Guild Wars 2

This inflation is good! In fact, I’d argue that further hyper inflation of precursor prices is to the benefit of us all.

Why? Because then the imbalance in the economy and the ridiculous manner in which precursors are obtained will finally force Anet into action.

Inflate them further please, and put them far, far out of reach of anyone who doesn’t play the TP.

Supply has not dried up, not yet anyway. Look at the current market for Unidentified Dyes – there are 81,200 of them for sale and its climbing. Over the past year, the supply ranged between roughly 9,000 – 50,000. On top of that, we know there are people hording them in their bank – TP players and regular players alike.

Yes at some point in time the supply is going to start drying up and prices will slowly climb, but buyers are going to mostly be investors, people who want to gamble on opening Unidentified Dyes, or people making Bifrost. I think that’s a long way into the future.

My cynical opinion is that the very smart players fooled everyone else and told them to start buying dyes because its going to be such a great investment, meanwhile they are dumping their dyes while the prices were climbing.

People who did that, likely got rich. People who followed like lemmings and bought dyes at inflated prices thinking they would go up even higher after the patch, got suckered.

Well, what is it about video games do you enjoy? When you have your answer, go do that.

Some people like adventure, or action, or collecting, or perfecting, or socializing, or testing their skill. If you’ve done those things and the game doesn’t have much more to offer in that area, maybe look at a new game and see if you can find what you like again there.

Why did people like Unidentified Dyes prior to the patch?

It was a chance at getting an expensive dye, like Abyss, and turning a small find of 25s into a big find of 25g.

-AND-

If it turned out that you didn’t get what you were hoping for, you didn’t feel bad because the chances were at least one of your characters didn’t already have that particular color unlocked.

It was the backup, “oh well, I didn’t have that one anyway” mentality that made a lot of people feel alright with gambling a sure-fire 25s.

Now, that backup is gone. Yes, people can still roll the dice with Unidentified Dyes, but now they have to make the conscious decision to spend gold they already have on Unidentified Dyes specifically to gamble. Otherwise they can just purchase the color dye that they want (most people have most of the colors they want now)

I think speculators who dumped thousands of gold into Unidentified Dyes thinking that the drop in demand would be overshadowed by the drop in supply are in for a hard landing.

How many of the people complaining that they bought a chance at one of the dyes made the purchase because they were hoping to hit the jackpot and get the really expensive dye and sell it on the TP? I’m guessing its most of the people complaining. They thought that if they dropped some cash on gems and gambled on some RNG dyes that they might get one or two of the really expensive dyes that they could sell for more gold than they would have got had they just converted the gems.

I mean, that’s most of the people complaining right? Otherwise if people were just SO enamored by one of these new colors they would find a way to get the gold for a direct purchase, or they would convert the gems to be sure they got the exact dye they wanted.

I think people just feel silly when they gamble thinking they are smart, only to find out they dropped real cash and got about as much in return as they could have got had they killed a few random creatures.

If you want to gamble, prepare to pay the price.

Well hopefully all of your in-game wealth buys you lots of things that make your gaming experience fun. If its not, then feel bad for wasting your time on this rather than on something more enjoyable or meaningful. If it is, then all the more power to you.

Each time I read a post like this I’m more and more convinced that the players who get really upset about not having enough gold are all really just frustrated that they can’t get a Legendary weapon easily. They grind for the gold, which isn’t fun for them but they think its what they should be doing, and then they come to resent the game for it.

You’ll never really see one of these “I can’t make enough gold” posts without the person mentioning a Legendary.

Looking at a TP website there are 70,600 Unidentified Dyes currently on the market and the sell price is 23s50c. How many thousands of Unidentified Dyes are currently sitting in the banks of speculators? And how many more are in the banks of average players like myself?

Let’s talk demand. Most players had at least one character with their favorite dyes unlocked already – i.e. Abyss, White, or Celestial – and many other random colors that they had picked up either because they were cheap or from opening unidentified dyes. Those players might have still needed dyes for alts, or when they decide to roll another new alt, because let’s face it, everyone wanted better color choices than the defaults.

Now, most people never need to buy another dye ever again.

People underestimated the drop in demand for dyes. On my main I had a significant number of dyes unlocked, but on my alts they were a luxury. Now I never need to buy another dye for any character and I had 180 unidentified dyes refunded. Only new players will need dyes now, and they are cheaper and unlocked for all characters, so those new players will also need to buy fewer dyes.

