Guild Wars 2

Why is this such a rare drop? I’ve been wanting this staff since HoT released. At the time, the price was at an all time high at 700g. So I decided to wait it out knowing the price would inevitably fall. However, I forgot all about the staff and stopped playing the game for a period of time. Came back during the summer and checked the staff again but it was still so pricey at 370+ gold. Now, the price has spiked up for whatever reason and is at 550 gold or something like that.

Maybe allowing the staff to be purchasable with airship parts (VB currency) could decrease the price. I’m currently swimming in VB currency with nothing to use it for.

All the HoT exotic skins are super rare drops. Only found 2 of the special exotics since HoT got released. I like it this way. Rare drops give value to the content.
Some skins are more expensive than others due demand.
Compare Lightward’s hammer and staff. The hammer has the same droprate but much lower demand so it only costs 35g instead of 500g.
Buying it with VB currency would defeat the purpose unless it would cost 250k+ airship parts.

Malediktus.3740:

All the HoT exotic skins are super rare drops. Only found 2 of the special exotics since HoT got released. I like it this way. Rare drops give value to the content.
Some skins are more expensive than others due demand.
Compare Lightward’s hammer and staff. The hammer has the same droprate but much lower demand so it only costs 35g instead of 500g.
Buying it with VB currency would defeat the purpose unless it would cost 250k+ airship parts.

I agree.

Note especially Malediktus’ point about the relative cost of the two lightward weapons: one is (currently) 500 gold and the other less than 8% of that. The drop rate isn’t that low, it’s just really low compared to the demand.

sad. i want this really rare and cool looking weapon but want it to be easy to obtain! everyone is so entitled and self-centered these days.

Entitled? Not necessarily. Many don’t want it for its rarity, they want it for its beauty (I’m one of those — I don’t give a flying fig for the rarity or dirt commonness of a skin, if it fits my look, other than “marker” skins like the Celebration Hat, and even that I just want to keep the unique logo and let everyone have baseball caps that want ’em …).

They introduced a melee staff profession and yet did not add much in the way of staff weapons that look made to physically hit things. So it does seem unfair that the one staff other than Bo and its pre-version that has a good sleek plausible melee design is so incredibly rare. If they added, say, at least ten melee-suitable staff skins that weren’t all so shiny as the Lightward, and made them as generally available as other staff categories, then having this one be so rare would be fine. (All my opinion as to what is fine and what is not, nor am I up in arms about it).

Besides, RNG is not the same as effort. Some people get the staff from their first cargo bash ever. Most people never get it even if they selflessly organize every VB map they’re in to T4 day after day and open thousands of cargoes in the process.

+1 to Donari on this. Especially on the part about some more physical-looking staffs being needed. Other than Bo, there’s not much out there for daredevils -__-

Christina.7926:

+1 to Donari on this. Especially on the part about some more physical-looking staffs being needed. Other than Bo, there’s not much out there for daredevils -__-

What about the Guild Pillar? It’s not as graceful but it’s definitely physical.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Pillar

The shimmering and teneborous staves that are constructed from that also have a more melee orientated look to them.

There are a variety of methods to acquire skins, including RNG (which benefits the lucky), collections (which is good for the focused among us), currency (which is good for the ‘dedicated’), and the TP (which is good for anyone who is willing to make tradeoffs).

That is generally how HoT worked, put limited skins into the game, hide them behind low drops and meta to get people to constantly do the meta.

Thing is the most rare skins feel common because everyone uses them xD

Like everyone with Twilight.

Donari.5237:

Entitled? Not necessarily. Many don’t want it for its rarity, they want it for its beauty (I’m one of those — I don’t give a flying fig for the rarity or dirt commonness of a skin, if it fits my look, other than “marker” skins like the Celebration Hat, and even that I just want to keep the unique logo and let everyone have baseball caps that want ’em …).

Since the endgame of GW2 is about cosmetics I think it makes sense to have rare items like this. Otherwise everyone would look even more of the same. Like with legendaries which got way way too common.
In general the more shiny and or outstanding a skin is the more rare and exclusive it should be.

Malediktus.3740:

Donari.5237:

Entitled? Not necessarily. Many don’t want it for its rarity, they want it for its beauty (I’m one of those — I don’t give a flying fig for the rarity or dirt commonness of a skin, if it fits my look, other than “marker” skins like the Celebration Hat, and even that I just want to keep the unique logo and let everyone have baseball caps that want ’em …).

