Guild Wars 2

This would be great imho.

Would be interesting…. or even a box that randomized the number of cores/lodestones you could get (guaranteeing at least 1). The number seems fair, but realize that an individual would have to run at least 200 paths (which would take up to 9-10 weeks doing 3 paths a day for the max token reward) of anyone dungeon just to get 100 lodestones O_O…. Although the market might drastically drive down prices so that they could also be purchased for a reasonable amount of coin.

I think this is a good idea, though I’d maybe say a higher token price for a lodestone. Don’t want to devalue anything too quickly. 180 maybe.

This is a great idea, and I hope Anet actually looks at it.

If grinding lodestones with ridiculous token prices is less efficient, people will still farm the gold to do lodestones.

There’s no point in making obtaining lodestones grindy when you can instead go farm 10g a day and make investments that will get you lodestones fasters than if you did the dungeons. Explorables need to drop lodestones from their boss chests.

I suggested this once before a long time ago, so I definitely support this.

I stand behind this idea as well.

Excellent idea! Although 120 tokens is too much for a lodestone depending on the dungeon, others are easy, others are a lot harder. If farming for the same time that takes to get 120 tokens gives a lot more gold why would anyone run the dungeon? Not all dungeons are super fast like CoF, for example (using the OP’s idea) getting Corrupted Lodestones with 120 tokens from Arah is nothing like getting Molten Lodestones from Citadel of Flame. When setting the “proper” amount of tokens you need to take into account the average of the dungeons not the fastest one.

One of the major failures of Anet’s dungeon reward system is that all paths on all dungeons award the same tokens while it is fairly obvious that some paths are insanely harder than others, leading to people farming a single path, but that’s for another suggestion altogether.

As someone who already has their 100 lodestones, i still agree with this idea.

In the middle of acquiring lodestones with many stacks of unused dungeon tokens in the bank; I fully support this idea.

I completely agree with the OP, this way fractals are not the only source of money and better loot. This adds more reason to do the other dungeon than just grinding out fractals.

It should be 120 tokens for a random chance to get 1-3 lodestones and 60 tokens to get one lodestone.

Why? Because most recipes cost 250 lodestones. Doing 3 paths everyday will take me 84 days to finish.

Zenith.7301:

If grinding lodestones with ridiculous token prices is less efficient, people will still farm the gold to do lodestones.

There’s no point in making obtaining lodestones grindy when you can instead go farm 10g a day and make investments that will get you lodestones fasters than if you did the dungeons. Explorables need to drop lodestones from their boss chests.

It’s not about what is faster/easier/more efficient, its about generating more ways to obtain them.

Even tho I’ve banked about 200g selling cores/lodestones I support the OP’s idea, including the prices. +1 for a good idea!

as much as i don’t mind the idea there a pretty common drop in fractal.

If nothing else, this would provide an incentive to run the older dungeons even after completing one’s set, and would also provide a nice cash bonus to those who would sell their Lodestones.

i’d prefer a system where the final chest/boss of the lodestone dungeons would just give you a lodestone 100% of the time.

this way you need to complete a path to obtain it and you could even put this reward on a daily system to prevent a massive influx of Lodestones entering the economy.

altho Crystal Lodestones still remain an issue.

Sincore.5076:

Recently I’ve been thinking of ways that Anet could increase the availability of lodestones on the market to make some of the rarer lodestones more attainable. What I’m proposing is adding specific lodestones to each dungeon vendor that fall in line with what the theme of the dungeon is.

Lodestone Prices and Dungeon Exchange

Ascolonian Catacombs – Consumable that grants a random Lodestone (120 tokens)

Caudecus’s Manor – Consumable that grants a random Lodestone (120 tokens)

*Note: Crystal Lodestone would most likely be put in Caudecus Manor instead of the random lodestone consumable.

Honor of the Waves – Glacial Lodestones (120 tokens)

Citadel of Flame – Molten Lodestones (120 tokens)

The Lost City of Arah – Corrupted Lodestones (120 tokens)

Twilight Arbor – Onyx Lodestones (120 tokens)

Sorrow’s Embrace – Destroyer Lodestones (120 tokens)

Crucible of Eternity – Charged Lodestones (120 tokens)

Sorrow’s Embrace – Destroyer Lodestones (120 tokens)

Fractals Of the Mist – None

Price Reasoning

I placed the token cost for these lodestones at 120 tokens to prevent lodestone farming (since the max tokens you can get in 1 day from one dungeon is 180-196 assuming you only do each path once).

