Guild Wars 2

OriOri.8724:

DGraves.3720:

I don’t know if you know this but the karma merchants that sell bell peppers and ginger are actually a “fix” to a significantly older problem.

Mind saying what that problem was…..

http://www.pcgamer.com/3000-guild-wars-2-players-permanently-banned-for-karma-exploit/

“Arenanet have permanently banned 3,000 players from Guild Wars 2 for taking advantage of an exploit that allowed them to craft high level weapons at “one thousandth of their normal price.” An emergency patch has closed the loophole and players that “significantly” exploited it have been thrown out of the game. 72 hour suspensions were dished out to lesser offenders."

I don’t know if you know this but the karma merchants that sell bell peppers and ginger are actually a “fix” to a significantly older problem.

Okay, so I would immediately get an infraction for typing “you suck, that’s ridiculous” so instead I will say the following:

I think you should revise your particular plan. Perhaps your build is not conducive to the situation you are in. If you know that there are a group of enemies that you will need to take care of and also know that you cannot afford to face them head on perhaps you should put effort into either kiting tactics, weapons that hit multiple targets at a time or condition damage.

Good luck to you, Commander!

First, let’s all stop using these two terms:

“Viable”.

“Meta.”

Because being “viable” in this game is stupidly easy. Nomad’s is “Viable”. And I am not even being facetious; you can make it work and people have.

Being “meta” in this game just means that it is the most popular, as per what meta actually means in latin, it does not really suggest or even guarantee anything near optimal.

For that matter the word “Optimal” is also garbage because in this game being “optimal” to a build path is based on your stats so “optimal” X is not “optimal for the class” it’s just optimal for X. It depends on your end-goal.

WoW, the comparison, actually has a single state of optimization. You can be viable in 3 (count them, 3!) different ways and playstyles. . . After you follow a very distinct path to that. GW2 suffers from analysis paralysis instead; there are so many combinations and options that work and are “viable” that it’s overwhelming and no one explores.

It’s basically an exercise in failing to find the sweetspot.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DGraves.3720:

“Beauty by definition refers to physical appearance (ie. beauty pageant).”

No it doesn’t. And it never did. Beauty as a concept going back to Greece actually referred explicitly to artistic endeavors, some of which are obviously not visual, like … singing.

What artistic endeavor did Sleeping Beauty do?

You are aware that “Sleeping Beauty” is the name of the story not the character right? Briar Rose is her real name.

Stop playing at madness.

“Beauty by definition refers to physical appearance (ie. beauty pageant).”

No it doesn’t. And it never did. Beauty as a concept going back to Greece actually referred explicitly to artistic endeavors, some of which are obviously not visual, like … singing.

fluffdragon.1523:

Thanks for the input so far, guys!

It’s really nice to see a lot of different opinions, and overall it sounds like the class will be worth picking up.

Well you’re asking in the Engineer forum. We’re a bit biased.

I like how PvE is just a series of complaints. XD

Quality not quantity. Hero channeling creates meaningful options. You can do an impressive amount of things with them and create a multi-variable approach to class roles in my opinion. Engineers have a lot of options but most of them aren’t even that good and generally it’s self-serving when you play since support engineer is all but dead.

Obtena.7952:

DGraves.3720:

No. Go Revenant. Engineer is not a bad class but it’s not particularly interesting either (long term).

Barring the fact that the OP doesn’t really tell us what part of the game he wants to play, your advice is that revenant is more interesting to play than Engi? What is your perspective here? I find that of all the classes, Revenant is way to restrictive in how you can choose skills or the number of skills available to be remotely interesting.

What are you actually asking? I understand you don’t find the Revenant to be interesting and that’s fine. But what do you want from me about it?

One more thing.

The 304 difference is really important.

The reason for this is that, as you’ve shown, the more toughness you add the smaller the different in effect. This is specifically because of that 304 difference. As you add to both bases the difference, and it’s impact, is reduced. This is obvious when you think about it:

304 / 3,040 is 1 / 10 right? 10%.

304 / 6,080 is 1 / 20 right? 5%.

It turns out that you actually rewrite this where you keep 304 as the denominator and show the difference as the numerator:

30.4 / 304 is 10%

15.1 / 304 is 5%.

