Guild Wars 2

Simple Question.

Should Charged Quartz still be time gated?

back when it was introduced it made sense to balance the new celestial stat.
But do we really see that many celestial builds running around?

But this day charged Quartz is not only used for one Stat combination anymore.
Sinister, Trailblazer, Wanderer and Commander all use something that was crafted with Charged Quartz

Since the Day of Charged Quartz, ascended Materials were also introduced, although those are also time gated, they are at least tradeable.

TL,DR: Should Charged Quartz no longer be time gated, tradable or stay as it is?
And a strawpoll for it http://www.strawpoll.me/10991278

For those who vote to stay like it is now, please say why you think so

Enrif.7359:

For those who vote to stay like it is now, please say why you think so

Because ANet likes to put in artificial time sinks so this goes with that. Playing should be painful, it should require logging in every day just so you can get your shiny. Here little rat, jump through this hoop so you can get your cheese!

My opinion: No, the time gate should be removed.

It should be time gated and untradeable

I really wish I knew why they bothered having the new stat combos require a material only found in extremely limited numbers on a single map. Sure, I could understand Living Season 2 things using it – that’s when it was introduced, and is involved in that content. But Heart of Thorns stuff has enough that Charged Quartz should have been left out.

When Charged Quartz first came out, I think the one-per-day mechanic was acceptable, because it was balanced in relation to what Charged Quartz was required for: Celestial gear, and only Celestial gear.

However, now Quartz is used obsessively in a lot of crafting recipes and Guild Halls, I feel the time gate needs removing, or we should be able to make multiple Charged Quartz per day. 3 to 5 perhaps.

If they removed the limit, they’d probably compensate by making it more expensive to craft. Since you originally had to commune them, they’d likely make it a crafting recipe requiring spirit shards in some form.

The limit does give it a value however. At a glance, it’s at least 1g.

I’d rather have more sources of quartz than get rid of the time gate on charged quartz (though it should be tradeable). Even with the limit of 1 per day you can only get something like 22 quartz crystals per day anyway from farming. Why not just put quartz nodes in the new maps as well and make charged quartz tradeable? I think that is the best solution to this

Jerus.4350:

Enrif.7359:

For those who vote to stay like it is now, please say why you think so

Because ANet likes to put in artificial time sinks so this goes with that. Playing should be painful, it should require logging in every day just so you can get your shiny. Here little rat, jump through this hoop so you can get your cheese!

qtf.

Also so people can actually make some money crafting things.

I voted for timegated but tradable. I dislike not being able to help out people because every other thing is account bound. Especially with raids, or whatever other social interaction, being able to trade your progress with other people would help the community more.

Plus charged quartz is inconvenience (Quartz is only in dry top and homeinstance) on inconvenience (need a skill point, taking it either out of the bank to move actively to a skill point) on inconvenience (this can only be done once a day because (reasons) " we like you to spend time preparing to finishing your build that you actually wanna play with" ) on inconvenience (whatever RNG factor is involved in getting the right recipes, and /or other materials)

Taking one factor out of those out of the game would be a great help in my opinion. It doesn’t necessarily be made tradable if I don’t have to go to a skillpoint for example. I don’t mind double clicking it every day. just for myself. :p

Malediktus.9250:

It should be time gated and untradeable

care, to explain why you think it should stay as it is?

Enrif.7359:

Malediktus.9250:

It should be time gated and untradeable

care, to explain why you think it should stay as it is?

Because evil tp barons could store 6.250 quartz crystals in charged form per storage slot instead of 250.

Because it is mostly used in crafting exotic/ascended but entirely optional items. The very top tier items should not be attainable without effort which means time. It’s also used indirectly as a time gate for Guild Halls as they shouldn’t be able to be built overnight simply with vast piles of gold.

From an economy standpoint, right now with the time gate, the supply of raw quartz crystals on the market have been falling and thus prices have been going up. If removed, it would skyrocket the price of quartz as supply on the TP dwindles.