Yea the supply is getting reduced, but so is demand and in a significant way. Not to mention the mass influx that occurred with the refund even if its a one time thing.

Dye prices will fall again, except for the really rare dyes which are a better value now that they are account bound. Same can be said for limited edition weapon skins.

Its been a long time, many months, but this was happening on Borlis Pass as well and only in Eternal. It only lasted for a day or two if memory serves me.

Devon’s post about wvw being inherently unfair is fine, I get that its unbalanced and can live with it under normal circumstances where winning and losing doesn’t matter.

Where its not cool is where you then place rewards on winning in a system admittedly unfair. It makes little sense other than to create a lot of hard feelings in the community.

I don’t mind it so much for the actual reward since its not that great, but its more about the principle of setting up that kind of system knowing its unfair. Kind of a kitten thing to do to people.

Don’t get me wrong, I left a T1 server for a mid-tier server. Im still out there fighting even when no one else is. I’m only pointing out what I observe in player thought and behavior. Discredit and attack if you so desire, it doesn’t change my point.

Yea that’s nice and all but I see you are on JQ which means you are in one of the most balanced tiers. Do you understand how not fun wvw can be when each time you log in you are severly outmatched? Good fights are very rare, and there is little point to strategy since you dont have people or coverage to hold anything. All you can do is hope to find a window of time and a place on some map where your group of 5 won’t get steamrolled by 30.

Its not about trying or fairness or any of that other garbage, its just not that enjoyable, and its far from lucrative.

This creates a downward spiral of people not logging in or leaving their server.

The problem is that rankings are based on a server’s history, and their matchup for the season is ranked accordingly. However, because of the huge movement of guilds prior to the season start the reality no longer matches the history for servers.

So what we have is a handful of matches that are no longer balanced as intended. The result is a few blowout matches which are discouraging for players who end up playing wvw less as a result, making the problem even worse.

I think by “stacked” people mean heavily loaded with, as in “stacked high” not as in “stacked deck”.

When I’m roaming on my Necro I look forward to finding a solo thief.

During the first season Yak’s Bend completely colluded with Ebay to beat Stormbluff Isle. At one point they allowed Ebay to take their entire BL for PPT, and escorted Ebay’s zerg around so it could take SBI’s keeps and towers.

It was disappointing.

Crafting isn’t that complicated. It typically follows a simple formula and once you figure it out its easy, or there are guides that will show you efficient ways to level up crafting.

Cooking is probably the most confusing since its a lot of trial and error. Best to have a guide for that one.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

If i’ve learned anything in this game it’s that stockpiling can backfire. Too many examples where ANet suddenly gets rid of or nerfs something. I honestly see no achievement or anything to brag about in saving up laurels but if it makes you happy then ok. Just don’t come crying when you eventually get hit by the nerf hammer my friend.

I agree with you on this. People either horde and then get the rug pulled out, or they slowly lose interest in the game and move on having never enjoyed everything they could have had in the game because they never spent any of it. It’s like people who horde materials the whole time they play, then quit playing out of frustration because they can’t buy a legendary. Meanwhile they’ve had hundreds and hundreds of gold in materials in their bank but they refused to sell any of it.

Northlander.4619:

I primarily play elementalist in WvW but I’m slowly starting to get fed up with how bad elementalist feels. I can handle myself ok against a lot of professions but “ok” isn’t quite good enough considering how much effort you need to put to merely surviving.

Sure in zergs I crank a lot of kills since it’s just about AoE spam and running with the tail between my legs if things look bad. It’s decent enough but I’d like to have a bit more survivable profession. Warriors and thieves specifically are my bane. It’s a choice between instadeath (if stopping to fight) or delayed death (if trying to run) when facing them. From others I can at least run!

Does anyone have any tips which profession would be good for handling themselves both in groups and while roaming? Especially when faced with warriors and/or thieves? I know the “warrior” and “thief” are obvious answers but those are actually the only professions I don’t have at 80.

As mentioned I’ve all other professions leveled up to 80 except warrior and thief. Bonus points if you can link to training videos/builds.

You should try a Necromancer. They have decent survivability in group fights and they can roam with the best of them. My Necromancer looks forward to stomping the thief that tries to gank me.

