Guild Wars 2

Under the guise of another popular called, Diablo 3, in which the game focused on the Auction House system to provide you with new gear to complete content with more damage, but at what cost? Diablo 3 became a renown Auction House Simulator, essentially. It’s new system became its downfall, as more people recognized it for the sour taste it will leave you further into the game.

This is what is happening in GW2, where the primary focus on acquisition of any important advancement, be it cosmetically or slight damage increase, the downfall comes to heavy reliance on gold. Given the state of the last two living story, we see massive amounts of people aggressively assaulting the zerg-play in order to gain additional gold fund, not because it was ‘fun’, but effective.

The underhanded mechanism gave rise to more people being able to generate around 10g/hr, in turn providing everyone the opportunity to get what they wanted to obtain while burning out their taste for gameplay. To most people, they were able to gain lots of gold in the last couple weeks, at the cost of inflating the price of gems to 5g/100gem, precursors becoming far and few at a rate of +200g.

Every new weapon skin introduced now is related to the gemstore, understandable when the game relies on a free-to-play model, but that’s not the issue. When the gemstore boxes rely on RNG, you could be spending upwards of $50-$100 a skin. This an ineffective system, that preys on those with gambling addictions and those who are optimistic in rolling against RNG-form.

Nothing in the game produces skill based progression towards new rewards, everything can be bought with either gold or through the use of RNG, which severely limits the gameplay for the majority of people. The only added additions so far is Liadari and the Aether dungeon achievements, that lack additional rewards outside of AP.

TL;DR

Move away from the necessity of gold, its time to focus on challenging content that’s more rewarding than zerging down mobs 24/7. This picture accurately depicts the game in the current state:

The difference is that it’s fairly easy to get the same BiS exotics from the TP as from dungeons (and even some karma merchants). You can run many of these dungeons in greens/rares. CoF farming for instance will easily yield the very popular Zerker gear.

Of course it’s easier if you have the gold to just buy the gear from the TP but it’s far from impossible (or even unlikely) to get it from other sources.

In other games like Diablo 3, the only way you’ll ever really get the best gear is if you spend gold or real money on it.

I agree with you. Played this last Living story Just for the achievements points and zerking all around is not for me at all. Plus all those gold in players’ hands is an handicap for those Who cannot farm for lag, time, family things. But the problem is also real imho because a great 70% like To spend money on new phones and such and it transposes exactly To gw2, because “that thing look cooler than the previous one”.
By the way I can’t say anything cause I still look for perfection in my chars and it’s (for me) a great thing To look like I wanted them To look. Otherwise legendaries Would not exist.
But I really hope something will chance because it’s not anymore funny

Everyone plays games to work towards something, to feel like they are achieving something, otherwise it feels like you’re wasting time for nothing. That’s why counter-arguments to just buy exotic armour and be done with it is not valid response. If that’s all you needed to feel like you finished playing, why continue playing?

The zerg-fest for the 4 weeks, is going to be detrimental to new players, because now they have to play catch-up to gold-farmers.

I agree with the OP in letter, but not in spirit.

ANet didn’t set out to make a game so heavily reliant on farm raids etc, they are simply responding to the wants of the players. Do you remember their discussion about Dynamic Events? Most people didn’t do any of them, especially in their content releases, so what did they do? Dumbed them down for later releases because obviously the community focus wasn’t there. If the players want to play Farmville Wars 2 then ANet will give them the game they want.

The change needs to come from us, but it’s not going to happen because human nature will always seek to find the quickest path to a reward. You’re basically asking people to stop wanting the shinies and just “play for the sake of playing” but I doubt most people would play this way.

If people can get item X in less time, they will do it. The item, not the experience, becomes the reward.

-PM

Imho….
gold is not the issue.
TP and its abuse is.

TP flippers have an insane amount of moneys and try to wonder who pays for that with an added 25-30% taxes?

Normal players.

Farming doesn t impact market prices as much as speculation imho.
Until flipping TP is the only way to get best in slot stuff, economy will be worse every day.

They should start to check how welth is in the hands of few and what do they do.

A lvl 80 fractal player is poor as hell.
A top 100 pvp player has nothing
A good www player has more expenses than incomes.

A player that can t get to the end of an istance or never played pvp etc….but flip market…can have 6-7 legendaries and thousands gold -.-

I can even accept zerging mobs….but the reality is way more sad.

That will not happen because gold is where Anet makes it’s money.