So why not add more quartz nodes? For story reasons, quartz was a Zephyrite sourced material which is why it’s scattered in Dry Top due to the crash or in home instances when players bought a Gift of Quartz during the two previous visits by the Zephyrites. Adding more nodes in the world to compensate for increased demand of a gate-less charged quartz doesn’t make sense in the story narrative.

Sartharina.3542:

I really wish I knew why they bothered having the new stat combos require a material only found in extremely limited numbers on a single map. Sure, I could understand Living Season 2 things using it – that’s when it was introduced, and is involved in that content. But Heart of Thorns stuff has enough that Charged Quartz should have been left out.

Because they wanted to put in a gear progression to slow people down. Simple as that. They stated they didn’t want that, and they’ll try to fudge the details to say they didn’t, but they did.

Yes I’m salty, the thing I liked most about this game has just completely gone at this point. The idea of being able to take a break and come back and be ok, or of not having to grind things out for progression… it’s just not that game anymore. Before these new stats you could play for a week at lvl 80 and have a set of exotic that would carry you through everything. Then came fractals and ascended… ‘ok it’s just this one part of the game that has gear progression’ then new stats and especially now, ‘ok I gotta grind my vipers trinkets in bloodstone fen and raids.’ GW2 has successfully fallen into the same generic pattern of MMO’s. We even have pure healers now (hi druid).

Their system and goals were fine, many people didn’t understand, and there were issues, but there’s always going to be issues. But it’s just really sad to see GW2 just abandon what made it different and refreshing to those like myself who have gone through that treadmill for far too long.

Behellagh.1468:

Because it is mostly used in crafting exotic/ascended but entirely optional items. The very top tier items should not be attainable without effort which means time. It’s also used indirectly as a time gate for Guild Halls as they shouldn’t be able to be built overnight simply with vast piles of gold.

From an economy standpoint, right now with the time, the supply of raw quartz crystals on the market have been falling and thus prices have been going up. If removed, it would skyrocket the price of quartz as supply on the TP dwindles.

I see your point, and agree that ascended should take effort to get. But why should the stat combination? Most of the stats you get through quartz are not that much in demand, but if quartz would be more easy accessible people could find niches for it.

For the economics part. With opening the charged quartz, there would be a higher demand for regular quartz, which would mean people would farm more of it. In itself it will balance out. maybe the price rises, yes but this falls back to your effort argument. Farming Gold is also an effort.

I think, the time gate is fine, as long as you can only farm 22 – 25 quartz crystals anyway. The worst thing about charged quartz is, that it’s suddenly account bound. If it was tradeable you could at least buy other player’s excess quartz, Or sell your own charged quartz at a high price .

Once we acquire additional means of gaining quartz, then I’m all for reducing the cap to one in 3 hours, or removing the timegate depending on how the market develops.

My point is, that removing the cap right now hardly makes a difference. Buying enough quartz crystals from the TP to make a second charged quartz is relatively pricey at 2G 74S 75C (as of 07-15-2015 2:00).

Looking at the data I found, that at it’s peak we had roughly 8.46 million units of quarts sitting at the trading post. In January 2015 the supply started to dry up, because many players felt compelled to craft ascended celestial armor. Raids were around the corner and we were told, that you needed ascended quality equipment to successfully do the raids. The supply dried up and our reserves lasted six months until July 2015, when the number of available quartz crystals dropped below 100,000 units. Since then, I assume the reserves have been depleted and the current supply is maintained through farmers and the price reflects their relative scarcity.
A distressed customer in Divinities Reach was able to give a short statement:

Maybe Ebonhawke is willing to pay these prices, but I’m not.

Allowing players to trade charged crystals will take some immediate price pressure off of the normal crystals, while initially charged cristals could spike, leading to increased farming activity in Dry Top.