And as you go you’ll also find that these are representative of the actual differences in damage taken. You’re just tracing this “base” as the two sides rise. So those should be the real different damage values when applied so long as you find the points where it is true for the two when combined.

Now combining them can be a tad difficult. I’m not a math teacher (sadly) so I can’t really explain it well.

24% is where you start. You take the measure of the initial difference and then as you see when you add to the bases in any amount you work away from the initial start towards an upper limit which, depending on how the game rounds and the maximum value to begin with, may or may not ever be equivalent. Basically you need that data in order to solve the rest of the problem and find the slopes and so forth and so on because now you can take the two data points, initials, compare them to any given data points which you can call “base + initials” for the values you are using and then from there create a slope and find out how inefficient light armor is in respect to heavy armor.

As for the 577/500-1 that is going to, or should, produce 15.45five% which is the original numbers from the above problem:

1,000,000 / 1967 = 508.39
1,000,000 / 2271 = 440.33

508.39-440.33 = 68.05

68.05 / 440.33 = .1545five

In short it’s the same error. It’s extremely subject to change based on damage incoming or “taken” (just change 500 to 600 and it shifts) as a result. This is because it’s a comparative slope problem that deals with a triangle.

It’s trigonometry.

The “base” of the trianble is the 24% difference, the lines that rise will run towards as though they would cross indefinitely but never actually cross numerically are the sides of the triangle. Though they probably would if the data were treated as integers though they should meet and never surpass one another.

It’s just not important. If 15.5% satisfies you I’m plenty satisfied as well.

The problem is they aren’t open to 15% either.

As we’ve noticed the base is a constant but the defense value is not. The above actually isn’t going to be a stable ratio. Easily proven. Just change the numerator:

2,000,000 / (967 + 1000) = 1016.777
2,000,000 / (1271 + 1000) = 880.6693

Method A: 1 – 880.6693 / 1016.777 = 13.39%

Method B: 1016.777 – 880.6693 = 136.1075

136.1075 / 1016.777 = 13.39%

Whichever method you use (you used you can see that the ratio shifts based solely on the incoming damage as well.

To answer this question you actually need a different math problem altogether. You want to solve for equivalent damage and absolute loss.

So let’s create a reversible.

Original: 1,000,000 / 967 = 1034.126

Reversed solving for power: 1034.126 * 967 = 1,000,000

So then let’s set a damage benchmark of 500 and solve for “incoming attack”. Then follow up with the heavy armor and absolute difference.

X / 967 = 500.

500 * 967 = 483,500 attack.

500 * 1271 = 635,500 attack

500 * -304 = -152,000 attack.

So no matter what you add to both sides you’ll always lose, in light armor, defense against 152,000 damage if the equivalent is 500 in heavy armor.

This is useful because this means that we can find the finding the slope of the graph now that we have stable numbers. This means you’ll always lose the absolute defense of 304 * damage taken no matter what your total armor, boons, or toughness and traits.

This also means that the “opening” for damage is going to linearly change stably as we merge the two based entirely on the defense values (because they’re the only inherent differences ignoring traits) but there’s a limit (math limit) where the two will never cross so while it may seem that the ratios change over time they actually don’t.

You’ll find a stable rate of change if you do all the math of 7.5% in ascended defense along the length of the line per X points change (you can shift the scale however you wish since its a ratio) based off of taking the absolute loss over the lower bounds subtracted from the absolute loss over the upper bounds.

Blah blah this is my day job. ????

Basically math isn’t magic and you don’t just take a flat damage reduction based solely on random numerators.that doesn’t solve the problem. A slope does.

No. Go Revenant. Engineer is not a bad class but it’s not particularly interesting either (long term).

All I want is my stats back and more options for traits. I don’t want another 250 skill point grind fest. I just want the trait line without the garbage “journey”.

IndigoSundown.5419:

DGraves.3720:

And you actually bring up another “silent” issue. The armor classes themselves. Soloing an enemy on a Warrior isn’t just easier because it’s a Warrior but because Warriors naturally have the most defense. Since defense is a divider every point of it counts so the 304 point difference in ascended armor is huge. That’s literally 24% of the heavy armor. So just choosing an elementalist opens you to 24% more damage.

That’s insane.

That’s not quite how it works. To get 24%, you’ve divided the 304 point difference by the heavy armor’s defense stat. However, the Armor Stat is the divisor, not the defense stat. Armor is the sum of Defense + Toughness.

