Guild Wars 2

Sorry, but I wanted to get all of this out.

It doesnt really matter, where my gold comes from, if the simple fact that i have more than you makes you feel uncomfortable or unfairly treated.

Honestly, the gold itself doesn’t bother me at all. You could have 10m gold for all I care. What bothers me is what having that gold allows you to buy (if you want them, doesn’t matter whether you do or not). There are plenty of items in the game that cost thousands of gold to procure. If I had substantially less gold than you, but I still had plenty that I could buy every item on the TP that I was interested in and still have plenty left over for a rainy day, then I wouldn’t mind in the least you having more.

So you don’t dislike the gold, you dislike that he can spend it. I see the logic…or lack thereof. Consider this: if you had the gold to buy every item on the TP that you wanted plus some, what would keep you playing? What motivation or goal would cause you to log on? Personally, I’ve found I don’t log on as much right after finishing a big goal because I haven’t set a new one to work towards.

Ohoni.6057:

I your personal perception of others that are better off than you is so important to you, I am not sure if an mmo is the right game for you and I would say that a solo rpg is what you are looking for.

And if you can play this game for 10K hours and not even care about “alts, . . .style, . . . gear, skins minis, dyes or other non-essential shenanigans,” then I’m not sure GW2 is the right game for you, you might be happier with a more pure economic simulator like EVE, one where the economy does not have actual impact on people trying to enjoy an adventure game about sword and armor.

He isn’t the one complaining about the game, you are. He is fine with the game as it is, and enjoys it enough to log 10k hours. You don’t seem to enjoy it, but rather despise some parts of it. The only suggestion here is to find another game that caters more to the parts you do like. Now, if you would mind proving that it affects you enjoying the game….

Ohoni.6057:

Why is it that i dont feel neglected by anet because other players can earn stuff with their playstyle that i cant while trading but you feel worse off just because i have alot of gold?

I don’t know, and ultimately it doesn’t matter. You’re you, I’m me, everybody’s different.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, unless it’s your feelings that are hurt. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, but Anet should still change the game to be the way I want it.
/sarcasm

Ohoni.6057:

Seems like a personal problem rather than a problem with the game.

It’s a personal problem I have with the game, yes. You say that as if that means it’s an irrelevant problem. Personal problems are not irrelevant when the game is populated by people. Personal problems ARE game problems.

Again, find another game that doesn’t involve the mechanics you have a problem with. Again, you seem to think you speak for the casual playerbase as a whole. You don’t. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of people don’t care about the TP.

Ohoni.6057:

How do I affect the game any differently compared to someone who buys his wealth in game with real currency?

Not much, although personally I’m no fan of those sorts either. If there is any distinction, it’s in how your methods prey on your fellow players, however much you try to pass that off as “them asking for it.”

Random player (A) just got a random exotic (1), for the sake of example. A could do pretty much anything they want to with 1. They choose to sell it to the highest bidder (B). As far as they are concerned, they are happy. They got to conduct the transaction they wanted, they have their money, and go on about their business. Why should A care what B does?

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~ Things would not be listed for thousands of gold if nobody could or would ever pay it. If anyone tried, someone would just undercut them. The costs of goods are all relative to what people are willing and able to pay for them. I don’t particularly blame you for taking advantage of the system as it exists, you’re just doing your best with the tools available. I blame ANet for allowing the system to exist in its current form, and what animus I hold towards you is only for you publicly defending the corrupt system.

You got one thing right: costs are relative to what people are willing and able to pay. Perhaps not you, perhaps not Player #231,468, but enough people. And yet you somehow seem to blame traders for these prices, or at least for inflation beyond what you can pay. No, what people like Wanze do only causes deflation.

Ohoni.6057:

Then, I guess we should all be thankful the rewards from dungeons were nerfed, as dungeon-runners made significantly more Gold per hour than all those that don’t have the ‘skill’ or desire to run dungeons.

Yeah, in general, so long as they spread that gold out to other activities.

Apparently you missed the sarcasm. Hint: there was sarcasm.

Ohoni.6057:

I guess the OP wants everything one does in-game to give the exact same rewards at the end of a play session, regardless of time spent or skill involved. Every player should have all the exact same things? Maybe all rewards should move to the Daily Log-in rewards?

I don’t really think that would be necessary, but yeah, ideally most in game activities would be in reasonable balance.

Straight from the horse’s mouth

Ohoni.6057:

But again, the larger point is that you’re making a facetious argument that you can’t craft ascended armor with just gold, which while true is largely irrelevant, since you can craft the ascended armor with MOSTLY gold, and with a VERY small amount of additional ingame skill and effort. ~snip~

No, the larger point is that gold isn’t everything and can’t get everything. Enough said.

Ohoni.6057:

If you have two players, one with zero bloodstone/dragonite/emp, but thousands of gold, and another with several bank tabs of those materials but zero gold, try to guess which of them could acquire enough mats to make a set of Ascended Armor first by completing normal ingame activities.

Now you’re the one making facetious arguments that gold buys pretty much anything. Hmm.

Ohoni.6057:

But the problem is that there are dozens, if not hundreds of people employing similar tactics, and it is their behavior in aggregate that cause the problems. It is the system that needs to change, not what you, personally, choose to do.

I have heard two problems from you. 1) someone else is earning/has more money, which isn’t a problem at all, and 2) other people can make money using ways I don’t like, which has nothing to do with the game and everything to do with you.

Ohoni.6057:

You are always saying that i am abusing and exploiting a system but all i do is listing my stuff at higher prices than the average player.
If they would list their loot at the same value as me, they would make the same profit, its that simple.

Which is an argument that has kept exactly zero confidence men out of prison.

Con men build trust with a victim, then use the other person’s confidence in them. This system is utterly anonymous; no trust or confidence is involved. The parallel is only in your mind. You didn’t even address what he said. anyone can do it.

Ohoni.6057:

The average player doesnt have the choice to list his loot at the same value as me?

He doesn’t have the understanding of what price to list things at and expect to ever make a return on that. ~snip~ If you have no idea that the price will rise, or even that it could fall further,then you have no reasonable expectation of positive returns, so just randomly listing items at prices well above the current level is not likely to pay off.

Yes, that’s called research, knowledge, and skill. Those three things, combined with the fact that most people don’t want to do it, are what make it profitable.

Ohoni.6057:

As I said, it’s like if there were a god-class in the game, but it required a certain level of skill to operate. Not more skill than other classes, just more skill than the average player would be able to display, and the returns for it are far and away superior to anything that any other class could possibly achieve, regardless of the skill applied to those classes.

Those were premises you did not originally state. Anyway, class balance is centered mostly around pvp, so that would really only matter if this was strong enough to become super dominant and widespread. We know TPers aren’t that widespread.

Ohoni.6057:

He understands how to abuse the ingame economy for his own benefit, that does not mean that he understands how the average player interacts with it. His problem is in not understanding human psychology, not in not understanding economic principles.

Again, stop pretending you speak for everyone. You don’t. Anyway, what is this “average player interaction” that we so utterly fail to understand, and how do you know the playerbase actually cares?

Ohoni.6057:

~snip~

Quite the opposite. You guys are defending a system that serves yourselves, at the expense of the majority of the game’s players. The playstyle I’m trying to reward is the playstyle that the overwhelming majority of the players embrace, and the “playstyle” that I’m trying to curtail is one that is only enjoyed by a tiny fraction of the game’s players. Don’t try to portray your side in this as the populist angle.

Then stop portraying your side as the populist angle, none of us speak for more than ourselves and maybe friends. As it is, you haven’t demonstrated it actually damages the play experience of the average player, or that the majority of the players agree with you. Give some non-anecdotal evidence of those, and then you begin to have a case.

Ohoni.6057:

but i dont go around complaining about the players who do these things because im just as capable of doing it too, i just choose not to and i accept that i wont receive the benefits because of my own unwillingness to work at it

That’s a very defeatist attitude, but why do you believe it would be beneficial to the game? Why should players have to employ systems that most of them do not enjoy to achieve that level of returns? Why shouldn’t the most enjoyable activities also be the most rewarding? Why does it benefit anyone to have to choose between “doing the things in game that I enjoy doing” or “being able to afford the things I want to have?”

Some people do enjoy using the TP. The most enjoyable activities are the most rewarding, precisely because they are so enjoyable. This is a game that sold on the motto, “Play how you want.” You can do exactly that; don’t throttle it by shutting off other, valid playstyles.

You started off pretty well, but then descended into a rant. I’ll reply to your final statement.

Every playstyle is throttled except for playing the tp for the sake of the economy. So if players do not find that particular playstyle fun, their rewards will be throttled. In essence shutting them off at a point for the sake of what? Easier economy balance? Less need for gold sinks? A certain dev’s prerogative? There are many ways to transfer the excess that tp fees of unregulated trade to other sink or diminished faucets.

Imagine if you will if raids become competitive and they rewarded every top time with a 2k gems for each player. This would be unrestricted so if a team beat their own time that day they could garner another 2k gems each and so on. Then they throttle all other methods of playstyle to avg about the same 10g an hour even playing the trading post.

What would your thoughts be about that? Speed raiding doesn’t add gold into the economy but is leaps and bounds beyond above, in terms of reward, compared to the rest of the game.

Kayberz.5346:

This comparison isnt even related. In the example the people are being GIVEN something while the others arnt, when it comes to legendarys in gw2 no one is getting free handouts while others arnt, people who put in the work get the reward, and those who dont complain its too much work. Those players complaining have just as much access to those legendarys, its their own choice not to work at it

Quick thought here: Sorry to be blunt, but you’re simply wrong. No, people are not being handed legendaries, but they can very easily be handed things like precursors, which is something that a significant percentage of the population will simply never see due to the rarity of the droprate. They are just one example of how RNG can work in a way that is not at all dissimilar to the experiment cited in the OP’s post.

Another example would be Teq weapons (which are a bit more precisely fitting, since precursors can now be crafted and don’t fit quite as well for that reason).

Concerning the topic in general:

• My impression is that most of the people who are ok with the reward system in this game are either mostly unaware of the progression of others, mostly hang around a group of friends who are at about the same place, or are at that sweet spot where they have good access to most of what they want but it’s an ongoing challenge to maintain so they feel pretty satisfied with where they are.

• My impression is that most of the people who are unsatisfied with the reward system in this game are either aware of the progression gap between them and others players and can’t seem to escape being aware of it, or would very much like certain items but notice a negative disparity between their ability to obtain these items and the ability of their peers to obtain the same items.

