Guild Wars 2

STIHL.2489:

LegACy.1296:

STIHL.2489:

Hypairion.9210:

So food…Best food is expensive (but i don’t think you know what food we’re using, go look at toxic sharpenning Stones for example).

LoL, I, like anyone who can invest 10 gold into crafting, have a 400 ranked Chef. Nothing is that expensive to make.

Anyway, why would you use Toxic Sharpening Stones? a power and condition based food sounds less effective then just using a straight up Power food.

Dude, seriously. If you don’t know anything about some stuff, stop pretending like you know that stuff, it doesn’t help your case.

As for food costs, the most basic foods (truffle steak + sharpening stone) costs 25s each, which totals to 50s. However some professions like elementalist and condition-based class used more expensive foods like Toxic Focusing Crystal which costs 70s or Seaweed Salad Bowl which costs 50s.

Yeah, if you’re good you’ll probably only need 2 of each foods to clear the entire wing. But really, no one ever runs raid for the gold reward, like no one ever do WvW for the gold reward.

Two Points:

Toxic Focusing Crystals which I can make, and I use on my Necro, for WvW, cost roughly 70 Silver for 5 of them, mainly due to the Crystalline Dust, as I have never had to actually buy the spore samples because they drop from a harvesting node.

Raid for the Gold I am sure you all turn a grand profit, just like I do when I run Fractals, even tho I needed to invest a lot of Gold into in Agony, Food, Oils, Potions, and that is not even addressing all the Ascended Gear & Items needed, which, as many of you have said, are not in fact needed for the raid.

Please spare us all your sob story about how much it costs to run a raid that drops gear has a net worth of 100+ Gold attached to it, along with a ton of other special and unique rewards.

It’s pitiful that you all still cling to some need for an ego boost to lock Legendary Collections behind the raid as well.

And Honestly, if you are going to bring up the Fractal Back Item, I Run fractals because they are fun and profitable not to stroke my kitten over a back item, if you are not doing that for the raid, you’re doing it for the wrong reasons.

We really don’t make money unless we can 1 shot the boss or unless it’s the first time killing it Toxic crystals and rare pizza is using about 1g every time you eat them and people rage at you if you try to use less expensive food. Now i’m not complaining about it, i’m just trying to say you really make nothing from raiding most of the time unless you get a lucky ghostly infusion drop. which Happens almost never.

The one to Rule.2593:

unless you get a lucky ghostly infusion drop. which Happens almost never.

I got a power one on my first Gorseval kill 8^] was a nice way to end a kittenty week

Yes, exactly like how services which aid people can sell their services because there is a market for it. A mechanic can assist someone with services on their car further reiterating my point.

Yes, but again, if it were possible to build a car that NEVER needed repairs, and auto-mechanics were actively fighting to prevent that from happening, then they would be the bad guys. Service industries are fair when they provide a service that absolutely needs to be provided, not when they perpetuate a broken system so that they can benefit from it.

I disagree. You pay a mechanic to fix your car. He’s doing you a favor. You order a pizza. That delivery driver is doing you a favor.

That’s not how words work! If you ask a mechanic to fix your car and he does so for free, then that’s a favor. If he asks for money, then he’s providing a service, not a favor.

If it is not free, it is not a favor.

Ever.

I’m not saying that providing services is automatically a bad thing, but it is not a favor.

Interesting. Do you have a link? I could not find any official difficulty standard list.

People have argued that raids deserve to have better quality loot because they are more difficult than most of the other content in the game. Are you trying to argue that raids are no more challenging than, say, Claw of Jormag?

The ascended drops do not drop every time, and their value is not fungible. If I get an ascended dagger drop, but I already have one, then the drop is worth 0 gold to me, despite that it would take 80-100 gold to craft a new one.

This is a fair point. Has anyone tried salvaging ascended weapons? If they’re increasing the drop rates in various parts of the world, then they should drop actual Ascended mats, so yeah, you might not get 80-100g back from them, but you could at least get 10-20g back in materials that you can put to your next weapon.

Favor definition:

an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual.
“I’ve come to ask you a favor”
synonyms: service, good turn, good deed, kindness, act of kindness, courtesy
“will you do me a favor?”

Service definition:

the action of helping or doing work for someone.
“millions are involved in voluntary service”
synonyms: favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand; More

SOURCE: THE DICTIONARY

So, nothing else needs to be said on this, unless Ohoni and Linken, you’d like to claim you know more than a dictionary.

You’re using the voluntary definition of service, as in “providing the service out of the goodness of his heart.” But when you use “service” elsewhere, you are using “transactional service” as in “I help you out, you give me money or other goods in return.” They are two separate meanings of the same word.

The fact that you think you shouldn’t thank the person making you coffee, carrying you through a run, working on your house, holding the door for you and taking your coat, waiting the table you are eating at, etc, is literally what is wrong with society today but that discussion has zero relevance to this thread and let’s try not to derail this thread which has had every possible component of discussion taken care of.

/Sigh. Let me give an ingame example. I was in Dragon’s Stand a couple weeks back, and I was at that hard to reach PoI in the Asura lane, and saw two people down below who looked like they were trying to get up there, and never could from where they were. I had my Mesmer though, so I told them to follow me and glided down and dropped a portal so they could get up there. Afterwards, both sent me a little gold. Now this was a favor on my part, because I did not ask for any gold, did not expect it, and if they hadn’t sent it, I would have been fine with having done a nice thing for people. But they sent me gold and I appreciated that. Now, if I had ASKED for gold, if I’d said “I’ll portal you for 2g” or something to that effect, then that would have been a transaction, it would not have been a “favor.”

“Stand here and do NOTHING while we CLEAR this content for you.”
“But, but you’re taking advantage of meeee!”
“How so? You don’t like raiding, you never plan on raiding, you have thousands of gold.” “Some random guy on the forums told me this.”
“Ok, get out, we don’t even want your 90g/9 for the hours of work we put into this multiplied by 9.”

But the problem is that the player wouldn’t NEED people to carry him if there were an easier alternative way that he could get himself through the content, and you guys are actively arguing that such an easier way should never exist.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, exactly like how services which aid people can sell their services because there is a market for it. A mechanic can assist someone with services on their car further reiterating my point.

Yes, but again, if it were possible to build a car that NEVER needed repairs, and auto-mechanics were actively fighting to prevent that from happening, then they would be the bad guys. Service industries are fair when they provide a service that absolutely needs to be provided, not when they perpetuate a broken system so that they can benefit from it.

I disagree. You pay a mechanic to fix your car. He’s doing you a favor. You order a pizza. That delivery driver is doing you a favor.

That’s not how words work! If you ask a mechanic to fix your car and he does so for free, then that’s a favor. If he asks for money, then he’s providing a service, not a favor.

If it is not free, it is not a favor.

Ever.

I’m not saying that providing services is automatically a bad thing, but it is not a favor.

Interesting. Do you have a link? I could not find any official difficulty standard list.

People have argued that raids deserve to have better quality loot because they are more difficult than most of the other content in the game. Are you trying to argue that raids are no more challenging than, say, Claw of Jormag?

The ascended drops do not drop every time, and their value is not fungible. If I get an ascended dagger drop, but I already have one, then the drop is worth 0 gold to me, despite that it would take 80-100 gold to craft a new one.

This is a fair point. Has anyone tried salvaging ascended weapons? If they’re increasing the drop rates in various parts of the world, then they should drop actual Ascended mats, so yeah, you might not get 80-100g back from them, but you could at least get 10-20g back in materials that you can put to your next weapon.

Favor definition:

an act of kindness beyond what is due or usual.
“I’ve come to ask you a favor”
synonyms: service, good turn, good deed, kindness, act of kindness, courtesy
“will you do me a favor?”

Service definition:

the action of helping or doing work for someone.
“millions are involved in voluntary service”
synonyms: favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand; More

SOURCE: THE DICTIONARY

So, nothing else needs to be said on this, unless Ohoni and Linken, you’d like to claim you know more than a dictionary.

You’re using the voluntary definition of service, as in “providing the service out of the goodness of his heart.” But when you use “service” elsewhere, you are using “transactional service” as in “I help you out, you give me money or other goods in return.” They are two separate meanings of the same word.

The fact that you think you shouldn’t thank the person making you coffee, carrying you through a run, working on your house, holding the door for you and taking your coat, waiting the table you are eating at, etc, is literally what is wrong with society today but that discussion has zero relevance to this thread and let’s try not to derail this thread which has had every possible component of discussion taken care of.

/Sigh. Let me give an ingame example. I was in Dragon’s Stand a couple weeks back, and I was at that hard to reach PoI in the Asura lane, and saw two people down below who looked like they were trying to get up there, and never could from where they were. I had my Mesmer though, so I told them to follow me and glided down and dropped a portal so they could get up there. Afterwards, both sent me a little gold. Now this was a favor on my part, because I did not ask for any gold, did not expect it, and if they hadn’t sent it, I would have been fine with having done a nice thing for people. But they sent me gold and I appreciated that. Now, if I had ASKED for gold, if I’d said “I’ll portal you for 2g” or something to that effect, then that would have been a transaction, it would not have been a “favor.”

“Stand here and do NOTHING while we CLEAR this content for you.”
“But, but you’re taking advantage of meeee!”
“How so? You don’t like raiding, you never plan on raiding, you have thousands of gold.” “Some random guy on the forums told me this.”
“Ok, get out, we don’t even want your 90g/9 for the hours of work we put into this multiplied by 9.”

