Guild Wars 2

The key issue with crafting components in this game is that there’s not really much worthwhile to obtain with them.

In GW1, various crafting materials were required for each purchasable armor/weapon skin. Krytan armor still required Krytan materials… But Elonian armor required new materials like Elonian Leather. Stuff in Cantha required Spiritwood Planks.

I’ve seen many people complain that the Ascended skins aren’t worth it for various reasons.

Elonian Leather is worth less than the components that it consists of.
Various leather components, generally, are about the same as they were months ago (or maybe even cheaper now.)

We need cosmetic grind. It’s been established in past topics.

Adding stuff to the Gem store may serve to reduce the overall amount of gold… but does nothing to impact crafting components.

Add to it that Ascended weapons are crazy expensive for the minor stat increase.
If you ignore getting your crafting to 500 and buying all the crafting materials necessary…
You could probably almost afford a Legendary with all that you’d save.
And that Legendary, unlike Ascended, would allow you to change stats on the fly.

Minos.5168:

The key issue with crafting components in this game is that there’s not really much worthwhile to obtain with them.

I can’t beat the guy with the back office access to the data, but as someone on the front end farming and selling these crafting materials, I come to the conclusion that you and I can’t be playing the same game.

John Smith.4610:

Given the input/output of materials and their value to players I would hypothesize that players find many outputs of crafting worthwhile for one reason or another.

An example, I pulled the approximate amount of crafting materials destroyed in the time I took to read this post and the number I received was 136,909 items. There’s a high demand and velocity of crafting materials, which I would say is good evidence that there must be something to do with those crafting materials.

Half of those 136k crafting materials destroyed could have been Thick Leather Sections sold to a vendor.

With respect to crafting in general, the reason that the value of inputs often appears greater than that value of outputs is because one of the major outputs (experience) cannot be resold. In fact, I would venture that a very large portion of all crafted items are crafted not because the crafter wanted to own or sell that particular item, but only because crafting gives experience and they wanted to level up their character.

When you think about it this way, the usual flow of value you would expect with regard to an activity like crafting is reversed – instead of the crafter adding value to raw materials through labor (like in real life), the crafter is actually REMOVING value from raw materials by gaining the experience award for combining them. Since there are no barriers to entry (every player account can have access to all crafting professions simultaneously), if the market is functioning efficiently, any crafting activity should result in a net loss of gold value due to the gain in experience value.

Can you tell that I think making crafting give leveling experience was a terrible idea? It shouldn’t be called “crafting” so much as “buying experience.”

I thought ascended weapon is about 60 gold to make. I don’t see why people wont’ want it. I thought weapon itself will give a decent amount of damage

A full set of ascended armor however is very expensive 25 bolt of damask is already like 325 gold.

Which become very expensive if you want to craft a few set.

Minos.5168:

The key issue with crafting components in this game is that there’s not really much worthwhile to obtain with them.

In GW1, various crafting materials were required for each purchasable armor/weapon skin. Krytan armor still required Krytan materials… But Elonian armor required new materials like Elonian Leather. Stuff in Cantha required Spiritwood Planks.

I’ve seen many people complain that the Ascended skins aren’t worth it for various reasons.

Elonian Leather is worth less than the components that it consists of.
Various leather components, generally, are about the same as they were months ago (or maybe even cheaper now.)

We need cosmetic grind. It’s been established in past topics.

Adding stuff to the Gem store may serve to reduce the overall amount of gold… but does nothing to impact crafting components.

Add to it that Ascended weapons are crazy expensive for the minor stat increase.
If you ignore getting your crafting to 500 and buying all the crafting materials necessary…
You could probably almost afford a Legendary with all that you’d save.
And that Legendary, unlike Ascended, would allow you to change stats on the fly.

I think that is more like leather isn’t worth as much. I’m sure you see the price of other material.

Please stop asking for it. I dont’ like to grind 7500 silk/500 gold just for a full set of ascended armor. I suppose a few people are invested in leather.

John:
That’s great that you can play the numbers game.

Now let’s play statistics.

How many of the “over 3 million players” have reached 500 in a single crafting profession on any of their characters?

My point being that aside from “cloth” materials (which are required for ALL Ascended insignias, regardless of armor type)… Most other materials haven’t really increased in value. (Granted, it may very well have kept Ore and Wood from plummeting due to an overabundance of mining and tree-chopping with Infinite Use tools.)

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

Given the input/output of materials and their value to players I would hypothesize that players find many outputs of crafting worthwhile for one reason or another.

An example, I pulled the approximate amount of crafting materials destroyed in the time I took to read this post and the number I received was 136,909 items. There’s a high demand and velocity of crafting materials, which I would say is good evidence that there must be something to do with those crafting materials.