• Note that people who view themselves as “elite” or “hardworking” are more likely to be upset at the disparity between them and others if they are way behind the pack (this is part speculation on my part, part personal experience, but I think it stands to reason because people who view themselves as “average” or “lower tier” will have less of a reason to be bothered by a negative disparity with their peers… if only because they need only average progression to feel satisfied with where they are, whereas “elite” mindset people need above average progression to feel satisfied with where they are).

• An interesting note here is: If you see yourself as an “elite” or “above average” person, your best bet is probably to join an MMO from beta (or launch) and stick with it, giving you the best opportunities to stay at an above average level of progression, even with only average time investment. Due to the inevitable barriers of entry in any given MMO, coming late to the game and seeing yourself as elite means that you’ll need to put in an amount of effort that is consistently top tier, i.e. higher even than above average players. Otherwise, you will endlessly be playing catch up and never getting that satisfaction of being on the elite level.

• Retaining players is definitely a balancing act and an imperfect one. I make no apologies for the current state of the game, despite that. Some are ok with where it is, others are not, and I have no desire to make excuses for Anet at this stage. However, I don’t think it’s all wrong or all right. Some aspects work well for me. Others do not.

• Entitlement shouldn’t even be a word in this discussion, unless it is in academic reference to the phenomenon of people getting upset about handouts (ironically, there are those in this thread who are calling some of the posts entitlement, while somehow missing the fact that the study in the OP academically references how upset people get when their neighbors get a handout and they don’t – being upset about entitlement is really just being upset at the anticipation of said handout happening). In other words, the psychology in here only confirms the study mentioned in the OP.

• It is clear, I think, that people don’t like others getting handouts that put them on or below the level of the people who got the handouts. The psychology of it matches the studies rather well. This, unfortunately, is part of a more complex problem: The perception of earning one’s place versus the perception of being handed that place. For example, we all recognize winning the lottery as a handout, but few would probably recognize superior genes or unknowingly “being in the right place at the right time” as a handout. Most would probably say that the latter is inconsequential or find a way to see it as something of their own doing, i.e. “my genes may be good, but I made the right choices that led me here” or “I may not have realized it at the time, but my gut lead me to being in the right place at the right time.”

• It’s all very complicated and perhaps the underlying theme here is that how people feel and how they perceive is far more important than what one believes or thinks they should feel or perceive. But equally, what one believes or thinks another should feel or perceive is itself, at times, a product of what they feel and perceive. If that doesn’t make your head spin, then I don’t know what will.

Essence Snow.3194:

You started off pretty well, but then descended into a rant. I’ll reply to your final statement.

Every playstyle is throttled except for playing the tp for the sake of the economy. So if players do not find that particular playstyle fun, their rewards will be throttled. In essence shutting them off at a point for the sake of what? Easier economy balance? Less need for gold sinks? A certain dev’s prerogative? There are many ways to transfer the excess that tp fees of unregulated trade to other sink or diminished faucets.

Imagine if you will if raids become competitive and they rewarded every top time with a 2k gems for each player. This would be unrestricted so if a team beat their own time that day they could garner another 2k gems each and so on. Then they throttle all other methods of playstyle to avg about the same 10g an hour even playing the trading post.

What would your thoughts be about that? Speed raiding doesn’t add gold into the economy but is leaps and bounds beyond above, in terms of reward, compared to the rest of the game.

In general i dont disagree, Anet is responsible for throttling all rewards across game content.

But it isnt responsible for “rewards” from the trading post, as they arent rewards that are generated out of thin air, like the 2k gems for the best raiders, you mention.

Profits on the tp are given out by players because they choose to sell and buy at the prices they do. Thats why i dont see the point of some players asking Anet to “balance” tp profits in line with other content because its up to the players to do that.

I would have no problem, if the best raiders get 2k gems each daily for the best time, if that gem reward pool was paid for by all raid squads that participated.

You dont understand economics at all, the reason these playstyles are so much more lucrative is because they are doing the work that most people arnt willing to do, thats how entrepreneurship works

But that doesn’t make it a good thing for the game.

If everyone is rich, no-one is rich

Yes.

If it can seriously win a 1v5, then yes, it needs fixing just to keep the game in check. But a 1v2, at high skill levels? That’s what’s called skill cap. The more skilled you are at it, the better you do. Anet may want to hit an equilibrium of skill ceiling, but that’s rather unlikely.

But my point is assuming equal skill. If you play this class, and are highly skilled, then you can 1v2 any two players on other classes, even if they are equal, or superior to you in skill. If you have the skills to pull off the God-classes basic rotation then it gives you unquestioned superiority over any other class. Given your comments on 1v5, I assume you can see the problem with that as well.

And that’s the problem with economic PvP, it’s a gameplay style that does not require extreme skill, but it is certainly not something that anyone can do well, and if everyone did do it well then it wouldn’t be worth bothering because everything would be at balance price all the time. But for those who do have the minimal level of skill and interest to do well at economic PvP, it blows all other profit methods out of the water, it “1v5s” dungeons and world bosses and map metas and anything else going on in terms of making money.

When someone says a reward isn’t ‘for you,’ I think they mean to say, ‘The content required for this reward isn’t for you.’

Yes, and often I agree with them. Where I disagree is that I believe in cases like that, the “content required for this reward” should be broadened to include more people. I don’t believe that rewards should be placed permanently out of bounds unless you do specific activities, there should be alternatives.

Woah, stop. How is Wanze or Penguin or myself or anyone directly making the game less fun for you. Go ahead, try to demonstrate it.

By defending the current economic model in which people can make gross amounts of money entirely off the TP rather than through game play. It’s not that your individual actions have caused significant damage in game, but the combined efforts of the “play the TP” crowd have certainly hurt the game for those that come to GW2 for an adventure game, and even worse, the efforts of ANet to maintain the economy to benefit those players.

You appear to be talking about the cost of items on the TP here. First, please go read something on supply and demand; they are extremely basic economic principles and understanding them would help a lot. If enough people find the prices too high, the demand will shrink and price will drop.

True, but irrelevant. You can shape human nature, you just have to work around it. If prices are too high, then actual gameplay changes need to be made to correct that, not just players deciding to deliberately abandon the TP. If prices qare too high, then either supply needs to be increased, or the need for those items (natural demand) needs to be reduced.

Macroeconomics doesn’t seem all that important to consider for you. But it’s the approach Anet has to take, as the ruling body of this system.

And in my view, it’s something that needs to be considered, but it can’t be the ONLY factor considered. The economy should work for the players, not the other way around. The macroeconomic issues, such as inflation, need to be taken care of, but they also need to pay attention to the players, and make sure that everyone is getting the things that they want at a reasonable rate.

Do you seriously intend to say that people should not be rewarded more for putting in more effort? Should we move legendaries to Day 2 Login Rewards? Should a person with <100 hours in-game get the same skins and rewards as someone like me, who has put in >3k hours? How is that in any way fair or just?

Strawman. My only point is, there should be a reasonable “effort soft cap,” a point at which you can expend additional effort, but you cannot expect it to put you significantly far ahead of anyone else. I have NEVER said that all this stuff should be available with zero, or even minimal effort, a reasonable level of effort makes sense, but all the goals should be achievable within a reasonable amount of effort, and if there are people who want to expend a great deal more than that, nobody is stopping them, they just shouldn’t have rewards exclusive to that additional effort.

So you don’t dislike the gold, you dislike that he can spend it. I see the logic…or lack thereof. Consider this: if you had the gold to buy every item on the TP that you wanted plus some, what would keep you playing?

Fun. This is Guild Wars, not Gold Wars. I don’t play this game to earn gold, and if I did I would just hang out in LA all day. There are things that I want that can be bought with gold, they would make my play experiences more fun, but it’s the actual playing of the game that keeps me playing. There are also plenty of goals to aim for that have nothing to do with gold or the TP.

In fact, if I did have tons of surplus gold, I would actually pursue ALL the Legendary Precursor quests. The main thing holding me back from bothering with them is because I know that each would require me to dump phat stacks before I could continue the process, and I don’t want to dump those stacks.

Again, find another game that doesn’t involve the mechanics you have a problem with.

Ok, do you have any suggestions? What game is exactly like GW2 in every way, including classes, gameplay, and races, but that also has a more balanced economic system? If such a game exists, I suppose I’d jump ship, but I’ve played dozens of MMOs over the years, and so far this is the best of them by a long shot. That doesn’t mean it has no room to grow.

No, the larger point is that gold isn’t everything and can’t get everything. Enough said.

True, but there is an awful lot of stuff that it can buy, and very little in the game that having plenty of gold wouldn’t make much easier.

Ohoni.6057:

If you have two players, one with zero bloodstone/dragonite/emp, but thousands of gold, and another with several bank tabs of those materials but zero gold, try to guess which of them could acquire enough mats to make a set of Ascended Armor first by completing normal ingame activities.

Now you’re the one making facetious arguments that gold buys pretty much anything. Hmm.

No, I’m just pointing out how gold is a part of almost everything. Yes, you do need some “not gold” to make ascended armor, but acquiring the required amount of “not gold” is relatively easy when compared to the amount of gold or gold-fungible materials that you would need. The player who had plenty of gold would have a much easier time finishing off his armor than the player who had plenty of Vision Crystals.

Con men build trust with a victim, then use the other person’s confidence in them. This system is utterly anonymous; no trust or confidence is involved. The parallel is only in your mind. You didn’t even address what he said. anyone can do it.

Players don’t have trust in the other buyers and sellers, they have trust in the TP prices, that the listed prices are “fair,” and that misplaced trust is what gets exploited. Plenty of Ponzi schemes and other economic scams involve the customers never interacting directly with the con men.

Then stop portraying your side as the populist angle, none of us speak for more than ourselves and maybe friends.

You’re the one that said “We know TPers aren’t that widespread.” How is the side that includes the overwhelming majority of the players not the “populist” position? It’s true whether they realize it themselves or not.

Some people do enjoy using the TP. The most enjoyable activities are the most rewarding, precisely because they are so enjoyable. This is a game that sold on the motto, “Play how you want.” You can do exactly that; don’t throttle it by shutting off other, valid playstyles.

And I’m not. Even if I got my way 100%, people would still be able to play the TP if they wanted. At most, the only change it would cause is that the profit margins would be far lower, far more in balance with other ingame activities. If you spent an hour or so on the TP, you couldn’t expect to make more for those efforts than an hours or so of dungeon running or other activities (and yes, I’m aware that the results of those TP efforts would take time to materialize). If there are daily caps to how much you can earn through things like dungeons, then there would also be daily caps on earning through the TP.

