Guild Wars 2

Actually, sad truth, it’s cheaper to buy than craft in this game.
Yes, I know it flies in the face of reason and common sense.

I play maybe max 2 hours daily, and I have no problems whatsoever earning money.
That being said, unfortunately you can’t “become wealthy” exploring zones or doing events.

Here’s a suggestion, buy 10 Rose skins and resell them after a month. Profit granted.

For me I just run around working on the dailys and hit all the world bosses, sell EVERYTHING you get (blues and greens to NPC, and all the rares on the tp), gather and mine every node you see doing these, after a couple days sell all the crafting materials. Easy money that builds up just by doing simple stuff. If I have time i’ll log into my alts and hit the world bosses again, you won’t get the bonus chest but the big chest sometimes drops rares so you could make some extra money.

In general, I think the rate of earning gold is fine.

I think the problem is that drops are too scarce and that there are some items, like the T3 cultural items which are ridiculously expensive compared to the rest of the economy.

Ok, let me rephrase your initial statement so that it is actually true.

It is too hard to earn gold in this game if you do not do dungeons (cof p1) or world bosses. The fastest ways to make money in this game are too easy and require no skill. I enjoy aspects of the game that require more player skill such as tpvp, wvw and fotm but these are all incredibly unrewarding and I am left broke, while others are lazily making thousands of gold farming cof p1.

Now this is a valid complaint, not that you can only (lol) make a few gold an hour farming cof p1 compared to the elistist (lol) groups that can make a lot more.

Get a job>buy gems>convert to gold. I stopped farming and resorted to this method after nearly quitting the game 2 months in when farming hardcore for my legendary. My life is so much better not worrying about farming CoF for money. Now I only wait for release day to maximize my gem-gold conversion rate, and go nuts. It’s fantastic and I urge you all to support ArenaNet this way. The game is so great without farming.

CoF should not be the factor in being rich in this game or not. Cheers to the players who love running CoF to earn gold, but this shouldn’t be the “way”. All dungeons should be Gold Earners, and hopefully ArenaNet can balance all the dungeons to be equally attractive.

On the topic of Gold Earning, you can play the TP, farm events, do the events that drop the chests, farm mats, dungeons, WvW (yes I make money off WvW), or just plain out killing enemies.

OH! You can be one of those players who sell themselves too. I’m not saying that in a dirty, sexual way though some do… I know talented flute players who earn tips, mesmers who portal, etc.

Forst.5863:

Casual gameplay is not rewarding enough given the policy-aims Arenanet stated.

.

Wrong

At most, I play about an hour or 2 a day, maybe 3 if I spend it chatting in map chat. I always have enough to give away 10-20 gold and then it all back rather quickly. I rarely run dungeons and only some times do the major boss events,

Farm give A LOT of gold, but play the like a normal person don’t.

I log on, in general, for about half an hour to an hour every day to do my dailies. Sometimes I do the metas and salvage the rares to get ectos for the Legendary I’m working on (Flameseeker Prophecies, for those curious). I make around 10-20 gold in a month. This may not be exact, and my funds were boosted recently by the gold boost from the Achievement Chests, but still, this is not an insignificant amount of coin, and from only about a half hour to an hour a day.

Sure it’s not the dozens and dozens of gold in CoF, and sure, I only have 100 gold stored in my bank since I started saving up for my legendary (And that was WITH occasional expenses to expand my Bank Storage Space) but yanno what? I’m fine with that. I don’t need it NOW.

Patience, and varied gameplay will get you what you want in time.

The Boz.2038:

sinzer.4018:

Gold really isn’t that hard to get. I don’t farm, i don’t play the TP or anything. I just mess around and sell stuff i find. I’ve got 60g that’s just sitting there.

…60g is ~nothing.

you forget that this is 60g that’s just sitting there, as in i have no use for the majority of it. I only need gold for repairs, consumables and WP. When you’ve got BiS equipment and you think legendaries look awful what use is gold?