Half of those 136k crafting materials destroyed could have been Thick Leather Sections sold to a vendor.

This.

Minos.5168:

Most other materials haven’t really increased in value.

You want items to increase the value for “what reason?”

You say people are not able to afford leveling crafting and ascended gear. But want items to increase in value? Isn’t that very contradictory?

laokoko.7403:

Minos.5168:

Most other materials haven’t really increased in value.

You want items to increase the value for “what reason?”

You say people are not able to afford leveling crafting and ascended gear. But want items to increase in value? Isn’t that very contradictory?

I don’t necessarily want items to increase in cost.

I, honestly, think that Ascended crafting is probably only being attempted by a small percentage of the player-base.

If Ascended were more affordable, perhaps more people would craft Ascended gear (and even craft Ascended gear for more characters).

As it is presently, I see most people (out of those that even bother with Ascended crafting) crafting a set for their main… And then not bothering.

There’s hardly any decent craft-able armor skin. The only point to crafting, currently, is for stats.

For those playing the number game at home:
1 Ascended Insignia requires up to 1920 crafting components:

• 5 Globs of Dark Matter.
• 10 Crystalline Dust.
• 1 Gossamer Insignia (which requires):
  • 5 Bolts of Gossamer (which requires):
    • 10 Gossamer Scraps.
  • 20 Spools of Gossamer Thread.
  • 5 Ectoplasm.
  • 5 of a “fine” crafting material (let’s assume Charged Quartz because NUMBERS):
    • 125 Quartz
• 3 Bolts of Damask (which requires):
  • 60 Bolts of Wool (which requires):
    • 120 Wool Scraps.
  • 30 Bolts of Cotton (which requires):
    • 60 Cotton Scraps.
  • 60 Bolts of Linen (which requires):
    • 120 Linen Scraps.
  • 3 Spool of Silk Weaving Thread (which requires):
    • 3 Globs of Ectoplasm.
    • 75 Spools of Gossamer Thread.
    • 300 Bolts of Silk (which requires):
      • 900 Silk Scraps.

And that’s just 1920 destroyed crafting components for the insignia…

Let’s take a cloth chest piece:
[spoiler] 7003 total crafting components destroyed [/spoiler]

• All 1921 (including the Ascended insignia itself) components above
• 1 Vision Crystal (which requires):
  • 1 Augur’s Stone (I won’t count Skill Points as a crafting component… but this requires 20 of those)
  • 5 Bloodstone Bricks (which requires):
    • 500 Piles of Bloodstone Dust.
    • 10 Obsidian Shards.
    • 50 Thermocatalytic Reagents.
  • 5 Dragonite Ingots (which requires):
    • 500 Dragonite Ore.
    • 10 Obsidian Shards.
    • 50 Thermocatalytic Reagents.
  • 5 Empyreal Stars (which requires):
    • 500 Empyreal Fragments.
    • 10 Obsidian Shards.
    • 50 Thermocatalytic Reagents.
• 1 Damask Coat Lining:
  • 5 Crystaline Dust.
  • 60 Spools of Gossamer Thread.
  • 1 Bolt of Damask (which requires):
    • 20 Bolts of Wool (which requires):
      • 40 Wool Scraps.
    • 10 Bolts of Cotton (which requires):
      • 20 Cotton Scraps.
    • 20 Bolts of Linen (which requires):
      • 40 Linen Scraps.
    • 1 Spool of Silk Weaving Thread (which requires):
      • 1 Globs of Ectoplasm.
      • 25 Spools of Gossamer Thread.
      • 100 Bolts of Silk (which requires):
        • 300 Silk Scraps.
• 1 Damask Coat Panel:
  • 5 Crystaline Dust.
  • 60 Spools of Gossamer Thread.
  • 4 Bolts of Damask (which requires):
    • 80 Bolts of Wool (which requires):
      • 160 Wool Scraps.
    • 40 Bolts of Cotton (which requires):
      • 80 Cotton Scraps.
    • 80 Bolts of Linen (which requires):
      • 160 Linen Scraps.
    • 4 Spool of Silk Weaving Thread (which requires):
      • 4 Globs of Ectoplasm.
      • 100 Spools of Gossamer Thread.
      • 400 Bolts of Silk (which requires):
        • 1200 Silk Scraps.
  • 1 Elonian Leather Square (which requires):
    • 20 Cured Thin Leather Squares (which requires):
      • 40 Thin Leather Sections.
    • 10 Cured Coarse Leather Squares (which requires):
      • 20 Coarse Leather Sections.
    • 20 Cured Rugged Leather Squares (which requires):
      • 40 Rugged Leather Sections.
    • 1 Spool of Thick Elonian Cord (which requires):
      • 1 Globs of Ectoplasm.
      • 10 Thermocatalytic Reagents.
      • 50 Cured Thick Leather Squares (which requires):
        • 150 Thick Leather Sections.

