Guild Wars 2

honestly, I think everyone should be able to get to Liandri. The thing you’ve proposed is already in there, in form of the gambits.

tier 1 = 0 gambits
tier 2 = 1 gambit
…

At first I liked this but I realize Pavilion is just plain wrong.

I like farming so I really enjoy my time farming in there. However, it is so forced and artificial. There is almost nothing behind the reason of such place. So the watchknight become those monsters, went crazy and start attacking people. I get that, but they just stay in the circle and patrol there?

Story and lore aside, we know it’s made for us to farm. They even give us the MF buff. But the thing reminds me of those WC3 custom rpg map, which has a place you can pay some money and you can go in where monster spawns nonstop. Exactly like what we have here.

Not only that it’s artificial, it also drives people away from the open world. There is nothing to explore inside. Labyrinthine Rift is fine, at least it has a story behind, it has good map design. What we have here is just a freaking circle with mobs to slaughter.

Gauntlet is a good concept although the execution is arguable. Many have addressed it, I’ll pass here.

The zerg fights in DR are fun…but I can t be bothered to do the individual fights no interest whatsoever.

The balloons hunting is lame and very annoying as there is no way to know which zones/balloons you have already visited. If you are alone on the map and you need to fight a champion you are screwed.

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

In that case, rather than tiers, why not impose skill levels? For example you could fight Linadri at lvl 1 for casual players (akin to tier one bosses); lvl 2 for skilled players who want a bit of a challenge, but are not within the 5/75 category that are able to complete queen’s gauntlet (similar to tier 2 bosses); and then lvl 3, for players who wish to ascend to godhood (the power of tier 3 bosses). If it were structured that way, everyone would be able to face the bosses and complete the meta, but the most skilled players could still experience the challenge they desire. The higher lvl the boss you face, the higher the pay out could be, or even titles could be awarded.

Hmm… So it’s really about the achievements from Liadri and gambits? Otherwise, like Marcus said, gambits are what you described. I can sympathize with completionists and perfectionism. High scores, 100% save profiles, gotta catch ‘em all. It’s in our blood by now.

However, that is a difficult line to draw. Can’t give achievements, skins, or mini-pets because of collectors. Probably title collectors out there too. What reward does that leave for people that like a challenge? Just more efficiency? But then they lose prestige as everyone else catches up. It’s their responsibility to find self-satisfaction? You could argue the same thing about someone distraught over missing achievements, so that’s not a fair.

Imagine event currency was universal: Would a lesser-skilled or time-constrained player be content with choosing 3 or 4 rewards a year while someone completing challenging content can afford each monthly patch’s new cosmetic? 5 or 6 a year? 12 a year? By then the challenging rewards start to overflow and lose meaning. It’s a very subjective.

Ronah.2869:

Living world should be all about changing the world around you.
(…)
You will not make a deadline for these, they will be on forever untill the players would finally built them all.

to resume, make players BUILD something permanent in the world through common efforts. Even dungeons could be developed in this way,

Yes, I fully agree! Does anyone here remember how the Isle of Quel’Danas was opened up in WoW’s first expansion? Or how Ahn’Qiraj was opened in vanilla? I’m sure the writers here could easily do something similar but much better, something that requires an extended, coordinated effort of a server’s playerbase, something that even low-level characters could contribute to. Gathering materials, crafting items, solving puzzles, completing story-steps, killing monsters, and finally we’d be rewarded for that with new content. That would be MUCH more involving and engaging than just having new stuff plopped down without personal involvement.

If we can help build a new, fully equipped settlement in a zone we first had to take from an enemy, then we secure and cleanse the surrounding land of dangers and corruption, then defend it against dragon minion attacks, discover a new dungeon underneath it … that would rock.

So basically u want elitism? is that what you like? well it can be done but not challenges that are temporary i think that is the biggest problem here, supporting temporary “one time” chance challenges is the wrong thing here, do u realize that not all players will get those achievemtns even if it was permanent content? so it means u could be a spoiled happy child screaming “i have it u dont” even if its permanent challenge open to anyone in the game, you know why? because players who dotn care or give up will not achieve same as is its temporary but the difference is if u add these challenges and achievemtns in permanent way people really interested “in becoming better” in the game can keep triying till they can do it someday with effort and practice, not losing the chance to do it because they have real life out there and other activities that constraint our gaming time, is not fun whne u play with stress of time, u think is fun maybe ur sick but in my opinion they could leave all these achievemtns and rewards open to everyone interested on do them for real without temporary stress to them, because players who give up will do it now or in 2 months dont matter if they can try, but other players there will never give up and get better if u allow them leaving that challenges open to get done with effort,for me theres big difference there

Seeing all those well-formulated and quite lengthy player responses (I’m being sincere) makes me realize that Anet probably doesn’t think of us as the “casual” playerbase they so often mention when certain design choices come up. As in our feedback isn’t representative for everyone.

Even though it’s wrong. A lot of us are casual players. Not being satisfied with their current direction and making a lengthy, in-depth post about it doesn’t necessarily make you part of the vocal “hardcore” minority.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

First of all, if you make achievements which can be achieved by every player, you can’t make challenging achievements. There will always be bad players who can’t beat a normal veteran alone… I definitely don’t want that. I want challenging achievements where you might hate the game at a point, but overcome your weakness by becoming better through trying out different builds, different things until you finally get it. Then you truly can be proud of your achievement.

This is absolutely false. The major issue here is that getting better requires lots of resources. People have wasted tens and tens of gold on changing builds and getting tickets. OK, you can make it challenging if you want, you can make it impossible even, BUT PUTTING A TIME LIMIT ON IT IS UNFORGIVABLE.

The most painless thing to do for devs would be putting the gauntlet achievement tab into “activities”. That way, all the non-pros and poor people have a fair chance to get it in the future.

It seems like the only ones opposing being anything done about the gauntlet are the ones who already have achievements. Its natural to wanting to be the best and wanting others to miss the chance, but if you are sure in your skill, why not giving everyone a fair chance. If you want one-shot kills you can always brag that you are lvl 72 in fractals.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m sure that a player who want’s to become stronger and learns how to play the game has a fair chance to beat any of QGs bosses. It’s just a matter of getting the mechanic, there’s a trick to every(?) encounter.

What is the trick to lag? Also, getting stronger is a process. One that my take more than a month.

ilr.9675:

I have to second this, purely on the basis that most of Orr has been getting ruined with more Bugs than usual the past month. Bugs that would not have made it to release with Open Testing and actual attention to PvE balance.

Northern Pact route has been bugged since mid-July

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/North-Pact-Reinforcement-DE-broken/

The Priestess of Dwayna fight can now make some players physically SICK

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Dwayna-s-new-laser-light-show/

GRENTH was also made a lot more difficult with absolutely no explanation for it.

