Guild Wars 2

BUMPity bump
ridculous….still no response on this?

Come on, it ain’t even funny…

I also think that undercutting on such expensive stock is gonna hurt a lot in the long run. You’re more or less sure it will sell, so if you don’t need the money nao, you won’t waste more by undercutting.

tolunart.2095:

it’s not a big deal any more.

See? That’s how I feel too. But people don’t, since the prices would reflect that :- /
Oh and also it’s a matter of variety. In heavy armors, pre-60 stuff is crap. You don’t want to be seen walking in that, unless you’re RPing a very poor man. Forget dungeon armors and skins and you’re left with precious little variety. Seeing everyone in Draconic gets rather old very fast too :-(

tolunart.2095:

… i like the cheap stuff in the game …

Well I run around content with dungeon equip. Feel appropriate and satisfying since that’s what I do most. NOT THAT IT MATTERS, because we’re talking about the player*base* on average, not you or I.

And it’s an indisputable fact that the stuff that is expensive is designed to be the stuff people strive for the most. It just has to be that way otherwise they wouldn’t plan on it to make them $$$. And since it is designed that way, most players will indeed fall for the bait. Well, it’s not really bait. It’s designed to appeal to a lot of people, so you can’t blame them.

Point is, if you’re playing a game, you want to relax. You don’t want to get frustrated that you can’t reach the carrot the game is dangling in front of you. You want realism in games, go play
Candy Crush!

I’ve seen a lot of people post about having something up for months … Though my OCD would sure love it if those pointless 1c buy and 100g sell orders disappeared :-)

tolunart.2095:

Borghal.1635:

laokoko.7403:

I like to know how you balance trading post since the profit can go from negative big number to a really large positive big numver.

If you’re not being sarcastic, first idea that came to mind is make end products (NOT anything that could be crafted further) account-bound on purchase as if you’d equipped them.
Second idea: Make exotic gear less rare.

Sure, they have their flaws, but that’s the idea of an idea; a sketch to be worked out.

Neither of those solve any problems and both introduce new problems. It’s not a sketch to be worked out, they have already been considered and dismissed.

I have an idea to wipe out world hunger: learn to eat rocks. Sure, it has flaws, but it’s an idea to be considered.

Keep the strawmen in the cornfield, please :P

tolunart.2095:

Borghal.1635:

tolunart.2095:

Nope, if you think that everyone should be rewarded equally for the activities they enjoy, that includes standing around talking. Don’t try to weasel out of it, not going to accept that as an excuse. I do not care if you agree or not.

Maybe you should look up what emergent gameplay means before adding more to the discussion. I did link that concept (or rather its’ opposite) directly with the rewards part of my opinion. (But then again you have been on the Internet for 20 years so you must have ran across the term at some point, which leaves me to believe you’re just adding on nonsense for the kicks :P)

Your argument is ridiculous and I really, honestly and absolutely do not care what you think.

I’m not sure you noticed this turned into a game design philosophy discussion a long time ago :-)

tolunart.2095:

Buy gems – convert to gold – buy stuff from the TP is naturally going to be supported more than play all day long – convert gold to gems – buy stuff from the gem store.

Guess what? I still have that opinion although I have an average of 1.5 hour per day. It’s the only way to make the game fair to the casual guy, which is this game’s target demographic.

Also, buying gold with gems at the current exchange rate is not “supported”. It’s an expensive option on top of the gem store. But really, if you have no time to play because of a job and still have no money to buy stuff ingame, what are you doing in a “pay2lookfancy” game?
And that situation is probably pretty common in GW2 if you’re middle-class or lower what with the silly exchange rates.
“Honey, where did those 100$ go yesterday?”
“Oh, um… I bought this really cool sword, see… It was better than playing for it for 100 hours, right?”

tolunart.2095:

Nope, if you think that everyone should be rewarded equally for the activities they enjoy, that includes standing around talking. Don’t try to weasel out of it, not going to accept that as an excuse. I do not care if you agree or not.

Maybe you should look up what emergent gameplay means before adding more to the discussion. I did link that concept (or rather its’ opposite) directly with the rewards part of my opinion. (But then again you have been on the Internet for 20 years so you must have ran across the term at some point, which leaves me to believe you’re just adding on nonsense for the kicks :P)

laokoko.7403:

Wanze.8410:

Borghal.1635:

laokoko.7403:

I like to know how you balance trading post since the profit can go from negative big number to a really large positive big numver.