Concerning the topic in general:. . .

Well summarized.

But it isnt responsible for “rewards” from the trading post, as they arent rewards that are generated out of thin air, like the 2k gems for the best raiders, you mention.

But they are responsible for every price on the TP, as they are responsible for saying "this recipe will require 200 Elder Planks, and that requires 3 Logs each, and you get 3-5 Elder logs per tree we spawn, and we spawn X amount of trees in high traffic areas, and you get 0-2 logs per salvage of certain weapons, and they drop in these percentages, etc. "

ANet controls all those variables, they can increase natural supply or reduce natural demand at will simply by changing some of them.

Profits on the tp are given out by players because they choose to sell and buy at the prices they do. Thats why i dont see the point of some players asking Anet to “balance” tp profits in line with other content because its up to the players to do that.

People cannot be blamed for the actions of people. People react as people will, as people MUST in reaction to the systems ANet puts into place. You cannot expect the players to deliberately forgo profits that they could potentially be making just because it’s wrong. If any change is to happen, it must come from changes to how the economic systems work that would reduce the profit potential involved.

Agemnon.4608:

It is on average, but do something long enough and you increase your chances of a good outcome.

Er, no, statistics don’t work that way, if something has a 1% drop rate it’s 1% likely to drop EVERY TIME you do it, whether it’s the first or the hundredth!

So it occurs to me (and I don’t have an answer to this question – at least, not right now):

Is it possible to help people get into the sort of reward spot that satisfies their needs without disrupting the needs of other groups? And if so, how?

For instance, say you have Tom, who only feels satisfied with a reward system when he is doing significantly better than an average level of reward progression (meaning that he needs to have numerous up-to-date reward systems where he is way ahead of the pack). And Tom is significantly lacking in progression without a good way to catch up.

Then you have Chris, who feels the same way as Tom, but is way ahead of the pack.

If you hand Tom a way to catch up, Chris might get angry at the injustice of (in his mind) being brought down to Tom’s level (or Tom being brought up to his) through effort that is not on the “elite” level that Chris put in. Chris may quit as a result, feeling that his investment has been undermined and his satisfaction destroyed.

If you hand Tom nothing, then Tom will be on a treadmill of dissatisfaction until he gives up and does something that will give him that feeling of satisfaction he’s looking for.

What do you do to solve this? Or can you?

Er, no, statistics don’t work that way, if something has a 1% drop rate it’s 1% likely to drop EVERY TIME you do it, whether it’s the first or the hundredth!

Um, sort of. Basically, the odds of you getting it the next time do not increase, so your 100th attempt does not have better odds than your 23rd attempt. Still though, the more attempts you make, the more “rolls” you get, and therefore the better your odds of getting the thing overall.

Basically, if something has a 1% drop rate, then you aren’t guaranteed to get the item on your 99th, 100th, or 101st attempt, but you do stand a better chance of getting the item over the course of attempting it 100 times than you would over the course of 50 times, and most people would have it at least within 200 times if not much sooner, but of course there are always outliers. The more you keep trying, the more likely at least one attempt will eventually pay off, but it could be your first or your ten-thousandth.

If you hand Tom nothing, then Tom will be on a treadmill of dissatisfaction until he gives up and does something that will give him that feeling of satisfaction he’s looking for.

What do you do to solve this? Or can you?

I’m not sure that they can solve things to everyone’s satisfaction, but they should err on the side of the person who is happy having what he wants to have, rather than the person who has what he wants, but actually gets upset that other people can have it too.

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, if you’re actually being serious, then I will answer your questions, last first, since I think the latter illuminate the former better.

“Who is best off in gw2?”

Lots of subjectivity here, but for the purposes of what I was saying in reference to the article (it’s a relatively quick read, btw), it refers to those economically best off, those that are able to buy the things that they want fairly casually, relative to those who would really have to scrimp and save to be able to afford these things.

“So whats the point? Anet should try to make the mayority of the player base happy?

Arent they trying to do that?"

I think they should, and I think that if they are trying to do that, and I hope they do, I believe they are doing it wrong, and that this study, at least, would indicate that. The belief is that if a few people are granted significant wealth above their peers, then it makes those people happy, and it makes everyone else strive to match them.

The study seems to indicate that while it may make the recipient happier, it only makes them slightly happier, while each other person becomes less happy by a more significant amount, so the net happiness of the population drops significantly. That would indicate that the solution is not to concentrate prosperity, to make “the good stuff” something quite rare that only a select few can enjoy, but rather to try and spread it as evenly as possible.

Yes, people should have to work towards tangible goals, but progress towards these goals should be through in-game direct effort, not through accumulation of gold via trade. And if you’re going to suggest that gold trading should be considered another legitimate way to play the game, then that’s fine, but in that case it would need to be thoroughly in balance with all other ingame activities, providing no more gold per hour of play than the various other options. It is currently nowhere close to balanced by that standard.

I see, so psychologial factors furthering your agenda: Hey, look at this.
Psychological factors not working for your agenda: BS.

Ohoni.6057:

but they also need to pay attention to the players, and make sure that everyone is getting the things that they want at a reasonable rate.

I got all of the attached pix in the past few months. That’s pretty reasonable, don’t you think? John has my permission to confirm that I’m not a hardcore Forger. Save up on Exotics, and toss them in. Craft a bunch of GS when my T5 mat hits a stack, save Exotics for future Forging. Having an NPC in WvW drop one was icing on the cake.

Long story short, this game is well balanced in terms of rewards. RNG can bless you. Or you can work hard and earn Account Bound ones.

I got all of the attached pix in the past few months. That’s pretty reasonable, don’t you think? John has my permission to confirm that I’m not a hardcore Forger. Save up on Exotics, and toss them in. Craft a bunch of GS when my T5 mat hits a stack, save Exotics for future Forging. Having an NPC in WvW drop one was icing on the cake.

Long story short, this game is well balanced in terms of rewards. RNG can bless you. Or you can work hard and earn Account Bound ones.

That’s lovely, for you, but the fact that people are complaining should tell you all you need to know about whether your experience is universal or not. You can’t make this right without everyone else actually feeling right about it, you aren’t going to convince anyone that you are.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s lovely, for you, but the fact that people are complaining should tell you all you need to know about whether your experience is universal or not. You can’t make this right without everyone else actually feeling right about it, you aren’t going to convince anyone that you are.

People complain when they don’t even try.

I don’t like that Legendary Armor is locked behind Raids.

• Why not play Raids then?

I don’t like Raids because they’re hard

• Then you don’t get to earn Legendary Armor. Pretty simple.

That’s not fair. Everyone should have an easier way to get Legendary Armor. Happy players = happy game.

• Instant gratification = bad. Delayed gratification = good. Here’s Cookie Monster teaching some self control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-LfQCPJJkY

People need to get out of their comfort zone. The reason why you advocate for the spread of wealth so much is because you’re locked in your set style of game play. Your steadfast refusal to deviate from your style prevents you from really experiencing the game in its full glory.

Now as for your previous dialogue that Capitalism is evil (an “exploit/abuse” in your words), I don’t know how to respond to that.

Ohoni.6057:

I got all of the attached pix in the past few months. That’s pretty reasonable, don’t you think? John has my permission to confirm that I’m not a hardcore Forger. Save up on Exotics, and toss them in. Craft a bunch of GS when my T5 mat hits a stack, save Exotics for future Forging. Having an NPC in WvW drop one was icing on the cake.

Long story short, this game is well balanced in terms of rewards. RNG can bless you. Or you can work hard and earn Account Bound ones.

That’s lovely, for you, but the fact that people are complaining should tell you all you need to know about whether your experience is universal or not. You can’t make this right without everyone else actually feeling right about it, you aren’t going to convince anyone that you are.

Players complain ALL the time. Doesn’t mean they are right.

Recent (as in last 3-4 months) occurances of massive complaints that turned out to be bogus:

Trait change - BIG nono for some. People complained that twinks had their hero points auto assigned. Long story short, it sorted itsself out in the mid- to longrun. Why? Because arenanet designed the system longterm, not shortterm.

class xyz is overpowered - all the time. Read the class forums. Basically every class is overpowered, and if everyone is overpowered, no one is.

mounts - we have a how big thread about this now? Granted, this is more of an opinion piece, still it is a constant source of complaint which does not mean that either side is right.

gold mail limit - yeah, also keeps reapering. Usually with no care as to why this was implemented in the first place.

race change - an all time favorite even though arenanet has openly said they will not implement it since the technical and programming barrier is to high. Not to mention it makes no sense lore wise.

Here is a simple fact:

No matter what you do, part of the playerbase will always feel happy or unhappy with your decision. Simply because there is a multitude of players with different opinions and desires.

I don’t like that Legendary Armor is locked behind Raids.

Why not play Raids then?

I don’t like Raids because they’re hard

Then you don’t get to earn Legendary Armor. Pretty simple.

And that little couplet is what I reject, the idea that those who can’t or won’t do raids should never have access to that armor. There should be alternatives, actual answers beyond “then do it anyways.”

That’s not fair. Everyone should have an easier way to get Legendary Armor. Happy players = happy game.

Instant gratification = bad. Delayed gratification = good. Here’s Cookie Monster teaching some self control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-LfQCPJJkY

We’re not talking about anything that has anything to do with delayed v. instant gratification. We aren’t talking about shorter paths, and if anything, the original paths would be the shortest. We’re talking about fair alternatives, in which the overall effort is equivalent, but can be pursued along alternate lines, and a balance of rewards. I know it’s easier to formulate nonsense positions that nobody actually holds, and argue against those, rather than to argue against positions actually held by other rational human beings, but do at least try to keep up.

People need to get out of their comfort zone. The reason why you advocate for the spread of wealth so much is because you’re locked in your set style of game play. Your steadfast refusal to deviate from your style prevents you from really experiencing the game in its full glory.

I’ve experienced all aspects of the game. There’s nothing I haven’t tried at least once, usually a few times, but I’m also aware of what I do and do not enjoy doing, so when I know that something is not fun for me, it is not, and never will be fun for me, and forcing players to continue to engage in activities that do not bring them any joy is not good for the long term health of the game.

Players complain ALL the time. Doesn’t mean they are right.

Perhaps not, but it does mean that they have a problem, and right or wrong, it’s a good idea to try and resolve it if at all possible.

Trait change – BIG nono for some. People complained that twinks had their hero points auto assigned. Long story short, it sorted itsself out in the mid- to longrun. Why? Because arenanet designed the system longterm, not shortterm.

