Guild Wars 2

What’s your current objective? I just ran through this with no issues, and he’ll talk to any player with the “Talk to Fibharr about Vallus Smokemane.” objective active. When you say you can only greet him, are you getting a “Greet” prompt, or a “Talk” prompt that triggers a greet? If you exit the map and re-enter (or log out/in) does that change anything?

Rouven.7409:

Imagining Bobby sitting in his office, a flower in his hand, picking off the petals:

“We kill him…”
“We kill him not.”
“We kill him…”

That’s exactly how it happened.

TooBz.3065:

Hi John,

How does wealth / material distribution affect how you think about sinks?

For example, I imagine that gaining wealth for the sake of gaining wealth could be, under some circumstances, be very similar to a sink – as wealth and materials are held outside the market. The problem being that at anytime those materials and gold could flood back in. Or is this a self-correcting problem that you don’t need to worry about?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe you’re asking if the sink is likely to sink from the rich/poor/middle/everyone, is that a factor of the design?

Where the sinks hit are a major factor of the process. Imagine the difference between HoHo Tron allowing people to donate to kick off the event faster and requiring anyone who wants to participate to donate.
It’s good to think about sinks and faucets in terms of wealth and potential wealth, both must remain balanced or you lose sleep over the possibilities.

wwwes.1398:

It’s hard to think of more questions, you’ve done such a thorough job.

Can you talk more about your role within the development process? You’ve alluded a few times to what seems like very specific periods of input to the process, do you have daily discussions on a project like Dry Top as it’s being developed or is it just an advisory role at the beginning and end?

On a different note, how involved do you get on a day to day basis? Do you operate like a stock trader with 3 monitors of different markets or just look at a daily snapshot of activity? Is part of your job identifying major anomalies or abuses in the system as they happen and flagging them for developers to take care of?

Again, this is fascinating to math/programming nerds like myself that frequent these boards, so thank you! I wish we had more threads like this with developers/writers, it makes the game more enjoyable to hear about how much care goes into it.

How much input I put into a project is dependent on the project and it’s possible economic interactions, it can go from a talk at the start middle and end to meetings every day. We have great designers too, so they are checking for economic interactions as well.

I’m hesitant to say that finding anomalies is part of my job, but being a person who recognizes patterns and anomalies is a must in this position.

I’m glad people are enjoying this mini Q&A, it’s great to see people interested!

Sure. The population of a world is not the number then present at a specific time, but the total number affiliated with or living in that game world. Sort of like the population of Bellevue, Washington is a given number, even if many are away working in other cities during the work day.

Thanks for understanding, frenzynoise.

Sometimes a word or name is blocked because it’s offensive. (And that might be “offensive in a different language” because Guild Wars 2 is a global game.) All that is pretty easy to understand, I’m sure.

Occasionally a word is blocked because it too closely resembles an in-game name and we want to prevent confusion. (There was a time when Xunlai Agent was a character name, and you can imagine how confusing that was! )

And, to be honest, occasionally our filter becomes a little Hal 9000-ish and develops a mind of its (his?) own and blocks something that really is / should be allowed. (Unblocking is not always possible.)

In the case of “Party” I believe the system is being overly sensitive, but then again, the word may have been added by someone else to prevent confusion.

I really appreciate that you’re flexible and will consider the alternative suggestions offered!

Just to clarify, the Skill Bar segment is a pre-recorded balance preview, much like the previews that used to be posted on the forums. Each segment will cover 2 professions and Karl will talk about the changes as they are demonstrated. We decided to pre-record these segments because it allows us to cut down each profession from over 15 minutes to about 5 and it allows us to show off the changes without making you wait for Karl to make build changes on the fly.

For your feedback, please feel free to open a new thread (for each profession previewed) in the profession balance subforum after the preview and I’ll make sure the balance team knows where to find it.

Lodius.5392:

@John Smith

It appears you are responding to these questions in this post… So my quick question in regards to the economy is this.

The economy centers around wealth of the players. This could be graphed on a bell curve (but that is outside the spirit of this post).

