Guild Wars 2

The real craft is buying items off the TP through buy orders and then selling them for more to people who have to have the item “now” rather than waiting for it to show up at their asking price.

Many servers, but only one economy. The TP is universal.

I think you’re over-simplifying the capabilities of some of the bot programs available. I’ve seen the mechanics of some of these in past games such as FFXI and WoW and both could remove unwanted items from inventory. The WoW bot I saw could be programmed to dump certain items and tracked back to an NPC when the inventory was filled to sell and continue pathing again.

I don’t advocate botting, but just tossing junk in their inventory is a simple programming fix that won’t stop the problem.

I would also like to note that while some players may find the boosters useful, I have never much considered +strength, +rejuv, or +exp to be of much use in my play style. I did use the +magic find booster I received from this round of chests, but didn’t receive anything beyond my normal loot expectations for the duration. If anything, I got far less loot altogether while the booster was active. I used a good handful of the tonics in the costume brawl, which wasn’t useful but at the time I had no other use for them. I received a few BL gathering tools, which are few in quantity and fared me no better returns (as far as the mining picks were concerned).

I won’t be buying any more keys, ever. That is, unless I read a majority of positive reviews on the forums here beforehand. I just didn’t feel like I got the entertainment value I had expected with the items I received. The rest of the event has been fun from what I have experienced, so I will just stick to that in the future.

I completely agree with the sentiments in this post. I would also like to applaud ArenaNet for listening to their customers and making an addition to their event with the mad king chests. All of mine were pretty much fruitless, but I did appreciate the gesture.

I think the game’s future will be forever changed by the feedback received from this event – specifically in regard to the black lion chests. This gives me hope. Sometimes disappointment can be swallowed much easier when you know that the other party listened as tried to make things a little better.

First off: this is not required reading. This is not a complaint thread. There is no you v.s. me or wrong or right. This is one player explaining his thought process to other players in a helpful manner. Take it for what you will.

I have this portable mystic forge sitting in my inventory right now. It was my reward for somewhat participating in the event ArenaNet released to deplete some of the extra resources that had flooded the economy. The original plan was to fully participate in the event, dumping load after load of excess virtual goods into the mystic forge in hopes of randomly getting the pieces I needed to build the finished product. Or perhaps at least get enough junk gemstones to sell to a vendor so as to recoup some of the cost.

Not too far into the event I came to a realization. At the current rate things were proceeding it would cost a fortune compared to my limited economic buying power at the time. I was about to give up entirely when I had an idea. I immediately sold all the bits I had collected and bought the main components and the rest of the coins needed to make the final transmutation. In all, I probably spent about 3.5 gold on my portable mystic forge. I still haven’t found it to be game changing or meaningful, but I know I can always dump in on the TP for anywhere from 11-17g.

Speed forward to yesterday. Like many others I was duped into buying keys to open some of the 69 Black Lion Chests I had sitting in my bank. I bought 5 keys, got one more from a chest, and nothing Halloween related. This is when the lesson really clicked. I wanted to participate in the event the way it was “intended” or “advertised”. But this mode of thinking will not benefit the general populace. Just like the previous event with the mystic forge, many people tossed piles and piles of resources away but the only real profiteers were the ones who provided those resources to the “gamblers” at ever increasing rates. Even those who simply bought the components from those who gave up hope, assembled the final portable forge, and resold the finished product made a decent exchange.

As unfortunate as it is, the game model as it stands promotes what is ofter referred to as leeching — effectively sucking the fun out of the process by replacing helpful player camaraderie with greed.

What I should have known is that I would have had more fun yesterday by not purchasing gems and supporting the company, but instead playing on the market and making money off the event so I could have a chance at buying a costume or skin that I desired.

I will likely never purchase another gem with RL money. I find this sad, because I love the idea of supporting a company that does a good job and being rewarded in kind with special virtual goods that leave me feeling my support is appreciated. Some may call me entitled or selfish. That’s fine. )I wonder how many of those championing the “gamble” aspect of the game actually spent any of their money on gems for keys. Some, for sure. I doubt all.) I’m merely offering my perspective on why I no longer believe that spending money on this game is worth the recognition or reward the company chooses to offer.

In the future I’ll gain my enjoyment from market speculation and buying and reselling event items.

TLDR: First off: this is not required reading.

I put down 10 bucks for this month to buy some keys. With the way things are looking, this is the last event I’ll pay money for until I have hard evidence the cost is worth it. I’m a bit saddened by the early news so far.

Are there plans to add a filter to the trade post to show only armor classes by type? I’d love to be able to search for items without having to scroll through all the gear I won’t ever be able to wear on my character.
:)

The concept of having crafting only for experience gain and item production, but not as a method for players to profit through a healthy economic system is very short-sighted. The game has been out a month and I’ve already got one character at level 80. In comparison, it took me much longer to hit 60 in Vanilla WoW – but relatively the same time as D3.

The good news is that even at 80 I’m only sitting just above 50% map completion and there still seems plenty of stuff for me to do. So realistically, I don’t need crafting as a method of gaining experience. It’s for this reason that it’s important to provide ongoing value from the system.

What really gets me, especially noticeable in making jewelry, is that many recipes take items that sell decently to vendors and yet somehow when you put them together the sum of your craft is an instant sell to vendor loss. With the exception of certain stones, you’re better off selling to vendor – or for the rocks with preferable stats you can squeeze a little more selling the raw component on the TP.

So, honestly, you’re better off just being a supplier. You’ll still get experience points from node farming and killing stuff along the way. You’ll just end up with a lot more currency to buy the things you want at the end of the day.

If we remain in a place where people are only paying vendor+15%, just NPC.

I really want to see the crafting scene revamped. I love playing the market in games and figuring out the dynamics of supply and demand. The idea that crafting should not be profitable will only end up hurting the game in the long run.

I don’t like this. I think it takes away from the dynamic of trade enterprises as a form of entertainment.

I wish the trade skills were more interdependent. It would have made a lot more sense to build these interdependencies to foster player trade for skill tiers. The process of refining materials for other combines and consumables is a fundamental component for viable trade.

Everything is too straightforward. Too many shortcuts in the supply chain exist, abundant raw materials with no need refine into tiers which can be bought and sold are flooding the market.

I was hoping for a more complex system where tailors would make inserts for armorsmiths and smiths would make blunt or sharp heads for arrows made by Huntsmen. These sub-markets would have given crafters a reason to use their skills after hitting 400.

As it stands now, crafting needs some serious work to appease those of us who have loved this element in various MMO’s for over a decade now.

“Seize the moment!”
“Never let a wrong ripen into evil..”
“Seize the moment!”

Crafting is definitely the way to go for this achievement. Using a booster helps out a ton. Just have your mats saved up and ready to go. With all the improvements to the crafting UI, discoveries have been made super simple. No longer do you need to stack all your items in your bags to see what fits together!

I get what the OP is saying, though. I was so frustrated when I was stuck at 74k without knowing how close I was getting to even matching my previous benchmark.

This has probably already been mentioned, but I would really like to see the addition of armor class specific filters for Trading Post searches. As a light armor wearer, I don’t need to view all the medium and heavy pieces in my level range. This added functionality would be a great improvement to the user interface.

Thank you!

This happened to me as well! I purchased the recipe from the npc, ate it, but it never showed up in my crafting list. I remember going back to try to find him but I could never figure out where he was – which would make sense if he was the escort npc.