But the problem is that the player wouldn’t NEED people to carry him if there were an easier alternative way that he could get himself through the content, and you guys are actively arguing that such an easier way should never exist.

The player doesn’t NEED people to carry him regardless.

randomguy.1283:

The player doesn’t NEED people to carry him regardless.

This exactly.

And it seems that most people don’t really have an issue with easier raids, as long as it doesn’t impact other raiding content coming out. It just needs to have reduced rewards and no possibility to work towards legendary armor

Well this has been a fun topic.

Let’s look at that replay for a moment. We go from posts like this.

fishball.7204:

The point is, raiding in GW2 isn’t hardcore. Anyone can do it if they really wanted to bar some serious real life circumstances (eg. disabilities).

45 minutes clear raid wing 1 is standard nowadays in pug groups.

You can argue all day why and how but when raid wings are cleared faster than AC1-3 pre HoT, you can’t really call these raids “hardcore”.

And then we move on to posts like this.

The one to Rule.2593:

We really don’t make money unless we can 1 shot the boss or unless it’s the first time killing it.

So let me get this right, a bunch of Pugs can go in, clear the raid in roughly 45 min, and at the same time I am hearing people fuss they can’t find a way to make money doing this. Well as I see it, either Fishball was grossly exaggerating the ease by which raids can be done. But, that’s unlikely as no one corrected them.

My other choices are that the people telling me they can’t turn a profit doing the raid are really, really, bad at doing the raid, like so bad they are losing money and maybe should not be raiding kind of bad at trying to do the raid OR they are not really telling the truth about their profit margins.

In either case, with each passing post, I gotta admit regrettably my respect for the Pro-Raid crowd takes a hit as their stands, points, and pretty much everything they have to say, flips and flops all over the place.

STIHL.2489:

In either case, with each passing post, I gotta admit regrettably my respect for the Pro-Raid crowd takes a hit as their stands, points, and pretty much everything they have to say, flips and flops all over the place.

If you’re gonna get your knickers in a twist over one post not being completely accurate with another post in two threads on the same topic whose pages total around 40 you’re kinda taking the kitten.

Sarrs.4831:

If you’re gonna get your knickers in a twist over one post not being completely accurate with another post in two threads on the same topic whose pages total around 40 you’re kinda taking the kitten.

LOL, so, “not being complete accurate” is how you describe posts that are totally contradicting each other. Cute.

Well come back when you all get your stories straight.

Ohoni.6057:

Because “service” and “favor” are not synonyms.

the action of helping or doing work for someone.
“millions are involved in voluntary service”
synonyms: favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand

Quote of the day!

I can’t even. I don’t care how you define “service” or “favor.” No, really, I don’t. I’ll listen to the good old book called the dictionary. Generally, when receiving favors, it is usually done to get something back… You mow your dad’s lawn (a favor) without him asking to lessen the impending doom of that F you received etc etc. You can mow it for no reason as well. A favor is not limited by this. It is pointless arguing this. You can service someone’s vehicle without payment. This is still a service and it is still a favor. I was simply trying to stop you where you were going off about how people who sell runs are exploiting. If you want to continue this favor/service thing…I suggest you find a source claiming that favors can not include rewards and services must include them.

Ohoni.6057:

People who offer to sell raid slots aren’t doing favors, they are exploiting people’s weakness, while fighting to maintain the system in which that exploitation has a place. There is NO justifying it from a moral standpoint.

Ohoni.6057:

If you ask a mechanic to fix your car and he does so for free, then that’s a favor. If he asks for money, then he’s providing a service, not a favor.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not saying that providing services is automatically a bad thing, but it is not a favor.

There you go, you contradicted yourself to push your own agenda by proposing an alternative to “not raiding” is immoral… That is… Unless car mechanics are exploiters?

STIHL.2489:

LOL, so, “not being complete accurate” is how you describe posts that are totally contradicting each other. Cute.

Two posts… by two different people… in different context. Valid argument. I don’t even agree with what “The one to Rule.2593” is saying. I’ve made like 100g full-clearing both wings this week and last. Non-raiders also advocate that they don’t want an easy-mode raid for the rewards, yet here we are… discussing rewards. Notice how this entire thread consists of dozens of opinions, including mine. Opinions….Opinions…Opinions… Onions… Opinions…

STIHL.2489:

LOL, so, “not being complete accurate” is how you describe posts that are totally contradicting each other. Cute.

Well come back when you all get your stories straight.

If you want us to review every single post in the thread for factual accuracy… Well, you first, please.

Sird.4536:

. Everything you listed for fotm are not needed either. Outside of some fotm you can dodge the AR attacks, you don’t need food or oil and if you do dodge the AR attacks you don’t need ascended gear. Plus in fotm you can also get rewards of up to 100g (btw you can’t salvage ascended items to get the based materials back so who cares how much they are worth).

While you may not need those things, I use them, and even with using food, oils, and potions, AR, Ascended Items, I still manage to turn a profit running Fractals.

Now, If you can’t turn a profit doing a Raid (or any content for that matter) then you need to revisit how good you really are at that content, and accept that perhaps that content is not really the right content for you, if you can’t turn a profit doing it.

I really wanted to go back and respond to the arguments earlier from my discussion a few pages back.

But I realized this thread reached a sort of impasse, and now is pointless drivel.

There’s about zero chance people are going to flip their positions regardless of the reasoning thrown out by either side, there’s just too big of a divide on how rewards should be treated in this game. Metaphors get thrown out like candy, people shout out against ad homenim, throw out definitions…

I just can’t. It’s just another repeat of a discussion months ago, and we continue to talk while in reality Arenanet probably knows a heck of a lot more about how rewards should be doled out. Maybe they will make an easy mode, maybe they won’t, maybe they will never make another legendary armor set, who knows honestly.

They have the metrics, they will know where to go if Raids are either good or bad for the health of the game.

Right now, I think there’s no longer any merit to this discussion at all. Can’t believe I baited myself back into this conversation when I said I wouldn’t back then. Another pointless circular argument.

Going to actually play the game now. Good luck.

Avarice.2791:

STIHL.2489:

LOL, so, “not being complete accurate” is how you describe posts that are totally contradicting each other. Cute.

Two posts… by two different people… in different context. Valid argument. I don’t even agree with what “The one to Rule.2593” is saying. I’ve made like 100g full-clearing both wings this week and last. Non-raiders also advocate that they don’t want an easy-mode raid for the rewards, yet here we are… discussing rewards. Notice how this entire thread consists of dozens of opinions, including mine. Opinions….Opinions…Opinions… Onions… Opinions…

(I’m talking to STIHL here, just using this quote as a foundation)

See, even raiders have varying experiences. As of now, I have never ever cleared both wings. Last week I killed 5 bosses and this week I killed 4 bosses. Oh, and I pugged, so that 5 bosses kills are separated into 3 different groups/tries instead 1 single guild run. I’m sure Avarice has a completely different experience than me, and that’s why people could report different things.

As for gold. Say, even if you cleared Spirit Vale in 45 minutes, that still means 2 foods + 2 utilies which to some can costs around 2 golds. And guess what, money-wise a full Spirit Vale clear only yields 6 golds, so that means the profit is… ta-da, 4 golds for 1 single week. Imagine how many golds you earn if you run Silverwaste an hour daily for the whole week.

STIHL.2489:

Now, If you can’t turn a profit doing a Raid (or any content for that matter) then you need to revisit how good you really are at that content, and accept that perhaps that content is not really the right content for you, if you can’t turn a profit doing it.

…why?
Unless you’re saying that people who go broke playing WvW should stop playing WvW?

This thread has devolved into too much arguing about easy modes and legendary armor. I keep seeing the same posters making the same points over and over again, on both sides.

Personally, I am of the belief that all legendary equipment types should eventually be available in every part of the game. Maybe in the next expansion we could get armor sets for WvW and fractals, backpacks for open-world PvE and weapons for raids and sPvP, for example. The problem is that so far Anet has been unable to keep up with legendary production, as evidenced by the discontinuation of the 2nd set of weapons.

I don’t believe that adding an easy mode of the raid and giving legendaries for it is the proper course. Of course, they could actually add an easy mode if they want more people to access the content. However, those would need to have new skins and items for rewards, which would also be aded to hard mode of course.

I say this as a player who has never stepped in a raid. I simply don’t have the time to even attempt them right now, even though I have 2 chars with full ascended gear. I am also in a very inconvenient time zone. Maybe I will eventually be able to try a raid, but only time will tell.

As for wether raids were a mistake… I’m not really sure. They seem to be intended for a small audience, so it depends on how many developer resourses they really take. I take Anet’s 5 dev statement with a grain of salt, because they stated that that is just the core raid team. They do in fact get assistance from other teams. What we don’t know is how much assistance is given to the raid team.

The player doesn’t NEED people to carry him regardless.

He shouldn’t, and with an easy mode, he wouldn’t, but with the current raids, there are plenty of players who can’t get past them within a reasonable amount of time and effort. I remember spending three hours with you trying to get past Gorseval and we didn’t get past the second phase. That, to me, is an unreasonable return on time spent. I understand that to you, that might not seem unreasonable at all, and that’s fine, keep a hard mode for you, play it as you like, I will not get in the way of that, but for players who do see that as an unreasonable waste of their time, their alternatives should not only be “give up entirely” or “pay someone else to do the work for them,” there should also be a method by which THEY can get through it, without that amount of wasted time and effort. Again, their choice if they take that approach, just as it would be their choice to buy a raid slot, but at least they would have that choice.