A level 80 character in all glass has 1000 Toughness, so a glass warrior in Ascended heavy has 1000 + 1271 – 2271 Armor. The glass Ele in Asc. has 1000 + 967 – 1967.

304/2271 = ~13.4%. However, to see the true difference we should divide by the light Armor stat of 1967. 304/1967 = ~15.5%

Apply the Armor stat to damage to check. I’ll use a base hit of 1,000,000 for simplicity.

1,000,000 / 1967 = 508.39
1,000,000 / 2271 = 440.33

508.4 – 440.3 = 68.1

68.1/440.3 = .15467, ~15.5%

This is a statistical error known as the “aggregation problem”. It’s when you take distinct subsets of data and apply them to global systems. I’ll call “defense” or the armor value set A and character value set B.

A: Light is 967. Heavy is 1271. 1271 – 967 = 304.

B: Character A is 1,000. Character B is 1,000. 1,000 – ,1000 is 0.

What this means is that before aggregation we can note where the actual difference is by calculating A and B separately. Afterward we would aggregate them to see the total effect. So you really are open to 24% more damage by choosing a light armor class.

Post aggregation is going to give a lot of difference specifically because it the differences are inherently non-linear. To show that let’s take the same 1,000,000 but let’s add exotic max toughness of 1289 to both.

1,000,000 / (967 + 1000 + 1289) = 307.13

1,000,000 / (1271 + 1000 + 1289) = 280.9

307.13 – 280.9 = 26.23

26.23 / 280.9 = 9.34%

Okay, so why isn’t it still 15.5%?

It’s because it’s a division problem. As you compress the input you’re going to get smaller and smaller numbers. If you added 275 to both totals assuming food and sigils it becomes 8.61% and so forth and so on.

So ultimately we can only take one set at a time and compare it so yes you are in fact open to 24% more damage by armor defense alone which is the only variable that necessarily must differ.

In economics this is called “Ceteris paribus”.

Obtena.7952:

Hey let’s be clear here. I don’t disagree that Eng isn’t in the best place but the argument that it needs love because ‘not popular’ and ‘not meta’ is just silly. It also doesn’t address any real deficiency with the class, since those things aren’t really issues.

Anyways, you’re a good example of what I’ve already stated … you need to find a class that works for you … there are 8 others you can choose from.

To say that makes literally no sense.

If you build the theoretically perfect class that no one enjoys playing then it doesn’t really matter that you’ve articulately crafted the theoretically perfect class.

The playerbase is the focus. It does not matter how the developer feels about what they are doing if the playerbase rejects it just like it doesn’t matter if you think you’ve designed a great game if everyone generally agrees that it’s terrible!

To ignore public opinion and state that there is objectivity in the design is … just a failure to understand how games and gaming and development of any product actually works. It’s useless if no one wants it. And fewer and fewer people do.

That’s a problem. That’s the definition of a problem!

As far as I am concerned you’re just trolling now.

AliamRationem.5172:

DGraves.3720:

Haishao.6851:

The reason people don’t invest on passive defense is because GW2 is an Action RPG and passive is an antonym to active.

*Passive defense is there because they allows people who aren’t good at the game to also be able to complete every content. *

That isn’t true. There is plenty of content you cannot survive without a solid skill level. Passive defense in this game does not even guarantee you one more hit.

That’s true. Many bosses have attacks that you’re expected to dodge and toughness/vitality aren’t always enough to ignore that (and even if they are, it isn’t a good idea!). I think where survival stats come into play is when there are so many sources of damage that you can’t just dodge it.

For example, mushroom queen. You’re stuck in a small area and she’s crippling and throwing projectiles and area effects. You can’t avoid it all. It simply isn’t designed in such a way that you can dodge frequently enough even if you had room to do so. In that scenario, I find toughness/vitality are useful because they allow you to sustain where your active defenses are inadequate.

I’m not in the “Zerker or you’re bad” camp (because I’m not a kitten), but I think the basic premise is spot on: If you’re having trouble with sustaining and not necessarily avoiding the pass/fail attacks you’re expected to dodge, then vitality/toughness might not be such a bad idea. Call me bad, but I can solo mushroom queen on my celestial ele where I can’t manage it in zerker gear. Does that make this gear relevant enough? Probably not. But there’s at least some purpose for it outside of organized group content.

