Guild Wars 2

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

i absolutely agree with the OP. it is already in the game and “there are much worse games” argument is childish. however, i don’t mind what OP said is in the game since it is “minor”. but he is also right about saying that existence of those items is harmful, since in my view, sets the stage for expanding on those mechanics.

guys, lets be honest here… we are paying for pvp arenas! this is paying for content in my opinion. (i know i don’t have to)

also, rng to get box full of rng is absolutely the worst rng i have ever experienced in mmo. im not a mathematician, but odds of getting something from that don’t seem high to me…

You’re not paying for PvP arenas. The content in those arenas exists outside of those arenas. It’s not like those arenas offer you a map you can’t play elsewhere.

In fact, many of those arenas will likely be open anyway, and you’ll get to play in them. Non-issue is a non-issue.

Yes, a company wants to make money from their product. It’s not exactly an unheard of concept, or a great secret.

Personally I’ve never felt pressured to buy anything from the gem store and after playing since launch I never have bought anything except minis (purely cosmetic) and one character slot. I disagree that anything in the store is pay to win because it’s entirely possible to do everything in game, including 100% PvE completion and reach the top of the PvP ladder, without buying anything and importantly just as easily as people who did.

Until this game I was not a fan of micro-transactions at all because all I’d seen was pay to win games but IMO Anet have gotten it right. Lots of things people want, nothing they actually need and the option to buy it with in-game currency.

CobaltSixty.1542:

Have you ever used a revive orb? The only thing a revive orb saves you is the silver cost of using a waypoint.

I’ve only ever used them to explore parts of the cities that I can only reach by leaping down fatally, like the chasm at the bottom of Rata Sum. They’re not worth an inventory slot otherwise.

Zelyhn.8069:

2. There are pay to win items.
Yes this is minor, but their presence is a serious pain. I count rez orbs, repair toolkits and upgrades, I might be missing some. Repair tools are essential in high level fractals as they allow you to avoid the one thing (theoretically) that can prevent you from completing a fractal level: armor breaking. Rez orbs feel awkward, but upgrades are a straight pay to win incentive! The fact that they are minor do not take away anything.

I’ve personally never understood the mentality of people (not you, specifically) who make P2W arguments regarding a MMO’s cash shop. P2W what, precisely? I suppose the argument hinges on the varying definitions of the term “winning.”

Now, calling items in a cash shop overpowered I can understand. Particularly those that are only accessible via the shop and whatever the currency is. GW2 has several ways around that. Not the least of which is that Gems can be bought using the in-game currency, meaning that everything in the item shop is accessible to a dedicated player. (And by such I’m not suggesting that farming up gold to buy Gems isn’t a process, only doable.)

The second defense against this argument is that the items CAN be found out in the world. Granted it might need to be a really lucky drop, but the chance is there.

If Anet was putting gear with 150% of the power of similar level weapons in the cash shop, only available with cash bought currency, you’d have a strong point. But then I wouldn’t have come close to touching this game.

haha except you can use gold for gems, so instant repairs are completely feasible and fair.

Transmutation Crystals are purely cosmetic, I see nothing wrong with them

Still no one is talking about indirect loot.. is everybody really okay with this ?

WolfOwl.3968:

If Anet was putting gear with 150% of the power of similar level weapons in the cash shop, only available with cash bought currency, you’d have a strong point. But then I wouldn’t have come close to touching this game.

Most p2w games do give players the ability to obtain every item in the game. It’s just the grind to do so without paying real cash is horrific. So your argument is not really good.

If that’s say tomorrow Anet release ascended armor and ascended weapon but each piece cost like 300 gold. Or 1800 gold for a full set of armor. Would you consider that pay 2 win?

Not that Anet would do that but just because you can obtain every item in game dont’ mean it’s not pay 2 win.

Zelyhn.8069:

Transmutation Crystals are purely cosmetic, I see nothing wrong with them

Still no one is talking about indirect loot.. is everybody really okay with this ?

The rates on these could use some work, from my understanding of it from what I’ve read, but otherwise I’m ok with it.

You never really articulated your objection to indirect loot, btw.