Most Escorts also now scale improperly, IE: the NPC’s do NOT scale up with the Mobs.
The final “Big D.E. chain Event” (that was the Pinnacle of this game’s Event system at launch) Pact escort was also just effectively “removed from game”… just last night…

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Temple-of-Balthazar-event-impossible/
  ^this thread documents both issues (Chan, & Balth escorts)

If you’re not going to make the NPC’s themselves immune to AOE’s, then simply don’t make these changes in the first place. These changes are not in any way tied to “skill” and the Gw2 Manifesto on self-reliance (iow: “no Healers” required).

…
…on top of this, WvW Damage & CC “Visual Queues” have also become massively Glitched making the entire game mode unplayable for many.

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/The-spell-effects-patch-and-WvW/
  This did get a response, however it was just a dismissive response and not a response that actually showed research and understanding of the issue.

… All of this together is very disappointing because it takes content that WAS somewhat rewarding prior to this patch(s), and makes it require 3x the effort while risking roughly 3x the Failure rates it used to have. One possible explanation for this might have been that we’re now getting “Coffers” from Champions… However if the RNG drop rates for everyone else, are anything like mine:
http://home.comcast.net/~ill_er/GW/coffers_8-8.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~ill_er/GW/coffers_8-8_value.jpg
…then it’s actually resulting in a NET LOSS in player income now when the entire premise & promise of the Blog Post was to make the content more rewarding again (even if a bit more difficult).

Not only that, but I CAN’T EVEN PLAY THE GAME NOW without crashing every 5 minutes when attempting Group Content with other people.

• https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/tech/Game-crashing-become-very-frequent/
  .

This is why I’m angry right now. I NEVER got angry at you ArenenaNet… during the 7 years of GW1. ….I got close to getting angry after spending 2 entire days failing Magni the Bison b/c you guys balanced it so poorly that only a Spirit Spam Ritualist could solo it when not every one of us actually owned a copy of Factions. But I didn’t get angry like I am right now, and the reason I’m angry is because your update and all the bugs that came with it; are not just ruining my daily routine and my progress, but it’s ruining the enjoyment of all the People I did these huge Meta events with.

We should be in full swing right now, it’s 6pm and we’d usually be rolling right through this content, supporting eachother & cracking wise in mapchat while just generally enjoying the ride. Not getting frustrated the whole time trying to figure out WHY it got broken in the first place and watching our best allies slowly give up on it in disgust. ….or in my case, not even bothering to Log in today.

[…]

TL;DR summary: Y U BRAEK EVRYTING 2 MAKE D.R. FARM??

This is the part that gets me and all I hear are from the white knights and apologists. “They can’t test EVERYTHING.”

Well no duh. But they won’t give us character-copy and a PTR because a PTR would mean a substantially large number of players playing their whisper-thin temporary content on a non-persistent realm where they

a) won’t spend gems

and

b) probably won’t log back onto their real characters and spend gems after they played the content on the PTR.

There are hearts that still don’t work properly and haven’t since launch. Check out the Penzan Pirates heart in Bloodtide Coast.

Bloodtide itself is, at the end of every patch cycle, a mess of stuck and buggy events. I haven’t been to Snowdrift until recently, but it too was horribly bugged and stuck.

The main game suffers because there’s not money in bug-testing the main game’s content because the temporary content is the money maker. Welcome our glorious micro-t overlords, which now not only dictate development, but now testing, priorities.

Jamais vu.5284:

Seeing all those well-formulated and quite lengthy player responses (I’m being sincere) makes me realize that Anet probably doesn’t think of us as the “casual” playerbase they so often mention when certain design choices come up. As in our feedback isn’t representative for everyone.

Even though it’s wrong. A lot of us are casual players. Not being satisfied with their current direction and making a lengthy, in-depth post about it doesn’t necessarily make you part of the vocal “hardcore” minority.

They can make hardcore content, but making it also temporary is a major flaw. Gauntlet should be optional, under “Activities” tab or something, being able to be beaten at the players leasure.

Seriously, if nothing is done about this update, after all the kittenstorm that has been a-brewing for the last days, people will loose all faith in Anet. Maybe even stop playing. Its their turn to respond, and the clock is ticking.

Re the Gauntlet, I like it.

Primarily because I was using any one of my characters with their skills.
How many more Super Monkey Ball mini games with replacement skill bars are we going to suffer?

This update’s activity felt like I was playing an MMORPG.

OP, I agree with many things you say, but I couldn’t help finding these holes in your argument:

Fiontar.4695:

waste of developer resources.

I don’t think it was a waste because of the wallet and the fact that this content will be returning, it’s not one time. Also this patch included a permanent new finisher system and a permanent activity rotation with new permanent and daily achievements. Also every patch like this includes permanent balances and fixes that were not a waste of developer resources.

Fiontar.4695:

Apparently, difficulty is supposed to make up for the complete lack of any redeeming design qualities, but it just makes the content as frustrating on a play level as it is on a design level.

I can hardly imagine the man-hours involved in making the gambit systems and all the new gauntlet mobs, abilities, and achievements. Many of those features are redeeming in that they are something new that we have not seen before (fresh skills and mob mechanics). The mechanics that players like could get reused I’m sure, it’s valuable for them to try new things to find what people do and don’t like. I found some of the fights very frustrating too, but that just made it more rewarding for me when I finally got the mini/achievements.

Fiontar.4695:

The Balloon rides. … Stale, boring, horrible; huge disappointment.

I agree we should have had a cinematic for a ride, but I don’t think they’re stale because of the several different events to unlock them. I find it refreshing to visit corners of zones that I haven’t been in a while, that’s the whole point of them. I also like visiting old, familiar places and seeing new mobs and nicely modeled hot air balloons that tie in well with the living story.

Fiontar.4695:

rather than just making it pointless to try to earn a temporary currency you may have no hope of making anything useful of.

I consider this new “currency” (watchwork sprockets) a mat instead because of its use in the new recipes (15 new sigil and rune recipes). It acting as a currency too makes people want to do the new content while it’s here. I think it could be confusing if they keep adding new things like this because it’s more for new crafters to learn, but for an old crafter it’s refreshing to get something new. I also don’t really think of them as temporary, think of pieces of candy corn that are still plentiful on the market. Obviously, too, many people are making useful things from this new currency. You can farm for a couple hours in the new zone (that was meant for farming) or you could buy sprockets at like 50c each and make some runes/sigils to try out (or just buy them premade). (doesn’t sound hopeless, and the new runes could be useful for several different builds out there)

Fiontar.4695:

Speaking of special currency, now we don’t just need special currency to get nice skins, we need that currency AND gold!

The special currency is absurdly easy to get, and this new patch makes it very easy to get gold through farming or crafting (not to mention dungeons now give significantly more money for single runs per day). I’ve already made at least 50 gold through crafting with little skill, you don’t have to be an expert to make money. Plus there’s other new skins from champs across the world that will always be available as drops (some are really cool imo).