To craft a legendary weapon people are required to earn around 2000 – 3000 gold. Which, when not considering drops, would require a person to run around 1,000 dungeons.

My questions are centered around gold making:
1) Dungeons. Are there talks / will there ever be an increased incentive to run dungeons? You cannot run more than the same path once per day now to get rewards. The 1.25 – 1.5g takes a while to amass any amount of wealth.

2) T6 material. There are no place to farm for T6 mats. The drop rate on these is extremely low, even in the Level 80 areas. Is there any talks to increase the drop rate or make these more “farmable” to lower the price on the TP? I mean… up to 55 silver a piece for some of these mats is getting very expensive.

3) Laurels. Tons of things require Laurels… from Ascended Accessories, to Ascended Armor/weapon recipes, Heavy Crafting Bags for people working on Legendaries, etc etc. Is there any thoughts to increase the amount of laurels that a person receives?

I can’t answer questions about our future plans. I’m more here to answer questions about our/my process in the economy, how the economy works, the past and other interesting ideas that don’t require me to violate an NDA.

So a match history? What kind of information would you want to have in your match history?

• Teammates?
• Team scores?
• Personal score?
• Stats?
• Profession?
• 5-10 previous matches?

nearlight.3064:

Josh Davis.6015:

To clarify a point in the original post:

Regarding the “Skill Bar” segment, we’re going to be covering future balance updates for both the ranger and engineer. We’re only covering two on each episode because we want to make sure we’re conveying the information in a more easily digestible manner, and we want to make sure we’re giving every profession its due in terms of coverage.

More professions will be covered in the coming weeks.

-Grouch

Okay I totally understand ranger being first, but why engineer so soon? Or is it just picked randomly? Just wondering, though, since I’m just glad that we get to hear about what you guys have in mind at all and that we’ll hear about each profession eventually

We thought about doing it alphabetically, but then we were like, “BOOM, WE’RE SPONTANEOUS!”

Kiriakulos.1690:

How long is ready up and how much time is dedicated to each segment?
Will player feedback from the ready up be taken into account for the proposed changes?

Regarding length: we’re aiming to keep Ready Up a lot shorter than we have previously – the two hour episodes are killer.

As for feedback, the our new way of splitting up the balance segments will make it easier for us to track feedback, as we’ll only be talking about two professions every two weeks, rather than 8 in one week.

To clarify a point in the original post:

Regarding the “Skill Bar” segment, we’re going to be covering future balance updates for both the ranger and engineer. We’re only covering two on each episode because we want to make sure we’re conveying the information in a more easily digestible manner, and we want to make sure we’re giving every profession its due in terms of coverage.

More professions will be covered in the coming weeks.

-Grouch

I consider this a different problem than the readability of Asura animations. Yes, they could be fixed in the same way with many of the solutions the players have suggested. However, all melee attacks hit outside the visible animation for all races. That specific problem is not easy to solve because it is a product of us trying to create fluid combat.

Hey all,

This week on Episode 18 of Ready Up, Josh will cover the ongoing Tournament of Legends qualifiers and the upcoming Guild Wars 2 International All-Stars Tournament at gamescom next month. Other topics up for discussion on this episode are China Joy, which is happening next week and the Immortal Kingdom Fractal Tournament happening this weekend. Also be sure to stick around for Karl McLain’s balance segment, Skill Bar.

Date/time: Friday, July 25 at 12:00pm PDT (18:00 UTC)
Location: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2

Great game. Keeping Hman alive in downstate long enough for him to vengeance was clutch!

ZilentNight.5089:

who won? who is going?

I’ll be announcing the rosters on Ready Up this Friday.

Hey guys,

Steve Blum is still doing the voice of Rytlock in Guild Wars 2, including our trailers. Audio treatments are applied to his voice and it may sound different sometimes, but it’s still him. Just wanted to clarify that

Psientist.6437:

John Smith.4610:

Conncept.7638:

but there is no way you have the numbers to claim that the players think so, from a psychological perspective.

You’re adorable.

Economists have ways to measure how much your parents love you and the scariest part of all… it works.

The EULU allows Arenanet et al to data-mine chat logs.