We still need a more reliable source of quartz, though.
In real life industry quartz crystals are created via hydrothermal synthesis.
But Tyrias best bet is, that the Zephyrites rebuild their home in a timely manner and allow the world to share their magically grown crystals, while we keep their sanctum safe from any future threats.

Behellagh.1468:

Because it is mostly used in crafting exotic/ascended but entirely optional items. The very top tier items should not be attainable without effort which means time. It’s also used indirectly as a time gate for Guild Halls as they shouldn’t be able to be built overnight simply with vast piles of gold.

From an economy standpoint, right now with the time gate, the supply of raw quartz crystals on the market have been falling and thus prices have been going up. If removed, it would skyrocket the price of quartz as supply on the TP dwindles.

So why not add my quartz nodes? For story reasons, quartz was a Zephyrite sourced material which is why it’s scattered in Dry Top due to the crash or in home instances when players bought a Gift of Quartz during the two previous visits by the Zephyrites. Adding more nodes in the world to compensate for increased demand of a gate-less charged quartz don’t make sense in the story narrative.

Love this response, and I appreciate you including lore explanations regarding the current status of quartz in Tyria as well. I have been wondering why quartz nodes are so rare, and I missed out on most of the Zephyrite living story as I was without internet at the time (still hoping Labyrinthine Cliffs makes a comeback, even in the form of a “flashback” story instance so I can explore it!). Thanks for the explanation and well thought out post!

The biggest problem, OP, is that changing either the time gate or the tradeability has economic implications. Re-balancing the sources and sinks and updating the item flags takes attention from other aspects of the game.

I’m against gating in principle — I don’t like the devs making decisions for me about where to go or what to craft. However, once those gates are in place, it’s not ‘cheap’ to remove them.

The question isn’t: is it bad that celestial stats are affected by both gating and binding? (Yes, of course it’s frustrating.) The question is: how important is it to change? How often does anyone craft it? How many people use it? How much better will their experience be if ANet changes things? And then compare that to how much effort it takes to do it well.

tl;dr I’d love it if ANet had never gated or bound the mats involved; I’d welcome the change if they made it. I just don’t think it’s worth it to us for ANet to worry about it.

I’ll just copy/paste a slightly modified version of what I said last time a thread of this nature was made:

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

If there were more than 3-5 nodes (one of which is rich, and literally gated behind an event. One is a home-node. And one is a node that doesn’t appear on all Dry Top maps) harvestable per day, I’d say the time gate of making charged quartz is okay… But, unless one purchases quartz crystals needed to create a charged at a very high premium (usually over 10s each now on TP), then by harvesting alone you’re rarely able to harvest enough to make 1 charged per day (you’d need a lucky strike on the home instance AND get on the right Dry Top map that has the 4th node). If the 1/day charged time gate were dropped, you still need 25 per charged making bulk buys infrequent for many players.

To me, the bottleneck of new quartz crystals introduced into the economy due to severe node limitations seems to be enough of pseudo time gating that the 1/day charged time gate is unnecessary.

~EW

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The biggest problem, OP, is that changing either the time gate or the tradeability has economic implications. Re-balancing the sources and sinks and updating the item flags takes attention from other aspects of the game.

I’m against gating in principle — I don’t like the devs making decisions for me about where to go or what to craft. However, once those gates are in place, it’s not ‘cheap’ to remove them.

The question isn’t: is it bad that celestial stats are affected by both gating and binding? (Yes, of course it’s frustrating.) The question is: how important is it to change? How often does anyone craft it? How many people use it? How much better will their experience be if ANet changes things? And then compare that to how much effort it takes to do it well.

tl;dr I’d love it if ANet had never gated or bound the mats involved; I’d welcome the change if they made it. I just don’t think it’s worth it to us for ANet to worry about it.