Fiontar.4695:

It took us an hour to agree it was horrible, log out and go play something else.

This sounds like the problem, I didn’t even see all the content until my third or so day of playing many hours a day. While I understand that many aspects of this update are frustrating, they only seem horrible or pointless at first until you realize their potential.

part 2:

Fiontar.4695:

Arenanet, you are killing the game. You are thumbing your noses at the Manifesto and apparently doing everything possible to make the game the worst kind of theme park.

It does feel like a theme park, but it is something that a lot of people like. Also like one of them mentioned, it’s impossible to make everyone happy at once, they’re appealing to the majority. When throwing out the Manifesto, try quoting specific parts in it that they are destroying :p

Fiontar.4695:

Why have you abandoned the game world, allowing the illusion of life that Dynamic Events provided to flutter away as the world has remained stuck in an infinite loop, in exchange for the absolute worst kind of MMO content?

I also feel that the Dynamic Event system leaves many things to be desired, but I don’t think adding a new loot system to make champion fights across the world more rewarding is ‘abandoning’ the game world (it’s obvious they’re at least making an effort). I’ve played MMOs with much worse kinds of content. It’s a really far stretch to call this the absolute worst.

Fiontar.4695:

Living Story itself is a colossal waste of everyone’s time and energy

It’s a pretty big generalization to project your feelings on “everyone.” I have made a lot of money and a lot of achievement points, so it was not a waste of my time and energy. (there you go it was not a waste for everyone) You can find many other people on the forums and in game that find their time not wasted on this new content.

Fiontar.4695:

It diverts players away from the assets of the game

It’s one of the biggest assets of the game right now for people that have already experienced everything else.

Fiontar.4695:

a currency that few are going to want to bother earning.

It quickly made its way to the front page of the TP. That doesn’t mean few people are bothering to earn it; that means that the vast majority of people are bothering to earn it. And of course they want to earn it with the new skins and recipes that they can buy with them, and after this content is through they can continue to use it on the recipes.

Fiontar.4695:

You would have been better off doing nothing but the occasional holiday event than this.

They did this because they feel like people need regular, fresh content. I agree with them.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

honestly, I think everyone should be able to get to Liandri. The thing you’ve proposed is already in there, in form of the gambits.

tier 1 = 0 gambits
tier 2 = 1 gambit
…

You know, that’s a very good point.

Has anyone ever done Liadri with five gambits? Is it even possible?

VOLKON.1290:

I’m having a blast, great update! Lots of fun indeed. I only have one complaint…

ArenaNet… next time you promise a balloon ride, can we haz balloon ride plz? Yeah, with the zones and all that it would be difficult to pull off I’m sure, but if you could it would be nice. Even a “live cinematic” (seeing characters and events below) until the edge of the zone before the portal effect would be sweet.

Aside from that… well, the wallet isn’t the most attractive thing… the big icons are tacky looking. A simpler list would be more sufficient, or better yet, a toggle between different modes of view.

But that’s it for complaints… a couple aesthetic things. I’ve been having a blast so far, this is definitely a worthy addition to the cyclical content and I’ll enjoy it when it’s back next year.

They could have very easily allowed us to travel in the balloon until it gets to the edge of the zone, then it could load at Divinity’s Reach.

I do understand the OP’s sentiment, though I am still having fun. The pavilion is just a mindless zergfest and its fun in spurts to get loot, but that is the only reason its even remotely fun. We need more complex dynamic events in the open world that scale in complexity as more people join in. Events that, when you have alot of people, cannot be zerged because to succeed you would need groups to break off in different directions to do different things. Also, Defiance needs to DIAF. Bring in CC diminishing returns instead so the game will feel a little less dmg only spam-fest. Make those CCs count as well, or punish the zerg for not CC’ing something properly or having reached Diminishing Returns.

I just want to know where the story content is. Flame and Frost had a boatload of great story instances. Rox’s and Braham’s content was fun and interesting. However, those types of story instances seem to have petered out in favor of “kill x of y” or “go do x thing y times.” It’s very similar to WoW holidays, and that became old a very long time ago.

When I first logged in for the Jubilee, I was so happy to see Rox and Braham. I thought I was going to have plenty of fun story breadcrumbs to follow, similar to Flame and Frost. However, it seems like that little event is all there is! Nothing else. I haven’t even seen any information on if/when more story content for this LS is going to happen. This makes me want to ignore the rest of the event, as there is nothing to keep me interested. A dinky minipet (especially when the minipet system is done poorly) is not enough to keep me logged in and doing “x of y” achievements.

tl;dr Please make the Living Story content true to its name again. It is supposed to be Living STORY. Bring more of the story content back!

I will just throw in my two cents here. I love everything about this update except the liadri and other portions of the gauntlet. These are so bad in fact that I really do not want to play the game after having to blow through 300 tickets to fight a boss who you may or may not have the chance of beating. To beat Liadri you must use skill 5 on your bar and that will hit her ONLY if it’s raining at 63 degrees Fahrenheit on the second tuesday of july during a leap year and your armor must be dyed in this order, green, blue, green, blue, red, yellow. I don’t know if the game developers realize this, but this battle is INSANE!!! It cannot be done on any class without the proper amount of luck, which I simply don’t have the time or patience for, as I said I’m beginning to dislike the game because of this pseudo-challenge you’ve implemented with the last boss. You have made a one sided portion of the game that only certain classes can do and it’s beyond frustrating. I seriously hope this gets fixed and that someone somewhere that can do something about it actually realizes how imbalanced this is and that people are getting severely frustrated, this is the opposite of fun. I can understand a challenge, that was the other npc’s in the gauntlet, the Liadri fight though, it’s impossible without the right amount of luck.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible. And If there’s one thing we can do consistently, it’s improving the experience of said content each time. I think we made some great strides with the Jubilee.

made achievement, such a big part of the game (rewards, passive bonusses, chests, bragging rights (so to speak), legacy, etc), that people will want them. Creating almost impossible achievement that the hardcore will get, but the casuals will fail, will create a void between the two. My friend belongs in the hardcore cathegory (10500 achievements in 4 months), i belongs in casual (9k since headstart). Last week we continuously had fights over why him or me deserve more achievements. We laughed it away later, but this is a very big problem. That sooner or later will explode. And when it does it might make players leave, instead of ‘keeping them interested’.

I still don’t get why this content cannot be permanent. Gw1 is a storyline. Technically you could say ‘once you finish this mission, same char is NEVER allowed to repeat it, cause well the story moved on. But the game allowed you nonetheless to repeat AMAZING story settings. amazing experiences. Amazing storylines, recaptured. And most of all (incredible important imo, Anet), NO PRESSURE. I waited for gwamm years. I never pressured myself cause i still had fun chilling, farming, doing my favorite mission over, etc. I kept telling myself i’ll do only dungeons, when i feel for it, cause this hardcore stress does not belong in a game, that it’s first priority should be to entertain people. That’s your fail anet. That’s why people get mad. That’s where the frustration comes from. That’s why you will loose players, indefinitely, if you can’t find a fix for the current problem you created. You overstepped the bound of the achievement system. And now either you will have to go back, (probably kitten ing some people off), or not go back also kitten ing of people.

