Guild Wars 2

Hey guild wars team I have been thinking about the solution to get people to play in the lower level maps. I know that the game is intended to make people work hard for their achievements but here is where the game gets a little out of hand:

1.The Leveling system:
The game takes way to long to level up to level 80. I know this game involves trying to get people to stay in the maps long, but it just gets them frustrated, because they are stuck in one area for to long. There are many times while i was leveling up that I completed everything on map and was still to low a level to go to the next area its not fair and it is not fun especially when you already have completed a character at level 80. People will quickly revert back to there level 80s to aquire money for the cost of leveling up the character and the joys of be 80 (better gear, more things to do, and better areas to farm). The person is already level 80 they spent 5 weeks plus getting to that high level why would they torture themselves to do it all over again especially when it takes 5 plus weeks to do it. Make the leveling system more fun for the player instead of unrewarding heart quests for 1.5 sliver a piece, make it faster to level ie more exp for hearts and creature kills, and make them more interesting quests then pour water on the corn to make it grow (serious we can do better).

Which brings me to my next point and the main topic.

2. Game Gear is way over priced:
I know you ask me what are you talking about its only a few silver to get level 80 gear. That would be true but to get level 80 max gear or exotics, which to the player who has not acquired a level 80 exotics are way better than master the gear, is over priced. The players of this game have to spend hours just to make money or spend there real money on gems in order to afford the outrageous prices of being able to play at level 80. So guild wars you ask the players why do the spend all there time in the cursed shore? Is it because it is more fun? More players? More events? none of the above, its because it takes 60 + ectos for player to gain max gear, weapons and jewelry. I mean seriously i have calculated that to be 18 gold worth of ectos only for the gear not counting the over priced crafting materials and things to make them. It takes an average person about 6 gold to gain max crafting in most of the major armor crafting professions so now were at 24 gold worth time wasted (not to mention the 3 gold spent on trait books that should just be given away). So I ask you guild wars you guys keep pressing the fact that no one wants to play in the low level areas that’s because no one can. They have to spend there entire time playing the curse shore just to make sure 1 level 80 is good enough to take to the dungeons, world vs world and measure up to its full potential. So if i decided to make all level 80 characters that would cost me for 4 give 24 X 4 or 96 gold and 20 weeks worth of time (not including farming time to gain the money).

My proposal:
Would it be bad to increase the drop rate of god material so the prices were not so crazy that we have to spend our weekends hammering Grenth or the cursed shore for all its got. That will make people spend less time farming in the curse shore and more time leveling and play characters in the low level areas. In addition, cut the tax on the black lion. I don’t know who i am paying tax to the united states of guild wars or whatever, but who is the one that needs the fake money to run a fake government. Make the game more entertaining with better heart quests, better rewards and exp for the player to level up faster. I don’t need to spend months leveling up a character it is not fun. And finally think of the game you would want to play. I heard you spent thousands of dollars on economist to make sure the game economy would be right, spend thousands of dollars on making the moments more memorable, killing more dragons, saving more towns, bring back the demons the plague and the mursatt if you have too just make people feel like what they are doing is worth something not a bunch of orders from a sylvari scholar.

It takes roughly 2-4 weeks to level a character to 80, which is relatively fast. Gear prices are fine, the only thing that needs to change are lodestone drop rates. They do need more ways to complete the hearts, but that’s about it.

Agree on leveling. You can easily get 5 level an evening. 8 days and you hit 80. Leveling is not an issue.

Gear prices…

Well, gear are over priced.
Why would a single piece of 80 (rare) cultural armour cost what an 2 entire sets of exotics would cost you?
Or why a an order (vigil, whispers, priory) set, (also rare quality) would cost what an exotic set would cost?

But that is another matter. The issue is not TP prices, it is TP inflation. GW2 economy is oddly familiar… the small minority super rich, the bulk of not so super rich, and the every increasing disparity between the 2 groups.

And who is creating this? Speculators. Simple as in the real world we live in. Speculative buying by those who have accumulated a mass of wealth…

So, in short, unless they start selling gear at prices that will control inflation from vendors, (IE, create a cap price, at witch point a buyer will simply buy from a vendor rather than TP, simply because it is cheaper) this situation cannot be controlled. That can only happen, if those prices were realistic as well.