The grand total for ONE Ascended chest piece is 7003 crafting components destroyed.
So maybe only 19 people were actually crafting anything while John responded to this topic…

TL;DR for prior post:
7003 crafting components for one Ascended chest piece…
That, effectively, reduces John’s lofty “136,909 items” down to possibly only 20 people crafting at one particular time-frame (of unspecified length, I might add).

I think Ascended crafting only provides a short-term crafting sink.
Long-term, people who want Ascended stats will craft a set and then move on.

You have to keep in mind that Ascended crafting was DELIBERATELY made so hard to get in order to provide a real long-term goal (we’re talking a possibly 1 – 2 year long goal here) for players to work towards. John’s post shows that an absolutely enormous amount of mats is being generated and destroyed every day; without something like Ascended crafting to absorb a large chunk of it, we would quickly see prices for T5 mats hit rock bottom as they did last year.

The one thing I will agree on is that cloth is abnormally hard to acquire compared to other materials. (Technically leather is in the same spot, but prices are kept in check by much lower demand.) Damask does not require Thermo Reagents to craft as Deldrimor Steel, Spiritwood or Elonian Leather do, but I think ANet didn’t expect prices for Silk (and Linen) to rise as high as they did. They could just wait it out; long-term demand WILL settle and prices return to a more normal level, but I think this would result in a lot of frustrated players.

I’d like to see the drop rate of cloth be increased, perhaps by increasing the number of scraps obtained from salvage or bags by 1 or 2 (effectively doubling the number of cloth entering the market). This should help depress prices and make it more accessible to more players, and because the change affects cloth at all levels, ANet wouldn’t need to adjust individual recipes and make it fairer for players that have already made Ascended armor using the old recipes.

Zaxares.5419:

The one thing I will agree on is that cloth is abnormally hard to acquire compared to other materials. Damask does not require Thermo Reagents to craft as Deldrimor Steel, Spiritwood or Elonian Leather do, but I think ANet didn’t expect prices for Silk (and Linen) to rise as high as they did. They could just wait it out; long-term demand WILL settle and prices return to a more normal level, but I think this would result in a lot of frustrated players.

I’d like to see the drop rate of cloth be increased, perhaps by increasing the number of scraps obtained from salvage or bags by 1 or 2 (effectively doubling the number of cloth entering the market). This should help depress prices and make it more accessible to more players, and because the change affects cloth at all levels, ANet wouldn’t need to adjust individual recipes and make it fairer for players that have already made Ascended armor using the old recipes.

It seems like they really didn’t take everything into account.
Damask is required for EVERY insiginia and certain armor components.
Leather is not.

It should be extremely obvious that cloth is generated at a much lower rate than all other materials. (Mining now requires no cost to the player… if they already bought a Gem store tool.)

If the cloth prices ‘settled’, that would mean everyone just gave up. Kind of like what is happening now.

John Smith.4610:

Given the input/output of materials and their value to players I would hypothesize that players find many outputs of crafting worthwhile for one reason or another.

An example, I pulled the approximate amount of crafting materials destroyed in the time I took to read this post and the number I received was 136,909 items. There’s a high demand and velocity of crafting materials, which I would say is good evidence that there must be something to do with those crafting materials.

Although I think ascended gear is at a good place I do like to point out that I find the demand for certain specific ascended materials lopsided. For example, bolt of damask is currently still selling for 14g50s while deldrimor steel ingot is at 3g30s. This leads to the case that heavy and medium classes have a much easier time to craft their ascended armor than light classes.

I don’t see how prices will settle down as long as supply is limited (there is no way to farm cloths) and demand is required from all armor classes.

Minos.5168:

So maybe only 19 people were actually crafting anything while John responded to this topic…

If you read John’s post he said in the time it took for him to read your OP, which is about 20 seconds. So you telling me 20 people managed to craft all that stuff, you put down in 20secs.
136,909 items destroyed in 20 secs…….
So i think yes 20 people could have been making ascended during that time frame or there were 70,000 people making 2 items for their ascended stuff. Then just multiply that by the hours in the day….(cba to do maths, just a really large number)
You have to look at the whole thing not just pick apart something that benefits your argument.

I think i can make the frustration of most players here more evident. We got following problems:

• The price of thick leather is very low due to the low demand and high supply.
• The high price of silk scraps: Silk may be just as common, but the amount needed is way higher, so that in the end we got the price imbalance were currently facing at.
  Result: player frustration when finding a leather scrap with no value and player frustration when buying silk scraps for ascended armor.

