Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

eliteblast.6403:

Devata.6589:

eliteblast.6403:

People with money will find ways to get items without grinding for them. Like in wow, or any other mmo, people will utilize 3rd parties to achieve something. They may not be able to get it off the trading post, but they most definitely will pay someone in game to get it for them, either by account sharing with a chinese farmer, or paying off a guild leader to invite them to the raid, or buying an account with everything on it.

Arena net is basically taking the ability for 3rd parties to profit from this game, and making themselves the service provider, which in effect is great for the playerbase because we can play without a monthly subscription.

The things you suggest are way more effort to get items then using a 3th party, then with buying gold from 3th party. So if anything, they make it easier for 3th parties.

And the player base, others then the grind-community, does not in benefit at all from everything being a currency grind.

I didn’t suggest anything? I said 3rd parties will take profit from arenanet if they stop letting the player economy be dictated by a free market. When you start making everything in the game soulbound, you make the currency worthless.

A good example of this, the original everquest, you could just buy most of the best items in the game, yet it thrived. Ultima online, the entire economy was dicated by crafters, and people who had money bought up the best in game properties so they could have the best area to live to earn money, or house vendors. Nothing was soul bound in uo either, unless you had a very rare bless deed, and everything had a durability so you constantly needed new gear, and you lost all of your items on death, so the game kept pvp balance by deterring players from using rare weapons in pvp.

Now we have a mmo that is free to play, because the developer is in control of how people spend real life money on the game, instead of going on ebay and buying a castle from some player, you go to the gem store and sell your gems for gold, or if you can’t afford gems but have plenty of time to play the game, then you can buy gems from other players.

If you remove the ability to sell items to other players, then you remove the need for people to earn money to buy gems, because all of the good items will not be found with gems or gold, but instead by only the very few people with the amount of time to farm these items. Once these people are in control then you will be forced to use them as a 3rd party in order to get the required gear.

One of the main problems with soulbound items is that it destroys the entire economy at end game, gold becomes meaningless, and the real currency becomes dollars, because if you want something without having the time to play, you will spend money utilizing a 3rd party. Forcing people to use 3rd parties is bad for the playerbase, because people don’t want to be forced into doing it to remain competitive.

This also leads to botting, people will bot to achieve things because they can’t be online. Look at honor grinding in world of warcraft, most of the players are afk not participating, a lot of them are botting to get honor because it is easier than playing.

I wanted a disgusting oozling in wow, in order to get it I had to farm oozling for 40 hours straight, am I going to sit at my computer killing oozlings, or am I going to use mmoglider to do it?

“I didn’t suggest anything? I said 3rd parties will take profit from arenanet if they stop letting the player economy be dictated by a free market. When you start making everything in the game soulbound, you make the currency worthless.”

Nobody said everything should be soul bound. Basically, the ‘best’ items (what in this skin based game are the best skins and mini’s) should be behind their own content and be account-bound.

There are still plenty items that do not have to be account-bound. Many of the mats and tonics for example. Still, even for them there should be a clear way to farm them yourself, other than grinding gold and buying them.

It’s also funny that you come with two games that indeed where popular but also known for the grind.

Making any item soulbound creates an opportunity for 3rd parties, it forces me to find someone to play my account, or it forces me to pay someone to let me into the raid. It doesn’t make the item exclusive, it just changes the vendor from arenanet to some chinese person.

Celtic Lady.3729:

By this logic, why would anything be tradeable? Why isn’t everything account bound so you have to do the work yourself and prove you played the game? We could simply farm everything we need, no currency necessary.

Since, you know, laziness…

Stuff dropped from the open world should be tradeable, not PvP exclusive stuff like skins and currency.

There should be a focus on exclusive skins if ANet wanted to keep the population high in the entire game, and not just certain maps.

Make each world boss drop exclusive skins you can only get with that boss. Make certain champions drop exclusive skins. Make some bosses in dungeons drop skins. Make super rare enemies that are either hard to find, or don’t always spawn in the same place drop some skins. Then make those specific skins account bound or soul bound.

Something small like that would already give many players a sense of achievement and purpose when trying to make their characters look the way they want. Sure the end is the same if you were to be able to buy that skin for 90 gold as opposed to getting it from a drop on your 20th fight against that boss, but for me, it feels more rewarding to have a shot at getting by defeating an enemy that isn’t necessarily easy.

