Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

Soon(tm).

Can’t wait for you guys to get a chance to dig into this cool new content!

Soooo it’s happen this morning right? Right?……… RIIIIGHHT?

But what about tomorrow (7/12/16)? That’s what we all REALLY want to know about. This information is great and it sounds like it’s going in the right direction, but this is all we get? If there is just a gem store update tomorrow, I’m going to cry.

mrauls.6519:

Lanaeris.3845:

mrauls.6519:

So, does this include class balancing?

Class balancing is a PvP issue. I do not believe this idea deserves any dev time because most of us would like to see content instead.

You’re only speaking for yourself, though. I want to see more content added too. Class balancing is a big issue in PvP, and it should be addressed soon.

A good portion of the player base felt wronged by the E-sports focus. Most players are casuals that don’t care about the elitists or try hards who want to fight other players. Most of us want to enjoy things as a community and work towards common goals. They tried to force this game into the E-sports arena and the community is widely rejecting it.

mrauls.6519:

So, does this include class balancing?

Class balancing is a PvP issue. I do not believe this idea deserves any dev time because most of us would like to see content instead.

Hey, Mike.

I guess, like the rest of this forum, we are really worried about content that will retain the player base. QOL changes only help those who have exhausted content to no end. We want to know what you guys are planning to add so that we can decide whether or not to devote our time and money to your paycheck. We need a calendar or schedule detailing CONTENT releases.

Fractal QOL: Great, I’ve been doing fractals forever. QOL doesn’t add more of them.

WvW: People don’t want to test things, and I don’t think you will get the population to test things without making a big change.

We want content; and no, not black lion gem store filler for the money-spending addicts.

Thank you for giving me hope. My personal best is 16, but I suspected you could get higher than that. Time to get more practice in.

You guys forgot to nerf Rangers again. It’s tradition to nerf Rangers every balance patch. I am disappointed.

The Dev team is probably just as mad at the marketing team as we are, and just like us, they can’t do anything about it. That’s business.

Because they don’t have enough money to pay the art team to do something better than reusing the old glider and just applying a new skin and effects. I think this is a good example of how much money Anet has to spend on extras. No wonder their gemstore has been so grabby lately.

The casual label for this game is what gave me that fan girl crave when I started. Since Hot, it’s been nothing but disappointment (except for the artistic side of the game). I am mad that everyone suggests to ‘get better’ to have more fun. “look up the best dps builds” “watch youtube videos of good players” “Learn your traits and builds”. Frankly, that’s not how some of us have fun. Some of us find enjoyment in the little things, like a leaf that looks awesome in the corner or a waterfall waterslide iceskating thing. We call our friends over and enjoy our time together. This game is pushing people away from each other when it sends them to look up the best dps builds to keep up with everyone; people get competitive and elitist. I miss guild wars for what it was, I truly do. Every MMO goes this route eventually.

Conquest is the most boring game mode ever conceived. Yet another thing that wasn’t tested before launch, what a shocker. And now I can’t PvP for wings. I don’t care about PvP. I just want wings and to semi enjoy getting them. Thanks again, guys.

Behellagh.1468:

Today’s spike in the rate is brought to you by KEYS …. KEYS when you want tickets and instead get a big pile of miscellaneous Gem Store stuff. Remember KEYS, the odds might be in your favor?

I refuse to buy those stupid things. If I buy gems, I want things. I don’t want the chance at things. I didn’t pay to gamble in an unregulated system, that’s just dumb.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Lanaeris.3845:

A recent thread came up about buying gold, then was closed because OP question was answered. Here’s another one.

So If I buy gold with real cash from someone in game, are you going to subpoena the credit card charges to find out? What if he just wanted to give me money? I say this because in a cash transaction, you guys can’t do anything (I hand someone cash IRL they give me gold in game). I personally think you guys don’t want the gem market to be competitive with other companies (effectively lowering the cost of gems). But I am more and more inclined to whisper rich friends in game and paypal them money for some gold (not saying I would actually do it, but what is to stop me without repercussions)?

The fact that they can investigate accounts pretty easily if there’s substantial amounts of gold being sent to/from unrelated accounts.

My response if I was the rich guy: “Yeah, seemed like a nice guy, gave him 10k gold. So what? I earned it. Stop harassing me.”

A recent thread came up about buying gold, then was closed because OP question was answered. Here’s another one.