Possible obvious solutions would be the following:

• Increasing the price of leather scraps by adding demand would even out the difference but make ascended items even more expensive. As a result this would slow down the amount of ascended crafting and therefore reduce demand and price of silk scraps.
• Decreasing the price of silks by reducing demand or adding supply through higher drop rates would increase crafting and therefore also the demand of leather – turning it more valuable. It would also turn ascended armor easier obtainable.

So both solutions would work in towards improving crafting. It depends on whether the cost for ascended armor should increase, decrease or stay the same, to say which solution or a combination of these is the best.

Edit: typos

In the end, its a dynamic market and ascended crafting was introduced not only as a mat sink but also as a gold sink. As long as there are players out there that pay the high prices, they wont go down. Ascended crafting was also introduced as a long term goal so I dont see why Anet should change the drop rate for cloth.

your daily 40 Linen Scraps are easily farmable in 15-20 min and you even get some cotton and silk along the way.

Silk is a bit more of a problem but in my opinion its just because players promoted huge amounts of the silk supply to gossamer prior to the patch and were left empty handed when they realized they dont need much gossamer and huge amounts of silk.
Apart from that, i think ascended crafting is pretty much working as intended and in a good place. I dont see a reason to change it.

But what about the 20 stacks of Leather Sections that I keep in my personal guild bank in case it goes up in price? They’re so useless right now that I don’t even care about crafting Elonian Leather anymore. I’m surprised there’s not more Leather destroyed. What about Bloodstone Dusts and Empyreal? Those craps drop way too much.

Heck, I even salvage green light amors (in addition to blues) for Silk Scraps since that crap is now worth a lot for a T5.

There is a high velocity of tax returns around the 1st Q of each year in the United States with spikes near April 15th.

Now, is there a high delight that comes with that high velocity?

The delight you have established by means of what you call “the economy” of the game and the mode of play crafting has become increasingly polarizing to the community around the issue of character progression and forced playstyles (crafting).

The “economy” artificially creates demand for otherwise “useless” items in an attempt to create more stickiness (goal and aspiration) than frustration (just quitting or giving up on the goal).

Ascended in crafting was a mistake at least as implemented. Most choices that polarize a community when you have multiple core segments (PvE, light WvW, PvP etc etc etc) historically works to your disadvantage. I suspect your crafting first community is one of the smallest micro clusters of your population if history repeats itself.

I view the decision as a short term narcotic (when there was a lack of real market competition) with long term consequences making it much easier to transition out of the game (as new waves of offerings go to market). It would be wise to heed the OPs thoughts of moving this to cosmetic crafting and dramatically lower the “fee” for the best gear in PvP for that community of users that simply will abhor crafting no matter what you do. It is telling that none of the upcoming title releases of competitors so far in betas have made a decision to demand crafting. Perhaps, that alone is worth thinking about.

I love crafting. I have all 6 professions at level 500. I have been saving mats for the next two as well.

I don’t own a single piece of ascended gear or weapon, but I have crafted a lot of damask, dowels, and inscriptions and sold them at a profit to people that wanted to buy them at my sell price. Once it becomes unprofitable to craft, then I’ll consider using it for myself.

Even with the amount of silk, I don’t find the required materials to be burdensome to craft it. I salvage and farm for mats. I play the game and get materials. I only care about the price of mats indirectly if I want to sell them rather than use them.

The one thing that is burdensome to me is the amount of karma needed for the inscriptions, insignias, and obsidian shards. I won’t use my laurels for them because those are even more difficult to accumulate.

John Smith.4610:

Given the input/output of materials and their value to players I would hypothesize that players find many outputs of crafting worthwhile for one reason or another.

An example, I pulled the approximate amount of crafting materials destroyed in the time I took to read this post and the number I received was 136,909 items. There’s a high demand and velocity of crafting materials, which I would say is good evidence that there must be something to do with those crafting materials.

Thanks for posting! The information you give out is always so interesting.

John Smith.4610:

Given the input/output of materials and their value to players I would hypothesize that players find many outputs of crafting worthwhile for one reason or another.

An example, I pulled the approximate amount of crafting materials destroyed in the time I took to read this post and the number I received was 136,909 items. There’s a high demand and velocity of crafting materials, which I would say is good evidence that there must be something to do with those crafting materials.

Was this on a day where a daily requirement happened to be “craft 10 items?”

How many of those destroyed materials was mithril? My understanding of crafting is that it’s a precursor hunter’s game for rare weapons, a niche tool for those who actually like it (one appeared in this thread), a leveling alternative and a grind to ascended for the rest.

How many materials were “created” in that time frame in comparison?

How many materials exist in the game to give us a fraction of the actual use crafting gave those 20 seconds.