Solution is simple. All content is ETERNAL. Only events like dragon bash return each year. If content is eternal there’s no pressure to do ANY achievement, right now, when you feel you want to do other stuff. This week, i didn’t have time to chill yet, because, i had to (see i know it’s wrong, but we human do it) achievements. Stop this ‘you will oblige to this 90% impossible content that you will have to farm over and over to succeed, or you will loose heavy amount of achievements’.

And lastly, stop the pvp/minigames/grind X of this crap. That is not living story. Flame and frost,and the part with ‘marjory’ (the hot girl with black hair, think in dragon bash), those two were amazing. Those two had me hooked. Those two deserve ‘to exist’. The others are meh. The celebrating part and the legendary bosses, in queen jennah’s pavilion are fun cause it brings people together and gives nice loot. The gaunlet however, the stupid pvp games (southsun survival, the crystal run, dragon bash pvp, and all the other trash games), SAB (that incredible weird, epic fail graphic (i don’t like indie games)-jumping puzzle, do not have a place in the living story. If you wanna introduce them make them permanent (and thus optional) content. Instead of forcing us to do this kitten, to keep our legacy (aka achievements) up to par. Technically we don’t have to. But that’s the mistakes you devs make. The people feel like they have to, and it’s just part of human nature (that you probably abuse no purpose to addict people, no flame intended, all mmo’s do this to certain degree, it’s just how the business works), and that should be looked at imo.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

honestly, I think everyone should be able to get to Liandri. The thing you’ve proposed is already in there, in form of the gambits.

tier 1 = 0 gambits
tier 2 = 1 gambit
…

It’s in there, but it was designed poorly. Properly designed, most people would be able to complete the gauntlet, with out using gambits, with a reasonable expenditure of time and effort, while the encounters would be tuned so that 5 gambits would be doable, challenging and rewarding for the most hard core players.

ANet thought of the mechanism for scaling the difficulty, but utterly failed in balancing it in the implementation.

ttyl.6021:

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

In that case, rather than tiers, why not impose skill levels? For example you could fight Linadri at lvl 1 for casual players (akin to tier one bosses); lvl 2 for skilled players who want a bit of a challenge, but are not within the 5/75 category that are able to complete queen’s gauntlet (similar to tier 2 bosses); and then lvl 3, for players who wish to ascend to godhood (the power of tier 3 bosses). If it were structured that way, everyone would be able to face the bosses and complete the meta, but the most skilled players could still experience the challenge they desire. The higher lvl the boss you face, the higher the pay out could be, or even titles could be awarded.

Hmm… So it’s really about the achievements from Liadri and gambits? Otherwise, like Marcus said, gambits are what you described. I can sympathize with completionists and perfectionism. High scores, 100% save profiles, gotta catch ‘em all. It’s in our blood by now.

However, that is a difficult line to draw. Can’t give achievements, skins, or mini-pets because of collectors. Probably title collectors out there too. What reward does that leave for people that like a challenge? Just more efficiency? But then they lose prestige as everyone else catches up. It’s their responsibility to find self-satisfaction? You could argue the same thing about someone distraught over missing achievements, so that’s not a fair.

Imagine event currency was universal: Would a lesser-skilled or time-constrained player be content with choosing 3 or 4 rewards a year while someone completing challenging content can afford each monthly patch’s new cosmetic? 5 or 6 a year? 12 a year? By then the challenging rewards start to overflow and lose meaning. It’s a very subjective.

I think the “lesser skilled, time constrained” players would be much happier with half as many rewards a year than none, not to mention that the current mechanic dissuades them from doing the content that earns the currencies at all, because they know they will not earn enough in the time allotted to get any rewards.

Response to ilovepi.3542

1. Waste of Developer Resources.

I’m pretty sure I’ve delineated between additional features/improvements to the core game and living story in this thread. The programmers have done much to improve the game since launch. the content designers working on Living Story have done fairly little and, yes, I consider their efforts with Living Story content as rolled out and developed in 2013 to be a serious waste of developer resources.

2. Difficulty does not equal quality.

There is nothing interesting about the Queen’s Pavilion Champion Zerg fest. It’s a circle, split up into a pie, with an endlessly repeating rotation of Champion fights and a magic find boost. Farmers and grinders will farm and grind this content endlessly until it vanishes. Other players will do so until bored. Adding a ton of HP to a mob and making it difficult enough to require a number of players to complete it doesn’t make up for the vapid quality of that content.

3. Stale, disappointing balloon rides.

The hype about the beautiful, relaxing, scenic balloon rides to the capital just framed the disappointment over the fact it’s nothing but an instant portal. The balloons and the stands are not anything special or beautiful. The events surrounding them are just another pointless escort mission that does nothing for the game or the game world.

4. Watchwork Sprockets and other special currencies.

These are yet another limited time currency and, in this case, crafting mat. this time, we can’t even earn them via ordinary game play, we have to either grind the sad, “so last century” QP grind, subsidize those doing the grind, or forget about it entirely.

5. The closed circuit that is the event skin grind.

WS plus gold = skins. WS plus Gold for players who don’t drink the cool-aid and actually prefer real MMO content = extremely expensive. WS and Gold for players who hop in on the self contained loop that is the Queen’s Pavilion grind, WS plus Gold = Trivial.

The true cost is the impact of this super accelerated grind loop on the game. People who embrace what is really an extremely sad example of modern MMO content gain wealth at a rapid and unsustainable pace. Not only does this bolster inflation and reward grinders while discouraging people who enjoy a more organic and free-form MMO experience, but there is the very real likelihood that many who do the grind will either burn out on it, or find the post event game play to be so sadly rewarding, in comparison, that they just won’t have the desire to continue.

Happiness is not the quest for stuff. When the grind for stuff doesn’t result in a player who is happy for more than the few moments in which they enjoy the afterglow of their achievments, the entire exercise and the game that provided it may seem completely pointless.

6. “You just need to give it more time. Once you are one of us, embracing the mindless grind, you will wonder why you ever had a thought that this is wrong or unacceptable”.

Sorry, but no. Jumping into a whirling death spiral sucking the life from the game may seem fun for the duration of the ride, but the splat at the end is something to be avoided. I’m sure the lemming must feel some exhilaration being part of the rushing crowd, “boy, we are making progress now”, only to find that following the zerg maybe wasn’t such a good decision after all.

