Guild Wars 2

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Three questions:

• Was it always intended that the game should offer asymmetric data on the custom offer screens? e.g. buyers can see competitive offers, but sellers can only see the highest WTB and lowest WTS.
• Post-wardrobe, did ANet intend it to be difficult to recover runes and sigils from equipment? Similarly, is it an oversight that some gear can’t be forged due to its source? For example, you can forge but not salvage karma-bought armor and you can’t even forge badge-bought armor.
• A recent patch made some changes to the mystic forge output for L75+ average gear inputs. You stated at the time that you thought we’d be pleased with the results. Have you been?

1. I’m not an expert on UI and cannot speak on that.
2. pass
3. I stated that you would be pleased with the final form. When it reaches the final form you may tell me.

Lonami.2987:

Nice thread. Some questions!

• Could we see recipe changes in the future? For example, silk bolt and weaving recipe being nerfed, or leather recipes being buffed. I’m not discussing current recipes, just if there’s any chance for some of them to change in the future, more radically than the silk bolt and leather square change from 2 scraps to 3, or even towards lower requirements.

Never say never.

Lonami.2987:

• Would it be viable to let us recycle composite crafting materials? There’s some of these, like bronze helmets, that have a ridiculous supply and price, and there’s no real way of getting rid of them, we’re talking about millions in some cases, and growing.
• Medallions and co. are useless. Why don’t transform them into inscriptions, and use them for crafting?

I think these questions may be too big for my current medium and time commitment.

Lonami.2987:

• Aren’t you worried about situations where a lower tier material is more expensive than their higher tier counterparts? Why not implement fixed conversion recipes for basic and fine materials, to maintain prices and value appreciation? (Rare materials, like shard, cores and lodestones already have fixed 2->1 recipes) While some of these materials can be farmed easily by going to their level zones and gathering their nodes, others like cloth and leather can’t be farmed as easily.

No. The materials are diverse intentionally.

Zinnia Rose.9425:

I am having the exact same issue with linking (weird serial number and all) so this bug is still ongoing. Like others in this thread, I have different email addresses linked to my GW1 and GW2 accounts, so that may be the cause of the issue.

In any case, I’ve submitted a ticket, so fingers crossed it’ll be sorted soon!

Thanks for this info, ZR. If you don’t have an answer by, say, tomorrow, could you post in the Tickets for Review thread, so I can take a peek?

AnsanJeux, if you still need help, a ticket really is the best way to get help, because an agent can discuss the individual factors related to your account with you directly.

Please submit a ticket by clicking “Support” at the top of this page and then clicking the “Submit a request” option. Provide as much information as possible in the web form, which will create a ticket within the support system. If you do not know some of the information requested, leave the field blank. However, there are two drop-down areas that require an answer so be sure to choose from those fields so the ticket is properly submitted. Once you’ve done that, the CS Team should be able to help you.

intently.4502:

They talked to a manager at GameStop and he took care of it. Hope the original employee got some training.

Excellent! I am so glad when our partners come through. I’m sorry it took an additional trip to get the matter resolved, but am happy that your nephew can play the game now!

I’m going to see if I can find out anything more about this. I hope to have a bit of info tomorrow.

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.

There has always been a PvP team working on features! (I know because I’ve been on it forevs)

Reaper, the only ticket I see from you is from earlier this month. If you need help with this new question, please don’t hesitate to submit a new ticket!

Valeyl, I did find your ticket (#759705) and it appears you’re ok now. If not, could you please update this thread?

I see that you posted in the Technical Support forum, so I’ll close this thread.

For general information, I’d like to address two comments in this thread:

Brother Grimm.5176:

If Support mentions a compromise, ASK for information about when and how long the compromise happened. You need this info when you request the rollback.

That information is absolutely not required in order to receive an account restoration. We can see game access logs and ascertain when the compromise took place and then determine the closest “snap shot” to use as a point of restoration.

Elas.9052:

Another question: Is it possible to change my login e-mail at all, I know it used to be an option but I can’t find it anymore?

