Guild Wars 2

My opinion is pretty simple. Regardless of how long it took, if there was a set amount recipe of mats that I could gather to create a legendary I would. I refuse to participate in stupid RNG stuff.

Once precursors can be crafted I’ll make one.

John Smith.4610:

snip

I’m curious John. I’ve been reading what you’re saying and it makes sense for sure. I believe what a lot of the vocal players want are more reliable ways to acquire the precursors through doing content rather than through gold (right now many people I know got their legendary items that way). I can also see some players feel it is unfair with RNG aspects of it. Such as one guildie I had got I believe 4-5 precursors within a month about 4-5 months ago. He made tons of gold and quit the game (boredom, double edged sword with making lots of gold haha), but a lot of players were disgruntled by how many he got. So I can see why so many people are made about this topic.

Let me ask you how this will change the economy (I dabbled in economics but no where near what you have). Say there is a guaranteed way to create a character or account bound precursor. That way you can’t sell it on the TP. I can see doing this means people aren’t sinking gold into the TP which could cause more people to enter the market which would cause an increase in prices, but do you think it is as severe? Maybe if we instituted this with another piece of content that can help drain gold out of the economy to help counter the affects of it. Do you think something like that may work?

Precursor issue is a defiantly a tough one to cover.

It’s alive! It’s alive!

“Rise from your grave! And rescue my daugh-” Whoops, wrong game.

Because it’s an ongoing point…….

Hell Avenger.7021:

1. Surely my Harvard Economics Prof would disagree. Pretty sure he would say an increase in “drop rate” or aka production efficiency is a shock to the supply curve and causing it to shift downwards.

Yes but this is a virtual economy. Unlike a real one, we’re not actually trading goods, and most importantly we’re not doing so with any graspable form of value token.

In other words, a giant portion of our economy is driven by some form of valueless hype, comparable only to (if even that) tech bubbles and startup hype.

It doesn’t quite adhere to the same mechanics.

1. Increase precursor drop chance.
2. List this in patch notes.
3. Everyone goes: OMG OMG OMG NEED PRECURSAH NAO!
4. Price skyrockets as per-customer supply just dropped by 90% or so.

Sure, long-term the price would come down, if the supply is increased so much that the playerbase saturates and everyone “just has” a Legendary. Sure. But that’s exactly what the dev said. :P

Carighan.6758:

Hell Avenger.7021:

1. Surely my Harvard Economics Prof would disagree. Pretty sure he would say an increase in “drop rate” or aka production efficiency is a shock to the supply curve and causing it to shift downwards.

Yes but this is a virtual economy. Unlike a real one, we’re not actually trading goods, and most importantly we’re not doing so with any graspable form of value token.

In other words, a giant portion of our economy is driven by some form of valueless hype, comparable only to (if even that) tech bubbles and startup hype.

It doesn’t quite adhere to the same mechanics.

1. Increase precursor drop chance.
2. List this in patch notes.
3. Everyone goes: OMG OMG OMG NEED PRECURSAH NAO!
4. Price skyrockets as per-customer supply just dropped by 90% or so.

Sure, long-term the price would come down, if the supply is increased so much that the playerbase saturates and everyone “just has” a Legendary. Sure. But that’s exactly what the dev said. :P

That is not what would happen at all. People would wait for the price of precursors to fall due to the increased supply, then buy them. No one would scramble to buy the steadily dropping precursors…

Axialbloom.8109:

Carighan.6758:

Hell Avenger.7021:

1. Surely my Harvard Economics Prof would disagree. Pretty sure he would say an increase in “drop rate” or aka production efficiency is a shock to the supply curve and causing it to shift downwards.

Yes but this is a virtual economy. Unlike a real one, we’re not actually trading goods, and most importantly we’re not doing so with any graspable form of value token.

In other words, a giant portion of our economy is driven by some form of valueless hype, comparable only to (if even that) tech bubbles and startup hype.

It doesn’t quite adhere to the same mechanics.

1. Increase precursor drop chance.
2. List this in patch notes.
3. Everyone goes: OMG OMG OMG NEED PRECURSAH NAO!
4. Price skyrockets as per-customer supply just dropped by 90% or so.

Sure, long-term the price would come down, if the supply is increased so much that the playerbase saturates and everyone “just has” a Legendary. Sure. But that’s exactly what the dev said. :P

That is not what would happen at all. People would wait for the price of precursors to fall due to the increased supply, then buy them. No one would scramble to buy the steadily dropping precursors…

Right, because everything we know about human nature is wrong. I want to make some comparison to first-month sales numbers of a new generation Xbox or Iphone, but… there just really isn’t any point to it. Anyone who would make the statement above just isn’t going to understand what I’m talking about.

