Guild Wars 2

John Smith.4610:

I’m very pleased with this year’s Halloween, and I get the general impression that the players agree as well.

I would agree that the rewards vs time spent are better than they have been in the past, but I would still like to have seen some original content. Now that I have the items I wanted, I’m only playing the content for the daily achievement points and then I move on.

Yes, I have that much time on my hands.

A new currency was absolutely needed?

John,

What’s your opinion on the impact of the current chest farm in SW?

Hi John,

The following statement that you made in the RNG thread made me wonder at what time during the development process you started working for Anet.

John Smith.4610:

Buttercup.5871:

In the same manner that my thousands of forges and thousands of hours played feel without ever getting a precursor, so does the Halloween raffle feel having handed in up to 1k tickets and winning nothing (while others who hand in 2 to 3 tickets win).

I understand why it can happen, but that doesn’t make the experience feel any better. It just leaves you with a very bitter taste. You can talk about this all you want, but I consider that it is – bluntly put – your job as game designers to prevent this from happening to me and many, many others like me, over and over and over again.

For the most part, I agree with you.

Wanze.8410:

Hi John,

The following statement that you made in the RNG thread made me wonder at what time during the development process you started working for Anet.

John Smith.4610:

Buttercup.5871:

In the same manner that my thousands of forges and thousands of hours played feel without ever getting a precursor, so does the Halloween raffle feel having handed in up to 1k tickets and winning nothing (while others who hand in 2 to 3 tickets win).

I understand why it can happen, but that doesn’t make the experience feel any better. It just leaves you with a very bitter taste. You can talk about this all you want, but I consider that it is – bluntly put – your job as game designers to prevent this from happening to me and many, many others like me, over and over and over again.

For the most part, I agree with you.

Early 2012.

Hey John, it seemed almost as if the huge influx of t5/t6 bones during the labyrinth were secretly designed to try and provide a floor for elder wood, knowing that a lot of people would use the opportunity to craft rare weapons. I don’t know whether this was actually the case or not, but in general, when you manage to sneak in some sort of hidden mechanism to shape the economy without the players really realizing, does it make you feel like a god? Do you laugh maniacally?

Any chance of a t6 blood stimuli anytime?

Essence Snow.3194:

Any chance of a t6 blood stimuli anytime?

t6 blood is on the loot table of embroidered coin purses, which drops from lost bandit chests.
Supply went up ten fold on the tp during last week and prices went down 25% in the process.

Edit: It also drops from ToT Bags and its price dumped down during the first week of Halloween but the discovery of the Reaper of Souls Recipe on the 24th of Oct. kinda put an end to that downward trend.

Kinda referring to an intended one to keep in more inline with other t6 mats.

2 Questions about legendary crafting:

1) Can you elaborate a bit on the reasoning behind the decision to have Legendaries not Account Bound on Acquire?

2) After 2 years, are there any major changes that you personally would have liked to have introduced to legendary crafting from the start, if you had the chance?
I know you cant tell what you would change, if you had the chance, so i am just looking for a yes or no.

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

John Smith.4610:

Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

Scarlet and her minions did during the Queens Jubilee.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

hmm
is that because drop rates are extremely significantly tied to how long a mob has lived and the playerbase now generally mistakes freshly spawned mobs for DR?

i guess you cant really answer… oh well its fun to speculate

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

I can’t speak for “normal” gameplay or farming. However, people were most certainly hitting DR during the Halloween event a few weeks back.

First was while farming the Labyrinth. There was both event DR (Karma and such rewards steadily decreasing after a certain point) and seemingly loot DR (“my inventory isn’t nearly as full from this hour of farming as it was from the previous hour”).

Second was anyone seriously doing the rat farm (Maize Balm). After around 250-300 kills in a row, the spawned candy corn mobs would increasingly stop dropping their “guaranteed” bags.

Maybe these can be written off as extreme instances of farming, and more so dismissed because they were during the special circumstances of a holiday event. So the revised statement might be that no one hits it during “normal” circumstances. But things like these still make me wonder about DR any time I keep a character in one particular area of the game for an extended period of time.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

Can you say if that is a global number or just NA? Can you elaborate on what it takes to hit DR now?

Can you comment on the correlation between how many precursors come into the game vs. how many legendaries get created over time? I’m interested in knowing how much of a ‘barrier’ material a precursor is to legendary crafting.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

Like another poster said, during Halloween loads of players hit DR. It was very easy for us to tell. Since then we had a release of which has been designed relatively DR free, numbers ofc will be lower while players are playing said content.

Can you please explain the comment “Virtually nobody ever hits DR”? I know it seems straight forward, but if it is indeed meant straight forward, I’m going to have to call bs.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

I hit DR after 2 hours in the mad king’s labrynth during the Halloween event.

