Fractals of the Mists Fractures The Playerbase

[ronkul.1320]

22 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

And that's why legendaries exist: to be the carrot for that convenience

Ascended gear is not intended to be that carrot.

Actually anet did state that ascended gear was supposed to be the bridge between exotic gear and legendary gear (like you said exotic gear was deemed to be too easily acquirable). Therefore they are still considered a "carrot" just not the "ultimate carrot" (legendaries). If legendaries were the only intended "carrot" anet would not have introduced ascended as stated in their old blog post. It is a medium goal for gear progression and a "carrot" by definition is a reward as a or for a goal. Also people asked for ways to make ascended gear desirable so I answered. Gear does not have to be useful only inside said targeted content (and having more stat versatility does help in fractals in min/maximizing for encounters).

[ronkul.1320]

32 minutes ago, Fueki.4753 said:

But implementing Ascended gear was a response to players acquiring exotics far quicker than expected. So, even if they had not implement infusions and the Agony system, they'd have put in a gear tier above Exotics.

It may be one of these "I want to get things from this content, but not actually engage with it and its systems.", like we sometimes see for WvW/sPvP exclusive rewards. Just in this case, it's not exclusive rewards.

Or it might be a case of "I want legendary features without investing time/money into getting an actual legendary".

Being a tier higher does not have to be a vertical progression tier nor does it entail artificial hard gating in fractals. Also having some "legendary features" (i.e. convenience) does not make ascended gear legendaries. Legendaries can have more and/or better features. Like I said the suggestion of having customizable stats via a upgrade feature with stat "items" can be limited for ascended gear but unlimited for legendaries, while absent entirely for exotic and lower (with only the preexisting stat combinations).

[ronkul.1320]

1 hour ago, Danikat.8537 said:

Hold on, why are all these suggestions ways to make ascended equipment more desirable/useful outside Fractals? I thought this thread was about problems getting groups or progressing through Fractals.

If the actual problem is you think crafting ascended gear is too expensive for the small stat boost (which isn't required in most of the game) we absolutely can have that conversation, but it's almost entirely seperate from what this topic says it's about.

I think it was appropriate to tie the two topics together because fractals rewards are ascended gear and are the goal of doing fractals (legendary gear components to a lesser extent like the stabilizing matrices). Also ascended gear is not just the reward but part of the system used to progress through fractals with groups of similar AR levels. I just suggested what would make ascended gear "wanted" and "used" but not "needed" in fractals. I think there are many issues with ascended gear and the systems built for around them by anet (fractals) or the players (higher end content with enrage mechanics and needing to min max) and they should be addressed together or cohesively.

Edited January 19 by ronkul.1320

[ronkul.1320]

50 minutes ago, LSD.4673 said:

Yeah if only. Legendary you can change with a series of pointless clicks, which have to be repeated for weapons/armour/trinkets. 

Gotta get people buying those equip templates, though, eh?

I agree with you but I think it is still a fair-ish way for anet to make money through the gem store. Though maybe anet should add one more equipment template per character base because there are three game modes and/or add them to the wizards vault and/or add them viable a heavy grind (for those who are unwilling to pay for them from the store). They already added build templates for the wizards vault so maybe there should be a more expensive choice there or another ingame method that is limited (availability or time).

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Fueki.4753 said:

It could have been solved in a cleaner way, for example by letting people only access the levels they had already reached themselves, but they didn't do that.

Actually, they did exactly that. Originally the fractal level group could access depended on the lowest of their member personal fractal levels. The highest fractal level you could enter was your own personal fractal level +1. The ability to join a higher level opener came only later, it wasn't there in the beginning.

That alone would have been enough to slow progression through fractals and allow players to adjust. Ascended and AR requirements went much, much farther than that.

[ronkul.1320]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Actually, they did exactly that. Originally the fractal level group could access depended on the lowest of their member personal fractal levels. The highest fractal level you could enter was your own personal fractal level +1. The ability to join a higher level opener came only later, it wasn't there in the beginning.