Though I do understand that some dungeons are easier than others (AC Vs. Arah), I didn’t want to vary that prices based on dungeon difficulty because it may cause unneccessary large shifts in individual lodestone prices if more than one of each lodestone could be obtained from a specific dungeon in 1 day.

What affect could this have on the Game

It is difficult to say, but I would imagine a price drop on all lodestones as a new method of acquisition becomes available.

More incentive to run dungeons to get lodestones for either money or personal use.

Slightly easier aquisition of the lodestone part of legendaries.

In conclusion

Let me know what you guys think! I’m putting this in the dungeon forum because I know you guys and gals run dungeons and would like to hear your feedback on this idea since it may affect your dungeon running in a positive / negative way!

Cheers!

-Sincorel

I completely agree. I know how to farm them but it’s only something the bored and unemployed can do successfully.

I want to see the employed players who have a 9 to 5 and a family be able to get these not just players like me.

120 tokens for a lodestone is not enough. 250 is more reasonable. 120 is way too easy to get, that would make lodestones chump change.

Adding some valuable mats like these to dungeon token rewards would be a great idea, I agree!

Maybe Caudecus manor token could give platinium doubloon to fit better?

Got my Sunrise done a while back and let me tell you it was a pain in the kitten I approve of this message.

I thought about something similar long ago, and I’m supporting this idea with all my four furry paws.

I think 120 tokens is right price for a single lodestone.

In my case, I’d need the Charged Lodestones. Doing 2 CoE paths to achieve that should be enough time and hard work to be rewarded with this.

I really hope Robert will read this thread and try to convience others to this great idea.
It’s nothing new after all, similar thing was in GW1 (FoW, DoA and UW in GW1) – you were guaranted to receive particular rare materials with the end chest (depending on the dungeon you did)+ chance for some unique rare drops. It encouraged players to do the dungeons, and they knew that at the very least, they will be given some valuable item for sure.

Also, maybe it’s only my impression, but in GW1 – whenever I opened end chest in FoW or UW, I felt very excited. There were many high quality drops, most of them weren’t anythign expensive, but once a while some valuable would drop. In GW2, for some reason, I’m not excited one bit about the chests. I know what I will find there – 3 greenies at best. With this tokens-to-lodestone trade, I would actually feel quite happy whenever I see another 60 tokens given to me.

120 tokens is too little. 2 dungeon runs shouldn’t give you a charged lodestone.

Also random lodestone from AC? yeah right… that’ll drop the price of all lodestones by a massive amount.

I mean I want my lodestones as much as the next guy, but let’s not exaggerate on the price. Lodestones are still valuable.

Well, if you keep in mind CoF, AC and TA speed clears, then indeed 120 tokens is not much.

Other dungeons are a bit more demanding. CoE takes much longer usually, not to mention Arah. But it’s a never ending issue about balancing all the dungeons & paths and reward players accorindg to required effort.

Either way, I wouldn’t mind higher price, but getting over 200 is too much in my opinion.

solid idea, need more letters to post

PowerCat.5738:

120 tokens is too little. 2 dungeon runs shouldn’t give you a charged lodestone.

Also random lodestone from AC? yeah right… that’ll drop the price of all lodestones by a massive amount.

I mean I want my lodestones as much as the next guy, but let’s not exaggerate on the price. Lodestones are still valuable.

But the problem is most recipes of anything valuable require 100-250 lodestones, some even 350 charged lodestones. Basically doing 2 dungeon runs is somewhere around 45min – 1hr which is basically equivalent to farming 1 lodestone per hour. So it pretty much evens out with general farming vs. doing dungeons.

So if a player did 2 dungeon runs a day to get a 100 lodestone recipe that player may need about 85-90 days(with wondrous goods factored in) just to complete it. Which if something takes over 2 and 1/2 months just on dungeons runs alone is pretty much where it needs to be imo.

At first sight it might seem like a good idea, but you have to look at how people approach the contents. I’m not against this idea. but I just want to say that personally I don’t think this is necessary, and possibly not even a good idea. It all depends on what issue you are trying to address, may it be excess of useless tokens, high price of lodestones, or making people interested in dungeons more.

I don’t have much to say about the price of lodestones, if they are pricy, then they are rare, I wouldn’t actually say that is a problem. If people just want it to be cheaper, well, whether that’s necessary is another discussion all by itself.

About access tokens and getting people more interested in dungeons. I personally think that won’t make people interested in the dungeons more. What would actually happen is people will run easy dungeons even more excessively. You see, people always converge to farm the most easy dungeons, not necessarily the most profitable ones. I’m can specifically point out AC and CoF. In the case of AC, the tokens aren’t even useful, compared to the level 70+ where you can convert tokens into ectos at a fairly steady rate.