A few people have mentioned guilds, and OP mentioned having friends and friends of friends. OP, have you considered making your own guild? One of the main reasons CoF takes a long time is due to people not knowing what’s going on, but once everyone has an idea of what is going on CoF is really fast. It’s also a social thing. Want to catch up with friends? As it has been stated, CoF is pretty mindless. Use it like a chatroom. A few friends want to try a different dungeon? Now they have a place to ask and a group of people that are more interested in having fun than leet grindz.

I do have to agree with the OP though. Gold can be pretty scarce. Until I joined a guild and started regularly doing dungeons/world bosses, I had a hard time getting over 15 gold to gear up. Now, I regularly make 10-15g in the hour or two that I play. I don’t do WvW as much as I used to, and I’m definitely more focused on world exploration, but at the end of the day it’s the dungeons that are doing the most.

So lets check on my playing history. Played for 2 months from launch, and quit for a long time. just got back 2 months ago. Before I left, I had about 8 gold. I earned a little more doing all the normal stuffs, no COF runs/farm. However, I needed gold, so I found ways. Now in 2 months, I am sitting on 460 gold… just saying…

You don’t need anything special to do cof runs. Speed runs are only worth it if you want spend hours and hours on cof p1. An average party with a mix of classes and builds can easily do a run under 10 mins. If you want to play with your friends who are new? Then watch some guides and practise and after a few runs, you’ll be making gold as fast as the rest of us.

You like world exploration? You can make gold there. Before you merch any blues/greens you’ve gathered in a zone, check the TP – some of them sell for much higher than merchant price (especially mid-level greens and rares). Gather everything. Hit up world chest events for rares.

Also, be smart about what you spend your gold on. You can get weapons and armour sets with dungeon tokens and make money while you’re getting them. When buying on TP, always put in orders, and if there’s temporary content (like the sentinel jewels or wintersday stuff) buy when the event is up and sell a few months later for mega profits.

While I don’t find obtaining gold that bad. I understand how people could be a little upset because the rewards for some content are lacking in the game. The “Play your way” philosophy doesn’t really account for how much gold you would like to have. Pretty soon CoF will get its nerf and people will be out looking for the next best thing which probably means orr overflows.

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet but if you salvage everything then you lose a substantial amount of money compared to selling to vendors/trading post.The mystic forge can lose you substantial amounts of money too. I think you have a low amount of money for the time played and this might explain it.

The original post isn’t what I expected from the title however. The high price of cosmetic items from vendors isn’t particularly game breaking. The tier 3 racial sets are meant to have some prestige even this long after release and that comes through rarity and that comes through cost in this case. Legendary weapons also only have prestige because of the difficulty in obtaining them. Achieving top line stat gear is quite possible on a low budget and as long as that’s achievable then the game is working and cosmetics can have any rarity or cost.

if COF1 takes you more than 7 minutes, you must think seriously how are you playing.

Fox Soul.4809:

if COF1 takes you more than 7 minutes, you must think seriously how are you playing.

You assume everyone runs 4 zerk warriors and a mesmer…

Fox Soul.4809:

if COF1 takes you more than 7 minutes, you must think seriously how are you playing.

not everyone is a cof farmer. cof money to me is chump change as my source of income.

Amun Ra.6435:

Fox Soul.4809:

if COF1 takes you more than 7 minutes, you must think seriously how are you playing.

You assume everyone runs 4 zerk warriors and a mesmer…

you dont need 4 warr zerk and a mesmer for do COF in less than seven minutes… You just dont need to have hands… play hitting your keyboard with your head and profit.

Man I’ve seen several posts in this thread alone that say they are trying to save money but at the same time they are converting gold to gems for a bank slot..

Wth people just spend 8-10g on those 1,000 influence cards make your own guild and use it as a bank it only takes (if memory serves) 4,000 influence to get the 50 slot guild bank, and you can make multiple guilds. YW

Fox Soul.4809:

Amun Ra.6435:

Fox Soul.4809:

if COF1 takes you more than 7 minutes, you must think seriously how are you playing.

You assume everyone runs 4 zerk warriors and a mesmer…

you dont need 4 warr zerk and a mesmer for do COF in less than seven minutes… You just dont need to have hands… play hitting your keyboard with your head and profit.

Huh? Were you hitting your keyboard with your head just now?