I guarantee I hit DR in the Mad King’s Labyrinth. Getting no loot at all and visibly watching the event rewards drop off in both karma and coin was a clear tell. If DR is not supposed to be a thing, then you better fix that issue before next year.

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

Scarlet and her minions did during the Queens Jubilee.

Why is no one appreciating this as much as I am???

John Smith.4610:

Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

I think this is a pretty misleading statement. For specific types of farms you definitely experience DR, first and foremost the Maize Balm Farm, simply because there you can observe it that easily. The labyrinth was also mentioned.

I don’t say that DR is a bad thing (although I don’t like the lack of transparency), but I think that such a statement, suggesting that DR is nothing you’d have to keep in mind is pretty misleading.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

It’s not a thing anymore because veterans like me have a better feeling for when we’ve hit the DR boundary and how to rinse it off (invigorating!). It still annoys me that I have the potential to be in the middle of Melandru and not notice that the evil mechanic has quietly taken hold of my soul.

That said, there is “loot DR” and “reward (ex:karma) DR.” Are these tracked together?

..and of course, questions you probably cannot answer:

1) Do you keep a history of when people hit DR?

2) Would you do a blind study where you compare the log of when a player hits DR with their manually tracked log of when they think they hit DR? (that is, without ever revealing the data to the end user, or having a juicy NDA in place, etc etc.)

If you suspect you have hit DR, whats the best way to get rid of it? Killing different creatures in the same map? Moving to a different map to kill? Completing quests on the same map or different map? Running a dungeon?

the reason i ask if that i have eight level 80’s, and 1 of them was camping a boss spawn in PvE to kill and hope to get a collectible. Its not my first, second, or even third main character so i only log into that toon to kill the boss once a day. After 2 or 3 days of doing nothing with that toon but killing that boss, i stopped getting the boss’s daily world boss chest and the corresponding boss chest that appears on the ground. All i get is a gold medal and loot from the boss directly, even if i’m partied up with others and they get the chest, but i dont. So i tried taking the toon into WvW, take a few camps, kill some yaks, cap some towers, actually played the toon for about 30-60 minutes “doing stuff” to try and reset my DR. next day, killed the boss again, still no ground chest or world boss chest. I had to bring another toon to that boss to kill him and got his dropped chest and daily world boss chest.

Whats a good, valid way, of reset your DR?

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Only 26 people in that hour timeframe. They must have really smart botters to avoid DR or they have way less of a botting problem than it appears.

John Smith.4610:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

It’s not a thing anymore because veterans like me have a better feeling for when we’ve hit the DR boundary and how to rinse it off (invigorating!). It still annoys me that I have the potential to be in the middle of Melandru and not notice that the evil mechanic has quietly taken hold of my soul.

That said, there is “loot DR” and “reward (ex:karma) DR.” Are these tracked together?

..and of course, questions you probably cannot answer:

1) Do you keep a history of when people hit DR?

2) Would you do a blind study where you compare the log of when a player hits DR with their manually tracked log of when they think they hit DR? (that is, without ever revealing the data to the end user, or having a juicy NDA in place, etc etc.)

1. Yes

2. Already done.

such tease much curious
silly nda

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

This is about DR. Is it based on when you kill something or when you pick up the loot? I vaguely remember people stating during the Blixx farm to pick up loot in 4 min intervals to slow down DR. Assume you’re allowed to answer this of course.

I cannot speak on the specifics, but I will say that it’s not really a thing anymore. In the last hour 26 people hit DR. Virtually nobody ever hits DR.

Your wording says 26 people “hit DR.” Does that include people who were already under DR? Is it “all the people who are under DR in the last hour” or “all the players who just got DR’d within the last hour?”

Also, it appears “within the last hour” was sometime monday morning. Care to share what the numbers are during primetime?

If dr’s so rare, why have it at all, then?

Becka Williams.4978:

If dr’s so rare, why have it at all, then?

It helps to point out the bots.

Becka Williams.4978:

If dr’s so rare, why have it at all, then?

Um, that’s a good thing. It’s not supposed to happen to a lot of players, only those who engage in extreme behavior.

John Smith.4610:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

1) Do you keep a history of when people hit DR?

2) Would you do a blind study where you compare the log of when a player hits DR with their manually tracked log of when they think they hit DR? (that is, without ever revealing the data to the end user, or having a juicy NDA in place, etc etc.)

1. Yes

2. Already done.

Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate your responses.

Special K.8143:

the reason i ask if that i have eight level 80’s, and 1 of them was camping a boss spawn in PvE to kill and hope to get a collectible. Its not my first, second, or even third main character so i only log into that toon to kill the boss once a day. After 2 or 3 days of doing nothing with that toon but killing that boss, i stopped getting the boss’s daily world boss chest and the corresponding boss chest that appears on the ground. All i get is a gold medal and loot from the boss directly, even if i’m partied up with others and they get the chest, but i dont. So i tried taking the toon into WvW, take a few camps, kill some yaks, cap some towers, actually played the toon for about 30-60 minutes “doing stuff” to try and reset my DR. next day, killed the boss again, still no ground chest or world boss chest. I had to bring another toon to that boss to kill him and got his dropped chest and daily world boss chest.