Since the endgame of GW2 is about cosmetics I think it makes sense to have rare items like this. Otherwise everyone would look even more of the same. Like with legendaries which got way way too common.
In general the more shiny and or outstanding a skin is the more rare and exclusive it should be.

Right, which is why the part of my post you cut out said that keeping this one shiny and rare to find is fine if they also give us a reasonable selection of less shiny melee-style ones. Heck, I’d actually like a Lightward shape without the shininess. Nice straight lines, a cutting edge, and at least the appearance of good weight balance. Most staff skins have a much larger section at the top end, which is nice for magic casting, not great for spinning and whacking.

The bo staff from the daredevil collection is reasonably easy to get

Donari.5237:

if they also give us a reasonable selection

There just aren’t ever going to be enough ANet staff to give each of us a “reasonable” selection of skins we like. Our tastes are just too diverse. I think offering RNG options is fine, as long as they also offer collection and currency options eventually.

In the case of shiny/shiny-ish Melee staff, there are so far Bo (collection), Lightward (RNG), and Dominator (collection & RNG). “Not bad, but not as good” options include imo Imryldyeen (RNG) & Monsoon (RNG).

It would help if ANet’s design staff were more diverse. There have been numerous posts in these forums as well as elsewhere about the relatively narrow options in several niches, including nekkid male armor options, not nekkid female, the aforementioned melee staff, and any number of other weapons. (And that’s without getting into situations in which the mechanics limit the design options.)

tl;dr we all want more skin options than ANet is ever going to deliver, so of course we get annoyed when the style we want finally arrives…and it’s gated behind the sort of acquisition we dislike (or even hate).

Malediktus.3740:

Since the endgame of GW2 is about cosmetics I think it makes sense to have rare items like this. Otherwise everyone would look even more of the same.

That’s what you could never understand. It’s as Drakz mentioned – as long as the rarity is the main factor behind what you wear, many people will end up wearing exactly the same. It’s only when there’s a ton of equally easily available stuff that people will start to look differently (because then they will be able to concentrate solely on aestethics, which are different for each player).

So no, making drops more common would not make people look more the same – it’s exactly the opposite.

@Astralporing Legendaries are a great example of what you are talking about. In fact some people that have listed off the same argument that Malediktus used here have also complained in other threads about Legendaries no longer feeling like a prestige item to them because they are “so common” now. Of course that happens when there is a relatively small amount of equally rare/hard to acquire skins in the game that actually look good.

Legendaries are no longer prestigious because you can farm 2 of them per month rather easily, while also needing no skill at all, because the best ways to make gold are the most brain dead ways to play the game.

@Malediktus – Not everyone farms gold religiously. And just because you don’t think legendary items are prestigious anymore doesn’t make that a fact. For a lot of players its still very much a prestige item.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

And what’s the moral of this story?
We need polearms :v
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Polearm

OriOri.8724:

@Malediktus – Not everyone farms gold religiously. And just because you don’t think legendary items are prestigious anymore doesn’t make that a fact. For a lot of players its still very much a prestige item.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Legendaries would be prestigious if it would be for the top 1%. 28% of players having more than 1 legendaries means that it is too easy.
So I think Anet should make future legendaries cost 20 current legendaries and 100 legendary insights each. It would have the advantage that black lion, exotic and ascended skins get used more widely again.

Malediktus.3740:

OriOri.8724:

@Malediktus – Not everyone farms gold religiously. And just because you don’t think legendary items are prestigious anymore doesn’t make that a fact. For a lot of players its still very much a prestige item.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Legendaries would be prestigious if it would be for the top 1%. 28% of players having more than 1 legendaries means that it is too easy.
So I think Anet should make future legendaries cost 20 current legendaries and 100 legendary insights each. It would have the advantage that black lion, exotic and ascended skins get used more widely again.

In that case it would be guaranteed, that all the top level players would look exactly the same. Is that what you want?

Malediktus.3740:

OriOri.8724:

@Malediktus – Not everyone farms gold religiously. And just because you don’t think legendary items are prestigious anymore doesn’t make that a fact. For a lot of players its still very much a prestige item.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Legendaries would be prestigious if it would be for the top 1%. 28% of players having more than 1 legendaries means that it is too easy.
So I think Anet should make future legendaries cost 20 current legendaries and 100 legendary insights each. It would have the advantage that black lion, exotic and ascended skins get used more widely again.