Yes, Customer Support certain can help you with this. Simply add that request to your existing ticket so that the agent knows this is part of the service that you would like to receive.

Specifically in relation to this thread:

Elas.9052:

All sorted now, thanks for the help everybody. A mod can close this now. Cheers.

Great to know. Thanks for updating!

Uhaen.9876:

I wish to express my gratitude for the assistance on my ticket. Timely, efficient, got precisely what I needed. If you guys ever contract CSR out to Comcast, they’ll have a world-wide monopoly in days. In case anyone at ArenaNet takes the forum’s more vocal members too seriously, I’d just like to reinforce precisely why it is Guild Wars is working on 10 years running as a non-subscription MMO; my experience with the staff has been nothing short of exemplary.

Thanks again! ^^;

~Uhaen

Wow, your post gets my award for “Post Most Likely to Brighten a Day!”

Thanks so much for your kind words and for your support of our game and company!

The account is owned by the person who activated the code and played on it initially. We cannot assist in retrieving a gifted account. Sorry.

We sure can try to help! Please submit a ticket by clicking “Support” at the top of this page and then clicking the “Submit a request” option. Provide as much information as possible in the web form, which will create a ticket within the support system. If you do not know some of the information requested, leave the field blank. However, there are two drop-down areas that require an answer so be sure to choose from those fields so the ticket is properly submitted. Once you’ve done that, the CS Team should be able to help you.

Yes, the team can assist. Please submit a ticket by clicking “Support” at the top of this page and then clicking the “Submit a request” option. Provide as much information as possible in the web form, which will create a ticket within the support system. If you do not know some of the information requested, leave the field blank. However, there are two drop-down areas that require an answer so be sure to choose from those fields so the ticket is properly submitted. Once you’ve done that, the CS Team should be able to help you.

Every in-game report is reviewed and acted upon, when necessary. In-game reports are simple to submit and are provably effective.

Now, no one who submits an in-game reports will receive a personal response; that’s simply not the way the system works. You report, in the game, and the report generally is seen within minutes and is often acted upon, when appropriate, in a very short period of time. Reports that take longer to investigate may be acted upon in a day or two. Reports that are not creditable, or which our investigation finds to be without merit, naturally are not acted upon at all.

Further, there are two types of actions: Suspensions and Terminations. Suspensions are temporary, so don’t conclude that “nothing happened” because you spot the player you reported a week or a month later. Terminations are permanent, and yes, terminations happen every day, and not solely on the basis of RMT (in-game sold sales, advertising, etc.)

RoyalPredator.9163:

Hi Gaile! I’m sorry that I have to make this topic, but at support ticket request it’s “You have been suspended from this account. You are not allowed to submit requests at this time.” Would be really fun to try gettign back a hacked account with this deny, lol…

But it’s not the case – some weird thing instead.
My original message

Hi! There is a missing Mistforged Heroic Longbow in my Bank, meanwhile, I’ve discovered that there is a Heroic Greatsword in it’s place.
Could you please help me and find my Mistforged Heroic Longbow? I don’t even see it in my Wardrobe’s collections – seems not unlocked.
I don’t know what this is…

Hope someone can help with this issue, or making a ticket of it at least.
And unblocking me as well?

Best regards,
- Royal

If you need help with a ticket and the ticket is at least three days old, you can submit in the Tickets for Review thread above. Thanks.

Safari.3021:

Is there any concerns over insider trading, and do you actively watch for/monitor the in game trading practices of anet staff and sub-contactors?

For example, I wish I’d have known to save my silk and not traded it all away at the zephyrites last time around

I’m sure there is nuggets of information contained on the in house dev build that could affect future markets

The Anet devs themselves are trustworthy (though I have been known to make disproportionately extreme threats if anyone treats it as a joke). Also the CBA of insider trading at your workplace doesn’t add up.

Buttercup.5871:

John, I have only one pressing question. I even created a thread on it a while ago.

Why are WvW badges treated differently, forge-wise, than dungeon tokens?