Zelyhn.8069:

Transmutation Crystals are purely cosmetic, I see nothing wrong with them

Still no one is talking about indirect loot.. is everybody really okay with this ?

What the heck is indirect loot exactly?

I’ve honestly never felt pressured to pay for any of those. Bag slots, maybe, but you can get the gems from ingame currency. You’re not compelled to pay anymore than what you want to.

There is no uber spank I killz you all lazor cannon in the shop that has double stats from every other weapon game. There is nothing win in the cash shop, just conveniences and “hopefully” an expanding skin selection of combat armors outside of the one for each armor type.

laokoko.7403:

Most p2w games do give players the ability to obtain every item in the game. It’s just the grind to do so without paying real cash is horrific. So your argument is not really good.

Unless “most”, in your argument, includes GW2 my point remains valid. However, I concede that generalizations are poor arguments.

In which case, we’re both wrong. o.O

eisberg.2379:

What the heck is indirect loot exactly?

I believe he’s talking about loot you get from salvaging or opening other loot, i.e. indirectly.

ilr.9675:

OP forgot to mention Transmutation Crystals.

There’s No way to obtain them in-game besides from farming Lion keys through story-mode re-rolls…. and then playing a lottery that Drop-research suggests only have a 3.5% chance of obtaining them through.

Well other than buying Gems with Gold and then buying them outright at the shop. That path is there for a reason just like how Transmutation Crystals are one of the few consumables at the Gem shop that may be a big draw.

Remember Gems for cash keeps the lights on despite what Dontain says.

Indirect loot is the process of letting you loot items that are so worthless that they need an other stage of processing (salvage, open bags & crates, sell) to maybe become valuable.
Therefore the possible valuable items you get are indirectly given to you.
Some people will be naive enough to call “free will” and say that you do not have to process the first hand items… well it’s kind of like saying “you have free will you do not have to breathe in life”! Indeed you do not have to, but you are very strongly influenced to do so, which is technically the same.
I do not want to make too much of a philosophical post but I want to make clear that no choice is ever completely free, you are always influenced (even if it is just by the amount of information given to you at the time of choosing) and while an individual’s choice is difficult to predict it is quite possible to make valid statistical assumptions enabling the prediction of mass people’s choices.

That being said, take a good look at how things work:
You receive items that you will want to process to make valuable. You get yellows you want to salvage them, because exotic armor is so easy to get that yellows are worthless in themselves. You get whites/blues/greens and you have to sell them to the merchant (or mystic toilet them) to make them have any use other than taking bag space. You get bags that you have to open, crates, etc.
Notice how there are two stages controlled by the server. There is the inital loot phase, and then the processing phase that makes them valuable. The server controls both. If you have two stages in a loot chain filleld with RNG then it becomes quite easy to tweak things and control the supply of valuable items.
Of course you will say that whites/blues/greens sold to the merchant have a fixed price. They do indeed, but the value of gold is not fixed in this game! Just because the server controls the supply of T6, ectos, insert_valuable_item_here, then they control the value of gold.
One thing you have to understand is that when you design an economic model you expect people to have rational expectations. We all have rational expectations, we make our choices at the best of our ability, using all the information available to us at the time of choosing.
However the gw2 economy is filled with RNG and very little information remains constant. This way it takes much longer to notice any changes in supply, it requires much more data.
This system is designed so you can be easily fooled.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

i absolutely agree with the OP. it is already in the game and “there are much worse games” argument is childish. however, i don’t mind what OP said is in the game since it is “minor”. but he is also right about saying that existence of those items is harmful, since in my view, sets the stage for expanding on those mechanics.

Slippery slope fallacy. This is a false argument.

I think it’s very clear A.net is moving away from those mechanics, especially concerning the gem store.

Lets assume OP’s statement is correct to some degree in that GW2 is infact “pay to win”, this still shouldn’t bother people. Besides PvP, you aren’t competing with anyone so why should you care how someone else chooses to play the game? It’s their loss if they choose to use XP boosters to skip over content that they have paid for. Additionally, anything that could give you an advantage in PvP like the stat boosters and revive orbs are disabled when PvPing.