The first trait redesign was always bad. The second trait redesign was always worse. Objections to it quieted down because most people who remembered the old system got their characters to 80 and didn’t have to fool with it anymore. Really a lot of the objections people had to the elite spec rollout had to do with things they broke with the second trait overhaul, for example having to slowly unlock your elite spec would have been a lot less egregious if you could pick and choose which abilities you wanted along the way, rather than being forced to pick up junk you’d never slot while your favorites are tucked near the back.

class xyz is overpowered – all the time. Read the class forums. Basically every class is overpowered, and if everyone is overpowered, no one is.

Some classes are overpowered in certain circumstances and underpowered in others, two people can say a class is over or underpowered and both be right, within the proper context. Both should be listened to, both their theories should be tested out, and the outcome should be based on the results of that.

mounts – we have a how big thread about this now? Granted, this is more of an opinion piece, still it is a constant source of complaint which does not mean that either side is right.

It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for them to give players mounts. We already have gliding and speed mushrooms, we already have cosmetic “mounts” like the broomstick, it wouldn’t be a huge leap for them to add some form of true mounts to the game, perhaps as a Pact Tyria mastery.

gold mail limit – yeah, also keeps reapering. Usually with no care as to why this was implemented in the first place.

And maybe some changes should be made, so long as they don’t interfere with that valid purpose. Just because the system currently functions to reduce gold-trading, doesn’t mean it couldn’t continue to evolve to better meet legitimate means.

race change – an all time favorite even though arenanet has openly said they will not implement it since the technical and programming barrier is to high. Not to mention it makes no sense lore wise.

They already let you change your name and gender (as well as height), race is not a huge lore leap there. As for whether it’s a worthwhile technical challenge, that’s for ANet to decide, and continually re-decide. They’ve said “absolutely not” to things in the past only to implement them later. Maybe they will overhaul some other things in a way that would make it easier to implement. Whether it’s currently feasible for them or not, it’s at least something they should always keep in mind as something the community wants.

No matter what you do, part of the playerbase will always feel happy or unhappy with your decision. Simply because there is a multitude of players with different opinions and desires.

Sure, but it’s still important to understand why they are upset, and make best efforts to make as many of them happy as possible. A system that by the admission of its practitioners only rewards a tiny fraction of the population and should maybe be adjusted for the benefit of everyone else instead.

Ohoni.6057:

Sure, but it’s still important to understand why they are upset, and make best efforts to make as many of them happy as possible. A system that by the admission of its practitioners only rewards a tiny fraction of the population and should maybe be adjusted for the benefit of everyone else instead.

And they’ve been doing just that. Less rng, more collections.

Now go looksie what all the recent rage is about on the forums.

And they’ve been doing just that. Less rng, more collections.

In places, but a lot of the collections currently involve dumping tons of money, and dumping tons of money to remove RNG was always an option, it was called the “Trading Post.” And Precursors aren’t the only problematic luxury goods, there’s also the Guild Halls, Nightfury, Ascended armor, etc. They have a lot of work to do.

Ohoni.6057:

And they’ve been doing just that. Less rng, more collections.

In places, but a lot of the collections currently involve dumping tons of money, and dumping tons of money to remove RNG was always an option, it was called the “Trading Post.” And Precursors aren’t the only problematic luxury goods, there’s also the Guild Halls, Nightfury, Ascended armor, etc. They have a lot of work to do.

All of the examples you just mentioned are affected by temporary price spikes which will correct themselves in the longrun.

Price spikes due to the widespread NOWNOWNOW attitude. Just look at flax seeds, down to 5s from 20-40s.

If you could show me how a majority of the collections besides precursor crafting can be circumvented by using the TP I’d be very thankful. Most are based on soulbound items (example: http://dulfy.net/2015/11/08/gw2-hot-weapons-armor-and-backpieces-guide/ ).

What more fair way is there than offering everyone the same opportunity via souldbound collections. Unfortunately this gave rise to a new problem once again, people feeling overwhelmed and thinking they have to “do everything” in order to “keep up”.

All of the examples you just mentioned are affected by temporary price spikes which will correct themselves in the longrun.

Even if you adjust for the price spikes, and assume that they will come down over time, the gold requirements for Precursor crafting would be considerable even at pre-HoT levels.

And besides, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, ANet bears responsibility for price spikes as well. They can estimate that certain items will be in unusual demand over a given period of time, and should provide short term faucets to counterbalance that demand, such as those silk-dropping bags they had during the LA invasion that tanked cloth markets for a bit. when you dump a ton of new sinks into the economy, dump a bunch of short term faucets as well, so that the system is designed to balance out eventually AND to quickly counterbalance short term spikes.

If you could show me how a majority of the collections besides precursor crafting can be circumvented by using the TP I’d be very thankful. Most are based on soulbound items (example: http://dulfy.net/2015/11/08/gw2-hot-weapons-armor-and-backpieces-guide/ ).

Well, aside from the Precursors, you can more easily gear up in peak equipment (full ascended with ideal runes/sigils) using gold, which makes any achievement-based progress easier. You can also buy peak food, which also helps. The Auris weapons require certain accountbound components bought with map-currencies, but they also require ori imbued inscriptions, more ori, and a good amount of linseed oil, which is currently down in price from its peak, but nowhere near vendor trash.

What more fair way is there than offering everyone the same opportunity via souldbound collections. Unfortunately this gave rise to a new problem once again, people feeling overwhelmed and thinking they have to “do everything” in order to “keep up”.

To be fair, some of the collections are pretty complicated and overly specific. I do think they could offer more paths towards earning some of the components required, or only requiring less than 100% of them and let players decide which to prioritize. But again, the biggest outrage was over the collections you seem least interested in discussing, the Precursor collections, which require hundreds of gold in fungible materials.

Ohoni.6057:

All of the examples you just mentioned are affected by temporary price spikes which will correct themselves in the longrun.

Even if you adjust for the price spikes, and assume that they will come down over time, the gold requirements for Precursor crafting would be considerable even at pre-HoT levels.

And besides, as I’ve said on numerous occasions, ANet bears responsibility for price spikes as well. They can estimate that certain items will be in unusual demand over a given period of time, and should provide short term faucets to counterbalance that demand, such as those silk-dropping bags they had during the LA invasion that tanked cloth markets for a bit. when you dump a ton of new sinks into the economy, dump a bunch of short term faucets as well, so that the system is designed to balance out eventually AND to quickly counterbalance short term spikes.

Or you know, they could just let the market find it’s own equalibrium instead of poking around and increasing volatility even more.

I’m quite sure arenanet has certain values in mind for items and timetables for these items to reach said value. If this isnot achieved in a timely manner, THEN they might interfere.

Ohoni.6057:

If you could show me how a majority of the collections besides precursor crafting can be circumvented by using the TP I’d be very thankful. Most are based on soulbound items (example: http://dulfy.net/2015/11/08/gw2-hot-weapons-armor-and-backpieces-guide/ ).

Well, aside from the Precursors, you can more easily gear up in peak equipment (full ascended with ideal runes/sigils) using gold, which makes any achievement-based progress easier. You can also buy peak food, which also helps. The Auris weapons require certain accountbound components bought with map-currencies, but they also require ori imbued inscriptions, more ori, and a good amount of linseed oil, which is currently down in price from its peak, but nowhere near vendor trash.

So we are now down to basic gear making stuff easier. Unlike what most people believe, full ascended is still not required for a majority of the game. Even rading does not require full ascended. How lucky that it’s become so easy to gear up in full exotic, you even seem to agree:

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t know where you did your shopping, but pretty much all exotics were already in the low price range you cited for years now. The only ones in higher price ranges were those with particularly rare skins, and the prices on those have remained high, in some cases spiking due to new/returning players coming in.

And finally we are back to you major complaint of precursor value:

Ohoni.6057:

To be fair, some of the collections are pretty complicated and overly specific. I do think they could offer more paths towards earning some of the components required, or only requiring less than 100% of them and let players decide which to prioritize. But again, the biggest outrage was over the collections you seem least interested in discussing, the Precursor collections, which require hundreds of gold in fungible materials.

Which is intricately interwoven with the games economy and has to be expensive for precursors to keep their value. It’s that or hike up the prices on a lot of other items to keep everything in balance. But here we seem to disagree.

I was merely pointing out that your outrage and arguments are based on one thing alone in the expansion, but you make it sound as though everything were out of balance to make people believe you have a stronger argument (which at it’s base is flawed, but that is another topic).

Or you know, they could just let the market find it’s own equalibrium instead of poking around and increasing volatility even more.

that takes time though, and in the interim, people cannot advance those activities without spending excessive amounts of money. Better to keep it balanced throughout. The volatility would be as shortlived as the initial volatility whenever they make changes, especially if they were clear in communicating the specific changes they were making, and what they expected the markets to do in reaction. The first time they do this, the markets might react a bit more, but once people know the drill the markets shouldn’t even blip in response, they should just settle into the “new normal” within a matter of hours and stay there.

I’m quite sure arenanet has certain values in mind for items and timetables for these items to reach said value. If this isnot achieved in a timely manner, THEN they might interfere.

And that’s pretty much the least they could do, but they could do more and lead to more happy players. They choose not to, so when spikes happen, you can’t just say “well, spikes will spike, wait them out,” the spikes only exist because they are deliberately allowed to exist. It’s not a natural disaster, it’s a poorly designed disaster management system.

So we are now down to basic gear making stuff easier. Unlike what most people believe, full ascended is still not required for a majority of the game. Even rading does not require full ascended. How lucky that it’s become so easy to gear up in full exotic, you even seem to agree:

What is “required” and what is “highly useful” is a matter of debate and pointless to argue within this discussion, but suffice it to say that whether they are right or wrong, a large number of players consider ascended gear to be advantageous over exotic.

and again, it hasn’t become “so easy” to gain exotic, exotic has always been at the price it is now, within a reasonable margin of error, it’s no easier to gain it than it was two years ago. What has changed is that the content does more damage now, making highest possible stats more valuable, and existing means of acquiring those highest possible stats have become more expensive and/or rare.

Which is intricately interwoven with the games economy and has to be expensive for precursors to keep their value

Sure, for Precursors to keep their value. Which is neither a necessary, nor positive thing. It’s like saying “well we can’t build dams on that river, it might make it less likely that a flood would wipe out the surrounding farms!”

I was merely pointing out that your outrage and arguments are based on one thing alone in the expansion, but you make it sound as though everything were out of balance to make people believe you have a stronger argument (which at it’s base is flawed, but that is another topic).