Ok we need to be reassured of a few things here

If you don’t plan on buying anything flashy, casually playing this game will net you enough gold to survive. If you however want vision of the mists, t3 cultural, *insert whatever other item you want that costs a decent amount, its going to take you a while to casually earn all that gold.

The 2 things I listed above were examples and a better example would be wanting to buy something like Aether. All you casual players tell me how long it takes you to make the gold needed to buy that. Oh whats that? You dont want/need to buy that? Well thats weird, because some people do want to buy that and thats their set goal. Replying with something like ‘’But you dont need to buy thakittens just a skin’’ is not a proper rebuttal either.

If you have 50 gold and all you need money for is repairs, wp’s and consumables, the OP’s concern doesnt affect you and you shouldnt post in this thread. If you geared up all your characters 8 months ago and have been saving every penny since with nothing to buy, this thread doesnt concern you. If you have to do world bosses and cof p1 runs everyday to keep chipping away at buying whatever weapon/mini/tonic etc you want, then this thread affects you.

Making gold at a decent rate in GW2 consists of flipping on the TP and cof p1 farming. Anything else is casual and if you plan on getting anything that costs a pretty penny you’re going to be chipping away for a while. But that doesn’t concern some of you because you play casually and you have no problem with waiting 3 months to buy said item. That isn’t a bad thing, it’s just that not everybody plays casually and or has the patience to play that long just to afford 1-2 things

Amun Ra.6435:

Fox Soul.4809:

Amun Ra.6435:

Fox Soul.4809:

if COF1 takes you more than 7 minutes, you must think seriously how are you playing.

You assume everyone runs 4 zerk warriors and a mesmer…

you dont need 4 warr zerk and a mesmer for do COF in less than seven minutes… You just dont need to have hands… play hitting your keyboard with your head and profit.

Huh? Were you hitting your keyboard with your head just now?

Y E S!!

The main issue behind these kinds of complaints is “I want it because I can’t have it.” Weapon tickets from rng boxes, Legendaries, equipment that costs laurels, T3 cultural gear, these things were all designed to take some amount of time and/or effort to collect.

The vast majority of things in the game are cheap, some so cheap that trying to sell them to another player is futile because 10,000 others are doing the same. You can gear up a toon in exotics via karma, a few gold, badges, laurels, or some mix of these things. Over half the weapon and armor skins are available on the TP for pennies, of there are karma/badge versions that you can buy. Dungeon armor isn’t out of reach either, judging by how many “look at me! I’m on fire!” armor sets I’ve seen since the game released.

Personally, I think a lot of the T1 and T2 cultural gear looks better than T3, is a lot cheaper and can be worn earlier. Most other types of armor exist in low-cost blue and green versions and can be bought from karma vendors or from the TP and transmuted on level-appropriate gear. The handful of exotic skins are more expensive but still within reach if you want them.

If you play to please yourself, find a look you like and keep it for as long as you like. How much it costs doesn’t matter. If you play to make other people jealous, then don’t expect Anet to make the things you want easy to get. The cost/effort involved in getting them is the point to having them.

At OP. I think you would find CoE more profitable than CoF. The drops of charged cores and lodestones makes good money, and it doesn’t sound like you have the CoF run down with your buddies. 10 minutes should be the higher end of the spectrum, not the lower end. (6-7 minutes in mesmer +4 war group, 8-10 minutes in mixed group).

I also find that selling mats and playing the game can be quite profitable. I barely run CoF speedruns and never farm Orr. In the past 2 (maybe it was 3?) weeks I went from 70 silver to 104 gold, then used 60 gold to craft an alt from 20-70 and by the time it was 80 I had another 20-30 gold. I now have 15 gold on one char, 45 gold on the other and I purchased a full set of exotic armor, weapons and trinkets along with sigils and runes for my new 80.

It’s actually pretty easy to earn gold, it just isn’t ideal in terms of fun imo. If you log in and do all the chest events every day, you can get quite a bit of gold every day from ectos. You can also spam CoF runs.

