Guild Wars 2

So Osi, let me get this straight. You spent 24 per exotic, and you got 30 exotics. This means you pumped at least 720g into this thing. Whether you did it in batches or in one go is irrelevant to me.

Now, you didn’t think it was weird that one event mini, one – which in the past has always been account bound – was virtually destroying a purely gem-generated market carefully built up by Anet over the last 10 months? Not only that, this was going on while you could still buy the normal 3 mini pack for 300 gems? A pack which renders a green mini at best, or very unusually, one rare mini? This didn’t strike you as odd? The more I read your reasoning, the more difficulty I have with understanding it.

You keep focusing on the “bad luck” part. What if you had had “good luck”? Would that have made a difference? The outcome of your forging is completely irrelevant. What is important is the effect it had on the market, and on the people you duped with it.

I’m a bit amazed by people stating that these patch notes are good. They selectively choose the “OK” bits, but ignore the “we-will-nerf-the-already-subpar-ranger-DPS-to-the-ground” bits, which incidentally will render our “class mechanic” – pets – into a joke. Again.

We have one decent build, in which wonky unreliable pets feature as the shining star to partially make up for our subpar overall damage. Now, after this patch, we have 10 builds which all give less survivability and provide less DPS output overall.

This patch will be another nail into the coffin that is our class. Rangers in PvE? Don’t expect an invitation from the majority of players for dungeon groups. Dungeon mobs have a metroton of health, who cares about swiftness or regenaration; damage output is your no. 1 priority, it always has been in PvE. Do I agree with that attitude? Not in the least, I loathe it, for many different reasons. But I do understand that it follows as a result of sheer logic; why should other players have sympathy for a situation they didn’t create, and form a less effective group (including a ranger) as a result? If these notes are implemented “as is”, I won’t oppose the ranger-bashing any longer.

But hey, look at it from the bright side; leather squares will become even more worthless on the TP! (while the price of ore will go through the roof)

Bump for greater justice.

The OP’s post is so mindblowingly constructive I would have at least expected some form of official feedback for his days and days of work on this. Some form of recognition is in order.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Buttercup.5871:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Andrew.4506:

Harvesting isn’t the only way to get iron and wood. In fact there are much faster and easier ways to obtain them. Maybe look in to those before asking the game be changed to suit your gaming behavior.

Ugh Oh! U mean buy it? or bot it? No thanks. I spent $100’s of RL money to buy full sets of permanent gathering tools for all 9 of my char, why should i have to spend money now on buying those mats?

Think harder. You’ll eventually get it. It’s entirely legit and has been in the game since release. I’m surprised at your bluntness when I see not one, but two people that tried to help you here.

I don’t need your, or other players help to mine iron/wood, i need Anet to fix the problem, but tnx for your input.

Why create this thread then if you don’t need help? If you just want Anet to respond here, you’re in for a tough time, because they know they’ve implemented other ways leading to Rome – which you are unwilling to explore or even consider – and that the current market is sufficiently healthy with the existing crafting requirements.

When you read this, instead of immediately responding, take a deep breath, step back, and think. “What are three players alluding to that I’m not seeing?”

My help stops here btw. Had you been less dismissive, I would have pm’d you the answer.

Nike.2631:

Then take it as directed at the generic ‘you’ you are so bravely championing.

Simple truth is if I can stack up 25 silver doubloons in two weeks and a total play time of under an hour without being even interested in the result, I DON’T BELIEVE YOUR PREMISE that they are too hard to get.

You’re essentially telling me to to delete three of my nine characters just so that they can do nothing but be a level 21 piggy bank and open chests at jumping puzzles they never really did. Or buy three additional character slots solely for this purpose instead.

I will not accept this kind of unintended gameplay. I’d rather bleed and buy the legendary straight from the TP than do that. It’s wrong.

azurrei.5691:

Avatara.1042:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well 50 scraps… that will certainly keep the price high… $400 USD for a weapon skin…

Absolutely insane pricing from Anet…

You think 50 is bad (it is)?? Oh are you in for a treat in the next few days…

He’s referring to reddit info that fused skins will eat seven (7) tickets. Yes. Seven. At 40 dollars a ticket on average you’ll pay 280 bucks for a fused skin. Many (“lucky”) will pay less, and many (“bad luck”) will pay a lot more.
So four hundred (400) dollars for a fused skin was not a fantasy number.