If you’re not being sarcastic, first idea that came to mind is make end products (NOT anything that could be crafted further) account-bound on purchase as if you’d equipped them.
Second idea: Make exotic gear less rare.
Sure, they have their flaws, but that’s the idea of an idea; a sketch to be worked out.

What would it change, if we make precursors AC on purchase? It was mentioned and explained many times, even by Devs, that it would change nothing at the price of them because prices are driven by supply and demand of the general player base.
And how is exotic gear rare/expensive? It takes about 5-10 hours to fully gear a character in exotics.
And both changes, if they were implemented, would change nothing of the way and magnitude, tp merchants make their gold.

I think they just want to cut the profit for flippers/investers. So they’ll have miserable gold per hour too.

Well then better stop thinking and start reading, It has been spelled out so many times it’s not funny. If the goal is to somewhat equalize opportunities, it doesn’t matter which way it goes, right? Nerf the TP, buff the rest of the game, whatever. IF you indeed acknowledge that non-investment gold gain in this game is miserable, then that just proves there is a problem to be solved.

And to Wanze: I think – and that is only my gut feeling – it couldn’t make things worse, at least. Because then you wouldn’t have people trying to buy low, sell high, driving the price even higher.

And some exotics are rare enough to cost well over a 100g. It does have a lot to do with rarity, really. If what you can make in the MF dropped in the open world at a significant rate, prices would go down. Some of those weapons are crazy expensive because of crafting costs. Yes, Infinite Light, I’m looking at you. I see no reason for a 100 000% price disparity only for the looks.

Wanze.8410:

First of all, by comparing rewards of different playstyles, you make the game competitive towards yourself, thats your choice, but dont complain about competition then.

Sorry, but that just doesn’t make sense. If you want to do something decently in this game, you needs must interact with the TP. The competition lies in the fact that in the end, players want the same things and they compete for them on the TP, because as it is, it still is the most reliable way to get stuff. What I’m getting at is that I think the competition needs to be equalized somewhat. When that one person who just couldn’t get his dream weapon ShinyGoldenSword drop through PvE gives up and decides to try and buy it through the TP, he finds out that through all the hundreds of hours of monster slaying he enjoyed, he made nowhere near the 400 gold the weapon sells for and gets frustrated even more… player dissatisfaction is what I want to avoid here. Disclaimer: numbers entirely fictitious.

Wanze.8410:

For me, the TP is my core gameplay so how can you state that it isnt? Nearly every player interacts with it and some make better choices than others.
You still claim that average profits made on the tp per hour are higher than other game modes, which is simply not true. The average tp player doesnt make more gold with the tp than with other activities, propably even less considering the TP doesnt create gold.

1) For you, sure. For other players? More importantly, for the game designers? I don’t doubt there are players who consider Belcher’s Bluff their core gameplay. Or Keg Brawls. There are RP’ers out there, to them RPing is the core gameplay. BUT, none of these, and I would bet on that, would be considered the kind of gameplay that the game was built around. The TP exists so that players could exchange items in a safe environment, making money on it is a side effect, not the reason it is in the game, hence why it is not a core gameplay element. If that still doesn’t convince you, consider this: the game never nudges you towards using the TP. Yet if you want to play this game, you have no choice but to go beat up bad guys. You get invitations to dungeons. Tutorials for sPvP/WvW (albeit miserable ones). Encouragement to do events, to gather resource, achievements for all the things you can do… and so on. If someone once mistakes the TP for the gem store and they forget about it since they don’t want to spend money now, nothing’s ever going to nudge them to open the TP screen again as opposed to the other activities.

2) Actually, in the case of high-value low-supply stuff, this is more of a problem of rich speculators than anything else. But I digress. I don’t claim there is more profit to be made on the TP. I go by the fact that I have yet to see a farmer/dedicated player state his wealth in the tens of thousands, whereas in this subsection there is no shortage of such people being mentioned.

Wanze.8410:

Basically each point of karma values at 1 copper atm, bloodstone dust more than 10c, a skillpoint at least 50s up to 3g. I dont see those rewards factored into the equation, when comparing different playstyles. I dont get those rewards on the tp but they are needed in order to craft endgame rewards, so how does my ability to extract more gold from the tp make me earn those endgame rewards at a faster pace?