AC is the easiest and most profitable dungeon; that’s why people run it. CoF is run because it’s the easiest dungeon that provides Berserker / Carrion armor and weapons. AC tokens are amazingly useful because it has the Soldier armor set, which is very popular. You can also throw excess tokens into forge attempts for precursors.

What this lodestone suggestion does is level out the playing field a lot. Charged, Onyx, Molten, Destroyer, etc. Lodestones are all highly sought after by players for the items they are used to create. These only being available from certain dungeons by spending tokens would encourage a lot more dungeon diversity in terms of what gets played.

For the record, I don’t think AC should have a lodestone at all, least of all a random sampling of the other lodestones. The other dungeons absolutely need one (CM can have Crystal Lodestones).

Shuguard.7125:

PowerCat.5738:

120 tokens is too little. 2 dungeon runs shouldn’t give you a charged lodestone.

Also random lodestone from AC? yeah right… that’ll drop the price of all lodestones by a massive amount.

I mean I want my lodestones as much as the next guy, but let’s not exaggerate on the price. Lodestones are still valuable.

But the problem is most recipes of anything valuable require 100-250 lodestones, some even 350 charged lodestones. Basically doing 2 dungeon runs is somewhere around 45min – 1hr which is basically equivalent to farming 1 lodestone per hour. So it pretty much evens out with general farming vs. doing dungeons.

So if a player did 2 dungeon runs a day to get a 100 lodestone recipe that player may need about 85-90 days(with wondrous goods factored in) just to complete it. Which if something takes over 2 and 1/2 months just on dungeons runs alone is pretty much where it needs to be imo.

the reason why his idea is awesome is because it takes the rng out of the equation. The player actually knows what they are working towards and can obtain it through work instead of luck.

180 for the lodestone. The chests can drop it very rarely as well. I know i would start doing multiple dungeon runs and paths a day for this. Also give story something, fed up of seeing people trying to get a story group together and no one is interested, i do waste alot of time just helping people do the story modes and the amount of groups that cant open dungeons is stupid. But all of that is way way off topic. 2 cents over.

PowerCat.5738:

120 tokens is too little. 2 dungeon runs shouldn’t give you a charged lodestone.*

And you say this because….that is a lot of value, right? The market will seek the new price based on the newly available supply and charged lodestones will drop in price to the point where farming them via dungeons about as profitable as any other farm. That is how the economy and players seeking efficient farming behavior works.

Do it all ready! If ANET wants people to run the dungeons more then this would do it. Even if it was just cores that could be converted I would still like it and it would help keep the lodestone prices up too if they were concerned about it.

While I can’t speak for the value of 120 tokens (I don’t put enough thought in to the repercussions of that), I would suggest having a lodestone appropriate to the dungeon as part of the daily reward. 60 tokens for your first path + a lodestone, then 60 tokens for the other 2 path with no lodestones. Heck, perhaps just a core.

I think 120 might be a tad bit low for a Lodestone. 180 might be reasonable. There could be even Cores as well for about 70~90-ish tokens. The reason for lower amount of tokens per Core is that you still need to buy the Elonian Wine and use T6 dust to make up for the discount.

Ari Kagura.9182:

I think 120 might be a tad bit low for a Lodestone.

What are you basing this assessment off of? Token→currency conversion for 120 tokens is 1.2-1.5g or so via ectos, every lodestone is currently under that value with the exception of Charged. In short, 120 tokens already gets you at least one of any lodestone except charged, or even two in the case of Glacial/Crystal. Putting lodestones on the vendor would take some of the randomness out while also increasing supply, resulting in further price drops.

Is it such a terrible thing that Crucible of Eternity would briefly become very popular until the rush of supply pushed Charged Lodestones down into parity with every other lodestone?

Some things to consider is that you still get a chance to get a Lodestone from the chests in dungeons. It could be something to factor in. Either that or a few Cores in which you could turn into Lodestones— just pay for the price of Wine and Dust.

I do agree, however, that some of the prices for Lodestones are a bit too high; but a 1-to-1 conversion of gold to tokens might not be a hip idea. Introducing more Lodestones to the market would no longer make the value 1-to-1. At 180 tokens, at least you’ll get a Lodestone per day, minimum, but you still have a chance to get more from the boss chests and maybe (as a suggestion) from Bags of Wonderous Goods.

