On the value of "luxury" rewards
Finally and interesting thread. I’m just thankful that the rewards for the games I play don’t conform to the ideas of the OP. When everyone is rich, no one is rich, so the question for me becomes; why even bother with rewards at all in that scenario? They all become very trivial if even the least capable players can earn them. At that point, the game is ONLY about the fun (if it’s fun at all), not any rewards and they can be completely removed. I get why MMO’s have them because that’s part of their sustaining factor. Otherwise, you get bored with the repeated content. THat’s not hard to understand; it takes a special level of obtuse to not follow that logic.
I’m curious if there are demographics associated with players that feel one way or another and how that’s linked to the kind of player specific games target. I’m sure there are correlations and to be frank, some of the the most fun games I’ve played don’t result in ‘stuff’ rewards; the fun play is rewarding itself. Can an MMO work like that? Has anyone played one like this? I know I haven’t. Why do I continue playing MMO’s then if most of the fun is linked to earning a reward? because the value of playing WITH other people is what makes it fun, moreso than the content itself.
I personally feel that if the rewards structure of an MMO (and GW2 is not a whole lot different than any other) does not suit you, you’re better off with a different kind of game because I’ve yet to see an MMO that trivializes rewards at the level being discussed in this thread.
(edited by Obtena.7952)
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.
I appreciate the vote of confidence. Unfortunately, I’m not sure you got my main point. I’m not ok with the fact that this game has an evergrowing glut of skins as its primary end-game, but makes zero effort to make a portion of older skins easier to obtain for players who are entering the game late and instead, in many cases, does the opposite, if only through inaction.
You are on point in that I see no reason to make everything immediately accessible to everyone (though I’m not sure that anyone is seriously suggesting such an extreme).
But I also feel that some rewards should be made more accessible over time, to ensure that new players don’t get endlessly left in the dust.
Or words to that effect.
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”.
Well, quite frankly, absolutely nobody needs that.
Nobody.
We have Dulfy for that.
It would be better if LOTS of players had that carrot and were showing it off, rather than a select few that mostly spend their time staring at UI in Lion’s Arch with their fancy weapons stowed anyway.
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.
Again, a fair argument, but if most players can’t earn them easily then no players should be able to earn them easily. Whatever the outcome, it should be balanced. Personally, I think the old legendaries have had three years, those carrots are getting a little moldy, it wouldn’t hurt to let anyone have them that wants one (with a reasonable, but not excessive amount of effort). Maybe the totally new ones they’re adding could take a bit longer to trickle into the population, but I’d say they’ve gotten their money’s worth out of the originals.
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.
Yes, I got the analogy, I’m just saying that it’s not actually relevant to the topic under discussion.
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?
I’m saying that it would be morally bankrupt if true.
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.
If they were only interested in making money then this would be a mobile game with an energy system. Of course they want to make enough money to pay their staff with a little to spare, and they can do that without being as evil as you seem to insist they must be.
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.
The thing is, the problem isn’t people who point it out publicly, the problem isn’t even people that realize the problem. The problem is people who don’t know why, but just aren’t enjoying the game as much as they could, they just feel that the goals they have are too far out of reach, the other players are too far ahead of them, and they quietly give up without ever making a ripple (or paying ANet any more money). When you’re a lifeguard, it’s not the people thrashing wildly that you need to worry about, it’s the people that quietly sink under the water and don’t come back up.
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. . .
I tend to agree. One of the causes of hopelessness is the knowledge that things aren’t likely to improve, that the goal posts will either stay in place or move away from you, rarely closer. That’s one of the reasons the Precursor Crafting system offended me, because I’d assumed that after three years, they would make a genuine effort to make Precursors more easily available, when instead they just made it more work on top of the existing gold costs.
Same with raids, in previous games you could assume that even if you can’t do the meta raid right now, eventually it would become trivialized and you could. In this game, they claim that the raids will never be devalued by future changes, so if you can’t do it now (by “now” I mean within the next few months, once good strats have been nailed down), then you likely never will.
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.
But the same would be true of “time,” the more time they spend playing does not mean the more money they’ll spend either, since the way the game is structured, you never have to spend money to continue playing like in one of those “energy” games. A player can play 16 hours a day, 365 a year, and not spend a dime if he doesn’t feel like it. Of the two of them, “happiness” is a better determiner of spending.
Every action they perform in game ( especially in GW2 which is highly cooperative) benefits other players who might be spending money.
That only depends on how much of the content scales poorly to small group and solo play. HoT has serious issues in this regard, but that’s just bad design on their part.
You do realize that most players don’t realize how far the carrot is right?
Not true. The distance is usually fairly apparent. They might not know exactly when they will get it, but they can gauge their process reasonably well.
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.
Perhaps, but they should consistently be hitting goals, so that they don’t feel like they aren’t making any progress.
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.
I bought my first bank tabs within the first couple weeks. I haven’t bought a single new bank tab in about two and a half years, even though I have room for some more. I do amass some things, but not nearly enough that I need to buy more bank tabs. Besides, I don’t need to play more often to feel pressured on space, I just beat the Tarir meta tonight and really stretched my bag space from that one twenty minute event.
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.
Yes, but again, that’s nothing to do with playing more time, that’s just about enjoying the game enough that you appreciate variety. I have eleven characters at the moment, and I’m not likely to get any more any time soon, but really the last of my first-wave characters just celebrated his third birthday, so it really didn’t take a ton of ingame time to get me to buy a few character slots.
My point was that the more people in a map the better – the fewer the worse it is.
Yes, but again there are usually plenty of people to populate most maps, the problem is their server systems spreading those players too thinly. More people makes no difference if they keep spreading them over dozens of huge maps.
The example was aimed at showing you how people get upset when there are not enough people around to help them achieve their goals.
And again, that is a problem with those goals requiring more people than the ones that are already there. If there’s only one person there, then only one person should ever be necessary.
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.
My point is that they would actually be reducing their own profits by burning players out that could instead be enjoying the game.
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.
Again, the fact that we can assume that is an indictment of the situation, not an excuse. If a price spike is predictable then an anti-spike mechanism should be put into place to prevent it.
Finally and interesting thread. I’m just thankful that the rewards for the games I play don’t conform to the ideas of the OP. When everyone is rich, no one is rich, so the question for me becomes; why even bother with rewards at all in that scenario?
If you’re only interested in the reward because you want to have more than other people, then why does the reward itself matter at all? You should want the reward because YOU want the reward, whether you’re the only one that has it, or whether everyone has it. The number of other players that have it should be irrelevant to you.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
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.
I dont think this is an adventure game. I think the term that Anet likes to use is a living online world. For a purely adventure game there would be a little too much focus on looks anyways.
Its heavily focussed on interaction between players and you seem to have a problem with the way players interact with each other on an economic level.
One thing my flipping history, that i posted earlier, demonstrates, is that people just make the wrong choices when selling their loot. It states a 45% return of interest after fees and taxes, which means that all the stuff i bought on buy order from other players could have been listed for 45% more (actually its over 50% because the fees and taxes paid by the sellers arent accounted for) and would have sold within 3 months.
Now, if everybody would be able to get 50% more for his loot, i dont think people would complain that they dont get enough.
Its down to wrong personal choices by the players and you expect Anet to step in.
It would be the same to ask Anet do remove the dodging mechanic because you are bad at it and nerf all incoming damage by 50% to compensate.
Tin Foil [HATS]-Hardcore BLTC-PvP Guild
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
Bloin – Running around, tagging Keeps, getting whack on Scoobie Snacks.
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.
‘Communism’ doesn’t mean what you think it does.
I dont think this is an adventure game. I think the term that Anet likes to use is a living online world.
No, it’s an adventure game. For it to qualify as a “living online world” it would need to shift more into the realm of the “craftopia” games, where everything is crafted and crafter wares rule the economy (rather than just being burnable resources towards other projects), trade would be based on actually traveling with items between locations rather than a single virtual TP and instant travel, and player housing would need to go well beyond Guild Halls. No, this is definitely an adventure game, and if ANet wants to see it differently, then they have a lot of work to do.
One thing my flipping history, that i posted earlier, demonstrates, is that people just make the wrong choices when selling their loot.
Which goes back to what I was saying about the current system being unfair to players who lack the skill, knowledge, or interest in competing on the TP. Again, it’s like having one class that can dominate if played right, but is worthless when played poorly, and makes all other classes worthless in comparison, so if you do not enjoy the god-class, too bad, you’re playing the god-class anyways or getting left in the dust.
Now, if everybody would be able to get 50% more for his loot, i dont think people would complain that they dont get enough.
Its down to wrong personal choices by the players and you expect Anet to step in.
Yes. At the very minimum the interface could do a better job of informing players of their options, like having built in volume metrics that would make clear to the casual players how quickly items sell at the sell prices, and history tracking that would show where the item’s price has been over time, and perhaps even a prediction of where it might go based on reasonable expectations that someone such as yourself would be making.
Players should not have to visit outside pages to find this data.
It would be the same to ask Anet do remove the dodging mechanic because you are bad at it and nerf all incoming damage by 50% to compensate.
If I felt that it was a major balance problem, I might, but personally I don’t feel that way about the game as they’ve designed it. The goal is just balance, for the amount of gold that an intelligent and skilled player can draw into his personal account from the TP should be no higher than the amount that an equally skilled and intelligent player can draw from active adventuring content, over the same amount of hours played, and the same level of active engagement in the content (ie, just standing there and managing the TP UI would be equivalent to Silverwastes chest farming, higher engagement activities would be more rewarding than that).
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
(edited by Ohoni.6057)
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.
You haven’t actually proven that it’s not good for the game. Doing so would substantiate your current statements, which lack any empirical substance.
If everyone is rich, no-one is rich
Yes.
And you want everyone to be rich.
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.
That was not a premise in the original comparison, but I digress. This God-class, however, is only being discussed in the context of competitive pvp, a race. There is no such thing. There is no competition between you, me, and Wanze over who can reach something first. If you do view it as a race, then you don’t seem to be as concerned with winning as with the fact that others are.
~snip~ 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.
Again, only if you think it is a competition. Play as you want at your pace. If you don’t think you can reach the goals you want, either reconsider how you are playing, or the feasibility of those goals.
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.
Let’s look at, say, high-end raid skins for clearing the whole raid. Part of the point of having those skins is for the prestige, for being able to see that a person was able to clear the whole raid. Adding other ways can sometimes undermine this, like the dungeon skins (Arah mainly, the others are pretty easy). It became easier to do the pvp reward track than actually clear the real content, and it made those skins less prestigious, although I appreciate they didn’t have much in the first place.
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.
I asked how TP traders directly hurt your experience of the game. Your answer states that they did. Back that up with some numbers or evidence.
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.
And I think Anet has proved quite good at that. Just look at silk, thick leather, the various wood logs, iron and plat, etc. If they thought an item was seriously too pricey, they’ve shown themselves capable of balancing that, imo.
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.
‘Reasonable rate’ remains a vague, undefined, subjective, and therefore useless term. You only seem to want to talk about macroeconomics when it supports your side.
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.
That’s your playstyle, and that’s fine. If you want to aim for those other goals, go ahead. But don’t invalidate everyone else’s playstyles just because you don’t like them.
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.
Or you can acquire the resources over time directly. As I said earlier, Dusk took ~90 deld. That involves mithril, iron, and platinum. There are guides out there for harvesting rich nodes that can net you quite a few of those. But if you aren’t willing to put the time in to get the resources for it, I would reevaluate my goal and whether it’s feasible.
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.
Could you please explain how ‘fair’ is being used here, how it’s relevant, and how players trust in it? I honestly don’t understand how to apply the concept ‘fair’ to anonymous price listings on items. To me, that seems like saying ‘cabinet’ is true; the object ‘cabinet’ doesn’t have a truth value.
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.
Yes, I said that. I’m not saying I’m the populist side, I’m saying neither of us are. You say your side has the ‘overwhelming majority of the players.’ Prove it. I don’t think you can. The last sentence doesn’t even make sense.
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.
Would you mind explaining how to put a cap on earning that is done by the fully voluntary (on both sides) buying and selling of items?
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.
That did not address what was said. Players choose when to buy and sell at what prices. I don’t know how you intend to ‘balance’ TP profits other than by taking away that choice.
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.
Correct, we’re talking about reasonable time v. unreasonable time. The overall effort is equivalent, but the time is more reasonable. Sarcasm aside, as I said earlier, part of it is prestige of knowing the person did that particular thing and now has this cool skin, something which Gw2 has rather lacked (dungeon skins are a joke). Even if they were to create alternate lines for, say, legendary armor, I have little faith in their ability to make it fair. They failed it with dungeon skins, and tbh, I don’t think you can find a point in pvp or wvw, point to a certain quantity of progress, and say, “That’s equivalent to beating the full raid.” I’m not totally closed to the idea, I just doubt Anet can do it well and I think it takes away from the value of the item; that’s why we have pvp-only skins for example.
~snip~ 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.
No one is forcing you to engage in activities, that is purely your choice. If you find the only way to acquire an item is through content you don’t like, perhaps find another item to pursue.
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.
You missed the point. The point is, someone is always complaining about every change Anet makes; it isn’t a sign of anything more than a diverse playerbase.
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.
And, pray tell, what is this golden method of redistributing the game’s wealth and earnings to the poor populace who are so damaged by the wealth of the wealthy?
Because as far as I can tell, there is none.
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.
First of all, precursor crafting wasn’t originally meant to reduce the costs (although I think it did, I haven’t fully looked), but rather to provide a marked, continuous progression towards a precursor. What you really seem to want is the same precursor in the same time frame, just cheaper so you don’t have to spend as much time on it. Anet wants these items to maintain their value, at least to some extent. I would recommend reexamining (a) if this item is feasible for you, (b) how much time you’re willing to expend on it, © how long you’re willing to wait, or (d) any combination of those.
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. ~snip~
Is this really how far you’ve gone? Everything but high fracs can be done in exos, max runes/sigils/food is only important if you’re tryharding raids or super care about dps. You can always look for more underrated ones, those are prolly way cheaper than strength, hoelbrak, et cetera.
~snip~ 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.
Where do you think such fungible materials come from? Why, they come from gear and nodes found all over Tyria! What fun!
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.
So you want the devs to create a specific temporary sink/faucet, stating exactly what they wanted to do with each item, all so that you can have less volatile prices around the time the content is released. This sounds like entitlement if I’ve ever heard it.
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.
It’s an economic commonality. I don’t think you expect the world governments to spend money doing things to make sure that a new economic report doesn’t change prices too much; why expect Anet to do so? Why should Anet bend over backwards for your temporary unhappiness with a temporary change in price?
I have more, but it’s rather late and I’m tired. More in the morning.
And you want everyone to be rich.
Yes, and no-one rich. Or at least closer. It’s like how if you take the current real world wealth disparity, where the .1% hold 20% of the wealth, I’m not suggesting anything radical like the top .1% only holding .1% of the wealth, but maybe only 1%? I think it would be best if the scales were not even, but more even than they currently are.
That was not a premise in the original comparison, but I digress. This God-class, however, is only being discussed in the context of competitive pvp, a race. There is no such thing. There is no competition between you, me, and Wanze over who can reach something first. If you do view it as a race, then you don’t seem to be as concerned with winning as with the fact that others are.