This all assumes that,this is something Anet wants.
Considering vendor prices… I would venture to think not.

Those sets you mention are for the skins and the skins only. They do not really factor in to the rest of the equation. As for getting other gear, do you not run dungeons? You can get level 80 exotics practically for free if you run a lot of dungeons, and make money doing it.

So what you are saying is that, because it is a skin the price is fair game and irrelevant to use as a base for comparison? And I am sorry, if they were simply skins, they would not have stats. Despite that they are used for skins, they are not in fact, skins.

And what does dungeon armour have to do with anything? You buy those with tokens, not gold, and you cannot sell them on TP. You even read what I wrote?

Sorry, but your reply did not make much sense to me.

The point on the skins is that they only have 1 single stat combination, and most people would not use said combination, so they are simply relegated to skins.

As for why I brought up dungeons, TC stated that it cost a ton of gold to get gear, where if you do dungeons, it does not cost you any gold to gear except for trinkets. You could also level up crafting yourself and get gear that way.

Buying gear off the trade post is not the only way to get gear.

Since gold is so readily available in the game, if MAX tier gear was cheaper, it would just be holding your hand and saying “Here, have some free armor, why should you work at it?” As it is, gear is cheap enough, and they don’t need to change a thing.

I will accept that as your oppinion, and in the same sentence, would simply like to kitten my opinion as well: Anet need to come up with a mechanism to control TP inflation. Unless they increase drop-rates of most of the top tier mats, I don’t see how else they would do that then to set price caps by lowering vendor prices.

A clever first step would have been to make legendaries account bound on acquire… but that ship has unfortunately sailed.

Most of the gear is fine sure, But I have to agree with the OP that the top of the gear chain (exotics) is too expensive. Now, I don’t mean every exotic should cost less than 1g or anything silly like that. What I’m talking about is how they said it would be the cosmetic stuff that would require lots of (optional) grind and be really expensive, and that would be fine!
But.
Basic exotic armor just for the stats? It’s a bit high just for the basic crafted exotics.
I made this post about a set I’m working on getting everything for:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Cost-of-Infusing-Backslots-too-intensive/1223468

Basically, it’s going to run me about 12g just for the Gossamer, Thread, and Ecto, just to make the Insignias and doesn’t take into account the armor parts at all. Total is going to run me about 17g or so (guesstimate).
That’s a lot of money just to get the stats (it’s more than half of what I’ve managed to accrue since launch -.-)

While I’m aware it’s complicated managing drop rates and how they impact the economy and item prices, they could simply lower the ecto requirement for the basic Crafter exotic sets, say from 5 to 2 per insignia (yes, that will drop insignia TP prices a bit, and then the prices of armor made with it). This would reduce the cost of those sets by 18 ecto, 5g38s at current prices, bringing my total down to around ~12 or so.
That’s actually still too high IMO, but it’s more in the ballpark.

Now, I’m only guessing here but it seems like 5 ecto was chosen because that’s the most you can get from salvaging an exotic, an we know how much they like items giving more than you put into them, so they’d probably be worried about people exploiting this. The easy solution would be to make those basic Crafted sets unsalvageable. Simple, easy, it’s not like they ever drop so having the crafted exotic armor unsalvageable shouldn’t have nearly any impact (seems like it wouldn’t be to me, but who knows).

Alternatively to dropping the ecto cost, they could always fix the ridiculously high ecto price, most easily by slightly improving the salvage rate.

As for the OPs other point, I wouldn’t say leveling is a problem, it’s just that when you’re doing it on character five six or seven it can get a little tedious. And as for taking a level 80 to earlier zones the problem is that open world rewards are kind of pathetic, especially in light of Fractals, and worst in earlier zones. Want people more evenly spread out? Equalize the rewards a bit, time is money and a lot of us do the math and avoid things with little to no return. e.g. Vets and Champions.

I have 3 level 80s fully geared in exotics, and I never had an issue getting money for it, doing lots of dungeon runs or world completion gets you quite a bit of gold. If you just go the quickest way to 80 and don’t do any dungeons at all, you might have a hard time getting some money, but it’s not that bad.