I am confused. So, something is only valuable if you don’t sell it? Because many people sell the loot bags (from which said indirect loot comes from) for a pretty penny; and, I guess, find them more valuable (to them) by doing so.

Zelyhn.8069:

Indirect loot is the process of letting you loot items that are so worthless that they need an other stage of processing (salvage, open bags & crates, sell) to maybe become valuable.
Therefore the possible valuable items you get are indirectly given to you.

Ohhhhh. So what you’re saying is not every piece of loot will be valuable straight away? And that these little bits of loot can add up to a nice piece of loot?

Please, tell me in what MMO’s this doesn’t occur?

GW has salvage items
WoW has disenchanting
TSW has disassembling
NW has unidentified items
Rift has salvaging

Hell, it happens in single-player games as well.

TES series (Jewelry, weaker weapons and such)
Final Fantasy (any loot when you got the best gear)
Pokemon (Nuggets and such)

Zelyhn.8069:

Some people will be naive enough to call “free will” and say that you do not have to process the first hand items… well it’s kind of like saying “you have free will you do not have to breathe in life”! Indeed you do not have to, but you are very strongly influenced to do so, which is technically the same.

I can’t tell you how hard my head hit the desk reading this. They’re hardly the same.

Free will is the ability to make choices.

Breathing is an automated process which you cannot stop through willpower permanently without external influence. You don’t get a choice in the matter. Hold your breath, and eventually your body will make you breathe again. That’s how people drown.

When I get loot, I got the choice to do what I want with it:

• Chuck it if I’m running out of bag space
• Send it to friends
• Process it

Usually, I’ll send it to friends for them to use, since I’ve got all my crafting professions up.

Zelyhn.8069:

That being said, take a good look at how things work:

You receive items that you will want to process to make valuable. You get yellows you want to salvage them, because exotic armor is so easy to get that yellows are worthless in themselves. You get whites/blues/greens and you have to sell them to the merchant (or mystic toilet them) to make them have any use other than taking bag space. You get bags that you have to open, crates, etc.

Notice how there are two stages controlled by the server. There is the inital loot phase, and then the processing phase that makes them valuable. The server controls both. If you have two stages in a loot chain filleld with RNG then it becomes quite easy to tweak things and control the supply of valuable items.

Of course you will say that whites/blues/greens sold to the merchant have a fixed price. They do indeed, but the value of gold is not fixed in this game! Just because the server controls the supply of T6, ectos, insert_valuable_item_here, then they control the value of gold.

One thing you have to understand is that when you design an economic model you expect people to have rational expectations. We all have rational expectations, we make our choices at the best of our ability, using all the information available to us at the time of choosing.

However the gw2 economy is filled with RNG and very little information remains constant. This way it takes much longer to notice any changes in supply, it requires much more data.

This system is designed so you can be easily fooled.

To say that the GW2 economy is full of RNG is like saying that most other MMO economies are full of RNG. I cannot think of a single MMO I’ve played where the most valuable materials / items weren’t RNG based OR soulbound to stop them being farmed and sold.

When you salvage stuff, you KNOW you’re going to get something, whether it be crafting mats (both common and rare), Sigils or runes.

The RNG part only applies to the rarer materials, to keep them being valuable. How cheap would ecto’s be if you were guaranteed one for every rare you salvage? Given how people can get up to 25 guaranteed rares a day, that’s a potential 25 ecto’s per person, per day.

If, say, 5,000 people got them 25 ecto’s a day and decide to sell them, then that’s 125,000 ecto’s per day flooding the trading post. How low do you think prices will drop?

Hence the RNG. ANet can tweak drop rates in line with supply and demand in order to keep prices as steady as possible.

Not many ecto’s on the TP? Raise the drop-rate.
Too many ecot’s flooding, driving the prices down? Lower the drop rate.

Being able to adjust drop-rates isn’t a bad thing in itself.

The funny thing here is redefinition.

If you redefine force as free will, cosmetics as pay2win, optional as required, then sure you have redefined:
Buying optional cosmetics out of free will with gold xor gems
into
Buying required pay2win items through force with money.