Or, you could actually read the things I’ve said, and discover that it is about more than just that one thing, although that one thing (well, twenty-three things) would be a notable portion of the problem.

Ohoni.6057:

Or you know, they could just let the market find it’s own equalibrium instead of poking around and increasing volatility even more.

that takes time though, and in the interim, people cannot advance those activities without spending excessive amounts of money. Better to keep it balanced throughout. The volatility would be as shortlived as the initial volatility whenever they make changes, especially if they were clear in communicating the specific changes they were making, and what they expected the markets to do in reaction. The first time they do this, the markets might react a bit more, but once people know the drill the markets shouldn’t even blip in response, they should just settle into the “new normal” within a matter of hours and stay there.

I’m quite sure arenanet has certain values in mind for items and timetables for these items to reach said value. If this isnot achieved in a timely manner, THEN they might interfere.

And that’s pretty much the least they could do, but they could do more and lead to more happy players. They choose not to, so when spikes happen, you can’t just say “well, spikes will spike, wait them out,” the spikes only exist because they are deliberately allowed to exist. It’s not a natural disaster, it’s a poorly designed disaster management system.

So we are now down to basic gear making stuff easier. Unlike what most people believe, full ascended is still not required for a majority of the game. Even rading does not require full ascended. How lucky that it’s become so easy to gear up in full exotic, you even seem to agree:

What is “required” and what is “highly useful” is a matter of debate and pointless to argue within this discussion, but suffice it to say that whether they are right or wrong, a large number of players consider ascended gear to be advantageous over exotic.

and again, it hasn’t become “so easy” to gain exotic, exotic has always been at the price it is now, within a reasonable margin of error, it’s no easier to gain it than it was two years ago. What has changed is that the content does more damage now, making highest possible stats more valuable, and existing means of acquiring those highest possible stats have become more expensive and/or rare.

Which is intricately interwoven with the games economy and has to be expensive for precursors to keep their value

Sure, for Precursors to keep their value. Which is neither a necessary, nor positive thing. It’s like saying “well we can’t build dams on that river, it might make it less likely that a flood would wipe out the surrounding farms!”

I was merely pointing out that your outrage and arguments are based on one thing alone in the expansion, but you make it sound as though everything were out of balance to make people believe you have a stronger argument (which at it’s base is flawed, but that is another topic).

Or, you could actually read the things I’ve said, and discover that it is about more than just that one thing, although that one thing (well, twenty-three things) would be a notable portion of the problem.

Sometimes I wonder if you make stuff up and actually believe it’s so. There are so many factual errors and blant (and I’m afraid having to use this word) but lies in your comment it’s sad.

Starting with you turning on your own argument from the first page of this very thread. First exotics are easy to get, now they are not that easy. Then going as far as saying exotics have kept a constant price over 2 years. You know, people can use trading post websites to verys imply discredit you, I’d do it myself, but I’m tired of your nonsense.

I’ve bolded some of the most obvious nonsense. If you do not understand why scarcity and value is important in precursors, the limit of your economic understanding is more frightening than expected. Then again you’ve proven this over and over again.

There is no point in arguing with a communist (refering to your very obvious train of thought, not ment derigatory) who can neither sticks to his believs devaluing his own argument and/or provides any sensible economic solutions to current capitalist problems in a game.

I even wonder how Ohoni determines the unreasonably high rewards made on the tp compared to other game content without ever giving numbers.
He just assumes that they are there without giving any proof.

To give out some ball park figures:

In the last 90 days (thats how long the api tracks your trading history),
I made a flipping profit of 6875g.
That might seem alot at first sight and is about 76g per day.

But i also played 8648 hours over the last 1185 days, thats 7.3h per day.

So i made a little over 10g per hour flipping.
I dont see that unreasonable and subpar to best farming methods in the past and present.

Somehow I doubt that every time you played all you did was play the tp the entire time. If it’s anything like mine, it’s maybe about an hour a day focus on trading…then the rest of the time is playing content or talking to ppl.

Essence Snow.3194:

Somehow I doubt that every time you played all you did was play the tp the entire time. If it’s anything like mine, it’s maybe about an hour a day focus on trading…then the rest of the time is playing content or talking to ppl.

I didnt play much content in the last 3 months.
I ran 3 fractals and completed the story of hot, since launch, thats it.
Most of the time is spent on the terrace or double tabbing, doing research on what to trade in.

Even at half the time investment, i dont think 20g per hour would be much out of line.

Its on Ohoni anyways to prove that rewards on the trading post are too high.
As things stand, i claim that Anet charged me nearly 4000 gold in fees and taxes in the last three months just so i get to play my favorite content.

But at least the player base rewarded me at a better rate for the service of convenience i provide for them.

I’m not going to argue exactly how much time you did or did not spend on which, but at least you can do is leave out the the obvious falsity.18 mastery points from 3 fractals and hot story alone is simply not possible.

Ohoni.6057:

But that I do not have enough to afford all the items I’d want, and that others do, and earned it through what I view as distasteful and illegitimate means, yeah, that does bother me.

Unfortunately, this statement right here is why this thread will never go anywhere. If you believe that free trade (which nearly every real world economy has) is illegitimate, then you are in for a surprise.

The fact of the matter is, people like Wanze have earned their wealth through means available to everyone. Because you choose not to use it doesn’t make it unfair, it doesn’t make it unbalanced, and it doesn’t make it illegitimate, and doesn’t make it a game problem. It’s strictly a personal problem because it only affects your ability to make money.

If you want to bring psychology into this, then the issue is instant gratification. As several people have stated, anyone can buy and sell items on the TP for whatever value they want. It doesn’t take genius to realize that listing something higher gets you more profit. But we have extremely expensive items (like ascended mats) because people want to buy it now and have it first. On the flip side we have hugely inexpensive items (like all exotics now) because there has been a huge influx of them and pepole will instantly sell to the highest bidder to get their money now.

If everyone listed common items at or above value, the price would slowly go up or remain the same. Conversely if people put in buy orders to match the highest bidder, we wouldn’t have over-inflated prices on ascended mats, all leading to a much more “balanced” economy as you say.

TL/DR It’s not a problem with the system Anet designed. The problem is people who want things handed to them with as little effort and delay as possible.

Essence Snow.3194:

I’m not going to argue exactly how much time you did or did not spend on which, but at least you can do is leave out the the obvious falsity.18 mastery points from 3 fractals and hot story alone is simply not possible.

Add 4 hours of cof bracier farm with full xp buffs.

Starting with you turning on your own argument from the first page of this very thread. First exotics are easy to get, now they are not that easy.

. . . I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never claimed that exotics were difficult to get. Exotics have never been difficult to get (aside from those very very few that can be turned into Legendaries, of course).

Then going as far as saying exotics have kept a constant price over 2 years. You know, people can use trading post websites to verys imply discredit you, I’d do it myself, but I’m tired of your nonsense.

I’m really not sure where you’re looking, but Exotic armor has always been in the ~1g range, and Exotic weapons in the ~1-3g range. The problem is the cost of things like Ascended, not Exotic armor. You may as well point out that rares can be had for only 30s each, for all it matters to anything.

I’ve bolded some of the most obvious nonsense. If you do not understand why scarcity and value is important in precursors, the limit of your economic understanding is more frightening than expected. Then again you’ve proven this over and over again.

Scarcity is irrelevant to Precursors. Precursors are not important because they are scarce, they are important because they can be turned into Legendaries, and Legendaries look cool. People want Legendaries, they want them not because not many people have them, too many people have them for that to really matter, they want them because they want to have them, so that their characters will have the fancy footprints and attack trails and other nifty effects that the weapons offer. This remains true whether only a few people have them, or everyone has them. For people who do only want them because of some perceived “better than that other guys who doesn’t have one” value, well kitten those guys, they’re jerks anyways.

In the last 90 days (thats how long the api tracks your trading history),
I made a flipping profit of 6875g.
That might seem alot at first sight and is about 76g per day.

But i also played 8648 hours over the last 1185 days, thats 7.3h per day.

I’m curious what you do during those 7 hours a day. Is that time spent actively engaged in content, or is it time spent hitting “craft” and then sitting back for ten minutes while a queue empties and then repeat, or standing in front of the forge and doubleclicking inventory items over and over. I mean, those are certainly activities, but they are hardly above that “chatting in Lion’s Arch and expecting to get a Legendary” that the elitists so often use as their straw men. Even Silverwaste chest farming is a more active playstyle (and I am not a fan of that either).

So i made a little over 10g per hour flipping.
I dont see that unreasonable and subpar to best farming methods in the past and present.

10g an hour is still more than most players average, those who are not actively farming the most gold-efficient routes. TP farming should not be comparable to the most efficient ways of earning gold from adventuring, it should be comparable to the least efficient methods, because it requires the least investment in the actual core gameplay.

Its on Ohoni anyways to prove that rewards on the trading post are too high.

Well, I just heard from one poster who claims to have made 6875g from trading alone, that’s well more than I’ve heard from most other players.

As things stand, i claim that Anet charged me nearly 4000 gold in fees and taxes in the last three months just so i get to play my favorite content.

Yes, but they only charge it as a fraction of what you bring in. That’s not them “taking” from you. If there was a dungeon you could run that rewarded 10g for completion, but they charged you 1g to enter, that would be ANet giving you 9g, not them taking 1g from you.

If you want to bring psychology into this, then the issue is instant gratification. As several people have stated, anyone can buy and sell items on the TP for whatever value they want. It doesn’t take genius to realize that listing something higher gets you more profit.

It doesn’t, but the average player does not have a good understanding of how to make use of that. You can’t just “set a higher price” and expect to get it back without understanding the system. If you try, you’ll just end up with an item languishing on the TP for months, years, or indefinitely and lost posting fees. To actually make the TP work to your benefit, you need to understand what “higher price” is feasible, a point at which it will eventually sell, and you need to understand how long that may take. Some items you can set slightly below the existing sell price, or even a bit above it, and expect it to sell within 24 hours. Others, you could list at 10% below the existing sell price and it would still never sell because it’s on a downward trend. Most people who buy things for a sell price don’t understand that they could set a buy price for it and recieve the item by the next time they log in at a fraction of the price.

TL/DR It’s not a problem with the system Anet designed. The problem is people who want things handed to them with as little effort and delay as possible.

And again, you can only design better systems, not better people. People will be people, you can’t “fix” people, to you need to design the systems to account for human behavior, to work for all people, regardless of how people behave.

