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Agony - the thing I am more worried about than Ascended gear
Ecoces
Member UncommonPosts: 879
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.
Comments
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.
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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.
'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.
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.
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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.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
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.
Agony could be Spectral Agony from GW1 - had infusion in GW1. Nothing new here....
Actually. took from Spectral Agony from GW1:Prohpecies. Infusion was needed to reduce damage.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
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!
Want to know more about GW2 and why there is so much buzz? Start here: Guild Wars 2 Mass Info for the Uninitiated
