Guild Wars 2

This was posted 6 weeks ago and it’s nearing 5 months since launch. It seems they’re being held back for the ‘Seasonal Update’ next month.

I can only think the view of the developers is (in lieu of any new content) packing as much as possible into one seasonal update makes it look like they’re doing more than if they release the same changes incrementally. But, from a player point of view, they just released an expansion which wasn’t even finished and then abandoned it for months at a time.

The game has been quite stable for three years and that has allowed for a chilled approach to any kind of balancing changes. Right now we are in a completely different situation with a rough expansion launch and a huge amount of work to be done just to get some of the core features of the expansion working properly.

This is a time when the game needs some rapid attention. Scribing decorations costing far too much? Fix it! Don’t add it to a list of things to fix in the future, get at the desk and reduce the materiel requirement, throw it onto live, then in a couple of weeks check to see if it’s done the trick.

Inimicus.7162:

Resonating slivers are a 1x per week deal. The economy gets an influx once per week, with the scribe player alone maybe pulling in 18-24 on average (for me, I can’t run WvW missions with my guild because of servers). Now consider it takes 81 of these to make this part of a grandmaster finishing kit.

18-24? Oh, that would be heaven. Me, I’m lucky to get five. I am the leader of a 10-member guild and a member of an 80-member guild. About the only favor either guild gets each week is from whatever missions I can do solo. (Easy bounties and easy treks now, since the WvW Oasis challenges are history.) Getting three people together in either guild for a WvW cap, cap-and-hold, or medium trek is worse than herding cats.

Sadly, even though I do missions for each guild, I only get the personal reward for one of them, which defies my comprehension. I can understand not being able to do a mission repeatedly for one guild to farm slivers, but if I am contributing favor to two different guilds, I should be rewarded for both.

Inimicus.7162:

Coarse sand. There are exactly 2 full maps where this stuff can be farmed, and all of 6 inches of Verdant Brink. The problem is you need thousands of these as a scribe and they do NOT farm quickly. You need 300 of these for each grandmaster finishing kit.

The six inches of VB are the best. You can’t farm sand in DT except for 20 minutes during each hour, and during that time you have to deal with or dodge devourers, skritt, and/or sand giant while doing it. SW is worse because the dust bunnies are relatively few and you’ll have mordrem beating on your tail the whole time. In either map the sand you get from event rewards is pretty small for the time each event takes, which is enough time to kill quite a few dust bunnies. VB at least gives you a place where you can concentrate on sand and nothing but sand.

PopeUrban.2578:

Coarse sand needs its scribing requirements cut by 90%, just slash a zero off of all the sandpaper recipies. Additionally, its demand necessitates other means of acquisition. Sure, leave silverwastes as the most direct and reliable means of acquiring it, but how about adding packs of 10-20 to the commendation trader’s crafting materials page, as one of the random rolls on the Ley Essence converter purchase tables, and as a purchase from the pact Supply mastery’s vendors.

Great ideas. I would also suggest having the insect collector in DT offer something like “Large Bag of Coarse Sand” in exchange for a fossilized insect. I finished the ambrite weapon collection more than a year ago and currently have nearly 30 bugs that have dropped for me since then. Dusty bags of gear don’t seem like a good exchange for something so rare, but that’s the only thing of value currently offered for them. It’s pointless to use them to craft more ambrite weapons, since those can’t be sold and cheaper Nomad’s weapons are just as good for salvaging or Mystic Forging.

For that matter, having the Zephyrite vendors sell sand for geodes would be nice, too. I have nothing left to buy from them save for lockpicks, and I don’t need to buy lockpicks any more because endless farming for sand is giving me more than I can use (along with SW keys, geodes, and bandit crests). So the useless geodes are just piling up in my wallet. My only incentive for doing events there is to help get the map to t4 to get access to Chicklet’s shinies.

For me, geodes are the currency in most demand and the one I have the hardest time coming by. I have 2 precursor collections stalled on me farming enough geodes. Sand I have plenty of.