Those numbers don’t really give me a picture of…anything without some way to compare and contrast them.

Wanze.8410:

Your daily 40 Linen Scraps are easily farmable in 15-20 min and you even get some cotton and silk along the way.

Where can you farm that much Linen from, because I’ve gotten that amount of scraps in about 2 months worth of normal play!?

Minos.5168:

TL;DR for prior post:
7003 crafting components for one Ascended chest piece…
That, effectively, reduces John’s lofty “136,909 items” down to possibly only 20 people crafting at one particular time-frame (of unspecified length, I might add).

I think Ascended crafting only provides a short-term crafting sink.
Long-term, people who want Ascended stats will craft a set and then move on.

You do realize that it took John only a few seconds to read your post, and in that time, 136,909 items were destroyed. If you do the maths to account for how long it took you to type your previous post, in that time frame, millions of items were destroyed. Once you understand that, you’ll see that you’re assumptions are all wrong.

ConfusedDave.4271:

Wanze.8410:

Your daily 40 Linen Scraps are easily farmable in 15-20 min and you even get some cotton and silk along the way.

Where can you farm that much Linen from, because I’ve gotten that amount of scraps in about 2 months worth of normal play!?

There is a difference between farming and normal gameplay. You would have to go to the appropriate zones, do some dynamic events that spawn the right mobs and even some dungeons give you quite some linen.

Linen is on the loot table of alot of different loot bags as well as 4 different salvage items.

Wanze.8410:

In the end, its a dynamic market and ascended crafting was introduced not only as a mat sink but also as a gold sink. As long as there are players out there that pay the high prices, they wont go down. Ascended crafting was also introduced as a long term goal so I dont see why Anet should change the drop rate for cloth.

your daily 40 Linen Scraps are easily farmable in 15-20 min and you even get some cotton and silk along the way.

Silk is a bit more of a problem but in my opinion its just because players promoted huge amounts of the silk supply to gossamer prior to the patch and were left empty handed when they realized they dont need much gossamer and huge amounts of silk.
Apart from that, i think ascended crafting is pretty much working as intended and in a good place. I dont see a reason to change it.

no 40 linen scraps are not anywhere close to 15-20 minutes. The best source for a level 80 charachter is killing a humanoid enemy that drops bags, only the bags, and the frayed garment can salvage into linen, linen doesnt drop in most bags, and frayed items dont drop super often, even then it can instead salavge into cotton. you can get more if you are within level range from gear drops IF it ends up being cloth, but you will level out of that range in probably a week

linen scraps go for 7-8 silver, if people could really farm it in 15-20 minutes it would be one of the main farms. at 8-11 gold per hour.

and thats only 1 material needed, you still need 300 silk scraps.

Another problem is once again the best way to achieve endgame goals in the game is to do a type of gameplay that devs refer to as degenerative gameplay. This is bad design. Its fine to have farming options, but when gathering that much material, or the gold equivalent to it, is required daily, you are essentially killing the fun in attaining long term goals.

Building ascended item recipes based primarily on economy rather than man hours required to generate is big mistake. It focuses the game once again on earning gold by any means necessary as the primary end game playstyle. And lets be honest, thats asking for degenerative gameplay.

just because there are 100000000 silk scraps on the market, doesnt mean its a good idea to make a recipe require each day, 2-3 hours dedicated solely to grinding gold or items as your endgame progression

Wanze.8410:

ConfusedDave.4271:

Wanze.8410:

Your daily 40 Linen Scraps are easily farmable in 15-20 min and you even get some cotton and silk along the way.

Where can you farm that much Linen from, because I’ve gotten that amount of scraps in about 2 months worth of normal play!?

There is a difference between farming and normal gameplay. You would have to go to the appropriate zones, do some dynamic events that spawn the right mobs and even some dungeons give you quite some linen.

Linen is on the loot table of alot of different loot bags as well as 4 different salvage items.

dynamic events would not help you unless you have enough people to spawn a lot more monsters, also dynamic events dont happen all the time. And yes, i have done this. While on some rare lucky occurence your first 6 bags could give linen and you get 6 frayed garments in 10 minutes, its unlikely to occur repeatedly over an extended period of time (like every day for the forseable future)

the dungeon would probably be caduceus, and if you got a team dedicate to farming it and killing mobs efficiently, that may work out, however i havent tested it in those conditions so i cant be sure

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

ConfusedDave.4271:

Wanze.8410:

Your daily 40 Linen Scraps are easily farmable in 15-20 min and you even get some cotton and silk along the way.

Where can you farm that much Linen from, because I’ve gotten that amount of scraps in about 2 months worth of normal play!?

There is a difference between farming and normal gameplay. You would have to go to the appropriate zones, do some dynamic events that spawn the right mobs and even some dungeons give you quite some linen.

