What concerns me is that these infusions are obtained via the Mystic Forge, if RNG plays a role in getting them I will be seriously annoyed, hate RNG, such a lazy, shallow way to lengthen the grind. Not happy about the gated content and stat increases either, could have done without either, on the one hand we have the gimmick of Agony which could be an annoying RNG grind via infusions and we also have a new stat tier, both of which go against their own manifesto. Great game but seriously concerned about the direction they could be taking here.

I think people are way over-reacting. Infusions are likely not hard to obtain, much like they were in Prophecies. 

In addition, I think Ascended gear is a good feature because the game needs SOME vertical progression at max level. Ascended gear is fine as long as it is not required for all max-level content from here on out.

Originally posted by fundayz

I think people are way over-reacting. Infusions are likely not hard to obtain, much like they were in Prophecies. 

In addition, I think Ascended gear is a good feature because the game needs SOME vertical progression at max level. Ascended gear is fine as long as it is not required for all max-level content from here on out.

but the balance of all new content will have to balanced assuming the player has full Ascended gear (or the most available at that time).  if they balance the content for exotic it will seem too easy.  the stat differencce is 8%.  a group of 5 that is 8% stronger each is 40% stronger.  making all the dungeons they have right now meaningless.  it's power creep. 

Originally posted by Jyiiga

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. 

The existing gear you infused was Forge armour.  No one infused or used lower level gear because it didn't have the necessary stats for survival that Forge gear had.  Yeah, you could infuse Ascalonian armour but you weren't going to live long with that unless you had a farming build that relied on low armour.  Not a lot of farming builds for Mursaat areas because the mobs were too diverse.

So it wasn't that people had options that they chose to use.  They had one option.

I do think that this will seperate the community, to a degree. However, maybe not as much as you imagine.

Agony is limited to Fractals of the Mist. Let's look at FotM in order to give this some context. Initially, FotM will feature 9 different "wings". Each is much shorter than a full dungeon wing in the other dungeons in the game. When you enter FotM, three of the nine "Fractals" (wings) will be randomly selected and off you go. When you complete the three fractals, you will be sent back to a sort of instanced hub where you can repair, vendor, etc... Then, your group can chose to re-enter the dungeon, with a new random fractal selection, but this time the difficulty and the rewards will be boosted. You can continue this process until the difficulty becomes too difficult and you have to accept you just can't push the difficulty any further.

Talk is that each Fractal may take between 10-30 minutes, depending on how well your party does in the Fractal.

Now, FotM does have appeal for even fairly casual players. Most people can put together a group and set aside an hour or so to dedicate to a basic run. It will be the more hardcore players who will be willing and able to set aside an entire afternoon or even an entire afternoon AND evening in order to push the difficulty progression to the limit. Since it seems you need to progress as a party, hardcores are naturally going to want to group with other hardcores that they know will be willing and able to devote as much time as needed to push a series of runs to the absolute limit. These people will aquire Ascended gear and infusions more quickly, which, if you are honest, are really most useful for the hardcore player, since most casuals who don't play FotM for more than a couple hours per session are unlikely to push deep enough into the experience to need infused gear.

Casuals will play FotM for fun and will slowly aquire Ascended and Infused gear. Maybe they will have the occassional weekend where they and their friends can attempt a several hour run where there hard earned infused gear may offer some benefit. Hardcore players will continue to chase the progression in order to push their personal best deeper and deeper into the FotM experience. The time commitment for a deep run already serves to seperate the community. Those with more time will be more likely to have aquired Ascended gear and the infusions, which will be most useful to those with the time needed to actually push the boundaries of the experience.

The point is that time commitment will already seperate the community when it comes to FotM and the more time one has to play this content, the more quickly they will aquire Ascended and Infused gear, which in turn appears to really only be useful for those with enough time to play a long enough run to come up against the new condition mechanic.

Seperation of the community might become an issue down the road. It appears that Arenanet has plans to expand on FotM in the months and years to come. One would assume that as people aquire more and more infused gear, it may become likely that some "shortcut" to higher difficulty content might become available. This would fragment people not just by the amount of time they have to spend in a given day/week, but by the total amount of time they have spent playing FotM and acquiring gear. I think that's sort of inevitable. On the plus side, a newer player with a lot of hours free to commit may not be able to get as deep into the difficulty/reward ladder on each full run, but they can still stack multiple runs per day and have a good chance to catch up to more well equiped players in a fairly reasonable amount of time.

It seems like a pretty brilliant concept, really. Casuals can still enjoy the dungeon and slowly earn Ascneded and Infused gear. Hardcores can chase the progression and push the limits further and further, trying to complete more "waves" per run as well as working to be more efficient at completion of each fractal. I'd assume Arenanet will add more fractals over time. Either adding to the randomized pool right from the beginning of the progresssion, or adding additional fractals that only enter the random rotation as players work into deeper and deeper waves during a run.