Jzaku.9765:

I literally am only able to play on weekends and I don’t feel terribly poor. If you’re spending 30 minutes per cof p1 run something is terribly wrong, on my specially casual all-classes-are-fine runs the maximum is generally 10 minutes.

Now, your post might have some weight once they start implementing all of that terrible time gated content and income but as it is now you just have no grounds to stand on.

Depends on how you are counting the time. If you have to redo the gate event after every run it could easily take that long “per run”. This has actually happened to us, the one time someone decided to “hey! lets farm CoFp1, it’ll only take 8minutes a run…” … 3 hours later “hmm that wasn’t really 8minutes a run if you include the gate events”. We were doing this on an EU server while most Europe should be asleep so that wasn’t too surprising but it is possible. Never doing that again. -_-

On the other hand the 80s/run seems a bit off. I don’t use gold find but we tend to kill most things in dungeons and I average 1g/run regardless of which dungeon we do. This does not include coin from selling drops(I salvage/forge most of mine). I would expect a CoF farmer to have as much GF as possible and beat my average.

To sum up this thread: Stuff that I want should be cheaper, since I want it.

This is about the OP not being able to decide to play for fun, or play for money. But here’s something that many people already know: You can play for fun & money!

You want the gear? Work for it. You want to buy it faster? Purchase Gems, and convert to Gold. There are many ways to get what you want in this game. How do you think Legendary weapon holders got to where we are? We farmed monsters, and/or the market. It was our choice to make, so there’s no room for complaining.

Based on a tip above I went to my collectibles tab in the bank and noticed I had a ton of stuff there that I had no immediate use for. I had been in the habit of storing at least 250 of everything thinking I would use it one day and this worked well while leveling alts. I sold off less than a third of it and made 195g. That was rather shocking. Some “poor” people may be sitting on a ton of gold in bank if you’ve been playing for awhile.

Raine.1394:

Based on a tip above I went to my collectibles tab in the bank and noticed I had a ton of stuff there that I had no immediate use for. I had been in the habit of storing at least 250 of everything thinking I would use it one day and this worked well while leveling alts. I sold off less than a third of it and made 195g. That was rather shocking. Some “poor” people may be sitting on a ton of gold in bank if you’ve been playing for awhile.

I got my first two “extra” character slots that way.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You want the gear? Work for it..

This is a game, not work… And if it were work, it would be a poor one at that; one that rewards time doing easy and mindless things, like being a Chinese factory worker, instead of rewarding skilled behavior like the work of those who have build a career (engineers, doctors, and so on).

The reward system is bad, in that it focuses rewards on doing very easy content over and over again, aka grind, like all other MMORPGs do (and exploiting the TP, which is one more way to reward exploiters). The main flaw here is that grind does not deserve a reward.

I agree with the matter of perspective angle. Your personal goals should be realistic in relation to your playstyle. That said, I would never think it is ok to treat a game the way I would a job. That’s absolutely silly. There is definitely a more complex nature to the micro-transaction and casual vs. non casual state of the game and it is worth talking about in a non-combative way.

However the more combative posts in this thread just kind of sound like rich people (hardcores) blaming poor people (casuals) for their own ineptitudes in an effort to elevate their own achievements. Keep it classy guys and gals.

Well its all on what your using your gold for and how much you want. If your going for the top end items both looks gear and food then yes it should be harder to get these gold cost. But for the lower end GW2 is super easy to keep up with gear (countless free items they give you though out the game) even giving out free look items. I am not sure if your just at this point of putting no value on items that are given to you for free or simply want every thing to be just handed to you because as things stand its easy to get items you need and easy to get most of the items you want.

Erasculio.2914:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You want the gear? Work for it..

This is a game, not work….

And thus you shouldn’t care that I get rewarded for enjoying my achievement quests. If this were work, I wouldn’t mind, since I enjoy every moment of it.

Sharpkiller.8516:

Ok, let me rephrase your initial statement so that it is actually true.

It is too hard to earn gold in this game if you do not do dungeons (cof p1) or world bosses. The fastest ways to make money in this game are too easy and require no skill. I enjoy aspects of the game that require more player skill such as tpvp, wvw and fotm but these are all incredibly unrewarding and I am left broke, while others are lazily making thousands of gold farming cof p1.