Think of it like an emergency exit. If you have a crowded space, and you have one set of doors to exit it, and a fire happens, then if the crowd behaves like intelligent, aware people they can calmly exit single-file at a steady pace and everyone gets out. But of course people won’t do that, they will rush the exit and smash into each other and block the exit and lots of them will burn, which is why, understanding this, you have to design the system to account for it, multiple exits that prevent pile-ups. You can’t look at the charred bodies and say “well if they’d just exited calmly and single file it would have worked out for them, not my fault they didn’t.”

That article addresses the effect of handouts, not earned income.

Do a similar study in which everyone in the town has the opportunity to earn the money by running a specific time target in a 2 mile run, or deliver n number of a specific local plant to a central location, and study those effects as they would actually be applicable to the discussion.

Everyone has the opportunity to earn these prestige items. This isn’t the same as randomly issuing increased wealth with no basis or psychological connection with it being earned.

Ohoni.6057:

As things stand, i claim that Anet charged me nearly 4000 gold in fees and taxes in the last three months just so i get to play my favorite content.

Yes, but they only charge it as a fraction of what you bring in. That’s not them “taking” from you. If there was a dungeon you could run that rewarded 10g for completion, but they charged you 1g to enter, that would be ANet giving you 9g, not them taking 1g from you.

Anet didnt give me any reward for trading.

Not a single copper.

Prove me wrong.

Kinda rewarded you with no cap on your potential earnings like there is everywhere else. Wouldn’t that account for everything past what is possible elsewhere in the game?

example) everything else has a 20g/hour potential cap………so anything above 20g/hour made via trading is the reward

Anet didnt give me any reward for trading.

Not a single copper.

Prove me wrong.

And ANet didn’t give you a single copper for beating a dungeon either, the dungeon did. You like to engage in this semantic discussion that money gained off the TP is somehow different than money gained off of other elements of the game because it passes through the hands of other players first, but it is still money earned from the game.

You still have it because ANet put systems in place that allow you to have it, just like any other system in the game. Yes, there are macroeconomic distinctions on play as regards gold sinks and faucets, but these are entirely irrelevant distinctions at the player level. All that matters at the player level is what gets added to your account, and what gets removed from your account, and on the player level it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether that money comes from a dungeon or from another player who got it from a dungeon.

ANet gave you ALL the rewards you made through trading, every single copper, just as much as ever copper earned by someone running a dungeon.

Essence Snow.3194:

Kinda rewarded you with no cap on your potential earnings like there is everywhere else. Wouldn’t that account for everything past what is possible elsewhere in the game?

example) everything else has a 20g/hour potential cap………so anything above 20g/hour made via trading is the reward

I was talking about rewards from Anet. Earnings from the tp arent capped from other content as well. You can list any tradeable good you get as a reward from Anet for any value you like, as long as you can take anets punishment of the listing fee.

Mine 3 mithril ore and list them for 1g each.
If they sell, you made 85s per second.

Cyninja.2954:

Ohoni.6057:

So getting the account bound mats like spirit shards, laurels, karma, bloodstone dust, empyrial fragments, dragonite ore for the old stat combos as well as airship oil, auric dust, obsi shards and ley line sparks for the new ones is considered by you no problem at all, while listing your loot for twice or triple the value you usually do is considered impossible.

Right.

I think you simply lost perspective on some things.

That you seem to believe you’ve made a point here just shows that you really don’t understand how the game’s economy works for the average player.

If I had to pick as to who has the better understanding of the ingame economy, it definately be Wanze over you Ohoni.

I’m sure many forum regulars will agree on this point no matter if they are sympathetic to Wanze or not. In order to effectively “play the trading post” one must understand the market. Your theories are nice and dandy, but so far all you’ve been advocating for is “free stuff”. That doesn’t show a lot of understanding.

I’m going to agree with this here – I missed the thread earlier.
Basically what Ohoni wants is people having access to stuff – but it’s the lack of access to stuff that keeps people playing and not the game’s inherent mechanics or gameplay because this game is an MMO and operates on different principles than most other games.

With today’s gamer demographic a lot of things have changes – games cannot remain relevant through gameplay alone – they must have a form of progression, they must have a carrot on a stick.

This is happening outside of MMOs – look at shooters in the last 10 years – from the simple arena shooter where weapons were free and placed around the map or fully unlocked and ready to be picked at the start we now have FPS games that have levels and that gate weapons, perks, equipment and weapons behind levels, challenges and the like.

Simply playing the game and having fun is no longer enough for today’s generation of gamers and the developers know this.

Discrepancy in rewards creates the perception of need. The need for that guy’s item or skin or whatever – it is that need that drives MMO players to keep playing.
It is a need that’s artificial in source since an MMO’s items are scarce by design and not “natural” factors but it’s a need that keeps people going far beyond the point where they would have stopped normally.

The dissatisfaction that the OP wants to point out in his first post is exactly what will make players sink more time into GW2 or use real life money to “catch up”.

Nothing motivates people more than being unhappy, unfulfilled, scared and generally miserable. These are the main driving forces that brought human society where it is today – they are the dominant forces that shaped the lives of our biological ancestors and forced them to push on and improve their lives and the lives of their offspring.

Ohoni.6057:

Anet didnt give me any reward for trading.

Not a single copper.

Prove me wrong.

And ANet didn’t give you a single copper for beating a dungeon either, the dungeon did. You like to engage in this semantic discussion that money gained off the TP is somehow different than money gained off of other elements of the game because it passes through the hands of other players first, but it is still money earned from the game.

You still have it because ANet put systems in place that allow you to have it, just like any other system in the game. Yes, there are macroeconomic distinctions on play as regards gold sinks and faucets, but these are entirely irrelevant distinctions at the player level. All that matters at the player level is what gets added to your account, and what gets removed from your account, and on the player level it doesn’t matter in the slightest whether that money comes from a dungeon or from another player who got it from a dungeon.

ANet gave you ALL the rewards you made through trading, every single copper, just as much as ever copper earned by someone running a dungeon.

So, let me get this straight.

If a player buys a listing from me, i basically got that gold from Anet.
If that player gets a gold reward at the end of the dungeon its from the dungeon and not from Anet.

Its funny how you expect Anet to cater to your microeconomic needs and disregard macroconomic consequences but once i give a microeconomic transaction example, you start bringing in macroeconomic arguements.

But this thread made me realize one thing.

Whatever makes YOU happy in game, makes me unhappy in game.
So I think Anet should make additional changes to the game that you dont like in order to enhance my game experience because they should value my personal point of view.

Essence Snow.3194:

So their “self serving” agenda is to have balance throughout the game? Doesn’t that kinda suit to serve everyone?

No it does not because not everyone has the same goals or needs. Personally I want rare things – the less rare my things are the less happy I am.
More people having my stuff ruins my play experience.

Ohoni.6057:

The average player doesnt have the choice to list his loot at the same value as me?

He doesn’t have the understanding of what price to list things at and expect to ever make a return on that. Listing things is not free, there is a listing fee, and a time lost. If you know that the price on an item will rise 20% over the next few weeks or months, then it might be a good idea to list it at 20% higher than the current list value. If you have no idea that the price will rise, or even that it could fall further,then you have no reasonable expectation of positive returns, so just randomly listing items at prices well above the current level is not likely to pay off.

There is always risk in speculation, but there’s far more risk for those that lack the wherewithal to predict reasonable market movements.

As I said, it’s like if there were a god-class in the game, but it required a certain level of skill to operate. Not more skill than other classes, just more skill than the average player would be able to display, and the returns for it are far and away superior to anything that any other class could possibly achieve, regardless of the skill applied to those classes.

If I had to pick as to who has the better understanding of the ingame economy, it definately be Wanze over you Ohoni.

He understands how to abuse the ingame economy for his own benefit, that does not mean that he understands how the average player interacts with it. His problem is in not understanding human psychology, not in not understanding economic principles.

No, its because his point is entirely self serving, hes blocking out all long term over arcing factors that effect the entire game and is only focused on making things easier and convenient for his own personal play style.

Quite the opposite. You guys are defending a system that serves yourselves, at the expense of the majority of the game’s players. The playstyle I’m trying to reward is the playstyle that the overwhelming majority of the players embrace, and the “playstyle” that I’m trying to curtail is one that is only enjoyed by a tiny fraction of the game’s players. Don’t try to portray your side in this as the populist angle.

but i dont go around complaining about the players who do these things because im just as capable of doing it too, i just choose not to and i accept that i wont receive the benefits because of my own unwillingness to work at it

That’s a very defeatist attitude, but why do you believe it would be beneficial to the game? Why should players have to employ systems that most of them do not enjoy to achieve that level of returns? Why shouldn’t the most enjoyable activities also be the most rewarding? Why does it benefit anyone to have to choose between “doing the things in game that I enjoy doing” or “being able to afford the things I want to have?”

If you think you understand human psychology then you should see my post above.
Apart from that – what the average player goes through with the TP doesn’t matter.
If the average player wanted to be more successful at the TP the average player should put in the effort to improve his understanding of the in game market and then attempt to better his understanding of economics.

The majority of the players in the game only matter in the sense that they keep playing. For both you and me most other players are just as good as NPCs.
For Anet most players are a financial source and an in-game world-building resource.

Rewarding most players handsomely for their play style can only hurt the game in the long run – I’ve mentioned in my post above why.

And in my view, it’s something that needs to be considered, but it can’t be the ONLY factor considered. The economy should work for the players, not the other way around. The macroeconomic issues, such as inflation, need to be taken care of, but they also need to pay attention to the players, and make sure that everyone is getting the things that they want at a reasonable rate.

I disagree – the players should be put in a situation where they’re working as much as possible in order to make them spend as much time in game as possible.

If the economic system worked FOR them the progress this would facilitate might make players obtain their desired items and play less.

In MMOs based on my experience player time is broken into two big categories:

a- time spent doing what one likes.
b- time spent doing things that enable one to spend other time doing what one likes or improving the quality of tie time one spends doing what he likes in the game.

If category a is all that remains you’ll probably cut out a lot of time you could have had players playing your game simply because the category b time sink no longer exists.
I understand you’re unhappy with this type of situation – but there’s a certain value of category b time where most players will keep playing and while overall you will lose some players (because they will refuse to play the time sink) the overall time squeezed out of the remaining players through time categories a+b is higher than the time you’d have squeezed out of the entire player base ( including those that have left) if they had only done category a time spending.

In a F2P game time spent in game is very highly correlated with money spent on game – and even if that was not the case players spending time in game is good for the game.