Nope. You’re trying to warp the discussion into your own pace. If you then bend your own description back to, say, sPvP, then it “wouldn’t matter who wins and loses, it would just be about how much fun you have.” The way the economy is set up, it is no less competitive than sPvP, because anyone who has a net profit on the TP must do so by one or more other players having a net loss. For you to make money, another player has to lose money. For you to earn points, another player has to lose points. And again, I’m not so concerned with what they have, so long as I can have the things that I want. If I’m prevented from having the things I want, but they are allowed to have them due to unbalanced mechanisms, then that offends my sense of justice.
Let’s look at, say, high-end raid skins for clearing the whole raid. Part of the point of having those skins is for the prestige, for being able to see that a person was able to clear the whole raid.
I reject that entire concept. People that believe that having a rare skin imbues them with any additional “prestige” can live in their sad little world, but it shouldn’t prevent everyone else from having access to styles that they like.
And I think Anet has proved quite good at that. Just look at silk, thick leather, the various wood logs, iron and plat, etc. If they thought an item was seriously too pricey, they’ve shown themselves capable of balancing that, imo.
Yes, but what they view as “too pricey” seems to be well out of step with what the community views as “too pricey,” as evidenced by numerous threads on the matter. Whatever metrics they are using to determine fair pricing, they aren’t the right ones.
‘Reasonable rate’ remains a vague, undefined, subjective, and therefore useless term. You only seem to want to talk about macroeconomics when it supports your side.
I don’t particularly want to talk about macroeconomics at all, I personally don’t really care, but if I don’t address it them people start whining “but oh, the inflation!” I acknowledge that it’s an issue that needs to be addressed at some level for the health of the game, but ultimately I view it as a tertiary concern. ANet seems to view an internally stable economy as an end-goal in and of itself. If the economy is running relatively smoothly and stably, then they’ve done their job right. I view that as only part of the problem, that the economy also needs to be balanced to a level that the players find comfortable, where the things they want are not excessively expensive to them. If you can’t achieve the latter, then achieving the former is entirely pointless, like building one of those Chinese Ghost Cities, all buildings, no people.
That’s your playstyle, and that’s fine. If you want to aim for those other goals, go ahead. But don’t invalidate everyone else’s playstyles just because you don’t like them.
I don’t have a problem with any playstyle that does not come into conflict with mine. For example, I wouldn’t mind if some people wanted a PvP server, but I would mind if people could PK me in the open world without being able to opt out of it. It’s not possible to opt out of the PKs on the Trading Post, like it or not, the economy shifts according to those mechanisms and players have to interact with them if they want to play the game in any reasonable fashion. If you want to buy most things, the TP is the only place you can buy them directly. If you want to sell most things, the TP is the only place that will offer anywhere close to a fair value. If ANet would simply offer vendors that would buy and sell items at a fair market value it would save a lot of trouble, but so far they have not.
Could you please explain how ‘fair’ is being used here, how it’s relevant, and how players trust in it? I honestly don’t understand how to apply the concept ‘fair’ to anonymous price listings on items. To me, that seems like saying ‘cabinet’ is true; the object ‘cabinet’ doesn’t have a truth value.
People tend to believe that when they see a price, that is a stable price that nobody is likely to beat. That if they sell something at the buy order price that they wouldn’t be likely to sell it for more than that, that if they buy something at the sell order price, that buy orders for it would never be filled, and that neither would fluctuate significantly. Those who play the markets understand which items will sell for well over their buy order price, and which can be bought for well under their sell order price, and which items will be more valuable in a few hours, days, weeks, or months than they are today, and are able to take advantage of that to make significantly more off the TP than the average player. Again, if the average player were as capable as the TP fatcats, then the fatcats could not make any reasonable profits because they’d have nobody to shark.
Yes, I said that. I’m not saying I’m the populist side, I’m saying neither of us are. You say your side has the ‘overwhelming majority of the players.’ Prove it. I don’t think you can. The last sentence doesn’t even make sense.
I’m not saying that the majority of players necessarily agree with me, or are even aware of the issue. I’m saying that the majority of players would benefit from some move in my direction, whether or not they know or understand it. My goal would be to reduce the proportion of wealth held/controlled by the tiny minority of the game’s population, and redistribute it to the remainder of the population, so it is, by default, a populist argument, and is self-evident.
Would you mind explaining how to put a cap on earning that is done by the fully voluntary (on both sides) buying and selling of items?
Oh, there are all sorts of ways, some very harsh, some very soft. I mean the harshest and simplest would just be to have a straight cap. Make it so that you can’t acquire more than a certain amount of gold per day off the TP. Of course this would have its own issues, it would make the TP far less useful to players using it as intended, as they could not sell their high value loot effectively. I think softer caps would be more reasonable, like Diminishing Returns in normal play.
Make it so that players can trade plenty of low-value items, and the occasional high value items without triggering it, but if they trade multiple high value items, or huge quantities of low value items, the DR would start to kick in, and start a climbing transaction fee, potentially to much higher than the current 15%. It would act to both disencentivize excessive trading, and also as a gold sink that mostly targets those who have the most gold anyway, like a progressive income tax.
I don’t know, I’m sure there are better ideas out there, made by people with much better understandings of the details of real and imagined economies, but the goal is a valid one.
My own personal solution would be to just make all items “bind on purchase,” so that if you found something, you could sell it, ONCE, but if you bought something off the TP, you’re stuck with it. This would prevent flipping entirely. There would still be some things people could do to make money from money, like crafting, but it would cut down on a lot of the shenanigans.
That’s equivalent to beating the full raid.” I’m not totally closed to the idea, I just doubt Anet can do it well and I think it takes away from the value of the item; that’s why we have pvp-only skins for example.
I think that if there are activities that they can’t find reasonable alternatives for, then those activities shouldn’t have fancy rewards in the first place. Nothing says that raids must have fancy rewards, they are just a type of content that some people like and some people don’t. Let the people who enjoy them enjoy them, but that shouldn’t mean that those who don’t should be cut off from armor they might want.
No one is forcing you to engage in activities, that is purely your choice. If you find the only way to acquire an item is through content you don’t like, perhaps find another item to pursue.
That paragraph is like a very complex oxymoron.
You missed the point. The point is, someone is always complaining about every change Anet makes; it isn’t a sign of anything more than a diverse playerbase.
People only complain about the bad stuff, because it’s bad and should be fixed. If people disagree on an issue, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the path ANet chose is the correct one, they need to determine how much of the population falls to either side of the argument.
First of all, precursor crafting wasn’t originally meant to reduce the costs (although I think it did, I haven’t fully looked),
There have been whole threads about this, but it basically boils down to “if reducing the cost was not ANet’s original intent, then they completely missed the boat.” Players wanted lower costs, if ANet does not achieve lower costs, then they have failed the players, whatever their intention was.
but rather to provide a marked, continuous progression towards a precursor.
We already has that, it was the little gold number at the bottom of the inventory screen.
What you really seem to want is the same precursor in the same time frame, just cheaper so you don’t have to spend as much time on it.
Cheaper so I don’t have to spend as much money on it. Time is not a factor, someone who already has the money doesn’t need to spend any time on it. I wanted a process that I could do start to finish, and the result would be a Precursor, spending at most a nominal amount of money along the way, and the task being entirely dependent on effort. Every precursor should have an identical gold cost to crafting it, and the effort should be in the actual tasks involved, not in whether or not you have enough gold on hand. There should be nothing about the process for which your amount of gold would make the task easier or more difficult.
Is this really how far you’ve gone? Everything but high fracs can be done in exos, max runes/sigils/food is only important if you’re tryharding raids or super care about dps. You can always look for more underrated ones, those are prolly way cheaper than strength, hoelbrak, et cetera.
More and more of the new content is pushing the limits of “just Exotics.” You CAN do these things in Exotics, but Ascended does make it easier, and when it’s group content that can succeed or fail based on DPS output and whether or not you can stay up, having the very best gear available IS becoming more and more a matter of courtesy towards those around you.
Where do you think such fungible materials come from? Why, they come from gear and nodes found all over Tyria! What fun!
But again, acquiring them directly is extremely inefficient, in some cases it requires ridiculous RNG, in others just a lot of pointless busywork. The TP does serve a useful function, there is no doubt about that. It allows players who come into items that they don’t need to get a good value for it, and for players that need a thing they don’t have to pay for it rather than counting on their own luck, that much is great. Where it all goes wrong is when a player can buy the item that the first person is selling, and then just put it back up at a higher price than the first guy was asking for it, causing the second guy to have to spend more than he otherwise could have had the third guy not gotten into the process.
So you want the devs to create a specific temporary sink/faucet, stating exactly what they wanted to do with each item, all so that you can have less volatile prices around the time the content is released. This sounds like entitlement if I’ve ever heard it.
Aside from throwing around the word “entitlement,” you haven’t said why this would be a bad thing. The positive side is pretty obvious, what would the negative be?
It’s an economic commonality. I don’t think you expect the world governments to spend money doing things to make sure that a new economic report doesn’t change prices too much; why expect Anet to do so?
Because they wouldn’t have to spend any money to do so. Their money would be the same either way. The government does take action to blunt the effects of various disasters, as they should.
Why should Anet bend over backwards for your temporary unhappiness with a temporary change in price?
You say “your temporary unhappiness,” as if this is just about me. If it were just about me then they definitely shouldn’t do anything about it. But it’s about everyone in the game, plenty of people are complaining about the prices of things that we can safely assume will be cheaper in six months, and for each of those people there are probably thousands more who are thinking it but not being vocal.
The HoT-related price spikes are hurting EVERY player currently trying to form a guild hall, gear up for the new raid, gear up their new characters, learn to Scribe, all sorts of various things that involve resources that are currently in unusual demand. And it’s all entirely predictable, if you know what incoming recipes will take, and you know how many sources for those ingredients there will be, you can tell which ones will spike in price, any half-baked market watcher can do that without even knowing the exact recipes involved. So knowing that, they should cause temporary influxes of materials, ones designed to dry up as demand starts to fall to the stable level, so that the prices would stay at the stable level throughout the process.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Well, quite frankly, absolutely nobody needs that.
Nobody.
We have Dulfy for that.
It would be better if LOTS of players had that carrot and were showing it off, rather than a select few that mostly spend their time staring at UI in Lion’s Arch with their fancy weapons stowed anyway.
Now you’re just bringing your feelings into this – we don’t need it? Why? because you dislike it?
Dulfy is a great resource but most players will never go to dulfy’s site – so there needs to be a person in-game showing it off and making them want to obtain it.
If lots of people had said reward then it wouldn’t be that special would it? people would be less inclined to want it because so many others do – there are goods in every market that are only valuable because they’re exclusive in nature – it’s the classic : this thing is cool because I have it and you don’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
Read that and replace prices with “ease of acquisition” to better adapt it to the MMO setting.
Again, a fair argument, but if most players can’t earn them easily then no players should be able to earn them easily. Whatever the outcome, it should be balanced. Personally, I think the old legendaries have had three years, those carrots are getting a little moldy, it wouldn’t hurt to let anyone have them that wants one (with a reasonable, but not excessive amount of effort). Maybe the totally new ones they’re adding could take a bit longer to trickle into the population, but I’d say they’ve gotten their money’s worth out of the originals.
That’s wrong – because some player should be able to earn them easily in order to keep everyone else working and believing it’s an attainable goal.
Every scam and trick operates on the premise of showing you someone succeeding at a process easily in order to encourage you to try it out or sing up for it yourself.
Also are you a game designer in order to know how much they’ve gotten out of the original set? It’s pretty clear that regardless of how much they got – there’s no reason to not get more out of them.
I’m saying that it would be morally bankrupt if true.
I’m sorry I don’t understand what morals have to do in the way our species shaped its future. Morals are an artificial and recent concept – also a very shifting one.
Moral backrupcy is only a problem if your company pays its employees in morals. If not then financial bankrupcy is all you should care about.
If they were only interested in making money then this would be a mobile game with an energy system. Of course they want to make enough money to pay their staff with a little to spare, and they can do that without being as evil as you seem to insist they must be.
The reason this isn’t a mobile game with an energy system is that they didn’t aim at that demographic. Perhaps they couldn’t have broken into the market – perhaps they didn’t have the know-how to do a mobile game.
For whatever reason they picked this segment of MMORPG – but don’t fool yourself into thinking this was an altruistic choice -all businesses operate on the premise of making money.
Also – why make “just a little to spare” do you honestly believe any business operates on these premises?
The thing is, the problem isn’t people who point it out publicly, the problem isn’t even people that realize the problem. The problem is people who don’t know why, but just aren’t enjoying the game as much as they could, they just feel that the goals they have are too far out of reach, the other players are too far ahead of them, and they quietly give up without ever making a ripple (or paying ANet any more money). When you’re a lifeguard, it’s not the people thrashing wildly that you need to worry about, it’s the people that quietly sink under the water and don’t come back up.
The people in the aforementioned category are only a problem if there’s too many of them. If leaking players for the reasons you’ve stated becomes too much of an issue I’m sure the developers will address it – however since nothing has been done to address this I’m guessing that this is not as big an issue as you would like to make it out to be.
Your whole hypothesis here hinges on your belief that the number of these people is somehow relevant to the game’s financial well being – but all indicators ( how this game has worked and most other games work) point to the fact that these people are hardly relevant in any way.
But the same would be true of “time,” the more time they spend playing does not mean the more money they’ll spend either, since the way the game is structured, you never have to spend money to continue playing like in one of those “energy” games.
Yes – you actually do – the more you play the stronger you become “encouraged” by the game’s systems to pay. I’ve explained it a couple of times and even given examples.
A player can play 16 hours a day, 365 a year, and not spend a dime if he doesn’t feel like it. Of the two of them, “happiness” is a better determiner of spending.
No he cannot because if he wants to progress past certain hard gates ( like space and character slots) he must pay. With that much time played it is incredibly improbable that someone can restrain himself from paying a dime.
You seem to confound possibility with probability here.
Not true. The distance is usually fairly apparent. They might not know exactly when they will get it, but they can gauge their process reasonably well.
If that were true I feel we’d have more complaints. It seems people are either not noticing things or are comfortable with them or have fallen into a strong state of learned helplessness.
Perhaps, but they should consistently be hitting goals, so that they don’t feel like they aren’t making any progress.
And they are – there are a lot of things like achievements, titles and all manner of silly goofy things that work like that in this game.
I bought my first bank tabs within the first couple weeks. I haven’t bought a single new bank tab in about two and a half years, even though I have room for some more. I do amass some things, but not nearly enough that I need to buy more bank tabs. Besides, I don’t need to play more often to feel pressured on space, I just beat the Tarir meta tonight and really stretched my bag space from that one twenty minute event.
But if you played more often you’d be more often confronted with Tarir – and the pressure would increase. Again -your personal example does nothing to dispel my original statement.
Yes, but again, that’s nothing to do with playing more time, that’s just about enjoying the game enough that you appreciate variety. I have eleven characters at the moment, and I’m not likely to get any more any time soon, but really the last of my first-wave characters just celebrated his third birthday, so it really didn’t take a ton of ingame time to get me to buy a few character slots.
You are trying to counter my points with YOUR personal experience -which does not matter – the majority of players is what matters and it remains a fact that character slots and bag tabs are an effective way of monetizing them. It also remains true that the more time they spend in game the faster they will have need of these tabs and slots.
Yes, but again there are usually plenty of people to populate most maps, the problem is their server systems spreading those players too thinly. More people makes no difference if they keep spreading them over dozens of huge maps.
Really? Core maps are pretty much empty – and were so even before HoT. That’s why they added a new system to farm mats and incentivize people to go there.
Even with the overflow system – if you had massive numbers of players things would be better not worse.