Because it’s all about volume. The speed at which you acquire gold is the real dealbreaker, the rest of the game’s resources is way on the sidelines. For example, you know how many skillpoints you can earn in a timeframe, you know the price isn’t going to change and you don’t need to compete with anyone to get them.

laokoko.7403:

I like to know how you balance trading post since the profit can go from negative big number to a really large positive big numver.

If you’re not being sarcastic, first idea that came to mind is make end products (NOT anything that could be crafted further) account-bound on purchase as if you’d equipped them.
Second idea: Make exotic gear less rare.

Sure, they have their flaws, but that’s the idea of an idea; a sketch to be worked out.

Fenrir.3609:

Except it hasn’t.

When someone points out exactly why different systems can and do have different potential gains is specific areas. Countering that with"but they should all give the same gold, the game is not competitive!" is not a very good argument to make. At all.

Oh nobody is disagreeing with you that they can and do have different potential gains. No need to argue for that :-) It’s just that some of us believes it is against the philosophy of the game to allow for large differences, and this argument is especially about the fact that one of them seems dominant, one that isn’t even gameplay in the first place. And for reasons that have been stated over and over again. I just summed it up my last post, in fact, but you conveniently dodged that.

The argument is also not that “the game is not competitive” because as it stands, yes it is. But it shouldn’t be unless you want it to. If the game invites you to go do PvE with friends, you -as a new unaware player- don’t expect to fiercely compete with others. That’s the core point and unless you believe that everyone should be forced into competing, there is really nothing to dismiss that with. The argument is less of economics and more of deign philosophy.

I’d really appreciate it, since you’re already taking time to reply, if you replied to everything.

Such friendly replies… :P

Fenrir.3609:

Borghal.1635:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If I want to spend 10 hours in Keg Brawl rather than farm Orr, I should not be entitled to the same rewards. If you want to make money, you do things that generate money.

Why should you not?

It’s been explained why.

And dismissed as a minor problem.
EDIT: Meh, one sentence replies are ridiculous.
Seriously, if everyone had the potential to gain more or less the same amount of money per time, then the only thing differentiating you from the next guy would be how long you play. That is a good thing
If you desired something of high value, all you would have to do is bunker down and farm more than average. There would be no people barring you from getting to that goal because they have much higher profits per time. It wouldn’t be possible.

In a casual game, inasmuch as this one is, reward gain should me more about time spent playing (also real money) than cleverness at finding profitable activities orthogonal to the main focus of the game.

Ensign.2189:

100% of endgame items (I’m pretty sure you mean precursors, why be obtuse about it) a

That’s simply not true. Many people don’t even like legendaries and don’t want to pursue them. Endgame content in a broad sense, which we are talking about, would be exotic/ascended gear of your aesthetic choice.

tolunart.2095:

Borghal.1635:

Why should you not? It’s an activity they put in there, not emergent gameplay. It already is being rewarded (via achievments) so there’s really no reasons it couldn’t be reward as much as anything else you can do that the devs put there.

(Though I sincerely doubt the devs expected someone to spend all their ingame time by Keg Brawls. Now dungeoneering/farming open world/sPvP/WvW, I’m fairly sure they did expect.)

Sounds good to me. My wife and I are going to spend the next six hours in Divinity’s Reach, standing near one of the big statues RPing. Give us each 6g/hour for this, plus karma and XP.

RP is a prime example of emergent gameplay, so you kinda missed the point on that one.

On a side note, oh how I’d love some serious RP. But this is not the game for it, now less than ever when RP’ers don’t even have their own server anymore.
Oh poor forgotten Ultima Online, the memories will never fade… :-)

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If I want to spend 10 hours in Keg Brawl rather than farm Orr, I should not be entitled to the same rewards. If you want to make money, you do things that generate money.

Why should you not? It’s an activity they put in there, not emergent gameplay. It already is being rewarded (via achievments) so there’s really no reasons it couldn’t be reward as much as anything else you can do that the devs put there.

(Though I sincerely doubt the devs expected someone to spend all their ingame time by Keg Brawls. Now dungeoneering/farming open world/sPvP/WvW, I’m fairly sure they did expect.)

I’d add – don’t go ACp2, it’s too risky if ppl can’t handle the boss fight at the end. Or rather, if you think your group wouldn’t be high on the damage end.

If you’ve got more time after those mentioned above -
COF2 is fine too, although features a bit of waiting, same goes for HotW1+2. Personally I like TAup too.