That alone would have been enough to slow progression through fractals and allow players to adjust. Ascended and AR requirements went much, much farther than that.

I think that the reason anet changed it was because people would not take lower level fractal players (even if they were skilled) because it would slow their own fractal progression and that some people wanted to steam roll through the levels so they gave that option to the grinders/gold owners. I think that if we were to re implement that old system anet would have to incentivize higher level players to join lower level ones to help/teach them the ropes. I think a system like the map reward system for the core zones would help (core zones gave lower tier mats used in ascended and legendary intermediate crafting materials). Humans are intrinsically self serving to a degree, so for them to team up/socialize/help lower fractals level players they have to feel like they are getting something out of it (may not be directly comparable but more horizontally comparable like a new currency or other ways of getting ascended/legendary items or materials).

[ronkul.1320]

Astralporing.1957

I also like your quote at the bottom. It reflects my ethos for gaming too.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Fueki.4753 said:

But implementing Ascended gear was a response to players acquiring exotics far quicker than expected.

Not exactly true. Remember, that before launch they mentioned how they fully expected any player to be in BiS gear the moment they hit level 80. That was the assumption that carried over from GW1, and they at first intended to fulfill it.

It's not that players exceeded dev expectations at the speed of gearing up. It's that devs started to change their mind about gear progression. It's around time ascended was shipped that some devs started mentioning how the gear progression will be continued (on a "shallow curve"), and how they are definitely intending to increase level cap in the future.

Turns out, players disagreed. Hard. Which is why we're where we are now - with ascended gear fully implemented in the game and AR system in the fractals, but also idea of new agony like mechanics dropped, new infusion stat tiers never implemented, legendaries guaranteed to be BiS and a promise of no new gear tier ever again. And Anet trying from time to time to push the envelope and get around those promises using some "clever" methods like introducing new gear slots.

[ronkul.1320]

Also maybe if you are also going to re-implement the old fractal system, anet may need to make it so that you can be within 5-10 fractal levels of the lowest fractal level in your group to still progress your fractal level so there is less conflict in choosing a lower fractal level player in your group (if the group fractal level is back to be determined by the lowest fractal level in the group).

[Astralporing.1957]

Just now, ronkul.1320 said:

Also maybe if you are also going to re-implement the old fractal system, anet may need to make it so that you can be within 5-10 fractal levels of the lowest fractal level in your group to still progress your fractal level so there is less conflict in choosing a lower fractal level player in your group (if the group fractal level is back to be determined by the lowest fractal level in the group).

Why would they re-implement it? The reason for it is long gone. Just like the reason for Agony. Now you can start playing fractals immmediately at whatever tier you want (even going straight to CMs), and can gear up for that completely outside of that content. There's no reason to go back to what was obsoleted years ago.

And practically the only reason Agony remains as infusions (instead of being changed into some sort of account-wide system, or removed altogether) is that there's too many of those on TP (and too much gold has been spent on gearing up fractal characters throughout the years), and they haven't thought of the good way to make change without annoying at least some players. Well, that, and they don't seem to spend a lot of effort on fractals anymore.

[ronkul.1320]

3 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Not exactly true. Remember, that before launch they mentioned how they fully expected any player to be in BiS gear the moment they hit level 80. That was the assumption that carried over from GW1, and they at first intended to fulfill it.

It's not that players exceeded dev expectations at the speed of gearing up. It's that devs started to change their mind about gear progression. It's around time ascended was shipped that some devs started mentioning how the gear progression will be continued (on a "shallow curve"), and how they are definitely intending to increase level cap in the future.

Turns out, players disagreed. Hard. Which is why we're where we are now - with ascended gear fully implemented in the game and AR system in the fractals, but also idea of new agony like mechanics dropped, new infusion stat tiers never implemented, legendaries guaranteed to be BiS and a promise of no new gear tier ever again. And Anet trying from time to time to push the envelope and get around those promises using some "clever" methods like introducing new gear slots.