Doesn’t mean you have an argument. It just means your words have changed meaning. It’s still optional, it’s still not pay2win. Using those words doesn’t make it so.

The constant nerfing to push player goals further and further away is a cheap tactic. If supply goes up and demand does it so be it. Most of the time I’m sure we don’t even find out about it. They were “caught” so to speak with their hand in the cookie jar on the salvaging “bug”. That alone should have sent up red flags for everyone playing the game.

I don’t agree GW2 is pay to win in any fashion. Besides, there isn’t any difficult content in the game that you’d need good gear for anyways.

I dont think the biz Anet is running can be categorized as “Dirty Cash”. A “cash cow” in a good way, maybe it is, but I don’t really know if it is. And even if this game is a cash cow, then so be it! Cash cow doesn’t equate “evil”, “bad”, “dirty”. It just means, it is a good source of money. I googled the meaning of Cash Cow and sure enough, it doesn’t really equate to being bad.

As for all your other concerns, they can be obtained by gold to gem conversion. I never spent real cash in this game, except for the initial 2 copies I got for me and the wifey. It’s money well spent. And while I would like to spend real cash to show support, I haven’t even converted any of my gold to gem except for one time when I have to get “bag slots” because I was a noobie and was using only the 5bag-slot that drops from bosses in Queensdale. But since then, it’s easy to just make new characters, craft 15-bag slots for them and before you know it, you will complain about how to manage your inventory from different alts (whether they are Lv2 or Lv80).

Furthermore, you can just do FotM Lv1 repeatedly and farm for tokens and get the bag that you want/need. You don’t even need a full party of 5 for that, I often run it with just 2 others,

As for RNG drops (porous bones and the like), well, if you Anet gives your guaranteed rare every drop, you’ll complain that armors and weapons dont stack. Players will complain that these drops are just trash drops and should just be converted to gold.

And when those “drops” are converted to gold, the inflation will rise since anyone can accumulate gold. And players will complain that they have thousands of gold, but the items costs hundred thousand more.

The point is, there will always be something to complain about, no matter how small. There might be valid complaints (such as the bugged ecto return from salvage), but yours fall on those “irrelevant” complaint.

If anything, I only have a few complaints, and I won’t even consider them valid myself, as I have yet to see the bigger picture. But for the sake of sharing, some of my complaints are:

== my feedback to OP thread ends, below is my own feedback to game ==

1) RNG drops on items – if there is an alternative way to get the item you want for (other than crafting, and farming till you drop, i.e. scavenger hunt) then it’s good. The RNG box can stay, and those who like to gamble can do those. And those who like to work for item, can also take that route. An example is “Mystic Clover” which is always a gamble.

The reason why I said that may not be valid, is even, for example, a player gets a legendary, those items doesn’t offer an advantage other than cosmetic. In fact, the effect might even be a disadvantage for those who have bad graphics card.

2) Anet changing G2G conversion (gold to gem, and vice versa) without clear formula on how this works – yeah, I have seen the inflation. And an ordinary player can’t keep up with how Anet calculate those, when the changes will happen, and what is affecting them. I can speculate that the rate is change based on how many in-game gold is flowing in the whole game region (i.e. EU vs NA) and that Anet is curbing the inflation, adding the G2G conversion as a cash sink. But even then, unless you make watching the G2G as a career or this is your hobby or this is your work in real life, it will be very hard to catch up.

For players like me who makes gold as I play when I have time, the changing conversion means what I used to make was “precious” and now, what I used to make is “nothing” even if I make the same amount of gold compare to when I started a several months ago.

But then again, that is just how life goes, if you don’t catch up, you will get left behind, hence if and when I get too left behind and no way to catch up, that is the time I will be saying good bye to this awesome game. And even then, stat-wise, I may not be considered left behind because I have full ascended now, but still, it’s always nice to see new looks from time to time since even some of the good things never last….

I don’t mind paying for things I want or think I need. I’m not paying a sub any longer, so 15-20 bucks a month for shinies is not a big deal.

Those of us with full time jobs and a family have a lot less game time. On the other hand…it usually means we have more expendable coin. It all equals out in the end.