And it seems that most people don’t really have an issue with easier raids, as long as it doesn’t impact other raiding content coming out. It just needs to have reduced rewards and no possibility to work towards legendary armor

Why is that a sticking point? Seriously? Both sides agree that if there were an easy mode it would have reduced rewards (even though there’s no reason it would have to, that’s a concession everyone seems fine with), and both sides agree that at the very least it would provide a slower path to legendary armor, but a lot of people seem to insist that it must provide NO path to Legendary armor. Why is this?

Most raiders seem to believe that the existing rewards are too little to justify raiding constantly, and fine, if that’s the case then bump those rewards up. Make raids worth running weekly whether you are interested in Legendary Armor or not, because otherwise they would be ghost towns after the vanguard players already have their armor.

And most, if not all raiders believe that it’s fair to have alternate methods of getting Legendary Armor, usually through PvP or WvW, but if so, why not through easy mode raids as well? We all know that their work pipeline is stressed at the moment, so even if they wanted to provide alternate methods they likely wouldn’t arrive in any reasonable timeframe, so wishing for those is basically saying “we can have that when global poverty is solved.” It’s just a way of saying “never” that sounds more conciliatory. And so what if you could earn them in WvW or PvP, how would that help PvE players that don’t want to raid? There would need to be an open world PvE alternative for earning them, and if that, then why not just put them in easy mode raids, where the mechanisms are already mostly in place? It would be easier for ANet, easier for the players, better all around.

I’ve said before, I would accept easy mode raids without any path to Legendary armor, if that was all that was on the table, but I would carry on requesting an alternate path for Legendary armor as a separate issue, and I genuinely don’t understand why the best solution is not to kill two birds with one stone.

Generally, when receiving favors, it is usually done to get something back… You mow your dad’s lawn (a favor) without him asking to lessen the impending doom of that F you received etc etc.

That wouldn’t be a favor then, it would be a self-imposed punishment.

You can service someone’s vehicle without payment. This is still a service and it is still a favor.

True, a favor can be a service and a service can be a favor, however, if you request and receive payment for something, then it can still be a service, but can no longer be a favor. It’s like if you go to a store, and you give them money, and in exchange they allow you to leave with an item valued for that amount, then it is a purchase, not a gift. For it to be a gift, it would need to involve you not having to pay anything. A favor is a gift, it cannot come with strings attached or it is not a favor.

There you go, you contradicted yourself to push your own agenda by proposing an alternative to “not raiding” is immoral… That is… Unless car mechanics are exploiters?

Again, a mechanic in the real world is not immoral, he is providing a service that people require. If, however, it were possible to build a car that NEVER needed repairs, and auto-mechanics were actively fighting to prevent that from happening, then they would be the bad guys. Service industries are fair when they provide a service that absolutely needs to be provided, not when they perpetuate a broken system so that they can benefit from it.

As for gold. Say, even if you cleared Spirit Vale in 45 minutes, that still means 2 foods + 2 utilies which to some can costs around 2 golds. And guess what, money-wise a full Spirit Vale clear only yields 6 golds, so that means the profit is… ta-da, 4 golds for 1 single week. Imagine how many golds you earn if you run Silverwaste an hour daily for the whole week.

But we all agree that Silverwaste is a badly balanced system, so trying to balance rewards against what you can earn in Silverwastes is always going to be a disaster. The solution is not to balance rewards up to Silverwaste standards, but to balance Silverwaste down at some point. I mean, sure, maybe raids could use more generic loot, but comparisons to Silverwastes are never a good argument for it.

Ohoni.6057:

But we all agree that Silverwaste is a badly balanced system

But it isn’t. Silverwastes fills an important role in maintaining the price of certain items. If SW were nerfed, don’t be surprised if you saw Linen Scrap go up to 10s overnight.

But it isn’t. Silverwastes fills an important role in maintaining the price of certain items. If SW were nerfed, don’t be surprised if you saw Linen Scrap go up to 10s overnight.

There would be other ways to resolve that though. For one, perhaps require less linen scrap than current recipes do. Cloth prices are all a little weird right now, with linen going for several times the rate of silk, and silk twice gossamer, when realistically it should be the other way around, they’ve just spiked certain recipes. Prices may be relatively stable, but they are still out of whack when they aren’t roughly in a consistent upward curve of some kind.

For another, add more linen scrap to other areas, including raid rewards. There is no area of this game that would be impossible to change without “breaking” the game, it just means that wherever you give, you have to take away somewhere else, and wherever you take, you have to add somewhere else, assuming the thing is in balance to start with.

Ohoni.6057:

Because “service” and “favor” are not synonyms.

DICTIONARY: the action of helping or doing work for someone.
“millions are involved in voluntary service”
synonyms: favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand

Ohoni.6057:

True, a favor can be a service and a service can be a favor, however, if you request and receive payment for something, then it can still be a service, but can no longer be a favor.

Please, show me where you are finding a favor can not be enacted with the grounds that the favor will be returned. This is getting ridiculous. Ever hear the phrase “return the favor.” You’re literally arguing against a dictionary at this point.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, a mechanic in the real world is not immoral, he is providing a service that people require. If, however, it were possible to build a car that NEVER needed repairs, and auto-mechanics were actively fighting to prevent that from happening, then they would be the bad guys. Service industries are fair when they provide a service that absolutely needs to be provided, not when they perpetuate a broken system so that they can benefit from it.

A system deemed “broken” by you. One that requires work you are not willing to put forth. This system is not broken. You are simply refusing to be a part of it.

Ohoni – “I will admit there were some surprised reactions when I let everyone know my tempest had 1600 toughness.”

Please, show me where you are finding a favor can not be enacted with the grounds that the favor will be returned. This is getting ridiculous. Ever hear the phrase “return the favor.” You’re literally arguing against a dictionary at this point.

This conversation reminds me of that saying “intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster, wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.” You’re so focused on reading that definition the way that you believe supports your case, that you refuse to accept the well established fact that a business transaction is not a favor by any definition. It’s the difference between knowing a word and understanding it.

A system deemed “broken” by you. One that requires work you are not willing to put forth. This system is not broken. You are simply refusing to be a part of it.

Again, if it were not broken in some way, there would not be a secondary market in circumventing it.

Ohoni.6057:

Because “service” and “favor” are not synonyms.

DICTIONARY: the action of helping or doing work for someone.
“millions are involved in voluntary service”
synonyms: favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand

Ohoni.6057:

You’re so focused on reading that definition the way that you believe supports your case, that you refuse to accept the well established fact that a business transaction is not a favor by any definition. It’s the difference between knowing a word and understanding it.

…And yet, you are still not showing me where it is literally defined a favor can not include something in return. It’s really simple. Go show me where you’re coming up with this fabrication. I’ll wait.

When did I say a business transaction equals a favor? A service does not equal a business transaction which does not equal exploitation? You’re digging yourself deeper into this war on dictionaries.

Raiders who carry players through kills are doing the players a favor due to the fact that they are essentially paying for time, not the kill. They are paying for the right to not put the work in. Raiders aren’t making a great deal off this. This isn’t highly profitable. They are sitting their 10th in order to get YOU the KILL. Now ignore everything I’m saying here and please continue to tell me why the definition of a word according to the dictionary is not correct.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, if it were not broken in some way, there would not be a secondary market in circumventing it.

What you are generally stating here is that all systems within video games where there is a potential for carrying for profit essentially means the system is broken. I just don’t understand your logic as this will literally almost apply everywhere. Simply because you do not enjoy raiding, does not imply that raiding is broken as the market for carrying is not limited to GW2. Difficulty and work do not equal broken. It simply goes against what you personally want.

Ohoni.6057:

A system deemed “broken” by you. One that requires work you are not willing to put forth. This system is not broken. You are simply refusing to be a part of it.

Again, if it were not broken in some way, there would not be a secondary market in circumventing it.

It doesn’t have to be broken for a market to exist…

Some times after GW2 launch I bought a couple of Arah run because I want a particular skin for my character and I’m not in the mood to do all of Arah paths. Does that mean Arah is broken? No, that just means there’s something I want (a demand) and there are some other people who can supply what I want.

Avarice.2791:

Ohoni.6057:

Because “service” and “favor” are not synonyms.

the action of helping or doing work for someone.
“millions are involved in voluntary service”
synonyms: favor, kindness, good turn, helping hand

Quote of the day!

I can’t even. I don’t care how you define “service” or “favor.” No, really, I don’t. I’ll listen to the good old book called the dictionary. Generally, when receiving favors, it is usually done to get something back… You mow your dad’s lawn (a favor) without him asking to lessen the impending doom of that F you received etc etc. You can mow it for no reason as well. A favor is not limited by this. It is pointless arguing this. You can service someone’s vehicle without payment. This is still a service and it is still a favor. I was simply trying to stop you where you were going off about how people who sell runs are exploiting. If you want to continue this favor/service thing…I suggest you find a source claiming that favors can not include rewards and services must include them.

Ohoni.6057:

People who offer to sell raid slots aren’t doing favors, they are exploiting people’s weakness, while fighting to maintain the system in which that exploitation has a place. There is NO justifying it from a moral standpoint.

Ohoni.6057:

If you ask a mechanic to fix your car and he does so for free, then that’s a favor. If he asks for money, then he’s providing a service, not a favor.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not saying that providing services is automatically a bad thing, but it is not a favor.

There you go, you contradicted yourself to push your own agenda by proposing an alternative to “not raiding” is immoral… That is… Unless car mechanics are exploiters?