John Smith, there are so many ways to shape information for thermodynamic effect. Your response to this player is almost caustic.

Questions!

1. The RMT algorithm, does it process every gold and gem bit as individual bits (ie do gem and gold bits queue in a single line), process bits as batches, or both?

2. The RMT algorithm, would it translate simultaneous “no demand” for gems and gold into a vector?

1. It’s more complicated than that, but as you know I cannot discuss the specifics.

2. If I’m understanding correctly then no. The exchange requires player activity for change, it does no interpret a lack of activity as value.

Ayrilana.1396:

He’s referring to the conversion rates of gem and gold within the gem store most likely.

Ah, I see.
As a note, while RMT is accurate, it is generally used to refer to third party traders, hence my confusion.

Psientist.6437:

John Smith.4610:

Conncept.7638:

but there is no way you have the numbers to claim that the players think so, from a psychological perspective.

You’re adorable.

Economists have ways to measure how much your parents love you and the scariest part of all… it works.

The EULU allows Arenanet et al to data-mine chat logs.

John Smith, there are so many ways to shape information for thermodynamic effect. Your response to this player is almost caustic.

Questions!

1. The RMT algorithm, does it process every gold and gem bit as individual bits (ie do gem and gold bits queue in a single line), process bits as batches, or both?

2. The RMT algorithm, would it translate simultaneous “no demand” for gems and gold into a vector?

I don’t understand what you mean by RMT algorithm, could you elaborate?

Update: 22 July 2014

Two requests:

• Do not ask for a review of someone else’s ticket unless you know that person. Culling random comments from other forums or social media is not appropriate.
• Always include a ticket number in your request.

765888 – Resolved
750877 – A response was sent on July 15th. If she did not receive the response, please ask her to read this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Not-Getting-Our-E-mails-Hotmail-Yahoo-Gmail-Comcast/first#post3785262

Please note:

• Responses flagged as “Final Response” will not be reviewed again.
• If you still need assistance and your ticket is at least three days (72 hours) old, feel free to post in the Tickets for Review – 3 Days and Older – Part 2 [merged] thread at the top of this forum.
• Please do not submit duplicate tickets for the same situation. Instead, please update your ticket by simply responding to the most recent e-mail with the ticket number in the subject line.
• If you believe your e-mail may have been compromised, submit a new ticket from a new, secure e-mail account. Please be prepared to provide proof of ownership, but we will do our best to help in this situation.

Update: 22 July 2014

765888 – Resolved
750877 – A response was sent on July 15th. If she did not receive the response, please ask her to read this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Not-Getting-Our-E-mails-Hotmail-Yahoo-Gmail-Comcast/first#post3785262

Good suggestions, IWN — thanks for sharing.

Hey there,

What sort of system specs are you working with? Specifically, CPU, GPU, RAM, and operating system.

SpudBob – I cannot located a ticket related to this display name. Please provide your ticket number.

Papi — I cannot located a ticket related to this display name. Please provide your ticket number.

Nauticus — you were given an inaccurate or incomplete answer. I’ve flagged your ticket for review.

chezzepticon and Sai Locke — I believe we may have another process that we can undertake to try to help, even while the devs are reviewing this issue, as you were told. I’ve flagged your ticket for review.

poptsot — According to your ticket, you were told that this was a known issue and that the developers were working on a fix. That’s true in this case. I’m a little confused about what you said, because you were not told to report in the game. In any regard, I will flag your ticket in case there’s a better answer.

Hey there,

I’d like for you to try the following:

1. Locate the file “GW2.exe” and right-click it, selecting “Create Shortcut.”

2. Rename this shortcut to “Guild Wars 2 Port Test.”

3. Right-click on this shortcut and select “Properties.”

4. Edit the “Target” line to include /clientport 80 at the end. Note: Please make sure /clientport 80 is outside of the quotes.

— Correctly Formatted Example: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\GW2.exe” /clientport 80
— Incorrectly Formatted Example: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\GW2.exe /clientport 80”

5. Once completed, click “Ok” to save your changes. If you get an error trying to save, your target line may not have the correct format. Please try Step 4 again.