There are a number of viable builds, my personal preference is for power necro with might stacking and might duration.

1. Guardian
2. Warrior
3. Necromancer
4. Elementalist

5. Mesmer
6. Thief
7. Ranger
8. Engineer

I split this into top and bottom four because it makes more sense to me that way. The top four all play key roles in an organized WvW group. I’m putting Guardian and Warrior up front only because my experience says a larger meat-shield up front is more beneficial than the DPS power from the squishies back.

In some ways a Necromancer can play somewhat between front and back with survivability, utility and DPS. They have some extremely useful skills like Well of Corruption, Plague Form, Epidemic, and can suck up the downed state enemies with Death Shroud. They are very useful, but I ranked them slightly lower than Guardian and Warrior only because you don’t need as many to be successful.

All of this is assuming you are running in a group. If you are roaming or doing small group stuff I’d change the list around quite a bit.

Who said it was a nerf?

I’m assuming its armor and not trinkets since armor is arguably the more costly and time consuming of the two.

I would also say Guardian.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Has it ever occured to any of you that some people simply don’t enjoy flipping items on the TP or doing dungeon runs or WvW? Maybe the reason a person’s main source of gold is champ farming is because that’s how they personally enjoyed the game. Just like some of you only do dungeons, or only WvW, would you like it if suddenly the activity that brought you most fun out of the game had its profitability nerfed? No, you’d be the first people on these boards whining and crying about it.

Anet needs to learn that nerfing the game only makes it less enjoyable and solves nothing. If you’re going to nerf Anet, buff something else to compensate.

note: i don’t champ farm myself, i find it pretty boring. but i’d be pretty kittened if WB events, dungeons and the other stuff i do to have fun and make gold doing it got nerfed without some sort of way to make up for the loss of income.

If champ farming is what you enjoy, then you will still enjoy the game by champ farming.

If champ farming is how your made your gold, you will now likely move on to other things, as was the intent.

Players who enjoyed champs for fun still get their fun, and players who did it for gold can now move on and learn that there are other, better, ways to make gold.

I don’t see how its a loss.

Max Lexandre.6279:

When i saw the hype about this blog posts, i was hyped because “finally, maybe it’s this time PvE will get changes to help fix the many issues we face right now”.

Oh lord, we were wrong.

When i saw the “No More Repair Costs” i did not understood, i mean:
- They remove the punishment to players when they die.
- Yet they still punish their players with Mad Waypoint costs when we try to help our friends/guildies with their new chars/stories/quests/events….

One minor but major change they could make is a 50% discount waypoint cost to areas we already 100%, so we do not need to think twice when a friend is asking for help in a area where it’s costing up to 4 silver to travel to.

Maybe, on the last posts of friendly play we can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Here is your solution.

Take a WP. Look at your map and find some ore, a tree, or a plant you can gather. Use gathering tool.

There is a good chance that just paid for your WP.

But I’m sure 99.9% of people reading this understand that to be true. I mean, talk about really really trying to find a way to make a positive change into a negative. It’s borderline comical.

Schizo.1375:

You know what brought the price up? The fear of thousands of normal players. Not speculators,not manipulators. Despite what you might think it is impossible for some of the best traders to manipulate the unid dye market let alone bring prices up to 1g.

So what brought the price down? Speculators who have been hoarding dyes to sell at such an opportunity or knew how to quickly generate supply in order to make a profit. The massive flood of supply stabilized the price (as you said) thanks to these people. You are upset at the wrong people.

This.

Your analogy isn’t very good.

The Living Story is more like, say, a concert ticket. You purchase your ticket for the date(s) of the event and if you miss it, then that’s a real bummer but it was a live event so there isn’t anything you can do about it.

People want content that’s more like buying a CD, where you can listen to it by yourself when and where you like.

Both have their pros and cons, but that doesn’t make one any more or less of a failure than the other.

It’s amusing how people call playing the game “farming” and “grinding”. If I go to a map and expect to get some kind of a reward, then I have to gather materials or kill enemies, which is what you are calling farming and grinding.

You can certainly choose to just farm, if you feverishly running from node to node as fast as possible gathering materials and ignoring everything else.

Or you can grind enemies by staying in the same small area, attacking the same mobs as they respawn and do it over and over again even after the enjoyment has worn off.

