Guild Wars 2

Recently, a member of the guild purchased 50 rare seeds to create the Potted Blue Orchid. It cost 335 gold to acquire these seeds and the end result was an EXTREME disapointment.
I am hoping the developers see this and determine if there is a way to review the scribable items available, and have drop rates adjusted to be appropriate with the item being created. The potted orchid has 0 functionality, no animation, no interaction, is not seasonal, cannot be scaled, and cost nearly 100 times more than other plants which are many times larger (and prettier). An item like this is not justifiable to be so hard to create.

Other items that are seasonal, interactive, animated, etc we don’t mind putting in a little extra effort to acquire but the scale of requirements for inanimate objects in guild hall that you cannot use in game for functionality other than aesthetics, is in dire need of change. Many of my peer scribers are afraid to create items as a result of the example given above (which occurs all too often in scribing) and we are reaching out to developers to change these requirements or increase drop rates such that trivial items are obtainable.

My guild created a memorial as a result of this injustice and i have included the picture with this post.

Oh, and increasing the quantity of items placable in a space would be nice too.

Thank you for listening to my rant/recommendations.

I am said member of the guild, and I support this message.

While many things with guild hall materials are rediculously expensive such as various guild upgrades and its leather requirements. Decorating your hall is a choice. You didnt have to spend that much gold on a single decoration. Also you could have done research before hand via the wiki, dulfy or other sites to see the decoration beforehand and its (or lack of) effects. Likewise, your guild could have helped farm the seeds rather than buying them.
While a decoration preview in game would be great, its not their fault for you spending so much.

The item is ridiculously rare for its use. Seriously, there are only around 170 on the black lion market / trading post (at the moment I am writing this). If we were to farm for it, it could take weeks and probably months. And I refuse to believe that for a decoration that small and insignificant, 50 items of that rarity is an appropriate requirement.

So why did you choose to make it?

Doing a general search for it in guild wars wiki or on google did not provide any scale for the item and the items are not preview-able therefore there is no way of actually knowing what it will be like until you make it. I am not asking for it back, i am just asking ANET put more thought on what they are requiring for trivial items.

Our guild loves the aspect of customizing our guild hall and making our own jumping puzzles in there and decorating our houses (we have each claimed an area and are responsible for decorating it). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining on all scribing, just saying that on trivial things you shouldn’t make them so hard to achieve as its pretty demoralizing (unless you are rich) when you have a vague idea of what it will look like and you go through a lot of effort or money and its vastly less satisfying when its accomplished.

And I’m sorry Khailyn, I do agree that it was our choice to decorate our guild hall and we did debate making it and elected to do so. ANET controls component drop rates and materials required to create items. Everything in this game is a choice, that doesn’t mean that its a fair choice, just as you mentioned with the leather requirements being ridiculously expensive but you still want to upgrade it and its your right to ask ANET to mellow out on such requirements should you choose to do so. ANET doesn’t have to listen but it would be nice if they looked after their player base when it comes to trivial items with no functionality.

The Devs did state that Guild Hall content was supposed to take months and months to complete.

Perhaps, the high cost of items is the result of wanting more immediate results. /shrug

Players can submit pictures to show scale to the Wiki. After all, it is only players who provide the content of the Wiki. I’m sure the editors would be appreciative.

Good luck.

I agree with you Inculpatus. ANET can accomplish the same thing by tying items to guild levels and once they are achieved you can decorate your guild hall using scribing without taking a year to save up stuff or spending a ton of money on an aesthetic item of no functionality.

That would meet the time and excessive material requirements for guild hall completions but once unlocked have at it at a cheaper rate.

I appreciate and encourage everyone’s commens/discussion.

335g for that plant is beyond unreasonable. Drop rates for scribing items are just silly considering how many you need. Guild Halls already have enough time sinks with the buildings, but for small, regular decorations to have such high requirements is baffling.

I am all for rare and legendary decorations where the return justifies the cost (eg the Whispers Globe and Uzolan’s Orchestra). But, regular plants and lamps?

Love the set up in the pic btw

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Players can submit pictures to show scale to the Wiki. After all, it is only players who provide the content of the Wiki. I’m sure the editors would be appreciative.

The gw2 community would be appreciative. It looks like the image on the wiki was only uploaded in June (likely due to the high cost of the item). A request for a better image was put out in September.

If you could take an image of the entire decoration, preferably in front of some stairs to give a sense of scale, it would help a lot.

Go to the file page and click on “Upload a new version of this file”, which is just below the file history. You’ll need to create an account on the wiki to upload an image.

Thanks!

It’s a very nice memorial. I agree that the costs for that particular decoration are ridiculous. It’s not the only decoration for which the costs are way out of proportion for the reality of the item, either.

Wooden Potatoes did a guild hall decorating video in which he built that plant and then ranted about the result. He’s still a little salty about how much that thing cost for the size of it. As my guild’s scribe, I’m glad I saw that and knew to stay away from it.

Whoever said “size doesn’t matter” is probably a blind man speaking . . because it DOES! Especially when it comes to guild hall decor. For the cost to scribe the blue orchid, it should at least fill the empty square planter . . then it would be impressive. Also there seems to be bias towards the small guilds that can’t utilize membership to either farm or share the cost of acquiring the rare seeds . .seems more fair to just change the drop rate so that ALL can have a prettier guild hall besides the rich and infamous.