Potions and Food make leveling to 80 easy. (One ‘wrench’ and one food item at a time. Both are cheap and easy to aquire.) That adds up to +20 exp from kills. And then if you have an EXP booster from the cash shop, you’re on fire.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Want people more evenly spread out? Equalize the rewards a bit, time is money and a lot of us do the math and avoid things with little to no return. e.g. Vets and Champions.

Spend 20 minutes slaying the Champ Giant.
Get a blue horn.
Retire to spend my vast fortune…

Perhaps map rewards should be character level based, and not map based… but then, a 80 character has a real easy time finishing a sub 20 map.
Then again, you can only finish a map once…

Dono. Not an easy one I guess.

I still feel TP inflation is the route of all evil here.

Scribe, to put perspective on this, my first set of exotics I made for my first 80 character cost me less than 4g. Granted, I had most of the mats for it. The second set I bought for around 7. The third for around 12. I have yet to return to TP for my other 80 characters. I don’t even want to know what those will cost.

So, between balancing family time, playing this game and working, lets just say I am not in the top 1% of the GW2 economy.

Lenneth.1372:

Those sets you mention are for the skins and the skins only. They do not really factor in to the rest of the equation. As for getting other gear, do you not run dungeons? You can get level 80 exotics practically for free if you run a lot of dungeons, and make money doing it.

Spot on, those “over priced” are skin. Now it would be nice if more of these skins were quested for rather than simply random loot and sold but that takes time and many resources. The main page of this site gives a general idea of where things are heading in the following months and they stated that,
“To complement this concept of regular world events with strong stories and themes, we also need to build on and strengthen our existing open world and its persistent content. The more persistent events we can provide in a specific area, the less often each of the events in that area needs to occur, which in turn adds to the sense of an ever-evolving open world.

This means we need to give reasons for players at all levels to explore these areas, to reward them for their time, and to encourage them to play in locations where they will run into each other and experience the community-driven features that make Guild Wars 2 shine. Before we expand our world more, we need to make sure our existing world is as strong as possible, and that it gives reasons for people at all levels to go back and play and explore in the entire game".

They are working on ways to make older or lower level zones relevant and maybe making your trip to 80 grant easy exotic money but since this game is less focused on gear progression more on looks, what little time it takes to get the best stats should feel time slightly time consuming.

[Full review of things to come https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/ ]

MAGpie.7962:

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Want people more evenly spread out? Equalize the rewards a bit, time is money and a lot of us do the math and avoid things with little to no return. e.g. Vets and Champions.

Spend 20 minutes slaying the Champ Giant.
Get a blue horn.
Retire to spend my vast fortune…

Perhaps map rewards should be character level based, and not map based… but then, a 80 character has a real easy time finishing a sub 20 map.
Then again, you can only finish a map once…

Dono. Not an easy one I guess.

I still feel TP inflation is the route of all evil here.

Scribe, to put perspective on this, my first set of exotics I made for my first 80 character cost me less than 4g. Granted, I had most of the mats for it. The second set I bought for around 7. The third for around 12. I have yet to return to TP for my other 80 characters. I don’t even want to know what those will cost.

So, between balancing family time, playing this game and working, lets just say I am not in the top 1% of the GW2 economy.

12g isnt that hard to obtain; 2-3 from all three AC paths a day (if your team doesnt skip all the champs) and you’re there in 4-6 days, for 6 exotics thats pretty good (considering its 23(?) runs for a full dungeon set)

Some perspective on my post. I have 4 level 80s, none have finished world completion (I’m taking my time exploring as I go, haven’t felt a need to rush that, plus I hear far too frequently that 100% map completion rewards are bugged), and none wear exotics (only two even have rares).
I don’t do Fractals, just not my thing.
Don’t want to do dungeons either. (I’ll explain further on)

The set I want isn’t even available through them anyway (Givers), so I’m going to have to grind the dungeon for the skin I want on top of all the money I’m already putting into this. And that part of it is fine, I accept that getting the skin falls into the “costmetic” zone.
But just getting the stats is the problem, it wasn’t supposed to be about gear progression, but aesthetics. I shouldn’t have to grind dungeons or Fractals to be able to afford the basic stats.

They said they didn’t want people to have to grind one thing to be able to keep up, but all I hear is “Farm dungeons/Fractals it’s the only way to make money outside playing the TP” and “It rains money in Fractals”

-.-

Sorry, but that falls outside the perimeters for the way this was supposed to work.
Expensive grindy skins? Sure! No problem! Gives me something neat to work towards.
Expensive basic stats? um, no, it’s not the stats that are supposed to be expensive.
Only a small number of places where you can make the money required to afford the basic stat set? Ridiculous.