They just need to make the rest of the game profitable so people can do whatever they enjoy and still make “farm” and progress toward w/e gold based goals they have.

Then if people decide to ignore a new event because it’s actually boring Anet should get the message and make it better.

Or it’ll backfire like with dynamic events where they didn’t make it better they just abandoned it completely lol.

LordByron.8369:

A lvl 80 fractal player is poor as hell.
A top 100 pvp player has nothing
A good www player has more expenses than incomes.

This is exactly the problem, only one part of the game is profitable.

You should be making decent money doing anything you enjoy in the game.

IT’S PART OF THEIR MANIFESTO for crying out loud, endgame : do what you want to do, not be on a gold/zerg treadmill.

I vote for a scavenging system and hard to get titles via complex boss fight like Liadri (which we need a title for defeating, not just a kitten mini that is almost always in a deposit -_-" ).

I’m conflicted with farming events. On one hand, I enjoy making a lot of money, seeing my money grow, and being able to buy materials or weapons right off of TP without feeling …POOR. On the other hand, it’s tiring and making the game less fun and making me a less caring and engaging player. Gold = power gets into head = loss of empathy = bad community.

That said, if the events don’t pay enough, people are not going to be interested. Then you’ll have a lull in between release. People who happen to come late to the party would then have a hard finding anyone to do events with them. While the downside of these money-making events is that it inflates the price of stuffs on TP, the upside of it is that events are filled with people and forums are full of discussion. The game doesn’t feel …dead.

They need to make it so that gold no longer is an issue for players. Personally i used to only do things that would net me a certain amount of gold per hour. Now ive started to stop doing that but my wallet is alot more empty. Ive finally gotten to higher levels of fractals…have not seen one good fractal weapon drop and have made way too little gold.

Once gold becomes of no concern in the sense that you can buy a legendary in x amount of weeks/months doing anything, this game will become great.

armor repair fees and way point fees stays the same.
people gold more easily now.

what is the problem?

You don’t need a single piece of gold for full BiS.

The only value of gold is cosmetics, and I like it that way.

marnick.4305:

You don’t need a single piece of gold for full BiS.

The only value of gold is cosmetics, and I like it that way.

and armor repair fees, way point fees, well, crafting have some vendor fees involved too.

but since we are getting so much gold so easily, it doesn’t matter much anymore.

marnick.4305:

You don’t need a single piece of gold for full BiS.

The only value of gold is cosmetics, and I like it that way.

cool..where do i get free legendaries?

LordByron.8369:

marnick.4305:

You don’t need a single piece of gold for full BiS.

The only value of gold is cosmetics, and I like it that way.

cool..where do i get free legendaries?

uhhhhhhhhhhhh

LordByron.8369:

A lvl 80 fractal player is poor as hell.
A top 100 pvp player has nothing
A good www player has more expenses than incomes.

Unfortunate but true. Those who are doing anything even remotely challenging in the game get nothing, while those who repeatedly farm the easiest parts of the game are filthy rich. And all this because Arenanet is only focusing on zerg/farm/grind gameplay lately, ignoring every other part of the part as if it doesn’t exist.

Although stats are dead easy to get (too easy in my view), the game as a consequence does revolve around gold.

There really isn’t another goal out there really, just gold gold gold. For me it cheapens the experience, not because gold is important, but because there is no challenge, it’s really the only thing to go for next to a legendary, for which you need lots of gold.

It’s a mistake that berzerker gear is best for all classes. It devaluates any class variation there might be. It’s also a mistake that exotic gear is dead easy to get. And it’s a mistake that cosmetics are just a matter of gold and not challenge. I know, it’s my opinion but that’s how I feel.

And beyond that there is very little gear that I actually think looks good in this game, which is odd considering the great graphics. It just shows you that technical skill still doesn’t trump artistry. And what I mean is that the team behind the graphics has done some great technical work but have failed to create a world that pulls me in and the design of the armours makes it so I don’t want to collect them.

I played for not even 3 weeks, got a character to level 80, in full exotic gear and 40g to spare. I don’t need the gold for anything cause I could easily double or triple that amount of gold if I kept playing. But I don’t want a legendary (I think all of them are either ugly or so so, none great) and there are no armour sets I want to collect.

This game does revolve around gold and though I don’t need it to be very difficult to collect gear, being able to buy a complete set of exotic gear from a vendor the moment I hit 80 is a bit underwhelming.

People moan when they can’t make cash in game and now people complain when they can. Anet just can’t win…….