Wanze.8410:

So if there is a cheap dye that looks very similiar in your eyes and you dont think the exclusive dye is worth the difference, why not just buy the cheap one but complain about the high price of the other one?

I wouldn’t, to be sure. But then this is not about us. This is about people who don’t even know there is a wiki. (Dwayna knows I’ve seen one too many in dungeons)

Fenrir.3609:

Let’s get this straight so I fully understand your position. You think that every system should offer the same potential gold reward regardless as to the fact that the mechanics, merits and factors involved might be utterly different?

It is important to understand the circumstances.
When it comes to a game that offers so many different playstyles yet presents goals that are not unique to each playstyle (as in, everybody needs to farm gold at some point) but actually common across all activities (as the much-discussed Legendary weapons certainly are), YES every player should have the same odds of “success” regardless of which path they enjoy.

I’m of the opinion that whatever play path you enjoy, if you set out for such a goal, you should reach it at a constant speed given only by your effort and not by which path you are taking. As in, all ingame activities, provided you do them to the max potential, provide around the same average gold per hour.

Of course what I’d really like would be account-bound rewards specific to each paths, but that is even less doable, obviously. Currently you have dungeon sets, which are exactly what I have in mind – that’s fine, but it’s too little. WvW players get nothing special. PvP get nothing special. Open-world content guys get nothing special. But the rest of items, which is a vast majority, is obtainable by GOLD. If you want to work efficiently towards your goal, you have but one path to choose. If you don’t someone’s gonna beat you to it. Holds especially true for precursors.

juno.1840:

If the exact dyes were sold for gems, then you’d have a feedback effect between the gem conversion and the trading post. Dyes on the TP could only get as high as the equivalent price in gems (minus the buy/sell hysteresis margin for gem exchange).

What’s so bad about “account bound”? Insofar as I know, all of the stuff on the gem store IS account bound, which is probably part of the reason why you can’t buy weapon skins with gems but must go through the BLC lottery unlike armor skins.

(On a side note, this forum subsection feels like the same 10 people divided into two teams throwing words at each other relentlessly with no effect whatsoever. I’ve yet to see someone say “you are right”, even though both sides obviously present fair arguments at times.) And I have this feeling after only a few days of hanging around here…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Borghal.1635:

Aidan Savage.2078:

KOPPER.1458:

As others have points out it isn’t driven by color but by rarity of that color

This is also a blatant mistruth. I’ve bought rare dyes before at prices below masterwork quality. Dye color prices are driven by the players’ desire to have that color combined with the supply, or lack, of the dye.

You just confirmed it yourself.

He confirmed that the market is working as intended.

What does that have to do with someone disputing something and confirming it in the same post

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Speculation is what drives this economy. Sometimes is works, sometimes not. Overall, it’s a fact of life that you must learn to live with when interacting with this economy.

The latter holds true for inflation as well, so yours is still a hypothesis. 3 weeks is a lot for speculation on a high demand market. When do we start calling it inflation then?

Fenrir.3609:

Now you suggest that system A should give the same “potential” return in terms of gold gain (point 5.) as B, really?

Sure, because we are not in a competitive game as a whole. In PvE, you shouldn’t have to compete with others, that’s what PvP is for.

The competitive/risk element of B is the problem, really.

Competing directly with other players should be a choice.

Using the TP as it stands is not a choice, though.

Aidan Savage.2078:

KOPPER.1458:

As others have points out it isn’t driven by color but by rarity of that color

This is also a blatant mistruth. I’ve bought rare dyes before at prices below masterwork quality. Dye color prices are driven by the players’ desire to have that color combined with the supply, or lack, of the dye.

You just confirmed it yourself.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If I go to the GW2 Gem Shop and buy a hat, I get a hat.

If I go to the GW2 Gem Shop and buy a chance at getting a rare dye, I get a chance at a rare dye.

If you’re going to make comparisons, be sure you compare them correctly.

Point being not the accuracy of comparisons, but that randomness for money is bad on an individual level.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If a player doesn’t have the self control to refrain from making a purchase purely based on “ZOMG it’s rare”, then I have absolutely no problem selling it to them. Other times, it’s OCDs in which someone needs to have that certain shade of Black. In that case, then I feel good that I was able to satisfy their cravings.

Making people smile, one customer at a time.