One thing does not negate the other – just because megaservers are a part of the low population problem in maps doesn’t mean that a higher player population would not be beneficial.
Are you running out of arguments?
And again, that is a problem with those goals requiring more people than the ones that are already there. If there’s only one person there, then only one person should ever be necessary.
So then the entire non-solo part of the game is now an issue?
The are parts of the game that require MORE players. By design.
My point is that they would actually be reducing their own profits by burning players out that could instead be enjoying the game.
If this were true why don’t we see a shift not only in GW2 but the gaming market in general?
If you’re only interested in the reward because you want to have more than other people, then why does the reward itself matter at all? You should want the reward because YOU want the reward, whether you’re the only one that has it, or whether everyone has it. The number of other players that have it should be irrelevant to you.
Because certain things only hold value through the fact that you can have them while other can not.
They are status symbols – things that display your superiority to others by having achieved them while those others have not.
You want the reward because you want the reward only if the reward matters to you. If what matters to you is boosting your ego and feeling better by proving to yourself and others you are in way shape or form better off than they are then the reward itself does not matter except for the way in which it shows off your status as best and to as many others as possible.
The number of other players that have it should be irrelevant to you.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
Yes, and no-one rich. Or at least closer. It’s like how if you take the current real world wealth disparity, where the .1% hold 20% of the wealth, I’m not suggesting anything radical like the top .1% only holding .1% of the wealth, but maybe only 1%? I think it would be best if the scales were not even, but more even than they currently are.
This here is the problem. You may want this communist-like system but most people don’t. You can tell this by looking at how most communist systems that worked like this collapsed at one point or another.
, then that offends my sense of justice.
There is no justice in the world – there’s only strength. Where do you get these things?
I reject that entire concept. People that believe that having a rare skin imbues them with any additional “prestige” can live in their sad little world, but it shouldn’t prevent everyone else from having access to styles that they like.
If that’s how you’re going to respond to an argument we might as well all respond to all your threads with “people that believe all players should have rare skins to enjoy themselves fully can live in their sad little world and their wishes never come to be”.
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
I dont think this is an adventure game. I think the term that Anet likes to use is a living online world.
No, it’s an adventure game. For it to qualify as a “living online world” it would need to shift more into the realm of the “craftopia” games, where everything is crafted and crafter wares rule the economy (rather than just being burnable resources towards other projects), trade would be based on actually traveling with items between locations rather than a single virtual TP and instant travel, and player housing would need to go well beyond Guild Halls. No, this is definitely an adventure game, and if ANet wants to see it differently, then they have a lot of work to do.
The topic of their game description says the following:
Enter a living, breathing fantasy world.
John Smith mentioned several times that the trading post is an integral part of this world. Here is one quote:
“Here is my stance on this subject:
The TP is part of Tyria and is a part of the game. Spending your time learning to interact with it is a fine way to play the game if that’s what you enjoy. It has ups and downs (including no exp, karma, achievements).
The amount of money to be made on the TP is finite. There is no way it can’t be, the TP only ever sinks money, it never creates it. The TP offers convenience to trade outside of equilibrium pricing, and if a player decides to step in and take the time and effort to consume that trade and push the trade into equilibrium, that is great for the economy. It pushed prices towards equilibrium, provides a service to those who want convenience and sinks money all at the same time.
Trading takes skill, and lots of it, it cannot be argued otherwise and here is why. Because the profit is so limited, the profit has to be split between all the people effectively trading. The lower the skill cap, the more people trading effectively, the less profit individuals make until there’s no longer a real market. If one argues that there is money to be made, then you are arguing that skill is involved.”
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/bltc/Why-manipulate-that/page/2#post3175493
Anet states that they designed a living breathing world with a living economy but you simply say that its an adventure game and therefore shouldnt have a living economy and less focus on it.
Anet states that no rewards are created by the trading post but you simply apply a different definition of rewards to make an argument.
You are basically talking about things that dont exist but you claim that they exist and you dont like them, therefore Anet should change or remove them.
Attachments:
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And you want everyone to be rich.
Yes, and no-one rich. Or at least closer. It’s like how if you take the current real world wealth disparity, where the .1% hold 20% of the wealth, I’m not suggesting anything radical like the top .1% only holding .1% of the wealth, but maybe only 1%? I think it would be best if the scales were not even, but more even than they currently are.
How exactly would you enforce this. Everyone in this game is in equal footing. We all have access to the same tools, the same game, the same everything. Lets say you get exactly what you want and all the wealth is taken from the richest players and given to the poorer players to get the wealth distribution you want.
Then what? I would suggest that within 1 week the wealth distribution would be exactly what it was before your magical intervention. People are rich and poor in this game because they choose to be rich and poor. Anything the rich players are doing the poor players can do too.
Going to continue from earlier posts, then get to new stuff.
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.
~snip~ 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.
Ascended is what, 5-7% higher stats? Less? Personally I never really noticed the difference. Outside of fractals, I think you’d have a hard time arguing that ascended is so ‘highly useful’ that it’s THAT important to have. Indeed, the only reason I got ascended was for fractals, quite some time ago. I would not get it just for the stat boost, it’s very little.
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!”
Legendaries were never meant for everyone and their dog to have. They were meant to be long-term, expensive goals for the people that wanted that item to work towards. You appear to be incapable of understanding this, or even basic economics.
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, ~snip~ 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.
I’m not sure if I even need to add anything here…
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).
You don’t like his playstyle. So what. Both playstyles can coexist.
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.
That is your opinion, you are entitled to it. Don’t shove it down everyone else’s throats.
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.
Over several hundred hours (650+), using skill, knowledge, and research that other people don’t do/have.
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.
Yes, knowledge, skill, intuition, and research set him apart from those other people in this area. I don’t see your argument.
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.
Yes, and people like Wanze are supplying what those people want. Pretty much the only person that sees this as a problem that needs “fixing” is you.
~snip~
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.
The stick is 20ft, your arm is ~3ft, and you seem to want the stick brought closer to you when you see other people getting the carrot by being willing to move. Maybe, just maybe, you should either get your buns moving, or choose a carrot with a closer stick. If a legendary takes too much time and gold for you, maybe just aim for a few BL skins or something.
If a player buys a listing from me, i basically got that gold from Anet.
Yes.
No. He was given that money by a player, who may have been given that money from Anet or from another player. Anet played no deciding factor in him getting the money. Random players did. Random players != Anet.
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.
Your logic is flawless; things that don’t exist don’t have flaws. You can’t claim Anet is responsible for every transaction on the TP, they did nothing to cause it.
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.
And you would destroy the macroeconomy so that you can have what you want when you want it, inexpensively.
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. ~snip~
You missed the point. Let me add the second half of the quote:
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.
He’s pointing out that what your argument boils down to is: “I don’t like this part of the game, therefore change it.”
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 doesn’t have to. No one is forcing him to. But go on
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.
Should, should, should. All of that is your opinion, you are entitled to it. But don’t shove it done other people’s throats. I do need to use that phrase a lot, don’t I?
It would be better if LOTS of players had that carrot and were showing it off, rather than a select few that mostly spend their time staring at UI in Lion’s Arch with their fancy weapons stowed anyway.
It would? Why? How so? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of it being a shiny carrot?
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.
Again, a fair argument, but if most players can’t earn them easily then no players should be able to earn them easily. Whatever the outcome, it should be balanced.
Again, only your opinion, but go on.
Personally, I think the old legendaries have had three years, those carrots are getting a little moldy, it wouldn’t hurt to let anyone have them that wants one (with a reasonable, but not excessive amount of effort). Maybe the totally new ones they’re adding could take a bit longer to trickle into the population, but I’d say they’ve gotten their money’s worth out of the originals.
Reasonable remains just as vapid, subjective, and useless as it was when you first used it. Now, let me go back to imagining the massive, angry backlash if Anet were to make the gen 1 legendaries easier…
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.
The thing is, the problem isn’t people who point it out publicly, the problem isn’t even people that realize the problem. The problem is people who don’t know why, but just aren’t enjoying the game as much as they could, they just feel that the goals they have are too far out of reach, the other players are too far ahead of them, and they quietly give up without ever making a ripple (or paying ANet any more money).
You have not demonstrated that such a group exists in significant enough numbers for Anet to care. Until you do so, this is just a pile of unsubstantiated claims.
~snip~
I tend to agree. One of the causes of hopelessness is the knowledge that things aren’t likely to improve, that the goal posts will either stay in place or move away from you, rarely closer. That’s one of the reasons the Precursor Crafting system offended me, because I’d assumed that after three years, they would make a genuine effort to make Precursors more easily available, when instead they just made it more work on top of the existing gold costs.
As far as I know, it was never meant to make it cheaper. It was meant to create solid progression. I can’t speak for the other precursors, having not looked, but it made Dusk much cheaper for me. Unless you want to buy all the stuff right now and have it done asap no matter the cost.
Same with raids, in previous games you could assume that even if you can’t do the meta raid right now, eventually it would become trivialized and you could. In this game, they claim that the raids will never be devalued by future changes, so if you can’t do it now (by “now” I mean within the next few months, once good strats have been nailed down), then you likely never will.
I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have interesting and hard boss fights forever than a couple hard boss fights that no longer matter in half a year. The former sounds much more fun and engaging to me.
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.
Perhaps, but they should consistently be hitting goals, so that they don’t feel like they aren’t making any progress.
You aren’t going to hit a goal like a precursor very often. If you’re just trying to gather mats for a component, you can always make your own goal (e.g. hit 150 ectos by the end of the week).
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.
Again, the fact that we can assume that is an indictment of the situation, not an excuse. If a price spike is predictable then an anti-spike mechanism should be put into place to prevent it.
I’m beginning to wonder if your arguments are based on anything more than a series of “I thinks” and “shoulds.” The economy will balance out eventually, it is only your instant gratification urges that need that to change.
One thing my flipping history, that i posted earlier, demonstrates, is that people just make the wrong choices when selling their loot.
Which goes back to what I was saying about the current system being unfair to players who lack the skill, knowledge, or interest in competing on the TP. Again, it’s like having one class that can dominate if played right, but is worthless when played poorly, and makes all other classes worthless in comparison, so if you do not enjoy the god-class, too bad, you’re playing the god-class anyways or getting left in the dust.
Why do you even care how much gold other people are making? Play at your own pace, the game isn’t a race. Person A getting Item 246 before Player B is irrelevant. The god-class analogy only works if everything is competitive; hint, pve isn’t all about competition.
Now, if everybody would be able to get 50% more for his loot, i dont think people would complain that they dont get enough.
Its down to wrong personal choices by the players and you expect Anet to step in.Yes. At the very minimum the interface could do a better job of informing players of their options, like having built in volume metrics that would make clear to the casual players how quickly items sell at the sell prices, and history tracking that would show where the item’s price has been over time, and perhaps even a prediction of where it might go based on reasonable expectations that someone such as yourself would be making.
This has been discussed before, and it would be beneficial, I agree.
It would be the same to ask Anet do remove the dodging mechanic because you are bad at it and nerf all incoming damage by 50% to compensate.
If I felt that it was a major balance problem, I might, but personally I don’t feel that way about the game as they’ve designed it.
maybe you missed what he was saying. I bolded a key word so hopefully you understand.
Man after reading all of this I only have 1 question to Ohoni
What exactly do you want anet to do? like specifically… make everything soul bound or something? shut down the trading post? please don’t say “Make everything balanced”
The goal is just balance, for the amount of gold that an intelligent and skilled player can draw into his personal account from the TP should be no higher than the amount that an equally skilled and intelligent player can draw from active adventuring content, over the same amount of hours played, and the same level of active engagement in the content (ie, just standing there and managing the TP UI would be equivalent to Silverwastes chest farming, higher engagement activities would be more rewarding than that).
More ‘shoulds’ and ‘I thinks.’ I’m seriously having doubts if your position is based on anything more.
That was not a premise in the original comparison, but I digress. This God-class, however, is only being discussed in the context of competitive pvp, a race. There is no such thing. There is no competition between you, me, and Wanze over who can reach something first. If you do view it as a race, then you don’t seem to be as concerned with winning as with the fact that others are.
Nope. You’re trying to warp the discussion into your own pace. If you then bend your own description back to, say, sPvP, then it “wouldn’t matter who wins and loses, it would just be about how much fun you have.”
Unless you read what I wrote. Then you might understand that I was saying that it’s a bad comparison because pve isn’t a race, whereas pvp is. And ultimately, yes, who wins and loses is only important if 1) it’s in a tournament, or 2) you give that priority. If you want to play pvp just for the fun of fighting a real player, that’s fine.
The way the economy is set up, it is no less competitive than sPvP, because anyone who has a net profit on the TP must do so by one or more other players having a net loss. For you to make money, another player has to lose money. ~snip~ If I’m prevented from having the things I want,
It isn’t a net loss. Lets take a quote 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.
Go on:
but they are allowed to have them due to unbalanced mechanisms, then that offends my sense of justice.
So other people making money certain ways offends you, so it should be changed? That’s almost a new one.
Let’s look at, say, high-end raid skins for clearing the whole raid. Part of the point of having those skins is for the prestige, for being able to see that a person was able to clear the whole raid.
I reject that entire concept. People that believe that having a rare skin imbues them with any additional “prestige” can live in their sad little world, but it shouldn’t prevent everyone else from having access to styles that they like.
Not everyone rejects this idea, some people relish in it. But you would force your rejection of the idea on everyone. No.
Yes, but what they view as “too pricey” seems to be well out of step with what the community views as “too pricey,” as evidenced by numerous threads on the matter. Whatever metrics they are using to determine fair pricing, they aren’t the right ones.
What, because some people whined on the forums? Unless it’s a pretty large backlash, that is a terrible reason to change things; the forum has always been the place for griping, on whatever matter. As to the metrics, perhaps Anet isn’t looking to give everyone the ability to get whatever they want whenever by playing anything for any time. Personally, I might like to know what metrics they use, but that’s just me being curious.
‘Reasonable rate’ remains a vague, undefined, subjective, and therefore useless term. You only seem to want to talk about macroeconomics when it supports your side.
I don’t particularly want to talk about macroeconomics at all, I personally don’t really care, but if I don’t address it them people start whining “but oh, the inflation!” I acknowledge that it’s an issue that needs to be addressed at some level for the health of the game, but ultimately I view it as a tertiary concern.
Your ability to buy the items you want won’t matter if it takes weeks for things to sell, items don’t move quickly towards a good price, and some items never hit equilibrium. Macroeconomics affect your personal experience bubble a lot more than you seem to think they do. You included my sentence about reasonable in the quote. Address it.
That’s your playstyle, and that’s fine. If you want to aim for those other goals, go ahead. But don’t invalidate everyone else’s playstyles just because you don’t like them.
I don’t have a problem with any playstyle that does not come into conflict with mine. For example, I wouldn’t mind if some people wanted a PvP server, but I would mind if people could PK me in the open world without being able to opt out of it. It’s not possible to opt out of the PKs on the Trading Post, like it or not, the economy shifts according to those mechanisms and players have to interact with them if they want to play the game in any reasonable fashion. ~snip~
You STILL haven’t actually given any evidence that traders like Wanze actually hurt the game. Until you do that, this is meaningless blabber. Prove your assertions.
If ANet would simply offer vendors that would buy and sell items at a fair market value it would save a lot of trouble, but so far they have not.
That would destroy..hmm..any reason for having an economy and any system of RNG, and…
People tend to believe that when they see a price, that is a stable price that nobody is likely to beat. That if they sell something at the buy order price that they wouldn’t be likely to sell it for more than that, that if they buy something at the sell order price, that buy orders for it would never be filled, and that neither would fluctuate significantly.