I think anet trying to push it vertically will not please any camp on the issue. Grinders will not have an overwhelmingly large advantage on other players and/or gate them from content because the gap is too small in a large span of time (casuals will catch up fast enough) and casuals will not like having constant vertical gear creep no matter how small (slow gear treadmill). I think the relic system introduction was a good revamp and was mostly horizontal progression but since many people needed to regear (if not for the free relics) or have to grind out the exclusive relics and/or new legendary relic (when they already had full legendary runes) it felt like a gear requirement increase (like you talked about with "clever"). If anet did not give the free relics for veterans there would definitely been a huge backlash of "invalidating gear" which somewhat occurred.

[ronkul.1320]

4 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Why would they re-implement it? The reason for it is long gone. Just like the reason for Agony. Now you can start playing fractals immmediately at whatever tier you want (even going straight to CMs), and can gear up for that completely outside of that content. There's no reason to go back to what was obsoleted years ago.

And practically the only reason Agony remains as infusions (instead of being changed into some sort of account-wide system, or removed altogether) is that there's too many of those on TP (and too much gold has been spent on gearing up fractal characters throughout the years), and they haven't thought of the good way to make change without annoying at least some players. Well, that, and they don't seem to spend a lot of effort on fractals anymore.

Yea too bad, it is just a grind/gold tax now for ascended gear/infusions for fractals. The rich get a simple pass while new players get the tax gate. This is coming from a t3 player too.

[Phyb.6704]

7 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Think a second about this argument. Agony Resistance was something that was preventing players from getting into scales that were "too high" due to Agony. It was always purely artificial restriction, that existed only to justify itself.

No, the real reason for it was twofold: first, it was there to slow down player progression through Fractals (by forcing players to grind for ascended and AR first, before they could progress further). Second, it was there to push players even more towards ascended grind, and thus justify introduction of that gear tier.

Basically, it is a gear progression system pushed into a game that was supposed to not have one. Also, due to how easy both infusions and ascended gear are now to obtain (and the fact that fractal levels are now capped at 100), it turned from content extender into a pure gold tax on fractals. Its original reasons have become completely obsolete by now, and the whole system is even more of a bad fit to the game than it was then (albeit one veteran players got used to, so rarely comment on it). Devs are completely aware of it, btw, and have made multiple comments in the past how they would have liked to revamp the system if not for the economic impact and fear of making billions of infusions already in the game obsolete (and potential player backlash that might have resulted from it).

The fact is you can BUY full ascended armor and weapon. You can use gold to max crafting and buy the stuff you need to craft them. If you have played for a bit then you can easily just spend gold to get the armor and weapon which is 80+ AR and then you can do another 15 from the potion and then wizzard vault laurels for the neck, rings, ect. It is very very fast to get the t4 req AR. 
The gate only exists to force new players to learn mechanics before its all stacked up with instabilties and CM's. 

The AR makes sense since it only actually gates new players within the first month and makes them learn the game. +9 or +10 Ar is about 10-12g each. Maxing a prof is like 100g. Getting stuff to craft a ascended is about 30g each and changing a stat if you dont have the right stat design is about 12-15g a piece. It may seem expensive at first but after a month I do not see any reason with 2-4hrs a day or 15hrs a week... you can not get even more gold. Just do nearly anything.
You can make easy gold doing so many different things. 

The truth is the AR gate is very very small and only effects very new players that should be delayed as they learn to play the game. This lets them put a higher diffaculty curve on the content. Honestly the fractal "gate" does not even req playing fractals. You can get around the gate just doing open world. 

The "gate" is simply...... stop spending all your gold on cosmetics and get the gear. Its not hard. I love the cosmetic wars personally. BUT I get that if ima go broke on skins then I may be a bit short on gear req. 

 

[Astralporing.1957]

2 minutes ago, ohericoseo.4316 said:

The gate only exists to force new players to learn mechanics before its all stacked up with instabilties and CM's.