I don’t think you want that. Right now its a good balance. Yes, you can look at it as a quarter of all players have more than 1 legendary skin, of which there are almost 30 different skins to choose from, which still allows for a large amount of personalization of your character. Or you could look at it like you do, which is that too many people have at least 2 out of almost 30 skins in the game, so ANet should make the next 3 or 4 skins extremely hard to get so that all of the richest players get those skins and look identical (which is about to happen when legendary armor collection is finished). Under your plan more people would look the same than ever before

OriOri.8724:

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Be careful about citing those statistics. The only accounts that are tracked for that are people who take the effort to assign their API to that site. Those people will disproportionately be those who want to show off, or who otherwise care about ‘account value’. Most casual players have no idea the site exists, and wouldn’t care if they did.

There’s no way that 56% of the player base has a Legendary weapon. It’s probably more likely that 56% of the player base doesn’t know what a Legendary weapon even is, or what crafting one entails.

Astralporing.1957:

Malediktus.3740:

OriOri.8724:

@Malediktus – Not everyone farms gold religiously. And just because you don’t think legendary items are prestigious anymore doesn’t make that a fact. For a lot of players its still very much a prestige item.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Legendaries would be prestigious if it would be for the top 1%. 28% of players having more than 1 legendaries means that it is too easy.
So I think Anet should make future legendaries cost 20 current legendaries and 100 legendary insights each. It would have the advantage that black lion, exotic and ascended skins get used more widely again.

In that case it would be guaranteed, that all the top level players would look exactly the same. Is that what you want?

Its a difference if 50% or 1% of the people look extremly similar? If you go in WvW it feels like half the zerg is wearing either bifrost or nevermore for example. GS users usually have twilight/sunrise/eternity.

Malediktus.3740:

OriOri.8724:

@Malediktus – Not everyone farms gold religiously. And just because you don’t think legendary items are prestigious anymore doesn’t make that a fact. For a lot of players its still very much a prestige item.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Legendaries would be prestigious if it would be for the top 1%. 28% of players having more than 1 legendaries means that it is too easy.
So I think Anet should make future legendaries cost 20 current legendaries and 100 legendary insights each. It would have the advantage that black lion, exotic and ascended skins get used more widely again.

As long as legendaries represent grinding easy or mindless content lacking in actual challenge…or breaking out the credit card, they will never have prestige (IMO of course).

Malediktus.3740:

Its a difference if 50% or 1% of the people look extremly similar? If you go in WvW it feels like half the zerg is wearing either bifrost or nevermore for example. GS users usually have twilight/sunrise/eternity.

You are severely overestimating the situation. When i’m running WvW, i can run a whole day without seeing even one legendary, so it’s possible you just run with some old and established players. Yes, those will have the rarest and most expensive stuff. And because it is the rarest and most expensive stuff, they will be showing it off. Your suggestion will change exactly nothing.

And it’s not 50%. The statistics from gw2efficiency is significantly skewed towards players posessing legendaries, because people knowing and using this site are far more likely to be heavily invested in the game.
It’s as Xiahou Mao said – an average casual won’t even know there’s a site like that, much less register on it.

Also, similarity of outlooks depends on how many equal choices are in a given category. As soon as legendary armor arrives, unless it happens to be extremely ugly, every raider will start looking the same.
If you want people to dress differently, you need to give them a multitude of meaningful choices, not funnel them towards the same ones.

What you really want is not variety of looks. What you ask for is color-coding people according to their social class.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

OriOri.8724:

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Be careful about citing those statistics. The only accounts that are tracked for that are people who take the effort to assign their API to that site. Those people will disproportionately be those who want to show off, or who otherwise care about ‘account value’. Most casual players have no idea the site exists, and wouldn’t care if they did.

There’s no way that 56% of the player base has a Legendary weapon. It’s probably more likely that 56% of the player base doesn’t know what a Legendary weapon even is, or what crafting one entails.

GW2efficiency tracks over 100,000 accounts. While I agree that people who are more casual will be less likely to use that site, 100,000 is a large enough number to take meaningful statistics out of. If the actual value is less, its not much less, it would still hover around 50%.

OriOri.8724:

Xiahou Mao.9701:

OriOri.8724:

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Be careful about citing those statistics. The only accounts that are tracked for that are people who take the effort to assign their API to that site. Those people will disproportionately be those who want to show off, or who otherwise care about ‘account value’. Most casual players have no idea the site exists, and wouldn’t care if they did.