Every player in game – even if not spending money on the game – acts as an NPC for other players – he creates resources ( which he can then sell or trade) and generally helps maintain an “active” status of the game.

Look at the complaint with the new HoT maps – how they are empty. Players being in game matters.

Fun. This is Guild Wars, not Gold Wars. I don’t play this game to earn gold, and if I did I would just hang out in LA all day. There are things that I want that can be bought with gold, they would make my play experiences more fun, but it’s the actual playing of the game that keeps me playing. There are also plenty of goals to aim for that have nothing to do with gold or the TP.

The actual playing the game is what keeps you playing? You are a minority. And even if you weren’t – if you simply played the game doing only what you like you might eventually get bored and move on.
By pacing you – forcing you to also do things you dislike to get to the ones you like the developers are effectively making sure they get as much time as possible out of you.
Sure – some people will quit – but not the majority – do you know how I know this?
Simple – because it is a commonplace practice in most MMOs and thus I will assume it must be working otherwise these MMOs would have gone belly up and bankrupted themselves.

Basically what Ohoni wants is people having access to stuff – but it’s the lack of access to stuff that keeps people playing and not the game’s inherent mechanics or gameplay because this game is an MMO and operates on different principles than most other games.

With today’s gamer demographic a lot of things have changes – games cannot remain relevant through gameplay alone – they must have a form of progression, they must have a carrot on a stick.

I’m not arguing for a reduction in carrots, sticks, or their availability. I’m saying that their availability should be more evenly balanced. I’m saying that if some people can gain them relatively easily, then all people should be able to gain them relatively easily, that no methods of earning things should be significantly superior to any other. If you want to argue about carrots and sticks, please do so elsewhere, that is not a factor here.

Nothing motivates people more than being unhappy, unfulfilled, scared and generally miserable. These are the main driving forces that brought human society where it is today – they are the dominant forces that shaped the lives of our biological ancestors and forced them to push on and improve their lives and the lives of their offspring.

ANet should put that on a plaque in their lobby.

If a player buys a listing from me, i basically got that gold from Anet.

Yes.

If that player gets a gold reward at the end of the dungeon its from the dungeon and not from Anet.

No, I was just sarcastically referencing your “ANet didn’t give me that TP money” argument. I thought that was obvious from the context, sorry.

For the record, yes, both you AND the dungeon runner got their gold from ANet.

Its funny how you expect Anet to cater to your microeconomic needs and disregard macroconomic consequences but once i give a microeconomic transaction example, you start bringing in

I’ve never said they should disregard macroeconomic consequences, I’ve repeatedly said that they need to keep those in mind, my point is just that they can’t ONLY keep the macro in mind, they need to make sure the system works at the micro level as well. I think they need to maintain plenty of sinks and faucets to keep the system stable at the macro level, they just also need to keep an eye out to make sure that these systems do not have disproportionate micro-level impacts on individual players. A stable macro economy is better than a chaotic one, but it doesn’t automatically mean that everything is fine.

Whatever makes YOU happy in game, makes me unhappy in game.

And I’m fine with that. You can’t please everyone. I think it’s fair to say that in an adventure game like this one, it’s better to keep the adventurers happy at the expense of the daytraders than to do the opposite. If we were playing “Blue Chips” or whatever, some sort of NYSE simulation game, and I came in trying to insist that “Swords, Swords, Swords” should be a more valuable stock than the game reflects, then feel free to shut me down on it, but if they can’t please everyone, not pleasing the day traders is obviously the way to go.

If the average player wanted to be more successful at the TP the average player should put in the effort to improve his understanding of the in game market and then attempt to better his understanding of economics.

But my point is that the average player does not want to do that and should not have to. He should be able to make just as much money doing random adventure game activities as he can on the trading post. He should not have to learn how to use the TP effectively in order to make competitive amounts of money in the game, everything else should be equally as rewarding. If he wants to learn to TP, he can. If he doesn’t want to, he shouldn’t have to, and yet be just as well off for it.

Labjax.2465:

So it occurs to me (and I don’t have an answer to this question – at least, not right now):

Is it possible to help people get into the sort of reward spot that satisfies their needs without disrupting the needs of other groups? And if so, how?

For instance, say you have Tom, who only feels satisfied with a reward system when he is doing significantly better than an average level of reward progression (meaning that he needs to have numerous up-to-date reward systems where he is way ahead of the pack). And Tom is significantly lacking in progression without a good way to catch up.

Then you have Chris, who feels the same way as Tom, but is way ahead of the pack.

If you hand Tom a way to catch up, Chris might get angry at the injustice of (in his mind) being brought down to Tom’s level (or Tom being brought up to his) through effort that is not on the “elite” level that Chris put in. Chris may quit as a result, feeling that his investment has been undermined and his satisfaction destroyed.

If you hand Tom nothing, then Tom will be on a treadmill of dissatisfaction until he gives up and does something that will give him that feeling of satisfaction he’s looking for.

What do you do to solve this? Or can you?

The optimal solution as I see it is that you keep Chris where he is and then squeeze Tom for as much as you can before he leaves. He might leave or he might not – he might be on that treadmill of dissatisfaction for long enough that he feels he’s invested too much time to give up.

If you cater to one you lose the other – so in that case you cater to the one that’s on top ( in an already satisfied position) because he’s the most invested and easiest to monetize while simultaneously you squeeze as much time and money out of the one that’s behind before he leaves ( if that’s indeed what he’ll do).

Ohoni.6057:

If you hand Tom nothing, then Tom will be on a treadmill of dissatisfaction until he gives up and does something that will give him that feeling of satisfaction he’s looking for.

What do you do to solve this? Or can you?

I’m not sure that they can solve things to everyone’s satisfaction, but they should err on the side of the person who is happy having what he wants to have, rather than the person who has what he wants, but actually gets upset that other people can have it too.

Why? Because of morals?

The point is that Tom can be tricked into believing he’s catching up much more easily than Chris can be tricked into thinking he’s still on top.
Catching up is in itself a process that takes time – and it can be a long time before Tom figures out he’s not actually going anywhere.

I disagree – the players should be put in a situation where they’re working as much as possible in order to make them spend as much time in game as possible.

No, that’s a faulty argument for GW2. GW2 does not necessarily benefit from players spending “as much time in game as possible.” It benefits from them enjoying the game for however long they spend. Other games have different models, if you have a subscription system, then your core goal is to make sure people don’t unsubscribe. If you have a P2W game, then your goal is to make sure they feel enough behind the 8-ball that they keep buying boosters or whatever to keep up with the others. GW2 doesn’t really do either of these things. GW2 benefits, financially, from people being willing to buy gems and spend them on things in the gem store. Happy customers are more willing to spend money in this fashion, because they never feel that they “have to,” you want them to feel that they “want to.”

A player that only spends 20 minutes per night in the game, but enjoys themselves and feels like buying a new outfit or whatever on the gem store is worth more to them than someone who spends 7 hours a day in the game and never drops a penny on them.

Yes, you want them to keep having goals in the game, things to work towards, but you want those goals to be placed reasonably ahead of them, obtainably close, and achieved every now and then. To use your carrot and stick metaphor, a carrot can be used as incentive, but if you put it 100ft ahead of the horse, the horse won’t even bother, and if you don’t let him catch the carrot every now and then, he’ll starve to death.

In a F2P game time spent in game is very highly correlated with money spent on game – and even if that was not the case players spending time in game is good for the game.

I think that’s a statistic that is only loosely applied here. In some F2P games, you really do have to keep paying just to keep up (like paying for “energy” in a mobile game), so yeah, the more you play the more you pay. In other cases, it may be a matter of correlation, not causation, in that people who are enjoying the game more tend to play the game more, and people who play the game more spend more, but they aren’t spending more because they’re playing more, they’re spending more because they enjoy it more, and if you use cheap tricks to extend play time at the expense of player enjoyment then it is ultimately self-defeating.

Look at the complaint with the new HoT maps – how they are empty. Players being in game matters.

Yes, but that’s more a matter of poor gameplay choices and server mechanics. It really has nothing to do with your carrot and stick arguments, the new zones have plenty of both, but “why the new metamaps are failures” is an entirely different discussion.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not arguing for a reduction in carrots, sticks, or their availability. I’m saying that their availability should be more evenly balanced. I’m saying that if some people can gain them relatively easily, then all people should be able to gain them relatively easily, that no methods of earning things should be significantly superior to any other. If you want to argue about carrots and sticks, please do so elsewhere, that is not a factor here.

Why?
The few people who can gain them easily are there to “show them off” – in a sense they are creating a trend and creating a need: “These are the carrots – look at how nice they are”.
The fact that most people can’t gain them easily is a good thing because then they’ll have to keep chasing them. If they got the carrots easily there would be more pressure on the developers to create new carrots or better carrots.
It’s much easier to just make the old ones harder to get and keep people trying for those. It’s more cost effective.

I am not arguing about carrots and sticks – but about rewards in this game. It is an analogy. I think you’re smart enough to understand what I’m trying to say here.

Ohoni.6057:

ANet should put that on a plaque in their lobby.

I’m sorry I didn’t quite exactly understand what you’re saying – but feel free to explain it further to me. Are you saying that my claim is false?

Ohoni.6057:

But my point is that the average player does not want to do that and should not have to. He should be able to make just as much money doing random adventure game activities as he can on the trading post. He should not have to learn how to use the TP effectively in order to make competitive amounts of money in the game, everything else should be equally as rewarding. If he wants to learn to TP, he can. If he doesn’t want to, he shouldn’t have to, and yet be just as well off for it.

And my point is that what the average player wants to do does not matter as long as Anet can keep him playing and monetize him effectively.

The inequality in the game right now is what makes people play “catch-up”. It creates a perceived need to play harder and keeps people invested, focused, playing and spending money on the game.

You seem to operate under the assumption this game was made to be fun for people. It was not – it was made to make a profit and keep people employed. The fun in the game is a side-effect of the developers needing the game to be played by people.

However – as a developer you should attempt to put in just enough fun to keep people playing but never too much and risk them moving on or taking a break.
You want to keep them in a perpetual situation of need and want – never having enough and always wanting more.
The beauty of this is most players won’t notice this system if it’s done subtly enough and even if they do notice most players won’t actively fight it by quitting or be outraged.

In fact – I’ve seen very few people even pointing fingers at it ( like you for example) so as far as I see it this system is a success.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not sure that they can solve things to everyone’s satisfaction, but they should err on the side of the person who is happy having what he wants to have, rather than the person who has what he wants, but actually gets upset that other people can have it too.

