Guild Wars 2

Except changes to the changes screwed up the physics so the world isn’t working right – they would have to spend time/money to fix it, and it’s clear that isn’t on the radar.

Haven’t people found datamined SAB stuff before, only for it to come to naught? I don’t want to get my hopes up just to be let down again.

I’d pay $50 for a SAB expansion.

I’m sorry, I thought this thread was for people who were still playing GW2 but did not purchase HoT. Not people who were not playing GW2 and not purchasing HoT.

Example post:

I like doing the special seasonal/limited time events. I basically log in just to do Halloween, Dragon Ball, Wintersday, Crown Pav, etc.. etc… because I like that content. None of that content is in HoT so I do not want to buy HoT.

About me:

I started playing at launch. For the first two years I was glued to the game. When the pace of releases/events slowed down, I found myself losing interest in the game, but not enough to stop playing entirely. Racked up just under 4k hours and 17.5k AP before the Sept. 2014 feature pack when I basically stopped playing. But I didn’t stop entirely. Instead, I really slowed down. Every now and then I would go revisit a map I hadn’t completed in a while, or do some PvP, or ride the world boss train, etc… I was putting most of my gaming time into other games, but still kept logging in for my dailies and engaged in the game (at least from a distance) because I didn’t have the firewall of a sub fee to keep me away when the itch struck.

I know this must sound like heresy, but I don’t really care about what class I’m playing or min maxing or whatever when I am not in a competitive environment. I just kind of like to pick something, throw myself at it, and see what I can find. Every now and then I just like to just go to a random zone and start scraping to see what I will find. The old event/update schedule just really worked for my attention span. The new instanced LS, on the other hand, was a bit too contained and quick for my tastes.

What I’ve seen of the HoT content doesn’t really grab me. That doesn’t mean its bad or anything, but I am not into the jungle theme, am not going to raid, and am kind of put off by what I perceive as the mastery system as gating the content. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever buy it, but right now I just don’t feel compelled to go check it out quite yet, particularly at a fifty-dollar price point.

Why does dollarsign + number five + number zero = kitten?

No doubt there are lots of people who care about it.
I suspect that anet just thinks this is a case of a rabid, vocal minority based on the poor performance metrics of SAB: Back to School.

They aren’t doing anything because they believe SAB will not generate sufficient returns to justify the investment of time and money to (a) fix the physics problems, (b) update the content (W2 hello!), and © design W3 (because there’s no way they will relaunch SAB without a new world launch to help draw players). I think it’s been thoroughly hashed out why many people think those metrics don’t accurately reflect player sentiment toward the content itself (simultaneous release with ascended weapons, WvW season 1, bugs, etc…). But, until they feel otherwise, we’re stuck.

Maybe a SAB kickstarter would help.

Every now and then my kid asks me about when we can play “the jumping game” again and its so disappointing to explain that the people who made it took it away and there’s no way to know if it will ever come back.

RIP SAB

Summary
Over the past year, content has become too focused on events that (1) provide back end rewards,(2) have long build-up/reset times, and (3) have short “reward phase” times. Newer events need to strike a better balance in rewarding a player’s immediate efforts, ie, improving the realization ratio for participation.

My Background

I’ve got a more than full time job, family, etc… etc… I’ve always been the type of person to consume the game in more frequent but smaller chunks. I’d load it up while watching TV with my wife or keep it going in the background if I’m working on stuff at home.

Despite my ADHD approach to gaming, I’ve played GW2 since launch and, despite having consumed all of the “content” quickly upon release, I continued to sink lots of hours into the game until about 8 months ago. But since then I’ve really drifted away from the game. I logged back in the other day to buy the rainbow unicorn finisher because I thought I would enjoy it when HoT rolls around. That made me think – what caused my engagement to drop off like that, and would HoT really make a difference, at least after the new car smell wears off?

Before continuing, I just want to be explicit in that this is not a “you must do this anet or the game will die” style of post, but just some feedback to chew on and consider. I understand my experience, motivations, and interests are most likely not representative.

The main point

In short, I very much enjoy the social aspect of the game, but also need the ability to hit the pause button for five minutes, metaphorically speaking. The casual, drop-in world events are my bread and butter. Events like Halloween labyrinth, Tower of Nightmares, Crown Pavilion, the scarlet mini invasions (remember, you got champ bags for each champ kill, not just at the end of the invasion).

