Guild Wars 2

Thank you for your response Gaile, as always it is much appreciated!

I don’t think anyone is really saying that they are against arenanet sticking to just one media to communicate on, I think it’s more that maybe responses should be done in tandem with other sites. This way, both official forum users and Reddit users can access posts and responses simultaneously.

That would be best thing to do in my personal opinion :-)

So, after reading this thread and the countless others created about communication on this official gw2 forum, there seems to be quite a bit of defence for them using Reddit. So, if Reddit is the main place for the devs to post on about the game and players concerns, should we all then be:

Reporting bugs etc on Reddit and not here for example?

I think it is a waste of time posting anything here now. No point if the responses are being made elsewhere.

I mean, if I was running a business and had my own company forums, why would I be using another media to post information?

And I don’t buy any of this “why would they post here with all the griefing?” Rubbish. It’s their site for gods sake. It’s not rocket science seeing that people are concerned with this.

Maybe anet should post on this forum to ask us all to join Reddit…

I’m crafting bolt and apart from a few t6 all I need is 403 ascalon tears.

But with nobody doing dungeons, how the hell am I expected to get them? I understand nerfing the loot, but dungeons were the main way to get tokens! I cannot believe Anet could be so stupid as to not realise the effect this would have on players making legendary weapons, it’s just insane.

Only other way is the pvp reward track, but I have to wait until that comes round to pvp again.

So tell me Anet, how am I supposed to get tokens when you destroyed dungeons?

Not happy at all right now. But…

If anyone here is in a AC dungeon guild, please let me know!

Good post, thank you for that reply.

So it all comes down to what anet expects from the exchange, more so, how does anet expect to benefit from the exchange. It would not be in their interests for gems to be available in the pool for a much cheaper amount of gold, as this would mean people would certainly opt to trade gold for gems rather than paying cash for them.

An interesting debate indeed :-)

So what we should expect to start seeing is the cost of gold to gems get lower and lower with the nerfs to popular activities and the increase of soul bound and account Bound items that have been slowly coming into the game?

My issues lie with the fact that gold to gems cost has risen by 100g over the past 18 or so months. But then, if people buy gems with gold and then buy store item then they are destroyed. So at some point there will be no gems left in the pool. This is a realistic possibility without Anet replenishing the gems in the pool.

So you are saying that the gems spent on gem store items are not added to the pool? Because if they are, then that means more gems in the pool which should mean less gold to play because there are gems available.

If they are not added to the pool then fair enough. But begs the question to how the very first player bought gems with gold, when nobody had put gems into the pool!

So anet must have put some gems in the pool to begin with if that is the case. So if they can add them to pool to make it cost less gold to get them, then they can remove gems to reduce supply and result in more gold to buy them.

What do you think?

Okay, so plenty more interesting posts here which are good to read! My only addition would be this:

If indeed there is a negative amount of gems in the pool, then people would have to spend more gold on gems. This cannot be denied by myself.

But it then raises the important question that if there is a negative amount of gems in the pool:

1. Have people stopped buying them and
2. If not, what is happening to the gems people buy?

Also, if there was a negative amount of gems in the market, then this would mean that players would not be about to trade gold for gems until gems were available once more. This cannot be true. Players do not place orders for gems. If someone buys gems with cash to trade for gold it happens immediately.

If as John smith states, the exchange is player driven, then players would be able to determine the cost of the exchange. But as we cannot see how many gems are available, then it does make one question the system in its current state.

As I said before, There are ALWAYS gems available for cash. So as long as this is so, then the whole gem pool amount theory is not a valid one I’m afraid. Unless the gems bought with cash go into a different pool after being traded for gold.

I think I have read enough to be fair. As you point out the gem/gold exchange rate has been working the same for 3 years. So answer me this:

If it is working the same then Why do 800 gems cost 150g now, when a year and a half ago it was 64g for 800 gems?