But charged quartz is also needed it a few of the crafted precursors in making an item for the collection, also Mawdrey and ascended back piece. Also charge quartz is needed is three of the eight new quad insignia/inscriptions, not just celestial. I think the issue is players want to craft a full set and are annoyed by the unexpected time gate.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The question isn’t: is it bad that celestial stats are affected by both gating and binding? (Yes, of course it’s frustrating.) The question is: how important is it to change? How often does anyone craft it? How many people use it? How much better will their experience be if ANet changes things? And then compare that to how much effort it takes to do it well.

The thing is, Charged Quartz is not only used for celestial Sets. It’s used for 5 stat combinations (Celestial, Sinister, Trailblazer, Wanderer and Commander) and also for 6 consumables (Bountiful Sharpening Stones, Bountiful Tuning Crystals, Bountiful Maintenance Oil, Furious Sharpening Stones, Furious Tuning Crystals, Furious Maintenance Oil).
By now it’s more like a regular crafting Material then something special for only 1 Thing

It probably should have the timer remove, there’s no real point. For people thinking it’ll make getting certain ascended gear easier, you still need other mats that are on a “can only make one per day” timer.

Also the quartz are tradable, I see no reason why the charged ones shouldn’t be either. It’s not like they are cheap anyways, getting 25 quartz from the market has never really been that cheap let alone the 750ish you need to make 6 insignias. So I doubt charge quartz would be any different.

Enrif.7359:

back when it was introduced it made sense to balance the new celestial stat.

No it did not. Just like Viper and all the newer stats. Stats should be balanced in terms of numbers and gameplay, not through being artificially longer or more difficult to get.

Ideally, all stats sets should be equal in costs, time and effort required to acquire. Otherwise you’re simply artificially hurting some class/build combinations that would be a better fit for the more expensive/slow stats combinations.

And i’m saying this with full celestial gear and tons of unused charged quartz crystals in bank. That gate shouldn’t have been there in the first place and it’d be a good idea to remove it for newer players.

At this point it should stay because it is part of the economy now with sheets of charged ambrite I think. Before that they could have though ya.

Quartz is so hard to get that you can’t charge it more than once every few days anyway. We need more sources AND the time gate removed.

I say leave it alone. Not because I’m in favor of gates, but I am in favor of development time being spent on other things.

Malediktus.9250:

It should be time gated and untradeable

Why?

Both sides raise good points, such that I can’t really argue much with either. One way or another, I’d rather see more spawns or reduced prices on making the food buffs in some respect.

Paying like 2g/hour for utility food because I can’t make very much of it over the course of an entire day is kinda nuts.

My current concern with the charged quartz is the guild hall mine upgrading. That takes a lot of ley-infused tools, and each one of those needs a charged quartz. I had a small stock of charged quartz and was able to donate it to Mining Rate 2, but that means I no longer have enough for Mining Rate 3. Perhaps not a problem for a guild of 500, but in a guild with five currently active members, three of us doing most of the mats donating, it means a serious slowdown in hall growth beyond our already glacial rate (we’re bearing down on all of level 22, after claiming the hall in the first week possible).

Donari.5237:

My current concern with the charged quartz is the guild hall mine upgrading. That takes a lot of ley-infused tools, and each one of those needs a charged quartz. I had a small stock of charged quartz and was able to donate it to Mining Rate 2, but that means I no longer have enough for Mining Rate 3. Perhaps not a problem for a guild of 500, but in a guild with five currently active members, three of us doing most of the mats donating, it means a serious slowdown in hall growth beyond our already glacial rate (we’re bearing down on all of level 22, after claiming the hall in the first week possible).

I think this is by design. Buy ley line tools on the trading post if it is not going fast enough for you.

Agreed, removed the time gate.

Celestial is a dead stat like most stats since HoT came out.

sephiroth.4217:

Agreed, removed the time gate.

Celestial is a dead stat like most stats since HoT came out.