End Part 1

Part 2

7. The Manifesto has devolved into a theme park ride named “The Manifesto”.

What part of the Manifesto haven’t they abandoned? What part of the ideals they managed to do fair justice to in the original core game have they expanded on or improved as part of the Living Story? I’m pretty sure most of us with eyes wide open can agree that The Manifesto wasn’t talking about people standing around in some (circular) field somewhere, swinging a sword, swinging it again and, hey, look, I swung a sword yet again, killing the same mobs over and over again, with no illusion that the players actions matter one bit in the context of the game world.

Queen’s Pavillion is a hyper-exaggerated caricature of everything the Manifesto espoused to despise AND Anet has made it, by leaps and bounds, the most rewarding content currently, and ever, attached to the game.

8. “New Champ loots make the static game world more rewarding. That’s progress, right”?

New Champ Loot has been long overdue and is part of the core game and systems improvements that have been added to the game over the past year. Those improvements and systems have nothing to do with Living Story, other than being part of the same patch.

They don’t justify, in any way, the waste of resources that has been “The Living Story”, nor does making Champions more monetarily rewarding to fight do anything to improve the stale, stuck state of world PvE Dynamic Event content.

9. “But some players earn plenty loot and lots of shinnies from Living Story. Productive use of developer resources, make me more shinnies, yes”?

Well, it’s now clear that the Skritt are actually a poke at a certain type of MMO player, so there is that revelation, but that’s hardly a worthy pay off.

Based on some of the comments from people who like the Queen’s Pavilion for the opportunity to grind content contained in a little circle to earn the most efficient rate of loot production ever seen anywhere in the game, including many methods that were nerfed out of existence for being too imbalancing for the economy, it’s even more clear how much a waste of resources Living Story has been.

Players who want a more free form play experience and want to enjoy a living game world can not help but be disappointed by the Living Story, while, all along, the efforts to placate those only concerned with grinding for shinies could have been completely satisfied with something as simple as the Queen’s Pavilion. Stick that in a field somewhere, call it a day and get back to designing and improving Dynamic Events. Simple.

10. “Yes, but Shinnies, shinnies, shinnies”!

Yes, I know, shinnies. If it’s preferable to playing anywhere else in the game, it clearly does detract from all the vast assets of the game world and GW2’s extensive content. If ANet had only known some would be so easy to please, they could have just passed on the development of the expansive, detailed, dynamic game world and Personal Story and just made the game a series of Grind based instances.

Well, ok then, that chunk of the game’s player base is addressed, so, I guess you can agree it’s now time to get back to addressing the rest of us, yes?

11. “The market is flooded with widgets, I mean doodads, I mean whatsits, I mean sprockets. That means almost everyone is doing it, bathing in the piles of shinnies and making all other pursuits pointless”.

Well, I guess the market has spoken then. Everybody just needs to have those shinny sprockets!

12. “Regular doses of mediocre content are much better than developing real content”.

Well, I can’t see I don’t see the trend. Bread and Circus have long been the means of distracting a population from long term thinking and a realization that a civilization or enterprise is failing.

Living Story has been a series of flashy distractions greatly devoid of real content and a drain on resources that would have been much better spent on building upon the solid foundations of this incredible game. That some are satisfied with the fluff, in place of real substance, because it gives them a more regular dose of novelty, does not mean it’s in the best interests of the game or any less an affront to the ideals the game was built around.

Response to Fiontar.4695

Hi again sorry for how long this is. tldr: I guess we can agree to disagree?

For num 2 I thought you were talking in the first post about the Queen’s Gauntlet fights in the pavilion (where there’s 6 spots to fight bosses with the final one being Liadri). I thought that because you described it as difficult and frustrating. The gauntlet fights are frustrating, but they are an imaginative challenge which a lot of people like. We can both agree that downstairs in the pavilion is a grindfest and unimaginative, but I don’t know why you would describe it as difficult and frustrating. As long as you’re with the zerg it’s not difficult, and it’s so easy and rewarding in a zerg I don’t find it frustrating. The reason that this boring grindfest exists is to pump mats into the economy, I’d bet money that in the next patches they’ll be releasing some of the new crafting they talked about. They made it purposefully because they know something will take those mats out of the economy soon (imo).
3. I don’t remember any hype about “beautiful, relaxing, scenic” balloon rides from Anet, so that must be from the community. You can’t expect all community hype to come to reality. The official info about balloons wasn’t very hyped up if you look at it here https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-06-2013/ and even if you click the link to their guide on that page.

4. You can buy watchwork sprockets on the tp. From one run of COF you could buy over a stack of them right now. You can’t earn them directly from regular game play, but you can earn money and buy them. It would probably be even faster to get them doing dungeons and buying them then farming them right now.

5. They have to keep at least some things relatively expensive or everyone would have them and they wouldn’t be special. Same thing as #4 you can get money from so many areas of the game and spend that money on sprockets and use sprockets and money in the pavilion. You don’t have to do the grind at all if you don’t want to, and you still get the same skin rewards. You’re right in that this farming could cause inflation, but you have to give them the benefit of the doubt. They have ways of reversing inflation, and I have not noticed any sudden inflation.

6. I never said you had to mindlessly join the zergfest; I said you should give the update more than an hour before you decide it’s awful. They made this content to fill a 2-4 week stretch of time, you can’t try it for an hour and then decide it’s bad. If you don’t like the grind then you can try the Gauntlet fights. If you can’t make it to/past Liadri you can try the Beacons of Kryta. If you didn’t like that then you could do open world and come across some balloon events. If you didn’t come across anything you liked after you tried it all, then you didn’t like the living story stuff, but you can still enjoy the new/improved mechanics that came with the update. Not every update in every game is going to be super rich in lore and perfect content; Anet is still finding their way with living story.

7. In the pavilion farm area you kill the same mobs over and over in a zerg for lots of loot. Without being able to kill the same mobs over and over and do the same events over and over we would have the one-time karka event. That was where there was great loot, a clear story, and sense of progression over a few hours of events that were one time only so many people missed them. There has to be repeated content for everyone to experience it and it makes a lot of sense to dish out lots of rewards to the players. I think it’s a stretch to say it’s the most rewarding. By time a 15-20 minute COF P1 run for 1.26 g base is probably the most amount of money for time besides the TP. Also not all of the new champ skin drops can even be obtained from the pavilion; you have to kill champs all around the world for them.

8. Again if it wasn’t stale and stuck feeling it would be one time progression like personal story or the Karka event. It has to stay and repeat for everyone to get a chance to play it. Open world content can’t go on forever like a real life world, basically no matter what it’ll have to repeat at some point.

9. No one is forcing anyone to grind for loot. As I said already, they are purposefully pumping loot into the economy (mostly in the form of mats). They are not doing this for no reason; the reason is likely new crafting up to 500 coming up soon. Also this grinding reminds me a lot of last Halloween. I don’t remember if it was quite as lucrative as this, but it was probably close. It’s not like this new farming location blows all the other ones of all time completely out of the water. You could even rival the amount of rares you get in the pavilion with the amount of rares you could get doing the dragon rotation. (fire ele, maw, jormag, fire shaman, etc.)