Paulytnz.7619:

People moan when they can’t make cash in game and now people complain when they can. Anet just can’t win…….

This thread isn’t about how easy it is to get gold but how central to the game it is or has become.

Gehenna.3625:

Paulytnz.7619:

People moan when they can’t make cash in game and now people complain when they can. Anet just can’t win…….

This thread isn’t about how easy it is to get gold but how central to the game it is or has become.

To me it sounded like a rant about new weapon skins being gemstore only which causes people to trade gold for gems to get them and now since gold is easier to make the trading of gold to gems is inflating the price. Gold is not needed for MANY parts of the game.

New weapon skins are coming with SAB is that Gemstore related? No. Will it be gold related? No.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

marnick.4305:

You don’t need a single piece of gold for full BiS.

The only value of gold is cosmetics, and I like it that way.

and armor repair fees, way point fees, well, crafting have some vendor fees involved too.

but since we are getting so much gold so easily, it doesn’t matter much anymore.

Unless I am seriously screwing up, one loop of Dynamic Events through a zone of my choice will cover costs. If I do some WvW, I might make more than the cost of repairs for that night.

Paulytnz.7619:

Gehenna.3625:

Paulytnz.7619:

People moan when they can’t make cash in game and now people complain when they can. Anet just can’t win…….

This thread isn’t about how easy it is to get gold but how central to the game it is or has become.

To me it sounded like a rant about new weapon skins being gemstore only which causes people to trade gold for gems to get them and now since gold is easier to make the trading of gold to gems is inflating the price. Gold is not needed for MANY parts of the game.

New weapon skins are coming with SAB is that Gemstore related? No. Will it be gold related? No.

Well, you do have a point. If you look at the title of the thread and the content of his post, they don’t exactly match. I was looking at the title more cause it’s what catches they eye in the forum.

There is of course a wide issue and he is speaking about a specific one. When the game came out I already thought the gem store would become more and more important over time. Simply because box sales would drop. That is a given to me. All MMOs start big and then crash after a few months. Then they stabilise and go on with that base hopefully growing more than losing players.

But as there are no subs and box sales have dropped quite a bit, Anet still has monthly bills to pay.

The OP complains about it and I do feel it’s a detriment that the game is focusing more and more on the gemstore, but that’s the reality when people don’t pay subs.

Also because when we agree that cosmetics are what this game is about at level 80, in a weird way it does make it pay 2 win. People end up grinding whatever to make cash to trade in at the TP for gems or they buy it with money, so you can just hang out and show off or something. The game then becomes a bit pointless when you like progression but that’s not what this game was supposed to be about….just a bit confused about the ascended gear there and the coming level cap raise, but other than that the game really is about looks. If winning = looks, then paying for looks = pay 2 win.

I dunno, I just find it all a bit confusing when I think about it really.

At this point I don’t think there is any going back. They are becoming addicted to it, and if Anet pulls it away they will whine like newborns Like last night, running boss metas, WP’d into a zone and asked status over chat. Yeah, pre event started I discovered on my own, but no one there yet. But zergers on chat showing hostility, mocking for doing bosses and not in their 1337 farming zerg making “real money”.

Hey, I’m there for my daily chance to get a precursor, maybe I’ll sell it to you for all your farming monies over the past six months! Those boxes don’t even drop anything but cheap rares or cheap common exotics. A few hours of doing boss runs and I have a bag full of fair rares that sell for more than they did last week lol. And maybe a nice rare-ish exotic. Yeah, sell lots and lots of masterworks as trash, a boon for us master crafters :roll:

But wow, once this is over, how do you think it will go? Next gold mine, revamped adventure box.

I have to agree with OP. I’d much rather run around with items contained by completing challenging content than running around with my legendaries, making players think ‘’Wow, he managed to get that weapon.. how the *?!’’ Rather than ‘’Oh well.. yet another guy who’s playing around on the trading post a few hours a day..’’

Legendaries aren’t hard to get. Time consuming? Yes, but challenging? No way. We need items that are actually hard to get your hands on without having to spend thousands of gold.

And i’m saying this as a trading post freak…

olleandersson.9408:

I have to agree with OP. I’d much rather run around with items contained by completing challenging content than running around with my legendaries, making players think ‘’Wow, he managed to get that weapon.. how the *?!’’ Rather than ‘’Oh well.. yet another guy who’s playing around on the trading post a few hours a day..’’