The only attempt to fool is the OP attempting to fool forumites into thinking he has a case. The only hidden variables ANet is using with regard to the economy are the RNG rates. No game reveals those. Players can infer those rates based on large sample sizes (See the recent thread about ecto salvage rates).

Salvage items are an attempt to fool me? ANet is attempting to fool me because I have to sell stuff to a merchant to get any value? Ridiculous.

did you guys even thought for a minute about what exactly you defend here? this is about choosing what kind of a game we want. if someone likes rng box drops with rng skins then something is wrong here.

last post here. this looks too fake to be true…

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

did you guys even thought for a minute about what exactly you defend here? this is about choosing what kind of a game we want. if someone likes rng box drops with rng skins then something is wrong here.

It is possible to dislike RNG boxes with RNG skins without accepting the OP’s claim that the entire game economy is based on deception. Those who dislike RNG boxes are best advised not to buy them rather than invent reasons why the games’ economy is deceptive. If enough people don’t buy, then the developers might take notice.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

did you guys even thought for a minute about what exactly you defend here? this is about choosing what kind of a game we want. if someone likes rng box drops with rng skins then something is wrong here.

last post here. this looks too fake to be true…

They keep adding them to the game, so it means there must be people buying (either lots of people, or few people buying LOTS of them), so it means there must be people out there that like them, at least from their point if view.

It’s simple, if you don’t like RNG boxes, just don’t buy them, not even “ok, just one to see if I get lucky”. If enough people did that, then they’d realize that people don’t like them. If they don’t get enough money to cover the costs of the skins (paid time used by artists to create them, rig them, test them and so on), they won’t use it anymore.

And if we can’t get enough people to stop buying them… well… maybe they are right on that point and there are enough people that do like RNG lottery boxes to justify keep using them.

DeathMetal.8264:

2) Anet changing G2G conversion (gold to gem, and vice versa) without clear formula on how this works – yeah, I have seen the inflation. And an ordinary player can’t keep up with how Anet calculate those, when the changes will happen, and what is affecting them. I can speculate that the rate is change based on how many in-game gold is flowing in the whole game region (i.e. EU vs NA) and that Anet is curbing the inflation, adding the G2G conversion as a cash sink. But even then, unless you make watching the G2G as a career or this is your hobby or this is your work in real life, it will be very hard to catch up.

Except I don’t see that. John Smith described how the exchange works, its just that the exchange haters don’t believe it. All of the surges happened when some new and desirable item is introduced or an old and desirable item goes on sale. And the influx of gold to gems for items is driving that. Once the surge goes away we remain at that level or decline over the next week or two because the basis of the exchange rate, the ratio between internal pools of gems and gold at the exchange stays about where it was.

There’s no magic. No secret ANet governing board setting rates to drive more players to buy gems with cakitten’s us baby. Only us and our innate sense of being cheap that is driving the exchange rate up until it isn’t anymore.

Honestly sometimes I think the forums would have been better off without the exchange. 1) We eliminate all the exchange conspiracy threads. 2) We reduce the RNG threads because fewer players would be willing to spend real money on a rare chance at something but don’t have 2nd thoughts with gold. 3) It eliminates one of the major reasons to accumulate large quantities of gold, the other being Legendary weapons which means the farm nerf outcry threads should also be reduced. Of course forum posters are a resourceful lot and would likely find something else to fixate on.

Me, I fixate on threads where someone thinks the game is unfair because they can’t get something now in the easiest way possible, but that’s me.

It’s not about legendaries. It’s about not getting pennies for spending an hour in the game doing typical in game stuff as well as what Anet decided they would like us to do and then falsely call it a choice.

That’s what it’s really about.

How much silver do you get each time you finish a map? See my point? Ever get anything useful? nope I don’t ever.

Know what I got today for finishing a daily? A gold crystal for changing an outfit. Yep the kind that only works on levels 1-79. Guess which level I am.

That’s all anyone wants is for a reward system somewhere in the game that makes sense. Right now there’s nothing.

Go ahead go over the list of all of the things that don’t require a grind that you can do that gives rares or T6 materials without buying an RNG box or bag. See what I mean?