So saying that people believe prices are fair means that people believe prices won’t change much. I think even someone with almost no understanding of economics can understand that fluctuations/spikes/cliffs happen. Are you going to blame me for people believing lies that they weren’t even told?
Yes, I said that. I’m not saying I’m the populist side, I’m saying neither of us are. You say your side has the ‘overwhelming majority of the players.’ Prove it. I don’t think you can. The last sentence doesn’t even make sense.
I’m not saying that the majority of players necessarily agree with me, or are even aware of the issue. I’m saying that the majority of players would benefit from some move in my direction, whether or not they know or understand it.
Demonstrate that the current system is directly hurting players, and how your propositions would fix this without breaking a ton of other things, and would directly benefit players. Then you have a case. As of right now, your arguments are a pile of assertions and opinions, not backed by anything else.
That’s equivalent to beating the full raid.” I’m not totally closed to the idea, I just doubt Anet can do it well and I think it takes away from the value of the item; that’s why we have pvp-only skins for example.
I think that if there are activities that they can’t find reasonable alternatives for, then those activities shouldn’t have fancy rewards in the first place. Nothing says that raids must have fancy rewards, they are just a type of content that some people like and some people don’t. Let the people who enjoy them enjoy them, but that shouldn’t mean that those who don’t should be cut off from armor they might want.
Again, reasonable is still a useless term. The point is, raids are hard content that Anet is pushing. In order to be worthwhile to many players, they have to have exclusive rewards. Thus, prestige. Or would you like the people doing the hardest, newest content to get 5 blues and a 2 greens for their hours spent practicing and perfecting their strategies?
No one is forcing you to engage in activities, that is purely your choice. If you find the only way to acquire an item is through content you don’t like, perhaps find another item to pursue.
That paragraph is like a very complex oxymoron.
Even if it is, the whole point of an oxymoron is a statement that appears contradictory but isn’t really. You haven’t refuted anything.
You missed the point. The point is, someone is always complaining about every change Anet makes; it isn’t a sign of anything more than a diverse playerbase.
People only complain about the bad stuff, because it’s bad and should be fixed. If people disagree on an issue, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the path ANet chose is the correct one, they need to determine how much of the population falls to either side of the argument.
You’re still missing the point. Take this thread as an example. You haven’t actually demonstrated that anything is bad or harmful, you’ve just stated that it is. People don’t only complain about bad things, they complain about things they don’t like. The two are not equivalent.
First of all, precursor crafting wasn’t originally meant to reduce the costs (although I think it did, I haven’t fully looked),
There have been whole threads about this, but it basically boils down to “if reducing the cost was not ANet’s original intent, then they completely missed the boat.” Players wanted lower costs, if ANet does not achieve lower costs, then they have failed the players, whatever their intention was.
I’m not going to bother arguing over Anet’s intention, it’s a self-defeating topic. I spent about 700g in mats and money on mats to create Dusk. Considering that over the past year it has hovered between 900g and 1400g, you can hardly say that didn’t lower the cost.
but rather to provide a marked, continuous progression towards a precursor.
We already has that, it was the little gold number at the bottom of the inventory screen.
The point was, the TP price fluctuated and could rise. This doesn’t change, Dusk will always need the same amount of deld, and thus the same amount of mats. The prices of those mats may rise or fall, but putting 10 deld into it will get you as much closer regardless.
What you really seem to want is the same precursor in the same time frame, just cheaper so you don’t have to spend as much time on it.
Cheaper so I don’t have to spend as much money on it. Time is not a factor, someone who already has the money doesn’t need to spend any time on it.
Time is money, as the saying goes. If time isn’t a factor (that is, you are willing to spend as long as it takes), then I don’t understand what is preventing you from using that time to get the money. The reason I have Dusk now rather than being in-progress is just a matter of the fact that I had been saving up for it well before HoT.
Every precursor should have an identical gold cost to crafting it, and the effort should be in the actual tasks involved, not in whether or not you have enough gold on hand. There should be nothing about the process for which your amount of gold would make the task easier or more difficult.
That’s your opinion. I doubt it would retain value for precursors the way Anet wants them to, and its clearly not Anet’s opinion, but you can hold that opinion as much as you want.
Is this really how far you’ve gone? Everything but high fracs can be done in exos, max runes/sigils/food is only important if you’re tryharding raids or super care about dps. You can always look for more underrated ones, those are prolly way cheaper than strength, hoelbrak, et cetera.
More and more of the new content is pushing the limits of “just Exotics.” You CAN do these things in Exotics, but Ascended does make it easier, and when it’s group content that can succeed or fail based on DPS output and whether or not you can stay up, having the very best gear available IS becoming more and more a matter of courtesy towards those around you.
Remember, this was in the context of account bound collections, not raids or fracs. I don’t think asc gear vs exotic gear matters for those collections. At all. On raids, I don’t think they were intended to be done by everyone. I think about 5ish percent was the number? I don’t remember.
Where do you think such fungible materials come from? Why, they come from gear and nodes found all over Tyria! What fun!
But again, acquiring them directly is extremely inefficient, in some cases it requires ridiculous RNG, in others just a lot of pointless busywork.
Point me to a couple high-RNG items seriously needed for precursor crafting. In making Dusk, I found the most limiting resources to be iron, platinum, and mithril, all mats that commonly occur in harvestable nodes in the open world. And you want whatever you do to to give you equally efficient progress towards whatever goal you may want. /facepalm
Where it all goes wrong is when a player can buy the item that the first person is selling, and then just put it back up at a higher price than the first guy was asking for it, causing the second guy to have to spend more than he otherwise could have had the third guy not gotten into the process.
You don’t even understand what you’re trying to attack, so let me correct you. Player C places a buy order (probably overcutting the top price), then re-lists the item (undercutting or listing at a price that person thinks the player demand will reach). In this scenario, Player A is getting a slightly better deal for his item and Player B is either getting a slightly better deal or is paying what player demand decided was a fair price. The ONLY way A gets more money or B saves more money is by actively making a different choice. Beyond not understanding this, you haven’t proven that any of this is ‘going wrong.’
So you want the devs to create a specific temporary sink/faucet, stating exactly what they wanted to do with each item, all so that you can have less volatile prices around the time the content is released. This sounds like entitlement if I’ve ever heard it.
Aside from throwing around the word “entitlement,” you haven’t said why this would be a bad thing. The positive side is pretty obvious, what would the negative be?
It’s like asking someone to bake you cookies that you’ll end up throwing away the majority of, just because the ice cream is at room temperature. You are so focused on you having what you want whatever the cost is to others that you can’t see how pointless the whole endeavor is, how much other people have to do for it, and how self-centered the whole thing is. Long story short, if you can’t afford a goal and don’t want to adjust your play towards getting it, either wait until it’s cheaper, or find another goal.
It’s an economic commonality. I don’t think you expect the world governments to spend money doing things to make sure that a new economic report doesn’t change prices too much; why expect Anet to do so?
Because they wouldn’t have to spend any money to do so. Their money would be the same either way. The government does take action to blunt the effects of various disasters, as they should.
Yes, governments blunt disasters, like bailing out large companies in the 2008 recession. The only person that thinks price spikes are a disaster is you. If you don’t think developing new sinks, plotting out how they will work and how much they should drain, and how much needs to be drained out of every market they want to change doesn’t take up the time of employees that could be working on content, then I don’t know what you do.
Why should Anet bend over backwards for your temporary unhappiness with a temporary change in price?
You say “your temporary unhappiness,” as if this is just about me. If it were just about me then they definitely shouldn’t do anything about it. But it’s about everyone in the game, plenty of people are complaining about the prices of things that we can safely assume will be cheaper in six months, and for each of those people there are probably thousands more who are thinking it but not being vocal.
So in other words, we can assume there are untold thousands of people that agree with you. Prove it.
The HoT-related price spikes are hurting EVERY player currently trying to form a guild hall, gear up for the new raid, gear up their new characters, learn to Scribe, all sorts of various things that involve resources that are currently in unusual demand. And it’s all entirely predictable, if you know what incoming recipes will take, and you know how many sources for those ingredients there will be, you can tell which ones will spike in price, any half-baked market watcher can do that without even knowing the exact recipes involved. So knowing that, they should cause temporary influxes of materials, ones designed to dry up as demand starts to fall to the stable level, so that the prices would stay at the stable level throughout the process.
If it was really so easy as ‘any half-baked market watcher, ’then I think we’d have seen a smaller price spike as those people unloaded their investments. So Anet should closely regulate every single market to make sure none of them go slightly to high or slightly too low, just so that you can buy them at a price you want. Great.
If lots of people had said reward then it wouldn’t be that special would it? people would be less inclined to want it because so many others do – there are goods in every market that are only valuable because they’re exclusive in nature – it’s the classic : this thing is cool because I have it and you don’t.
That’s toxic behavior, it does not benefit anyone and should exist as little as possible. Things should be desired because they are intrinsically cool, not because few other people have them. People that only want things because other people don’t have them should be ashamed of themselves, not rewarded.
Every scam and trick operates on the premise of showing you someone succeeding at a process easily in order to encourage you to try it out or sing up for it yourself.
You seem to be all-in on your “evil is good” mantras.
Yes – you actually do – the more you play the stronger you become “encouraged” by the game’s systems to pay. I’ve explained it a couple of times and even given examples.
And yet it remains untrue. You can play for a few hours and decide to spend a lot of money, or play thousands of hours and decide to spend very little. I’ve played several games with marketplaces over the years, and the times that I’ve paid for additional stuff have not fallen along playtime milestones, they have fallen along times that I’ve been enjoying the game and something came along that would increase that enjoyment. If I’m just begrudgingly grinding away I’m not in a particularly generous mood.
No he cannot because if he wants to progress past certain hard gates ( like space and character slots) he must pay. With that much time played it is incredibly improbable that someone can restrain himself from paying a dime.
But those gates are irrelevant to time played. You can play thousands of hours and never feel pressure from those gates, or play only a few hours and feel that you want to open them. As I noted, I purchased the vast majority of my additional character slots and bank slots when I’d only put maybe 100 hours into the game, and have since spent thousands. If your model held water, I would be expected to either have taken 1000+ hours to reach my 8th character, or I would have a couple dozen characters and full bank slots by now. Each player buys things at his own pace, but it is rarely directly correlated to gameplay hours. A player who enjoys playing an hour a day is just as likely to buy things as one who plays several hours per day, if those things are useful to him.
You are trying to counter my points with YOUR personal experience -which does not matter – the majority of players is what matters and it remains a fact that character slots and bag tabs are an effective way of monetizing them. It also remains true that the more time they spend in game the faster they will have need of these tabs and slots.
And you have provided no evidence that the more time one spends in the game the more they would have need of any of that stuff. You just repeatedly insist that this must be the case. People’s need for those things is based on how quickly they run out of what they already have, which doesn’t necessarily correlate to time spent in game.
The topic of their game description says the following:
Enter a living, breathing fantasy world.
Don’t confuse marketing spin with function. Again though, if they actually wanted a “living breathing world” then they still have a LOT of work to do in adding the systems necessary for that to happen.
Then what? I would suggest that within 1 week the wealth distribution would be exactly what it was before your magical intervention. People are rich and poor in this game because they choose to be rich and poor. Anything the rich players are doing the poor players can do too.
Yes, the the things that rich people currently do should be made less efficient, less effective at taking money from the poor.
Ascended is what, 5-7% higher stats? Less? Personally I never really noticed the difference. Outside of fractals, I think you’d have a hard time arguing that ascended is so ‘highly useful’ that it’s THAT important to have. Indeed, the only reason I got ascended was for fractals, quite some time ago. I would not get it just for the stat boost, it’s very little.
Have you watched any videos of raid boss fights? Even highly coordinated groups making few mistakes often beat raid bosses within a few seconds of a total failure. That 5-7% difference seems like it would be quite significant in those cases, if it takes them say five minutes of constant burn to kill a boss using peak stats, then that 5-7% would equate to about 15 seconds of burn time.
Legendaries were never meant for everyone and their dog to have. They were meant to be long-term, expensive goals for the people that wanted that item to work towards. You appear to be incapable of understanding this, or even basic economics.
It’s been three years, I think that’s plenty long by most accounts.
You don’t like his playstyle. So what. Both playstyles can coexist.
They can, they totally can, so long as they are in balance, so long as one is not ridiculously more effective at returning gold to the player than the other. So long as they are out of balance, however, more work is needed to correct that.
Over several hundred hours (650+), using skill, knowledge, and research that other people don’t do/have.
And others have played well more than 650 hours, also using skill and knowledge of the game, and not made anywhere near 6000g off their efforts. For your information, according to the stats on GW2 Efficiency (which should skew towards the richer players), the mean total account value for a player with up to 1000 hours under his belt is only 3000g, and that includes plenty of accountbound items like dyes and such that are not fungible.
Yes, knowledge, skill, intuition, and research set him apart from those other people in this area. I don’t see your argument.
Again, the point is that having “knowledge, skill, intuition, and research” over this one aspect of the game gives such a massively overwhelming advantage over players who have equivalent “knowledge, skill, intuition, and research” over any other aspect of the game, aspects that are much more central to what the game actually is than the Trading Post is.
You aren’t going to hit a goal like a precursor very often. If you’re just trying to gather mats for a component, you can always make your own goal (e.g. hit 150 ectos by the end of the week).
If you’re going to be making that argument then the opposite one is equally true, that Precursors could be a more reasonable goal, someone that most players are expected to achieve every few months of gameplay, but that if you need a more long term goal then that, then you could become determined to get 50K Ectos or whatever floats your boat.
Why do you even care how much gold other people are making? Play at your own pace, the game isn’t a race. Person A getting Item 246 before Player B is irrelevant. The god-class analogy only works if everything is competitive; hint, pve isn’t all about competition.
Again, the TP is ENTIRELY PVP. Every transaction is you either winning or losing against the player who made that sale possible. Either you got a better deal than he did, or he got a better deal than you. Other players having more gold does impact me, because it means that they can afford to buy items that I cannot. If they could not afford to but those items, then those items would not be listed at such high prices, and they would be more affordable to me. You seem far too clever to not understand this, so I can only assume you’re deliberately trying to obscure this simple truth about the marketplace.
Again, if it were a non-competitive system, if the prices were relatively fixed, and even the most expensive items were capped out at reasonably low levels, so that having thousands of gold would be irrelevant because it wouldn’t mean that you could afford anything that anyone else couldn’t, then it would be an entirely different situation, but that is not the game we have.
What exactly do you want anet to do? like specifically… make everything soul bound or something? shut down the trading post? please don’t say “Make everything balanced”
I commented on this a few posts back. My favored solutions would be to either make all items “bind on purchase,” so that you can sell things you find and buy things you need, but not buy things and then resell them for more, and/or some kind of diminishing returns on TP purchases, that would make high volume trading far less profitable than it is, while minimally impacting standard user behavior. But again, I’m sure there are people who could craft far better systems than that which would achieve the same goals.
Ohoni.6057:
The way the economy is set up, it is no less competitive than sPvP, because anyone who has a net profit on the TP must do so by one or more other players having a net loss. For you to make money, another player has to lose money. ~snip~ If I’m prevented from having the things I want,
It isn’t a net loss. Lets take a quote 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.