Precursors keep people playing. It’s important that something in the game be very difficult to accomplish. I’ve seen people quit once they’ve achieved their goals.

Svarty.8019:

Precursors keep people playing. It’s important that something in the game be very difficult to accomplish. I’ve seen people quit once they’ve achieved their goals.

Difficulty of getting precursors shouldn’t be equal to an unfair RNG.
Drop rate should be increasing with the difficulty of content you play.

Behellagh.1468:

It’s alive! It’s alive!

John just encouraged people to check on his posts on precursors yesterday.

Goloith.6349:

Like the title says, ANET needs to double the precursor drop rate. Now I can see a few people that spent a fortune with real currency to obtain these, but they are minuscule to the total revenue that ANET could receive if the “base was widened”. Also many of the people that own legendaries did not spend a dime ever in the gemstore. Call them the lucky ones that got a precursor drop early, flipped it, and repurchased when it was lower. Same goes with other market hawks.

So how exactly can ANET make more money and make more players happy?
It’s simple supply and demand really. If precursors would double what would happen? The price for precursors would drop a little less than half. This would in turn put precursors in the viability range for a lot of players to purchase…….well almost. It would spark huge demand for gems to cover the extra 100-200 gold needed to buy the precursors. It would also greatly increase the demand for the other mats needed in creating the actually legendary. The increased demand for those other mats would compensate a bit for doubling the drop rate. It would also force demand on none-legendary materials.

Overall we would see the price come down, but would give a huge perception that legendaries are actually attainable.

don’t worry, precursor crafting is coming. (more crafting yippee…)

as to your question… “So how exactly can ANET make more money and make more players happy?”

1- adopting more of the guild wars mentality when it comes to gearing up and rewards while offering all the “great” skins through the gem store.

2- offer more options than just crafting, rng luck and horrible drop rates as ways to obtain ascended, precursor and legendary gear.

3- save face and earn more money from customers in the long run by not making false statements in interviews that contradict what has actually been in development for many months.
*on ascended gear… “minimal stat increase with the focus on zero grind”.
*"best statistical loot by 80"
*"cosmetic grind only"
*"play your way"

4- offering better goods, services, skins, all gear levels… in the gem store will make for an easily accepted gold sink and increase gem sales tremendously.

5- content for the “fun of it” that rewards players appropriately for their time and effort, not content mainly designed for gold sinks and gem store sales.

I know this thread has been necro’d but in the same vein of things the recent increase in drop rates of chaos of lyssa would, by JS’s reasoning, increase the price. Odd….wonder why they would do this believing it would increase the prices? Also looking at the tp it has dropped from 2500g to 550g…odd again.

Nice try, but people haven’t been saving up for Chaos of Lyssa for months.

So you’re saying it would only temporarily increase prices while players that saved up are the ones increasing demand?

I’m saying you’re predicting the apple harvest by looking at orange trees.

Im not the one predicting…JS was.

tolunart.2095:

Axialbloom.8109:

Carighan.6758:

Hell Avenger.7021:

1. Surely my Harvard Economics Prof would disagree. Pretty sure he would say an increase in “drop rate” or aka production efficiency is a shock to the supply curve and causing it to shift downwards.

Yes but this is a virtual economy. Unlike a real one, we’re not actually trading goods, and most importantly we’re not doing so with any graspable form of value token.

In other words, a giant portion of our economy is driven by some form of valueless hype, comparable only to (if even that) tech bubbles and startup hype.

It doesn’t quite adhere to the same mechanics.

1. Increase precursor drop chance.
2. List this in patch notes.
3. Everyone goes: OMG OMG OMG NEED PRECURSAH NAO!
4. Price skyrockets as per-customer supply just dropped by 90% or so.

Sure, long-term the price would come down, if the supply is increased so much that the playerbase saturates and everyone “just has” a Legendary. Sure. But that’s exactly what the dev said. :P

That is not what would happen at all. People would wait for the price of precursors to fall due to the increased supply, then buy them. No one would scramble to buy the steadily dropping precursors…

Right, because everything we know about human nature is wrong. I want to make some comparison to first-month sales numbers of a new generation Xbox or Iphone, but… there just really isn’t any point to it. Anyone who would make the statement above just isn’t going to understand what I’m talking about.