Over the past year, however, there has been a notable shift in open-world gameplay to events that are end-weighted in terms of loot, but have long wind-up times and relatively short “reward earning” phases. Marionette, Assault Knights, the hour long LA evacuation events, Dry Top (sandstorm), and Silverwastes (breach/wv). And then the megaserver killed the Orr temple farms and made the world boss schedule static across all servers. EotM isn’t bad in theory, but the huge run distances can be quite the hurdle when a zerg is deep in enemy territory.

I understand that these events are structured in a way to encourage people to work together. I also suspect the lack of rewarding drops from event champs, particularly in Silverwastes, is to incentivize successful event completion, rather than just farming as many champs as you can kill (like Pent/Shelt and Plinx farming). The problem, however, is that if you can’t stick around to the end — or even worse, get disconnected and lose your event credit or can’t get back in the zone — you lose the bulk of the reward.

In other words, you don’t realize the gain on your efforts as you make the investment. And if for some reason you miss out on the reward event, your realization ratio drops severely. Imagine spending 20 minutes defending a fort in SW (getting what, 1-2 badges per 5m event cycle) but then missing out at the end? It’s not fun and it has made me not want to spend my time on it. (There’s also the chance that events fail because of other players, which is also disappointing, but that’s a separate issue).

In conclusion, I think the game needs to do a better job of drip-feeding rewards in direct response to effort. I get the concerns about how “farming” is bad for the economy, but the scale has pushed too far in the other direction. The reward is too far in the future and not connected enough with my own efforts to encourage my participation.

I know a better balance can be struck. I thought the revamped Crown Pavilion balanced those concerns extremely well. The world boss train remains decent, although frustrating at times. And boy did I love seeing just how many heavy bags I could collect during each temple event by rallying people to Orr. The PvP system also seems to do a very good job in this respect, although I don’t enjoy PvP like I do PvE.

Finally, bring back SAB. I know SAB doesn’t really fall into this category, but I loved SAB and can’t wait for its return.

Thanks!

final boss impossible to kill on green attunement
the only way to damage it is to get the protection sphere, but that makes your dmg reduced to the point its impossible to damage the memory. i have been at this for over 30minutes its insane.

is the buff reducing my outgoing damage as well as the incoming damage?

https://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Control_Point_%28game_mode%29

Or you could just patch in Badlands? After all these years, still my favorite map/mode.

TIA.

New matchmaking system #1 awesome great fantastic wahoo. I played 7 ranked matches today for the first time in like 4 months. They all started within 1-3 min, and were all incredibly competitive except for one where a player on the other team went afk mid-match.

SAB carrier. I’m thinking bee-dog. Make it so, #1

It currently says: “Reflect incoming damage back to its source; stacks duration.”

Retaliation does not reflect or mitigate damage in any way.

It should say: “Enemies take damage when they damage you; stacks duration.”

nekretaal.6485:

I hate it when people decide to play games with words to deny inflation when we all see inflation happening.

Prices go up and own, but an across the board increase in prices (due to inadequate Gold sinks as one cause) is here and has been here ever since the patch one year ago that introduced champion bags.

Pick an index of Representative goods and track it and that will show you where inflation is happening. Money moves from one place to another all the time but a spread out index ought to tell you the whole truth.

Green Items – Way up since last year
White/Blue items – Way up since last year
Gems – Way up since last year
Ectos – Gradually moving up
Precursors – up since last year
Crafting Costs – Way up since last year (despite fewer people crafting)

Pick a representative index

Wow, that’s some intensive research you did there on price movements. Way to prove your point. :facepalm:

Ohoni.6057:

They are just selling for more than you think they are worth. Apparantly other players value them differently.

And we’re back to “supply and demand justifies all” again. It’s a very tautological argument. “Why are prices the way they are?” “Because they are the way they are.” If other players think that the items are worth more than I do, then it is because ANet has set the stats or appearance or recipe usage of it to be very good, and/or the method of acquiring them significantly time consuming and/or difficult. Had ANet made different choices in that regard then the players behaviors would adapt accordingly, therefore I refuse to blame my fellow players for high prices, no matter how many times you try to convince me that I should.