No, it does require a net loss. Say on one side you have one savvy trader, and on the other you have three less savvy ones, each trading one item. If the savvy trader buys and resells their items, and earns a total profit on that transaction of 1g, leaving TP fees aside from the moment, then that would mean that the other three players would have had to lose out on a total of 1g in potential returns. If they did not leave that money on the table, it would not be available for the savvy player to scoop up. His gains MUST come at their expense, otherwise the gains would not exist to be had.
That would destroy..hmm..any reason for having an economy and any system of RNG, and…
It really wouldn’t. You can have fixed market values for things AND RNG coexisting. You just set the fixed market value high enough that people are willing to play the odds of RNG in hopes that they get it for less. If people were just playing content and just happened to receive a rare item as a drop, they would still feel super happy about that, even if they always had the option of buying it at a relatively high price.
So saying that people believe prices are fair means that people believe prices won’t change much. I think even someone with almost no understanding of economics can understand that fluctuations/spikes/cliffs happen. Are you going to blame me for people believing lies that they weren’t even told?
I’m not blaming you for anything, I’m blaming the system for not fully taking human nature into account in a way that would benefit the average player.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
That’s toxic behavior, it does not benefit anyone and should exist as little as possible. Things should be desired because they are intrinsically cool, not because few other people have them. People that only want things because other people don’t have them should be ashamed of themselves, not rewarded.
I think all form of rational discussion is pretty much hopeless when you decide to clump up a group’s way of playing and way of thinking as “toxic”.
That’s your opinion – and regardless of it and your special little feeling associated with the topic I was trying to explain to you that these things exist – both in game and in the real world.
Just because you do not agree with something doesn’t mean that thing has no right to exist.
I might as well label everything you say and think as toxic and then what? There’s no room for discourse if this is your attitude towards people.
Come back to debate things once you’ve managed to free yourself from the constraints of your own moral views and your feelings.
You seem to be all-in on your “evil is good” mantras.
You seem to be naive – I’m not promoting evil or good – I’m just saying effective is effective. Things aren’t good or evil – they just are. And such scams are effective. Do I care if they’re good or evil? No because that’s not the debate here.
And yet it remains untrue. You can play for a few hours and decide to spend a lot of money, or play thousands of hours and decide to spend very little. I’ve played several games with marketplaces over the years, and the times that I’ve paid for additional stuff have not fallen along playtime milestones, they have fallen along times that I’ve been enjoying the game and something came along that would increase that enjoyment. If I’m just begrudgingly grinding away I’m not in a particularly generous mood.
While I agree with you that anomalies exist I’m willing to bet that there’s a pattern that links time spent in game with money spent in game quite strongly that holds true for the majority of players.
You’re trying to explain to me that a trend isn’t there because some outlier examples are possible. You are an individual – but as an individual you are an exception.
Most individuals are not like you – most players I’ve met have spent money on the game regardless of whether or not they enjoyed it or simply felt compelled to do it.
Let’s not bring personal examples into this.
But those gates are irrelevant to time played. You can play thousands of hours and never feel pressure from those gates, or play only a few hours and feel that you want to open them. As I noted, I purchased the vast majority of my additional character slots and bank slots when I’d only put maybe 100 hours into the game, and have since spent thousands. If your model held water, I would be expected to either have taken 1000+ hours to reach my 8th character, or I would have a couple dozen characters and full bank slots by now. Each player buys things at his own pace, but it is rarely directly correlated to gameplay hours. A player who enjoys playing an hour a day is just as likely to buy things as one who plays several hours per day, if those things are useful to him.
It is true – you can play a lot without pressure from those gates however it is extremely unlikely you’ll spend a lot of time in game without having those gates pressure you. Just because something CAN happen doesn’t mean it WILL or does so OFTEN.
Again you attempt to provide your personal experience as relevant – but it is not – you are an atypical individual in this game. And even if you weren’t – you are just one player. You can’t possibly conclude what the behavior of many players will be based on your own feelings and decisions.
And you have provided no evidence that the more time one spends in the game the more they would have need of any of that stuff. You just repeatedly insist that this must be the case. People’s need for those things is based on how quickly they run out of what they already have, which doesn’t necessarily correlate to time spent in game.
Since I have no access to Anet’s stats I cannot provide anything but common sense.
The longer someone plays the game the more stuff they have. The more stuff they have the more space they’ll need to put the stuff in – this is not rocket science.
Yes exceptions can exist – yes it’s not a clear situation but I think you can see there’s logic in what I am telling you.
If you play 3000 hours of GW2 you will most likely need more space to put all the stuff you’ve earned in the game somewhere.
If you want to add personal experiences here – I’ve had multiple friend join the game -around the first 200 hours they’ve all experienced a shortage of space.
Some have realized they can put stuff on other characters – some haven’t and just bought tabs.
Yes, the the things that rich people currently do should be made less efficient, less effective at taking money from the poor.
What is this? Communism the video game?
It’s been three years, I think that’s plenty long by most accounts.
If you have just your own opinion backing this up I’ll counter with a classic " I think you are wrong and it has not been long enough. Please go away"
If here they fall they shall live on when ever you cry “For Ascalon!”
Again, it’s like having one class that can dominate if played right, but is worthless when played poorly
Every time you say this, my mental peanut gallery says “You mean thief?”
You can play for a few hours and decide to spend a lot of money, or play thousands of hours and decide to spend very little. I’ve played several games with marketplaces over the years, and the times that I’ve paid for additional stuff have not fallen along playtime milestones, they have fallen along times that I’ve been enjoying the game and something came along that would increase that enjoyment. If I’m just begrudgingly grinding away I’m not in a particularly generous mood.
How much do people spend if they’re not playing the game at all due to boredom caused by nothing to do? If there’s anything the last few years have shown, it’s that ANet believes keeping as many players as possible playing is what matters to them. You may play the game whether you have a goal or not, but ANet’s choices suggest that too many players don’t act that way.
It’s really the same argument with exclusivity. If ANet can attract more players via exclusive rewards than they’ll lose players who are like yourself, it’s a win for them. They don’t care about your desires as an individual anymore than they do anyone else’s. They’re making macro-level decisions based on metrics and percentages.
For the record, I have no issue with you asking for whatever you want. I do have an issue with your assumption that you represent a majority when the evidence points to Anet believing the opposite.
If lots of people had said reward then it wouldn’t be that special would it? people would be less inclined to want it because so many others do – there are goods in every market that are only valuable because they’re exclusive in nature – it’s the classic : this thing is cool because I have it and you don’t.
That’s toxic behavior, it does not benefit anyone and should exist as little as possible. Things should be desired because they are intrinsically cool, not because few other people have them. People that only want things because other people don’t have them should be ashamed of themselves, not rewarded.
As you say, people can’t be changed. Although I don’t know what gives you the authority to say that their desires and reasons are shameful. Seems like you only want people to be able to do things you agree with; anything else is shameful and looked down upon.
Then what? I would suggest that within 1 week the wealth distribution would be exactly what it was before your magical intervention. People are rich and poor in this game because they choose to be rich and poor. Anything the rich players are doing the poor players can do too.
Yes, the the things that rich people currently do should be made less efficient, less effective at taking money from the poor.
I really need a button to auto-add this each time…That’s your opinion, you can have it. You just can’t force everyone else into the same opinion.
Ascended is what, 5-7% higher stats? Less? Personally I never really noticed the difference. Outside of fractals, I think you’d have a hard time arguing that ascended is so ‘highly useful’ that it’s THAT important to have. Indeed, the only reason I got ascended was for fractals, quite some time ago. I would not get it just for the stat boost, it’s very little.
Have you watched any videos of raid boss fights? Even highly coordinated groups making few mistakes often beat raid bosses within a few seconds of a total failure. That 5-7% difference seems like it would be quite significant in those cases, if it takes them say five minutes of constant burn to kill a boss using peak stats, then that 5-7% would equate to about 15 seconds of burn time.
That may be true. From what I’ve heard listening to WP talk about the raid wing is that it’s more the fact that there are half a dozen mechanics and each one has to be played into. Raw DPS is only an issue because you have to spend time dealing with the boss fight mechanics.
Legendaries were never meant for everyone and their dog to have. They were meant to be long-term, expensive goals for the people that wanted that item to work towards. You appear to be incapable of understanding this, or even basic economics.
It’s been three years, I think that’s plenty long by most accounts.
And that’s why people that had interest in a longer goal now have it. You haven’t refuted anything.
You don’t like his playstyle. So what. Both playstyles can coexist.
They can, they totally can, so long as they are in balance, so long as one is not ridiculously more effective at returning gold to the player than the other. So long as they are out of balance, however, more work is needed to correct that.
sigh Again, that is your opinion. It isn’t everyone’s and it certainly isn’t Anet’s. You can’t force everyone else into it.
Yes, knowledge, skill, intuition, and research set him apart from those other people in this area. I don’t see your argument.
Again, the point is that having “knowledge, skill, intuition, and research” over this one aspect of the game gives such a massively overwhelming advantage over players who have equivalent “knowledge, skill, intuition, and research” over any other aspect of the game, aspects that are much more central to what the game actually is than the Trading Post is.
You do realize that advantages only exist in competition, right? You and I aren’t competing for who will get some item. You can play the game as you want at the pace you want. Thinking of the game as a competition and playing for relaxed fun are generally not compatible. You seem to think that Anet should change the game so that the two are the same.
You aren’t going to hit a goal like a precursor very often. If you’re just trying to gather mats for a component, you can always make your own goal (e.g. hit 150 ectos by the end of the week).
If you’re going to be making that argument then the opposite one is equally true, that Precursors could be a more reasonable goal, someone that most players are expected to achieve every few months of gameplay, but that if you need a more long term goal then that, then you could become determined to get 50K Ectos or whatever floats your boat.
You missed the point. I was saying that you don’t hit a major milestone every week or two, and that if you want weekly or biweekly goals to meet, you can set them yourself. This also goes back to the idea that legendaries aren’t meant to be for everyone and their dog, a concept which you fail to grasp. For some people, amassing large amounts of resources is keeping them playing; a guildie of mine is dedicated to stockpiling iron and platinum. For a lot of people though, I don’t think that’s enough. They want that to go towards something.
Why do you even care how much gold other people are making? Play at your own pace, the game isn’t a race. Person A getting Item 246 before Player B is irrelevant. The god-class analogy only works if everything is competitive; hint, pve isn’t all about competition.
Again, the TP is ENTIRELY PVP. Every transaction is you either winning or losing against the player who made that sale possible. Either you got a better deal than he did, or he got a better deal than you.
You missed the point. I’m asking why Player A should care how much gold Player N earns. You seem to care a lot, but not for any actual reason; you haven’t shown that it affects your gameplay.
Other players having more gold does impact me, because it means that they can afford to buy items that I cannot. If they could not afford to but those items, then those items would not be listed at such high prices, and they would be more affordable to me.
I’m going to leave out the ad hominem, thank me later. You say items would be more affordable. Prove it. Until you do, I can easily ignore baseless claims like this one.
Again, if it were a non-competitive system, if the prices were relatively fixed, and even the most expensive items were capped out at reasonably low levels, so that having thousands of gold would be irrelevant because it wouldn’t mean that you could afford anything that anyone else couldn’t, then it would be an entirely different situation, but that is not the game we have.
The failure to understand economics, the reason for an economy, and input v output is self-evident.
No, it does require a net loss. Say on one side you have one savvy trader, and on the other you have three less savvy ones, each trading one item. If the savvy trader buys and resells their items, and earns a total profit on that transaction of 1g, leaving TP fees aside from the moment, then that would mean that the other three players would have had to lose out on a total of 1g in potential returns.
With that logic, I’m losing out on untold thousands in potential returns by sleeping.
If they did not leave that money on the table, it would not be available for the savvy player to scoop up. His gains MUST come at their expense, otherwise the gains would not exist to be had.
You make it sound as if they looked at 15g on the table, then only picked up 14g. I assure you, if it were that easy it would not exist. In this situation, each player that bought or sold to him did so at a price they found acceptable. This is a concept we have understood for thousands of years.
“Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.” -Publilius Syrus (85-43 BCE)
So saying that people believe prices are fair means that people believe prices won’t change much. I think even someone with almost no understanding of economics can understand that fluctuations/spikes/cliffs happen. Are you going to blame me for people believing lies that they weren’t even told?
I’m not blaming you for anything, I’m blaming the system for not fully taking human nature into account in a way that would benefit the average player.
I never knew it was human nature to believe lies they weren’t even told. You seem to think that Anet should bend over backwards while falling from a cliff to make sure that everything absolutely benefits every single player to the maximum. Not that you’ve shown it hurts them in the first place.
I’m surprised you have 10k hours and still feel the need to complain this much. And you want everyone, regardless of activity or time spent, to end up with the exact same rewards? I will not waste another sentence on this particular nonsense, the flaws are obvious.
For someone to have 10k hours of GW2 over the 3 years it’s been out, they’d have to have been in the game ~40% longer than a full-time employee would have worked during the same amount of years. With all the changes that have been implemented in the past few months, a more-than-full-time gamer is going to be impacted most by those changes – and if people who (assuming it’s true) have 10k in-game hours in 3 years are surfacing to the forums with complaints, the devs have most certainly changed something drastic. Yoiks.
Been there, punned that.
Ehmry Bay Guardian
Ehmry Bay Guardian
I’m surprised you have 10k hours and still feel the need to complain this much. And you want everyone, regardless of activity or time spent, to end up with the exact same rewards? I will not waste another sentence on this particular nonsense, the flaws are obvious.
For someone to have 10k hours of GW2 over the 3 years it’s been out, they’d have to have been in the game ~40% longer than a full-time employee would have worked during the same amount of years. With all the changes that have been implemented in the past few months, a more-than-full-time gamer is going to be impacted most by those changes – and if people who (assuming it’s true) have 10k in-game hours in 3 years are surfacing to the forums with complaints, the devs have most certainly changed something drastic. Yoiks.
I was being semi-sarcastic. Wanze is the one with 10k hours; I doubt Ohoni does. The latter was claiming that a difference in wealth had nothing to do with time spent, thus the sarcasm.
I’m surprised you have 10k hours and still feel the need to complain this much. And you want everyone, regardless of activity or time spent, to end up with the exact same rewards? I will not waste another sentence on this particular nonsense, the flaws are obvious.
For someone to have 10k hours of GW2 over the 3 years it’s been out, they’d have to have been in the game ~40% longer than a full-time employee would have worked during the same amount of years. With all the changes that have been implemented in the past few months, a more-than-full-time gamer is going to be impacted most by those changes – and if people who (assuming it’s true) have 10k in-game hours in 3 years are surfacing to the forums with complaints, the devs have most certainly changed something drastic. Yoiks.
I was being semi-sarcastic. Wanze is the one with 10k hours; I doubt Ohoni does. The latter was claiming that a difference in wealth had nothing to do with time spent, thus the sarcasm.
And mine was partial sarcasm as well. =)
Oh yeah… I forgot to add the O.o at the end.
Been there, punned that.
Ehmry Bay Guardian
Ehmry Bay Guardian
(edited by Swift.1930)
You seem to be naive – I’m not promoting evil or good – I’m just saying effective is effective. Things aren’t good or evil – they just are. And such scams are effective. Do I care if they’re good or evil? No because that’s not the debate here.
Just because something is effective doesn’t mean that it’s something that should be done. That is the basis of human morality. Most things that are judged to be morally evil are the things that are the most effective way to achieve a certain goal.
Most individuals are not like you – most players I’ve met have spent money on the game regardless of whether or not they enjoyed it or simply felt compelled to do it.