And you actually bring up another “silent” issue. The armor classes themselves. Soloing an enemy on a Warrior isn’t just easier because it’s a Warrior but because Warriors naturally have the most defense. Since defense is a divider every point of it counts so the 304 point difference in ascended armor is huge. That’s literally 24% of the heavy armor. So just choosing an elementalist opens you to 24% more damage.

That’s insane.

Haishao.6851:

The reason people don’t invest on passive defense is because GW2 is an Action RPG and passive is an antonym to active.

*Passive defense is there because they allows people who aren’t good at the game to also be able to complete every content. *

That isn’t true. There is plenty of content you cannot survive without a solid skill level. Passive defense in this game does not even guarantee you one more hit.

Obtena.7952:

You’re proposition is simply an opinion. Certainly, some people will feel that way though, but that’s neither here nor there. You’re claims are unsubstantiated and can even be viewed as sensational. You have no idea how popular the class is or not. It’s quite irrelevant anyways. If you think Anet tries to target some popularity level with each class, then it is you that has this wrong. Anet makes various classes available to provide different styles of play, not to make it harder for them to make them all popular with players. I don’t suspect for a second Anet cares about the popularity of any class, as long as players who play it do so for the right reasons. Clearly, if you’re miserable playing it, you haven’t chosen the class for the right reasons.

yes I have been involved with a development team … and to be clear, your analogy is nonsense because in this game, you do have choice … the choice of class. It’s not black and white like play or don’t play. Ignore it if you will, but the reason there are classes with various kinds of gameplay options is exactly to avoid situations where players are locking into playing a class they don’t like, for whatever the reason.

Will Engi survive 2017 if it’s not meta .. it sure will, because people choose to play it for reasons that aren’t related to meta. Perhaps the question is if meta players will recognize that it’s more reasonable for them to chase the meta with good class choice instead of Anet failing to chase meta into their game state and class development.

That’s not the question I even asked. As a matter of fact you’re more caught up on the topic of the engineer being meta than I ever was. I looked at the polls, year over year, on Reddit to see the popularity of classes and who main’d what and so forth and so on and you can easily see a decline in interest in the Engineer. It’s a playerbase decision and phenomenon.

Do you even main Engineer?

And I will spare you the requirement of clarifying exactly what you did or developed since your understanding of marketing is … beyond words.

Obtena.7952:

You’re post confirms what I suspect … people that make the game about meta only care about meta. Engi is both functional, by itself and in groups. It’s only when you introduce meta into that equation that you lessen the value of the class. Again, if you only see a class for it’s meta-value, then of course your only going to kitten a class and it’s performance against how it stacks up in the meta. Unfortunately, the game is so much more than that. So Ok, for some people this is everything, so I won’t debate that but that leads to my next point.

Let’s get one thing clear. The proposition you’re making is completely false. As a matter of fact it is quite literally the opposite of what I’m trying to propose; the engineer is so difficult to play that it isn’t meta because it is not fun. You do not maintain “least popular class” for years in a row because you’re a blast to play.

You’re taking a symptom (something being inherently unpopular) and applying it as the disease (player’s opinions are just founded on social popularity) which is backwards.

There is nothing conditional about the folly of chasing meta as a game developer. YOu might think I’m being glib by saying there are other classes you can play if Eng falls out of favour, but that is the answer, especially for the people that only care about meta status. There is no reasonable approach for Anet to ensure that every class that ’isn’t meta’ is made meta every time the game changes, just so people can play the class they want and get the highest levels of performance. Ideally sure, we would have that but over 4 years later, we don’t. That’s not just GW2 either. It’s prevalent in lots of MMOs with a diverse range of classes. I will leave it to you to think about why that is.

Have you ever been on any form of development team? Like even just making a basic card game for children won’t work with this approach. “Oh, you don’t like the rules? Well, you can always just not play!”

Um…

AliamRationem.5172:

DGraves.3720:

AliamRationem.5172:

You tell me. Would you run a weird survival build like celestial ele or marauder thief for solo open world? Or is just not worth your time when you could get the job done faster by bringing friends or running with the zerg? Because somehow I doubt glass builds are soloing a lot of the champions in HoT (okay, maybe necro or ranger can but the so-called squishy classes?). Am I wrong here? Or is it just that it straight doesn’t matter enough to people to register the value of survival stats in these scenarios?