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

They’re a fundamentally different item. Though I expect that’s not the answer you’re looking for. Could you elaborate a bit more on the question?

Serophous.9085:

I just have one question:

Why isn’t it possible to put superior runes and sigils in the mystic forge to gamble? This would at least start using up the lowest priced runes and sigils on the market, and allow us to at least try for an unsoulbound rune.

I can’t discuss the origins of why. I can say that the market isn’t in a state where it would handle changing that very well. The markets need a more fundamental change.

Bombsaway.7198:

Is special consideration given to how you build a macro economy based on the age of the consumer in the market (how long they have played)?

Yes, this is a major aspect of design.

Bombsaway.7198:

How are you evaluating price to resource ratios across different gameplay modes which each generate more/less resources? Do you, for example, worry about the WvW player who collects resources at a lower rate than, if for example, the same time was spent in EOTM?

We make heavily data driven decisions when comparing apples and oranges, but the differences do require a group of experts working together to make good decisions that are fueled by data.

Bombsaway.7198:

Are your models more supply or demand driven?
Are you more macro focused or micro customer cluster/segment focused?

1. I ’m not sure I understand what you mean
2. Time constraints often require a more macro focus, but I prefer to work in both when possible.

wwwes.1398:

pdavis.8031:

So as long as we are asking questions…what about champ trains and event trains “ruining the economy”? I’ve seen this argument as the reason that the champ trains and event trains were nerfed. Apparently, according to some, that they were nerfed because too many people were making too much money, and that was bad for the economy as a whole. Can you shed any light on this? Or were they in fact “increasing inflation” as has been claimed. Thanks!

I’d be interested to hear about champ trains, too, but a slightly different directions. Do you have a hand in sort of attempting to guide the zerg towards events that will help balance the economy or is that primarily something done for the sake of gameplay?

And as for champ bags, are these used as a testing ground for experimentation? Seems an ideal control given that it’s usually the same players every day.

Champ trains were a mix of things. I said before in my blog post that we wanted to redistribute content participation a bit and that was definitely true. Do they add input into the economy/money supply? Sure, definitely, how could they not, but that is by no means the entirety of the reason for the change.

Second question:
With stuff like this I try to intervene on a more macro scale and provide input, but we have experts in design that are much more suited to creating guiding events and objects of that sort.

Lastly, are the bags an experimentation object. I would say no, the game is live, nothing is an experiment. Every change we make is with the intent of it being successful.

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

I definitely agree that in-game world boss availability messaging is something that should be implemented and it’s something we would like to do.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about map completion is the abundance of things to do in any order I wish. Events could sort of have this nature if we showed them map-wide. But even telling players about events that are across a single map can be tricky business depending on the nature of that event. A number of events can be completed well within the time that it would take to travel to it from even the nearest waypoint. Yet a good argument for showing them anyway would be a map such as Dry Top or the Crown Pavilion, wherein you might care about the state of the events even if you don’t plan on participating in them.

Do you think that showing all of these events makes the map feel cluttered? Would it make finding the information you care about more difficult?

This is a neat idea. Personally, I’ve always felt that having some extra Order based objectives during open world events like Battle for LA or even a whole map like Dry Top would also be interesting both storywise and gameplay. It’s something I hope we’ll have time to touch on the future.

phys.7689:

How effecient is the currency exchange, in terms of risk assumed by anet.
essentially, if the currencies were real, would anet be losing money or passing fluctuations in value to the exchangees, remaining mostly untouched, and gaining value/breaking even through the spread.

How does it compare in this respect(this type of effeciency) to a direct exchange system with a tax. (like the TP kinda) from the perspective of anet as a currency exchanger.

what are the advantages and disadvantages of each style over all, from the perpective of a currency exchanger

I would argue that the comparison between the exchange and a direct exchange with a tax is is a good one. I also recognize that it’s very easy to argue for it being similar and dissimilar. I’m not currently at liberty to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the two versions (sorry), but I would definitely say that our current system was the right choice.