That suggests that gems are more scarce now, than they were a year and a half ago. Did people stop buying gems? Did sales of gems drop by over 50%? I personally don’t think that for a minute.

And I know it was 64g per 800 gems, as I bought quite a few char slots back then and I’m bloody glad I did it back then :-)

Bravo bravo!! I’ve been lynched many a time trying to explain some of the finer points that you have all put here. Now let me just blow kitten in the “my gems are traded with players for their gold, determines the exchange rate” fallacy:

This isn’t the TP and I’m not placing order!

Anet would have us believe that the gem/gold exchange works like the TP to determine rate. the TP does determine an items value, black lion skins are a good example. If there are lots of a certain skin from a set, the price is lower, because demand is low. If a different skin from the set only has 3 or 4 listed, then the value is higher as demand is higher.

With gems, there is no way to tell if gems are in demand or if indeed they are in short supply. Because we do not see that information, we have to take anets word for this.

According to the Anet version of its workings, if there is an abundance of gems in the world, then the gold to gems cost will be lower. If there is a low amount of gems available then demand is higher than the supply so the gold to gems cost will be higher.

This hits a number of problems, one being that Anet would never let the amount of gems get low in any shape or form as it would affect their ability to make real cash from selling gems to players via credit card.

This then highlights another problem, if Anet would never limit the amount of gems in circulation, then how come over the past year and a half, 800 gems has gone from 64g for 800 to 150g for 800?

As another here posted, if you paid £20 for X amount of gems and then decided to sell them, you would (and rightly so) expect £20 back for them. As we see in the exchange, we pay more to get 800 gems than we get for selling them.

Anet are fully in control of the price and its manipulation of gem/gold exchange rate. To think otherwise is to believe the conspiracy that Anet are NOT fixing prices.

What you might also call a conspiracy, is an idea taken from TP flippers but also would affect supply and demand of items, this:

If Anet fixes gem/gold prices, what if Anet ( who also control gold into game ) started buying up ALL the expensive items and then relisting them at a far more expensive price, forcing players to think about parting with real cash to be able to afford those items.

Would put RNG into a whole new category if that was happening, but who could stop them from doing this?

A great thread all, nice to see some likeminded posts :-)

Is it just me or isn’t the OP referring to the amount of time needed to craft JUST precursor? Or are the collections for the new legendaries completely different from the collections for the older ones?

So as far as I see it, you still have to factor in the added time (and gold) needed to farm all the other stuff (gifts, t6, clovers, dungeon tokens etc) before you can actually make the legendary?

Please, anyone, correct me if I am wrong.

That should read anet, not anger sorry :-)

If players traded between each other as currency exchange states then there would be no fluctuation in prices. If 800 was worth 200g then that conversion rate would remain constant until the supply of gems ran out.

You think anger would ever let the supply of gems run out?

I think I explained how it works but ok.

The gem exchange works by charging you more gold to get 800 gems than the amount of gold you get for exchanging 800 gems to gold.

Let’s take it a step further. Gems/gold conversion rates are determined by the people exchanging them we are led to believe. But we are not talking about an item on tp here that we can list for whatever price we like. Anet determines the cost of the conversion and here is why:

Gems are anets currency, they own it and they control gem supply. How? By creating gems when people buy them. They also exchange gems for gold. They pay less gold when buying gems back and ask for more gold when selling.

Why do they need to tax us for SPENDING the currency they want us to SPEND?

It’s not like I pay cash for 800 gems but only get 700 due to a tax to stop me making too much gold.

Ah Zing! There it is, if you pay cash you will always get same amount of gems for same amount of cash. It’s only when you don’t want to spend cash on gems does the system change.

Your gems….for their gold.

Who is the “their” in that text?

I’m imagining it means anet’s gold as there is zero proof of “our” gems being traded with other players.

And also the “your gems” part should have additional text so as to make it perfectly clear what the statement is saying:

“Your gems, bought from anet by you, for real cash…for their gold”

Plus you still get less gold for exchanging gems than it costs to you to exchange gold to get gems.