That is because you are completely wrong. Look what just happened with the Chaos of Lyssa recipe. Your real life comparison is also totally flawed, and has absolutely no relevance. Early sales of a real item does not even begin to compare to generated droprates in a game.

I honestly don’t care about the drop rate or the mystic toilet chance. What I do care about is the fact that I have over 2700 hours booked into the game and there is still no way to earn it. You could crack out the wallet and buy one without any actual playing time in, or you could have attended the original Karka event when they were raining, but I refuse to do the former and was working for the latter.

I realize that precursor crafting would be tough to implement, but I have over 1000 skill points saved up at this point, so I ask, at what point does a player become legendary?

Disclamer: I actually don’t much care for the legendaries available as they don’t suit my main, but even if I wanted to try and make one to add to my skin wallet for another character, I would be kitten out of luck.

Or you can all cut the lecture on boring economics here and add the precursor crafting already? DEAL WITH IT So I wonder how many threads like this have to come up until something changes. 3 years? 5?

I mean.. I got my legendary few months ago; through bloody and sweaty sleepless nights. I don’t want any other, but I do feel for the new players, or those who are working on it already.

Svarty.8019:

Precursors keep people playing.

A percentage of sure.

For me however, WvW, PvP, PvE is what keeps me playing. Personally I think precursor acquisition in its current form is stupid. Which feeds into your next point…..

Svarty.8019:

It’s important that something in the game be very difficult to accomplish.

Difficult in what way? If I’m not prepared to grind out gold for hours and hours on end and pay someone else for the privileged. If I’m not prepared to sit afk in LA while I price gouge the TP with a bunch of spreadsheets in front of me. If I’m not prepared to use my credit card. If I’m not prepared to cross my arms and legs and pray to the almighty RNG Gods.

Which one are you referring to?

Svarty.8019:

I’ve seen people quit once they’ve achieved their goals.

People quit for a variety of reasons, that would be one amongst many.

Twice nothing, still nothing.

Nothing from nothing leaves nothing.

Since we done gone & necro’d this. I think the main issue for many, many players is that RNG isn’t very legendary nor is it any actual achievement of accomplishment. I totally would support a scavenger hunt that, in the course of your map completion & Explorer achievements, you collected certain bits that Miyani accepted to craft your precursor. It would need to be much more comprehensive than the Black Moa chick though.

dansamy.3752:

Since we done gone & necro’d this. I think the main issue for many, many players is that RNG isn’t very legendary nor is it any actual achievement of accomplishment. I totally would support a scavenger hunt that, in the course of your map completion & Explorer achievements, you collected certain bits that Miyani accepted to craft your precursor. It would need to be much more comprehensive than the Black Moa chick though.

I have a feeling that after this “scavenger hunt” is added to the game, players will prefer grinding the gold to buy a precursor instead.

sMihaly.1492:

Svarty.8019:

Precursors keep people playing. It’s important that something in the game be very difficult to accomplish. I’ve seen people quit once they’ve achieved their goals.

Difficulty of getting precursors shouldn’t be equal to an unfair RNG.
Drop rate should be increasing with the difficulty of content you play.

You have ignored the second and easiest way to get one … buying it. Whether people want to acknowledge it or not, this game is based on earning gold and buying stuff you need.

tolunart.2095:

I have a feeling that after this “scavenger hunt” is added to the game, players will prefer grinding the gold to buy a precursor instead.

Probably, because it’s not like everything else you need to forge a legendary isn’t one massive (and repetitive) scavenger hunt. We need another one to complete the insanity. :p

endirasae.3015:

tolunart.2095:

I have a feeling that after this “scavenger hunt” is added to the game, players will prefer grinding the gold to buy a precursor instead.

Probably, because it’s not like everything else you need to forge a legendary isn’t one massive (and repetitive) scavenger hunt. We need another one to complete the insanity. :p

It’s not actually going to be a scavenger hunt. About a year and a half ago, when the concept was first mentioned of a non-rng method of creating a new precursor (rather than just buying one from the TP that was randomly created by someone else) there was talk about it being some kind of scavenger hunt. Later discussions hinted that it would be crafted, like ascended gear, but some people still insist that it will be a scavenger hunt.

As you said, some of the gifts that are also used to forge a Legendary weapon are already created through collecting items, so either the precursor will be a new kind of gift or a scavenger hunt is unlikely.

Guys just wait for the scavenging hunt