10. You’re also right in thinking that they can please the big mass of players just looking for an easy grind for loot. They try to please everyone at the same time, but you can’t expect everyone to get pleased equally. What you want, for them to add more open world content, is in the works as they’ve said. I imagine it takes a lot more effort to redo whole areas with new content, so they are taking the easy way out to please the masses with a small farm area. They’re working on open world content, but it will take more time for them to make than this stuff. Naturally you can expect them to roll out actual content like that much later than fluff content like this.

11. lol I like your quotes of me; I guess if people want to know what I really said they’d have to scroll up a bit and read it for themselves. You said the sprockets are “a currency that few are going to want to bother earning.” That’s why I mentioned how many there are on the TP, obviously plenty of people are bothering to earn it. I didn’t say that everyone needs them, I’m saying that plenty of people are getting them.

12. Hmm a quote I didn’t say…you must be talking to someone else.

So again, I agree with a lot of what you said. I agree that temporary farming areas are no substitute for real content. You just have to remember that the bottom floor of the pavilion was not the only content they released and that they are working on new content to please more people. This new farming area is great fun for some people and one of their tools to influence the economy. If you don’t like the grind you can do other stuff and buy the same rewards.

I think half the Queen’s Pavilion is a great update, it finally gives players a good way of making money that isn’t CoF farming, however… The ball was really dropped on the Queen’s Gauntlet. It’s a frustrating mess that expects you to play to the meta, and if you are not well and appropriately geared and traited, it gets even worse. Add a high ping on top of that and.. Yeah, this is not in the least bit fun.

Afya.5842:

At first I liked this but I realize Pavilion is just plain wrong.

I like farming so I really enjoy my time farming in there. However, it is so forced and artificial. There is almost nothing behind the reason of such place. So the watchknight become those monsters, went crazy and start attacking people. I get that, but they just stay in the circle and patrol there?

Story and lore aside, we know it’s made for us to farm. They even give us the MF buff. But the thing reminds me of those WC3 custom rpg map, which has a place you can pay some money and you can go in where monster spawns nonstop. Exactly like what we have here.

Not only that it’s artificial, it also drives people away from the open world. There is nothing to explore inside. Labyrinthine Rift is fine, at least it has a story behind, it has good map design. What we have here is just a freaking circle with mobs to slaughter.

Gauntlet is a good concept although the execution is arguable. Many have addressed it, I’ll pass here.

Actually thats not it at all.

The only watch night that went crazy was the one attacking logan in the story.

The story behind the public pavilion is for the bottom part its split into areas representing the different enemies of humanity, the watch knights are designed to play the role of those enemies (aided with alittle mesmer magic) so that players get to beat those enemies over and over again. Its like a realistic re-enactment battle for fun and glory.

The upper part is a gladiator arena(s). You’re fighting gladiator style these powerful enemies for fame and glory.

The reason behind it is there and it makes sense.

Fiontar.4695:

Response to ilovepi.3542
4. Watchwork Sprockets and other special currencies.

These are yet another limited time currency and, in this case, crafting mat. this time, we can’t even earn them via ordinary game play, we have to either grind the sad, “so last century” QP grind, subsidize those doing the grind, or forget about it entirely.

First: Watchwork Sprockets are permanent.
Second: I got most of mine by getting out in the world and just play.

Ok, so I gave a try to being a part of farming group at Frostgorge Sound. It gave me a clear picture of what this game is now.
Everyone know that they cannot be better than other apart from their skill? And despite that, so many ppl just farm, teleport from place to place and kill champ in 5-7 seconds. One I started attacking at the very beginning of zerg massacre with my Engineer and I’ve received nothing, boss was not tagged for me, great.

Nononononononono, I don’t wanna play this game that way, it drains brain. It’s so mindless, it’s so… so… kitten STUPID AS HELL!
And also don’t try to persuade me that it brought life to world. It brought zombies who see only one thing – champions.
Even chat doesn’t show any other messages, only: “Oak up, then boar, then this and then that.” “Hey, wanna join farm, any spot left in pt?” “Ok ppl ,everyone here [WP]”.

Make champions drop bags once a day per account, pls, do something to stop this game-killing activity!

Really, you wanted to achieve THAT? Even so this is broken – champs die too fast.
I don’t wanna believe it that this is the way this game is taking.
HEEEEEEEEELP!

TBH, I just find this Living Story content bland bland bland. All you do is kill, kill, kill, farm, farm, farm, fight, fight fight (with potentially characters that are underleveled for the area/fights). The only thing remotely interesting to me are the random champions you fight to get balloons, along with the balloon events and the balloon you get. Which, is interesting enough, but by far not half as cool as anything in the Bazaar. And you’re forced to do dailies to get the meta achievement and most of them are kill, kill, kill. Who really wants to kill 600+ things just to get achievements? Over half the LS achievements require killing x number of x things representing y. Not fun. And the other achievements tend to be fairly bland (besides the balloons, which you can’t get the achievement for if you don’t have a level 30+ character). Can’t there be more interesting achievement points like there were in the Bazaar? Plus, they’re not exactly easy kills, particularly due to performance issues. But their new permanent stuff like champ rewards, dungeon rewards, and the wallet are fantastic!

I have enjoyed this update so far, in particular the new method of in-game cinematics. The Opening Ceremony sequence was entertaining and I’ve become interested in the storyline again.

I think the Queen’s Pavilion is fun in a chaotic zerg grind fashion that is kept enjoyable because it is optional. You can do it or not as you please. The change in champion’s rewards seems to be encouraging players to cooperate more that ever to take them down and getting people to play together like that isn’t a bad thing IMO. I think it’s rather cool to see mapchat announcements of champions in a zone which you can join in if you want.

But I can see some of the OP’s complaints. I would not mind seeing more dynamic event being incporporated or rotated into the open world but we are seeing some of that in this update with the balloon towers and there seems to be a bit more variety than just fighting off spawn camps. I think we’ll see them implement other events with still variety later.

I was disappointed that the balloon rides just led to an instant teleport. It would have been cooler if we could have watched the zone pass by below for a little bit or even just done sometime like a moving Vista cinematic.

I just don’t like that they are ruining the open world environment, I can’t take caledon seriously anymore with the circus crap thrown around.

Daecollo.9578:

I just don’t like that they are ruining the open world environment, I can’t take caledon seriously anymore with the circus crap thrown around.

There are about 2 locations where balloons looks amazing from afar, but apart from it it’s, how you beautifully put it, circus crap.