BrettM.9062:

For that matter, having the Zephyrite vendors sell sand for geodes would be nice, too. I have nothing left to buy from them save for lockpicks, and I don’t need to buy lockpicks any more because endless farming for sand is giving me more than I can use (along with SW keys, geodes, and bandit crests). So the useless geodes are just piling up in my wallet. My only incentive for doing events there is to help get the map to t4 to get access to Chicklet’s shinies.

As a 400 scribe, I’d like to see a Master Scribe title available for all fully leveled scribes, new and old alike. Maybe make that an option if scribe is expanded to 500.

While some decos are very pricey, in my opinion the worst offender is still the humble white balloon. Only 50 silver, but you need a level 34 guild to buy it.

Free the balloons, Gaile. Balloons for all.

Will WvW upgrades be nerfed in price also?

I would like to see some compensation awarded to those of us that busted our backside (and our in game wallets) to get level 400 scribe before the redesign.

MadRabbit.3179:

Like define “reasonable”? Or what the GW2 teams idea of “reasonable” is? Since it’s pretty clear when it comes to the cost of materials and grinding, “reasonable” is very a subjective and broad adjective.

Like is “reasonable” going to be something personally obtainable by a single individual who hasn’t been stockpiling tons of materials and gold since the dawn of GW2? Is “reasonable” obtainable without the help of an entire guild of people if you don’t all into the former category?

Because if “reasonable” is according to the same standards you have applied to everything else in HoT where players are being treated like hamsters in a wheel, endlessly grinding massive amounts of materials for little reward, because economic stimulation is priority one and player’s actual enjoyment is second, then “reasonable” is pretty debatable.

At the end of the day, you have a personal crafting profession that is intended mostly for the benefit of the entire guild, but also contains a small percentage of personal items. This crafting profession currently requires the help of an entire guild to complete and the results of that guild’s time and material investment are not owned by the guild. A player can quit the game, leave the guild or use their crafting profession to help other guilds, all three creating scenarios ripe for drama and hostility when the original guild who helped them loses out on their investment.

It seems to me the scribe profession is way more broken and controversial than just making prices more “reasonable” can fix.

I’d like to chime in and say scribe is a guild profession, not meant for materials to be gathered by a single person, you are supposed to ask the guild for help. it sounds like you don’t have a very good group of people in your guilds if you’re thinking about them leaving/quitting, sure things happen, but if you have a big organized guild there’ll always be someone to take their place.

Xbon.9086:

MadRabbit.3179:

Like define “reasonable”? Or what the GW2 teams idea of “reasonable” is? Since it’s pretty clear when it comes to the cost of materials and grinding, “reasonable” is very a subjective and broad adjective.

Like is “reasonable” going to be something personally obtainable by a single individual who hasn’t been stockpiling tons of materials and gold since the dawn of GW2? Is “reasonable” obtainable without the help of an entire guild of people if you don’t all into the former category?

Because if “reasonable” is according to the same standards you have applied to everything else in HoT where players are being treated like hamsters in a wheel, endlessly grinding massive amounts of materials for little reward, because economic stimulation is priority one and player’s actual enjoyment is second, then “reasonable” is pretty debatable.

At the end of the day, you have a personal crafting profession that is intended mostly for the benefit of the entire guild, but also contains a small percentage of personal items. This crafting profession currently requires the help of an entire guild to complete and the results of that guild’s time and material investment are not owned by the guild. A player can quit the game, leave the guild or use their crafting profession to help other guilds, all three creating scenarios ripe for drama and hostility when the original guild who helped them loses out on their investment.

It seems to me the scribe profession is way more broken and controversial than just making prices more “reasonable” can fix.

I’d like to chime in and say scribe is a guild profession, not meant for materials to be gathered by a single person, you are supposed to ask the guild for help. it sounds like you don’t have a very good group of people in your guilds if you’re thinking about them leaving/quitting, sure things happen, but if you have a big organized guild there’ll always be someone to take their place.