You are just trolling at this point.

Price volatility gives people an opportunity to make money by shifting their resource (mats & gold) generating activities. It’s not anet’s fault if some people would rather complain about the high prices for certain luxury goods rather than take advantage of new earning opportunities.

Ohoni.6057:

This works to some degree, but some items can’t be farmed, or can only be farmed in a very inefficient manner (like chucking exotics into the MF), so supply is harder for players to adjust to meet demand. When the methods to farm something are more trouble than they’re worth, sure the price will balance out at some point, but the balance point may be well above what the item should be worth (ie Silver Doubloons which are going for over five times the Platinum ones).

Items are worth what players believe they are worth. Just because something is a higher tier doesn’t mean it’s “worth” more. The higher price for silver doubloons may suck for an 80 who needs them to make Juggz, but it’s a windfall for leveling characters who stumble on them.

As I said before, there are certainly problems with the distribution of “hot” items like charged lodestones. But those don’t generate inflation across the board. The are very limited gold faucets in this game.

One thing I forgot to mention: sure, it’s anet’s job to ensure that (a) player demand exists (people want to make things) and (b) supply is goldilocks (not too loose, not too tight).

If you want to complain about JS’s mismanagement of the economy, there are plenty of examples about idiosyncratic changes that went haywire (candy corn) and crafting formulas making no sense (requiring charged lodestones for EVERYTHING, while glacial and crystals remain mostly worthless).

If S < D, then P goes up. As P goes up, more people farm because the profit margin from farming outstrips the benefit from other activities. This continues until S > D, at which point margins begin to fall again, pushing producers out of the market and back into other things like dungeon farming. But on the whole, as economic activity grows, prices change accordingly (typical, growth driven inflation).

The GW2 economy is extremely demand driven and extremely competitive, so it’s very stable on the whole. Of course, things may spike when there are shocks to supply (venom crash from blinx farm) or demand (wardrobe for legendaries, minis). Think about how fast the market for minis stabilized —- market clearing prices were established within an hour or two when it was just driven by speculation and not consumption.

It may take a while to balance out, but there’s always an opportunity for players to increase supply, which in turn drives prices down, cycle continues. Precursors have stayed high because demand remains high. Precursors are more expensive right? At the same time, the market for 68+ rares is up too. So you can make more money selling rares.

If people were “efficient” then they would shift their economic activity into doing things that got more rares to sell (WBT, etc…), thus generating more gold, thus making it more affordable — even at the new prices, I suspect.

Again, even though it may take time for people to adjust, on the whole the economy is very healthy.

The only semantics going on is the obfuscation of the “I don’t like that this is too expensive for my tastes, so anet should intervene to make it cheaper” argument.

Normal inflation (the kind that results from economic growth, not supply/demand shocks) is only a problem for people who save money in currency form and money lenders.

Remember, we only have half of the picture. We don’t have any real way of knowing the income generation and distribution figures.

Price is a function of what people are (a) willing and (b) able to pay for an item. Just because people are willing and able to push a lot of money into the precursor market does not mean that there are general inflationary trends across the entire economy.

Remember how people were flipping out in 2009-2010 about how QE was going to cause hyper inflation because the fed was just “printing money?” And then inflation never materialized because it just went to Wall Street and got pushed into an asset bubble (the S&P 500 and HY debt)?

I think all of the event and reward changes made it easier for the great bulk of players to make a little more money, but harder for the smaller, but still significant, farming crew to make a ton of money. TP Kings are a tiny fraction of the playerbase, but their effect on the broader economy is probably more limited than most people estimate since they don’t actually generate money – they just reallocate existing wealth.

As for a Tyrian CPI, I think it’s probably best to approach it from the “uneducated casuals” point of view, the group I suspect is the driving economic force in the game. People who buy/sell leveling gear off the TP, common crafting ingredients, maybe some food consumables…

Inflation is a macroeconomic concept that describes changes in the general prices for goods and services in an economy. If there is inflation, the value of 1 unit of currency is decreasing. If there is deflation, the value of 1 unit of currency increases.

Generally speaking, inflation occurs for two broad reasons: (1) excess currency allows consumers to bid up the general price levels (demand driven) and (2) increased production costs drive up general price levels (supply driven).