EDIT:
ok, to not make pure flame post without substance:
I don’t like how these balloons grow like mushrooms out of nowhere everywhere in the world, how suddenly human have robots, how we have elements from fairy tales where there’s carnage, whole cities are burned to ground, people slaughtered, sacrificed, minotaurs eaten alive (I’d wish this was portraied somehow, I miss fights like the very beginnig of the game, you feel tension, the adrenaline).
Apart from story, there is no indication that humans are barely surviving. Failed events of defending human villages should make them burned down completely, fallen bodies lying around. Then new people should arrive, who would like to rebuild town, this would have many stages:
protecting people in their journey, helping them gather materials, maybe even train soldiers (we are a hero, don’t we?), then take the site from attackers, help building it, protecting, creating new buildings (houses, windmils, barracks, etc. – we could decide what to build) then just being with these people we would influence how the town prosper, how people will live there. We could even fortify this town so much that future events would require a lot more mobs to actually endanger it.
This would make the world living, not balloons. Yea, balloons, because… just because.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We do our best to deliver appealing content with enough variety to keep as many people as satisfied as possible.

I do believe this. I know you guys want this game to succeed.

The Living World is a great idea, but it’s hard to implement. So far, we’ve mostly been given temporary content that people are rushing to finish because they know it won’t last. And that is frustrating. We’ve been givekittenllion currencies and new skins and so many things to buy with it that we have to check fan sites to even keep track of it all, and many of them also won’t last. And these are frustrating. And ultimately, the entire Living World content has boiled down to mostly just grinding for achievements. And that’s frustrating, too. I think the problem here is that you want people to see all your new and exciting content, so you ramp up the rewards to give lots of incentive for people to do it. But the rewards are so good – and the time to reap them so small – that people feel like they HAVE to play the game this one way: achievement grinder. And ultimately, that’s what I believe people are pushing back against.

I loved the open world when the game launched and the open world was, for me, the thing which set this game apart. Now most of the open world is super empty. I’d love it if there were a reward structure to encourage people to spread out over the world (like bonus XP on mobs, only more extensive). I’d also like more of an emphasis on XP as the main reward, rather than achievement points or laurels. Another main draw to this game is that you can play how you want to play and still be rewarded. You can still be rewarded with XP, but not the other currencies which are currently being emphasized.
I’d like to see XP be important again, and for new DEs to be added rather than one-time areas (often with their own skill bars which make the character you’ve built the same as everyone else’s.)
My favorite part is exploring the open world and finding new things. I just want there to be new things to find and people around to share it with.

Ubrasaur.7103:

I’d love it if there were a reward structure to encourage people to spread out over the world (like bonus XP on mobs, only more extensive).

Now this gave me an idea:
Imagine that mobs that were not killed for at least an hour have a chance to drop some rare parts of something useful (armor, weapon?).
What I have in mind:
Some npc character (hidden somewhere) says that there was a adventurer who wore a special pair of gloves which warned him whenever something attacked him – they started to burn. Legend says that this particular pair of gloves were created from the fur of creatures of opposing elements: fire and ice (there can be other – poison and life, thunder and water, etc.). Now you can start gathering components (2% chance of dropping from long-lived creature). You need 125 of each. Then you can craft it – gloves that give special visual effect in battle.

This would spread population across whole world in search of mobs that were not killed in a long time.

Gizmo.8623:

Imagine that mobs that were not killed for at least an hour have a chance to drop some rare parts of something useful (armor, weapon?).

I would love for there to be a mechanic along these lines. Care must be taken though to ensure the mechanic doesn’t spread people out too much. We wouldn’t want players actively avoiding each other.
The simplest (and possibly most fool-proof) way is to reward players more in under or averagely populated areas. That would normalize the population across the open world.

Ubrasaur.7103:

Gizmo.8623:

Imagine that mobs that were not killed for at least an hour have a chance to drop some rare parts of something useful (armor, weapon?).

I would love for there to be a mechanic along these lines. Care must be taken though to ensure the mechanic doesn’t spread people out too much. We wouldn’t want players actively avoiding each other.
The simplest (and possibly most fool-proof) way is to reward players more in under or averagely populated areas. That would normalize the population across the open world.

Or it could be limited to few mob kills per day/account. For a few weeks you could be hunting mobs you need, it could be very fun and I’m sure that if Anet would agreed on implementing this, they would add something extra to ensure that we wouldn’t tire of is too soon

Another idea – when I’ve written “hunting mobs” it occured to me that we lack class quests. But that’s probably too big for any kind of hope now.

I think they said they didn’t want specific profession quests as they wanted everyone to be able to participate in all the content. Perhaps it would be neat to have “profession training” though.

Basically, though… my problem with this LS is that there isn’t enough variety in things to do – as it is, for the most part, “kill things!”. Perhaps the Bazaar set my bar up too high as there were so many options for all kinds of players’ likes and dislikes. The Bazaar was absolutely amazing in terms of content options though. I hope that future Living Stories/content go along the lines of the Bazaar. The Bazaar even had great recipes and meta award that let you get the material for said recipes when the Bazaar isn’t going on! Normally I really really dislike the recipes given out during Living Stories as the mats aren’t permanently available so you only have so many after the event’s finished with no way to gain them again until the next year when the event comes back. And I hope that future permanent content is more like the wallet (Jubilee), achievement point rewards(again, from the Bazaar), champ/dungeon rewards (Jubilee). Hopefully we will get Guild Halls and a skin management type system more like the achievement skins for Gem Store skins and others.

Funny thing about that is a lot players on these forums complained about there not being enough killing back during the Bazaar and Cutthroat.

I happened to like everything so far but I’m easy.

So ANET surely reads the forums and recognizes this. I’m sure they’ll do rotations of everyone’s favorite content. The best thing about gw2 is the diversity of the population so anet delivers diverse content.

Gizmo.8623:

And also don’t try to persuade me that it brought life to world. It brought zombies who see only one thing – champions.
Even chat doesn’t show any other messages, only: “Oak up, then boar, then this and then that.” “Hey, wanna join farm, any spot left in pt?” “Ok ppl ,everyone here [WP]”.

Make champions drop bags once a day per account, pls, do something to stop this game-killing activity!

Really, you wanted to achieve THAT? Even so this is broken – champs die too fast.
I don’t wanna believe it that this is the way this game is taking.
HEEEEEEEEELP!

Yeah. Crown Pavilion is a grim sign of whats to come, but at least it’s temporary. Champion bags print money and are here to stay. The people that haven’t already moved to Frostgorge or Orr will migrate to champion loops after Queen’s Jubilee ends. That’s also why nerfing each popular champion loop is not a solution on its own. There’s always a next in line.