STIHL.2489:

LOL, so, “not being complete accurate” is how you describe posts that are totally contradicting each other. Cute.

Two posts… by two different people… in different context. Valid argument. I don’t even agree with what “The one to Rule.2593” is saying. I’ve made like 100g full-clearing both wings this week and last. Non-raiders also advocate that they don’t want an easy-mode raid for the rewards, yet here we are… discussing rewards. Notice how this entire thread consists of dozens of opinions, including mine. Opinions….Opinions…Opinions… Onions… Opinions…

Yes its exploiting since they are activily combating a way for the guy to do it him self in a easier mode.

I have now question that you will still have people that have more money/gold then time and will still pay to get the hard modes done since they want their reward faster.

Please link were non raiders said it wasent for the rewards, all I seen are we want easier but take longer time to get same reward as the hard raiders.

A dev stated that we will get viper jewelery in ls3 when ever that hits so all thats left is the legendary armor pre, Keep the unique skins as hard mode raid reward give the functionality in easy mode or some other content if they can manage that.

Edit
They already started on creating or said so blank weapon legendaries so you could have two of the same, even tho there already were 1 of each first gen legendary.

So maybe that tech can be turned over on armor aswell

Avarice.2791:

STIHL.2489:

The people playing WvW do so for the fun, notice they are not whining like purulent children that they need Legendary Armor locked behind their Content Mode to satisfy their feelings of adequacy. So, lets leave them out of this discussion. Thanks.

This is definately not an attack good sir but let’s go over what you’re saying here. I wouldn’t say “whining” but there has been a massive uproar in WvW resulting in major near-fixes with the eventual replacement of Alpine BGs.

Second, no one here is saying legendary armor needs to be limited TO raiding. I think a healthy alternative would be the addition of multiple sets of legendary armor specific to certain game-modes, but we see how the legendary developer team is doing. There needs to be some sort of high-class exclusive reward in what Anet states is the most difficult PvE content in this game. This is not going to change amigo. I think the best route is to eventually make Legendary Armor obtainable through multiple routes of gameplay.

You mean like the tri wurm the privously hardest content due to high coordination.

It drop mini and dif skinned ascended armor all that you already got right?

When did I say a business transaction equals a favor? A service does not equal a business transaction which does not equal exploitation? You’re digging yourself deeper into this war on dictionaries.

If you’d like to argue semantics, I said from the first that a service can be a favor and a favor a service, look it up. What I disagreed with is that selling a raid run could be a favor, because if you request payment for something then it is a transaction, not a favor. A favor is something freely given.

Raiders who carry players through kills are doing the players a favor due to the fact that they are essentially paying for time, not the kill.

there have been any number of illegal enterprises that tried to function on the basis of “they weren’t paying for [illegal act], they were just paying for [legal thing that they would not get the illegal act unless they paid for it].” These schemes rarely work at absolving them of the criminal act itself. If people are paying to take part in a raid, then they are paying to succeed at the raid, and the person being paid is being paid for the person to succeed at the raid, and there’s no arguing circles around that.

What you are generally stating here is that all systems within video games where there is a potential for carrying for profit essentially means the system is broken.

Yes. Players should never be in a position to profit off of other players. Even in the case of markets, the way markets should function is that if one player makes a profit off of one transaction, then he should be losing money off of other transactions (ie buying things), or at the very least losing out on opportunities by converting his time into currency. Players should not be capable of turning gold into more gold via transactions.

Some times after GW2 launch I bought a couple of Arah run because I want a particular skin for my character and I’m not in the mood to do all of Arah paths. Does that mean Arah is broken? No, that just means there’s something I want (a demand) and there are some other people who can supply what I want.

In a game, there should not be cases where you would rather pay another player to carry you rather than doing it yourself. The content should be achievable enough that you could do it yourself, and fun enough that you’d want to. In cases where you might not enjoy a specific type of content, there should be alternate content from which you could earn the same rewards, so as long as you enjoy any part of the game, you could progress towards any rewards you wanted.

Ohoni.6057:

There would be other ways to resolve that though.

That doesn’t mean that SW isn’t doing the job of keeping down the prices of salvaged materials across the board. To say otherwise is lying or ignorance.

Ohoni.6057:

For another, add more linen scrap to other areas, including raid rewards.

Except they did exactly that. You can get Linen as map rewards in the middle range maps. You can get it from all PvP tracks in the same way you get it from Silverwastes. You can still get salvage drops from mid-level areas and get it from that.

Oh and you can still buy it with gold if you’d like. Just like you can buy raid runs. This is all so far divorced from the original post that it’s incredibly difficult to argue that these diversions about hard modes and now silverwastes rewards are on topic, when rewards are rarely in scope when it comes to whether raids are a good idea.

Raids are fine, they were a great idea.

People, they know who they are, seemingly are the problem.

Ohoni.6057:

Some times after GW2 launch I bought a couple of Arah run because I want a particular skin for my character and I’m not in the mood to do all of Arah paths. Does that mean Arah is broken? No, that just means there’s something I want (a demand) and there are some other people who can supply what I want.

In a game, there should not be cases where you would rather pay another player to carry you rather than doing it yourself. The content should be achievable enough that you could do it yourself, and fun enough that you’d want to. In cases where you might not enjoy a specific type of content, there should be alternate content from which you could earn the same rewards, so as long as you enjoy any part of the game, you could progress towards any rewards you wanted.

…so you’re saying that arah is broken then?
Anyway, I think it’s best to just agree to disagree. I believe that Anet knows what’s best.
(btw, I guess you’re also opposed to mesmer selling portal for JP?)

Also, Ohoni, please, please stop stating your opinion as if it’s a universal truth.
“In a game, there should not be cases…”. It’s an opinion, not some universal game design rules that every game designer have to follow to make a good game.

That doesn’t mean that SW isn’t doing the job of keeping down the prices of salvaged materials across the board. To say otherwise is lying or ignorance.

Yes, but I never claimed otherwise, I claimed that it was a poorly balanced reward mechanism, which it is. A piece of content can succeed at doing one thing but fail in other, more serious ways. The fact that it keeps coming up as an object lesson in lazy gameplay offering great rewards is a major sign of its overall failure. If the goal is to “keeping down the prices of salvaged materials,” they can achieve that in all sorts of ways with lower negative side effects.

Except they did exactly that. You can get Linen as map rewards in the middle range maps. You can get it from all PvP tracks in the same way you get it from Silverwastes. You can still get salvage drops from mid-level areas and get it from that.

You can, but apparently not enough of it to knock Silverwaste farming off as the ideal effort/reward mechanism. If enough linen dropped off of those sources, then they could obliterate Silverwaste farming and not impact those markets at all (beyond some short term corrections).

Oh and you can still buy it with gold if you’d like. Just like you can buy raid runs. This is all so far divorced from the original post that it’s incredibly difficult to argue that these diversions about hard modes and now silverwastes rewards are on topic, when rewards are rarely in scope when it comes to whether raids are a good idea.

Hey, I just follow where the conversation leads, I don’t take us to places like this.

Sigh all right, let’s just agree to disagree then. I believe that Anet knows what’s best.
(btw, I guess you’re also opposed to mesmer selling portal for JP?)

I am. Again, it’s not that I think the Mesmers doing this are awful people (although personally when I offer a portal, I do it without conditions), but the system should not encourage it or allow it. Mesmer portals play a role because a lot of JPs are designed in such a way that if you screw up, it can set you WAY back, and I believe that is a discouraging form of design. A good JP has short bursts of difficult jumps, both in twitch skill and intuition, but then some form of built in "safetynet, " so that if you screw up a jump, then it sets you back, but only by one series of jumps, not by the last dozen series of jumps. It’s only when a JP fails at this that a Mesmer becomes a necessary replacement for good design.

I’ve said before, I think that it would be a good idea for them to add more safety nets to existing JPs, but in exchange make it so that you cannot portal through them, such as by requiring you to carry a bundle from start to finish, which you drop if you portal.

I really feel like interjecting in this thread and bring an argument that no one has brought up before (afaic): it will never be about what we want but rather about what the game can offer. What the game can offer, imo, is based on what Anet envision GW2 to be and some pretty general not individual feedback of players. Here there is no general backslash of people requiring leg. armor to be obtainable in another way, there is rather 5 people complaining that they can’t and don’t want to raid and five other people legendary gating is fine so far. Add me to the latter. Don’t get me wrong I don’t plan on raiding personally but let’s see what happens in game now. I see easy content that literally everybody can achieve without real effort to obtain the best stats in game and hard content that require a bit more dedication in the form of coordination with teammates and learning the mechanics of bosses. And that is perfectly fine and healthy for the game, that is called balance and the silver lining of said balance is the fact that powerful classes with powerful mechanics and action oriented combat system need, require and even deserve great encounters and challenging content at some point. I am sorry but that never happened in core tyria before except for living world events that were temporary content maybe. What I mainly saw before was players stacking in a corner with an ele summoning an icebow in dungeons and people mainly auto-attacking a world boss from a safe spot (though Anet made sure to suppress such spots and tone downed the damages of icebow of course). The thing is the direction Anet is taking with raids is great and can only lead to success imo. What is sad though is that we need to wait a while for the release of LS3. What bothers me more is the comments of players that are against raids: I just find their logic (rather sophism) very deceiving and the feeling I get when reading them is that they use raids as a scapegoat for the cancelling of future legendary weapons (for now) and the delayed release of LS3. Of course I am not claiming that what I resent is true, just an opinion on this particular matter of raids.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, but I never claimed otherwise, I claimed that it was a poorly balanced reward mechanism, which it is.

but it isn’t, it’s a perfectly balanced reward mechanism- at least, it should be in your eyes

it’s a casual way to get money on a timescale. you should love that, you love getting things on a timescale.

seriously it’s not imbalanced, it’s just really strong. more zones should be built like Silverwastes.