It will be a nice feature for some, while having no impact on those who take a pass. Nothing to be up in arms about, just another game play option to add to the freedom that GW2 offers it's players.

It appears Ascended and Infused gear provides no advantage outside of FotM, so the game's general gear progression is uneffected. Community is already fragmented by available time commitment for each full run, so gear related fragmentation becomes secondary in most cases. Like WvW and sPvP, this is essentially an alternative mode of play meant to appeal to people looking for a progression related Dungeon experience with in GW2. Just like sPvP and WvW, participation in FotM doesn't provide any real advantage to players in the game proper. It's just another alternative meant to apeal to people looking for a particular style of play, either full time or as an occassional break from other game play activities.

Originally posted by muffins89

Originally posted by fundayz

I think people are way over-reacting. Infusions are likely not hard to obtain, much like they were in Prophecies. 

In addition, I think Ascended gear is a good feature because the game needs SOME vertical progression at max level. Ascended gear is fine as long as it is not required for all max-level content from here on out.

but the balance of all new content will have to balanced assuming the player has full Ascended gear (or the most available at that time).  if they balance the content for exotic it will seem too easy.  the stat differencce is 8%.  a group of 5 that is 8% stronger each is 40% stronger.  making all the dungeons they have right now meaningless.  it's power creep. 

Ummmm....no. A group that is 8% stronger is 8% stronger. The stat advantage of the group would be the average of the stat advantage of all players in the group, not the sum!

Besides, it has been explained that the stat bonus is in exchange for the lack of enhancement slots. Since the initial Ascended gear is rings and a back slot item, the enhancements you are losing access to are all pure stat boosts. If anything, this creates a disadvantage as players have no freedom to customize stat spread via the choice of enhancements.

The math will become more fuzy when they add Ascended armor down the road. Armor enhancements are in the form of Runes. Will Ascended Armor have the equivalent of runes built into them, with the ability to boost bonuses via sets? This seems more likely than pure stat bonuses in place of the ability to apply runes and will stretch the gear progression element as players pursue armor with particular Rune equivalents. That's all speculation though. What we do know is that fully enhanced Exotic rings should be pretty much on par with Ascended Rings, the possibility of Agony mitigation and Influsion slots being the only advantage, an advantage that will mean nothing outside of FotM!

Originally posted by xpiher
If content after FoTM (omg I can't believe no on mentioned this is Flavor of the Month) doesn't require FoTM armor and you can start with exotics and have a chance then at completing, then I'm ok with the system. ANET needs to clearify if FoTM armor is going to be necessary for all new dungeon content and if they will continue adding higher stats to new amor. If they do, its treadmill gear grind which is why I don't play most MMOs

The really important question here is how long did they sit around the office, throwing names around, until they made something fit into fotm because you *know* it worked like that.  The many tears shed over the years about fotm builds in GW1 is just too much to be purely coincidental.

All I know is I'd like to see Infusions that work like Mega Man abilities!  

Say there are ultimately 10 "end game" dungeons that offer 10 different Infusions.  You run one dungeon to acquire an ascended piece of armor and an Infusion power that can help you complete a different dungeon.  Every new character would have to decide in which order they wanted to tackle the dungeons based on which Infusion powers they have available to them and which ones they want to acquire to use in the next dungeon.  

Do it Anet.  

Originally posted by Homitu

All I know is I'd like to see Infusions that work like Mega Man abilities!  

Say there are ultimately 10 "end game" dungeons that offer 10 different Infusions.  You run one dungeon to acquire an ascended piece of armor and an Infusion power that can help you complete a different dungeon.  Every new character would have to decide in which order they wanted to tackle the dungeons based on which Infusion powers they have available to them and which ones they want to acquire to use in the next dungeon.  

Do it Anet.  

For the love of god no. Thats gear grind tread mill :(

Originally posted by xpiher
If content after FoTM (omg I can't believe no on mentioned this is Flavor of the Month) doesn't require FoTM armor and you can start with exotics and have a chance then at completing, then I'm ok with the system. ANET needs to clearify if FoTM armor is going to be necessary for all new dungeon content and if they will continue adding higher stats to new amor. If they do, its treadmill gear grind which is why I don't play most MMOs

This

Originally posted by xpiher

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.

This would have indeed been the best way to go. Perhaps a questline to gain an item (amulet, ring, back items or whatever) which provided protection from Agony, or perhaps consumables in the crafting arena.

Then the possibility to do the dungeon and tackle the Agony boss(es) once so armed. It would have been great fantasy trope - Siegfried needing to craft the meteoric iron sword to slay Fafnir; Merry needing the Barrow Blade to wound the Witch King.

None of these ever required repeated failed attempts to beat the bad guy - paper slicing your way to eventual victory by getting a matching set of armour piecemeal from his minions who are inexplicably carrying additive fractions of their bosses downfall around with them.... 

.... maybe it's some sort of monster work/life balance protest....