Currently, inflation is inevitable. Champion bags dropping rare exotics, mats, and karma is fine. Until the salvage patch, blue and green item and gold drop rates need to be heavily nerfed. Just put a couple gold on the daily achievement reward to compensate the average player.

ttyl.6021:

Yeah. Crown Pavilion is a grim sign of whats to come, but at least it’s temporary. Champion bags print money and are here to stay. The people that haven’t already moved to Frostgorge or Orr will migrate to champion loops after Queen’s Jubilee ends. That’s also why nerfing each popular champion loop is not a solution on its own. There’s always a next in line.

Currently, inflation is inevitable. Champion bags dropping rare exotics, mats, and karma is fine. Until the salvage patch, blue and green item and gold drop rates need to be heavily nerfed. Just put a couple gold on the daily achievement reward to compensate the average player.

You could not be more wrong. Champion Loot does not primarily create coin; it creates items.

For example: If your friend found a valuable skin like Genesis and sold it on the Trading Post for 200g, it might seem like it produced money; it didn’t. It moved Gold from the buyer to the seller, but it also destroyed some of that gold from the Economy due to the 15% Trading Post cut. You say Inflation is inevitable, yet Lodestones are dropping in price because the supply of items is increasing.

Producing more items = Increases supply, destroys gold, and prevents inflation.
Producing more gold = Increases prices, makes supply more competitive.

But wait, I am vendoring these Greens and Blues for sweet, sweet coin?

For now. Take a look at Colin Johanson’s post about the 2nd Half of 2013

Salvaging Fine and Masterwork Items
Otherwise known as blues and greens, we want to give more reason to care about these item types when they drop. When the account magic find system is implemented, there will be a chance you can acquire account magic find consumables from salvaging both fine and masterwork items.

Producing more items is not a bad thing. Good riddance to CoF Path 1 gold printing machines.

Nokaru.7831:

ttyl.6021:

Yeah. Crown Pavilion is a grim sign of whats to come, but at least it’s temporary. Champion bags print money and are here to stay. The people that haven’t already moved to Frostgorge or Orr will migrate to champion loops after Queen’s Jubilee ends. That’s also why nerfing each popular champion loop is not a solution on its own. There’s always a next in line.

Currently, inflation is inevitable. Champion bags dropping rare exotics, mats, and karma is fine. Until the salvage patch, blue and green item and gold drop rates need to be heavily nerfed. Just put a couple gold on the daily achievement reward to compensate the average player.

You could not be more wrong. Champion Loot does not primarily create coin; it creates items.

For example: If your friend found a valuable skin like Genesis and sold it on the Trading Post for 200g, it might seem like it produced money; it didn’t. It moved Gold from the buyer to the seller, but it also destroyed some of that gold from the Economy due to the 15% Trading Post cut. You say Inflation is inevitable, yet Lodestones are dropping in price because the supply of items is increasing.

Producing more items = Increases supply, destroys gold, and prevents inflation.
Producing more gold = Increases prices, makes supply more competitive.

---

But wait, I am vendoring these Greens and Blues for sweet, sweet coin?

For now. Take a look at Colin Johanson’s post about the 2nd Half of 2013

Salvaging Fine and Masterwork Items
Otherwise known as blues and greens, we want to give more reason to care about these item types when they drop. When the account magic find system is implemented, there will be a chance you can acquire account magic find consumables from salvaging both fine and masterwork items.

Producing more items is not a bad thing. Good riddance to CoF Path 1 gold printing machines.

Did you stop reading at that line you bolded? Right after I said rare exotics and mats are fine (because they obviously don’t produce money). Tier 5 and 6 mat and lodestone prices have gone down because they drop from champion bags. I also said “until the salvage patch”, referring to the same thing your quote from Colin does. Until then, blues and greens are sold to vendors. And champion bags do drop about 7 additional silver. You could not be more wrong.

Currently, abusing the Shank Anchorage event generates 8g+/hr. That’s more than CoF1 and much more accessible. But wait, just nerf Shank Anchorage? That’s the problem with champion bags, this can be done anywhere. There will always be a next best zerg spot.

I love this update. More challenging achievements in the future plox!

ttyl.6021:

Currently, abusing the Shank Anchorage event generates 8g+/hr. That’s more than CoF1 and much more accessible. But wait, just nerf Shank Anchorage? That’s the problem with champion bags, this can be done anywhere. There will always be a next best zerg spot.

If that’s the best case scenario, I wouldn’t worry about it since the Cauldrons always die.

Nokaru.7831:

ttyl.6021:

Currently, abusing the Shank Anchorage event generates 8g+/hr. That’s more than CoF1 and much more accessible. But wait, just nerf Shank Anchorage? That’s the problem with champion bags, this can be done anywhere. There will always be a next best zerg spot.

If that’s the best case scenario, I wouldn’t worry about it since the Cauldrons always die.

That’s just from failing the event the 3 times an hour, you could farm in between. People get yelled at for killing the cauldrons. The fact that purposely failing is more profitable is enough reason to worry…

I predict…

Dynamic Champion Scaling.

It’s going to be glorious!

Mia Lunarfang.5826:

So, Queens Jubilee…
I loved the opening ceremony, until the Aetherblade Pirates were involved in the scheme, because, lets face it, they’re an overused plot device, quickly thrown in and just as quickly pulled out, without adding any depth to the story at all, which is beginning to give them a very ‘Team Rocket’ feel. Their leader has been imprisoned, their base ransacked, so why are they still such a big threat? If they really are of consequence, I would like to see why. More then that, why don’t they have a place in the world map like the other pirate crews? Aside from the jumping puzzle they don’t exist outside living story, and then they come with such a force one would think there’s an entire nation of them hidden.

Because Mai Trin was working for a person named “Scarlet”. If you have paid attention to the dialogue during the Aetherblade dungeon, you would’ve known.

Also when the player inquires Anise about why the Aetherblade aren’t defeated yet, she says she doesn’t know, and only knows that they’re back and better funded than ever.

So as for over-used plot devices, I don’t think this certain plot has played out yet.

PopeUrban.2578:

I predict…

Dynamic Champion Scaling.

It’s going to be glorious!

IMO:
Scaling would be far too little to help the situation.
Do you wanna sigh when you see zerg going to boss and you know that everyone will have to pew pew him for 5 minutes because of scaling?
We need new mechanics, maybe even stages with boss fight (for example – more reinforcements as his health goes down, etc.) – like in Final Fantasy games (in FF8 last boss had 4 or 5 stages, each had different abilities).
Scalling is ok for events but bosses need a lot more love.

Daecollo.9578:

I just don’t like that they are ruining the open world environment, I can’t take caledon seriously anymore with the circus crap thrown around.

You mean the forest with houses made of flowers, quests that turn you in to a giant tree, and the meta that makes you participate in hot crab battle action?

Yeah. That balloon stand sure did ruin the somber and thought provoking content there.

I know the devs want this game to succeed, but I will refuse to paticipate in braindead, uninspired content like Crown Pavillion.

Game’s been reduced to farming for cosmetic stuff and legendaries, which people get and then quit the game.

This has to stop.