And really, it comes down to the price of ecto for most of it, if they were to still cost what they did a couple months ago this would hardly be an issue. So I suppose realistically this comes down to it being more “ecto is overpriced” instead of “gear is overpriced”
Why craft it instead of just buying it? I leveled my crafting all the way up, thought it would be nice to, you know, craft something nice with it.

Basic stats would be whites. Not exotics.

the real problem is the market is upside down. I can sell the mats to make 95% of the items for far more then I can get for the finished item.

Lenneth.1372:

Basic stats would be whites. Not exotics.

Incorect, in the GW games, “basic” stats are the top end. As top end gear was never ment to take grinding (heck in GW1 top end gear was GIVEN to you).

They need to take the grind out of the game, make fractals drop no money (really people should be doing it for fun, not loot…that is the game’s manifesto after all) and put the money back where it belongs, in the dynamic events out in the world.

Supply and Demand

The gear isn’t overpriced, those prices are what people are willing to pay for them.
If even a small group of customers is willing to buy it, then it’s not considered overpriced in a free market economy.

I appreciate all the response that i got for the forum to show the guild wars team that there is a problem. However, i am not talking about the people who get level 80 in 5 days because they spent money on gems to craft there way to the top or have a level 80 that farmed to get where they are today. I agree with the skins, but i was trying to explain a problem in the video that they posted along time ago which is that the game lacks one the most important things: FUN. You guys all explained that you spend how many hours:
1. Farming.
2. Redoing dungeons over and over again.
3. leveling up characters for heart quests.

The show is to get people interested in the low level areas i am explaining to GW team why everyone has spent there entire life farming in the curse shore and why no one cares about the other maps. You guys hit what i was explaining before that you spend your time farming and then gaining 20 levels at the crafting table (wheres the fun in that) There are no dynamic characters in the game as is today, there is no sence of heroism or helpfulness, there are no dynamic event’s IE: you get a blue from a champion troll. the problem will be fixed when guild wars gets what my statements say:

1. It takes to long to level when doing it the right way.
2. There is no point in leveling anymore
3. All of the players time is wasted on farming just to stay afloat or gain things in the game.

I don’t want a game where i spend 40 hours + farming in one location, I don’t want to have to redo a dungeon where the story lacks depth or care IE: explorable mode, I want to go on an adventure and gain rewards as i play worthy of the difficulty in which i face. Why should i care about helping other people kill a level 30 troll when all i get is a blue horn. Why should i water NPCs plants to gain 66 copper. Why can’t my friends and i go on an adventure and kill zitan with my friends. I’ll tell you why, because, i am forced to sit in the curse shore until i bore myself to death to farm for drops, because its worth more. Plain and simple. You want people out of the curse shore, you want people to explore what you have make the exotic gear easier to obtain, make the low levels have a reward worth of its choice, AND FOR CRY OUT LOUD I AM A HERO I HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO THEN RID YOUR ORCHARD OF LEVEL 3 SPIDERS! or maybe i am a just a errant boy (Trahearne tell me what to do, because i can’t do anything myself)

The on;y time I ever went to cursed shore was to complete the map, I have NEVER farmed there at all.

Its an mmo, they have things called quests. You do these to level and get money. Otherwise you grind. Same with dungeons. Gear in this game is cheaper than gear in other mmo’s relative to level and difficulty of acquisition.

If you don’t like it, then GW is probably not the game for you.

MAGpie.7962:

Why would a single piece of 80 (rare) cultural armour cost what an 2 entire sets of exotics would cost you?

In this case, your not paying for the gear itself, but the awesome skin. I don’t think cultural armor is overpriced at all, it’s the best looking gear in the game, and so it should cost more than regular gear.

If they gave you everything cheap, and you had nothing to work towards, what would be the point?

The point isn’t having everything be super cheap. I still want those really cool things to be something to work towards. Just the basic, crafted stuff shouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg, and that’s what it feels like right now.