Now this is a valid complaint, not that you can only (lol) make a few gold an hour farming cof p1 compared to the elistist (lol) groups that can make a lot more.

This is the only issue I have. Being WvW, FotM and other dungeons just aren’t as profitible as CoF1 or World Bosses. I’ve made a lot of money in this game but I tend to spend it just as quick as I earn it. That’s no ones fault but my own. I want to spend all of my time in WvW but I can’t, I literally need to go out and do PvE and dungeons or convert gems to gold in order to maintain the status quo.

I’m going to tell it like it is;

One’s perspective on gold acquisition is directly tied to the price of items in the game, and how far one is from having that much gold (one’s personal rate of income)—and that’s exactly how it is in the real world—no brainer, but just think about this for a moment; There are lots of different people out there doing different things.

The Rich
‘Pro’ Trade Post flippers
Hardcore dungeon speed runners
Real-world wealthy gem buyers
One-time (or more) lucky RNG winners of high-priced items

The Middle-to-low income class
Everyone else

If you’re not in The Rich category of gamer, you will always “have to work quite a lot for [your] gold”. There is no way around this, not here in GW2 nor in the real world.

And finally, and this is an important concept—even if there was some ‘magical’ way for you to get more gold (as a “middle-to-low income class” gamer) the same would apply to everyone else as well, and prices for everything would naturally increase accordingly, and so you and everyone else would be in no different a situation.

So you need to decide where you want to be. If that ain’t in The Rich category, you’ll just need to be satisfied with your lot.

Pure Heart.1456:

I’m going to tell it like it is;

One’s perspective on gold is acquisition is directly tied to the price of items in the game, and how far one is from having that much gold (one’s personal rate of income)—and that’s exactly how it is in the real world—no brainer, but just think about this for a moment; There are lots of different people out there doing different things.

The Rich
‘Pro’ Trade Post flippers
Hardcore dungeon speed runners
Real-world wealthy gem buyers
One-time (or more) lucky RNG winners of high-priced items

The middle-to-low income class
Everyone else

If you’re not in The Rich category of gamer, you will always “have to work quite a lot for [your] gold”. There is no way around this, not here in GW2 nor in the real world.

And finally, and this is an important concept—even if there was some ‘magical’ way for you to get more gold (as a “middle-to-low income class” gamer) the same would apply to everyone else as well, and prices for everything would naturally increase accordingly, and so you and everyone else would be in no different a situation.

Quoted for truth.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Erasculio.2914:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You want the gear? Work for it..

This is a game, not work….

And thus you shouldn’t care that I get rewarded for enjoying my achievement quests. If this were work, I wouldn’t mind, since I enjoy every moment of it.

Unfortunatelly, since we are playing the same game, I have to care. Because if ArenaNet places all rewards behind a huge wall of grind… That’s not only the kind of activity they will make the most, but that’s also the kind of player who they will cater the most.

MMORPGs can be mediocre games because they don’t need to be fun – they can cater to players who just want to grind through mediocre content in order to get rewards. Those players, in order hand, are not going to complain when the game lacks fun content – they are going to complain when the game lacks rewards. Which means, games catering to grinders tend to get more and more grind focused as time goes by.

Is ArenaNet catering to grinders, and becoming more and more grind focused as time goes by? Regardless of your specific answer, this kind of change has an impact on everyone playing the game, not only on you. Thus yes, I care about what rewards you get.

Pure Heart.1456:

I’m going to tell it like it is;

One’s perspective on gold acquisition is directly tied to the price of items in the game, and how far one is from having that much gold (one’s personal rate of income)—and that’s exactly how it is in the real world—no brainer, but just think about this for a moment; There are lots of different people out there doing different things.

The Rich
‘Pro’ Trade Post flippers
Hardcore dungeon speed runners
Real-world wealthy gem buyers
One-time (or more) lucky RNG winners of high-priced items

The Middle-to-low income class
Everyone else

If you’re not in The Rich category of gamer, you will always “have to work quite a lot for [your] gold”. There is no way around this, not here in GW2 nor in the real world.