Legendaries aren’t hard to get. Time consuming? Yes, but challenging? No way. We need items that are actually hard to get your hands on without having to spend thousands of gold.

And i’m saying this as a trading post freak…

Just saying? GW1 with it’s weapons to be traded often brought comments of “how much did you have to pay?” rather than “where did you get that?”. This is not new to GW2

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

olleandersson.9408:

I have to agree with OP. I’d much rather run around with items contained by completing challenging content than running around with my legendaries, making players think ‘’Wow, he managed to get that weapon.. how the *?!’’ Rather than ‘’Oh well.. yet another guy who’s playing around on the trading post a few hours a day..’’

Legendaries aren’t hard to get. Time consuming? Yes, but challenging? No way. We need items that are actually hard to get your hands on without having to spend thousands of gold.

And i’m saying this as a trading post freak…

Just saying? GW1 with it’s weapons to be traded often brought comments of “how much did you have to pay?” rather than “where did you get that?”. This is not new to GW2

Sure but then we didn’t really have legendary weapons and the really expensive weapons were a lot harder to come by than here.

I remember also that weapons had level requirements. And some skins were only available in oldschool stuff. Man, the pride I had for having a -5/+28 gold Echovald shield and it wasn’t even perfect stats.

I just don’t get that feeling from anything here. Somehow it just all feels meaningless.

Gehenna.3625:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

olleandersson.9408:

I have to agree with OP. I’d much rather run around with items contained by completing challenging content than running around with my legendaries, making players think ‘’Wow, he managed to get that weapon.. how the *?!’’ Rather than ‘’Oh well.. yet another guy who’s playing around on the trading post a few hours a day..’’

Legendaries aren’t hard to get. Time consuming? Yes, but challenging? No way. We need items that are actually hard to get your hands on without having to spend thousands of gold.

And i’m saying this as a trading post freak…

Just saying? GW1 with it’s weapons to be traded often brought comments of “how much did you have to pay?” rather than “where did you get that?”. This is not new to GW2

Sure but then we didn’t really have legendary weapons and the really expensive weapons were a lot harder to come by than here.

I remember also that weapons had level requirements. And some skins were only available in oldschool stuff. Man, the pride I had for having a -5/+28 gold Echovald shield and it wasn’t even perfect stats.

I just don’t get that feeling from anything here. Somehow it just all feels meaningless.

They didn’t have level requirements, they had Attribute Requirements (which were a whole different kettle of fish). Also, I think a lot of the ZChest skins which were rarer to see could indeed command awesome prices.

Also fun, tracing back the value of things like the green weapons. Totem Axes anyone? For a long time they were pretty valuable. Inscribable Jade Swords were actually pretty hard for me to find cheap, if at all, but I did get one . . . solely out of respect to wear with a couple people I ran alliance events with.

Now, translate it over to GW2 and the price of some Precursors or specific rare Exotic skins. Like, say, “Final Rest” until it was more widely known how to get it (that clocked in over 40g at some point). How about “Dawn” or “Dusk”? “Foefire’s Essence”? All of these are multiple hundreds of gold, which would put them about on par with some of the more specific rewards back in GW1. Like “Elemental Sword Q9”. Or Celestial weapons with inscription slots.

Edit: I just got told those were always junk, but you know I didn’t have any problem selling them when I was cleaning out some alts in the mad dash to try to maximize my HoM score before GW2 hit I dunno, there was a wild fluctuation to a few things and I tended to either have something valuable and not know it . . . or think it was nice and it was really crap.

I entirely agree. At least we have an asura jumping box for a fortnight. It might give time for the coins to fall away from people’s eyes.

Gold is a focus of the players, not the game.

The reason for this focus is because the game is designed around “horizontal progression”. This means that getting BiS gear is easy and fast, and once accomplished you have many different paths to chase if you want to “progress”. The amount of gold you “need” is completely dependent upon two things:
1. What completely optional path you have chosen to chase.
2. The rarity of the parts or result of that path.

Getting a Legendary is optional and very expensive. If you want one you will need to either sink several years worth of time into the game or buy parts. When you buy parts, you fund another player’s horizontal progression, just as other players fund your progression when they buy your things from the Trading Post. Gold is simply the currency that facilitates the trading process used to reach your optional destination.

LordByron.8369:

marnick.4305:

You don’t need a single piece of gold for full BiS.

The only value of gold is cosmetics, and I like it that way.

cool..where do i get free legendaries?