Let’s not bring personal examples into this.
Lol.
Again you attempt to provide your personal experience as relevant – but it is not – you are an atypical individual in this game. And even if you weren’t – you are just one player. You can’t possibly conclude what the behavior of many players will be based on your own feelings and decisions.
Evidence?
The longer someone plays the game the more stuff they have. The more stuff they have the more space they’ll need to put the stuff in – this is not rocket science.
That’s not really true though. “Stuff” is not something that one accumulates per hour played, it is more often something acquired based on activities completed. I mean, yes, you do gain items as you play, but the overwhelming majority of these items are “junk”, converted into materials, vendored, sold, etc. before the night is through, they do not require increasing your storage space. The only items people “accumulate” are things that cannot be recovered, like rare or story-based items, which do not accumulate at any set rate.
A player who blitzes through all the game’s story content in a couple dozen hours, and then stops, will likely have more “stuff he keeps” lying around than a player who spends 500 hours just grinding away at random events, or particularly playing WvW or PvP. If that first player were then to go on and play another 500 hours of random events, his amount of “stuff he keeps” likely wouldn’t rise nearly as fast as it had over those first hours spent on story content.
So while yes, you obviously do have more items passing through your inventory if you play more hours, playing more hours doesn’t necessarily translate directly to “need more room to put things.” It’s a loose correlation at best, without even factoring in things like hoarder’s mentality or exceptional uses of inventory space.
If you want to add personal experiences here – I’ve had multiple friend join the game -around the first 200 hours they’ve all experienced a shortage of space.
Some have realized they can put stuff on other characters – some haven’t and just bought tabs.
Yes, and I expect most players do hit that point fairly early on, and typically resolve it in some way. My point is that I believe this is more likely a response to the quality of their gaming experience, rather than the quantity. People accumulate stuff as a response to achieving various tasks that reward things worth keeping, not merely as an inevitable byproduct of hours spent in the game. Therefore, it’s to ANet’s benefit to encourage players to enjoy their time in the game, more than it is just to ensure that they keep grinding away at unpleasant things, so long as they stay logged in.
What is this? Communism the video game?
No, rational socialism at best. It’s not a complete leveling of every player to the exact same level of wealth, it’s just balancing things more toward a level playing field. Slight income inequality vs. extreme income inequality.
Every time you say this, my mental peanut gallery says “You mean thief?”
By most accounts, the Thief is not currently in a place where even the best players can cause it to be OP, they seem to be sub-par in the hands of even the best players. They’re just more annoying because they can run away easier when things are not going their way, and can attack you when you weren’t prepared for them, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because most of the time they do have to run away without having accomplished much.
How much do people spend if they’re not playing the game at all due to boredom caused by nothing to do?
Not much, but that was not the point I was making. Obviously there should be things to do, but the goal should be to encourage players to spend at least a few hours a week in the game, that should be enough to encourage them to enjoy and want to spend more on it, but beyond that you run into diminishing returns, where players start to feel that the game is more a burden than an enjoyable experience. Of course if people want to play more, they should have plenty to do, but they shouldn’t feel pressured into it.
As you say, people can’t be changed. Although I don’t know what gives you the authority to say that their desires and reasons are shameful. Seems like you only want people to be able to do things you agree with; anything else is shameful and looked down upon.
Being happy in yourself only because others have it worse off than you is inherently shameful. That has nothing to do with me, it just. . . is.
That may be true. From what I’ve heard listening to WP talk about the raid wing is that it’s more the fact that there are half a dozen mechanics and each one has to be played into. Raw DPS is only an issue because you have to spend time dealing with the boss fight mechanics.
True, but it remains a fact. The mechanics aren’t going anywhere, and there doesn’t seem to be any supercheese tactics to ignore tham anymore than is already being done, and it’s still a tight DPS race to the finish, so clearly having every last percentage of DPS seems vital to the process. Would it be possible for a team with all Exotics to beat the latter two bosses in time? Maybe, but if I were going to spend my time trying, especially my first few times, I’d certainly not want to take any chances. If they don’t want Ascended stats to matter to the raids, then they need to remove the DPS check entirely, and just have it as “deal with the mechanics and you win, fail the mechanics and you die,” and any amount of DPS you bring is largely irrelevant to the core boss fight.
You do realize that advantages only exist in competition, right? You and I aren’t competing for who will get some item.
So you’re saying that if I put in a buy order for a Dawn at, say, 200g, nobody would “compete” with me by posting a higher buy order than that? So long as one player’s actions can prevent another player from achieving his objectives, it IS competition.
You missed the point. I’m asking why Player A should care how much gold Player N earns. You seem to care a lot, but not for any actual reason; you haven’t shown that it affects your gameplay.
As I said earlier, the problem is not directly in how much Player N earns, but it is about the relative purchasing power that affords him. When items are a finite resource, priced based on what anyone is willing and able to pay, then having some players willing and able to pay considerably more for things makes it more difficult for other players to acquire those things, and since many items in the game are restricted to either A. buy it off the TP for whatever price the market determines, or B. preposterous RNG, high amounts of wealth pushing option A off the table can represent a serious problem to those players.
I’m going to leave out the ad hominem, thank me later. You say items would be more affordable. Prove it. Until you do, I can easily ignore baseless claims like this one.
Before players had thousands of gold, you could get high-end Precursors for well under 500g, and this was when supply was considerably lower than it is today (given that they were just starting to come out and methods for Forge-farming them were not yet fully understood), and demand was likely higher (given that fewer players already had one).
With that logic, I’m losing out on untold thousands in potential returns by sleeping.
Yes, but some things are necessary. Still, this is part of the reason why DR and daily chests are a positive factor, they reduce the efficiency of playing 24/7 and reduce the incentive to do so.
You make it sound as if they looked at 15g on the table, then only picked up 14g. I assure you, if it were that easy it would not exist. In this situation, each player that bought or sold to him did so at a price they found acceptable. This is a concept we have understood for thousands of years.
Yes, but a player accepting a bad deal because he did not understand that a better deal was available, does not make it a good deal. He still got a bad deal, and ideally the game would reduce the potential for that to occur. I remember playing in the Wildstar beta, and their TP was so messed up that you could post items at below vendor value, so I could go on there, buy up piles of materials, walk a few paces to the side and sell them to a vendor and turn a profit instantly. Clearly the person listing the item was fine with his choices as he understood them, but that doesn’t mean that it was a good deal on his end, and ideally the game would better inform him of his options. Players should not have to monitor outside resources or make spreadsheets to determine the best prices to buy and sell things for, that information should be readily apparent to any casual viewer, in the UI itself.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
As you say, people can’t be changed. Although I don’t know what gives you the authority to say that their desires and reasons are shameful. Seems like you only want people to be able to do things you agree with; anything else is shameful and looked down upon.
Being happy in yourself only because others have it worse off than you…
Somewhat misleading phrasing, but go on.
…is inherently shameful. That has nothing to do with me, it just. . . is.
Oh? So you’re claiming that desiring something because of the difficulty of acquiring it is objectively and inherently shameful. Would you mind showing how you reach thatt conclusion independent of your personal feelings?
You do realize that advantages only exist in competition, right? You and I aren’t competing for who will get some item.
So you’re saying that if I put in a buy order for a Dawn at, say, 200g, nobody would “compete” with me by posting a higher buy order than that? So long as one player’s actions can prevent another player from achieving his objectives, it IS competition.
That wasn’t what I was saying. We aren’t competing for who can get Dawn first. I don’t see why you care that I can get Dawn a bit faster by playing more directly towards what I need to get it.
You missed the point. I’m asking why Player A should care how much gold Player N earns. You seem to care a lot, but not for any actual reason; you haven’t shown that it affects your gameplay.
As I said earlier, the problem is not directly in how much Player N earns, but it is about the relative purchasing power that affords him. When items are a finite resource, priced based on what anyone is willing and able to pay, then having some players willing and able to pay considerably more for things makes it more difficult for other players to acquire those things, and since many items in the game are restricted to either A. buy it off the TP for whatever price the market determines, or B. preposterous RNG, high amounts of wealth pushing option A off the table can represent a serious problem to those players.
You would have a serious point here, if you could prove that a) this is an actual problem, and b) it happens to enough players that Anet should care. Thus far, however, you have shown to be either incredibly averse or downright incapable of substantiating either.
I’m going to leave out the ad hominem, thank me later. You say items would be more affordable. Prove it. Until you do, I can easily ignore baseless claims like this one.
Before players had thousands of gold, you could get high-end Precursors for well under 500g, and this was when supply was considerably lower than it is today (given that they were just starting to come out and methods for Forge-farming them were not yet fully understood), and demand was likely higher (given that fewer players already had one).
Nevermind the fact that gold-earning techniques have improved quite a lot, as well as inflation. So lets get some perspective using the gem to gold exchange. Dusk buy order was last at 500g on Jan 14, 2013. On the same day, 100 gems sold for 1.18g. 501/1.18 is a long decimal, so I’ll round to 424.5. 424.5*100 = 42,450. So at the time, you would have had to convert almost 42.5k gems into gold. Lets do the same math for now. 952g buy order divided by 10.65g per 100 gems = about 89.4. Multiply by 100, and it’s relatively small, under 9k (8940). Not even close. (data courtesy of gw2spidy.com)
With that logic, I’m losing out on untold thousands in potential returns by sleeping.
Yes, but some things are necessary. Still, this is part of the reason why DR and daily chests are a positive factor, they reduce the efficiency of playing 24/7 and reduce the incentive to do so.
I was pointing out how absurd your logic becomes when applied evenly. You’ve even argued against your own logic.
You make it sound as if they looked at 15g on the table, then only picked up 14g. I assure you, if it were that easy it would not exist. In this situation, each player that bought or sold to him did so at a price they found acceptable. This is a concept we have understood for thousands of years.
Yes, but a player accepting a bad deal because he did not understand that a better deal was available, does not make it a good deal. He still got a bad deal, and ideally the game would reduce the potential for that to occur.
If they chose to sell to a buy order, that was their knowing choice; they have just as much ability to list as a sell order as I do. If you are referring to the trader listing for higher to sell later, it is that foreknowledge and predictive capability that sets him apart.
I remember playing in the Wildstar beta, and their TP was so messed up that you could post items at below vendor value, so I could go on there, buy up piles of materials, walk a few paces to the side and sell them to a vendor and turn a profit instantly. Clearly the person listing the item was fine with his choices as he understood them, but that doesn’t mean that it was a good deal on his end, and ideally the game would better inform him of his options.
I agree, and Gw2 has systems in place that prevent selling below vendor price + fees.
Players should not have to monitor outside resources or make spreadsheets to determine the best prices to buy and sell things for, that information should be readily apparent to any casual viewer, in the UI itself.
I don’t even disagree. I’m fine with more info on the TP UI.
Oh? So you’re claiming that desiring something because of the difficulty of acquiring it is objectively and inherently shameful.
Not at all, and I’m not sure how you would even get to there from the words that I typed. What I said was that it was shameful to value the thing you have because other people do not have it, to value its scarcity. You should value the thing because of what it is, not because of how many other people have it. Taking pleasure in other people’s sadness is just disgusting, no matter how you care to dress it up.
That wasn’t what I was saying. We aren’t competing for who can get Dawn first. I don’t see why you care that I can get Dawn a bit faster by playing more directly towards what I need to get it.
But I don’t care that you get it first. I don’t mind that at all. I mind the people who’s actions make it harder for me to get it, such as by placing higher bids for it than I’m prepared to match.
You would have a serious point here, if you could prove that a) this is an actual problem, and b) it happens to enough players that Anet should care.
I think it would be difficult to prove otherwise.
Nevermind the fact that gold-earning techniques have improved quite a lot, as well as inflation. So lets get some perspective using the gem to gold exchange. Dusk buy order was last at 500g on Jan 14, 2013. On the same day, 100 gems sold for 1.18g. 501/1.18 is a long decimal, so I’ll round to 424.5. 424.5*100 = 42,450. So at the time, you would have had to convert almost 42.5k gems into gold. Lets do the same math for now. 952g buy order divided by 10.65g per 100 gems = about 89.4. Multiply by 100, and it’s relatively small, under 9k (8940). Not even close. (data courtesy of gw2spidy.com)
What relevance does that have? The entire point is that people having more gold drives up the gold price of things. Of course the exchange rate of gems goes up as well, more people have more gold to dump into gems. Perhaps it is cheaper to buy gems with cash and use them to buy a Dawn, but that’s a completely irrelevant point.
I was pointing out how absurd your logic becomes when applied evenly. You’ve even argued against your own logic.
That only shows that you didn’t actually understand the point I was making. I’m sorry if I was unclear.
If they chose to sell to a buy order, that was their knowing choice; they have just as much ability to list as a sell order as I do.
No, that’s a false argument. Just because someone agrees to something does not mean that it was a fair deal, similar arguments are used to support those high interest payday loans, the subprime mortgages that crashed the economy, pushing plea bargains on defendants that could likely get off completely with proper representation, etc.
Just because someone agrees to sell to a buy order does not necessarily mean that they did so fully understanding the risks and rewards involved to the same degree as the person placing that order. If they did, some might still make that choice, but if most players did then the system would not function in favor of flippers.
If you are referring to the trader listing for higher to sell later, it is that foreknowledge and predictive capability that sets him apart.
which is the problem. I’m fine with people being able to turn marginal profits on TP trades, but the profit potential should not allow for players to bring in as much profit as is currently available, just as no one class should be able to just completely roll over every other class in any game mode.
Ideally though, making money from money on the trading post wouldn’t even be a thing. Finding things in the wild and selling them for money? Yes. Buying materials, converting them into items and selling those? Sure. Buying items at one price and selling them at a price which turns a profit, even after transaction fees? No, that should not be a thing.
I agree, and Gw2 has systems in place that prevent selling below vendor price + fees.
Yes, it does, and that’s a useful, minimal safetynet, but they could do a great deal more to prevent people making bad trades.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
(edited by Ohoni.6057)
How much do people spend if they’re not playing the game at all due to boredom caused by nothing to do?
Not much, but that was not the point I was making. Obviously there should be things to do, but the goal should be to encourage players to spend at least a few hours a week in the game, that should be enough to encourage them to enjoy and want to spend more on it, but beyond that you run into diminishing returns, where players start to feel that the game is more a burden than an enjoyable experience. Of course if people want to play more, they should have plenty to do, but they shouldn’t feel pressured into it.
In every MMO player-base I’ve been a party to, there are a ton of players who want to play a lot. They also tend to want rewards they can continue to attain. How are you going to provide every reward that a part-time player could possibly want in your “reasonable” time frame and also appeal to the full-time players? The point I was trying to make, which you dodged the way you dodged the rest of my previous post, is that players who no longer play will spend nothing, and players will leave the game if things are too easy to get.
One thing my flipping history, that i posted earlier, demonstrates, is that people just make the wrong choices when selling their loot.
Which goes back to what I was saying about the current system being unfair to players who lack the skill, knowledge, or interest in competing on the TP. Again, it’s like having one class that can dominate if played right, but is worthless when played poorly, and makes all other classes worthless in comparison, so if you do not enjoy the god-class, too bad, you’re playing the god-class anyways or getting left in the dust.
Man, when you say stuff like this it gets really hard to take you seriously. It is not like a god-class. Rather, this is like never learning how to complete Sorrow’s Furnace and complaining that all the people who DID learn are somehow unfairly advantaged over you. You could google this junk just like the rest, but you didn’t/don’t.