Who are you to judge others’ self-control? The perception of rarity is, for example, what drives people to make legendaries and is generally a good source of motivation in non-competitive MM games. But that does not explain why similar shades should have dramatic price tags other than “drop rate”, which is what i posted about in the first place, saying it’s a self-fueling problem.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Again, you make the mistake of comparing rewards from events and quests, to TP profits. These are two inherently different things. One creates items and coin, the other trades it with a Gold Sink attached. I’ll try to explain it below.

Or, you know, you’re making the mistake of making a distinction where one is not relevant for the issue.

The reasons why it is unimportant have been stated many times already.

Southern.8973:

This is why most MMOs account bind pretty much everything from their Microtransaction stores

Yeah that would be so much better than the RNG stuff, I’m all for account-bound things. And as a side benefit ,it eliminates the “lucky you” feeling, where for every one happy player you get X unhappy :-)

After all, the only things that really need to be tradeable are those that players produce by playing – loot and crafted stuff.

Curtis Johnson.8456:

And the consumer benefit being the direct purchase price is largely driven by the true player value of each color.

That is the exact opposite of benefit. Since the dyes in the game are often very similar, in a lot of cases their popularity is determined mostly by their rarity and/or drop rate, not actual estetic preferences, resulting in a vicious circle.

-Oh, it’s rare? Then people will surely pay more for it, let’s stick it up at a high price.
-Wow, that is one rare colour, I gotta have it. The other one for 1/10 of the price looks a bit similar, but there’s got to be a reason the expensive one is so expensive.
Bang, price goes up more.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

gold is a reward, and the items you buy with gold is a reward.

Do you really think wanze with his 60k gold in value (many of which are items) can truely say he has gotten no rewards playing the TP?
I feel like you guys must be arguing semantics here, because you can’t possibly really beleive that getting gold and items is not a reward.

There is an important distinction that exists that must not be ignored, which is why the “semantics” are coming into play.

Wanze was not rewarded by the game. He was rewarded by other players.
That distinction is the reason why rewards obtained through playing the TP CANNOT be “balanced”. ArenaNet does not control them.

First, the players are not rewarding people willingly or even knowingly. In fact, I would wager many of them never stopped to think that they are selling not to the game, but to other players that ill then resell to more players.
Secondly, they can be somewhat balanced.
One such example is, albeit probably unintentional, the clunkiness, bad design and slow responsiveness of the TP UI. It’s so much slower than the other parts of game UI and thus it is annoying to do anything on the TP, and more importantly, the speed limits what you can do per unit of time. :-)

People keep defending “for the economy”… yet economy is only a supplemental feature to actual gameplay in itself and as such is not even required for the PvE/PvP stuff this game is about (if you believe the what the devs say, that is).

And to those who keep saying – but it IS gameplay! – well, I have never seen anyone mention “market trading” as a feature at the same level as crafting, guilds, dungeons, openworld bosses, WvW, PvP and so on. Until the day when goods trading is marketed as a reason to get this game, I will not consider it important.

One could even go as far as to say that trading is not _game_play at all. You are actually moving real measurable wealth between people much like on a real stock market. Factor in that some of the gold does indeed come from real money (albeit a tiny fraction) and the only difference between real trading and GW2 trading is that of volume.

BUMP FOR THE EMPRAH!

Wanze.8410:

If the average player is not dedicated towards minmaxing gold gain, he doesnt seem to need gold to enjoy the game.

Why would that be true? I bet there are people out there who would love to get their hands on some of the expensive stuff, but it just seems out of reach, making them if not sad, then certainly less happy. They might not even know what the idea of minmaxing is. Or they are not clever enough. Or they don’t even know they could look stuff up on the internet outside of the game… You get the point. Heck, I heard people whine they want to do more damage but they never consulted a single guide, for example. I know such players and I would even go as far as to say that among ‘casuals’ there is a significant portion of these.

Wanze.8410:

I once made 200g profit in an hour and i also sold items with more than 1000% profit margins. But guess what? That stuff doesnt happen very often to me and for most players never at all. Doesnt that mean that those profits should be disregarded as well when looking at my average profits?

Did you triple your total wealth by one totally random occurrence that you had absolutely no control over? No. That’s what I’m talking about.

Lothirieth.3408:

Borghal.1635:

Say you have…
1) harvesting and selling – 6gph
2) crafting – 12gph
3) doing dungeons – 10gph
4) world bosses – 12gph
5) PvP/WvW rewards – 7gph

I dunno if those were meant to be actual estimates but all aside from the harvesting seem fairly off base. 12g per hour doing world bosses? Um wat? I’d halve the dungeon rate as well.