If for example it costs you 160g to get 800 gems, you should get 160g for exchanging gems.

Still unsure about who the “their” is mind….

Simple guild hall solution, have it like gw1 where you bought all the upgrades with gold. Straightforward enough.

Yes I agree that guilds can take a lot of hard work getting it to where you want it. Hard work just like what all the small guilds did to gain influence pre HoT, yet Andy took all that time and hard work and gave them all the middle finger.

What’s to say that when more guild halls are introduced, that the same hard work will once again be required as knowing anet, you will get a barebones hall for sure…

Seems funny those who say “well it’s a Massively Multiplayer Online game”, where you only need 5 people to do a fractal, 5 people to do a dungeon. Raids increased that slightly, but in reality it’s only the meta events that require a large amount of players.

Abet clearly do not care about how much time and effort people put into their guilds pre hot. And will more than likely not waste anymore of their time or effort on the game.

These are critical times for anet and gw2…

Just GW 2 for me until Xmas, when I’ll be getting Madden 16. Will still play gw2 more though for sure :-)

I think we are all missing out on something here:

Take not of the following:

It’s called Legendary Crafting.

It’s in the Legendary Weapons Collection.

It’s to craft Legendary Precursor..

That’s right, to craft a legendary PRECURSOR.

The issue is that to craft one of these precursors, could equate to the cost of:

Buying the precursor off TP AND buying the mats to make the legendary.

The cost for crafting would be fine, if you were indeed crafting a LEGENDARY weapon, not just the precursor.

Makes me wonder why the collection is called legendary weapons when that’s not what you are crafting…

It isn’t just the problem of the core game being nerfed, it’s things like the unique item tokens they have just blogged about being locked behind masteries and only trade able from an npc in HoT. This is ridiculous in my opinion. They haven’t said if you can get unique items this way for the core game boss uniques, even if you can you still have to use that one npc.

Want a reward from core game boss? Play HoT…

I actually still love the core game, in fact I love it way more than HoT as HoT stands at the moment. Not good times indeed…

So read the update for raids today and if I’m honest they sounded okay-ish for what may drop, but thought the gold for doing a raid is poor. You get 2 gold for doing teq.

Any ways I know the community has been asking for a token to be able to get each time they do a boss so that once they have enough, they could trade in for a unique item from that boss.

Well, if I am reading correctly, this is only available in HoT and is behind mysteries. Now, I’m pretty sure it also only means you can trade in for unique items from HoT, not from the core game ( which players had been asking for, with regards to teq). The vendor to spend the shards is in HoT so no luck if you wanted something from core game.

Really really disappointed with this. Another player request that has been hidden behind HoT. Andy have truly given the core game the finger indeed. What about the core game unique boss items?? Do we still have to Pray to RNG gods to get it to drop or will this become a feature in THE WHOLE GAME as requested by players?

Thank you both, I read the blog so thank you for pointing that out :-)

Just read something on Reddit where someone has crafted the legend and says it is NOT account bound but trade able on the TP.

Is this 100% correct please?

Sorry if I’ve started a new thread about something that’s been asked before, but I couldn’t find anything in forums about this.

Just wondering if anyone has got a precursor from forge since HoT was released? Has anyone tried (besides me) to get one?

No luck as of yet since HoT came out, so I’m putting the question to the community to see if you have or not.

Or are people just doing legendary crafting for their precursors?

Personally never been so underwhelmed by a full set of weapon skins as I have been this morning. Apart from the scepter (at a push) are people really wanting these?

What do you all think about them? Would you want any?

Not the greatest picture I know. Mobile pic :-)

Mapping wayfarers today and just north of Haivoissen Kenning the area is extremely bright, bright white in fact. Not just my machine as I got some Guildies to come take a look too and everyone who was in the area saw it.