There’s no way that 56% of the player base has a Legendary weapon. It’s probably more likely that 56% of the player base doesn’t know what a Legendary weapon even is, or what crafting one entails.

GW2efficiency tracks over 100,000 accounts. While I agree that people who are more casual will be less likely to use that site, 100,000 is a large enough number to take meaningful statistics out of. If the actual value is less, its not much less, it would still hover around 50%.

If I polled 100,000 registered democrats with the question, “do you intend to vote for Trump?” the answer would likely be 100% no. That does not mean that 0% of the American people intend to not vote for Trump.

Sample bias can completely negate any value for any number of respondents.

Ashen.2907:

OriOri.8724:

Xiahou Mao.9701:

OriOri.8724:

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Be careful about citing those statistics. The only accounts that are tracked for that are people who take the effort to assign their API to that site. Those people will disproportionately be those who want to show off, or who otherwise care about ‘account value’. Most casual players have no idea the site exists, and wouldn’t care if they did.

There’s no way that 56% of the player base has a Legendary weapon. It’s probably more likely that 56% of the player base doesn’t know what a Legendary weapon even is, or what crafting one entails.

GW2efficiency tracks over 100,000 accounts. While I agree that people who are more casual will be less likely to use that site, 100,000 is a large enough number to take meaningful statistics out of. If the actual value is less, its not much less, it would still hover around 50%.

If I polled 100,000 registered democrats with the question, “do you intend to vote for Trump?” the answer would likely be 100% no. That does not mean that 0% of the American people intend to not vote for Trump.

Sample bias can completely negate any value for any number of respondents.

You are claiming that GW2efficiency went out and found 100,000 people to register their API keys with the site which is absurd and simply incorrect. An actual analogy would be to go out and just poll 100,000 random, eligible voters without worrying about whether they were republican or democrats. Then you would get a proportionate response to who all would vote for trump.

OriOri.8724:

Ashen.2907:

OriOri.8724:

Xiahou Mao.9701:

OriOri.8724:

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Be careful about citing those statistics. The only accounts that are tracked for that are people who take the effort to assign their API to that site. Those people will disproportionately be those who want to show off, or who otherwise care about ‘account value’. Most casual players have no idea the site exists, and wouldn’t care if they did.

There’s no way that 56% of the player base has a Legendary weapon. It’s probably more likely that 56% of the player base doesn’t know what a Legendary weapon even is, or what crafting one entails.

GW2efficiency tracks over 100,000 accounts. While I agree that people who are more casual will be less likely to use that site, 100,000 is a large enough number to take meaningful statistics out of. If the actual value is less, its not much less, it would still hover around 50%.

If I polled 100,000 registered democrats with the question, “do you intend to vote for Trump?” the answer would likely be 100% no. That does not mean that 0% of the American people intend to not vote for Trump.

Sample bias can completely negate any value for any number of respondents.

You are claiming that GW2efficiency went out and found 100,000 people to register their API keys with the site which is absurd and simply incorrect. An actual analogy would be to go out and just poll 100,000 random, eligible voters without worrying about whether they were republican or democrats. Then you would get a proportionate response to who all would vote for trump.

I am claiming nothing of the sort.

What I am claiming is that numbers alone, as you seem to imply in the post I quoted, are not sufficient to determine validity of a poll.

The 100,000 mentioned on GW2efficiency are not random.

OriOri.8724:

You are claiming that GW2efficiency went out and found 100,000 people to register their API keys with the site which is absurd and simply incorrect. An actual analogy would be to go out and just poll 100,000 random, eligible voters without worrying about whether they were republican or democrats. Then you would get a proportionate response to who all would vote for trump.

The actual analogy would be to poll 100,000 people who signed up for the (fictional) blog.politicalscience.edu — these are people who express an interest in the topic and therefore are neither randomly selected nor a cross-section of the overall population.

We can use GW2 Efficiency as an upper bound: it’s extremely unlikely that its users are less dedicated to the game than the general population, so whatever numbers we see there are almost certainly greater than (but not equal to) any random sample. i.e. we can be sure that fewer than 44% of frequent players own a legendary.