Ohoni.6057:

A piece of content can succeed at doing one thing but fail in other, more serious ways. The fact that it keeps coming up as an object lesson in lazy gameplay offering great rewards is a major sign of its overall failure.

the only component of silverwastes which suggests that is ‘you can taxi in and still get full rewards on breach/vinewrath’, which they went out of their way to address in the new HoT zones; they just need to reimplement it for SW/DT

Ohoni.6057:

If the goal is to “keeping down the prices of salvaged materials,” they can achieve that in all sorts of ways with lower negative side effects.

what are the ‘negative side effects’ of letting you pick what tier you salvage from

that’s pretty much the only strength silverwastes has over other zones

Ohoni.6057:

You can, but apparently not enough of it to knock Silverwaste farming off as the ideal effort/reward mechanism. If enough linen dropped off of those sources, then they could obliterate Silverwaste farming and not impact those markets at all (beyond some short term corrections).

…why do you want to obliterate silverwaste farming

you whinge at raiders for not going down to the standard that you want the game to be at but now you’re here telling people that you want to obliterate silverwaste farming which is actually fun, because you think it’s ‘lazy gameplay’

so what exactly is it that stops a raider from telling you that you’re lazy because you don’t buck up and get the gear and do the research which will actually allow you to push into current raids

flog.3485:

I really feel like interjecting in this thread and bring an argument that no one has brought up before (afaic): it will never be about what we want but rather about what the game can offer. What the game can offer, imo, is based on what Anet envision GW2 to be and some pretty general not individual feedback of players. Here there is no general backslash of people requiring leg. armor to be obtainable in another way, there is rather 5 people complaining that they can’t and don’t want to raid and five other people legendary gating is fine so far. Add me to the latter. Don’t get me wrong I don’t plan on raiding personally but let’s see what happens in game now. I see easy content that literally everybody can achieve without real effort to obtain the best stats in game and hard content that require a bit more dedication in the form of coordination with teammates and learning the mechanics of bosses. And that is perfectly fine and healthy for the game, that is called balance and the silver lining of said balance is the fact that powerful classes with powerful mechanics and action oriented combat system need, require and even deserve great encounters and challenging content at some point. I am sorry but that never happened in core tyria before except for living world events that were temporary content maybe. What I mainly saw before was players stacking in a corner with an ele summoning an icebow in dungeons and people mainly auto-attacking a world boss from a safe spot (though Anet made sure to suppress such spots and tone downed the damages of icebow of course). The thing is the direction Anet is taking with raids is great and can only lead to success imo. What is sad though is that we need to wait a while for the release of LS3. What bothers me more is the comments of players that are against raids: I just find their logic (rather sophism) very deceiving and the feeling I get when reading them is that they use raids as a scapegoat for the cancelling of future legendary weapons (for now) and the delayed release of LS3. Of course I am not claiming that what I resent is true, just an opinion on this particular matter of raids.

I agree when you say that dungeon running was and is superboring in GW2. Stacking and spamming your skills has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with skill or fun in general.

In my opinion, we are talking about four things here:
a) the Question of Anet is incompetent or malicious, coming straight out of the legendary weapons thread.
b) If runs should be sellable.
c) If the introduction of raids and the carrot associated with was wrong.
d) Sustainability

a) The last time I thought that Anet was competent was when they had ls1 running. Elitists hated it, so I came to love it in addition to loving it for the idea of a living, vibrant world. Sadly it came into conflict with topic D, sustainability. From then on, it went down quickly and reached its all time low with the introduction of a raid and Shatterer as the only thing coming out for months. I don´t think Anet is bad by choice, they are bad because they either now lack the money by catering to the wrong group of people to back up their talk or just are not good organized.
b) Yes, they should be. In the case that I want to have a thing but can´t be bothered to do it, I am glad that there are people who drag my sorry behind through stuff.
c) Yes. They have some points speaking for them, but I think the bad outweights the good here.
d) This is the major problem plaguing Anet lately in my opinion. Content they brought out is either selective(raids), plain bad(PvP balance), to short(HoT) and/or fails to offer long term goals(ls2).

but it isn’t, it’s a perfectly balanced reward mechanism- at least, it should be in your eyes

it’s a casual way to get money on a timescale. you should love that, you love getting things on a timescale.

seriously it’s not imbalanced, it’s just really strong. more zones should be built like Silverwastes.

It would be in balance if there were maybe 1/4 as many chests or less. If you could Silverwaste farm, and get all those rewards, but you’d be getting 1/4 or less per hour for doing so. Right now it gives far too much per hour, given the low level of player engagement.

I got into this discussion months ago, but basically people too often conflate “challenge” with “engagement.” You don’t need to be challenged to be engaged by content, and I seek engagement, but not so much challenge. That’s why I want an easy mode that has all the same mechanics, just with reduced penalty, because I don’t want to fail, but I want to have all the same opportunities to succeed as in hard mode. I like gameplay that gives players things they CAN do, but that doesn’t implode if they don’t do everything just right. Let players choose for themselves how much or how little they want to engage themselves into that content.

But yeah, they could balance all other content rewards to the level of Silverwastes, but if they did that, that would cause some serious economic upheavals. I think it would be better to balance a few areas up a bit more, and Silverwaste and perhaps a few other areas down a bit.

the only component of silverwastes which suggests that is ‘you can taxi in and still get full rewards on breach/vinewrath’, which they went out of their way to address in the new HoT zones; they just need to reimplement it for SW/DT

I did a whole thing on Silverwaste in a general sense, but basically the chest farming is the issue, and that has nothing to do with the events. The actual map meta itself is fine, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that really (could be better, but it’s not broken). It’s the fact that you can just run around in circles opening chests that give out very solid loot that is the problem.

you whinge at raiders for not going down to the standard that you want the game to be at but now you’re here telling people that you want to obliterate silverwaste farming which is actually fun, because you think it’s ‘lazy gameplay’

For the same reason I do want raids to be accessible at the game standard level, because I want everything to be in balance around a median difficulty, with more difficulty stuff offering more rewards, but less difficult stuff offering less rewards, If people find Silverwaste farming to be fun, they can do it, but it should have rewards comparable to the engagement, roughly equivalent to farming trash mobs in starter maps. It should not be offering champ bags and other fancy loot.

Well my raid group beat SV in 30 minutes last night… It now takes us less time to finish a raid then it used to take me to clear AC 1-3. If the people in this thread had spent half as much time practicing the raid as they did typing their long winded responses they could have easily cleared it multiple times by now.

The problem here is clearly the people, not the raid.

@ZudetGambeous that is pretty much right. Like I said we have powerful classes, therefore it will become very easy with time to clear the instances that the developers have created, just as it became easy to kill tequatl whereas players struggled to kill it at the beginning of its rework.

Ohoni.6057:

It would be in balance if there were maybe 1/4 as many chests or less. If you could Silverwaste farm, and get all those rewards, but you’d be getting 1/4 or less per hour for doing so. Right now it gives far too much per hour, given the low level of player engagement.

I got into this discussion months ago, but basically people too often conflate “challenge” with “engagement.” You don’t need to be challenged to be engaged by content, and I seek engagement, but not so much challenge.

if you want to address the silverwaste farm the better way to do it would be to target the loot table itself, but the only item which actually holds any value on that loot table is the champ bag (a value which is self-nerfing as all items within the champ bag lose value as more are opened and their contents are added to the market). lost bandit chests are balanced against key and shovel availability; while you’re pushing the hours up, you’re keeping the value of the keys and shovels where they are

silverwastes in any form versus raids just does not make sense as a comparison because the liquid gold is the only thing that actually matters. fair currency reward examinations should be made between dungeons and raids, or any other kind of content which is principally ran for the sake of raw gold return

Ohoni.6057:

That’s why I want an easy mode that has all the same mechanics, just with reduced penalty, because I don’t want to fail, but I want to have all the same opportunities to succeed as in hard mode. I like gameplay that gives players things they CAN do, but that doesn’t implode if they don’t do everything just right. Let players choose for themselves how much or how little they want to engage themselves into that content.

but you’re so careful about the side effects of the silverwastes choo choo train, why are you not concerned about the side effects of an easy mode raid? i’ve seen no thesis which carries reasonable expectations of sustainability between multiple modes of raid, especially not those which you prefer which provide identical rewards on longer timescales

Ohoni.6057:

But yeah, they could balance all other content rewards to the level of Silverwastes, but if they did that, that would cause some serious economic upheavals. I think it would be better to balance a few areas up a bit more, and Silverwaste and perhaps a few other areas down a bit.

nah just give zones gear bags

Ohoni.6057:

For the same reason I do want raids to be accessible at the game standard level, because I want everything to be in balance around a median difficulty, with more difficulty stuff offering more rewards, but less difficult stuff offering less rewards, If people find Silverwaste farming to be fun, they can do it, but it should have rewards comparable to the engagement, roughly equivalent to farming trash mobs in starter maps. It should not be offering champ bags and other fancy loot.

you see the balance that’s been created here though, right?

if you want stuff below median difficulty, you can do the chest farm train – and again, ‘run around a zone collecting loot’ is an oversimplification.
if you want stuff above median difficulty, go raid.
if you want stuff of median difficulty, there’s an entire game just sitting there for you, waiting for you to plunder it. open world content, dungeons, casual/core fractals, personal story.

there are massive problems with it as it stands, but knocking down raids will just change the problem from “no content that isn’t 2 hard for me” to “no content”. easy mode raids aren’t the answer to systemic problems which resulted in the 8m/8m content droughts surrounding hot

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well my raid group beat SV in 30 minutes last night… It now takes us less time to finish a raid then it used to take me to clear AC 1-3. If the people in this thread had spent half as much time practicing the raid as they did typing their long winded responses they could have easily cleared it multiple times by now.