It’s fine to want to make money we all know that makes the world go around but they’re just going to have to learn that players do need to be able to earn a decent amount of currency or the materials to craft the tier below max items or F2P games just don’t last. Every other F2P developer has had to learn this out there I guess they will too here once all those new sandbox F2P titles come out and this game gets left behind which I predict will be happening sometime this year.

Behellagh.1468:

Me, I fixate on threads where someone thinks the game is unfair because they can’t get something now in the easiest way possible, but that’s me.

+1

Psst… you’re not alone

Mourningcry.9428:

Behellagh.1468:

Me, I fixate on threads where someone thinks the game is unfair because they can’t get something now in the easiest way possible, but that’s me.

+1

Psst… you’re not alone

Not at all alone.

Raises hand

Have a legendary, never did CoF 1 speedruns, barely farmed Orr events, sPvP and WvW a lot (rank <200 in PvP currently, woo~).

Close to 2000 hours played doing what I feel like, and with a Sunrise to show for it. Getting pennies for spending hours in game? I seriously question what you’re doing exactly in that hour. Are you counting in your earnings mob loot? Materials you gatehred? Vendored Blues/greens and the materials you gather from a map can quickly add up.

This isn’t counting the incredibly east to track/do world bosses which give guaranteed rares. And one daily (1 laurel) nets you 3 T6 crafting mats. Are those all pennies to you?

If anything this game makes me WANT to spend money on it. You want Greed? Look at Neverwinter. You die and the first thing that pops up is a message stating that you can revive right away if you pay cash.

I won’t buy RNG for the following reason, one I’d say people should consider before parting with money you presumably worked hard to get.

There has not been one patch that did not require fixing, on most occasions multiple times. The recent admission that salvage kits weren’t working as intended was one that only cam after multiple complaints and people providing enough evidence that this was the case.

So, who’s to say the boxes you are buying aren’t bugged too?

I have bought like 1, bag slot for convenience.

The rez and repair items I can see and they should be able to acquired through (rare) drops.

And as mentioned above, transmutation crystals are the biggest joke.

Still, I can’t say the game forces you to do any of that. The items listed above are the worst ones, for sure. I don’t imagine myself having to buy gems with actual money any time soon.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Zelyhn.8069:

Indirect loot is the process of letting you loot items that are so worthless that they need an other stage of processing (salvage, open bags & crates, sell) to maybe become valuable.
Therefore the possible valuable items you get are indirectly given to you.

Ohhhhh. So what you’re saying is not every piece of loot will be valuable straight away? And that these little bits of loot can add up to a nice piece of loot?

Please, tell me in what MMO’s this doesn’t occur?

GW has salvage items
WoW has disenchanting
TSW has disassembling
NW has unidentified items
Rift has salvaging

Hell, it happens in single-player games as well.

TES series (Jewelry, weaker weapons and such)
Final Fantasy (any loot when you got the best gear)
Pokemon (Nuggets and such)

This. It’s a pretty standard mechanic in RPGs and was probably originally an attempt to make games more realistic. In real life you wouldn’t go out and kill a boar and suddenly have a leather jacket (something which can and does happen in games), you’d have to skin the boar, clean and cure the hide, cut it and sew it. So they add similar processes to games to make it more realistic and to give you other activities to do in between killing things.

Also remember that with a few exceptions this process isn’t a linear chain you’re forced to go through. There are multiple options for most items and the ‘stages’ let you choose which you want. Depending on level and type you can use all the armor and weapons that drop without any additional steps (until I hit level 80 that was how I got all my gear). Or you can sell it to a merchant. Or sell it to another player on the Trading Post. Or salvage it for crafting materials. Or put it in the Mystic Forge for a chance at another item.

To me that’s much better than simply replacing all the weapon and armor drops with gold. If I want gold I can sell them, but if I want crafting materials more I can salvage them instead and save myself a few ‘stages’ in going from what I have to what I want.

Danikat.8537:

So they add similar processes to games to make it more realistic and to give you other activities to do in between killing things.

Except, just this morning I killed a stag in Wayfarer Foothills and it dropped an axe. They do this quite regularly in fact. Clever are the ways of the deer. Sometimes these stags have a hide and sometimes they dont. Weird genetic mutation?