Wanze hit the nail straight on the head when he described it as a matter of player-choice errors.
(edited by NonToxic.9185)
In every MMO player-base I’ve been a party to, there are a ton of players who want to play a lot. They also tend to want rewards they can continue to attain. How are you going to provide every reward that a part-time player could possibly want in your “reasonable” time frame and also appeal to the full-time players?
Well, at some point even in the current system some players will “have all the things.” According to GW2Efficiency, there is at least one player with like 40 Legendaries, for some reason. I say let him, let people collect as many things as they want, so long as those who want one can get one easy enough. I think that if you are going to have some “crazy loner tier” items, ones that take full time commitment as you discuss, they should be very fringe things, this that have value ONLY in their exclusivity, things that nobody would actually want if everyone could have them, but that those who like working towards obscure and soul crushingly long paths would have something to show off at the end of it.
Things like Legendary Weapons and Nightfury completely fail at this, because they are intrinsically cool, people want them for what they are, not what they represent, and many people would wear them even if everyone got one in the mail. The sort of rewards you’re talking about should come in the form of titles perhaps, or maybe Outfits, mini-pets, hand-held trinkets, something that is visible to other players, but that does not form any part of costuming or weapons, is not a part of the character’s basic visual identity. It has to be something that ONLY says “I have achieved this, I’m an achiever,” not “This is a look that I think looks really good on my character.”
The point I was trying to make, which you dodged the way you dodged the rest of my previous post, is that players who no longer play will spend nothing, and players will leave the game if things are too easy to get.
And again, three years is a LONG time, and players that have zero to few Legendaries over that period of time have waited long enough. That’s certainly not “easy to get.”
Rather, this is like never learning how to complete Sorrow’s Furnace and complaining that all the people who DID learn are somehow unfairly advantaged over you.
Which would be true IF Sorrow’s Embrace rewarded 10g per path. If SE was somehow way above and beyond the reward structure of any other dungeon, then that would be unfair to players that preferred to run other dungeons, or other non-dungeon content. That’s my point, not that you shouldn’t benefit from having skill, but that you shouldn’t benefit WAY beyond other content just because your skills happen to be in one specific area that happens to be far more rewarding than any other in the game.
Wanze hit the nail straight on the head when he described it as a matter of player-choice errors.
And he’d be right, IF you buy into the idea that players in an action/adventure game should ideally be spending most of their time in Lion’s Arch working the trading post, rather than killing things with swords. But if you expect most players to be spending their time doing the things shown in all the trailers, then there is absolutely no reason that they should need even a basic understanding of how the TP functions for them to be making peak-level income within the game world, equivalent to what any other activities provide.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
Oh? So you’re claiming that desiring something because of the difficulty of acquiring it is objectively and inherently shameful.
Not at all, and I’m not sure how you would even get to there from the words that I typed. What I said was that it was shameful to value the thing you have because other people do not have it, to value its scarcity. You should value the thing because of what it is, not because of how many other people have it. Taking pleasure in other people’s sadness is just disgusting, no matter how you care to dress it up.
No one is talking about sadness, I don’t know where you got that. You say people should value the thing based on what it is. ‘Should’ indicates that this is your opinion, not something inherent and apart from you (see: objective). I still fail to see why you can judge other people’s desires this way.
That wasn’t what I was saying. We aren’t competing for who can get Dawn first. I don’t see why you care that I can get Dawn a bit faster by playing more directly towards what I need to get it.
But I don’t care that you get it first. I don’t mind that at all. I mind the people who’s actions make it harder for me to get it, such as by placing higher bids for it than I’m prepared to match.
If you are unprepared to get what you need to in order to acquire your goal, maybe it isn’t a good goal for your playstyle. That aside, prove that TP traders are the ones directly responsible for that.
You would have a serious point here, if you could prove that a) this is an actual problem, and b) it happens to enough players that Anet should care.
I think it would be difficult to prove otherwise.
So prove it.
Nevermind the fact that gold-earning techniques have improved quite a lot, as well as inflation. So lets get some perspective using the gem to gold exchange. Dusk buy order was last at 500g on Jan 14, 2013. On the same day, 100 gems sold for 1.18g. 501/1.18 is a long decimal, so I’ll round to 424.5. 424.5*100 = 42,450. So at the time, you would have had to convert almost 42.5k gems into gold. Lets do the same math for now. 952g buy order divided by 10.65g per 100 gems = about 89.4. Multiply by 100, and it’s relatively small, under 9k (8940). Not even close. (data courtesy of gw2spidy.com)
What relevance does that have? The entire point is that people having more gold drives up the gold price of things. Of course the exchange rate of gems goes up as well, more people have more gold to dump into gems. Perhaps it is cheaper to buy gems with cash and use them to buy a Dawn, but that’s a completely irrelevant point.
You were comparing the price of precursors now to their prices more than two years ago. It’s like saying that it’s unfair that I got a lawnmower for fewer $ in 1950 than you can now. The worth of each of those dollars in 1950 is far more than the worth of each dollar now. I’m just using gems to gold as a sort of ‘gold standard’ for the comparison of buying power.
I was pointing out how absurd your logic becomes when applied evenly. You’ve even argued against your own logic.
That only shows that you didn’t actually understand the point I was making. I’m sorry if I was unclear.
I took the logic behind your point and applied it to a slightly different thing. If you would like to clarify your point, please do so.
If they chose to sell to a buy order, that was their knowing choice; they have just as much ability to list as a sell order as I do.
No, that’s a false argument. Just because someone agrees to something does not mean that it was a fair deal, similar arguments are used to support those high interest payday loans, the subprime mortgages that crashed the economy, pushing plea bargains on defendants that could likely get off completely with proper representation, etc.
You missed the point. They have just as much agency to chose between filling a buy order and listing it themselves. It would defeat the point of having an economy if that agency was taken away. And yet, that’s exactly what you want to do.
Just because someone agrees to sell to a buy order does not necessarily mean that they did so fully understanding the risks and rewards involved to the same degree as the person placing that order. If they did, some might still make that choice, but if most players did then the system would not function in favor of flippers.
So what, you want to give them more info on the UI? I’ve already agreed with that, though I doubt it will change too much. The people that already fill buy orders would likely continue to fill buy orders; they want their money now without more thought towards it, and they will still want that.
If you are referring to the trader listing for higher to sell later, it is that foreknowledge and predictive capability that sets him apart.
which is the problem. I’m fine with people being able to turn marginal profits on TP trades, but the profit potential should not allow for players to bring in as much profit as is currently available, just as no one class should be able to just completely roll over every other class in any game mode. [/quote]
It should not, hmm? You can hold that opinion as long as you want.
Ideally though, making money from money on the trading post wouldn’t even be a thing. Finding things in the wild and selling them for money? Yes. Buying materials, converting them into items and selling those? Sure. Buying items at one price and selling them at a price which turns a profit, even after transaction fees? No, that should not be a thing.
It should not, hmm? You can hold that opinion as long as you want. I might suggest a singleplayer RPG though, I think something like that might suit your tastes a bit more.
I think that if you are going to have some “crazy loner tier” items, ones that take full time commitment as you discuss, they should be very fringe things, this that have value ONLY in their exclusivity, things that nobody would actually want if everyone could have them, but that those who like working towards obscure and soul crushingly long paths would have something to show off at the end of it.
In other words, there can be long term goals, as long as they look like crap so no one wants them. Yeah, that’s not gonna fly.
Things like Legendary Weapons and Nightfury completely fail at this, because they are intrinsically cool, people want them for what they are, not what they represent, and many people would wear them even if everyone got one in the mail. The sort of rewards you’re talking about should come in the form of titles perhaps, or maybe Outfits, mini-pets, hand-held trinkets, something that is visible to other players, but that does not form any part of costuming or weapons, is not a part of the character’s basic visual identity. It has to be something that ONLY says “I have achieved this, I’m an achiever,” not “This is a look that I think looks really good on my character.”
Remember the Liadri mini? I do. Players kittened all over the place about not being able to get that. People would also kitten about titles, outfits and anything else you care to substitute if they want it and can’t/won’t get it. There’s no magic formula that would allow developers to create a visible-in-game reward that would appeal to grind-preferers and not at all to grind-avoiders. In statistical terms, there is likely to be zero correlation between aesthetic tastes and game-play preferences.
And again, three years is a LONG time, and players that have zero to few Legendaries over that period of time have waited long enough. That’s certainly not “easy to get.”
Legendary items were always meant to be a lengthy process to obtain. The initial implementation did not reflect this. It looks as if ANet is trying to change that with the new tier.
Once again and this may be the telling point, ANet does not seem to believe that the payoff of your preferred approach would offset the cost.
huh? wasn’t/isn’t liadri considered one of the best rewards in it’s implementation?
Serenity now~Insanity later
huh? wasn’t/isn’t liadri considered one of the best rewards in it’s implementation?
I guess you don’t remember the kitten-awful complaints about how it was too hard and should be nerfed so anyone could do it. I do.
“Legendary items were always meant to be a lengthy process to obtain. The initial implementation did not reflect this. It looks as if ANet is trying to change that with the new tier.”
They were at first though. It took me two WEEKS of mystic forging to get my first precursor back in 2012, that’s lots of rares. That was just the precursor I also had to compete against bots by going ahead of them, aggroing lots of mobs (trolls were a pain) then kill them or wait for them to finish them for me. T6 was still expensive but T5 was ridiculously cheap, so after getting all of my clovers I converted T5 to T6 buying only T5 plus dust to save gold. Did lots of WvW and dungeon for it too.
Even if you’re buying a precursor or legendary directly with gold that’s still going to be lots of farming for it.
huh? wasn’t/isn’t liadri considered one of the best rewards in it’s implementation?
I guess you don’t remember the kitten-awful complaints about how it was too hard and should be nerfed so anyone could do it. I do.
I do and it was….not to mention most of the complaints were about artificial difficulty like the dome blocking the camera and targeting issues.
Serenity now~Insanity later
No one is talking about sadness, I don’t know where you got that. You say people should value the thing based on what it is. ‘Should’ indicates that this is your opinion, not something inherent and apart from you (see: objective). I still fail to see why you can judge other people’s desires this way.
Because I’m a human being.
If you are unprepared to get what you need to in order to acquire your goal, maybe it isn’t a good goal for your playstyle.
And once again, this is not a reasonable response. Just because I’m unprepared to do what is currently asked to acquire an item has absolutely nothing to do with whether that item is something I want. I choose to pursue it by pushing for alternative methods of acquisition, rather than giving up and pursuing existing methods that I believe to be unreasonable.
You were comparing the price of precursors now to their prices more than two years ago. It’s like saying that it’s unfair that I got a lawnmower for fewer $ in 1950 than you can now.
It is, because income levels have not kept pace with inflation. It would have been easier to earn the money necessary to buy a lawn mower in 1950 than it is today.
I’m just using gems to gold as a sort of ‘gold standard’ for the comparison of buying power.
And my point is that it’s a flawed measurement, since it has no relationship to actual gameplay effort.
You missed the point. They have just as much agency to chose between filling a buy order and listing it themselves. It would defeat the point of having an economy if that agency was taken away. And yet, that’s exactly what you want to do.
and again, it would be better to take that agency away, better to “defeat the point of a free market economy,” than to expose unwitting players to clearly bad deals. The goal should be an economy that works for ALL players, not just those savvy enough to take advantage of the less intelligent or invested. The system could allow players to make less profitable choices, but only once it was assured that they were absolutely aware of what they were passing up.
The only people that should ever be selling to buy orders are ones where that particular market is already at balance point or close enough to it, or that absolutely need cash immediately for something, and the only ones that should ever be buying from sell orders should be those who absolutely need those items right that minute.
Players should always be made aware that if they place a buy/sell order at [this price] before they log out, then chances are that the order will be filled by the time they log in the next day, or that if they set it at [this price], chances are that the order will fill within an hour or two. Players should be made aware that the price on this item is on a sharp downward trend, so selling out fast might be a good idea, or that it’s on a sharp upward trend, so waiting it out might be better for them. Certain items should even be flagged as “one to watch” when new recipes get added that use them, or new sources get added that might make them more common.
The people that already fill buy orders would likely continue to fill buy orders; they want their money now without more thought towards it, and they will still want that.
I honestly doubt there are that many players that “need their money now.” I mean, I’m not super rich or anything, but I haven’t needed gold immediately in about three years now, I’ve always had plenty of surplus to cover whatever immediate purchases I needed to make. There’s very little in this game that demands instant money, it’s not like you have rent to pay or anything. Most people that go for “money now” could probably afford to wait for hours or even days, but don’t understand that this is an option, and worry that they will have the item on the market indefinitely.
It should not, hmm? You can hold that opinion as long as you want. I might suggest a singleplayer RPG though, I think something like that might suit your tastes a bit more.
You might, but you would be wrong. If I preferred single player RPGs to MMOs, then we would not be having this discussion because I would not have spent the last three years playing GW2, and over a decade before that playing other MMOs, but really, I might think that would be obvious, and clearly I was wrong on that as well.
Remember the Liadri mini? I do. Players kittened all over the place about not being able to get that. People would also kitten about titles, outfits and anything else you care to substitute if they want it and can’t/won’t get it. There’s no magic formula that would allow developers to create a visible-in-game reward that would appeal to grind-preferers and not at all to grind-avoiders. In statistical terms, there is likely to be zero correlation between aesthetic tastes and game-play preferences.
Maybe they can’t make everyone happy, but they should at least try better, and if they absolutely have to choose, they should always side with the larger group, the people who will not achieve ultra-grindy conditions. If that annoys the ultra-grinders, then that’s unfortunate, but better than the alternative.
Legendary items were always meant to be a lengthy process to obtain. The initial implementation did not reflect this. It looks as if ANet is trying to change that with the new tier.
I’m not talking about the new tier. I think the new tier is largely fine, aside from the gold-fungible components. I’m mostly talking about the existing tier here.
I guess you don’t remember the kitten-awful complaints about how it was too hard and should be nerfed so anyone could do it. I do.
I think that had more to do with people just wanting to be able to beat Liadri so that they could beat Liadri, not because they MUST have the mini. People will always want to be able to complete content, regardless of reward. Rest assured, if beating Liadri had unlocked a Legendary-class weapon, backpack, armor, etc., the kitten-storms would STILL be happening.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
(edited by Ohoni.6057)
Because I’m a human being.
Not even an argument.
If you are unprepared to get what you need to in order to acquire your goal, maybe it isn’t a good goal for your playstyle.
And once again, this is not a reasonable response. Just because I’m unprepared to do what is currently asked to acquire an item has absolutely nothing to do with whether that item is something I want. I choose to pursue it by pushing for alternative methods of acquisition, rather than giving up and pursuing existing methods that I believe to be unreasonable.
I wasn’t questioning whether you wanted it; that was the starting point. I’m suggesting that you reevaluate what you want compared to what you’re willing to put in. It seems you want items, but are unwilling to get what you need for it, and so you ask Anet to do what you think will make it easier for you to get it to suit your playstyle.
You were comparing the price of precursors now to their prices more than two years ago. It’s like saying that it’s unfair that I got a lawnmower for fewer $ in 1950 than you can now.
It is, because income levels have not kept pace with inflation. It would have been easier to earn the money necessary to buy a lawn mower in 1950 than it is today.
What I was demonstrating with those numbers is that 501g was able to buy far more then than it can today. To continue the analogy, the cost of the lawnmower in 1950 could have bought more than the cost of a lawnmower now can buy.