The problem here is clearly the people, not the raid.

I honestly don´t know how you failed to understand multiple times(I read this before from you) that this raid could be the best invention since sliced bread and perfectly executed and still would not answer the question if it is good or bad to have one in GW2.

You neither take needed time to reach your state, commitment to reach your state, willingness to reach your state or anything else thast surrounds the raid as arguments. It is one of these gid good answers I personaly massively despise despite seeing how your usual responses are usually pretty readable.

How about if I am just unwilling to reach your raid status and lobby here to marginalize raids because I dislike them in my favorite game? If enough people think and say like me and stay out of raids, Anet will listen to our demands. You know that as good as I do as it has already happend before with the introduction of raids.

Torolan.5816:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well my raid group beat SV in 30 minutes last night… It now takes us less time to finish a raid then it used to take me to clear AC 1-3. If the people in this thread had spent half as much time practicing the raid as they did typing their long winded responses they could have easily cleared it multiple times by now.

The problem here is clearly the people, not the raid.

I honestly don´t know how you failed to understand multiple times(I read this before from you) that this raid could be the best invention since sliced bread and perfectly executed and still would not answer the question if it is good or bad to have one in GW2.

You neither take needed time to reach your state, commitment to reach your state, willingness to reach your state or anything else thast surrounds the raid as arguments. It is one of these gid good answers I personaly massively despise despite seeing how your usual responses are usually pretty readable.

How about if I am just unwilling to reach your raid status and lobby here to marginalize raids because I dislike them in my favorite game? If enough people think and say like me and stay out of raids, Anet will listen to our demands. You know that as good as I do as it has already happend before with the introduction of raids.

Minority of people read the forum, and among this thread you’re the minority. Same 4 or 5 people arguing over and over to have easy way to have raids rewards, because they think Raids are too hard.
So, no need to dévote dev time for this, since for other having exclusive rewards in raid is fine ( OK, except viper trinkets).

/Thread.

Well my raid group beat SV in 30 minutes last night… It now takes us less time to finish a raid then it used to take me to clear AC 1-3. If the people in this thread had spent half as much time practicing the raid as they did typing their long winded responses they could have easily cleared it multiple times by now.

And if people would take “that’s not what we want” as an answer, this thread would have been like two pages long.

The problem here is clearly the people, not the raid.

If so, it would be both.

if you want to address the silverwaste farm the better way to do it would be to target the loot table itself, but the only item which actually holds any value on that loot table is the champ bag (a value which is self-nerfing as all items within the champ bag lose value as more are opened and their contents are added to the market).

If this were true then Silverawastes would not be a worthwhile use of time. The fact that it is a profitable way to play indicates a flaw in your calculations.

lost bandit chests are balanced against key and shovel availability; while you’re pushing the hours up, you’re keeping the value of the keys and shovels where they are

The value of keys and shovels is negligible, especially when you run in packs that can share in shovels. Perhaps if each player needed his own shovel to open a chest, rather than one shovel opening it for everyone around, they would be a more scarce resource.

silverwastes in any form versus raids just does not make sense as a comparison because the liquid gold is the only thing that actually matters. fair currency reward examinations should be made between dungeons and raids, or any other kind of content which is principally ran for the sake of raw gold return

I don’t think liquid gold should ever be treated as a special reward. It’s more convenient than other rewards, but in practical terms there are only two types of rewards, account-bound rewards and gold-fungible rewards of varying degrees of inconvenience. There is no player-centric difference between 5g in raw currency and a drop that can be reliably sold for 5g on the market. Gold is certainly easier to message of being of a given value, but perhaps they could put more effort into cluing players in that a given item can be sold for 10g on the TP.

but you’re so careful about the side effects of the silverwastes choo choo train, why are you not concerned about the side effects of an easy mode raid?

I am concerned about it, I just don’t see any reason to be concerned.

i’ve seen no thesis which carries reasonable expectations of sustainability between multiple modes of raid, especially not those which you prefer which provide identical rewards on longer timescales

And I’ve seen no thesis on it being any less sustainable. If anything, it should be more sustainable because it would engage a larger portion of the player base. Each version would need to be rewarding enough to justify its existence, but if a player can effortlessly clear hard VG in a half hour, or easy VG in ten minutes, but hard VG gives significantly higher reward, then why wouldn’t people run that?

if you want stuff below median difficulty, you can do the chest farm train – and again, ‘run around a zone collecting loot’ is an oversimplification.

I think there’s a balance well between median difficulty and ‘run around a zone collecting loot.’ I don’t think ‘run around a zone collecting loot’ really should be a viable method in this game, as it falls so well below the median, and if people want to do that, then they should not see significant reward-per-hour for doing so.

if you want stuff above median difficulty, go raid.
if you want stuff of median difficulty, there’s an entire game just sitting there for you, waiting for you to plunder it. open world content, dungeons, casual/core fractals, personal story.

There is, but what I’m asking for here is raid content and unique rewards to be available at that median difficulty as well. It is not difficult to understand, you just disagree that I should have what I’m asking for.

there are massive problems with it as it stands, but knocking down raids will just change the problem from “no content that isn’t 2 hard for me” to “no content”. easy mode raids aren’t the answer to systemic problems which resulted in the 8m/8m content droughts surrounding hot

No, but neither are solutions to the systemic problems surrounding HoT a solution to the problem of a lack of easy mode raids. The two have nothing to do with each other. They should solve both.

Minority of people read the forum, and among this thread you’re the minority.

Both true statements, but you seem to extrapolate from it that Torolan’s position represents only a very small portion of people, a minority of a minority. Obviously that is not a reasonable assumption, given the nature of MMO forums, and a raid-focused board at that.

Same 4 or 5 people arguing over and over to have easy way to have raids rewards, because they think Raids are too hard.

And also the same 4 or 5 people arguing over and over that raids are just fine and don’t need an easy mode because they can do it. What’s your point?

Ohoni.6057:

If this were true then Silverawastes would not be a worthwhile use of time. The fact that it is a profitable way to play indicates a flaw in your calculations.

what, that the champ bags are the only valuable item in the boxes? i suppose you’re right, you can get a single piece of cloth in the boxes as well, sometimes you get lucky and roll linen

that the champ bags are self nerfing? that’s self-evident, compare prices of bonetti’s pre and post sw

the idea of ‘profitable way to play’ is really really weird in an environment where you have no actual costs other than secondary currencies. outside of wvw, there’s practically no content that is really unprofitable

Ohoni.6057:

The value of keys and shovels is negligible, especially when you run in packs that can share in shovels. Perhaps if each player needed his own shovel to open a chest, rather than one shovel opening it for everyone around, they would be a more scarce resource.

no they aren’t negligible

you can pretty obviously only hit one chest with one key, and the keys are nowhere near self-replenishing without doing events

shovels are completely unobtainable without doing the events, yeah you can share them but sharing is a good thing

if you want to do chest farming in any capacity you actually have to do silverwastes runs

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t think liquid gold should ever be treated as a special reward. It’s more convenient than other rewards, but in practical terms there are only two types of rewards, account-bound rewards and gold-fungible rewards of varying degrees of inconvenience. There is no player-centric difference between 5g in raw currency and a drop that can be reliably sold for 5g on the market. Gold is certainly easier to message of being of a given value, but perhaps they could put more effort into cluing players in that a given item can be sold for 10g on the TP.

uh, what
liquid basic currency is a massively important part of any virtual economy
it should be the most special of special rewards from a design perspective, if it’s mismanaged or given out too readily it kills game economies and in some cases even games

a ui feature which puts the current tp buy or sell order price into the tooltip of an item would actually be super helpful

but you’re so careful about the side effects of the silverwastes choo choo train, why are you not concerned about the side effects of an easy mode raid?