Your real life metaphor fails, in that GW2, unlike the real world, doesn’t reward skill, rather time spent.

“Oh, real life rewards time spent more than skill” – nope. I know we have some teenagers here who think about working extra shifts at MacDonalds, but that isn’t the difference between time spent and skill. In real life, “time spent” is being a Chinese factory worker, working 18 hours per day 6 days per week making repetitive and mindless motions that a bot could do – it’s almost exactly the description of grind, for the records. Meanwhile, “skill” is being someone like Steve Jobs.

Now, who had a higher salary? A Chinese factory worker, or Steve Jobs? Guess who worked more hours per week? And guess who was more skilled?

In GW2, the Chinese factory worker would get better rewards. That’s how all MMORPGs are, for the records. ArenaNet could have build something different… But they didn’t.

Minos.3450:

I don’t see how you could get only a hundred or so gold in seven months.

Since headstart I’ve never had more then twenty gold at any one time, and that took well over a month to amass. Frankly I’d be surprised if my account’s life time gold total was a hundred.

The people who are used to farming gold and scam…err….“playing” the trading post do so so easily now that they don’t even realize it. For casual players who actually don’t make amassing a fortune a priority gold is nearly impossible to come by. Heck, the only way I can be sure to get a gold is to grind out dailies for a week and use the laurels for a few unidentified dyes to toss on the trading post.

This has probably been brought up already, but T3 armor costs 119g, not 112. And for the record, I bought T3 armor for my asura guardian, then made that 119g back in 3 weeks of casual dungeoneering.

I’ve been playing since February fairly casually. I commute 5 days a week to a 40 hour corporate job, am a homeowner who has to maintain upkeep on a home and yard, and I’m a single dad of a 2 year old. So my play time is limited to nights when my daughter goes to bed and on the weekends when she is with her mom, granted I have nothing else to do.

That’s pretty casual.

I’ve got PLENTY of gold in this game so far and I’ve spent it fairly recklessly, especially during the first few months I played when I didn’t understand the game well. I’ve got 2 level 80s, one with map completion, both all wearing ascended gear (minus back), one with a mix of T1/T3 cultural armor and the other with Vigil armor and aT2 cultural helm. Plus I’ve purchased The Crossing staff which was about 120G, plus I’ve bought a Commander hat. One character has Abyss and a F&F dye for her armor.

Through all of that I’ve still got over 100G banked and I don’t sell my materials; in fact I’ve got over 250 globs as I’ve had to start collecting them in my bank now. I don’t farm, I don’t ever run CoF, and I often spend a good amount of time in WvW.

So has gold been hard to come by for me? Not in the slightest. I’ve got everything I want for both 80s (except for 20 slot bags) and I’ve still got plenty of gold. I’d say I gain 1-2 gold each time I log in to play.

Arkham Creed.7358:

Frankly I’d be surprised if my account’s life time gold total was a hundred.

The “Gold Hoarder” achievement track helps to know this, I think. I’m not sure if you can get the “Golden” title by placing 1 gold in the bank, retrieving it then placing the 1 gold back 100 times, but if that’s not how it works and if you place most of your gold in the bank instead of keeping it with your characters… Then your progress in that achievement would more or less show how much gold you have earned until now.

I’m at more or less 100 gold, for the records. After more or less about 800 hours of play… Which means, 12.5 silver per hour?

(Hah, the filter censors you if you try to say “less” followed by “800”, it thinks you are trying to use homossexual slang.)

Erasculio.2914:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Erasculio.2914:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You want the gear? Work for it..

This is a game, not work….

And thus you shouldn’t care that I get rewarded for enjoying my achievement quests. If this were work, I wouldn’t mind, since I enjoy every moment of it.

Unfortunatelly, since we are playing the same game, I have to care. Because if ArenaNet places all rewards behind a huge wall of grind… That’s not only the kind of activity they will make the most, but that’s also the kind of player who they will cater the most.

MMORPGs can be mediocre games because they don’t need to be fun – they can cater to players who just want to grind through mediocre content in order to get rewards. Those players, in order hand, are not going to complain when the game lacks fun content – they are going to complain when the game lacks rewards. Which means, games catering to grinders tend to get more and more grind focused as time goes by.