I don’t think the answer is to go extreme in one direction or another, but i think the reward system is extremely flawed and theres no real reason to do any specific content when trying to get any single item in the game. Right now you just go to whatever train/farm/zone that gets you the most gold and just run around for a few hours or however long you have and see how much gold you get from selling your drops. At least if you had motivation to fight specific bosses or enemies, you might find yourself exploring or going to places you rarely go, and I always found that fun.

eliteblast.6403:

What is the point in having gold, if I can’t purchase things with it?

I don’t really see what relevance that has on having access to content restricted skins, unless you don’t merely want to purchase things as opposed to everything.

Sekhmet.6153:

Right now you just go to whatever train/farm/zone that gets you the most gold and just run around for a few hours or however long you have and see how much gold you get from selling your drops. At least if you had motivation to fight specific bosses or enemies, you might find yourself exploring or going to places you rarely go, and I always found that fun.

Agreed.

That’s pretty much my main issue. Instead of such rewards actually having any character, merit or actual relevance as far as that characters journey or history everything can be traced back to a handful of gold farms and zergs running around in circles, regardless of how the individual earned it,

There is no personality or RPG in that.

Exclusivity of some skins, not all, based on terms outside merely goldsink would allow such players the game play and reward of expression they enjoy.

As it stands everyone is tarred with the same brush in that such skins can be obtained “farm-mode” which cheapens and removes the personality from the game and the reward itself.

The only valid argument against this is a lack of skin variation imho, outside that the only impression I get is that of greed.

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

No it’s unrewarding because of the absolute abortion of an equipment system Anet used. It has in no way achieved it’s goal of horizontal progression, just stepped vertical progression, with bland items that don’t do anything interesting except look garish.

So you’re simultaneously saying that there is no horizontal progression, just stepped vertical, while saying that the gear does nothing except look garish?

That’s horizontal progression, my friend…..

And to further contradict yourself, you say they items are bland by describing them as garish? Like seriously? LOL

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

Devata.6589:

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

Paralux.6714:

Ok, the fact that you can buy Shards of Glory and Memories of Battle on the TP is annoying already. I thought the thing about Precursor Crafting was that players instead of spending a lot of gold could just put a lot of effort in to the game and still being able to get a precursor. But not only does do you lose gold on finishing the precursor tiers (counting the costs of all materials needed atm it’s cheaper to jsut buy the precursor directly from TP.) it’s also still much easier for people who are willing to spend a lot of gold to get it much faster than people who actually wants to work for it. I can understand that some things which are needed for the precursor is on TP, like elonian leather for example, which is also something you need to craft other things. But to put shards of glory and memories on battle on TP is just totally unnecessary.

And now I’m even more annoyed since even the fractal ACHIEVEMENT chests can be sold/bought on/from the TP. I thought they wanted more people to do fractals, now you can get a skin without even having to enter the gate in LA. :S

And just a note, personally I think that it is much more encouraging to work for something I know everyone else that wants the same thing has to work for aswell, rather than knowing some people can just buy everything they need.

I can’t support your viewpoint at all, a lot of people in this thread have boosted the buyer’s view on this, but the more effective argument against your position is that of the seller. Whoever put those fractal chest on the market clearly weren’t terribly attached to them, no doubt already having any and all fractal skins they want or desire, they instead seek to trade a thing they DON’T want for a things they want, or at least for currency that can be exchanged for things they want. Take away the ability to trade things just leaves you with a bunch of people lumbers with kittens they don’t want. This game is already completely unrewarding as it is. I am of the view that no random loot should ever be account-bound or soul-bound as it just again leaves people with inventories clogged with stuff that they don’t need or want.
So in conclusion, no it not worth causing massive inconvenience to the playerbase of the game as whole to satisfy your utterly baseless sense of elitism.

“This game is already completely unrewarding as it is.”

And this is because of that grind gold to buy what you want mentality. So you praise what creates what you despise.

No items feel rewarding this way. When you kill a hard to kill boss and get a reward for that, that you can only get that way, that feels rewarding. When the same item is owned (because they got it from the TP) by people who grinded Silverwaste while watching the latest episode of The Walking Dead on their second screen, that does not feel rewarding.

And the nonsense elitism excuse again, as if people feel entitled to things they should not be. Maybe people should not feel entitled to things for brainlessly grinding away. How about that? Maybe the real elitism players in GW2 are the ‘casual’ hardcore grinders that think everything should be available for them.

No it’s unrewarding because of the absolute abortion of an equipment system Anet used. It has in no way achieved it’s goal of horizontal progression, just stepped vertical progression, with bland items that don’t do anything interesting except look garish. Combined with miserly drop rates and the fact that when you get to 80 anything other than exotics just becomes something to be ground up for materials – to the point where I just wish they’d drop the pretense and just have 3-6 ectos in the world boss chests.