However, we can also estimate a lower bound: we can presume (for argument’s sake) that 500k people login at least once a month and (again for argument’s sake) we can pretend that only GW2 Efficiency users have created a legendary and that every GW2 efficiency user can be counted in that “once a month” estimate. That puts the lower bound at roughly 8.8% of players. If there are a million frequent players, it would be half that, or 4.4%.
INB4: of course, those assumptions can’t be verified by anyone other than ANet; they are simply plausible within the scope of this discussion

That speaks to Malediktus’ point: even if the numbers are half of my lowest “guess”, that’s a lot of legendaries out there. It means we’ll see at least 2-4 on any full map. They aren’t nearly as prestigious as they might have been at one time.

OriOri.8724:

Ashen.2907:

OriOri.8724:

Xiahou Mao.9701:

OriOri.8724:

According to GW2efficiency.com right now, 56% of players don’t have even a single legendary item/skin. Only 28% of players have more than 1 legendary skin. Spread that out over all of the different weapon types in the game and legendaries are far and away less common than people like you make them out to be.

Be careful about citing those statistics. The only accounts that are tracked for that are people who take the effort to assign their API to that site. Those people will disproportionately be those who want to show off, or who otherwise care about ‘account value’. Most casual players have no idea the site exists, and wouldn’t care if they did.

There’s no way that 56% of the player base has a Legendary weapon. It’s probably more likely that 56% of the player base doesn’t know what a Legendary weapon even is, or what crafting one entails.

GW2efficiency tracks over 100,000 accounts. While I agree that people who are more casual will be less likely to use that site, 100,000 is a large enough number to take meaningful statistics out of. If the actual value is less, its not much less, it would still hover around 50%.

If I polled 100,000 registered democrats with the question, “do you intend to vote for Trump?” the answer would likely be 100% no. That does not mean that 0% of the American people intend to not vote for Trump.

Sample bias can completely negate any value for any number of respondents.

You are claiming that GW2efficiency went out and found 100,000 people to register their API keys with the site which is absurd and simply incorrect. An actual analogy would be to go out and just poll 100,000 random, eligible voters without worrying about whether they were republican or democrats. Then you would get a proportionate response to who all would vote for trump.

No, he is claiming that the very fact someone registered on that site creates a skew in statistics. You’re not polling democrats only, but you are polling people just outside the main entrance to their convention

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That speaks to Malediktus’ point: even if the numbers are half of my lowest “guess”, that’s a lot of legendaries out there. It means we’ll see at least 2-4 on any full map. They aren’t nearly as prestigious as they might have been at one time.

Of course they are more common. The main investment for them is time, after all, and the older the game is, the longer the average active player history is.

gw2efficiency – the site used by raiders to gear check.
Not a great place to start figuring out how many people have a legendary.
Same with WvWvW. These aren’t good metrics.
Also not sure what we’re trying to prove here. The OP has a point, nothing anyone here can do about it short of giving them the money to buy it. Rarity sometimes seems to exist just to make the richest players richer.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

That speaks to Malediktus’ point: even if the numbers are half of my lowest “guess”, that’s a lot of legendaries out there. It means we’ll see at least 2-4 on any full map. They aren’t nearly as prestigious as they might have been at one time.

Astralporing.1957:

Of course they are more common. The main investment for them is time, after all, and the older the game is, the longer the average active player history is.

I think you’ve misunderstood. Neither Malediktus nor I care much about why they are owned by so many; the point is that they are. As a result, these other perceived-to-be-less-common items take on additional prestige, simply because they are rare.

Which is why some people want the drop rate of things like the Lightward Battlestaff to remain lower-than-low.

General Health.9678:

gw2efficiency – the site used by raiders to gear check.

First time I’ve heard of GW2 efficiency being used to check gear, then again I don’t pug anyway.

General Health.9678:

The OP has a point, nothing anyone here can do about it short of giving them the money to buy it. Rarity sometimes seems to exist just to make the richest players richer.

Rich players can get rich without rarity, playing the market with rare items is not an easy way to get rich, not to mention takes long to.
Playing in on common items that are used frequently ( e.g. materials) are much better suited for that.

Rare random drops are there mostly to make you want to play specific content and get you excited to loot it.

The real problem is that any loot in the game is incredibly boring, greens and blues are salvage/vendor trash, rare items are only worth as much as the average ecto’s salvaged, and the large majority of exotic drops are not worth a kitten unless it’s a level 80 with berserker stats or a rare rune/sigil.
The only other loot that’s exciting in this game (outside of Precursors) is the kind that’s a rare skin, specifically one that’s very nice looking and not the kind that’s ugly or on an underused weapon class.
Why? Simply because those are at least worth some gold, and guess what will happen if those dropped more commonly? They’d end up being as unexciting as drop as the rest of the loot you already mindlessly salvage daily or sell for less then 1 gold.