Is ArenaNet catering to grinders, and becoming more and more grind focused as time goes by? Regardless of your specific answer, this kind of change has an impact on everyone playing the game, not only on you. Thus yes, I care about what rewards you get.

Pure Heart.1456:

I’m going to tell it like it is;

One’s perspective on gold acquisition is directly tied to the price of items in the game, and how far one is from having that much gold (one’s personal rate of income)—and that’s exactly how it is in the real world—no brainer, but just think about this for a moment; There are lots of different people out there doing different things.

The Rich
‘Pro’ Trade Post flippers
Hardcore dungeon speed runners
Real-world wealthy gem buyers
One-time (or more) lucky RNG winners of high-priced items

The Middle-to-low income class
Everyone else

If you’re not in The Rich category of gamer, you will always “have to work quite a lot for [your] gold”. There is no way around this, not here in GW2 nor in the real world.

Your real life metaphor fails, in that GW2, unlike the real world, doesn’t reward skill, rather time spent.

“Oh, real life rewards time spent more than skill” – nope. I know we have some teenagers here who think about working extra shifts at MacDonalds, but that isn’t the difference between time spent and skill. In real life, “time spent” is being a Chinese factory worker, working 18 hours per day 6 days per week making repetitive and mindless motions that a bot could do – it’s almost exactly the description of grind, for the records. Meanwhile, “skill” is being someone like Steve Jobs.

Now, who had a higher salary? A Chinese factory worker, or Steve Jobs? Guess who worked more hours per week? And guess who was more skilled?

In GW2, the Chinese factory worker would get better rewards. That’s how all MMORPGs are, for the records. ArenaNet could have build something different… But they didn’t.

You’re delusional. I’ve been tested as above average intelligence, have a natural “gift” for science and mathematics, and a college education. Know what I do for a living? Wait tables at a Mexican restaurant. The real world doesn’t reward skill; it rewards prestige.

Oh it used to reward skill, back when men like Steve Jobs were starting out, but these days that isn’t true. These days it is all about how many big names you can toss at people. Who you know, and where you’ve been. Yeah I went to college, but I didn’t go to the right college for my education to be taken seriously. Yeah I’m pretty smart, but I don’t have the right people telling potential employers that. Things like skill and knowledge are irrelevant in the real world; just look at how we celebrate the most useless and brainless human beings and shower them with wealth.

Skilled….yeah right. What kind of “skill” does Paris Hilton have? Nothing unless you count “rich daddy.”

If you’re casual then stay casual. What do you need gold for?
Skins are vanity items. You don’t “need” them since the stats are the same.

If you’re casual, you can still have full exotic armor, weapons, sigils, runes…
Skins are rewards for grinders or people who give money to Anet.

Pure Heart.1456:

I’m going to tell it like it is;

One’s perspective on gold acquisition is directly tied to the price of items in the game, and how far one is from having that much gold (one’s personal rate of income)—and that’s exactly how it is in the real world—no brainer, but just think about this for a moment; There are lots of different people out there doing different things.

The Rich
‘Pro’ Trade Post flippers
Hardcore dungeon speed runners
Real-world wealthy gem buyers
One-time (or more) lucky RNG winners of high-priced items

The Middle-to-low income class
Everyone else

If you’re not in The Rich category of gamer, you will always “have to work quite a lot for [your] gold”. There is no way around this, not here in GW2 nor in the real world.

And finally, and this is an important concept—even if there was some ‘magical’ way for you to get more gold (as a “middle-to-low income class” gamer) the same would apply to everyone else as well, and prices for everything would naturally increase accordingly, and so you and everyone else would be in no different a situation.

So you need to decide where you want to be. If that ain’t in The Rich category, you’ll just need to be satisfied with your lot.

This is exactly right and even though I’m not in the rich category, I’m relatively satisfied with where I am.

Arkham Creed.7358:

You’re delusional. I’ve been tested as above average intelligence, have a natural “gift” for science and mathematics, and a college education. Know what I do for a living? Wait tables at a Mexican restaurant. The real world doesn’t reward skill; it rewards prestige.