Unfortunately you are. A lot of individuals who solo content can do so in just about any gear and typically don’t run any form of tanky gear. It’s just far more unforgiving but by no means impossible.

I myself have done it getting most of my HoT skill points by myself for a few classes. ;_; Suck at Mesmer though, I do.

Well, I’ll believe it when I see it. Let’s just say that hasn’t happened yet, despite spending a year playing this game I don’t see players in berserker gear soloing any but the easier HoT champions (pet classes aside because AI is stupid). Of course you don’t have to, and that was rather my point. There are plenty of easy champs and communes you can choose instead to get you hero points, and just ask for help on those that aren’t worth the trouble. And perhaps that’s why despite spending so much time in solo play, most players don’t consider non-meta builds worthwhile.

YouTube.

AliamRationem.5172:

You tell me. Would you run a weird survival build like celestial ele or marauder thief for solo open world? Or is just not worth your time when you could get the job done faster by bringing friends or running with the zerg? Because somehow I doubt glass builds are soloing a lot of the champions in HoT (okay, maybe necro or ranger can but the so-called squishy classes?). Am I wrong here? Or is it just that it straight doesn’t matter enough to people to register the value of survival stats in these scenarios?

Unfortunately you are. A lot of individuals who solo content can do so in just about any gear and typically don’t run any form of tanky gear. It’s just far more unforgiving but by no means impossible.

I myself have done it getting most of my HoT skill points by myself for a few classes. ;_; Suck at Mesmer though, I do.

Obtena.7952:

Meta is related more to optimization than it is popularity. If there was no reason to optimize in this game, there would be no meta. This should be obvious at this point because meta changes all the time; it’s a response by players to the state of the game.

The idea that Eng isn’t popular because it doesn’t have meta-value is held only by people who care only about how the Eng stands in the meta. The only part of the playerbase that majorly ignores classes that don’t have meta-value is the SUBSET of the whole playerbase that cares about it. Maybe this will surprise you … people don’t always choose a class because of where it stands in the meta. Meta-value is not the only way to kitten class health. I don’t even think it’s the primary one.

You’re reading into it backwards. You don’t optimize things you don’t care about, right? So if there’s no optimization effort (meta) then no one cares about it. This is reflected in stats about who mains Engineer which has been lower all along. The number of major contributors etc. to Engineers versus other classes is significantly lower.

Because no one actually cares about class health. What’s really happening is we care about social place. Most players who play the game intend to do so with other players hence why you get questions about “roles” and “viability”. Can you play any class you want in Nomad’s armor? Yes. Are you going to be considered a great player when grouping up? No. You’ll be a liability. The truth of the matter is that you have two questions:

1. Is the Engineer functional?

2. Is the Engineer group functional?

The answer to 1 is not answered by any meta. Hell it just has to work and respond properly. The answer to 2 is solely answered by player interest. It is the only way to really note how effective and sought after the class is. If the class is ill-sought then perhaps it needs to be tweaked or boosted as did happen with Scrapper but unfortunately overcompensation occurred for the rest of the Engineer core being still total and utter far too difficult to play crap.

Frankly, i think ‘not being meta’ is a kitten poor reason to do anything to a class. I don’t get the point of trying to chase the meta for the subset of players that put such an emphasis on it, especially when it changes with other game changes and when players can play whatever class they want. *It’s a fools errand to do such a thing. *

This is conditional.

If you want to run around in Raids for instance, that’s just what you want to do, then you need to have something recognizable. No, you don’t need a world class build or to break the record books but there are limits to what will and will not work. Again, you can’t show up to the party in Nomad’s. However for players like myself who often play alone the whole deal is turned on it’s head. What I think is important is going to differ and I won’t care at all what is meta when I’m in Bitterfrost Frontier.

To be blunt Obtena if a class has no “meta-value” what this means is that the playerbase is majorly ignoring it. What “meta” is a symptom of is popularity. The lower the meta-value the lesser the popularity and, often in the eyes of the general public, relevance. So in turn what you call “chasing meta” is actually more akin to “measuring popular approval and interest”.

If there’s no interest there’s no meta-build because no one is making the communal effort to rework, tweak, calculate, etc.

Thanks to your input I decided to get the Copper-Fed.

Thank you Na.