And you’ve ignored my main point which is that the person selling the item clearly doesn’t have a problem doing this and will lose any sense of achievement from doing this mythical ‘hard’ content, because under your idea they aren’t being rewarded.
Destiny got blasted, and rightly so, at launch for having no trade mechanic so in the unlikely event that you got a rare item and it was one you couldn’t use it was literally useless to you.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pro-grind -I have no patience for it – I really dislike how grindy making money in this game is but don’t for a second think that you’re better than someone who ground their way up to a legendary, because that took work and dedication on their part, hell the whole point of grind is that it’s a chore, thae challenge lies in not dying of boredom at the keyboard.

“And you’ve ignored my main point which is that the person selling the item clearly doesn’t have a problem doing this and will lose any sense of achievement from doing this mythical ‘hard’ content”

There will always be people who are not interested in some reward, so when they can sell it they will sell it. That does not mean it’s an universal truth that that means nobody will feel rewarded for it. And especially because items can be sold, they hold less reward value so make you more easy to sell. It’s not a token for your achievement.

“Destiny got blasted, and rightly so, at launch for having no trade mechanic so in the unlikely event that you got a rare item and it was one you couldn’t use it was literally useless to you.”

Mainly talking about skins here, but also for that are solutions, like allowing people to trade within the group who did the content (I think that was how destiny solved it, or it was another game). Another solution is to make you select from different stat-sets (something that is implemented in GW2 in some cases) or only drop gear usable for your current class. What should always, and only be implemented if it’s a soul bound on pickup item.

The fact that a game manage to give you soul bound loot that you could not use is hardly a reason to not have soul-bound or account-bound loot. And honestly, Anet did see this was a mistake, they even said so if it comes to Legendary weapons. That is why the new legendary weapons are soul-bound. But exact same reason for why it’s bad with legendary weapons (and it took some time, but Anet eventually realized that) also applies to many other items.

I am also not saying nothing should be tradable. There should be plenty stuff tradable, but there should also be plenty stuff that is not tradable as long as you also make it possible to work towards getting the item.

I also don’t mind that some people grind, but it means you take value away from items if you make them available that way. That is why there should be items that are account-bound, and most items should have a direct approach of getting them, that is always the most efficient way to get it. Then you can also grind for them, but that should be the less efficient way. Problem here is that there are too few account-bound items, and even worse, many of the items can only or most effectively be earned by ginding gold instead of going for them in a direct approach.
See for example the complains about the new precursor crafting where people complain about grinding for them is still the best way to get them. They don’t complain that getting it the long way is hard, they complain that it’s also the least efficient and honestly they are right. Getting the new precursors should not be easy, but should be more efficient then getting them by grinding Silverwaste.

eliteblast.6403:

Devata.6589:

eliteblast.6403:

Devata.6589:

eliteblast.6403:

People with money will find ways to get items without grinding for them. Like in wow, or any other mmo, people will utilize 3rd parties to achieve something. They may not be able to get it off the trading post, but they most definitely will pay someone in game to get it for them, either by account sharing with a chinese farmer, or paying off a guild leader to invite them to the raid, or buying an account with everything on it.

Arena net is basically taking the ability for 3rd parties to profit from this game, and making themselves the service provider, which in effect is great for the playerbase because we can play without a monthly subscription.

The things you suggest are way more effort to get items then using a 3th party, then with buying gold from 3th party. So if anything, they make it easier for 3th parties.

And the player base, others then the grind-community, does not in benefit at all from everything being a currency grind.

I didn’t suggest anything? I said 3rd parties will take profit from arenanet if they stop letting the player economy be dictated by a free market. When you start making everything in the game soulbound, you make the currency worthless.

A good example of this, the original everquest, you could just buy most of the best items in the game, yet it thrived. Ultima online, the entire economy was dicated by crafters, and people who had money bought up the best in game properties so they could have the best area to live to earn money, or house vendors. Nothing was soul bound in uo either, unless you had a very rare bless deed, and everything had a durability so you constantly needed new gear, and you lost all of your items on death, so the game kept pvp balance by deterring players from using rare weapons in pvp.

Now we have a mmo that is free to play, because the developer is in control of how people spend real life money on the game, instead of going on ebay and buying a castle from some player, you go to the gem store and sell your gems for gold, or if you can’t afford gems but have plenty of time to play the game, then you can buy gems from other players.

If you remove the ability to sell items to other players, then you remove the need for people to earn money to buy gems, because all of the good items will not be found with gems or gold, but instead by only the very few people with the amount of time to farm these items. Once these people are in control then you will be forced to use them as a 3rd party in order to get the required gear.