Except charged quartz is used in some HoT stats as well. As well as some crafted precursors. Charged quartz is the non-ascended ascended mat the devs fall back on when they want to add a time-gate without creating a whole new time-gated material.

sephiroth.4217:

Agreed, removed the time gate.

Celestial is a dead stat like most stats since HoT came out.

I’d argue that’s the reverse of ideal. At least by the games initial design. You weren’t supposed to have a gear progression or big blocks in gear. But, here we are with some stats being locked behind like 25g per piece and others at a couple gold max. That just seems counter to initial design and feels like it’s become the same standard MMO design of grinding for new gear every so often.

Vote to keep, just because there was a reason to put it there in the first place, even if we don’t agree with it or know what it is or how it affects the game.

Jerus.4350:

sephiroth.4217:

Agreed, removed the time gate.

Celestial is a dead stat like most stats since HoT came out.

I’d argue that’s the reverse of ideal. At least by the games initial design. You weren’t supposed to have a gear progression or big blocks in gear. But, here we are with some stats being locked behind like 25g per piece and others at a couple gold max. That just seems counter to initial design and feels like it’s become the same standard MMO design of grinding for new gear every so often.

25 times 10 silver is 2.5 gold, not 25.

There was a glut of quartz before HoT was announced and it was going for 50-60c each. Smart market investors figured, as ANet has done in other cases, that a need for quartz was going to be introduced and the 8 million units on the TP was drained to under 200k when HoT launched. And they were right as charged quartz was need for guild halls, some new stat combos and a few of crafted legendary weapons.

Behellagh.1468:

Jerus.4350:

sephiroth.4217:

Agreed, removed the time gate.

Celestial is a dead stat like most stats since HoT came out.

I’d argue that’s the reverse of ideal. At least by the games initial design. You weren’t supposed to have a gear progression or big blocks in gear. But, here we are with some stats being locked behind like 25g per piece and others at a couple gold max. That just seems counter to initial design and feels like it’s become the same standard MMO design of grinding for new gear every so often.

25 times 10 silver is 2.5 gold, not 25.

There was a glut of quartz before HoT was announced and it was going for 50-60c each. Smart market investors figured, as ANet has done in other cases, that a need for quartz was going to be introduced and the 8 million units on the TP was drained to under 200k when HoT launched. And they were right as charged quartz was need for guild halls, some new stat combos and a few of crafted legendary weapons.

I was referencing the stuff that takes the new stats that require 3+ of 7g+ stuff. Yes it’s slightly off topic but at the same time it’s all about accessibility to gear stats. Freshwater Pearls are about 7-8g each, need 3 of them per piece of standard gear, more for trinkets iirc. That plus the other materials you’re looking at close to 25g if not more on average per piece. Likewise charged quartz while not as much is still far more than your standard core gear stats, and that’s just wrong for a game that was not supposed to have a gear grind.

Just mentioning grow lamps as well as the bountiful and furious nourishments, which also require charged quartz to create….

Behellagh.1468:

sephiroth.4217:

Agreed, removed the time gate.

Celestial is a dead stat like most stats since HoT came out.

Except charged quartz is used in some HoT stats as well. As well as some crafted precursors. Charged quartz is the non-ascended ascended mat the devs fall back on when they want to add a time-gate without creating a whole new time-gated material.

The Problem here is, it is not like ascended materials, which are at least tradeable.
And if they include more and more stuff that needs charged Quartz, the problem only gets bigger and bigger

The problem does not get bigger. You can buy most things that require charged quartz

Malediktus.9250:

The problem does not get bigger. You can buy most things that require charged quartz

You can not buy Celestial, Wanderers or Commanders Insignias

Enrif.7359:

Malediktus.9250:

The problem does not get bigger. You can buy most things that require charged quartz

You can not buy Celestial, Wanderers or Commanders Insignias

Yes but all the items that is not part of armor/weapons.
So buy the items you can and save your quartz for the untradeable stuff

Enrif.7359:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The question isn’t: is it bad that celestial stats are affected by both gating and binding? (Yes, of course it’s frustrating.) The question is: how important is it to change? How often does anyone craft it? How many people use it? How much better will their experience be if ANet changes things? And then compare that to how much effort it takes to do it well.