But your solution is to make the game harder and less forgiving. I think what you consider “interesting” is one thing, and you are free to your opinion, but what makes something viable such as sustainability (which is what Vitality, Toughness & Healing Power are) is separate from personal goals and really just a question of algorithmic behavior.

If you want players to actually use passive defensive techniques you need to create a system where strikes aren’t “large” but strikes are “quick”. Sustainability is a counter to damage pressure not raw damage so having 3,000 armor and 30,000 health in a game where a massive strike can do upwards 10,000 damage to a fully decked character is pretty much not going to ever see a sustainability model succeed.

You can prove this by running Nomad’s. You will die. Which should be effectively impossible to conceive but you will die.

The people who experiment with stats the most are rarely, if ever, the people who ask for this.

The people who experiment with stats the least and just want to go from meta A to meta B are usually the ones who “need” this.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Why is it ok to have added Karma sinks, but not Spirit Shard sinks? I’m confused on how that hurts the economy.

The more competing currencies you have the less every currency is worth which in turn means the less anything bought with those currencies is worth. If Ascended Trinkets could be sold every time there was a new way to get them they would drastically drop in price. This is the effect having multiple currencies and channels for acquisition especially when considering the volume the playerbase has.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

How about things you can buy such as (just throwing ideas out)

Temporary auras or a sparkle when you move your hands
Temporary mini pets
The ability to have another race’s dance or one of Guild Wars 1 dances for X minutes
One time use waypoints where you can port to any selected spot on a map you’ve already uncovered.
The ability to actually fly in PvE for X minutes (but not in areas where gliding is turned off). (Can have a cool down).
One time use sigil/rune extractor

Well these are definitely more unique. I know for a fact the sigil/rune extractor wouldn’t be accepted since it’s a gem store exclusive and used to funnel some gold out of the economy but otherwise it’s not as if having access to a temporary ability, perhaps a large sum of tomes / shards cashed in for a permanent pet or aura or effect, or minor convenience items that aren’t particularly lucrative (that’s for Anet to decide; I just don’t imagine the “warp to a friend” to be lucrative but I don’t have sales numbers) and have limited use with even more limited utility are probably all good candidates.

I say permanent on the pet / aura simply because making a large sum the goal means you have to support offloading a lot less from a seller’s vantage point. It’s highly efficient as it makes people actually want more of the crap they don’t want and then feel more rewarded when they trade it in. In real life it is why certain brands of cars can sell for millions of dollars even if they still can only go 40 mph down the road.

I have a silver-fed salvage-o-matic but was thinking of replacing it with a copper fed one. Is it worthwhile doing in your opinion?

We know this. That was covered hours ago. The actual reality though is that if you’re monetizing spirit shards you may as well bypass the conversions meaning you’re in fact monetizing ToK. It’s kind of like how Karma can now buy ascended trinkets by turning karma into winterberries and then buying them with the winterberries.

I’m purposefully leaving out the intermediary.

Well, that’s the problem; no one has any good suggestions. The product needs to be very unique, most systems in this game are either covered in uniqueness or suffering somewhere but off-limits. I mean unless you traded them in for materials for crafting or something that are difficult to build or could use them as substitutes in something you’re just not going to be able to produce something unique enough for ToK to become a currency.

You are aware that no one is arguing with you, right?

I probably shouldn’t have used the example because you’re stuck on it but the point was pretty simple: You need something unique.

Stand The Wall.6987:

not only does that not make sense, some people have hundreds of tomes.

Which now begs the question of how many can even be adequately and properly traded? This is an interesting aspect as well. Is it going to be 20:1? 80:1? Whatever we buy with them it probably cannot be a 1:1 relationship so what’s the price and how do you set it?

So now we have no product and no price.

Let’s get back to the matter at hand since, again, in order to even unlock the Mastery Points you have to be level 80 and complete an event related to HoT. You have to leave Queensdale.

( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Torn_from_the_Sky )

You have to do Torn from the Sky to even open Mastery lines.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

With your idea someone could max out central tryrian mastery lines and never leave a starting zone.

Level to 80. Do the minimum necessary to start masteries.
Do dailies in that starting map to get XP and writs of experience.
Turn the writs into tomes and get tomes from daily login bonuses.
Continue to get XP on mastery lines. Use tomes to buy mastery points per your suggestion. Complete all Tyrian mastery lines this way.