Ohoni.6057:

I am concerned about it, I just don’t see any reason to be concerned.

spock sez you are illogical

but nah like i’ve said already of course you don’t, you haven’t seen the effects of the suggestions in action

Ohoni.6057:

And I’ve seen no thesis on it being any less sustainable.

it’s pretty basic
if the ratio of reward:emeffort:hmeffort is too high in one mode’s favor, the other mode will be ignored
if a mode is ignored, work is wasted
finding the balance is extremely difficult and i don’t know if there even is a sweet spot
and then you need to consider the reward that the player can get from any other content in the game; if people can do silverwastes (lazy example but it fits) and get way way more money than they can get from ezmode, completionists will only do the content for skins and non-completionists may never do it at all, beyond once.

see dungeon uptake rate for present examples

Ohoni.6057:

If anything, it should be more sustainable because it would engage a larger portion of the player base.

this is an argument for easy raids, not multimodal raids

Ohoni.6057:

Each version would need to be rewarding enough to justify its existence, but if a player can effortlessly clear hard VG in a half hour, or easy VG in ten minutes, but hard VG gives significantly higher reward, then why wouldn’t people run that?

firstly vg is like
10 minutes v 13 minutes
time only increases meaningfully on late phase wipes, and if a raid team can’t do VG without wiping, it’s not effortless
secondly because why not run both? raiding the same content on two different difficulties is boring af and drains the excitement from the hard mode
thirdly because you’re approaching the problem from a bad point of view; the target is not “i can comfortably do this raid” it’s “can i comfortably convince 9 other people to do this raid with me”. again, i’d love to do dungeons, but i’m a loner with no friends to do them with me i don’t even have dungeonmaster

Ohoni.6057:

I think there’s a balance well between median difficulty and ‘run around a zone collecting loot.’ I don’t think ‘run around a zone collecting loot’ really should be a viable method in this game, as it falls so well below the median, and if people want to do that, then they should not see significant reward-per-hour for doing so.

sure, it’s a spectrum
but it’s still there
and like i’ve said you’re missing the cost:benefit ratio of the silverwastes farm, it isn’t infinite as the suggestion ‘run around and loot’ implies

Ohoni.6057:

There is, but what I’m asking for here is raid content and unique rewards to be available at that median difficulty as well. It is not difficult to understand, you just disagree that I should have what I’m asking for.

you should have nothing
i am here to ruin your fun

but there are things i’m pretty happy to say that should be available at the ‘median’. you should be able to get viper’s trinkets. maybe you should be able to get a set of legendary armor (and don’t trot out ‘anet are incompetent and won’t make more legendaries!’ that’s a boring nothing answer)

like, to be completely clear
it’s just the skins that should be locked to the difficult mode
and it’s just skins

what would you think of the following:
ez mode sv
loots from each boss:
50s
2-4 rares/exotics
10% chance at generic ascended weapon or chest

Ohoni.6057:

No, but neither are solutions to the systemic problems surrounding HoT a solution to the problem of a lack of easy mode raids. The two have nothing to do with each other. They should solve both.

“lack of easy mode raids”
i don’t think there’s a lack of easy mode raids because they’re a continuation of other small-group content
there is a lack of small-group content which is easier than raids
i would really like dungeons to step up and do their job

but y’know, we’ve said all of this already

what, that the champ bags are the only valuable item in the boxes? i suppose you’re right, you can get a single piece of cloth in the boxes as well, sometimes you get lucky and roll linen

that the champ bags are self nerfing? that’s self-evident, compare prices of bonetti’s pre and post sw

Whatever checks and balances are “built into” Silverwaste farming may have been enough to reduce the potential of the map, but the level it balanced out to regardless of those mechanisms is still well above where it should be, otherwise people would not use it as a punchline. I don’t know why you seem to think this is a reasonable thing to argue.

you can pretty obviously only hit one chest with one key, and the keys are nowhere near self-replenishing without doing events

You do get some badges through opening chests, and the key to badges ratio is VERY favorable. You might need to run some events, but even just barely tagging into a few events here and there will get you plenty of badges. Worse case scenario you might have to spend a half hour vaguely paying attention to mobs for every few hours of digging.

liquid basic currency is a massively important part of any virtual economy
it should be the most special of special rewards from a design perspective, if it’s mismanaged or given out too readily it kills game economies and in some cases even games

I did say “from a player-centric perspective.” Obviously the economists need to keep an eye on how much total gold enters and leaves the economy, by point is that from a rewards design perspective, in terms of “what the player is owed for doing this,” gold is not better than fungible assets. The content designer should decide “this content should be worth 4g to the player who completes it,” and then the economist would decide how much of that ends up in liquid gold and how much has to come in a stable asset worth the remainder, but on the player level, the “is this worth doing?” level, 4g of gold or 4g in materials, same difference.

if the ratio of reward:emeffort:hmeffort is too high in one mode’s favor, the other mode will be ignored

That’s why you skew that ratio strongly in hard mode’s favor. Players who can do hard mode SHOULD largely ignore easy mode. But not everyone CAN reasonably do hard mode, however much you guys insist that they can, so there will always be a population that will never do hard mode and only do easy mode, and they will keep running it. It’s like how with Fractals you have people running at least Fractal 50, but you also still have no trouble finding Fractal ~10 groups. If you were right, there would only be one level of Fractal range that ever gets run.

and then you need to consider the reward that the player can get from any other content in the game; if people can do silverwastes (lazy example but it fits) and get way way more money than they can get from ezmode, completionists will only do the content for skins and non-completionists may never do it at all, beyond once.

How is that any different than the current state of Hard Mode raids, once people already get the Legendary Armor bits? I mean, keep in mind that even if easy mode offers those legendary bits, it would take longer to earn them, anything unique to raids would take longer to earn in easy mode, so if we’re going to argue that having easy mode would kill raiding because it could never be as profitable as other farms, then the same is true of hard mode as well, only faster.

this is an argument for easy raids, not multimodal raids

It’s both. Easy mode raids would engage a broader range of players, those currently alienated by the existing raids, so it increases the audience. But hard mode raids would still appeal to those player they were designed for, the ones that enjoy a high challenge level and currently want raids left as they are. If they were JUST nerfed into ONLY easy mode, yes, the overall audience for them would be larger and healthier for the game than just hard mode, but it would bore the players currently running hard mode, and I don’t see the point of that when the content already exists.

10 minutes v 13 minutes
time only increases meaningfully on late phase wipes, and if a raid team can’t do VG without wiping, it’s not effortless

I was basing it on Zudet’s claim of 30 minutes, but sure, if you can regularly beat hard mode in 13 minutes, why not do that and get way more reward per time than easy mode?

secondly because why not run both? raiding the same content on two different difficulties is boring af and drains the excitement from the hard mode

Sure, why not do both? it gives raiders something to do in the downtime after they’ve already gotten their weekly kills. And remember, these wouldn’t kick in until well after each wing’s launch window, so a serious raid group would never have access to easy mode until after they’d beaten hard mode.

thirdly because you’re approaching the problem from a bad point of view; the target is not “i can comfortably do this raid” it’s “can i comfortably convince 9 other people to do this raid with me”. again, i’d love to do dungeons, but i’m a loner with no friends to do them with me i don’t even have dungeonmaster

I think if you can find nine other people to do hard mode now, you can find that many to do it after easy mode, because it would be those exact same people. The audience for easy mode are the ones who aren’t currently raiding. If you can raid now, you’d have every reason to want to continue hard mode raiding.

but there are things i’m pretty happy to say that should be available at the ‘median’. you should be able to get viper’s trinkets. maybe you should be able to get a set of legendary armor (and don’t trot out ‘anet are incompetent and won’t make more legendaries!’ that’s a boring nothing answer)

But it’s still a more HONEST answer than "I think you should have Legendary Armor, but definitely not the same ones that they still haven’t even finished yet, a set after that, probably years down the line, but then I’d be fine if you had those.

what would you think of the following:
ez mode sv
loots from each boss:
50s
2-4 rares/exotics
10% chance at generic ascended weapon or chest

I’d run it, I don’t even need that much generic loot, but I’d still want a PvE path to getting Legendary armor that BEGINS no later than a few months after the current Legendary set is released, and that can be earned within nine months of that. Ideally less. None of this “well, in some indeterminate future there can maybe be some way of getting it through WvW” nonsense.

“lack of easy mode raids”
i don’t think there’s a lack of easy mode raids because they’re a continuation of other small-group content

And it’s fine that you believe that, for you, just accept that I don’t believe that, for me. If you’re satisfied that the existing content fills that niche for you, that’s great, but it means absolutely nothing about whether it fills that niche for me. The niche I need filled is the “easy mode raid” niche, and no amount of other content, no matter how appreciated, would remove that particular gap.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s why you skew that ratio strongly in hard mode’s favor.

Ohoni.6057:

The niche I need filled is the “easy mode raid” niche, and no amount of other content, no matter how appreciated, would remove that particular gap.

Here’s the problem.

What’s a reasonably strong skew?
You posted earlier that 25s with 10% the solid rewards (which becomes reasonably negligible) was a reasonable liquid money reward for scrubcore; is x8/x16 a reasonable skew as it would be under that model? I figure it would be, otherwise you would have not made this estimate.

The basis for a reasonable amount of gold to grant for the amount of time invested (10/15 minutes is a reasonable expectation for each boss in a comfortably easy mode) is probably around the amount that a CoF1 run granted; 1g26, iirc, not including the liquid rewards. Probably prune that down to 1g; CoF1 was overly rewarding and it makes the math easier. If you go below that mark, at some point, everyone will already have the secondary rewards like legendary progression and bonus skins, and they’ll not bother. It’s not a sustainable model.

Should individual boss kills therefore be granting 1g in liquid rewards in easy mode?
Should individual boss kills therefore be granting 8g in liquid rewards in hard mode?
Should individual boss kills therefore be granting 16g in liquid rewards in hard mode CE?

What sort of impact would giving a specific set of players 72g a week have on the economy? It’s pretty clear that there are obvious massive inflations on prices. How does this impact you as a player who only has proportional access to that gold flow? You’ve been very unhappy about the economy in prior threads and even in this thread. And this number will only increase as the number of raids and raid wings goes up; and they definitely will go up, if you’ve pushed the participation rate high enough with multimodal raids- there’s no reason not to push raids as the only form of content, as everyone’s doing them! It’s only two raid wings before they’re earning 100g a week just for clearing raids.