Of course, the real world rewards more than skill; it rewards beauty, influence, status. But it also rewards skill. There are multiple examples of this – a look at Time’s list of influential people shows many examples of skilled people who have been rewarded for it.

I think the point is that the world rewards real skill, not self delusional skill.

Zanshin.5379:

Skins are vanity items. You don’t “need” them since the stats are the same.

If you’re casual, you can still have full exotic armor, weapons, sigils, runes…
Skins are rewards for grinders or people who give money to Anet.

“Need” is irrelevant, considering how you don’t need to play a game in the first place. And you are right, skins are a reward for grind… But grind doesn’t deserve a reward. That’s the main flaw in the system.

Erasculio.2914:

Arkham Creed.7358:

You’re delusional. I’ve been tested as above average intelligence, have a natural “gift” for science and mathematics, and a college education. Know what I do for a living? Wait tables at a Mexican restaurant. The real world doesn’t reward skill; it rewards prestige.

Of course, the real world rewards more than skill; it rewards beauty, influence, status. But it also rewards skill. There are multiple examples of this – a look at Time’s list of influential people shows many examples of skilled people who have been rewarded for it.

I think the point is that the world rewards real skill, not self delusional skill.

And how many of those people got their start in the last twenty years? The real world used to reward skill.

Erasculio.2914:

Your real life metaphor fails, in that GW2, unlike the real world, doesn’t reward skill, rather time spent.

Erasculio, I disagree; it doesn’t fail. And GW2 does reward skill—it just depends on which skills. In fact, your own following statements support this.

Erasculio.2914:

“Oh, real life rewards time spent more than skill” – nope.
[snip]
In real life, “time spent” is being a Chinese factory worker, working 18 hours per day 6 days per week making repetitive and mindless motions that a bot could do – it’s almost exactly the description of grind, for the records. Meanwhile, “skill” is being someone like Steve Jobs.
[snip]

Exactly. The middle-to-low class workers, while still skilled in something, grind for pittance, while the other Rich people, also skilled (e.g. TP flippers: see real world investors, hard core dungeon runners: see people dedicated to achieving etc.

Erasculio.2914:

Now, who had a higher salary? A Chinese factory worker, or Steve Jobs? Guess who worked more hours per week? And guess who was more skilled?

Both parties are skilled. not necessarily more skilled, but they are different skills.

Erasculio.2914:

In GW2, the Chinese factory worker would get better rewards. That’s how all MMORPGs are, for the records.

You could liken The Chinese factory workers to be the hardcore dungeon speed runners and farmers, or you could liken them to the average gamer casually dipping into a bit of everything over and over—their wealth varying accordingly, but they will never be as rich as the TP flippers (Steve Jobs).

Pure Heart.1456:

You could liken The Chinese factory workers to be the hardcore dungeon speed runners and farmers, or you could liken them to the average gamer casually dipping into a bit of everything over and over—their wealth varying accordingly, but they will never be as rich as the TP flippers (Steve Jobs).

You could liken the farmers to a potato and the TP flippers to a tomato, wouldn’t make your point any more valid. Saying the average game is “dipping into a bit of everything over and over” is a rather strenuous argument that doesn’t hold much weight; negating how a Chinese factory worker is almost the perfect example of MMORPG grind is just nonsensical, considering how obvious that metaphor is.

I do agree with your point about the TP players, too bad they are basically exploiting other players to get rich. If not for that, they would be better than the grinders.

Arkham Creed.7358:

Erasculio.2914:

Arkham Creed.7358:

You’re delusional. I’ve been tested as above average intelligence, have a natural “gift” for science and mathematics, and a college education. Know what I do for a living? Wait tables at a Mexican restaurant. The real world doesn’t reward skill; it rewards prestige.

Of course, the real world rewards more than skill; it rewards beauty, influence, status. But it also rewards skill. There are multiple examples of this – a look at Time’s list of influential people shows many examples of skilled people who have been rewarded for it.

I think the point is that the world rewards real skill, not self delusional skill.

And how many of those people got their start in the last twenty years? The real world used to reward skill.

You didn’t read the list itself, did you?