General Health.9678:

gw2efficiency – the site used by raiders to gear check.

Most raiders don’t need to do gear checks; it’s used by a minority, who think that counting LI or seeing someone’s build is going to help them have a smooth run.

However, the site is used by all sorts of people, far more than just raiders. That’s easy to see from the fraction that have magnetite shards.

General Health.9678:

Not a great place to start figuring out how many people have a legendary.

It’s a perfectly fine place to start, since we don’t have a lot of stats from any other source. As I’ve shown above, we can use the numbers at GW2/E to set both an upper bound on the fraction of players with legendaries (certainly, it’s no higher than those allowing their character info to be public) as well as a lower bound (using a ‘plausible’ guestimate of how many people play the game).

General Health.9678:

Also not sure what we’re trying to prove here. The OP has a point, nothing anyone here can do about it short of giving them the money to buy it. Rarity sometimes seems to exist just to make the richest players richer.

What folks are trying to demonstrate, not prove, is that there’s reason for some items to have extremely low drop rates, making them available to the lucky or the wealthy willing to pay someone luckier.

Rarity sometimes exist to make poor players richer — the richest players don’t need help getting richer; the poor do.

Rarity can’t exist to make poor players richer as only richer still players can do that.

Izithel.6853:

The only other loot that’s exciting in this game (outside of Precursors) is the kind that’s a rare skin, specifically one that’s very nice looking and not the kind that’s ugly or on an underused weapon class.

Sorry if you think I meant yellow rare items but I didn’t. We are talking about the same thing here, rare skin from a rare drop. Or similar.

And I don’t see that there’s really any reason for an item to have a lucky_rare_ low_ drop_rate. If you want something to be rare, make it expensive on the gem store. You got invisible shoes from a treasure mushroom? Big woop. Some weird bee goop translucent glowy aura? Yay? There’s things that are so rare that I’ll never a) get one or b) see anyone else with one. That just seems weird to me.

And you can’t say “it’s a fine place to start given we have no other sources”, that doesn’t validate it being a fine place. WvW is a game-mode that probably on some servers attracts the kind of person who is likely to have a legendary or, equally likely, more than one. Plus other rare stuff. You can’t extrapolate that out to anything.

General Health.9678:

Rarity can’t exist to make poor players richer as only richer still players can do that.

Richer players will pay lucky poor players for coveted drops, whether for themselves or for investment purposes. That is how “rarity” makes poor players richer.

The wealthy will always find ways to profit.

Those to me are two different things.
I’m not driven by profit or the need to be wealthy. I’d much rather have more things available to people who want it than have someone who can afford to flip legendaries for instance. But that might just be me.

That has nothing to do with what makes an item covetous tho.
I imagine data mining reveals rarity and that makes it desirable. Because how else do you know something is rare?
Remove that layer of rarity and it’s no longer saleable at the levels we’re talking about.

I would suggest that the reason some people have the kind of money needed to buy my lucky drop / rare item is because they have sunk a lot of real life cash into the game. Which I guess is why things are rare, to hopefully promote gem sales.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

General Health.9678:

Rarity can’t exist to make poor players richer as only richer still players can do that.

Richer players will pay lucky poor players for coveted drops, whether for themselves or for investment purposes. That is how “rarity” makes poor players richer.

Actually, due to the rarity, it will make only a few players richer, most of whom will be farmers, not poor players. And it will be at the expense of all the others.
Because, you see, such a drop can make Mr_I_Multiloot_AB_All_Day_Long richer only if it will be something those average poor players you are so concerned about are only able to dream about.

That kind of rarity will not stop poor players from being poor. It will only stop them from being able to enjoy said skin.

Astralporing.1957:

That kind of rarity will not stop poor players from being poor. It will only stop them from being able to enjoy said skin.

There are 113 different skins (acquirable with gold, 153 total) for Staffs, plenty of them are beautiful, some are rare and others are common.
Are you telling me that people can not enjoy the entire weapon class because one single skin, one that is both nice and rare, is to expensive for you?

Next you’re going to tell me that people can’t enjoy their weapons because the Legendary skins require to much money and/or time investment.

General Health.9678:

and I don’t see that there’s really any reason for an item to have a lucky_rare_ low_ drop_rate. If you want something to be rare, make it expensive on the gem store.