Lord Kuru.3685:

John Smith.4610:

3. Halloween 2 candy corn sinks. There was an insane amount of candy corn in the world (10’s of billions) and we underestimated the distribution of those materials and cranked up the sinks too high. This made it very difficult to interact with those sinks at all and it didn’t feel good.

Can we infer from this that a large number of people quit the game between Halloween 1 and Halloween 2, essentially taking those billions of candy corn out of the economy (without literally doing so)? Or something else?

I wouldn’t infer a smoking gun, rather a series of different possibilities that all add up.

I’ve fallen a bit behind, but don’t stop asking questions, I’ll try to get to them all.

wwwes.1398:

Keep your questions vague, people! This isn’t the place to argue decisions, it’s to learn why decisions are made, albeit in a way that isn’t possible to profit from.

Oh, I have one more. John Smith is a pseudonym, right?

It’s a long story…

This is not a thread to talk about precursors. There several of them out there already with data and responses. This isn’t the place for that, let’s not get the thread shut down.

Ryan Mozo.9581:

Hi John,

First and foremost thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!

I too have a question:

How does volatility/stability get manipulated (from your end) through updates such as the Living Story, which itself incurs volatility on certain items through player demand? Or do you let this type of volatility change just run its course to stabilize on its own?

Thanks!

We design in some volatility and some stability (silk wasn’t an accident ). We use our past experience, mixed with data to make predictions of what will happen given our choices. We then select outcomes that match whatever goals we have and use the data/experience to match those outcomes. We’ve gotten surprisingly good at this, but if we do make a mistake, the robustness of the player market helps smooth any bumps. For example, at one point a long time ago, we had an ecto exploit with snowflakes. This exploit produced a decent amount of ectos and put them into the market, but the market absorbed that and return to normal in a very short period of time.

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.

wwwes.1398:

I have three questions:

1) Is precursor crafting something being held back because of technical concerns or because of economic concerns, ie a massive surge in demand for certain types of materials? I know you’re limited in what you can speculate, but I have a theory that the crafting is largely being held back because legendaries and precursors are possibly the biggest driving force of the economy and a change in how they function could cause massive waves. Wanted to know if I was correct in this.

2) When you consider game inflation, do you primarily look at the prices of farmable material and blues/greens or do you take into account super-rare items acquired from drops, rewards or gems? Is the reason you say inflation isn’t a problem simply that the items with crazy high prices are the only things with a price rising so rapidly?

3) Can you give an example of a situation where what seemed a good idea for balancing had ridiculously bad consequences? A true learning experience in GW2, I suppose you could say.

Also thanks for doing this! It’s extremely interesting every time you have something to say.

1. All I will say about this is that any discussion about precursors, that I’m involved in, involves a discussion about the materials and markets involved.

2. When looking at inflation I use a large bundle of common goods
(the bundle changes depending on the time frame and the game state). I never use super-rare items or anything involving gems.

3. Halloween 2 candy corn sinks. There was an insane amount of candy corn in the world (10’s of billions) and we underestimated the distribution of those materials and cranked up the sinks too high. This made it very difficult to interact with those sinks at all and it didn’t feel good.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

John Smith.4610:

LordByron.8369:

Question:
Do you care/will do something about the fact game economy is really perceived as broken?
Or if you instead think its well perceived, why don’t you look at every single thread that had the luck to remain for few hours in general section?

There were many threads about how important economy perception is in a videogame.

If by “really perceived” you mean that you mistakenly perceive a fantastic and functioning system as broken, then no… I don’t care.

Is there ever a situation where the economy might be changed (for the worse) due to the majority perceiving a problem and thus hurting Anets bottom line?

Has there been any pressure for this to happen?

Also when will we see new legendary weapons/trinkets

When we first released we made a couple of mistakes with some low level crafting components and they were worthless way over-supplied. This made new players feel like gathering and crafting materials were worthless and changed their play patterns. We didn’t feel that was positive; I wouldn’t say it necessarily it affected our bottom line DIRECTLY, but issues like that can effect retention and that affects our bottom line.