Linen is on the loot table of alot of different loot bags as well as 4 different salvage items.

dynamic events would not help you unless you have enough people to spawn a lot more monsters, also dynamic events dont happen all the time. And yes, i have done this. While on some rare lucky occurence your first 6 bags could give linen and you get 6 frayed garments in 10 minutes, its unlikely to occur repeatedly over an extended period of time (like every day for the forseable future)

the dungeon would probably be caduceus, and if you got a team dedicate to farming it and killing mobs efficiently, that may work out, however i havent tested it in those conditions so i cant be sure

Well, what holds you back to gather some people and farm for an hour? There are many nice dynamic event chains in the mid level maps which arent run by big groups continously like the champ trains. In my opinion, most people are just lazy to do some research online or in the field to find better spots and prefer to do what everybody else is doing.

Take Southsun for example: Nobody is farming it, even though Veteran Karkas have a guaranteed drop of Karka Shells, which go for 8s atm, with a chance of t5 and 6 blood, both also in demand. There are lots of champs to kill and dynamic events that spawn lots of mobs, Ori, ancient wood and passion flowers to gather.

If you want more Linen, start a champ train in a lvl 40-60 map that has a higher chance of dropping masterwork champ loot bags that drops linen.

Also, in a champ train, it hardly matters what level you are, as all you need is to spam 1, so what hold you back to roll an alt to get lvl appropriate loot that has the potential of being higher in value than doing the same with your lvl 80?

In a former guild of mine, we had a map completion run going on every 2nd night and with a group of 20-30, it didnt take much more than 1-2 hours per map, while we got alot of mats along the way.

The possibilities are all there, most people are just too lazy to take advantage of them.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

ConfusedDave.4271:

Wanze.8410:

Your daily 40 Linen Scraps are easily farmable in 15-20 min and you even get some cotton and silk along the way.

Where can you farm that much Linen from, because I’ve gotten that amount of scraps in about 2 months worth of normal play!?

There is a difference between farming and normal gameplay. You would have to go to the appropriate zones, do some dynamic events that spawn the right mobs and even some dungeons give you quite some linen.

Linen is on the loot table of alot of different loot bags as well as 4 different salvage items.

dynamic events would not help you unless you have enough people to spawn a lot more monsters, also dynamic events dont happen all the time. And yes, i have done this. While on some rare lucky occurence your first 6 bags could give linen and you get 6 frayed garments in 10 minutes, its unlikely to occur repeatedly over an extended period of time (like every day for the forseable future)

the dungeon would probably be caduceus, and if you got a team dedicate to farming it and killing mobs efficiently, that may work out, however i havent tested it in those conditions so i cant be sure

Well, what holds you back to gather some people and farm for an hour? There are many nice dynamic event chains in the mid level maps which arent run by big groups continously like the champ trains. In my opinion, most people are just lazy to do some research online or in the field to find better spots and prefer to do what everybody else is doing.

Take Southsun for example: Nobody is farming it, even though Veteran Karkas have a guaranteed drop of Karka Shells, which go for 8s atm, with a chance of t5 and 6 blood, both also in demand. There are lots of champs to kill and dynamic events that spawn lots of mobs, Ori, ancient wood and passion flowers to gather.

If you want more Linen, start a champ train in a lvl 40-60 map that has a higher chance of dropping masterwork champ loot bags that drops linen.

Also, in a champ train, it hardly matters what level you are, as all you need is to spam 1, so what hold you back to roll an alt to get lvl appropriate loot that has the potential of being higher in value than doing the same with your lvl 80?

In a former guild of mine, we had a map completion run going on every 2nd night and with a group of 20-30, it didnt take much more than 1-2 hours per map, while we got alot of mats along the way.

The possibilities are all there, most people are just too lazy to take advantage of them.

And you see what you are saying is that in order to be the most powerful adventurer, you should dedicate your life to farming.
Gather 20 players to force spawns of easy enemies
You also suggest leveling up throw away charachters to spam 1 and get rewards

point is, what you are suggesting is that the best way to obtain endgame gear should be to come up with and use various effecient techniques to easily farm. for probably around 2-4 hours a day, (for all the various things you need for ascended) for about a month.

And thats the problem, 2-4 hours of farming per day is what ascended has become. Instead of the reward leading people to the interesting gameplay parts of GW2, it gives them only 1 real choice, exploit the most effecient means of farming.

In someways, ascended is an Economic success, it has generated demand and markets, and increased certain forms of earning. But in other ways it is a failure, because the economy it creates makes degenerative play the best way to succeed, or TP merchanting, which isnt really that degenerative, but it should only be one avenue to success

Wanze.8410:

Well, what holds you back to gather some people and farm for an hour? There are many nice dynamic event chains in the mid level maps which arent run by big groups continously like the champ trains. In my opinion, most people are just lazy to do some research online or in the field to find better spots and prefer to do what everybody else is doing.