Also harvesting has been severely nerfed due to the dumb megaservers.

Those were not meant as real estimates. Its a fictitious example of what the differences should ideally be like, to give you an idea what the percentage differences I was talking about would look like.

Wanze.8410:

So youre complaining all this time that its too hard for you to get exclusive skins. Then you get one as a drop and it somehow doesnt count towards your goal?

It is not about me. It’s about getting the idea of an average income of a player that is not dedicated to minmaxing gold gain.
When determining how long you will work towards something you want, you cannot account for random 200gold item drops. That stuff may never happen again. For a lot of people it never does at all, instead they get exo’s much lower in value. The Thorn didn’t drop because the game felt I needed more gold. I just got extremely lucky, like buying a few keys and getting 5 claim tickets in 10 chests.

Wanze.8410:

Borghal.1635:

I can add my numbers to the pile :-) 300 hours clocked and all the money I’ve ever had I’d estimate at 100-150g. But then again, at least half of that time was spent with under-80s.

In a different topic on this forum you just stated a day ago that you sold crying thorn of dreams for a net worth of 230g.
Please tell me how i should believe any numbers that you pull out of your hat to supplement your arguements to be true from this point on?

Simple. I do not count the Thorn into my income – it’s one of the most profitable drops in the game and being RNG based, you can’t count on it. A week ago I didnt have it. Now, with one drop, I have triple the gold I had before, but that hardly counts as standard when trying to compare things. It’ll probably take months at least, maybe statistically I will even never get such a valuable find again.

If all of that doesn’t make sense to you, just imagine I wrote that a week ago before it dropped. The hours and gold would be spot on without neglecting anything.

I can add my numbers to the pile :-) 300 hours clocked and all the money I’ve ever had I’d estimate at 100-150g. But then again, at least half of that time was spent with under-80s.

I would say it has been overstated to exhaustion that skins are among the main endgame goals in this game, and that’s how I look at them.

^^ Yes, that is true. Only I would reword it such that too much of the game’s content is available only to a select few. I would love to have numbers on this, but I bet they don’t match, i.e. the 20% of difficult to attain items is not obtainable for at least 20% of the pl;ayers.

And this being a game, I would expect a system even more forgiving than that.

Behellagh.1468:

As for skins, the most expensive pure skin for staffs is fused at about 450g. Which at current exchange rates is roughly $87. Yes, outrageous. That same $87 can by roughly 80 keys. Trust me you aren’t going to get the 7 tickets you need for that skin from the 80 chests those keys unlock. More likely you will get only half the number you would need.

I read somewhere that the drops are around 1 ticket in 20-30 chests and the same amounts to scraps. So that makes it 7 tickets ~ at least 100 keys ~ 8 000 gems. To actually BUY the skin by converting gems to gold – 6 500 gems.
So I suppose in the end people should be thanked for putting it up on the TP? :P Either way the price is insane :-)

Behellagh.1468:

Neither is Xanthium (currently unattainable)

I think that one is attainable. Since I just dropped a dagger from the same series in TA Aetherpath I assume the staff would drop too… or was it taken out of the loot tables for some reason? That would explain its obscene price.

I have a somewhat related question – how do you judge the velocity of an item?

Well then, you’re the only one talking about the game activities in a discussion that revolves around expensive items on the trading post. No-one disputed the availability of activities.

And bringing RNG to the table is pointless. It works out for the economy, it does not work out for player experience. For each one of you that dropped Dusk, there are hundreds upon thousands of players that have never seen such a valuable drop.

tolunart.2095:

I said it.

95% of the game, the loot and so on is accessible to everyone whether they spend an hour a week playing, or 12 hours a day. Because it’s accessible to everyone, everyone pretty much ignores that stuff.

Legendaries, the weapons skins from Halloween 2012, ascended gear, these things are not accessible to everyone. They are in limited supply, or they take some planning and effort to obtain. These are the things people complain about, because they were intended to reward players who are more dedicated to the game than the average, casual player.

The real hardcore players aren’t here complaining about them, they already got those things a year ago. The hardcore wannabees want the “stuff” that hardcores have, they just don’t want to make a hardcore effort to get them. Thus the complaints.

I’m a casual player, and I don’t want, or care about, the things that were put into the game to satisfy hardcore players. I believe that if you want the things the hardcores have, you should be prepared to make the same efforts the hardcores do to get them.