But you don’t need to do either in order to make gold. You can play, do events, wander a map, and still make gold. Yes, it helps to do this is an area where the loot drops are more profitable and where there are materials that have a higher value, but don’t blame ANET for that if your goal is to make gold.

For example, log in and go to Iron Marches. Wander around killing mobs. Gather the material as you find it, and yes, go out of your way to hit up the rich nodes. You don’t have to do it in a way that kills your fun or where you ignore the beauty of the game world. You can have your cake and eat it too.

However, if you simply want to maximize your gold earned per hour then yes, you would be better off finding that one thing that gave you the best returns and do that thing repetitively. But you don’t need to do that to make gold.

Does anyone go to Southsun? I try and go there once a day, by myself. I go to gather the Blooming Passafloria because they are valuable and easy to spot, and I go to fight the karka because they can give good drops and I enjoy the challenge.

Not standing in the red circle I think is a big one that all new players should be aware of.

Yea, the rich nodes are not based on server reset. I’ve always taken the 24 hour rule of thumb.

Use the rich-node map and get used to the node locations and the run will be fairly quick and you soon won’t need a map. You will also learn where there are node farms that have as much iron as a rich node. It’s a little slower because there is more running around, but there is just as much iron and the respawn rate is fast.

Also note you can do these runs on multiple characters on the same day. So if you had 5 level 80s with all the WPs open you could run the rich-node mines 5x in a day. It might take 3-4 hours to complete on all those characters but people are walking away with 1500 iron ore.

1500 iron ore @ 3-4 silver each? What is that, 45 gold? Prices are way down from the highs when people were making bank, but even at 2 silver + you can make a reliable amount of gold without relying on other people and at a nice relaxing pace – its pretty hard to fail.

I always just put on some chill music and did a few runs. It’s nice to get out into areas of maps and see Tyria that I otherwise might not have. Then at some point prices declined a bit I was ready for a change of pace, but I made a killing and do continue to run rich nodes when I need materials for my own crafting.

I feel your pain. This happened to me as well, and while I’m all for taking responsibility for my mistakes, in this instance I truly felt there was no clear guidance informing me that two of the same rings would not be allowed.

Had this just been some gold or karma it wouldn’t be as big of a deal, but Laurels are time-gated, and this amounted to a loss of a month’s worth of time.

I submitted a ticket and got zero response. Good luck OP.

chemiclord.3978:

I think what you’d discover is that the bulk of the player base would rather just dump $10 on gems to buy something they want rather than grind through content either to A) Eventually get it in game or rely on RNG that it drops for them.

True, but it doesn’t have to be a grind all the time. If I’m sitting on a few hundred gold and I happen to see something in the Gem Store I want, I don’t suddenly have to grind to get it, I can just convert gold to gems and get it.

I’ve done both, convert some gold to gems for something I wanted, and I’ve just paid actual cash for gems for other things.

I think that LA will come back, but it will be redesigned, and that’s a good thing. LA was a pretty cool place, but people used a tiny fraction of it. Perhaps with a redesign they could make it the player pathing flow a little easier or add some new features like guild halls.

In terms of story, it would be smart if they staggered the rebuilding of LA over a few patches to give the rebuilding a sense of time and I think we might see that happen.

kokiman.2364:

a t s e.9614:

First lets establish what’s a zerg, it dosent necessary mean a blob of 50 players, a zerg is a group of players that can stick together to make the things easier or faster. It can be 5 players or 10 or 1000 dosent matter, moving as a blob should never be considered a strategy and should never be rewarding.

So you define the word zerg and we should accept it? And what are you talking about? blobs or zergs? And why should playing together never be rewarding? I do understand that the scaling, especially the champion scaling just doesn’t work and that’s why people abuse it zerging but still.. playing together should always be more rewarding than playing alone in an mmorpg, that’s what this genre is all about.. playing together, socialize, ..

I agree with this; the OPs definition of a zerg isn’t the same as mine.

Others mentioned that team play and social play are important elements of a MMO game, and I agree. There isn’t anything wrong with large groups of players teaming up, even in WvW.

The true zerg is the one with little to no coordination or cooperation. It’s a blob for blobs sake, to upscale events in hopes of tagging more mobs, or being carried by the skill of others, and getting a revive each time you are downed because one of the dozens of people around you will be kind enough to pick you up.