Unlocked this earlier and I’d like to say I am delighted with this feature. So much in fact, that as soon as I get the gold, I’m going to unlock ALL of them :-)

I’m a huge lover of mapping and I’m getting the xp I need by mapping 14 chars. I mapped Queensdale with my revenant earlier and it got me 545,000xp plus loot and karma. And as xp increases in higher areas I think it will take me about 20 areas of that to get the 12 million plus xp I need total.

I like long term goals and this feature has shown me that I don’t just have to play HoT to enjoy GW2 :-)

Ok cheers all and thank you for taking the time. I do like that the tomes will be used for guild halls so that’s a great use!

Thank you again :-)

Just wanted to bring this up, but with writs being a reward for daily in PvE, what is the benefit of having these if your account has all level 80 chars (as does mine and many other players I know).

I think it might be worth looking at this and maybe changing it so that:

1. It can be used towards masteries xp or

2. Changed to give some other benefit/reward.

They are starting to build up in my bank now and as I have all level 80’s I am unable to use them.

What do you all think about that?

Thank you both for your replies. I shall try again today at some point. You both must be more skilled than me lol

I think I’m going to park HoT for now also. I can say I had one great hour of fun with a guild mate doing events for experience but the way you have to play this expansion doesn’t compel me to want to play it :-(

I mean, empty maps mean I’m only halfway to glider 2. Story takes a few goes at working out where u need to be regarding above or below. Fail and your quite a way from nearest waypoint so have to do the same thing over and over until you get it.

I got as far as prized possessions and due to one wrong skill being used and throwing me off the ledge I now have lethal pustules to deal with that we’re not there on my first attempt. Have a boss chasing me and died about 20 times. NOT FUN at all.

It’s painful, but I fear it is so painful, it will put me off playing the game altogether, even core game.

I was so looking forward to HoT but I’ve never been a fan of jumping puzzles and I can’t stand platform games and this feels more like a platform game in HoT.

No guide, no starter area to introduce you to stuff, gates story and those mastery points are a nightmare with empty maps. You need to do 56 successful events to get 1 million xp. Not possible if no one else is doing them.

Maybe I’ll just take a break from HoT and see how it goes. Sad days, sad days indeed :-(

Okay, so follow the npc, which I did, used skill 3 to get to ledges around edge to get to npc. Next part I followed through a windy path to a ledge, no enemies just the one chasing. Pressed wrong skill and it threw me off ledge and I died. So it put me back to start of that and now there are pustules with a huge circle around them and I just cannot get past. Tried all 3 skills and still die. Tried running around them but because I’m not moving forward, I’m caught.

Any ideas please? I’ve come out of it now as it’s just ridiculous to do. No idea why pustules appeared or were not there first time through :-(

First of all, let’s look at this with regards to real world economics:

If a money supply is contracted ( meaning less of that money around ) then items become more expensive. With less money in the system, few people can afford the things they need.

If there is too much money in circulation, the opposite occurs as trades and sales flow easier because all parties have access to enough money to be able to afford those things.

What Anet have done to the market is twofold and its effects will be felt by its currency users. Here is how:

Anet control the value of gold to gems and gems to gold. You may hear or have read that Anet do not control this, or that exchange rate is determined by supply and demand. It is not. Supply and demand is not the issue here as there is NEVER a short supply of gems. If there were a limited amount of gems in circulation this would increase demand and people would be paying a lot more for them.

Then we have the nerfs to loot, across the board as well I might add. So as people spend the gold they earned pre nerfs, there begins to be a shortage of gold in the system. Anger have taken it out.

They have taken it out because they want you to buy gems to convert to gold, but what is strange here, is that while there is less money in circulation from events/dungeons/fractals etc, Anets supply of gold NEVER decreases. Yet the cost of gold to gems gets higher and higher. Which over time, even gem buyers who exchange them
For gold have been getting less and less gold for their real world cash.

A contraction of gold is in play here and I do feel it will have a serious knock on effect in game.