So If I buy gold with real cash from someone in game, are you going to subpoena the credit card charges to find out? What if he just wanted to give me money? I say this because in a cash transaction, you guys can’t do anything (I hand someone cash IRL they give me gold in game). I personally think you guys don’t want the gem market to be competitive with other companies (effectively lowering the cost of gems). But I am more and more inclined to whisper rich friends in game and paypal them money for some gold (not saying I would actually do it, but what is to stop me without repercussions)?

Side note, it amuses me to see how many people are so stressed and angry in their lives that they have to attack the points of someone else’s claims or opinions. Don’t like it, move on. Stop trying to impose your views on mine. This thread would disappear if people didn’t care or didn’t want to attack someone else. It’s sill really.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You know, there’s two kinds of conspiracy theories that I hear often. The first kind is the one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain a complicated issue where nobody is in control. The second kind is is one that applies an extremely elaborate and convoluted hidden collaboration to explain away common sense. This conspiracy is the latter.

You guys are trying to come up with an elaborate deception to explain something that is really simple. Anet sets up a gem exchange system, and puts in a 30% reduction on the gold -> gem exchange to prevent stock market exchanges. They used a fixed set of gems as a basket, and then program a dynamic exchange rate based on ratio of gems that have been created or destroyed in respect to this basket. The whole “manual manipulation” thing is silly and pointless, when you can just write a simple program that does it for you. It isn’t like the whole “people will buy gems if gems are cheap” thing is going to go away, so you set up an automated system to have the price of gems be adjusted automatically, and let basic economic principle take care of the rest. It wouldn’t even be that hard. Its just fractions!

The throttle on gold -> gem conversions isn’t mean to make things a gigantic gamble. It is meant to make things a stupid gamble. It is there to make using real money to buy gemstore items more appealing, and in-game gold less appealing. I’m fairly certain it acts as a market stabilizer, too.

And there you have it. The conspiracy is that no, Anet didn’t go with an automated, low-maintenance system and explicitly weighted it toward real money exchanges. Instead, they secretly manually manipulate the prices of gems and the prices of items just to mildly inconvenience players, but only in such a way that it makes sense to economists.

I’d hate to be the one to tell you this… wait, no. Scratch that. I love to be the one to tell you this: Liquid rewards in game don’t mean squat regarding the gem conversion. Under an automated system, the price of gems would adjust to inflation eventually. Under a conspiracy based “they’re controlling EVERYTHING!” system, they’d just manually adjust the price anyway, so again it doesn’t matter. Either way that line of thinking doesn’t work.

There is also no way that your exchange can be construed as a misrepresentation. If you buy a $25 gift card for 2000 gems, that is exactly what you get. These gems don’t go away. You can buy the same things you wanted to buy. If you happen to buy something and later regret the decision, there was still no deception. You got exactly what you paid for, as it was listed. Anet isn’t lightly adjusting the value of gem -> gold exchanges ever so slightly just to eek out cash from you. It wouldn’t work. You can still pay the same amount of money for the same amount of gems to buy the same item, and if you happen to want to convert gems -> gold anyway, you end up in a better position than you were prior. The entirety of the whole “buy it for real money instead” hinges solely on you having the exact amount of gold such that the supposed false-inflation for highly demanded items would adjust the price into a range where you not only don’t possess enough gold, but also lack the ability to make that amount of gold in the allotted timeframe. To elaborate in list form, you would need to be someone who:

A)Is in that narrow range where you could’ve afforded it, but can’t after the gem price spike.
B)Has a playschedule that prevents you from acquiring the difference in price before that item leaves the store (set timeframe undetermined)
C)Is in that specific group that highly desires this item so much that they have to get it
D)Is a person who does not have a resting amount of gems in your pack, thus forcing you to acquire them.
E)Is a person capable of shelling out money as needed to buy the product, but also be a person who would shell out money to buy any product. In a sense, you have to be IRL rich enough to spend cash on a frivolous game, but not IRL rich enough to not care about spending cash on a frivolous game.
F)Is in a specific, very narrow section, wherein the natural inflation that would emerge from a high demand gemstore item via an automated system would insufficient to move the price of that item into such a state that conditions A, B, and D are fulfilled, and thus special intervention is required.

This is not an untapped market. It is a fluke in customer demographics. There is no money to be earned in this. It is the most trivial of things to be deceptive about.

I love your arguments, but I think you are using far too many “can’t do this” “this is impossible” type logical statements. Don’t see things so black and white. I am not saying there is a group of people watching the gem exchange at every single second on Anet’s side; That’s outlandish like a conspiracy. I am thinking much more concrete and simple. Point being, there is no law against changing their numbers in any small or large way, they can do whatever they please. The world given as an example, if there is money on the line and there is no law prohibiting you from pursuing extra money, chances are you are going to go for it. I am pointing out how easy it is for them to tweak something because it is unregulated. (I am not calling for action from anyone)

I think the reason we are seeing worry is because it’s so easy for Anet (unwillingly because of business) to “tweak” the system at any point into their favor without having to tell anybody. If we could make real life money from this game, what they are doing is completely illegal in every sense because of gambling and fixing the odds; Thankfully, that’s not the case, but I just wanted to put things into a different perspective.