Group play is different and is quite rewarding. If anyone has ever played in a skilled WvW group you know what I’m talking about. And that group might appear to just be a blob to others but its FAR from that zerg I mentioned above. Everything about that group is designed to work together as a functional unit.

The shame is that those same types of skilled groups – usually guilds – aren’t given their own instances in PvE events to take their skills and use them there. Instead you get random people together, so you get little to no coordination, and you end up with zerg mentality.

They are just stat-stacks.

Most smart players then keep two sets of weapons, one that has a stacking sigil, and one with another non-stacking sigil that they swap to once their stacks are full. Losing my stacks is one of the most compelling reasons for me to not die in WvW.

Flytrap.8075:

Imagine what this game would be like if ANet didn’t spend so much time implementing new additions to the Gem Store.

When this game was in development, I was under the impression that the Gem Store would have additional cosmetic items rather than a monopoly on them.

Items added to the gem store amount to ANet doing a “bake sale” to raise funds to support the game’s development.

So I imagine if there were no additions to the gem store the game would be far short of what it is today.

I see this every day. My server runs temples daily and people know exactly where mobs are going to spawn and they melt them within a second or two with the exception of vets and above which take a few seconds longer. Are they actually dead before they spawn, or before they load on your screen?

There are mobs that spawn with the Determined buff making them invincible for a few seconds. This happens in a few places, but I’m not sure that’s the answer either. When you have an event like that going, with that many players, it wouldn’t matter how long it took for the mobs to lose the Determined buff, they are going to melt.

When I run those events, I just don’t worry if I tag mobs or not, I’m mostly there for the event reward. Sure I’ll still get some bags too, but that’s not the main point of joining an event that size.

Here is my Guardian.

I agree with what someone else said, joining a guild will give you the best chances of finding a party for a dungeon run without running into the elitists and people looking to just do speed-runs.

It was really easy as a guardian. Aegis on initial approach, then Judge’s Intervention after her first push back, spam F and she’s stomped.

Everything you listed would be an improvement.

I’m imagining the OP as the same kind of person who complains the game has no content. Flash-levels all characters to skip the content and beauty that exits in Tyria; complains there is nothing to do.

I know that wasn’t the intent of the original post, but that’s the kind of play style that I believe leads to those complaints. And don’t get me wrong, I do understand the desire to get your characters to 80 quickly, especially when you’ve done it multiple times. I’m just not convinced its always for the best to do so.

There is, and has been, one thing that keeps me going and engaged and that’s having my own personal goals for my characters.

It’s not about ANET setting goals for me, or rushing to complete the next thing that ANET puts out, but instead following and actively playing towards the goals I set for myself.

Also, I try and keep myself in check and make sure that I don’t get so caught up in chasing rewards as to forget that this is a really beautiful game that can be a lot of fun to play.

There is a group of players who really hate the idea of the gem store. I feel like you all are thinking about it wrong. It’s not about greed, or else these wouldn’t just be cosmetic and convenience items. It’s more like they are holding a bake sale so they can keep developing their game.

With recent market prices I can make 8g+ in an hour farming Iron, but the number of runs I can do in a 24 hour period is limited to the number of alts I have with the map open.

I like the group events, but I agree it is somewhat disappointing to rely on random players to get some achievements.

I did Marionette a number of times but failed most of that LS because there were never enough players.

I tried rescuing citizens the best I could when LA was under attack, but players always zerged and we never reached 1200, so I’ll never have the Hero of Lions Arch title.

This afternoon I was on in Borlis Pass and we did it multiple times in a row and it was fairly easy. I got on again tonight, into overflow, and people weren’t as coordinated and kept losing.

The difference – during the day everyone cooperated and downed one knight at a time, Blue – Green – Red, in that order. It was fairly simply. Tonight in overflow everyone was split up into small groups on each knight and failing at least one of the events.

laharl.8435:

You’re not being punished for not crafting. You’re just not being rewarded for not crafting.

This.

I never really put too much thought into it before, but now that you have I have to admit I agree that these are also many of the reasons I don’t like many of these armors either. I’ve been challenged to come up with an armor set on my human guardian and norn necromancer that I’m really excited about. I have one for each that I like, but there certainly isn’t many other options I’m excited about.