This is my personal opinion on this topic.

I kept logging out to character screen then back in. Last time I did it he was stood away from where he was sat and I could talk to him. Now back on track.

Finally managed to glide to him ( don’t ask) and he won’t talk to me. Because this new area is as clear as mud, I thought glide to scout acan and talk to scout acan seemed straightforward enough?

Is there something else I’m needing to do before they will talk to me? The other scout spoke to me ok. Is it because he at top of nuhoch wallow and I haven’t ground that one to level one yet?

Didn’t put into bugs as was hoping some help here thank you guys!

1. In order to get the masteries you have to do the story.

I did first 2 parts of story then hit a wall. So you have to do story, grind to do more story and etc etc etc

When the dust settles in 2 weeks? Have you not realised yet? That’s when all of you moaning about us complaining begin to ask anet why hot maps are empty and demand it sorted lol

Right then I thought I’d give my own opinion on HoT, the good bits and the bad bits:

The Good:

New Class, really love the Revenant and looking forward to getting it geared out as soon as possible. Love the skills this class has and will make mapping even more enjoyable than ever!

Guild Halls: WOW! Bigger and better than I expected! I just wish I had more of the stuff our guild needed to get things quicker! I have to give a HUGE shout out to our Guild Leader as she has been absolutely fantastic in researching and getting it all set up! Was fun exploring it too!

Crafting Discipline on char select screen: how many times I’ve had to go through all my chats to find my armorsmith lol not anymore! A great touch by Anet that I think has gone unnoticed on the forums.

More items now in material bank: for me this was another plus as I have stuff taking up guild space! No more mystic clovers in the bank!

The Bad:

The Story Gate. I really enjoyed the first 2 parts of the story and was quite disappointed that I needed to do other stuff before being able to continue. I liked how stories worked before where you only needed to grind if you were doing story achievements, but could access each chapter after completing the previous.

The Ugly:

Masteries. If I was disappointed with having to do other stuff just to continue story then the time it took me to get to 0.68% of glider mastery really disappointed me. I kind of expected to get to use a glider straight away, albeit a basic one, but that was my mistake to think that. Glad I didn’t buy a glider skin to find I had to grind to be able to use it.

So there it is. Pick it apart or agree as you so wish, this is my opinion and that is how I currently feel about HoT. I am completely put off by the new map with all the gates it brings. An informative starter area would have helped to alleviate some of the negative experience I had but alas that wasn’t to be.

The worst thing I know will happen, is that when the people who enjoy wvw and pvp have got their specialisations, I won’t be able to compete on a level playing field. I fully understand and accept this is my choice, but I won’t let that force me to have to go through all of in the new maps. It’s not the way I’ve played guild wars before and I know some people don’t like change but I didn’t expect such a big change to the gameplay in the expansion.

Right or wrong is a nonsense here as personal opinion is simply an individual’s opinion. What is factually correct here is that people are not happy with the expansion: FACT.

The best approach to this will come from those who are happy with expansion but have concerns that maps will be empty so making any remaining hero points more difficult to get.

This would result in the happy players complaining that there are empty maps and demanding it to be fixed.

A happy balance is certainly needed here :-)

As for working (grinding) and earning something, it’s not like we talking about lumi armour or karma converter, we are talking about grinding for stuff you need TO PLAY THE GAME!!

This isn’t for aesthetics, or an item that makes some things easier in game, it’s grinding just TO PLAY THE GAME!

This isn’t grinding to get gold for a precursor, nor is it grinding for everything you need to make a legendary (mapping, dungeons/pvp farming for t6 etc) it’s grinding just TO PLAY THE GAME!

It really isn’t that hard to see the difference.

Remember when you could complete a story section…and then just start the next part?

Those were the days…..

I’d like to add my bit here, it’s about this hand holding some of you keep mentioning.

Isn’t that what a community does for each other? Does a community not mean helping other members of their community?