So it will require Large amounts of gold anyway, become in-acquirable for large stretches of time, can not be traded any more and you can’t get lucky and get one dropped for free?

General Health.9678:

Because how else do you know something is rare?

Simply searching the marketplace will show you how many of them are on the market for sale giving you a decent idea.

General Health.9678:

I would suggest that the reason some people have the kind of money needed to buy my lucky drop / rare item is because they have sunk a lot of real life cash into the game. Which I guess is why things are rare, to hopefully promote gem sales.

Because I like to dabble in the TP, I meet others who are power traders, moguls, and dabblers. I don’t know a single one of them who got rich from spending RL cash. There are just too many ways to make money in the game.

Besides that, people seem to enjoy the chance of getting rare stuff — it’s part of what makes things seem shiny to people, it’s part of what makes it seem worth spending time in certain zones/farms etc. Without the chance for rare drops, people wouldn’t enjoy the game as much.

And while it’s true that farmers have a better chance to get stuff that’s rare (since they have more opportunities), it is still the case that lucky, poor players have the opportunity to use or sell: either way, they end up richer.

Izithel.6853:

General Health.9678:

Because how else do you know something is rare?

Simply searching the marketplace will show you how many of them are on the market for sale giving you a decent idea.

Sorry, that not what I meant. Before an item even appears in-game people seem to know it’s going to be rare. I mean if there’s none for sale because nobody has discovered the first one but we know it’s going to drop – like wooden scythe, paper hat then it’s a going-to-be-rare-drop regardless of how many are for sale. Might be conflating games but I’m sure I’ve seen bids on the market for things that haven’t actually appeared in-game yet.

Besides I was looking at exotic daggers yesterday, filtered cheapest first and the first one was a named dagger with not that many for sale (not at home, can’t double check). So a lack of something for sale doesn’t equate to a high price.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

General Health.9678:

I would suggest that the reason some people have the kind of money needed to buy my lucky drop / rare item is because they have sunk a lot of real life cash into the game. Which I guess is why things are rare, to hopefully promote gem sales.

Because I like to dabble in the TP, I meet others who are power traders, moguls, and dabblers. I don’t know a single one of them who got rich from spending RL cash. There are just too many ways to make money in the game.

A bit devils advocate here as I’ve not made millions on the market but I’ve had 5k gold until I finished up a legendary and converted a bunch of gold to gems for sale items and I’ll probably have that kind of spare money again. I don’t lack for stuff. Yet you look at all the posts saying that drops are bad, the thread about pre’s never dropping for 99% of people. And then there was that one post from a guy who was going to spend $250 on buying a legendary. Want to get all the cool stuff? Buy your way in for sure.

And are there really that many ways for the average normal person to make money? I can name a few and AB meta is an obvious one. But for your average player? Drops are bad, farming makes my skin crawl, gold to gem ratio is awful, etc.

When the game first came out and there are all those youtube videos of people making the tri-pendant thing (this is what I was thinking of.. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Triforge_Pendant) or the first legendaries.. they can’t have made enough money in that time to be able to do that from playing. They dropped rl money.
There’s no way to prove or disprove any of that but that’s my feeling, rl money spent to play the market would be how I see the situation right now. Great for anet. Feels a bit mercenary towards the bread-and-butter players.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

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Besides that, people seem to enjoy the chance of getting rare stuff — it’s part of what makes things seem shiny to people, it’s part of what makes it seem worth spending time in certain zones/farms etc. Without the chance for rare drops, people wouldn’t enjoy the game as much.

Oh sure, I do agree. But if we talk about something with a 0.0000001% chance of dropping that isn’t obtainable by working through a collection then how many people enjoy getting that? On the way to getting that, I might get 100 other things that are suddenly less cool because they’re not that other thing I’m trying to get. If that other thing was less rare I’d have more of a chance at getting it and I’d be a happier player. Personally I’d like more epic collections and less rare as crap drops. I’m sure that would make more people happy than that one time, that one guy got those one shoes or whatever.

Not going to solve anything obviously, the point still remains the thing the OP wants is too pricey because it’s pointlessly rare.

General Health.9678:

Not going to solve anything obviously, the point still remains the thing the OP wants is too pricey because it’s pointlessly rare.

It’s “not pointlessly rare” — it’s just rare and it’s coveted. Even at current market prices, about 8-12 are selling every day — which is very similar to the amount of Lightward’s Battlehammers trading hands

The demand for the staff outstrips demand by a 10:1 ratio and for the hammer it’s only 1.5:1. The hammer is rare, but people aren’t as interested in it.