One of the main problems with soulbound items is that it destroys the entire economy at end game, gold becomes meaningless, and the real currency becomes dollars, because if you want something without having the time to play, you will spend money utilizing a 3rd party. Forcing people to use 3rd parties is bad for the playerbase, because people don’t want to be forced into doing it to remain competitive.

This also leads to botting, people will bot to achieve things because they can’t be online. Look at honor grinding in world of warcraft, most of the players are afk not participating, a lot of them are botting to get honor because it is easier than playing.

I wanted a disgusting oozling in wow, in order to get it I had to farm oozling for 40 hours straight, am I going to sit at my computer killing oozlings, or am I going to use mmoglider to do it?

“I didn’t suggest anything? I said 3rd parties will take profit from arenanet if they stop letting the player economy be dictated by a free market. When you start making everything in the game soulbound, you make the currency worthless.”

Nobody said everything should be soul bound. Basically, the ‘best’ items (what in this skin based game are the best skins and mini’s) should be behind their own content and be account-bound.

There are still plenty items that do not have to be account-bound. Many of the mats and tonics for example. Still, even for them there should be a clear way to farm them yourself, other than grinding gold and buying them.

It’s also funny that you come with two games that indeed where popular but also known for the grind.

Making any item soulbound creates an opportunity for 3rd parties, it forces me to find someone to play my account, or it forces me to pay someone to let me into the raid. It doesn’t make the item exclusive, it just changes the vendor from arenanet to some chinese person.

What are much more complicated ways then just selling gold. What the current system creates as an opportunity for 3rd parties.

Sekhmet.6153:

There should be a focus on exclusive skins if ANet wanted to keep the population high in the entire game, and not just certain maps.

Make each world boss drop exclusive skins you can only get with that boss. Make certain champions drop exclusive skins. Make some bosses in dungeons drop skins. Make super rare enemies that are either hard to find, or don’t always spawn in the same place drop some skins. Then make those specific skins account bound or soul bound.

Something small like that would already give many players a sense of achievement and purpose when trying to make their characters look the way they want. Sure the end is the same if you were to be able to buy that skin for 90 gold as opposed to getting it from a drop on your 20th fight against that boss, but for me, it feels more rewarding to have a shot at getting by defeating an enemy that isn’t necessarily easy.

I don’t think the answer is to go extreme in one direction or another, but i think the reward system is extremely flawed and theres no real reason to do any specific content when trying to get any single item in the game. Right now you just go to whatever train/farm/zone that gets you the most gold and just run around for a few hours or however long you have and see how much gold you get from selling your drops. At least if you had motivation to fight specific bosses or enemies, you might find yourself exploring or going to places you rarely go, and I always found that fun.

Agree. This would come a long way into holding a player base active. Imho even better than a LS patch every 2 weeks. Of course those items should also be the best looking ones. Because it still feels completely unrewarding if you get one of these skins while at the same time a way better one is sold on the TP.

Also for guilds they should keep adding decorations related to events. From small events that reward something small (like an apple tree when doing the event with the apples in Queensdale) to a giant wall decorated with moving worms, from killing the triple worm. And so on.

That type of things will give people goals they can keep working towards. Else there is only one goal and that is grinding gold. For some that will be fine to do for years on end, but for a majority they will get burned out by it before we get 6 months after HoT, and many of them already got burned out from it with GW2, left and now came back with HoT. They will not be back for the second expansion if you burn them out again.

HoT is a good expansion, but they really have to control this (most efficient, or only available) grindy game-play.

For those that would rather not buy specific items from others that do the content because it would be more rewarding, why don’t they just do the content? Then, both sides of the camp can be satisfied.

Or is it that they don’t want anyone to have said rewards if they didn’t do the content themselves?

Speak for yourself, i’m glad you can buy Shards of Glory.(PvP) 100% annoying if you where forced to do PvP. for those that aren’t into it. WvW stuff i don’t mind grinding out, plus you get the stuff to make those HR scrolls.(i’m rank 325)

Those fractal chests are another thing, there are some people that will never do them. now the people that do fractal’s can share what they get for a most likely unreasonable price, but at least other people can now get that stuff. “you” don’t have to buy them since that is what you are crying about.

I agree that these shouldn’t be on the TP, always thought the same of the legendaries.

But that didn’t stop me from buying a box to get the only fractal skin I want.