And that's the point - it does not force them to learn anything. The only thing it "forces" them to do is earn and spend gold.

[Phyb.6704]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And that's the point - it does not force them to learn anything. The only thing it "forces" them to do is earn and spend gold.

I am very split on having the option to buy the gems  / earn the gold vs actually having to do the content and learn. I do agree the purpose has been lost though I used to like having more options to get the ascended gear.... now its just a gold sink. It does not really make all that much sense now. But thats anet / ncsoft........ Non existent balance in stats, gear, content, reward req vs reward teir... its all kinda junk. There was a clear reason then it just got thrown out and now its w/e. Its ncsoft.... that should say enough. 

[Cyninja.2954]

26 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And that's the point - it does not force them to learn anything. The only thing it "forces" them to do is earn and spend gold.

True, that's what soft gates are for: discourage you from skipping them and if you do, you do it at your own peril while at the same time still giving the option to skip them.

I don't think the the way agony is done is fitting for today, but I also disagree that removing all gates is in the interested or benefit of most players. We know how the majority of players in this game fare when they are given the option to enter any content: most are insanely inadequate skill wise and often suffer for it.

I also disagree that fractals "fracture" the player base, not in any significant way. Any player can enter ANY fractal level. They merely can't open them themselves. That's a huge distinction.

Acquiring the recommended agony resistance, and thus the recommended amount of ascended gear on slots, is another way of encouraging players spend a minimal amount of time on what gear they are getting, especially in regards to stats. The amount of times I am asked by newer (or returning) players what stats they should get tells me that a lot more thought goes into ascended gear versus exotic or lower.

The last thing we need is MORE access for inadequate players rolling up in content they have no business to be in and messaging: "hi dps" because "rewards best at T4".

As to the legendary changed suggestions: no. Making legendaries or ascended individual stat select-able is not an increase in utility, it's power-creep. I don't feel the need to explain given this is self explaining. These changes are also not needed given this entire game is made with exotic gear in mind, even fractals if it wasn't for the agony resistance. Ascended was never meant to be a stepping stone to legendary. In fact legendary gear was adjusted to ascended, being exotic quality before. Legendary was originally meant as purely cosmetic style items, there was not even any utility involved (and very early legendary items were even inferior to exotic gear because they were soldier stats). This take is plain incorrect.

TL;DR:

There is no huge fracturing going on here. Players who wish to start T4 fractals day 1 have the ability to do so, it merely takes some other players helping them out, which is exactly where you would want a new player to be at: a more experienced player at his side who might even discourage this if needed.

The natural fractal progression, aka when not skipping and actually climbing the ladder naturally, actually flows very well. The soft gates with agony resistance slowly ramp up encouraging players deal with them and get an understanding of the games gearing system. In that regard all the rest of the game has failed.

Edited January 19 by Cyninja.2954

[ronkul.1320]

1 hour ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

True, that's what soft gates are for: discourage you from skipping them and if you do, you do it at your own peril while at the same time still giving the option to skip them.

I don't think the the way agony is done is fitting for today, but I also disagree that removing all gates is in the interested or benefit of most players. We know how the majority of players in this game fare when they are given the option to enter any content: most are insanely inadequate skill wise and often suffer for it.

I also disagree that fractals "fracture" the player base, not in any significant way. Any player can enter ANY fractal level. They merely can't open them themselves. That's a huge distinction.

Acquiring the recommended agony resistance, and thus the recommended amount of ascended gear on slots, is another way of encouraging players spend a minimal amount of time on what gear they are getting, especially in regards to stats. The amount of times I am asked by newer (or returning) players what stats they should get tells me that a lot more thought goes into ascended gear versus exotic or lower.

The last thing we need is MORE access for inadequate players rolling up in content they have no business to be in and messaging: "hi dps" because "rewards best at T4".