Did you expect me to answer that or can I just ignore your trolling?

marnick.4305:

LordByron.8369:

marnick.4305:

You don’t need a single piece of gold for full BiS.

The only value of gold is cosmetics, and I like it that way.

cool..where do i get free legendaries?

Did you expect me to answer that or can I just ignore your trolling?

He’s implying that legendaries are BiS, not exotics, and the weapon is based solely on its cosmetics (pre-ascended stats).

Yeaaaah no. An economy is integral to any MMO.

And you can’t really compare GW2 to D3. D3 has little to no goldsinks. D3 is a perfect example to what happens when you do not monitor inflation.

As named before in this thread money is almost only for cosmetics. I dont think it matters what you play, you will still have enough money for what you really NEED it to, like fixing your gear and wp expenses.
Everything you NEED in this game can be obtainable just by playing the game, wvw badges can be traded to armour and weapons, dungeon tokens can be used the same way. I think every event anet had also rewarded you with some kind of token that can be traded in for varies unique items.

You dont need to buy/craft a legendary, you can get the same stats from dungeon items, you dont need to buy items costing hundreds of gold because all you get is cosmetic. The ONLY reason you get this items is if you feel that the work to get them is worth the trouble, not because the game require you to have them.

It also seem that many call tp flippers unfair, that they got so much money and can control the market. Well some players enjoy flipping, power trading, crafting, having lots of money etc, its only another way to play the game. I think they have the right to play the game as they like. Also once again the items they make money from are cosmetics.

I can only conclude that money is really of no importance unless you want some special skins for your char because you get the minimum amount of gold doing what ever you like to do.

About agree with op about to few skill based rewards, the perfect game rewards to me is unique skins you can only get by clearing some really hard content, like Liadri. Well a mini pet might not be much but its a start, lets hope more content like this will come with a bit more useful unique equipment or titles.

Cosmetics are one of the MAJOR aspects of the game. Saying they don’t matter b/c they are optional is like saying that the story doesn’t matter since it is optional, wvw doesn’t matter since it is optional, most game play mechanics don’t matter b/c they are optional, spvp doesn’t matter………….it goes on and on

“let’s move away from gold.”

Oh yeah! We all love account bound currencies and soul bound items! Let’s do away with gold forever and have no player interaction with items, only the mighty overpriced gem store overlord! Smart thinking!

Cosmetics DO matter for many players but you will have to pay for it. How fun would it be if every1 had the best looking items for little to no effort?

Move away from gold?

Most farmers will attest that you can make about 5 gold an hour farming champs. If you spent an entire 8-hour day farming, you’d be lucky to clear 40 gold (assuming the train lasts all day, which many times it doesn’t)

I agree. I haven’t done actual content in about 2 months. All I do is log in and play the TP for 15 minutes and then log off. I admit that I do the same exact thing with Diablo 3. This entire game needs to be reinvented in my opinion. Anet needs to rethink rewards, RNG, legendary’s, ascended gear, and just a ton of stuff they probably never even thought about in the first place.

Everyone screamed for more ways to make gold and they got what they asked for. There’s more gold in the system and at least short term inflation is the result.

They should have been screaming for a better drop rate on items, but people can be foolish.

darkdomino.9578:

Move away from gold?

Most farmers will attest that you can make about 5 gold an hour farming champs. If you spent an entire 8-hour day farming, you’d be lucky to clear 40 gold (assuming the train lasts all day, which many times it doesn’t)

Is that seriously your counter-argument? Farm for 8 hours a day to make 40 gold?
40 gold is $10. You’re telling people it’s perfectly okay to farm at a rate of $1.25/hr because as we all know, farming is not ‘fun’ its a chore, it’s work.

Charak.9761:

darkdomino.9578:

Move away from gold?

Most farmers will attest that you can make about 5 gold an hour farming champs. If you spent an entire 8-hour day farming, you’d be lucky to clear 40 gold (assuming the train lasts all day, which many times it doesn’t)

Is that seriously your counter-argument? Farm for 8 hours a day to make 40 gold?
40 gold is $10. You’re telling people it’s perfectly okay to farm at a rate of $1.25/hr because as we all know, farming is not ‘fun’ its a chore, it’s work.

This is exactly the reason I won’t farm. It’s boring. I don’t understand how people can spend hours running from champ to champ, but apparently some people have a stronger constitution than I do.

I wouldn’t think you’re cool if you’re wearing a headpiece just because it cost 10k gold, or if you had to spend an intense 24 hours in a one man raid. Just saying.