6. Double click “Guild Wars 2 Port Test” and try connecting again.

Hope this helps!

Hey SooperDooper,

When you do receive an error message, what does it say?

I am also not seeing the complete system specs listed in that image. Can you tell me what video card is in your system?

Lacey

I understand the scale issues; just making sure there weren’t some misconceptions flying around. Most melee attacks have pretty large hit areas to make the game feel better with latency. I believe they’re bigger than the animations show for every race/scale. Especially to the sides.

I can’t think of a way to fix this off the top of my head without plastering ground decals all over the place or somehow making streak effects better show the attack arc. Any other ideas?

Not sure whats being implied here. The attack areas are the same for all races.

ukuni.8745:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I can confirm I am working on PvP features <3
No more details than that, though!

pvp features? or pvp balance?

I personally do not work on balance other than whining to designers every once in a while when I get rekt.

BG makes a good point. If the world is full, your friend won’t be able to join. The good news, though, is that world populations change all the time. Therefore, he should continue to try, even during “odd hours.” I believe he’ll find he’s able to get onto the desired world soon.

nightly.2761:

Solved. within 48 hours!! Thanks again.

Can be closed now;)

Terrific news! Thanks so much for keeping me up to date on the situation. It’s good to know that things are working even better than anticipated, where the charges were reversed quickly and appropriately!

We’ll continue to try to speed up transaction completion so that there aren’t incidents of this nature, but invite anyone with questions to contact Support and we’ll take care of you.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Gaile Gray.6029:

This is not a phishing e-mail. How can you tell? It does not ask you, nor take you to a page that asks you, to provide account-sensitive information. (Even the reset process only asks for your e-mail address and nothing else.)

You can verify that you’re on an official page by carefully reading the URL and noting that it is going directly to our account management section.

I commend the care with which you review e-mails, but in this case, with these exact links and requests, you can rest assured this one is ok.

Alrighty then. My apologies for the false alarm

No worries at all. We like to keep abreast of possible new phishing attempts and when they prove to be “phishy” we add them to this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Phising-mail-from-Arena-Net/first#post4221516

Hey Nauticus – may I have your ticket number? I want to make sure our agents are giving the best advice, and I need to determine if this is a one-off situation, where we can help individual players with an account-based issue, or if this truly is a systemic issue that would warrant an in-game report.

Thanks for that info!

Michael Walker.8150:

Quoting myself, adding some questions, for every question answered I will give 1 gold to the next drunk quaggan.

Michael Walker.8150:

Hi John!

Cool idea, would love to hear some of your experiences when creating the BLTP

-Can you explain how you started designing the BLTP when approached by Anet?
-How big was/is your team, how many variants and iterations did you come up with and how different were they?
-Did you have to change some aspects that make perfect sense economically but didn’t fit lore?
-If there have been others, what were the alternative names for the BLTP?
-How many hours approximately did you spend working with sound engineers & audio artists?
-How much gold do you have in game?
-Have you ever contributed something to the lore behind the economy or helped?
-Who had the idea for the mystic forge conduit? Love mine and it worked well (?) as a material sink. Can you give that person a cookie?

Angel’s post was really interesting

//edit
@Wanze
Questions aren’t about the current economy, still fits the spirit of the thread I hope. More than one because I don’t want a specific answer.

-Can you explain how you started designing the BLTP when approached by Anet?
I did not design the BLTP, the concept of it was in place upon my arrival. There are many major aspects that went into the design including programming and design and I wouldn’t want to speak for those individuals.

-How big was/is your team, how many variants and iterations did you come up with and how different were they?
The internal structure inside arenanet is complicated (yes I’m sidestepping the question, sorry).

-Did you have to change some aspects that make perfect sense economically but didn’t fit lore?
Almost, but lore was added to merge the world and the BLTP system together.

-If there have been others, what were the alternative names for the BLTP?
I’m not free to say, sorry.

-How many hours approximately did you spend working with sound engineers & audio artists?
Me personally? None unfortunately, our sound and music guys are fantastic.

(skipping a couple)

-Who had the idea for the mystic forge conduit? Love mine and it worked well (?) as a material sink. Can you give that person a cookie?