LordByron.8369:

Question:
Do you care/will do something about the fact game economy is really perceived as broken?
Or if you instead think its well perceived, why don’t you look at every single thread that had the luck to remain for few hours in general section?

There were many threads about how important economy perception is in a videogame.

If by “really perceived” you mean that you mistakenly perceive a fantastic and functioning system as broken, then no… I don’t care.

Zenguy.6421:

John,

Is the following a reasonable summary of the key factors driving MMO economies and their impacts on in-game markets/prices?
If not, what’s incorrect or missing? (just the key stuff)
(I know real world economies experience many of these factors. The question is whether these are the key ones for MMO economies.)

In MMOs, player rewards create ever increasing supplies of in-game currency.

• MMOs offset this by include in-game currency sinks (e.g. the 15% TP trading tax).
• Players’ expectations that they will get richer the longer they play means:
  • Currency sinks are always set at levels lower than the overall currency supply.
• The currency surplus resulting form this imbalance causes inflation.

IN MMOs, player rewards and crafting systems create ever increasing supply of in-game items.

• MMOs offset this by:
  • Limiting supply of higher value items (e.g. low drop rates for precursors)
  • Making items have limited use (e.g. account/soul bound on equip)
  • Providing mechanisms to remove items from the game (e.g. salvaging items for magic find)
• Player expectations that they will get progressively better gear the longer they play means:
  • Increasing demand for more powerful items
  • Overall, demand for lower level items is significantly lower than for end-game items
  • Mechanisms for removing items are set lower than overall item supply
• Surplus items collapse in value
• Supply constrained items increase in value

Where MMOs include open market systems, the combination of these two aspects results in:

• Ongoing inflation caused by increasing currency supply
• Prices for desirable scarce items increase far faster than overall inflation
• Prices for surplus items collapse
  • (the extent of this may be concealed by the overall inflation of prices)

There’s a lot here, but I want to present something that may make you think slightly differently about your questions. Are economies static? MMO Economies move at hyperspeed and games change very quickly. This is especially true in Guild Wars 2 when we constantly update the game adding new content and changing the game. For many of these questions there isn’t a single answer, but we move in cycles; we increase and decrease, we update and change, we add volatility and stability sometimes both. The change makes the market more interesting, more fun and allows us to keep the economy balanced.

If you like I can still answer those questions in general about working in MMO economies, or I can wait to see if you’d like to rethink the questions at all for GW2 specifically.

Hey guys – I can tell you that we have certainly looked at this issue, even as far back as Lost Shores, and it did come down to technical and logistical problems we are, at this time, unable to solve. Jia Shen is correct that our instances do not use separate maps from the open world, so if those maps change because of a larger world story event, like Lion’s Arch being laid to waste for example, then the story instances that take place in those maps will reflect whatever the current state of the world is.

We do have some limited ability to do phased instancing of certain elements within those maps, but not the kind of sweeping large scale terrain changes that result from the major changes we want to make to the world.

Solving this for our existing instances was not as simple as reserving a custom map for every instance, either, as that would entail a significant number of new maps to be generated, which would all need to be downloaded and stored in the DAT. There are hundreds of instances for the personal story, so even compressed that many custom instance maps would add dozens of GB to your DAT. So at the very least, we determined that we couldn’t accomplish this retroactively, but we are certainly still discussing all the implications of this limitation, and how it impacts your experience with our storytelling.

I edited my post for clarity, based on information I was just provided:

To unlock the content, you need to enter the game world. You cannot simply log onto the character selection screen.

Paragon.5479:

i dont think is it fixed cause now i am rank 80 and i am not moving whatsoever

What mode did you play?

Unkillable — You are welcome to submit a ticket and discuss what seems to be an individual issue with Technical Support. Clearly this thread is about a very recent occurrence, not a situation that has been ongoing for 2+ weeks.

Midnight.2348:

Dear Gaile , i send ticket # 747706.
My problem is not solved . I checked it while doing my daily.
It’s not nice to be cheated for suport.