Izithel.6853:

Astralporing.1957:

That kind of rarity will not stop poor players from being poor. It will only stop them from being able to enjoy said skin.

There are 113 different skins (acquirable with gold, 153 total) for Staffs, plenty of them are beautiful, some are rare and others are common.
Are you telling me that people can not enjoy the entire weapon class because one single skin, one that is both nice and rare, is to expensive for you?

Way to put in my mouth words i haven’t said. I didn’t say anything about “not enjoying a whole class of skins”. Additionally…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s “not pointlessly rare” — it’s just rare and it’s coveted.
[…]
The demand for the staff outstrips demand by a 10:1 ratio and for the hammer it’s only 1.5:1. The hammer is rare, but people aren’t as interested in it.

It’s not just “one of the 153 skins”. It’s one of the most desirable skins in that group. So yeah, having it not accessible due to arbitrary rarity is going to make a lot of people unhappy.

Astralporing.1957:

It’s not just “one of the 153 skins”. It’s one of the most desirable skins in that group.

Which is why it’s worth so much, not because it’s so rare, but because everyone wants it

Don’t see anyone here complaining about any of the other skins with similar rarity but that are many times cheaper simply because not everyone wants it.

Astralporing.1957:

So yeah, having it not accessible due to arbitrary rarity is going to make a lot of people unhappy.

If you’re not happy because you don’t have one lousy skin and feel that it’s drop should be more common because of that I can’t help but call you entitled.

Astralporing.1957:

Izithel.6853:

Astralporing.1957:

That kind of rarity will not stop poor players from being poor. It will only stop them from being able to enjoy said skin.

There are 113 different skins (acquirable with gold, 153 total) for Staffs, plenty of them are beautiful, some are rare and others are common.
Are you telling me that people can not enjoy the entire weapon class because one single skin, one that is both nice and rare, is to expensive for you?

Way to put in my mouth words i haven’t said. I didn’t say anything about “not enjoying a whole class of skins”. Additionally…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s “not pointlessly rare” — it’s just rare and it’s coveted.
[…]
The demand for the staff outstrips demand by a 10:1 ratio and for the hammer it’s only 1.5:1. The hammer is rare, but people aren’t as interested in it.

It’s not just “one of the 153 skins”. It’s one of the most desirable skins in that group. So yeah, having it not accessible due to arbitrary rarity is going to make a lot of people unhappy.

Your logic makes no sense. If something is desireable it must be rare to stay desireable. If too many people have something I feel repelled by it instead of desireing it.

Malediktus.3740:

Astralporing.1957:

Izithel.6853:

Astralporing.1957:

That kind of rarity will not stop poor players from being poor. It will only stop them from being able to enjoy said skin.

There are 113 different skins (acquirable with gold, 153 total) for Staffs, plenty of them are beautiful, some are rare and others are common.
Are you telling me that people can not enjoy the entire weapon class because one single skin, one that is both nice and rare, is to expensive for you?

Way to put in my mouth words i haven’t said. I didn’t say anything about “not enjoying a whole class of skins”. Additionally…

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

It’s “not pointlessly rare” — it’s just rare and it’s coveted.
[…]
The demand for the staff outstrips demand by a 10:1 ratio and for the hammer it’s only 1.5:1. The hammer is rare, but people aren’t as interested in it.

It’s not just “one of the 153 skins”. It’s one of the most desirable skins in that group. So yeah, having it not accessible due to arbitrary rarity is going to make a lot of people unhappy.

Your logic makes no sense. If something is desireable it must be rare to stay desireable. If too many people have something I feel repelled by it instead of desireing it.

You can’t speak for everyone. You may only like skins that are rare, but many people like skins for the skin itself, regardless of how common/rare they are or how cheap/expensive they are.

Malediktus.3740:

Your logic makes no sense. If something is desireable it must be rare to stay desireable. If too many people have something I feel repelled by it instead of desireing it.

Whereas I and others desire things for their own sake and are perfectly content if everyone else has one too.

Donari.5237:

Malediktus.3740:

Your logic makes no sense. If something is desireable it must be rare to stay desireable. If too many people have something I feel repelled by it instead of desireing it.

Whereas I and others desire things for their own sake and are perfectly content if everyone else has one too.

You might be playing the wrong game genre then, especially since skins are the sole proverbial carrot in this game