Take Southsun for example: Nobody is farming it, even though Veteran Karkas have a guaranteed drop of Karka Shells, which go for 8s atm, with a chance of t5 and 6 blood, both also in demand. There are lots of champs to kill and dynamic events that spawn lots of mobs, Ori, ancient wood and passion flowers to gather.

If you want more Linen, start a champ train in a lvl 40-60 map that has a higher chance of dropping masterwork champ loot bags that drops linen.

Also, in a champ train, it hardly matters what level you are, as all you need is to spam 1, so what hold you back to roll an alt to get lvl appropriate loot that has the potential of being higher in value than doing the same with your lvl 80?

In a former guild of mine, we had a map completion run going on every 2nd night and with a group of 20-30, it didnt take much more than 1-2 hours per map, while we got alot of mats along the way.

The possibilities are all there, most people are just too lazy to take advantage of them.

After reading that, I should create my own guild and call it Trash Pickers [TP]. Get a group of players that enjoy resource gathering and go out into the open world, hit dynamic events, enjoy these dynamic events and collect materials to either use or trade on the… wait for it… TP.

In all honesty, I think it’s a great idea. I might have to work on that this weekend.

phys.7689:

And you see what you are saying is that in order to be the most powerful adventurer, you should dedicate your life to farming.
Gather 20 players to force spawns of easy enemies
You also suggest leveling up throw away charachters to spam 1 and get rewards

point is, what you are suggesting is that the best way to obtain endgame gear should be to come up with and use various effecient techniques to easily farm. for probably around 2-4 hours a day, (for all the various things you need for ascended) for about a month.

And thats the problem, 2-4 hours of farming per day is what ascended has become. Instead of the reward leading people to the interesting gameplay parts of GW2, it gives them only 1 real choice, exploit the most effecient means of farming.

In someways, ascended is an Economic success, it has generated demand and markets, and increased certain forms of earning. But in other ways it is a failure, because the economy it creates makes degenerative play the best way to succeed, or TP merchanting, which isnt really that degenerative, but it should only be one avenue to success

I might have used the term “farming” a bit losely in my post. I dont consider getting a bunch of guildies being together and complete a map with an alt that i havent completed for a couple of months or ride a champ train outside of frostgorge or queensdale for the duration of 10 levels for a couple of hours a week farming but a welcome change in gameplay.

Whatever type of efficient gameplay you choose, i agree that 2-4 hours of farming is needed in order to refine your daily ascended mats.

Degenerative gameplay most of the times might even be the most efficient, I wont argue that either. But every player has a choice and by no means ascended gear is really neccessary. Would you rather ride the train for 2 hours a day and feel like doing a chore or spend 3 hours of fun doing content you rather enjoy or just 2 hours of fun and craft your bolt of damask every 2nd day?

If degenerative gameplay in order to get asc gear is all someone is dedicating all his gametime on, i wonder why he needs asc gear in the first place.

I agree with you that asc crafting was a success by creating demand and markets for certain materials but i disagree that it promotes degenerative gameplay because the player is left with a choice, he can go the easy boring way or the intended fun way.

TChalla.7146:

Wanze.8410:

Well, what holds you back to gather some people and farm for an hour? There are many nice dynamic event chains in the mid level maps which arent run by big groups continously like the champ trains. In my opinion, most people are just lazy to do some research online or in the field to find better spots and prefer to do what everybody else is doing.

Take Southsun for example: Nobody is farming it, even though Veteran Karkas have a guaranteed drop of Karka Shells, which go for 8s atm, with a chance of t5 and 6 blood, both also in demand. There are lots of champs to kill and dynamic events that spawn lots of mobs, Ori, ancient wood and passion flowers to gather.

If you want more Linen, start a champ train in a lvl 40-60 map that has a higher chance of dropping masterwork champ loot bags that drops linen.

Also, in a champ train, it hardly matters what level you are, as all you need is to spam 1, so what hold you back to roll an alt to get lvl appropriate loot that has the potential of being higher in value than doing the same with your lvl 80?

In a former guild of mine, we had a map completion run going on every 2nd night and with a group of 20-30, it didnt take much more than 1-2 hours per map, while we got alot of mats along the way.

The possibilities are all there, most people are just too lazy to take advantage of them.

After reading that, I should create my own guild and call it Trash Pickers [TP]. Get a group of players that enjoy resource gathering and go out into the open world, hit dynamic events, enjoy these dynamic events and collect materials to either use or trade on the… wait for it… TP.