As to the legendary changed suggestions: no. Making legendaries or ascended individual stat select-able is not an increase in utility, it's power-creep. I don't feel the need to explain given this is self explaining. These changes are also not needed given this entire game is made with exotic gear in mind, even fractals if it wasn't for the agony resistance. Ascended was never meant to be a stepping stone to legendary. In fact legendary gear was adjusted to ascended, being exotic quality before. Legendary was originally meant as purely cosmetic style items, there was not even any utility involved (and very early legendary items were even inferior to exotic gear because they were soldier stats). This take is plain incorrect.

TL;DR:

There is no huge fracturing going on here. Players who wish to start T4 fractals day 1 have the ability to do so, it merely takes some other players helping them out, which is exactly where you would want a new player to be at: a more experienced player at his side who might even discourage this if needed.

The natural fractal progression, aka when not skipping and actually climbing the ladder naturally, actually flows very well. The soft gates with agony resistance slowly ramp up encouraging players deal with them and get an understanding of the games gearing system. In that regard all the rest of the game has failed.

But these agony mechanics in fractals are not soft gates like masteries but hard gates with gold tolls. And yes you are right the game needs to better teach what stats and builds to get while leveling up and how to play roles in higher end content better. Sadly anet has not done much of this "explaining." And the suggestions of specific individual horizontal currencies or rewards for each fractal tier was suggested to encourage veteran players to help/guide new players in fractals who would otherwise, as you said, have the mindset of "rewards best a T4" while new players are left on their own finding other new players to play fractals with and going in more "blindly." And yes the game was designed with exotics in mind and ascended gear was created to create a false sense progression. Anet said that ascended would bridge a gap between legendary and exotic as PR speak to introduce a new harder to get tier to try to retain the old style vertical progression mmo players who were leaving in mass when there "was no endgame" at the launch of the game. Since we are stuck with ascended level gear anyway I think that making them more appealing in a more horizontal fashion is a more acceptable approach because you said that the game was designed around exotic gear. And the stat select-able option was made as an idea more to increase build diversity while having balance guard rails such as stat selection limitations (amount of certain stats in certain combinations limited when they are OP) depending on profession and/or elite specialization, which would streamline the current way of adding new stat combinations to the game (which is universal for all professions so we have something OP like celestial elementalists).

Edited January 19 by ronkul.1320

[Cyninja.2954]

1 hour ago, ronkul.1320 said:

But these agony mechanics in fractals are not soft gates like masteries but hard gates with gold tolls.

A gold toll is not a hard gate. In fact, give the amount of gold available in todays game, it's more than possible to get T4 ready within 1 week of regular play (and not buying any gold). Fractals themselves reward large quantities of gold, even starting at tier 1.

As far as MMO timespans, the time added on is insignificant.

1 hour ago, ronkul.1320 said:

And yes you are right the game needs to better teach what stats and builds to get while leveling up and how to play roles in higher end content better. Sadly anet has not done much of this "explaining." And the suggestions of specific individual horizontal currencies or rewards for each fractal tier was suggested to encourage veteran players to help/guide new players in fractals who would otherwise, as you said, have the mindset of "rewards best a T4" while new players are left on their own finding other new players to play fractals with and going in more "blindly."

That's nonsense. You are making a claim that all longterm players all only play T4. That's untrue.

There are many players who play all levels of fractals, not only T4. Though sure, T4 is the most populated.

Adding to that: recommended fractals are already in place to encourage lower tier fractal play, and the recommended fractals rewards make up around 40% of all gold and material rewards from daily fractals.

1 hour ago, ronkul.1320 said:

And yes the game was designed with exotics in mind and ascended gear was created to create a false sense progression. Anet said that ascended would bridge a gap between legendary and exotic as PR speak to introduce a new harder to get tier to try to retain the old style vertical progression mmo players who were leaving in mass when there "was no endgame" at the launch of the game.

Please find the quote from back then where they explicitly state that ascended is a bridge to legendary.