The thing is, Charged Quartz is not only used for celestial Sets. It’s used for 5 stat combinations (Celestial, Sinister, Trailblazer, Wanderer and Commander) and also for 6 consumables (Bountiful Sharpening Stones, Bountiful Tuning Crystals, Bountiful Maintenance Oil, Furious Sharpening Stones, Furious Tuning Crystals, Furious Maintenance Oil).
By now it’s more like a regular crafting Material then something special for only 1 Thing

Its used for

• Celestial gear
• Wanderers gear
• Commanders gear
• Sinister gear
• Trailblazer gear
• Superior Rune of the Defender (a rather nice heal based rune)
• Superior Sigil of Blight
• 6 consumables (Bountiful/Furious Tuning crystal/sharpening stone/maintenance oil)
• Grow lamps
• Ley line infused tools
• Astralaria
• Bolt
• Nevermore
• Kraitkin
• And possibly more legendary weapon collections

Its used for way more than celestial gear, way more than just stat combos in general.

There is no reason that such a widely used crafting material is both time gated and untradeable. It should be tradeable at the least, and more sources of quartz crystals should be introduced to the game.

OriOri.8724:

…

Its used for way more than celestial gear, way more than just stat combos in general.

There is no reason that such a widely used crafting material is both time gated and untradeable. It should be tradeable at the least, and more sources of quartz crystals should be introduced to the game.

Perfectly put and I agree 100%, there are a lot of materials just like this that need to have restrictions removed from them just like the time gating on charged quartz and/or drop rates increased, no stat combinations should be orders of magnitude more expensive to obtain materials for than other sets.

You might not realize it, but it’s possible that timegating these mats makes the items derived from them more affordable on the TP.

Obtena.7952:

You might not realize it, but it’s possible that timegating these mats makes the items derived from them more affordable on the TP.

Only Ley-Line Infused Tools, Grow Lamps and Sheets of Charged Ambrite are available on the TP, the rest are account bound. How is restricting the tools and charged ambrite to 1 per day per account and Grow Lamps to one per 10 days per account going to reduce their cost on the TP? Can you explain that please? I cannot see how reducing the supply could bring prices down.

They shouldn’t be time gated, and no other item should either.
It’s just a very cheap way to slow down progress,
if you want to make something harder to achieve,
just add more difficulty to it, not a delay,
it just makes the progress feel boring.
Imagine you need, let’s say.. 40 of them,
is getting 1 a day for 40 days really something fun to do?
Will it feel like you did something awesome once you complete the 40 days?
No, it will just feel like you had to wait an eternity.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Obtena.7952:

You might not realize it, but it’s possible that timegating these mats makes the items derived from them more affordable on the TP.

Only Ley-Line Infused Tools, Grow Lamps and Sheets of Charged Ambrite are available on the TP, the rest are account bound. How is restricting the tools and charged ambrite to 1 per day per account and Grow Lamps to one per 10 days per account going to reduce their cost on the TP? Can you explain that please? I cannot see how reducing the supply could bring prices down.

If the gating is dropped and no extra quartz source put in, the trading post will probably run dry or atleast to the point that quartz is the price of ecto or worse.

I’m thinking the time gate should accumulate. Like if you didn’t make ascended mats for 30 days you would have 30 of each that you could make. Same with the quartz.

lioka qiao.8734:

I’m thinking the time gate should accumulate. Like if you didn’t make ascended mats for 30 days you would have 30 of each that you could make. Same with the quartz.

If you are not logging in, you are not playing the game, if you are not playing the game why does it even matter beyond, oh I was on vacation once this season and missed 3 whole days of crafting.