Greener, i took your advice and updated the Wiki. Now that I have updated the potted blue orchid, I will likely start doing that with other items I have made to assist other people with approximate scale and functions/movements associated with scribed items.

Fig Nastie.1302:

Greener, i took your advice and updated the Wiki. Now that I have updated the potted blue orchid, I will likely start doing that with other items I have made to assist other people with approximate scale and functions/movements associated with scribed items.

Thank you very much for doing that. It won’t solve your problem, but it will save the next poor sap growing in a pot from the same pain.

Khailyn.6248:

While many things with guild hall materials are rediculously expensive such as various guild upgrades and its leather requirements. Decorating your hall is a choice. You didnt have to spend that much gold on a single decoration. Also you could have done research before hand via the wiki, dulfy or other sites to see the decoration beforehand and its (or lack of) effects. Likewise, your guild could have helped farm the seeds rather than buying them.
While a decoration preview in game would be great, its not their fault for you spending so much.

i can’t believe that you’re okay with how broken this system is.
Yeah you should never craft anything without looking on the wiki for pictures first(if you’re afraid of the gold sink). i did the exact same thing when scribing first came out and there wasn’t a picture of what i was crafting. If you thought a “pirate flag” would have a skull and cross bones on it… You’d be mistaken

yeah, its a choice to decorate, Like its a choice to make Legendaries (which i have many, because i like pretty things) but many of us scribes were looking forward to doing just that with the guild hall. It was part of the reason we all bought HoT. Assumption problem , maybe, but that bit about “Guild Hall content was supposed to take months and months to complete” in reference to upgrades makes sense, not decorating. I agree that “trivial things you shouldn’t make them so hard to achieve”. People were looking forward to decorating with regular decorations, but then found out everything was a gold sink, it just doesn’t make sense.

The item “Rare Flower Seed” is used to craft two decoration items, both requiring level 400 Scribe to make (so they are comparable)

Potted Blue Orchid requires ~203g if you buy everything from the TP and 200g of those are for the 50 (!) Rare Flower Seeds

The second item, Potted Blooming Moa Fern requires only ~30g if you buy everything from the TP, requiring only 5 Rare Flower Seeds.

Two decorations of the same level, one requires 50 of a rare item, the other only 5. The Moa Fern requires some extra items, making it more expensive than the Blue Orchid if you exclude the Rare Flower Seeds, but the price difference doesn’t make much sense anyway.

It’s very common for other scribe recipes to have similar issues and it’s especially problematic while you are leveling scribe because the price for decorations is all over the place.

Scribe is a profession that — as the master craftsman warns you — mostly benefits your guild! It’s kinda sorta intended, we generally infer, that you also craft with the help of your guild. (Especially, they contribute guild decoration components to the bank or whatever, so that you have 50-500 people hunting them down, etc.)

That means that for a 20 person guild you are talking about a roughly 10 gold per-person cost to decorate with that, and for a 200 person guild, 1 gold per person.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Scribe is a profession that — as the master craftsman warns you — mostly benefits your guild! It’s kinda sorta intended, we generally infer, that you also craft with the help of your guild.

100% this.

There’s also enough resources now to know what you’re crafting before dumping gold on it.

I generally post on my guilds facebook, what I’ve got planned to craft and what I might need help with (my last big help decoration was Uzolan’s Orchestra).
I never craft any decoration until I see what it looks like.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

It’s kinda sorta intended, we generally infer, that you also craft with the help of your guild.

Of course, things that scribes make are for the entire guild, so it’s up to the guild to help with material costs, and scribe leveling. However, why such a huge difference between different items of the same skill requirement? 30g vs 203g is a rather huge difference. And they both produce the same type of item, with a very similar size.

maddoctor.2738:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

It’s kinda sorta intended, we generally infer, that you also craft with the help of your guild.

Of course, things that scribes make are for the entire guild, so it’s up to the guild to help with material costs, and scribe leveling. However, why such a huge difference between different items of the same skill requirement? 30g vs 203g is a rather huge difference. And they both produce the same type of item, with a very similar size.

Then they should’v made the scribe as a guild hall feature instead of single player crafting discipline. Make everyone within the guild can access this crafting zone without the hassle of leveling it. Let anyone craft/build anything (those with premission). The reason of people not contributing is a trust issue.

DeanBB.4268:

So why did you choose to make it?

Its not about the gold. Its about sending the message.

Shafara.8217:

maddoctor.2738:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

It’s kinda sorta intended, we generally infer, that you also craft with the help of your guild.

Of course, things that scribes make are for the entire guild, so it’s up to the guild to help with material costs, and scribe leveling. However, why such a huge difference between different items of the same skill requirement? 30g vs 203g is a rather huge difference. And they both produce the same type of item, with a very similar size.

Then they should’v made the scribe as a guild hall feature instead of single player crafting discipline. Make everyone within the guild can access this crafting zone without the hassle of leveling it. Let anyone craft/build anything (those with premission). The reason of people not contributing is a trust issue.

Technology can’t solve “people” issues, and “my guild don’t trust each other” is a people problem. I’d suggest you, hey, pick a better guild.