Whats a good, valid way, of reset your DR?

Rhendak the Crazed. That is just a bug, I have no idea what causes it but it’s quite common. I’ve gotten it multiple times, the only way I’ve found to get rid of it for a character is to get them off the map (taking them into wvw doesn’t seem to work).

I have chars parked in different maps at different events who haven’t left those maps for months in some cases and it only happens at Rhendak. It also takes a varying amount of time to show up, sometimes I get this bug after killing the boss twice, sometimes it takes longer. If I wait a day and try again, I still don’t get a chest.

At one point I had 3 characters parked at Rhendak, one got the bug and the other two didn’t after the same amount of time.

Rhendak is a bit of a special case:

1. Because his reward chest is technically a “mini-dungeon” reward chest, if you simply log out from within Flame Temple Tombs, the game will think you’ve never left the mini-dungeon and thus won’t reset the daily credit for you. To bypass this, move your character to WvW or Heart of the Mists (the Eye of the North portal stone works too) and log out there.

2. Rhendak also has a special restriction where you can’t fight him and gain his chest loot more than twice within 30 mins. This is account wide. So if you have 3 characters parked at Rhendak, kill him the first time, then immediately log onto your 2nd character and kill him again after 10 mins, the game won’t give the 2nd char the chest loot.

Even worse, this kill will count towards that character’s limit for the day, even though he didn’t get any loot.

So in short, if you’re farming Rhendak, give the poor Charr a bit of a breather between deaths. :P

Question John why put a bottom out price on non vendor Items if you don’t plan to put a cap on them

Deep Sleep.4568:

Question John why put a bottom out price on non vendor Items if you don’t plan to put a cap on them

They’re not mutually inclusive. Just because an item has a price floor doesn’t mean that it must have a price ceiling as well.

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

Deep Sleep.4568:

Question John why put a bottom out price on non vendor Items if you don’t plan to put a cap on them

They’re not mutually inclusive. Just because an item has a price floor doesn’t mean that it must have a price ceiling as well.

I don’t think I entirely understand the question.

Im just wanting to know the reasoning behind it if this is a player controlled economy. i enjoy these types of questions.

Deep Sleep.4568:

John Smith.4610:

Ayrilana.1396:

Deep Sleep.4568:

Question John why put a bottom out price on non vendor Items if you don’t plan to put a cap on them

They’re not mutually inclusive. Just because an item has a price floor doesn’t mean that it must have a price ceiling as well.

I don’t think I entirely understand the question.

Im just wanting to know the reasoning behind it if this is a player controlled economy. i enjoy these types of questions.

are you suggesting they cap the price on the tp (and how?) or are you suggesting they cap the supply or what? what do you want capped?

question is ambiguous

are you suggesting they cap the price on the tp (and how?) or are you suggesting they cap the supply or what? what do you want capped?

question is ambiguous[/quote]

I never asked to have any thing capped I was just asking the reasoning. I just wanted to pick at his brain because thus far he had good reasoning for what he has done and was wondering why this. Its always good to broaden ones self with others philosophies and thoughts. you can only grow from it.

I guess you want to know why tradeable goods have a vendor value? I think its mostly for stopping supply of undesirable goods to flood the tp. Once it reaches vendor value on tp, people start to vendor it, removing the items from the supply.
Otherwise we would propably have half a billion thick leather on the tp right now.
Ambrite is another good current example.
Yesterday lumps of ambrite (which salvage into 2 pieces of ambrite) were at 76c.
So it was actually profitable for a short time to salvage them and sell the ambrite to a vendor for 46c each. ~25 silver profit per stack of lumps.

During the Launch of the game, you published some data about the economy:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-guild-wars-2-virtual-economy/

One Graph showed the distribution of wealth.

Can you tell us how you defined “wealth” for that?

Was it just gold on each account?
Were gold in buy orders included?
How were tradeable goods valued, if they were included in each players wealth?
What about soulbound items?

And if possible, we’d (okay, I’D ) love to see an updated version of that infograph showing the current spread of wealth throughout the population, along with what are the new major sources for player wealth in terms of activities.

Thanks for saving this thread!

I don’t know whether this question has already been asked, but anyways:

There are surely a lot of “historic” items offered on the TP as well as there are historic buy requests, by that I mean transactions requested by players who have not been active in this game for a long time.

Do you think that there should be a maximum time for buy or sell requests to be active in the TP before they expire and are deactivated (being no longer usable), because if they are there for so long they do no longer reflect the current state of the economy anyways?