I may be in agreement with you in one sense and here’s why:

People love to go on about how GW2 has no gear treadmill, but this is mental gymnastics. In raiding games, generally speaking, they have to antiquate old sets of gear (making them easier to obtain or obsolete) so that new sets coming in don’t make the treadmill too hard for new players entering the game.

For example, a raiding game might start with blue > green > yellow. Blue and green are super easy to obtain. Yellow takes some work. Yellow is also vital for contributing to the latest raids. Later they release Orange, which better than yellow. So yellow now becomes almost as easy (if not as easy) to obtain as blue and green, with Orange being the new Black. I mean, cough, yellow.

Many of GW2’s players and the devs themselves have no doubt told themselves that they don’t need to do this antiquating thing in their game with gear. Which is partly true, but more on that later.

What they are consistently missing is that in raiding games, the main end-game content is raiding and in GW2, the main end-game content is fashion. In neither case is said content the only kind of end-game content. Raiding games invariably have some content outside of raids at end-game, it’s just not very robust or has much longevity. Similarly, GW2 has some content outside of fashion, but (for the most part) it has never had much longevity to it. The illusion of longevity only comes from the treadmill for unlocking a seemingly infinite number of skins.

If you look at GW2 in the context of fashion being its raiding, there is an evergrowing barrier of entry to new players that is only increasing over time, instead of being addressed in the typical way – with old rewards becoming easier to obtain.

One might think this is some sort of twisty mind game I’m playing, but if we look at it in the context of what we’re discussing about psychology, it makes a lot of sense. Gear treadmills and barrier to entry in raiding games isn’t just about the hard barrier of not having the right gear. It’s also about the psychological barrier of feeling that you will never catch up to your peers in a meaningful way.

Some examples of how fashion has gotten worse, or stayed in much the same place: Ascended gear (which is a can of worms in itself and I don’t want to fit it into this post in full) is now harder to obtain than before. Dungeon skins are harder to obtain because less people are playing them, while the content itself remains at the same level of difficulty. Old Legendaries are still pretty much as costly as ever, despite the ability to craft the precursor. And most generalized tradeable skins are all but completely controlled by the whims of the market, so obtaining them as a new player is a highly fickle process.

Here’s the kicker (and maybe this is why some people aim their crosshairs at TP flipping): If you hit this barrier of entry in its various forms, there is one consistently effective way to get past it and that is to become good at playing the TP. It’s not an instant solution, but it is an effective long-term buffer. The problem is, it is also the only significant one in place, so if you aren’t excellent at trade or economies, then you can kiss your luck and place among your peers goodbye.

Both the GW2 community and its developers need to recognize that there definitely IS a barrier of entry to enjoying end-game as your peers do. Many of them, in fact, and the argument that the barrier is not “hard” (e.g. not Agony type hard) concerning fashion is an impersonal argument that fails to take human psychology into account.

There is also the matter of ascended/legendary gear and actual raids, but that’s a post for another time.

Ohoni.6057:

No, that’s a faulty argument for GW2. GW2 does not necessarily benefit from players spending “as much time in game as possible.” It benefits from them enjoying the game for however long they spend. Other games have different models, if you have a subscription system, then your core goal is to make sure people don’t unsubscribe. If you have a P2W game, then your goal is to make sure they feel enough behind the 8-ball that they keep buying boosters or whatever to keep up with the others. GW2 doesn’t really do either of these things. GW2 benefits, financially, from people being willing to buy gems and spend them on things in the gem store. Happy customers are more willing to spend money in this fashion, because they never feel that they “have to,” you want them to feel that they “want to.”
A player that only spends 20 minutes per night in the game, but enjoys themselves and feels like buying a new outfit or whatever on the gem store is worth more to them than someone who spends 7 hours a day in the game and never drops a penny on them.

Your assumption here is that satisfaction with the game,player happiness and money spent in game correlate in a linear fashion – they do not.
In reality – it most likely looks like a curve with a flat top. Up to a certain level of satisfaction the correlation will be strong- after which regardless of how happy people are with the game they won’t spend more cash on it.

Your goal as a company is to make enough content to keep people in that area of strong correlation between satisfaction and money spent – anything else is wasted.

Also – again I’ll point out that players playing the game even if they’re not spending are a resource.
You might not see it – or not agree – but it undeniably true.
Every action they perform in game ( especially in GW2 which is highly cooperative) benefits other players who might be spending money.
More players means more meta events completed, more mats sold on the TP, more groups for any type of content, shorter wait times in PvP, larger zergs and more activity in WvW, more people to meet ( social aspect) and so on.

Even if they’re not spending money – just having people in game is something that’s beneficial to the game.

To use your carrot and stick metaphor, a carrot can be used as incentive, but if you put it 100ft ahead of the horse, the horse won’t even bother, and if you don’t let him catch the carrot every now and then, he’ll starve to death.

You do realize that most players don’t realize how far the carrot is right?
The point is people should never feel fully satisfied in game – lest they might simply play an hour or so for the gameplay and log off.

Ohoni.6057:

, but they aren’t spending more because they’re playing more, they’re spending more because they enjoy it more, and if you use cheap tricks to extend play time at the expense of player enjoyment then it is ultimately self-defeating.

Yes they will be spending more because they’re playing more. The more you play the more stuff you amass – the more stuff you amass the more space you’ll need – there are bank tab and inventory tab extensions on sale. This is possibly the most basic and easiest to understand of the systems in place.
The more you play the more characters you’ll make (for space if nothing else) – you’ll have to buy a character spot when new classes arrive and you’re out of space to make a new character.
The more you play the more classes you’ll get – the more gem store skins directly target you as a potential buyer.
The more you play the more you feel attached to the game – the more you might feel compelled to buy something that you find is cool.
The more you play the stronger the social ties between you and in-game friends become- the more you’ll be willing to buy content they too have bought to experience it together.

es, but that’s more a matter of poor gameplay choices and server mechanics. It really has nothing to do with your carrot and stick arguments, the new zones have plenty of both, but “why the new metamaps are failures” is an entirely different discussion.

My point was that the more people in a map the better – the fewer the worse it is.
So the more people in the game – the better. The example was aimed at showing you how people get upset when there are not enough people around to help them achieve their goals.

Ohoni.6057:

and if you use cheap tricks to extend play time at the expense of player enjoyment then it is ultimately self-defeating.

Is it? How did you come to that conclusion?
If it makes a profit – then you’re doing fine.

Labjax.2465:

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not sure that they can solve things to everyone’s satisfaction, but they should err on the side of the person who is happy having what he wants to have, rather than the person who has what he wants, but actually gets upset that other people can have it too.

I may be in agreement with you in one sense and here’s why:

People love to go on about how GW2 has no gear treadmill, but this is mental gymnastics. In raiding games, generally speaking, they have to antiquate old sets of gear (making them easier to obtain or obsolete) so that new sets coming in don’t make the treadmill too hard for new players entering the game.

For example, a raiding game might start with blue > green > yellow. Blue and green are super easy to obtain. Yellow takes some work. Yellow is also vital for contributing to the latest raids. Later they release Orange, which better than yellow. So yellow now becomes almost as easy (if not as easy) to obtain as blue and green, with Orange being the new Black. I mean, cough, yellow.

Many of GW2’s players and the devs themselves have no doubt told themselves that they don’t need to do this antiquating thing in their game with gear. Which is partly true, but more on that later.

What they are consistently missing is that in raiding games, the main end-game content is raiding and in GW2, the main end-game content is fashion. In neither case is said content the only kind of end-game content. Raiding games invariably have some content outside of raids at end-game, it’s just not very robust or has much longevity. Similarly, GW2 has some content outside of fashion, but (for the most part) it has never had much longevity to it. The illusion of longevity only comes from the treadmill for unlocking a seemingly infinite number of skins.

If you look at GW2 in the context of fashion being its raiding, there is an evergrowing barrier of entry to new players that is only increasing over time, instead of being addressed in the typical way – with old rewards becoming easier to obtain.

One might think this is some sort of twisty mind game I’m playing, but if we look at it in the context of what we’re discussing about psychology, it makes a lot of sense. Gear treadmills and barrier to entry in raiding games isn’t just about the hard barrier of not having the right gear. It’s also about the psychological barrier of feeling that you will never catch up to your peers in a meaningful way.

Some examples of how fashion has gotten worse, or stayed in much the same place: Ascended gear (which is a can of worms in itself and I don’t want to fit it into this post in full) is now harder to obtain than before. Dungeon skins are harder to obtain because less people are playing them, while the content itself remains at the same level of difficulty. Old Legendaries are still pretty much as costly as ever, despite the ability to craft the precursor. And most generalized tradeable skins are all but completely controlled by the whims of the market, so obtaining them as a new player is a highly fickle process.

Here’s the kicker (and maybe this is why some people aim their crosshairs at TP flipping): If you hit this barrier of entry in its various forms, there is one consistently effective way to get past it and that is to become good at playing the TP. It’s not an instant solution, but it is an effective long-term buffer. The problem is, it is also the only significant one in place, so if you aren’t excellent at trade or economies, then you can kiss your luck and place among your peers goodbye.

Both the GW2 community and its developers need to recognize that there definitely IS a barrier of entry to enjoying end-game as your peers do. Many of them, in fact, and the argument that the barrier is not “hard” (e.g. not Agony type hard) concerning fashion is an impersonal argument that fails to take human psychology into account.

There is also the matter of ascended/legendary gear and actual raids, but that’s a post for another time.

This one gets it.

Now that we’ve established that if we remove the “endgame” from guild wars there would be no game left, can we move past this nonsense? Or are we seriously arguing about removing the little bit of endgame design this game has?

Yes, if you consider fashion as endgame GW2 is very grindy. Especially if you have to have every single skin there is. Even some of the more luxorious ones end up demanding much of your time.

Yes, temporarily ascended gear has become more difficult to obtain (who would have guessed this might happen when a majority of players try to gear up in a very short amount of time, prices might spike… /sarcasm. Small note, most people who have multiple ascended sets did not pull their first set out of thin air, but built it over a much longer periond of time than 1 week. Except for the ones who built it on release. Deldrimore Ingots were 30+g the first 2 days, so we have a LOT of room up).

For anything besides endboss raiding and very high level fractals, ascended armor is not needed to enjoy the game content. Neither are legendarys. There go about 80% of the gold needed to gear up. On top of that, arenanet have stated that fractal rewards are to low and should get buffed.