Ensign.2189:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

I think its funny how people say to sell your mats to make money. What they don’t get is that we need those mats for what we are trying to make. So how do you make money to buy mats if you can’t sell them?

If you need the mats you acquire through gameplay, great! In that case they go directly onto your income statement without having to touch the trading post, saving both time and money from saved TP fees. There is also no reason to complain about a lack of ‘liquid’ gold in this case, since you are directly farming the materials you need. Wins all around!

The point, by the way, is that on average a player’s item income (value from drops) is going to be many times greater than their cash income (value from coin) – I’d guess around 8x as a rough estimate. If you don’t pay attention to that item income and don’t value it you’re going to think that your income is only ~10% of what is actually is (on average). Hitting raw gold faucets, in the long run, lowers item prices and raises real incomes – you just have to do some arithmetic to know what your income is now.

Yeah, that’s all for good intention, but to get those mats to decide to sell or keep in the first place, you need to be a mindless robot and grind them out. How is that fun?

tluv.5821:

I don’t understand. What part of the game is “Pay to Win”? What items can I buy with cash that give me an absolute advantage over the rest of players who didn’t purchase it?

This thread isn’t about P2w. It’s about prestige and “effort to win”. Grinding is not about effort or intelligence, It’s about mindlessness. Hence the hatred towards grinding.

It’s okay if you bought gems. HOLD ON TO YOUR GEMS. ANET will feel their wallet get lighter the next time a sale comes around and we don’t buy gems because we already have them.

DarksunG.9537:

Lanaeris.3845:

Same, I have 2001 gems because I was ready when That_Shaman leaked a few things plus the excitement for Black Friday. What a let down. I think if we hold gems, the price to gold goes down too, which just sucks because we get less gold for our gems because more people have gems.

They already have your money now, it’s irrelevant if you want to use your gems or not.

What sucks is that’s true. They probably got so much money from people buying gems ready for Black Friday. The problem is on them though. Without a sale, more people are going to have gems; they won’t make as much money when they actually do have a sale because we all held on to our gems.

Same, I have 2001 gems because I was ready when That_Shaman leaked a few things plus the excitement for Black Friday. What a let down. I think if we hold gems, the price to gold goes down too, which just sucks because we get less gold for our gems because more people have gems.

Plot twist: Anet is getting too much money so they thought they would be modest and NOT have a sale to get said money.

Farming isn’t fun at all; It’s mindless. I want to feel like I worked hard for things instead of sleeping at my keyboard to get things. Anet dropped the ball SO hard with F2p.

What economist on the face of the planet would decide NOT to have a sale on Black Friday (the busiest shopping holiday of the year)?

Snow.2048:

puts on the tinfoil hat

Rereads

Takes off hat

Why add the extra “anet is lying” to the theory when the exchange itself already acts this way? Or am I just having a durrrr moment?

Because I thought it was a “gems in, gold out from other players” closed loop type of thing. I didn’t think they would just “print” more money out of air. Maybe I was having the durrr moment for not making this realization or being hopefully ignorant, either or.

The two good looking, reasonably obtainable tops are Sneakthief and Illustrious, that’s all we got. (side note, I hate how capital "i"’s look just like "l"’s, what grammar natzi thought that one up?)

It’s a simple theory/hypothesis based SOLELY on what I’ve seen in ANET’s actions. This hypothesis has no scientific merit whatsoever. Basically, an easy way to get gems if from the $25 cards that give 2k gems. Then they make packs worth EXACTLY 2k gems (sale price 100% of the time mind you). What if they do this because when you convert gems to gold, it doesn’t grab the gold from other players, but rather puts more gold into the economy. (Obviously we will never know how the exchange is programmed, that’s Anet’s secret, so essentially, it could be the biggest legal gambling scam ever conceived). This puts incentive on the staff to raise the price of gold from gems as much as possible. They have to nerf in game liquid rewards to raise that price and make people feel pressured to buy gems to get gold. This pressure builds up against a high-cost gem to gold wall and the economy takes a huge downturn because people are upset that they can’t get the gold they want without paying more. Long story short, I’m rambling. Discuss, flame, battle, and do what you do forum people.