Inflation is not typically used to describe changes in the price level for individual goods. Instead, that is just a result of changes in the marketing clearing price based on supply and demand.

Complaining about inflation in the abstract is pointless because you also have to consider the changes in consumer income generation. 100 years ago, it may have only cost $100 per month to rent an apartment, but people earned significantly less then too. Instead, you have to think about the relative purchasing power per unit of earnings. For example: Assume that you want to buy a piece of gear. One year ago, that piece of gear cost 5 gold and it takes you 1 hour to earn 5 gold. Today, that piece of gear costs 6 gold, but now you can earn 6 gold in 1 hour instead of 5. It’s all relative.

Loosen the tinfoil hat a bit, bro.

Also, every time I hear someone rant about inflation, this line comes to mind:

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

If you wanted to build a pure point holder, what about something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAR8dlknpStlqxDNMrRCvRYuhTv+Fiu6SFA-TZxGwAAOCAr2f4ZZABXEACPAAA

The phantasmal defender would have 34k health, and that plus moa would let you hold a 1v2 for a decent amount of time. The reflects from warden could pretty useful on maps like temple or foefire where people like to sit back and snipe. And at least sword would give you decent boon stripping and the invul every 9.5s.

Although, if you really just want to hold points, I think a guard, turret engie, or bunk hambow would be much more effective.

^^ great suggestion.

I’d also suggest a /resign function, as an alternative. At least then you could get out of painfully imba matches.

As someone just getting into the esports side of the game, I’d rather wait longer in the queue and have a decently balanced team. I’ve been doing a lot of SQTA lately, and nothing crushes my spirit like winding up with 3x or 4x of one class vs. a balanced comp on the other side.

Here’s what I do as a GS/Staff shatter mesmer: count to three.

From what I can tell, no good thief opens with steal because they want to save the daze/initiative gain/boon strip to counter your response to their opening burst. So, if you see a thief coming for you and pop into stealth, they are going to be on your back within three seconds.

Depending on your cooldowns and energy, there’s a lot you can do. Chaos storm around you, dodge roll, diversion, distortion… if it’s a 1v1, one of my favorite things to do now is mass invis immediately after they stealth. I’ll typically see them drop out of stealth first, and then I can get the jump on them. If they try to escape via shadow refuge, you know where they are so just blow every PBAOE you have in the area and look around for the body.

NB – I just started esporting and am coming up with most of my strategies on the fly, so you may want to take this with a grain of salt.

I would guess they probably aren’t going to rush to make any statements until they can carefully consider the issue. But I think the furor has had some effect already … consider the new red posts on communication and new CDIs. And as for SAB, specifically, I suspect that their internal deliberation process is probably moving slower than usual because of the upcoming feature pack release.

I agree with the above. I can confirm that you can receive duplicate skins. I’ve had multiples of the rifle, axe, and staff drop off the top of my head.

Here’s another thought … For level 50+ fractals, apply random mistlock instabilities per shard and give significantly better loot. Mixing it up would keep the content a little more interesting and make it more challenging, since you can’t just pick the “easy” instabilities.

I know I acquire transmute stones much faster from map completion on alts and sPvP than I can reasonably use them. But I also know I would buy a permanent transmute contract because then I could freely model outfits that other people could see and comment on in game, rather than having to paste screenshots of the preview window.

I bet JS has interesting statistics on per player acquisition and use rates.

In general, do you consider the impact of magic find when deciding on rewards for LS & seasonal events? For example, in deciding to change Queen’s Pavilion from mob drops to event reward chests.

Aetherpath is my favorite dungeon in the game. In general, it rewards situational awareness, movement, and the smart use of control abilities, rather than stacking and raw DPS. For those same reasons, it’s also a total pug killer, which is why it’s done less.

It’s as close to a hard mode as we’re going to get for GW2 dungeons.

(1) SAB
(2) Trading Post
(3) Mobile Gameplay

As a threshold matter, (a) thank you for trying to address the communication issues and (b) you have my sympathy for dealing with the people who lack reading comprehension.

I like this idea, but I think you would have to have someone responsible for making sure it stays current. Are you willing to dedicate the resources to that?