Yes, technically white items are considered “basic” gear, and are listed as such on the TP. But a level 80 exotic is far better stat wise than a level 80 white. I was calling the stuff “basic” because you’re supposed to be able to easily reach the best gear stat wise. That’s the whole idea of horizontal progression over vertical, everyone has the same stats, but people who put in a ton of effort are still rewarded with really awesome looking stuff, it just doesn’t give them a stat advantage over others (GW1 worked like this, and it was fun working on getting some of the cooler skins, even when they required some farming and grinding).
Basic exotic tier armor should be something people can get without excessive farming/grinding, and right now it takes quite a bit (I’ve done some trying to mitigate the cost a bit, but since we’re talking T6 mats here plus ecto, it’s extremely slow going), again largely due to the price of ecto, but the rarity of gossamer doesn’t help either.

I do understand supply and demand. The problem is that ArenaNet introduced a huge demand without doing anything (or so it appears) to balance out the supply side. They had to know what the effect was going to be, given how paranoid they are about the economy (justifiably so).

Lenneth.1372:

If they gave you everything cheap, and you had nothing to work towards, what would be the point?

To play for the fun of it.

Too many of you have been indoctrinated to expect and need progression when that progression was only an illusion in the first place. GW has always been about doing things for fun, not for the carrot on the stick.

Iunno, in GW1 it was all about the builds, if you didn’t have the specific one everyone wanted, you didn’t get in a party.

Lenneth.1372:

Iunno, in GW1 it was all about the builds, if you didn’t have the specific one everyone wanted, you didn’t get in a party.

You need to find a better guild then, or more friends.
Good friends or a good guild embraces new builds and trying new things, a few deaths are worth laughing at. You may even shock people with what you can come up with.

Sure the typical tanking build was a requirement, but only if you had the typical healing build too. If your tank shifts things up, the support will have to adjust as well. Usually to amusing results when you find things work so much smoother after bucking the status quo.

OK once again we are off topic of the main point in which i was trying to express. Back when Guild wars 1 was created it was easy to get max armor and it was not better then elite or skinned armors. However, there is a huge jump between exotic and regular cheaper armor in both stats and price. People can work for what they want, but i just don’t want to buy my way to play the game. Its already bad enough that people can buy there commander title in WvW and not earn it through actual hard work. I spend money on trait books, money on gear, money to change my gear when my build is bad, money on jewelry, money on traveling, money on repairing, and the worst money when i want to sell something. The pricing is way out of hand and it needs to stop. I explaining to the game programmers why no one ever goes to the low levels.

If you actually go questing in the low levels Lenneth then you are lieing to everyone or you a poor character that go lucky when everything was cheap during the boting phase. One there are no quests they are chores. A quest requires equal compensation for doing a difficult task usually involving an adventure diving into a dungeon, defeating a boss, or collecting treasure in a lost ruin. A chore is killing spiders in an orchard, gathering grapes for wine, and feeding the cows. Which brings me to probably my final post:

The reason why no one is in the low level areas is because an hour spent farming high level materials is worth more than completing 5 heart quests. If i am going to be bored i might as well get money out of it. They can’t expect the human being to want to complete the tasks. Its not a game anymore, its a job to get your characters and there max gear just so you can actually get to the fun part: questing in dungeons, competitive WvW and not getting killed every single time you want to fight more than 3 enemies.

I just want my guild wars back when the game involved skill, exploration of new builds and stratagies, and coop game play. The game revolves around loot to much and if you don’t believe me ask a burst Theif. And if you want to change you build you have to buy a whole new set of armor for 14 gold. I wanted to try a new build on my elementalist that i though might be good and now i have come to find that the only thing good is the dagger dagger elementalist. Now i have to spend 14 more gold again to change my stuff because i was wrong. I shouldn’t have to be penalized for trying something different!

I play guild wars 1 and i bought guild wars 2 because i believed in the creators, but it lacks the same heart and soul that was put into the first game. I mean you can program thousands of dyes into the game, but you can’t make a max armor fair and equal to the poor and the rich players.

If guild wars employees read this post all i have to say is i want my guild wars back where i could change my build and try something new without having to pay more money. I want more coop play where i can help my friends with quests no matter how bad there level or gear, and i want a game to reward people for skill not how much gold they have in there pocket. Otherwise I will be a the cursed shore like everyone else until i have enough gold to buy my way through the game like the rest of the crowd.