In all honesty, I think it’s a great idea. I might have to work on that this weekend.

GW2 gave us the opportunity to be part and create 5 guilds at the same time and it would be foolish to not take advantage of it. Of course everybody has his main guild which he represents the most, filled with friends from real life or friends made in game.
But you have 4 more guilds to create or be part of for special reasons. As a big TP trader, i now have 3 personal guilds, upgraded to 250 slot guild vaults each to store items i trade in.
When guild missions came out, there was a guild created on a french server that was solely focussed on doing guild missions together twice a week, no representation needed when no guild missions where active. They had over 400 people participating in each guild mission from guilds all over the server.
When Tequatl was updated, Tequatl Killers was formed with the sole purpose of taking him down on a general basis.
I have seen multiple guilds focussing on map completions and being very successful, not only giving veteran players another quick option to level alts but also giving new players their first shot on being in a guilt that helped them leveling but also get alot of advice from veteran players.

My point is that forming a guild for a specific reason is a very good idea and promotes the community aspect of the game, which in my opinion is quite good in general anyways.

Why not make a farming guild that tries to find better farming spots for specific resources than the current meta?

Give every guild member the chance to suggest certain events or maps to hit in order to get specific resources. You will be surprised how much extraordinary tips you will gain.

thanks to the TP:
tradable items = gold.

so you can do whatever you like, earn money and get the items you need. it depends on the item sell price (in this case linen/silk) to say how much a “boring farm run” is more efficient than what you normally do.

in other words: if you’re feeling you’re beeing forced to farm, you’ll be bored quickly and not enjoy the game. this depends entirely on the farm efficiency, your resistance against boredom and your wish of obtaining ascended gear.

VincentDW.9376:

With respect to crafting in general, the reason that the value of inputs often appears greater than that value of outputs is because one of the major outputs (experience) cannot be resold. In fact, I would venture that a very large portion of all crafted items are crafted not because the crafter wanted to own or sell that particular item, but only because crafting gives experience and they wanted to level up their character.

When you think about it this way, the usual flow of value you would expect with regard to an activity like crafting is reversed – instead of the crafter adding value to raw materials through labor (like in real life), the crafter is actually REMOVING value from raw materials by gaining the experience award for combining them. Since there are no barriers to entry (every player account can have access to all crafting professions simultaneously), if the market is functioning efficiently, any crafting activity should result in a net loss of gold value due to the gain in experience value.

Can you tell that I think making crafting give leveling experience was a terrible idea? It shouldn’t be called “crafting” so much as “buying experience.”

I myself craft way more to level alts than to actually craft something worthwhile, unless I should call it “crafting an alt” :P
Overall though, the only thing that would make me happy would be to be able to trade these silly materials…see my point: I run dungeons every day and a lot of them, I drown in Empyreal Fragments. Someone else might instead be more into chasing world events with all of their alts (It happened before the Ascended weapons were added even) and ithese people likely drown into Dragonite Ore, that on the other hand is a pain for me to get. Why can’t we simply exchange these so that both kind of players can actually do what they like to do without being forced in the other side?

Wanze.8410:

Take Southsun for example: Nobody is farming it, even though Veteran Karkas have a guaranteed drop of Karka Shells, which go for 8s atm, with a chance of t5 and 6 blood, both also in demand. There are lots of champs to kill and dynamic events that spawn lots of mobs, Ori, ancient wood and passion flowers to gather.

Just wanted to chime in here…

I have a lot of experience here because Southsun Cove is my favorite zone in the game and I farm it for 2 hours or so every day because I love it. Even with massive MF (250 at least), it’s a total crapshoot whether you make decent GPH or not. Average, it is about 1/3 as effective as the FGS champion train at making gold if you sell everything, even with a group of ~5 people smashing Veteran Karka in as much time as it takes for their invul phases to pass. Just trust me, as far as making money, there’s a good reason people don’t take to SSC. The only exception is if you have ~250MF at least and take on a highly upscaled Steampipe offense event, and even then you can have days with ~0-2 T6 and other days with ~12-16. Only real reasons to go there are for the Karka Queen and if you really love the place (like me!).

Its not worth to craft anymore. People getting Ascended/Legendary because

• Just Bored
• Have something to spend on
• They’re elitists

Since linen, in middle of crafting is same expensive as lvl80 armors…
You can make a level 80 exo gear about ~4g / piece
Completing 4-6 dungeon runs for the tokens are giving you the money instead of sinking it…

And for +4 +5 +0 stats, I will not craft any ascended armor piece, mostly because of the bad RNG curses me since first logged in GW1, and it still haunts me in GW2.

Only reason I’ve made asc. GS & LB is because rangers are so crap still.

laughing at the ranger who thinks ascended weapons make a difference for him…