You are not being “cheated” by support. You were asked to report an in-game issue in the game, and you later wrote to say you’d received some of your rewards. If you are still entitled to rewards, you need to report that, as requested. If you need additional information, please update your ticket. The forums are not the proper place to discuss individual account reward questions because each case is different and each account has its own set of details.

Gaile Gray.6029:

goblin.5938:

Gaile Gray.6029:

She does not need to log into her account to submit a ticket or get responses to support tickets. They come via e-mail. If she is not getting responses, please have her read the thread about e-mail difficulties. If she cannot use the webform (but I think she already has, so that’s best) she also may wish to submit an e-mail to Support@GuildWars2.com and watch for responses, again, through e-mail. Using a completely different e-mail provider is sometimes necessary, as some providers are blocking our mails.

Thank you for response. We will use a different e-mail provider to submit another request.
But could you please check if there is a request from her? Submission e-mail address matches her registration e-mail.
I know it might sound like i’m some other person, but we live together, we play together and we read this forums together. And now we are using this healthy account to ask for help on forums, because other methods of communication didn’t work.

We have two tickets in the system. Both have been sent an automatic response, but I believe the e-mail account used to submit the first ticket may be compromised, and the hacker may have deleted the response. Since you submitted a second ticket, presumably from a secure e-mail account, I’ve asked agents to respond in that ticket, to avoid the hacker getting confidential information through what is, I believe, a potentially compromised e-mail account.

I could be wrong in my assessment, but since you have two addresses, I’d rather be safe, especially given all the authentication approval communication the first e-mail address received.

I wanted to hasten to say that I do not know for certain that the e-mail account has been hacked, but it bears all the earmarks. So for security’s sake, I’ve made notes on both tickets and hope that helps her.

goblin.5938:

Gaile Gray.6029:

She does not need to log into her account to submit a ticket or get responses to support tickets. They come via e-mail. If she is not getting responses, please have her read the thread about e-mail difficulties. If she cannot use the webform (but I think she already has, so that’s best) she also may wish to submit an e-mail to Support@GuildWars2.com and watch for responses, again, through e-mail. Using a completely different e-mail provider is sometimes necessary, as some providers are blocking our mails.

Thank you for response. We will use a different e-mail provider to submit another request.
But could you please check if there is a request from her? Submission e-mail address matches her registration e-mail.
I know it might sound like i’m some other person, but we live together, we play together and we read this forums together. And now we are using this healthy account to ask for help on forums, because other methods of communication didn’t work.

We have two tickets in the system. I’ve believe the e-mail account used to submit the first ticket may be compromised, so since you submitted a second ticket, I’ve asked agents to respond in that ticket, to avoid the hacker getting confidential information through what is, I believe, a potentially compromised e-mail account.

I could be wrong in my assessment, but since you have two addresses, I’d rather be safe, especially given all the authentication approval communication the first e-mail address received.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug preventing PvP rank 80 from resetting once completed.

CS agents can offer you some troubleshooting steps, so do feel free to submit a ticket.

Doomdice.7984:

I have sent tickets and I have opened a thread in this forum about my issues but everyone who replied was having the server attack issues (which didn’t help me at all). Also this thread got attention from Gaile so I thought I would post here.

Continue to discuss with a Technical Support agent, please. This thread is intended to collect various posts about recent service interruptions.

Thanks for understanding.

I responded in Account Issues, so am closing this thread.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue in The Concordia Incident in which the On Swift Wings achievement could be earned after the instance was completed.
• Fixed a bug preventing PvP rank 80 from resetting once completed.
• Fixed an issue that prevented Belinda’s Greatsword from appearing.
• The “Cull the encroaching dust mites threatening the Zephyrites” event in Dry Top has been rebalanced to accommodate higher scaling. The rewards for infinitely respawning creatures has been lowered.

Update: 17 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.

749494 – Resolved
747706 – Resolved.
715527 – Please ask your additional question within your current ticket.
754149 – This ticket is less than 2 days old. This thread is intended only to check on tickets that have gone three full days without response. Please allow the team time to help you.

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.