Realistic my butt.

pricer.5091:

Realistic my butt.

You’re playing a game that’s set in another universe, had dragons and all sorts of fantastical creatures, telecommunication, instantaneous crafting and other impossible in real life things.

Please tell me you’re not that concerned about “realism.”

Not really, but I do find it kind of stupid that a deer can be looted for anything other than meat (always) and leather (if you have a knife and know what you are doing).

Cant recall any of the great fantasy novels having the hero pull his mighty sword out of the butt of a pig he’d just had for breakfast.

pricer.5091:

Danikat.8537:

So they add similar processes to games to make it more realistic and to give you other activities to do in between killing things.

Except, just this morning I killed a stag in Wayfarer Foothills and it dropped an axe. They do this quite regularly in fact. Clever are the ways of the deer. Sometimes these stags have a hide and sometimes they dont. Weird genetic mutation?

Realistic my butt.

I didn’t say the entire loot system was realistic, and in fact said in my last post that enemies can and do drop items they would never really carry in this (and most other) games.

What I meant by adding crafting and similar systems makes it more realistic is that enemies dropping salvage items which are turned into crafting materials and then useable items is mimicking the real life process as opposed to being an artificial system invented for games in order to force players through a series of steps to get the items they want, which is what the post I was responding to claimed.

But being a game they also have the ability to make it optional instead of required, so enemies do also drop finished items.

WolfOwl.3968:

pricer.5091:

Realistic my butt.

You’re playing a game that’s set in another universe, had dragons and all sorts of fantastical creatures, telecommunication, instantaneous crafting and other impossible in real life things.

Please tell me you’re not that concerned about “realism.”

I don’t really have a stake in this debate, but this argument is wholly and staggeringly ignorant. Realism isn’t the problem. Internal consistency is. Just because a setting is a “fantasy” location doesn’t mean all logic and patterns are suspended. This game is still attempting to present a world with a coherent internal structure. We do not know all the ways that the natural laws we understand are different in this world, but clearly there is supposed to be some system at work. And nothing that has been presented about that alternate system makes this guy’s axe-toting deer make any sense.

Or are you in fact trying to suggest that axe-toting deer are a deliberate stylistic choice, an intended feature of the story and setting rather than a mechanical abstraction that pulls people out of suspended disbelief?

So I thought I would dig up this thread from before my account got banned

You guys want to reflect on the cash-grabbing development that has been going on since I wrote this post?

Darox.8069:

So I thought I would dig up this thread from before my account got banned

You guys want to reflect on the cash-grabbing development that has been going on since I wrote this post?

We could. I also wouldn’t be surprised if some of the people who posted in this a year ago (and still post regularly) changed their tune.

…I keep a steady constant 13-17/45 inventory. I don’t even use all my slots or at max containers.

The only reason my Alts exists is to keep treasures/toys/obsolete, or stuff I can’t use as a warrior. They are an extra bank tab!

Keep organized, and have fawn.

Darox.8069:

So I thought I would dig up this thread from before my account got banned

You guys want to reflect on the cash-grabbing development that has been going on since I wrote this post?

I’d say it’s less ‘cash-grabbing’ than before.

Most stuff (permanent tools, for example) is now account-unlocked.

Also, you no longer have to purchase multiple sets of store armour, and the amount of Transmutation Charges needed to apply the skin to 2 other characters (since you have a one-time use of the skin) of the same armour type is still cheaper than a full outfit.

Changes brought on by the wardrobe is a mix bag. Pros, skins are account bound. Skins can be unlocked via salvage which a lot of players are doing for luck so it’s “free”. Trans Charges are cheaper than crystals but more expensive than stones, which hurts skinners on under level 80 characters. But unlike gem gathering tools, skins are still the same price unlimited copies as it was with only one.

The only thing I remotely see as a “cash-grab” is the exclusiveness of new armor skins to the TP. Come on, throw us a bone every now and then and add an additional look to each of the armor weights.