How was legendary gear supposed to be after ascended gear when it had lower stats to begin with? Again legendary gear was bumped to ascended level once ascended was added. It was never meant to surpass ascended and it did not originally.

All the quality of life if has now was added years later. You can't just willy nilly jump around in time and make stuff up.

Also yes: ascended was added retroactively as tier after exotic, and it's only place of use was fractals. The stats disparity was even smaller when it was added and only grew to where it is now with the stat changes when traitlines where reworked pre HoT.

1 hour ago, ronkul.1320 said:

Since we are stuck with ascended level gear anyway I think that making them more appealing in a more horizontal fashion is a more acceptable approach because you said that the game was designed around exotic gear.

Ascended just got made less appealing by bumping legendary gear utility wise. I doubt the developers are going to do a 180 om this.

The entire approach is to convince more players to go for legendary gear, not ascended.

I doubt many players in this game would want horizontal progression, at least the majority never did in the past. Obviously I can't speak for all the new players from more traditional MMORPGs which might want to change this game to their liking.

1 hour ago, ronkul.1320 said:

And the stat select-able option was made as an idea more to increase build diversity while having balance guard rails such as stat selection limitations (amount of certain stats in certain combinations limited when they are OP) depending on profession and/or elite specialization, which would streamline the current way of adding new stat combinations to the game (which is universal for all professions so we have something OP like celestial elementalists).

Yup, and it's  a bad idea as far as balance goes and would make ascended/legendary superior to exotic in even more ways than now.

Edited January 20 by Cyninja.2954

[ronkul.1320]

4 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

A gold toll is not a hard gate. In fact, give the amount of gold available in todays game, it's more than possible to get T4 ready within 1 week of regular play (and not buying any gold). Fractals themselves reward large quantities of gold, even starting at tier 1.

As far as MMO timespans, the time added on is insignificant.

That's nonsense. You are making a claim that all longterm players all only play T4. That's untrue.

There are many players who play all levels of fractals, not only T4. Though sure, T4 is the most populated.

Adding to that: recommended fractals are already in place to encourage lower tier fractal play, and the recommended fractals rewards make up around 40% of all gold and material rewards from daily fractals.

Please find the quote from back then where they explicitly state that ascended is a bridge to legendary.

How was legendary gear supposed to be after ascended gear when it had lower stats to begin with? Again legendary gear was bumped to ascended level once ascended was added. It was never meant to surpass ascended and it did not originally.

All the quality of life if has now was added years later. You can't just willy nilly jump around in time and make stuff up.

Also yes: ascended was added retroactively as tier after exotic, and it's only place of use was fractals. The stats disparity was even smaller when it was added and only grew to where it is now with the stat changes when traitlines where reworked pre HoT.

Ascended just got made less appealing by bumping legendary gear utility wise. I doubt the developers are going to do a 180 om this.

The entire approach is to convince more players to go for legendary gear, not ascended.

I doubt many players in this game would want horizontal progression, at least the majority never did in the past. Obviously I can't speak for all the new players from more traditional MMORPGs which might want to change this game to their liking.

Yup, and it's  a bad idea as far as balance goes and would make ascended/legendary superior to exotic in even more ways than now.

The agony mechanic is a hard gate through a loophole called the gold tax. There is only one recommended fractal per tier making grouping with others less often in lower tiers compared to the 3 dailies that auto completes lower tier dailies.

Bridge to legendary:

https://www.pcgamer.com/arenanet-guild-wars-2-ascended/

https://www.engadget.com/2012-11-13-arenanet-explains-new-ascended-item-tier.html

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/linsey-murdock-unveils-new-high-end-ascended-gear/

Yes I agreed with you that ascended was retroactively added in my previous posts to try to retain the hard core or grinders that were streaming out the game. Since legendaries were considered the ultimate goals from beginning (as cosmetics) to end (as utility gear), anet made them the last tier after ascended got introduced as you said to please the ones who went for or are going for them. Ascended would still have less functionality than legendary gear just more than exotic gear so they would still be a mid goal to the end goal of legendaries.