I’m just using gems to gold as a sort of ‘gold standard’ for the comparison of buying power.
And my point is that it’s a flawed measurement, since it has no relationship to actual gameplay effort.
The gem to gold ratio is indirectly set on supply and demand; the more people exchange gems for gold, the more gold you get per gem. Yes, it can be spiked/tanked by a wealthy enough person, but there are enough players doing enough transactions that it finds an equilibrium based on the populace. The populace gets its money from…oh, it’s almost all gameplay effort.
You missed the point. They have just as much agency to chose between filling a buy order and listing it themselves. It would defeat the point of having an economy if that agency was taken away. And yet, that’s exactly what you want to do.
and again, it would be better to take that agency away, better to “defeat the point of a free market economy,” than to expose unwitting players to clearly bad deals.
Prove that such a system would objectively be better for everybody than the current system and aligns with Anet’s goals. Then you will have a point.
The goal should be an economy that works for ALL players, not just those savvy enough to take advantage of the less intelligent or invested.
Are you sure that the other players aren’t getting what they want from this system? Can you demonstrate it? That enough players don’t like it for Anet to want to make such a massive change? Would it ultimately serve a point?
The only people that should ever be selling to buy orders are ones where that particular market is already at balance point or close enough to it, or that absolutely need cash immediately for something, and the only ones that should ever be buying from sell orders should be those who absolutely need those items right that minute.
They should only do it then? Why, and how is this objectively true? I hope you realize that the average player can list the loot they get as sell orders and buy what they need at buy orders; This ‘ideal’ you are setting up hurts them too.
Players should always be made aware that if they place a buy/sell order at [this price] before they log out, then chances are that the order will be filled by the time they log in the next day, or that if they set it at [this price], chances are that the order will fill within an hour or two. Players should be made aware that the price on this item is on a sharp downward trend, so selling out fast might be a good idea, or that it’s on a sharp upward trend, so waiting it out might be better for them. Certain items should even be flagged as “one to watch” when new recipes get added that use them, or new sources get added that might make them more common.
If Anet wants to add features like this to the TP UI, I’m all for it. I’ve said this several times, I think we can drop this bit.
The people that already fill buy orders would likely continue to fill buy orders; they want their money now without more thought towards it, and they will still want that.
I honestly doubt there are that many players that “need their money now.” I mean, I’m not super rich or anything, but I haven’t needed gold immediately in about three years now, I’ve always had plenty of surplus to cover whatever immediate purchases I needed to make. There’s very little in this game that demands instant money, it’s not like you have rent to pay or anything. Most people that go for “money now” could probably afford to wait for hours or even days, but don’t understand that this is an option, and worry that they will have the item on the market indefinitely.
I agree, there probably aren’t that many. What I’m saying is that unless you make filling a buy order a pain compared to doing anything else with it, many of the same people will still do the same thing; they already know they could list it and they don’t care.
It should not, hmm? You can hold that opinion as long as you want. I might suggest a singleplayer RPG though, I think something like that might suit your tastes a bit more.
You might, but you would be wrong. If I preferred single player RPGs to MMOs, then we would not be having this discussion because I would not have spent the last three years playing GW2, and over a decade before that playing other MMOs, but really, I might think that would be obvious, and clearly I was wrong on that as well.
It’s just a suggestion, you don’t have to take it. I’m not trying to force a single player RPG down your throat.
Legendary items were always meant to be a lengthy process to obtain. The initial implementation did not reflect this. It looks as if ANet is trying to change that with the new tier.
I’m not talking about the new tier. I think the new tier is largely fine, aside from the gold-fungible components. I’m mostly talking about the existing tier here. [/quote]
The new crafting process was never meant to make precursors 300g. They were meant to make a non-RNG, non-TP method, and to maybe reduce the costs of some of them over the long term.
Not even an argument.
Doesn’t need to be one.
I wasn’t questioning whether you wanted it; that was the starting point. I’m suggesting that you reevaluate what you want compared to what you’re willing to put in. It seems you want items, but are unwilling to get what you need for it, and so you ask Anet to do what you think will make it easier for you to get it to suit your playstyle.
Yes, exactly. I’m glad we’re on the same page.
What I was demonstrating with those numbers is that 501g was able to buy far more then than it can today.
Which is true, but the buying power of 501g was not really at question, what is more relevant is the difficulty in acquiring it. You do know that there are plenty of players in this game that have been playing months or years and have not acquired more than a few hundred gold. If we go purely by liquid gold in the account, according to Efficiency, even the bottom 50% of players with up to 1000h of time in the game have only about 500g on hand. The bottom 10% are under 140g. That would be after roughly a year and a half averaging two hours a day, which is reasonable for a more casual player.
I hope you realize that the average player can list the loot they get as sell orders and buy what they need at buy orders; This ‘ideal’ you are setting up hurts them too.
But if the average player did do that then buy orders would never fill and sell orders would never move until both came together close enough to equilibrium that flipping them would be impossible, so it’s a moot point. If more people would be harmed by what I’m proposing than would be helped by it, then the markets would not look anything like what they do, therefore, the opposite must be true.
It’s just a suggestion, you don’t have to take it. I’m not trying to force a single player RPG down your throat.
It’s “just a suggestion” made way too often to be taken as anything but hostile.
The new crafting process was never meant to make precursors 300g. They were meant to make a non-RNG, non-TP method, and to maybe reduce the costs of some of them over the long term.
What they were “meant” to do is entirely irrelevant, all that matters is what the players wanted them to do, which was to make them cheaper. A “non RNG, non-TP” method was never needed. If you wanted to avoid RNG, you could just use the TP instead. The alternative that was needed was one that involved negligible gold cost.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
What they were “meant” to do is entirely irrelevant, all that matters is what the players wanted them to do, which was to make them cheaper.
What kind of nonsense is this?
Of course the intent behind the implementation is relevant. It’s the only sane way to measure the success or failure of the change.
A “non RNG, non-TP” method was never needed. If you wanted to avoid RNG, you could just use the TP instead. The alternative that was needed was one that involved negligible gold cost.
A “negligible gold cost” option was never ‘needed’ either. ‘Need’ is complete nonsense in a virtual world with a pretend economy where nobody is starving to death.
The collections actually do something very useful by indexing the price of precursors to materials.
Nalhadia – Kaineng
What kind of nonsense is this?
Of course the intent behind the implementation is relevant. It’s the only sane way to measure the success or failure of the change.
Whether it accomplishes the intent only measures how well the developers achieved what they wanted to do. If what they wanted to do isn’t what the players wanted from them, then their success or failure at achieving that goal is entirely irrelevant. All that really matters is how closely the result matches up with the players’ expectations, not the developers’ intent.
The collections actually do something very useful by indexing the price of precursors to materials.
That was already in place, as the price of high-value Precursors was largely tied to the costs of making dozens of rare weapons to toss into the forge. The new system is no more efficient at this, although it may not have found its equilibrium point yet as it’s had less time to do so.
“If you spent as much time working on [some task] as
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
you spend complaining about it on the forums, you’d be
done by now.”
~~~ snip ~~~
I give you credit for attempting to bring psychology into the debate. I, too, have a background in psychology as well as business. While jealousy can have a negative impact on people who view the fortunate ones with envious eyes, that’s only half the story. Game designers have to look at the impact of player retention. The science to player retention in MMOs is to give players long term goals or goals that have a high replay value. Giving all players what they want achieves the opposite of this. Without goals, players will get bored. The counter to this is to pump out more and more new content. With Anet and their limited resources, they’re not able to bring out new content fast enough, so the only option left is to have longer term goals. The carrot on the long stick, so to speak. And you can also artificially extend the goals by putting in gates (i.e. once per day crafting).
In Guild Wars 2, or any other MMO, you have a wide variety of players. You have players who demand challenges. You have players who thrive in PvP. You have players who roleplay. You have players who want to collect everything in the game. And you have players who want the best items in the game for no effort. The latter is categorized as Entitlement. Among all groups and types of players, the Entitled player is the one that a game company doesn’t want to cater to. As stated above, once these players get what they want, and no longer have anything else to desire, they lose interest in the game. This leads down the road to quitting the game until more new content is released.
There has been debates on players quitting because they don’t get what they want. This is true. Some players who don’t get their way, or if the game doesn’t do/reward what they’re feel they deserve, they’ll leave. However, this group would have far less people quitting than the group of players who are bored. Using some made up numbers, it’s better to have 2 players quit over not having their way, over 100 players quit because there’s nothing left to do.
It’s definitely a balancing act. It’s also heavily dependent on the culture of those playing. I think it goes without saying that western players are more interested in getting their rewards sooner than those in the eastern market. There’s a reason that Korean imports usually fail in the west, and it almost always has to do with time investment/reward.
Goals definitely keep players around. Unfortunately, treadmills are risky. Time-gated completion is risky and can be a big turnoff for people with play schedules that differ from the target audience. Usually implementing these kinds of things isn’t advisable due to the potential of alienating customers. Of course, it’s difficult to create content that doesn’t both get rapidly consumed nor gated behind time or resource walls not available to many players.
The best way to go about a solution to maximize retention and prevent churning isn’t so much by adding new objectives but actually changing the rules of a game to create a new experience. It ought to be just as fair as the original from a numbers perspective as to prevent morale loss for flawed design, and should inspire more creativity and provoke more thought than repetition, just as the initial game did for the novice. While humans have a tendency to be completionists and hoarders, we are also intelligent enough to at some point learn we’re on a big hamster wheel. The approach of adding more goals is unfortunately not a sustainable way to run a game. As these get more and more obscene and removed from the core design or implementation of the game, more and more people churn.
The thing is, to create an environment where this approach on creating high or almost innumerable replay-ability is implemented requires a lot of resources and the design intentions of doing so long before implementation. Getting things like AI experts to implement PCG for the game is long and expensive, and proving mathematically that a game is balanced (as well as from a QA point of view with real people) is arduous and requires a lot of iteration and subsequently more development effort and money spent on resources.
Or, companies can just book the main stage at a games expo and announce the release a a re-skin of the current mechanics — chess with blue and green pieces — generate a ton of hype, and ride the waves of profit when all that was changed were some aesthetics.
Formal Thief Elite Spec proposal:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/ES-Suggestion-The-Deadeye-FORMAL/
I wasn’t questioning whether you wanted it; that was the starting point. I’m suggesting that you reevaluate what you want compared to what you’re willing to put in. It seems you want items, but are unwilling to get what you need for it, and so you ask Anet to do what you think will make it easier for you to get it to suit your playstyle.
Yes, exactly. I’m glad we’re on the same page.
Straight-faced.
What I was demonstrating with those numbers is that 501g was able to buy far more then than it can today.
Which is true, but the buying power of 501g was not really at question, what is more relevant is the difficulty in acquiring it. You do know that there are plenty of players in this game that have been playing months or years and have not acquired more than a few hundred gold. If we go purely by liquid gold in the account, according to Efficiency, even the bottom 50% of players with up to 1000h of time in the game have only about 500g on hand. The bottom 10% are under 140g. That would be after roughly a year and a half averaging two hours a day, which is reasonable for a more casual player.
You do realize that if it was so hard to get 500g, then 500g would have far greater buying power, right? You’re misinterpreting the graph. The median represents the exact middle, or ‘your ticket into the top 50%.’ The median and 50% of players rows are the same, so the same phrase applies. Thus, we can extrapolate to say that 500g is ‘your ticket into the top 99%.’ I think you were arguing as though it were the mean, so lets look at the average for 500-1000h. The average is….2800g, more than or equal to the buy orders of any tier 1 legendary, sans Eternity. Huh, would ya look at that.
I hope you realize that the average player can list the loot they get as sell orders and buy what they need at buy orders; This ‘ideal’ you are setting up hurts them too.
But if the average player did do that then buy orders would never fill and sell orders would never move until both came together close enough to equilibrium that flipping them would be impossible, so it’s a moot point.
No, I wasn’t talking about the current system, I was talking about yours, so it’s not moot. You’ve also just admitted that in your system, the main thing pushing anything toward any state even resembling equilibrium is players not getting the items they want. Very effective.
If more people would be harmed by what I’m proposing than would be helped by it, then the markets would not look anything like what they do, therefore, the opposite must be true.
Yes! a good start, but it still needs a bit of work. It still relies on the underlying assumption that the markets would be different if it were not true. You also need to give a good reason for why the current system is so bad Anet would want to allocate the resources to making the change, etc. A good start, still.
It’s just a suggestion, you don’t have to take it. I’m not trying to force a single player RPG down your throat.
It’s “just a suggestion” made way too often to be taken as anything but hostile. [/quote]
If you want to take it as hostile, that’s on you. It’s just that single player RPGs don’t suffer from the problem you’ve been complaining about.
The new crafting process was never meant to make precursors 300g. They were meant to make a non-RNG, non-TP method, and to maybe reduce the costs of some of them over the long term.
What they were “meant” to do is entirely irrelevant, all that matters is what the players wanted them to do, which was to make them cheaper. A “non RNG, non-TP” method was never needed. If you wanted to avoid RNG, you could just use the TP instead. The alternative that was needed was one that involved negligible gold cost.
And yet you’ve spent this entire thread moaning about how the TP is terrible and doesn’t work the way you want it to, and now it becomes ‘just use the TP.’ Now Anet gives you a way to craft it using materials, many of which you can gather, and you moan about it because it uses too many materials. Except ohwait where do those mats come from the open world.
What kind of nonsense is this?
Of course the intent behind the implementation is relevant. It’s the only sane way to measure the success or failure of the change.Whether it accomplishes the intent only measures how well the developers achieved what they wanted to do. If what they wanted to do isn’t what the players wanted from them, then their success or failure at achieving that goal is entirely irrelevant. All that really matters is how closely the result matches up with the players’ expectations, not the developers’ intent.
No, it means that the devs either succeeded or failed, depending on whether they hit their intentions, and you didn’t like the result. You seem to hate the TP in its current form, but you can hardly argue that it failed. If enough people don’t like the result, Anet may decide that its original intent was off, and thus it failed. This doesn’t mean that Anet failed because you didn’t like it.
The collections actually do something very useful by indexing the price of precursors to materials.
That was already in place, as the price of high-value Precursors was largely tied to the costs of making dozens of rare weapons to toss into the forge. The new system is no more efficient at this, although it may not have found its equilibrium point yet as it’s had less time to do so.
No more efficient? The previous mat index was based on an average from an RNG-based system; I’d guess most precursors that were made this way did not fall especially close to that average. Compare that to this new system, where X, Y, and Z mats will always be able to make precursor N, once per account. I’d say that’s far more efficient.
(edited by DeShadowWolf.6854)
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.
Haven’t been following this thread, as it was just too depressing to even think about, but just thought I should say that I don’t agree with you, at all.
Both of them probably understand how markets work, it’s just that Ohoni also understands how this affects the players who either don’t understand, or choose not to participate.
The problem is that IRL, even in this unfair world, most people are not forced to gamble on the stock market.
Or to be a business entrepreneur.
Most people can, or should, be able to make a decent living in other ways.
Ways that, hopefully, inspire and challenge them; or, at least, don’t bore and depress them.
So, if you make the only option to make decent money, in a game, something most people either don’t find easy, or don’t enjoy doing, you are inevitably limiting the appeal of that game to a relatively small number of people.
Accusing anyone, who dares to point this out, of being ignorant and/or suffering from sour grapes, is doing them, Anet and most of the other players of the game a disservice.
“Turns out when people play the game, they don’t admire your feet at all.” sephiroth
(edited by Tigaseye.2047)