At any rate, ANet has already ruled this out as they could see what a bad idea it is to allow people to bypass the whole mastery leveling experience this way.

As it stands with Tomes not being tradeable and no stated conversion rate I highly doubt players would have enough. If it were 10 tomes to 1 mastery point even those with 300 or 400 would only get 30 to 40 so you couldn’t max out unless you had 670 + 80 to max the character.

Keep in mind that Mastery Points are account-wide so if you’re really worried about someone doing that having a completely new account that would be impossible. You would likely find the player trying to raise their character level versus their mastery points which don’t even unlock until 80. It is not possible to do this without leaving a starting zone unless you logged in everyday for months, did no other content whatsoever and already achieved 80 of them from the same process.

Mind you that’s strong dedication. <3

Not that I am defending the idea tooth and nail. Since I’ve not paid attention to the mastery lines myself even when they came out because I’ll never bother to build precursors and stopped Fractals over a year ago if you’re right, you’re right. However I digress instead to the main point behind the suggestion:

You would need something in the game that is not competed for regarding your currency idea. Turning ToKs into something else requires that something else to truly be unique or at least not acquirable through other popular means.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One can only earn 8 Mastery Points from the Core Personal Story, and none of the points are tied to Race. I’m confused about the 22 points you reference.

“Complete the sylvari personal story step “A Vision of Darkness”, “Eye of the Sun”, “Shattered Light”, or “Snuffing Out Embers”."

Same source.

You can earn 8 at a time from a specific story. You can actually earn I think 22 total if you did all the stories on all the races. 11 of them are actually “takeable” because you can’t repeat Victory or Death or any of the non-racial ones.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

DGraves.3720:

I already offered one: An alternate way to acquire Mastery points. Turning Tomes of Knowledge into Mastery Points even makes sense given the names and roles of the items in game.

And yes, we can leave Anet to do as they will mainly because they will regardless of what we say to do but I am just saying that the reason the idea may be rejected isn’t baseless or without sound merit. It isn’t whim. Economic reasoning suggests that replications and competing currencies are bad ideas; I imagine that’s doubly so in vacuum economies like games.

That’s a truly bad idea. It would allow people to bypass doing content that the devs have made for us and advance their mastery track by simply logging on every day to get ToK and by visiting the same vistas/harvesting/mining as dailies in low level areas

At any rate ANet said before HoT that ToK and mastery tracks was not an option. I expect they would say the same for the Mastery points.

I’m more referring to the Central Tyria mastery tracks but ( most of which aren’t listed in-game ) considering people are already just looking up the information as it is publicly available ( https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mastery_point_unlocks#Central_Tyria_mastery_points ) it is hardly any different. To complete Central Tyria would require 48/67 so damaging the tracks would be almost impossible and forcing players to replay the central story to earn said track progression wouldn’t necessary since 22 of the 67 available are all tied to personal story and some to ultimately character race.

Negating content is what players do. If we were to be so sanct abount content there wouldn’t be a need to monetize ToK or Shards. (Or sell Dungeon Runs or Jumping Puzzle “Solutions” [portals] to other players ).

I already offered one: An alternate way to acquire Mastery points. Turning Tomes of Knowledge into Mastery Points even makes sense given the names and roles of the items in game.

And yes, we can leave Anet to do as they will mainly because they will regardless of what we say to do but I am just saying that the reason the idea may be rejected isn’t baseless or without sound merit. It isn’t whim. Economic reasoning suggests that replications and competing currencies are bad ideas; I imagine that’s doubly so in vacuum economies like games.

I’ve always called it a prefix.

I’m not referring to raiding solely. I’m preempting the referral to raiding by stating that the class itself is difficult to play and the effort required for max damage is not valuable. This in turn also applies to other game modes; you can do many things far more easily in WvWvW, PvP, PvE, Fractals, etc. with other classes and less effort and investment.

This goes beyond damage into just playability.

Now that I think about it why is it that we don’t make armor out of the stuff we can’t ourselves destroy? Why is the High Commander of Tyria so impractical?

The class isn’t bad but it also isn’t particularly good at any given thing. Looking at this has made me wonder if the complexity of the thing is good or bad or even intended. I think at some point analysis paralysis kicks in and choosing a good role to play is becoming harder and harder because everything can be done in a more or less mediocre way.