Fractals are just not fun for a lot of people, and it has nothing to do with the challenge (I actually love how hard they are) which is the first thing any fractal player will attack a ‘casual’ about. But is just as often about other inescapable portions of the content like the gear grind, the level grind, the massive time consumption, being reliant on other players, and the horrible flood/famine RNG drop system. ALL things which GW2 advertised you didn’t have to deal with in its game world.

But I was slowly working towards the skin I wanted since they finally at LEAST removed the RNG. Then I found out about the TP skins and now I’m done! DING DONG THE WITCH IS DEAD! NO MORE FRACTALS EVER AGAIN! Screw that crappy content and the horse it rode in on.

Draknar.5748:

Thatkitten Rat.1236:

No it’s unrewarding because of the absolute abortion of an equipment system Anet used. It has in no way achieved it’s goal of horizontal progression, just stepped vertical progression, with bland items that don’t do anything interesting except look garish.

So you’re simultaneously saying that there is no horizontal progression, just stepped vertical, while saying that the gear does nothing except look garish?

That’s horizontal progression, my friend…..

And to further contradict yourself, you say they items are bland by describing them as garish? Like seriously? LOL

By bland I mean bland mechanically-they no real effect on gameplay. And no cosmetics aren’t horizontal progression, they’re cosmetics. Horizontal progression would be the ability to unlock things that give you different abilities in game, without simply being numerically superior. For example if the game had horizontal progression, getting a hold of Volcanus would alter your weapon skills, to have fire themed abilities something like the firey greatsword skin it’s based on.

Even before the fractal changes, fractal skins were hardly “prestigious”, when you could simply open up the lfg and buy a fractal 50 run for 20g.

Anet is discouraging dungeon selling by allowing the “prestigious” fractal specific drops to be sold on the tp, and I have absolutely no problem with this.

Drops exclusive to raids will probably also be tradeable on the tp, which again, I will have no problems with if it ends up discouraging people from selling raid runs.

Deincentivizing kittenty behaviour directly related to dungeon selling is nothing but good in my book.

Kraggy.4169:

MY sense of achievement doesn’t depend on how others may get something, why does yours?

It would be pretty sad if I were to tell MYSELF that I am amazing. I like to be told that by other people

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

For those that would rather not buy specific items from others that do the content because it would be more rewarding, why don’t they just do the content? Then, both sides of the camp can be satisfied.

Or is it that they don’t want anyone to have said rewards if they didn’t do the content themselves?

1. For many of the items there is no content to do. There is not that dungeon that drops the item. At best it’s some world-boss that gets farmed resulting is extremely low-drop rates.

2. Doing “what you like” or “the content” is usually punishing yourself as doing whatever rewards the best gold is way more efficient. Let’s take the word bosses. Farming the boss that drops it will usually get you the gold to buy it sooner then that the item drops. It should be the other way around. But that’s because it’s content that gets grinded because of overall good loot. Farming sparks for charged lodestones is slower then grinding gold and buying them. Grinding gold to buy the TA Aetherblade weapons, is faster than farming TA Aetherblade.

3. Simply the fact that you can get it in any other way devalues the item. It removes the content related value from the item. It does not stand for anything anymore. It’s not a token for killing that boss.

“Or is it that they don’t want anyone to have said rewards if they didn’t do the content themselves?” That as well of course, as by allowing that it removes that value I talked about.

Devata.6589:

Simply the fact that you can get it in any other way devalues the item. It removes the content related value from the item. It does not stand for anything anymore.

Kind of sums it up for me.

I get the other side of the coin, people who just WvW wanting PvE skins or whatever the case but it would be nice to keep some skins sacred to that game type so they actually represent something. As it stands they just represent gold or timesink……thats it…..

As much as many players don’t want such restrictions it would be nice to have a select few so I can at least see a player in game and appreciate the actual individuality of such reward.

The lack of skin variation is the catalyst for this imo.

It is fixed.

Fixed a bug in which the following items were tradable rather than account bound:
Nuhoch Hunting Stashes
Fulgurite
Chest of the Casual Fractal Hero
Chest of the Core Fractal Hero
Chest of the Elite Fractal Veteran
Chest of the Fractal Master

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-November-4-2014-1/first#post5717429

Also the stuff/last boxes at tp you cant buy. wondering whats happened with the owners that added it and paid 5% taxes

Celtic Lady.3729:

By this logic, why would anything be tradeable? Why isn’t everything account bound so you have to do the work yourself and prove you played the game? We could simply farm everything we need, no currency necessary.

Since, you know, laziness…

Works for Diablo 3!

Sort of. I stopped playing again midway through Season 4, but it’s a nice thought.