Also, have you considered doing something similar on the official wiki instead? That seems like a better format than the forums, given that this is a one-way flow of information and would not be a thread for discussion. For example, instead of the upcoming changes page on the wiki, have a locked entry regarding “development priorities” or whatever you decide to call it.

At this point, I just hope that they bring back the SAB finisher, minis, and other gear for the anniversary sale.

Thanks, One Note Chord. Interesting that 31-40 is the best range for fractal weapon skin drops. How big was the sample size?

I play on a SP3 i5 model. Work’s fine on low settings, particularly if you bring down the resolution a notch. The fan gets a little noisy, sure, but thanks to the hinge setup, my lap never gets hot.

Can’t access reddit or google docs. Could you post it in text? Sorry for not being specific.

The economy is an ecological system. If you touch one part of it, a ripple extends throughout the entire system. Sometimes it’s hard to anticipate how the system would react, particularly if it changes a variety of incentive structures.

That’s a way too literalistic reading. SAB W2 had bad metrics, for reasons that may or may not relate to how much people like SAB. SAB has been gone for over a year. Devs confirm that no one is working on SAB and has no plans to work on SAB until work on the other core game systems are improved, ie, never.

Based on that, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for players to assume that SAB is dead for all intents and purposes.

Could someone re-post the latest fractal rewards statistics that were posted yesterday on reddit? Can’t access from my current location.

I would also like a charr motorbike toy. No speed boost or anything; just make it like the witch’s broom or tunneling device.

Supermagnum.3458:

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Well it’s about time we fixed that.

I heartily endorse this post.

Another serious question:

Do you have different measures of money supply that you track? For example, M1 = all gold in player wallets, M2 = all gold in player wallets + all gold tied up in TP bids, M3 = all gold in player wallets + all gold tied up in TP bids + gold held in the gem exchange?

Also, do you track the value of tradable assets held in player accounts?

Less costume tonics, more armor sets that you can mix-and-match with.

To be fair, Jeff Grub was involved with GW: EOTN and also has a much deeper background in writing fantasy novels. Angel McCoy wrote a lot of source material for Changeling and other White Wolf products, and a handful of short stories IIRC.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

John Smith.4610:

B. tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Say it ain’t so! But seriously, as ye olde saying goes, “sometimes the truth hurts,” amiright?!? Huh, huh?

I think most people appreciate the honesty vs the tact imo.

Except the community relations managers that don’t like it when he says mean things about someone’s parents

Kaspar.3892:

#mostthecommunityisatworkstill

I think the organizers are EU.

(a) Does anyone read the “what we would like in the gemstore thread” and take the suggestions into account?

(b) Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

Vesuvius.9874:

pavo.4371:

Vesuvius.9874:

Brother Grimm.5176:

You guys do realize how this may just make them NEVER bring it back. If they cave to this kind of “pressure” (not that it in any way matters to Anet), it sets a precedence they likely don’t want to make….

Just clean up the mess a week from now when this dies down and I’ll be sure to wave as I pass thru Rata Sum….good luck.

I was about to post exactly what you said. No way ANET is going to give in to this. They’ll be setting a bad example.

what are you talking about? since when its US vs THEM. anet isnt the government. whats their incentive to work against their customers.

Customers need to act like customers and not like a little child throwing a tantrum. What’s to stop these “customers” from behaving this way the next time they are feeling entitled to something?

Well, customers act like this all the time. People want to show support for things they love and get mad when they feel they’ve been treated unfairly. The question is whether the cause of this outcry is reflective of issues that need to be addressed by the business or whether its something they can ignore. In this case, people feel aggrieved for different reasons. For example,(a) that SAB may not be coming back because the metrics for W2 were tainted by ascended crafting/reward structure nerf/length/bugs, and do not accurately reflect the underlying demand for SAB content in general (see W1) and (b) that the company sold the ICC with the implication that it would have future value, but did not intend to continue SAB.

I’m sure the company would rather have its customers speak up, as it demonstrates that its customers care a lot about their product. It doesn’t mean that the company must change its mind about the future of SAB, but it gives the company notice that they may want to reconsider the decision. If people just kept quiet about their product demand, the company could be leaving money on the table as customers (a) just left or (b) wouldn’t spend as much as they otherwise would.

Celestial D/D eles are hardcountered by anyone with boon stripping.