I help run a local foodbank that helps people who are struggling in real life because I love the community where I live. We help each other.

It seems as if the gw2 community or a portion of it are more than happy to leave those who need help alone. How about instead of promoting your selfish natures, why don’t you remind them just how good our community is and offer to hold their hand as you say?

Or would that be asking too much from you as you have masteries to get?

I also totally agree with the OP. Original storylines were doable even if you were not the recommended level, but that changed so you had to be the correct level before progressing story. This was a bad enough gate.

Living world stories also were doable without any gate stopping you, you simply got past each story chapter and opened the rest.

What living world did do, was upon story completion had plenty of grind to get ascended gear and lumi armour etc. But this was after completing story.

HoT however is completely different and has completely ruined doing the story for me. Why can it not be like every other past story?

Personally I think it maybe because you might need to have all gliding mastery done as you may need it for one part of the story. I could be wrong as I came out of HoT at 68% of glider mastery.

Overall, having to unlock stuff through hours of grinding to just be able to play the game I paid for is ridiculous at best. Even more so without there being a starter area in HoT to help assist you and explain what you need to do. Maybe this expansion was rushed?

As for myself I will not be going back to HoT. The knock on effect is that specialisms will make pvp and wvw unplayable for me as I won’t have the same skills etc but I will not let that force me to do this horrid expansion.

Bad show anet, bad show.

Punished for not buying? You should count yourself lucky you didn’t part with any cash for that mess!!

That old logic, we have had hours of gameplay at 5 pence per hour is funny. It’s used to make people who are complaining about the expansion think that because they have such a cheap hourly play rate they should simply shut up and stop complaining. Good tactic, but nefarious at best.

Value isn’t just how many hours you get from a product based on initial price, it’s about the quality of the product you have paid for. With gw2 the game, we have all received great quality value for our money.

As for HoT however, it is beginning to dawn on people that they are not getting or are going to get the quality for there money. They will certainly get the hours, oh yes they will get the hours and hours and hours of gameplay. It’s just that all those hours will be spent unlocking stuff so that they can actually play the product they paid for!

Did you have to unlock any item or learn new stuff to be able to continue the original guild wars 2 story? Only the level required change recently put that time gate on it. Before, you could access story of you were not the recommended level.

HoT to me is just a mess. It’s as clear as mud and for a first experience of verdant brink and the real expansion I cannot believe what a state it is. When u finally find a mystery point and you die in 3 seconds when you step near it, you begin to realise Anet have spun is a yarn, a very very long yarn indeed.

I agree 100% with the OP. Had a few things to do in game this morning but once I was done I headed straight to SW and began the story. Arrived at verdant brink and was looking forward to getting in the air on my glider. I noticed it said the required mastery was unlocked but I didn’t realise that I then had to do stuff to get to use the glider!

Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t recall any other gw2 stories requiring me to learn something just to be able to continue the story!!!

I actually got quite wound up by it and had to rep my solo guild as all I was doing was moaning :-( I shall be trying again shortly but I get bored quickly of spending stupid time doing things JUST to let me continue a story.

Bravo OP, fair play to you for saying it. A lot of hidden stuff just to eek out the expansion. It will make it feel like it is a huge expansion when in reality, it’s just small.

May I say what a wonderful post yours is! I don’t think it’s a silly or pointless post, it comes from the heart and no post on any forum can beat those!

Keep fighting and keep playing! Many of us have lost loved ones to cancer and I take my hat off to you for posting this.

Hope to see you in HoT when it starts :-)

Just one precursor per account? This doesn’t read like that:

This crafting system is an account-based activity, which means you’ll only be able to craft each precursor this way once. However, all of the currently existing precursor acquisition methods will remain intact in addition to this new acquisition method. That means that if you want a particular precursor more than once, you’ll have to fall back to the original methods of acquisition.

Each precursor once is the key text in that section :-)

Am I basically reading here that there is an EA style handicap system within guildwars?

I pray not.