So the big question;
Are you willing to give a select elite (if you express the will of the proletariat as you proclaim) a massive gold spigot?

why do easy mode have to have any liquid gold at all they run them for the legendary pre how ever long that take 8-15 months

Linken.6345:

why do easy mode have to have any liquid gold at all they run them for the legendary pre how ever long that take 8-15 months

buy why easy mode for legendary pre? it’s easy after all, so not much reward needed…

Linken.6345:

why do easy mode have to have any liquid gold at all they run them for the legendary pre how ever long that take 8-15 months

I’m not suggesting it, I’m just pointing out the flaw in the logic.

If it has no rewards beyond legendary components, then it shouldn’t exist because once everyone has it, the easy mode will be dead, and that’s wasted work.

Wasted work is why LS1 was terrible for the game, and is broadly a big issue for the game. ANet is making an MMO and they’re banking on content which the player base will have a reason to go to until the day the servers shut down- the entire reason not to add an easy mode is that one way or the other, one mode will be wasted work.

While I wouldn’t be bold enough to wager a definitive guess… The amount of work that would go into building an easy mode could be resources spent on retuning a dungeon back into relevancy. What would you prefer?

Hypairion.9210:

Torolan.5816:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well my raid group beat SV in 30 minutes last night… It now takes us less time to finish a raid then it used to take me to clear AC 1-3. If the people in this thread had spent half as much time practicing the raid as they did typing their long winded responses they could have easily cleared it multiple times by now.

The problem here is clearly the people, not the raid.

I honestly don´t know how you failed to understand multiple times(I read this before from you) that this raid could be the best invention since sliced bread and perfectly executed and still would not answer the question if it is good or bad to have one in GW2.

You neither take needed time to reach your state, commitment to reach your state, willingness to reach your state or anything else thast surrounds the raid as arguments. It is one of these gid good answers I personaly massively despise despite seeing how your usual responses are usually pretty readable.

How about if I am just unwilling to reach your raid status and lobby here to marginalize raids because I dislike them in my favorite game? If enough people think and say like me and stay out of raids, Anet will listen to our demands. You know that as good as I do as it has already happend before with the introduction of raids.

Minority of people read the forum, and among this thread you’re the minority. Same 4 or 5 people arguing over and over to have easy way to have raids rewards, because they think Raids are too hard.
So, no need to dévote dev time for this, since for other having exclusive rewards in raid is fine ( OK, except viper trinkets).

/Thread.

If there have to be raids, I have nothing against them having exclusive rewards in general. I would shower raiders with gold, skins and titles if that helps. But keep things with stats out of this. And again, only because it has also happened with Fractal backpiece, ls2 rewards and PvP backpiece does not make it better or more right, and most of the things I wrote are considerably more easy than raiding. Either forcing people into said content or denying people things with stats is plain bad for the game in my opinion.

STIHL.2489:

Sird.4536:

. Everything you listed for fotm are not needed either. Outside of some fotm you can dodge the AR attacks, you don’t need food or oil and if you do dodge the AR attacks you don’t need ascended gear. Plus in fotm you can also get rewards of up to 100g (btw you can’t salvage ascended items to get the based materials back so who cares how much they are worth).

While you may not need those things, I use them, and even with using food, oils, and potions, AR, Ascended Items, I still manage to turn a profit running Fractals.

Now, If you can’t turn a profit doing a Raid (or any content for that matter) then you need to revisit how good you really are at that content, and accept that perhaps that content is not really the right content for you, if you can’t turn a profit doing it.

I turn a profit because I am in a good guild, this isn’t about me. Though everyone is not in a good guild that can speed clear a raid and for those what do you say? ‘This content is not for you’. Well if you can’t get a guild or friends to get the legendary armour then we’ll ‘this content is not for you’.

You posted earlier that 25s with 10% the solid rewards (which becomes reasonably negligible) was a reasonable liquid money reward for scrubcore; is x8/x16 a reasonable skew as it would be under that model? I figure it would be, otherwise you would have not made this estimate.

I’m personally very flexible on the generic loot for easy mode raids. I don’t really have a solid grasp on what the community would demand. I’m just saying, based on what people have said of the hard modes once you’ve got them on farm, I’m assuming an average easy mode run of Spirit Vale, start to finish, would be about 30-45 minutes or so? And of comparable difficulty to a mid-tier dungeon or low end Fractal.

So given that, if you want people to do it just long enough to get their Legendary, and then bounce, then you could have relatively minimal generic rewards. If you want it to be something people add to their rotations even after getting their Legendary, then it would need to be roughly equivalent to a dungeon/fractal of comparable length and difficulty. Just slightly more, perhaps, to account for taking just slightly longer to form a party (once the LFG has been fixed).

Hard mode raids could offer way more than that, I don’t think many would have too much of a problem with that.

And keep in mind, any arguments made on “well if the generic rewards for easy aren’t good enough then nobody will run it after getting their Legendary,” well that’s true, so you do want the rewards to be “enough,” and the same applies equally to hard mode raiders, who will be getting their Legendaries earlier than easy mode. So if legendary rewards are the only draw for hard mode, then hard mode would be a ghost town way before easy mode would be.

What sort of impact would giving a specific set of players 72g a week have on the economy? It’s pretty clear that there are obvious massive inflations on prices. How does this impact you as a player who only has proportional access to that gold flow?

I think it’s important that the higher the “total reward” gets, the more of it is shifted from liquid gold to fungible assets. I mean, if it’s ever determined that 16g is a reasonable drop from a given boss (and I’m not sure where you’re getting that), it should not come in coin, that should cap out in the 4-5 range, but rather most of it should be given out in stable materials, resellable exotic gear, things like that. The total amount of wealth gained would be appropriately high, but the liquid currency added would be relatively low. Since relatively few players would be earning these amounts, it shouldn’t even have a huge impact on the resale markets, so long as they choose the right markets to use for this purpose.

And this number will only increase as the number of raids and raid wings goes up; and they definitely will go up, if you’ve pushed the participation rate high enough with multimodal raids- there’s no reason not to push raids as the only form of content, as everyone’s doing them! It’s only two raid wings before they’re earning 100g a week just for clearing raids.

I think your high-end here is getting a little preposterous. If you have to bribe players that heavily into doing hard mode raids, then the indication would be that hard mode raids are just not a thing anyone actually wants to do and they should be scrapped. The rewards should be fair, such that someone inclined to hard mode raid will feel that his time was well spent, not a bribe to convince people that hard mode raiding is the only reasonable activity to pursue.

While I wouldn’t be bold enough to wager a definitive guess… The amount of work that would go into building an easy mode could be resources spent on retuning a dungeon back into relevancy. What would you prefer?

I believe it would take considerably less work to make an easy mode raid than it would take to make a vanilla dungeon relevant again, but assuming that it would take an equivalent effort, DEFINITELY easy mode raid. I mean, there’s not even a question there. The vanilla dungeons have been out for years now, people have run them to death, whereas the raids are new content with more interesting mechanics to them. I mean this one’s a no-brainer, obviously easy mode raids. Who do you think would choose otherwise?

I believe it would take considerably less work to make an easy mode raid than it would take to make a vanilla dungeon relevant again, but assuming that it would take an equivalent effort, DEFINITELY easy mode raid. I mean, there’s not even a question there. The vanilla dungeons have been out for years now, people have run them to death, whereas the raids are new content with more interesting mechanics to them. I mean this one’s a no-brainer, obviously easy mode raids. Who do you think would choose otherwise?

Pretty ironic for you to praise the interesting mechanics of raids, when your easy mode raids would trivialize these mechanics.. (no wipe flamethrower or green zone for example…)

Pretty ironic for you to praise the interesting mechanics of raids, when your easy mode raids would trivialize these mechanics.. (no wipe flamethrower or green zone for example…)

I’ve explained my stance on this too many times for you to not understand it, whether you agree with it or not.

Sird.4536:

STIHL.2489:

Sird.4536:

. Everything you listed for fotm are not needed either. Outside of some fotm you can dodge the AR attacks, you don’t need food or oil and if you do dodge the AR attacks you don’t need ascended gear. Plus in fotm you can also get rewards of up to 100g (btw you can’t salvage ascended items to get the based materials back so who cares how much they are worth).

While you may not need those things, I use them, and even with using food, oils, and potions, AR, Ascended Items, I still manage to turn a profit running Fractals.

Now, If you can’t turn a profit doing a Raid (or any content for that matter) then you need to revisit how good you really are at that content, and accept that perhaps that content is not really the right content for you, if you can’t turn a profit doing it.

I turn a profit because I am in a good guild, this isn’t about me. Though everyone is not in a good guild that can speed clear a raid and for those what do you say? ‘This content is not for you’. Well if you can’t get a guild or friends to get the legendary armour then we’ll ‘this content is not for you’.

I’ll just coincide that you would understand that situation better then I would, I mean after whatever MMO you used to play, I am sure had raids, and you gave that up to come play an ultra-casual game like GW2, where, a 3 hour a week investment can net you some pretty good progress and guilds only serve as a social hub, because honestly, you realized that the demands to do raids in that other MMO were simply beyond you.

Wish I could share in that sentiment, as the last MMO I quit playing was Black Gold Online, and honestly I stopped playing because I really hated their money grubbing payment model.

But, I will say we kinda agree, I mean, really, if players joined GW2 at any time prior to HoT, they stayed because of the friendly, casual, enjoyable content, where they did not need to be in the right guilds to gain access to the whole game, and I guess if the direction that GW2 is going in, is to make it so that players need to be in the right guilds, know the right people, Then I am sure many people will realize, you’re right, and that this is not the game for them anymore.