Izzy and I brainstormed that event with the conduits together, it was a lot of fun and very successful.

tolunart.2095:

Rouven.7409:

I’m not sure if John can, but if not, is someone else perhaps able to elaborate on the implications? Thanks in advance – and thanks John for participating here, love it!

Because most activities produce in-game currency (“gold” or whatever) from nothing, the amount of money in circulation tends to go up as the game ages. Currency sinks like repair costs are a major concern to new players, but a minor annoyance to more experienced players. Inflation of player-controlled market prices is expected, simply because it takes a lot of work to have 10 gold to spare on your toon while leveling, but when you’re at max level for six months you don’t upgrade or repair equipment as often so more experienced players have more gold to spend.

The game works much differently when 5% of the players have recently achieved max level vs. when 50% of the players are at max level and gearing alts. The market reflects this as a natural consequence of players involved in the game over time. The design of the game reflects this, for example removing repair costs makes it easier for newer players to accumulate gold while experienced players barely notice the difference.

Devs have to watch the effect of currency sinks and faucets carefully, and try to balance the amount of money in circulation with the sinks designed to remove it in order to make sure that new players can afford basic equipment as they level but experienced players can still feel as though they have goals to achieve. If either side is too rich or too poor the game suffers.

To add to this. There are many different types of currency sinks, but the most common error when attempting to control for inflation is to apply a set of large static sinks. An example of a large static sink is something like a commander’s icon. You want a bunch of these in the game, but you don’t want them to be your only tool for controlling inflation.

What I call “Dynamic Sinks” are important. These are sinks that either change naturally with the state of the economy, or a sink that designers can modify to pull more or less money out of the total supply. The trading post is an example of a dynamic sink.

Combining multiple types of sinks together allow you to more effectively control the money supply as well as don’t look terrifying to a new player when he sees that there are 900,000 gold worth of stuff he needs to buy at level 80.

We were able to reproduce the bug and find a fix for it, so we’ll be pushing it with the next release (The Dragon’s Reach: part 1, on July 29).

Dessa is voiced by Kari Wahlgren.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1312566/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1

Explorer Smatti is voiced by Erin Matthews.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0560019/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Glad you like her performance!

This forum is not a place for appealing a ban, but since you went into so much detail on why you think you got banned, I’ll go into the same level of detail on why you actually got banned.

Your account was terminated due to use of a 3rd Party Botting program. In regards to your reference to Cursed Shore, that is where you were reported (thanks players that reported you) and investigated. After watching your character, our GM team was able to determine that you were running a bot.

To extend further on that investigation, I looked into the logs and it looks like you were leaving your bot on for a couple of hours then playing the game later.

I also find it very interesting that a user by the name of kitten Cracked also has a post on a known botting forum where that user goes into depth about botting in Cursed Shore and is attempting to help others do the same.

Closing this thread. Please open a ticket with Customer Service if you wish to appeal.

Psientist.6437:

Would this derivatives market have anything to do with the unique features of Tyrian lore or just be an addition to our mercenary marketplace?

I would attempt to incorporate any game feature into the world as a piece of the world.

I wanted to note that I merged two similar threads to try to keep the reports in the same thread.

Psientist.6437:

Color me an impressed Tyrian.
I hope the color isn’t account bound because Wanze and John Smith deserve some of that color, in shades.
I haven’t made it through the first page and I had to post at least that sentiment.

My question:

Information releases that talk about changes to in game systems impact the market. The information concerning changes to the dye mechanic came in dribbles and the market reacted as any market would to incomplete information.

If it were up to you, would you have released all of the information concerning changes to the dye system at once?

Unfortunately, releasing problem isn’t a single variable problem. There is an unbelievable amount of work required to release information in an official/public way.

VincentDW.9376:

Thanks for all your responses, John. Even if you aren’t permitted to go into great detail, it’s reassuring to hear that there are carefully considered reasons for certain things behaving as they do, and that decisions made regarding them are not arbitrary or casually made.