The majority of players may not want certain horizontal progression systems (like having too many currencies) but they were adamantly opposed to the vertical gear setup of the introduced ascended gear. On the forums and reddit they stated they didn't want a gear treadmill or similar vertical progression systems (like harder to get BIS gear) and it created a bigger exodus of players after the hard core/grinders left (there was "no end game") for a time until it cooled down with anet trying to promise not to introduced new tiers. Anet tried pleasing both crowds and ended up pissing off both crowds.

Also I said that to make exotics closer are same base stats state wise to ascended/legendary gear to balance (as you said) the gears in exchange for my utility from ascended gear and legendary gear (which would only make them superior in a utility sense and not a stat sense to exotic gear).

Edited January 20 by ronkul.1320

[ronkul.1320]

The fractal gold gate is like a parking fine. You can either get points on your license or go to jail or bypass it all together with money (that is why fines are called laws for the poor). It is just a gold sink at best and hinders new players at worst and does not teach new players how to play fractals or high end content as the barriers first implemented suggested ("easing" players into higher end content).

[ronkul.1320]

Check the first reply's replies for the last post. This was one of the fire storms of the playerbase when ascended was first introduced as vertical progression. There used to be a large mega thread on reddit but I cannot seem to find it, sorry about that.

[ronkul.1320]

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-Ascended-the-End-of-It/page/1#post789379

more bridging the gap quotes (yes it was PR)

There was a more direct quote from anet on social media before but I think it got deleted over time.

Edited January 20 by ronkul.1320

[ZephidelGRS.9520]

This just sounds like you just wanna jump straight to Tier 4 without the grind that comes with it.

Players being carried through by more experienced veterans is exactly how we have the Tier 3 "pug hell" situation: Sh!t got real and the fights become actually difficult, yet you have a bunch of clueless players that's a mix of illiterate to mechanics, dysfunctional group synergy, abysmal DPS, on top of not knowing how to counter Instabilities to make life easier.

Which makes Tier 3, even though supposedly easier than Tier 4, more often than not more difficult and inefficient. And Tier 4 themselves are chill only because most people already know what to do and can perform reasonably well, but if you show up completely clueless like above then it's likely that you'll not be received nicely by the group. The key here is the experience that comes naturally with the grind as you level up organically.

Yes theoretically a player can just cash out gold and gear themselves full of Ascended and Agony without having to touch a single lower level, but if said player has any of the aforementioned problems then natural selection will boot them back to the lower levels really quick. Outside of their good friends, carried players will likely struggle and find that pugs are not as nice, and can come off as elitist and toxic. But that's to be expected, if you have reached the highest levels of Fractal then people can expect that you must have known how the fights work right? 

This is why the grind for Ascended and Agony is actually a good thing. Yes I have done the grind and I know how much it sucks to acquire your 1st full gear set, but it's a healthy gate to monitor difficulty and expectation.

[ronkul.1320]

But the grind tends to not have much to do with teaching how to play or how the mechanics work, that is the issue I have with it. I also did not say for veterans to carry new players but to teach and guide them, using external rewards to motivate veterans to teach in pugs groups. Since anet is bad at teaching the mechanics in fractals, I think that making the community organically get involved would help. It would be even better not to have the gold tax grind that just serves nothing more than a gold sink if it does not teach/help new player learn the mechanics. Grinding does not equate to learning.

As said:

Astralporing.1957 replied to ronkul.1320's topic in Instanced Group Content

And that's the point - it does not force them to learn anything. The only thing it "forces" them to do is earn and spend gold.

 

And difficulty is already monitored and gated through fractal levels theoretically not through gear or agony resistance grind. If a person gets carried and then becomes a bad pug later on it is the way the system and content was made that didn't teach the players how to play in the first place while being carried.

[ronkul.1320]

Also grinding for ascended gear can be done outside and is done through crafting, which has nothing to do with fractals or learning the mechanics.