And I am looking beyond “damage” I’m afraid for those who want to bring up pure damage builds. The amount of technical skill required far outstrips the actual value of the damage because if you’re looking at damage numbers genuinely most don’t differ by but a few thousand. To illustrate my point let’s say we have an Condiiton Engineer who does 32k per second. We pit him against a Condition Necro who happens to only get 29k per second with significantly less effort.

Taking 1m HP as a base you just divide it down to get the number of seconds, right?

1,000,000 / 32,000 is 31.25s

1,000,000 / 29,000 is 34.5s

34.5 – 31.25 = 3.23s?

I can live with not having max DPS (I don’t do world records) at the cost of not getting a hand cramp.

I don’t want to say it because I’ve played the Engineer since the beginning but I haven’t played my Engineer seriously for almost 7 months now? It just isn’t worth the effort. I love the class and the concept of the class and used to love the skill level but eventually it just got out of hand and became more or less outmoded by builds on other classes that are significantly easier to pull off and just about as effective.

I’m not certain but I think a lot of players feel the same way about the Engineer so the question isn’t “how do I save it!” but rather just whether you think it really is going to be meaningful to be an Engineer past this point in development if something major doesn’t change.

Why am I wearing armor that can be messed up by a bear against dragons? Am I that dumb?

Will the repair message ever not be “Good as new! You should be fine unless you start up bear-wrangling.”?

Because… I fight dragons now.

First GW1 is not GW2. It requires an elite class to even get something mildly like Essence of Celerity (Alacrity) with quicker cooldowns so a 20% difference is far greater here than it would be in GW1.

Taking an old economy from an essentially totally different game isn’t going to work. We know that +1 health regeneration and +10 armor is not going to break the bank in GW2 and making adjusted equivalents just to sink spirit shards/tomes and retro back to the original isn’t, in my opinion, good development.

Also if you want to discuss “boosts” you should pick a specific one. Yes, you can get many types from many sources but I don’t think there’s a food that boosts harvesting. For instance: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gathering There are 5 listed here. Not all of those 5 stack for harvesting. So now we have to look at what it really means to add one more a bit more carefully.

On the other hand boosting power and damage can be done in a myriad of ways and one more boost to that won’t break the game because enemies that have higher resilience are typically built for multiple players anyway so their HP will always outperform your damage increases. You cannot produce enough damage to greatly shift the outcome of a battle through boosts alone on a single character in normal gameplay.

Which brings us full circle. You need something that isn’t currently offered because of how you’ll either create a replica of little impact or something that is purposefully not present.

Well, “Gems” and “Gold” are in-game currencies.

What you’re asking is whether you can have multiple sources of currency for a specific type of item or service. The answer to that is “yes, but at a price”. The price being that every manner in which you open the avenue to acquisition cheapens the value of the item in question.

An example would be ascended trinkets. You now have five avenues to get them? One of those avenues includes three types of currency? The truth becomes that not having ascended trinkets becomes more and more inexcusable because of the numbers of means of acquisition.

The boosts and other elements can’t afford to suffer the same fate. For instance if everyone could just stack their own harvesting boons from every source possible with little to no cost (because of excess tomes / spirit shards gained naturally through gameplay) this directly effects the market.

When you have competing currencies you open yourself to a world of trouble because both direct and indirect effects occur. Indirect effects of ascended trinkets for instance will be players acquiring more loot faster because they are killing things that much faster and having an easier go at the content ascending through the ranks on their own that much faster. Direct effects like harvesters are a bit more tangible and obvious and don’t require an explanation.

“Guild Enhancements.png Guild Enhancements are 24-hour buffs that, once unlocked by a guild, can be obtained free of charge from a vendor in guild halls.”

This is a perk of being part of a guild. It is not equivalent because it is not available those who are not part of guilds. This isn’t the same. There’s no exchange of currency.

You’re talking specifically about turning something into a currency.

You’re circumventing the gem store. The items that you have to be able to buy cannot be bought anywhere else and have no similar replacements in order to not have a competing currency.

Perhaps Tomes of Knowledge could be turned in for something that granted Mastery Points instead? That would be your best bet since no currency currently effects that and the item itself is not tradeable or replicable.

Both examples turn ToK/Shards into Gems which is essentially converted back into Gold through gameplay.

Which is my point about “competing currencies”.