They really need to display the year threads or posts were made. Someone mentioned transmutation crystals and stones. so I’d assume this is an old as heck thread as 3 stones = 1 charge, and they’re common map completion and pvp rewards.
there really isn’t much in the way of cash grab other than exclusive armors, and the cash shop sure isn’t pay to win by any means.

Behellagh.1468:

Changes brought on by the wardrobe is a mix bag. Pros, skins are account bound. Skins can be unlocked via salvage which a lot of players are doing for luck so it’s “free”. Trans Charges are cheaper than crystals but more expensive than stones, which hurts skinners on under level 80 characters. But unlike gem gathering tools, skins are still the same price unlimited copies as it was with only one.

The only thing I remotely see as a “cash-grab” is the exclusiveness of new armor skins to the TP. Come on, throw us a bone every now and then and add an additional look to each of the armor weights.

They do and they keep adding. Just because some are TP only doesn’t bother me at all. One set can only be had if you have HoM in GW1.

1. You can get along with the free bag slots and 1 bank tab. Be a little more discerning with what you keep, it’s not very difficult. And even so, buy the gems for gold if you can’t think of any reason why this game would be worth paying for.

2. Revive orbs and repair canisters are 35 gems each, that’s between 2 and 3 gold of gems depending on the time of day. You can buy 35 gems for gold and then buy the rez orb in the shop and get it out of your mail all while laying there dead, you don’t even need to carry this stuff around with you. This the the most baseless of all your complaints. These are rarely needed emergency items with a small gold sink attached to them. Calling them pay to win is laughable, and frankly you shouldn’t be doing fractal 40s if you can’t afford the 2.5g for an on the fly repair.

3. Complaining about being able buy to run your own PVP server, especially when you can do it without ever having to pay a penny unlike other games? Who’s twisting your arm to buy one anyway?

First of all, a basic point about economics must be made. GW2 and every other game out there exists for one purpose – as a money making venture. Games are not developed to break-even or operate at a loss. If GW2 does not make profit, GW2 does not exist. It’s not bad, it’s not evil, it’s not dirty. I have no problem with a.net creating a profit model that works for them. And I think the recent changes they made to make more items account-bound rather than soul-bound was a good one. But I think the topics in the original post – bank slots, revive orbs, etc. are very low impact issues that all have work arounds. I mean, throw in $10 or $20 and your slot issues go away.

My only frustration might be around the effort / cost involved in acquiring the rare items of the game – legendary items, some ascended gear, etc. While I understand those items should be difficult to get, I’ve been purely focused on acquiring a legendary item for the past five months and I’m only about a third of the way there. That’s playing about an hour a day. That seems excessive to consider it may take more than a year of focused farming effort to raise the items and gold needed. I computed the real cost of a 3000 gold legendary – convert that to gems and back to real cash, it’s just over $500 depending on the exchange rate. Not that anyone would actually pay for a legendary that way, but raising that kind of cash inside the game is tedious. That would be my only gripe.

OneLouder.2807:

First of all, a basic point about economics must be made. GW2 and every other game out there exists for one purpose – as a money making venture. Games are not developed to break-even or operate at a loss. If GW2 does not make profit, GW2 does not exist. It’s not bad, it’s not evil, it’s not dirty. I have no problem with a.net creating a profit model that works for them. And I think the recent changes they made to make more items account-bound rather than soul-bound was a good one. But I think the topics in the original post – bank slots, revive orbs, etc. are very low impact issues that all have work arounds. I mean, throw in $10 or $20 and your slot issues go away.

My only frustration might be around the effort / cost involved in acquiring the rare items of the game – legendary items, some ascended gear, etc. While I understand those items should be difficult to get, I’ve been purely focused on acquiring a legendary item for the past five months and I’m only about a third of the way there. That’s playing about an hour a day. That seems excessive to consider it may take more than a year of focused farming effort to raise the items and gold needed. I computed the real cost of a 3000 gold legendary – convert that to gems and back to real cash, it’s just over $500 depending on the exchange rate. Not that anyone would actually pay for a legendary that way, but raising that kind of cash inside the game is tedious. That would be my only gripe.

That is why they are called ‘LEGENDARY’ – they should be hard to get.