Two things to consider: does ArenaNet think the price of Lodestones are reasonable ? And: Should they value all Lodestones (and even Purtid Essence) equally? If they value all the T6 Rare materials equally, like the Rubies and Sapphires in GW1 Nightfall, then I bet they have something planned that would increase the value of lesser used T6 Rare materials (more crafting patterns), but add other ways to help reduce the costs of heavily valued T6 Rare materials (possibly by increasing the droprate).

At that point, 120 tokens for a single Lodestone might devalue those materials further than expected. There’s way more math to consider when it comes to the final value of these Lodestones when it comes to using tokens. It’s just that the value of Coin always changes based on the player-controller market, while the intrinsic value of dungeon tokens will always remain the same (unless ArenaNet decides to increase or lower the price of dungeon gear).

Ari Kagura.9182:

I do agree, however, that some of the prices for Lodestones are a bit too high; but a 1-to-1 conversion of gold to tokens might not be a hip idea. Introducing more Lodestones to the market would no longer make the value 1-to-1. At 180 tokens, at least you’ll get a Lodestone per day, minimum
…
At that point, 120 tokens for a single Lodestone might devalue those materials further than expected. There’s way more math to consider when it comes to the final value of these Lodestones when it comes to using tokens. It’s just that the value of Coin always changes based on the player-controller market, while the intrinsic value of dungeon tokens will always remain the same (unless ArenaNet decides to increase or lower the price of dungeon gear).

120 tokens will already buy you, right now, in game, at least 1 lodestone of any type except for charged. The non-charged lodestones won’t sell for 180 tokens unless their prices rise.

And the market value of tokens isn’t a constant, it varies based on the value of tradable goods that tokens can be converted into, in this case ectos.

That’s sort of true— Token-to-Ecto conversion would only apply to CoF, CoE, and Arah tokens to the best extent. It could also apply to other dungeons but then it would be a much bigger gamble because you’re basically hoping that one Exotic you burned 180 tokens on will turn into an ecto, as opposed to the 6 Rares you buy from those three listed dungeons. As such: it’s not guaranteed that you’ll get an ecto if you salvage any of the Rares that you purchase with those tokens.

In that case, the value would be a suitable range instead of a near-static amount, but who knows if RNG will bless you with a lucky salvage streak or nothing at all.

Ari Kagura.9182:

That’s sort of true— Token-to-Ecto conversion would only apply to CoF, CoE, and Arah tokens to the best extent.

HotW also works. SE misses the cutoff by a couple levels, sadly.

I almost forgot about that one— thanks for reminding me. I guess I don’t run it enough for me to remember it.

I also find that 120 works out nicely as well because not all 3 paths are optimal(or work) to do. I very rarely see groups advertising to do SE paths 1 and 2 leaving only pugs to do path 3. Would love to see some dungeons get a little bit more balancing if this lodestone idea goes through.

Excellent idea. Lodestones are the worst part of the legendary. Mainly because they are almost impossible to farm.

+1.

I can only agree,
i think even 60/lodestone would be enough
doing coe path 1 100x would take long enough

+1 from me also, a really good idea

Lodestones should not cost less than 180 tokens, and having a “random token” from AC is a really bad idea.

I know we want to get everything easily, but let’s look at it from an unbiased POV. Doing AC once and getting a charged lodestone? not reasonable. Doing CoE 3 times and having a guaranteed charged lodestone, plus whatever you got in the dungeon, now we’re talking more balanced.

move that crappy pile of putrid garbage out of Arah is what I say. Make arah drop corrupted or something else for the love of insert religion deity

I’d rather see legendaries require 2.5x the amount of lodestones, and buff droprates by 2.5×. Maybe make them drop off of more locations.

It’s demoralizing when you farm for 10 hours, and only come up with 7 lodestones. Sometimes going without a lodestone for 2.5 hours +. I’ve spent wayyy more hours in dungeons and have only come up with maybe 2 lodestones?

I’m fine with the materials taking many, many, many hours to grind out. It just sucks that when you do grind, you can go hours without results.

PowerCat.5738:

Lodestones should not cost less than 180 tokens, and having a “random token” from AC is a really bad idea.

Barring charged lodestones, you can already get any lodestone you want for 60-120 tokens from any of the upper-level dungeons.

That would make too many lodestones running out there.

Not a matter of how long it would take to gather your 100 – 250 lodestones but a matter of a rare material. Currently it’s designed so ppl who are discouraged to have 100 of them will sell to ppl that are not discouraged and that is what makes weapons to be rare.

If you give everyone a reliable way to gather this materials, they will save them and few weeks/months later they will all have their not-rare-anymore weapon.