On that note, I also have a question: is there any aspect/feature of the economy that you would have designed differently, but that was essentially baked in and no longer changeable before you started in your economy oversight role? Or were you part of the design process of the game from the ground up, so to speak? If you’d prefer to answer more abstractly, is there an economy-related feature you would be sure to include in your own personal dream MMO that we don’t (currently) have in GW2?

Each time you make a game you get better at it and realize all the things you should have done.
What I would personally, as a player, love to have is a derivatives market. It could be a lot of fun, but there are also a huge quantity of problems that go along with it, so it would most likely need to be build into the game from the very beginning.

Update: 21 July 2014

Two requests:

• Do not ask for a review of someone else’s ticket unless you know that person. Culling random comments from other forums or social media is not appropriate.
• Always include a ticket number in your request.

754736 – Resolved
754149 – Resolved
743638 – Answered today in Ticket No. 743332
759837 – This was resolved last Thursday in Ticket No. 759613. If you did not receive the response, please see this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Not-Getting-Our-E-mails-Hotmail-Yahoo-Gmail-Comcast/first#post3785262
762548 – Final answer: You were not hacked. You may not post again.

Please note:

• Responses flagged as “Final Response” will not be reviewed again.
• If you still need assistance and your ticket is at least three days (72 hours) old, feel free to post in the Tickets for Review – 3 Days and Older – Part 2 [merged] thread at the top of this forum.
• Please do not submit duplicate tickets for the same situation. Instead, please update your ticket by simply responding to the most recent e-mail with the ticket number in the subject line.
• If you believe your e-mail may have been compromised, submit a new ticket from a new, secure e-mail account. Please be prepared to provide proof of ownership, but we will do our best to help in this situation.

Update: 21 July 2014

754736 – Resolved
754149 – Resolved
743638 – Answered today in Ticket No. 743332
759837 – This was resolved last Thursday in Ticket No. 759613. If you did not receive the response, please see this thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Not-Getting-Our-E-mails-Hotmail-Yahoo-Gmail-Comcast/first#post3785262
762548 – Final answer: You were not hacked. You may not post again.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Jeez Gaile, why have you had to close my topic?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/To-Support-or-To-Gaile-Gray

No, there is No ticket yet, because the system doesn’t allow me to create one.

You should be able to submit a ticket now. I looked into the account configuration and it should allow a customer support or account-related ticket at this time.

I note that you were unable to submit a ticket, but I believe that you will be able to do so now.

You’ve made quite a few erroneous statements in this thread, and therefore I am going to share some information and then close the thread.

• We definitely do have tools that allow us to track purchases. We do not deal in “assumptions.”
• The statement about making an exception is accurate and appropriate. It would be wrong and potentially dangerous to engage in a constant stream of item replacements.
• The request that a player use care in handling items is also fair, because if players use care, there will be fewer tickets of this nature which means that everyone gets faster service.
• Gifted items are handled differently, and on a case-by-case basis. We have records of those, but it’s appropriate to deal with the actual buyer and not the recipient.
• Every agent is highly motivated to help. The team is made up of human beings, which means they may make the occasional error. However, no one is in — or retains — a position because he or she “does not really want to help.”

If seems from your comments that you had corrupted files, and that everything now is fine for you. If that’s not the case, please update your ticket to let the team know if you continue to need assistance. In the meantime, I hope the information I provided is helpful to you in getting a realistic view of the situation and how it was handled.

If someone gets charged more than once, we will take care of that person and make sure that he or she has exactly the number of gems intended for purchase and no more.

Sometimes there is a lag in PayPal purchases, where it takes a bit of time for the gems to arrive. Our payment provider is working with PayPal to try to address this. Ideally, you will be able to click “purchase” and immediately receive an in-game mail saying “Here are your gems!”

• If you accidentally purchase too much, contact Support and we’ll retrieve gems and get you a refund.
• If you purchase in error because the first purchase was slow to process, likewise, we’ll make it right.
• Never feel that you are obliged to keep gems that you did not intend to purchase — we will work with you to get that right!

The critical thing to remember is Do NOT do a charge-back for situations like this. Contact us and we’ll make the necessary adjustments that safeguard your account and that make sure you don’t spend a penny more than you intended to spend.