And yet it still makes the same account bound backpacks every other profession makes.

You want that spiffy messenger bag back item you say? Better hope you’re the one the entire guild rallies behind to fund…

Making an entire crafting profession revolve around a guild funneling communal resources to a single person just so you can perform said profession is crappy design.

They should have just done away with the whole idea and made the thing some kind of guild menu interface where it’s part of the hall itself and anyone can contribute to the crafting level and make scribe items. The system wouldn’t hinge on a single person and the idiotic system would make much more sense.

And lets not pretend this was any kind of community building exercise by Anet. This was a blatant material vacuum that was meant to stir up the economy and eat up surplus materials. Nothing more.

Diovid.9506:

This doesn’t adress the fundamental problem of scribing: It is aimed at guilds but tied to individual players. Why anyone ever thought that was a good idea is something I really do not understand. Scribing should always have been a guild-wide thing.

Yeah, it should be like a mastery system for the guild, not individual. Everyone can lvl the profession, but as a guild you unlock certain achievements allowing the indivduals to craft additional things of that level/tier. So if a scribe leaves the guild, it doesn’t affect what that guild already unlocked. Supporting an individual scribe would change to supporting the whole guild.

Deimos.4263:

As a 400 scribe, I’d like to see a Master Scribe title available for all fully leveled scribes, new and old alike. Maybe make that an option if scribe is expanded to 500.

While some decos are very pricey, in my opinion the worst offender is still the humble white balloon. Only 50 silver, but you need a level 34 guild to buy it.

Free the balloons, Gaile. Balloons for all.

My guild is 43, still can’t buy white balloons ???

Substance E.4852:

They should have just done away with the whole idea and made the thing some kind of guild menu interface where it’s part of the hall itself and anyone can contribute to the crafting level and make scribe items. The system wouldn’t hinge on a single person and the idiotic system would make much more sense.

And lets not pretend this was any kind of community building exercise by Anet. This was a blatant material vacuum that was meant to stir up the economy and eat up surplus materials. Nothing more.

Yeah, they so should have done this. If the entire guild membership could have worked on it, it would have been a much better system. They’re so desperate to keep their economy in a chokehold that they don’t appear to think some things through.

Kelly.7019:

Deimos.4263:

As a 400 scribe, I’d like to see a Master Scribe title available for all fully leveled scribes, new and old alike. Maybe make that an option if scribe is expanded to 500.

While some decos are very pricey, in my opinion the worst offender is still the humble white balloon. Only 50 silver, but you need a level 34 guild to buy it.

Free the balloons, Gaile. Balloons for all.

My guild is 43, still can’t buy white balloons ???

It’s not the level of guild per se, but the tier of the decoration trader. 34 is just the minimum guild level at which you can unlock that upgrade.

Besides the high Scribing costs, the trade skill itself is selectively tied to a guild. I was really excited to see scribing added because I used to scribe in EQ2. But just as soon as I looked into learning it, I discovered this fact.

Very disappointed in the high cost, but more so because it is selectively tied just to the guild.

Vivianne.2506:

3. Put banks next to each of the proprietors kitten . (kitten lol) Its SO tedious to have to visit each of the proprietors to see what you need and then run over to the scribing station to get to your bank to get the stuff.

Or better yet, allow the proprietors to see your bank.

extra coarse sandpaper is still requiring 10 piles of sand

cdsmith.1072:

extra coarse sandpaper is still requiring 10 piles of sand

It was 20.

“Adjusted all sandpaper to only require 10 piles of coarse sand to create.”

no it was 10 for tier 1. but then finishing kits needed 5 papers and now only 1. Thus decoration costs are 1/5th of the price for tier 1 decorations.

I wish they would’ve changed the Piles of Flax Seeds to Vials of Linseed Oil ratio, though. 20-1 and considering it’s needed for about every decoration still makes this disproportionate to the other requirements, in my honest opinion. Besides this, I’m very happy to see all the changes, though. And not just the changes to Scribe.