95%? I disagree and it is actually easy to verify – open up the wardrobe in a bank and rummage through skins of any sort – they’re sets, after all, so the item type doesn’t matter and there’s probably not a huge disparity between weapons/armor.
I’ll save you the trouble, I like looking at skins :-)
There’s roughly 100 varieties of staves in the game.
How many of those cost more than 100g to obtain?
Aetherblade, Bloody Prince, Dreamthistle, Fused, Sclerite, Scythe, Bifrost, Crossing, Legend, Winter’s Timber, Xanthium, Zodiac staff.
12 pieces.
Now factor in stuff that is simply unobtainable because it was tied to events:
Gnarled walking staff, Kasmeer’s, King toad’s, Storm Wizard’s, Super

You get 17 out of 95… basically, 20% is unavailable to most players. It is hard to present a convincing argument about what number is good – to me 5% – 10% would be ok, but 20% is too much.

tolunart.2095:

Borghal.1635:

But I still think they are way too expensive in a game that was supposed to be not so grind-heavy. Legendaries are the epitome of grind, buy or craft, doesn’t matter.

Somewhere along the line they realized that for a lot of traditional MMO players, the grind is the game. Without the carrot dangling just out of reach, they get bored and wander away. And players who don’t log in won’t spend money on the game…

There’s truth in what you say. But in this case for most players the stick is not a foot long, it’s a mile. Such players won’t spend money on the game either – they might buy the stuff they won’t grind, sure, but probably not at the prices the TP enforces (That’s just my speculation, admittedly. And I am from a poorer country than the devs).

Someone, I forget who, said in this or the other thread, that what casual gamers consume in weeks, a hardcore gamer blows through in hours or days.
There is more casual than hardcore players, that is a known fact, yet the content seems to be designed to keep the hardcores happy rather than provide incentive for the casuals.

tolunart.2095:

You said that you haven’t researched the exchange rates over time, you only looked at what they are right now.

Right now the rates for buying gems and converting to gold are around the best it’s been in the history of the game. If this is such a bad deal, what about at launch, when buying a Legendary would have cost $700 or more, or perhaps even $1000?

Whether this is a good deal or a bad deal is subjective, not objective. It is your opinion that it’s a bad deal. It’s my opinion that it’s a good deal because Anet didn’t even have to offer this service, and because the rates have changed over the last year and a half to heavily favor those converting gems to gold rather than the other way around.

We disagree, and I believe the source of the disagreement is your inexperience with this particular situation. If you had bought gems a year or so ago and converted them to gold, you would look at the exchange rate now and realize that it is so much more beneficial to you to buy gems now to exchange for gold compared to a year ago.

I find it incredibly easy to make gold in this game, I wander around doing stuff and loot falls into my pockets. So I don’t feel the need to buy gold.

What you’re doing is you’re glorifying what is essentially a case of out of the fire, into the frying pan. Better =/= good. I do not deny the situation is better than it used to be. However, it still remains bad as proved by the LoL comparison (and frankly, right now I don’t recall coming across a game with microtransactions where a single piece of content would go for that much, including those rip-off kittenty things like Clash of Clans and similar smartphone nonsense).

As an aside, I would love to know where and how you wander. I didn’t start counting my money in golds until my first char was 80 and even now, after 207 hours of ‘wandering’ with him, if I wanted something pricier, I would have to spend all of my 207 hours’ earning on it. And it would still have to be under 100g.
So if it’s not a secret, I would like to know what you consider as “wander around” and “easy to make gold”. The whole point of this thread of late is that those two activities seem mutually exclusive in this game.

Stone.6751:

Each time I read a post like this I’m more and more convinced that the players who get really upset about not having enough gold are all really just frustrated that they can’t get a Legendary weapon easily. They grind for the gold, which isn’t fun for them but they think its what they should be doing, and then they come to resent the game for it.

You’ll never really see one of these “I can’t make enough gold” posts without the person mentioning a Legendary.

Eh, it’s probably because the Legendaries are a great showcase of the pricing hikes. I for one find most of them downright ugly. But I still think they are way too expensive in a game that was supposed to be not so grind-heavy. Legendaries are the epitome of grind, buy or craft, doesn’t matter.

Having a legendary is not unique anymore and since there is such a limited variety of them, the probability of most people wanting one are actually kinda on the low side. (flower footsteps, omgwtf)