The problem with the TP interface is that its extreme user-unfriendliness feeds the popularity of the third party programs. Those programs are so advanced, it’s disturbing. I refuse to use them, still, but a case can almost be made that they should be allowed. Almost.

felivear.1536:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

The blog says that we should craft all our PvP crafting components into items.

How do we do this now that glory has been removed and the final components can’t be purchased anymore? Is there some temporary way to obtain item tokens so I can finish crafting my leftover materials?

Please answer this as well. I can’t imagine the hundreds of thousands of PvP mats that will just wash away because people have no means to use them because they don’t have the gear or consumable tokens.

This x 1000. You already made us feel like fools with the glory booster thing. I urge you not to destroy a year of efforts in a heartbeat.

Please don’t mess with the guesting system unless there no other way whatsoever. Here, that is not the case, as the OP’s initial complaint is not even related to the guesting system. Frostgorge sound is a champ-train dominated area on nearly every high population server. It has nothing to do with guesting. Nothing.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Can’t we all just get along?

When Kiel is in the council, we can. Gnashblade, on the other hand, plans to sacrifice baby quaggans in his evil experiments for a new fractal.

Yes! And I want to buy legendary footsteps as well. We can call them “footprint” to distinguish them from “footsteps”. Everyone knows this is clearly different. I’d like add the frostfang footprint on my left foot, and the incinerator footprint on my right foot. Ok? Just make it happen.

And I want the title “I won the game more than others”. Because obviously, I did. Whatever it was that I won, I won it more. Naturally, I’ll pay more for this title than the mere “I won the game” title, which is clearly inferior. I will look down on those petty inferior titled players and shout “ha!” – or something similarly witty.

Celestial was already inferior, particularly when magic find on celestial was not replaced with anything else.

Now, it’s just a very time-intensive joke.

Silvercyclone.1462:

im waiting for the copper fed salvage-o-matic.

Be wary when that happens. The ect-o-matic may be next.

I did get the tickets and I fully agree with the postponement. This was a wise decision; implementing the NPC would be like throwing fuel on a raging fire.

Syktek.7912:

“Celebration of human spirit and resilience of all the difficulty Kryta has faced.”

-Snorts- Pathetic humans don’t have any spirit, all they do is cry and whine about everything because their gods are no longer there for them to brown-nose. They’re weak and useless without their gods. Hope you humans enjoy your massive pity party.

I have no idea how that comment relates to Charged Shards. To the patch preview, yes, to charged shards, no.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Vick.6805:

As long as the campaigning doesn’t become absurd in-game.

As someone who hates the political games we call campaigning, just from reading the forums, I can’t wait until this event is over, and it hasn’t even started officially.

By players it already has become absurd in-game and in the forums, what with people abandoning logic and ignoring other’s statements to try to discredit any opinions that disagree with theirs. Just like real elections, it’s already making me feel sick.

Vote for Ellen Kiel, she will cure your illness once elected.

Behellagh.1468:

I opened around 75-85 normal dragon coffers, collected since Dragon Bash started, before logging off tonight, got a ticket. Seeing how the drop rate data on the wiki suggests a 1 in 2000 chance of that, I was indeed quite lucky.

Also got one mini, one Cold Potion and three types of food items (and of course fireworks but they are quite common relatively speaking).

With all due respect, I don’t see how this is relevant to the current thread, which is about rich coffers. I’m happy for you though that your slot machine cashed out. That’s at the heart of the RNG model, and the reason this community remains divided on the issue. Yet, false advertising and gambling are very real issues, that take a special place in legal systems around the world. Certain commercial companies have been taken to court – and lost – for far less as a result of false advertising. If these were items in a regular store, most national watchdogs would have intervened by now. But because they’re virtual items, people don’t know what to do yet. Anet is exploiting this uncertainty to the fullest; with each update, it’s checking where the boundaries are, and what people will still accept.

Most constructive post I have ever seen. In any MMO.
In the last 10 years.
I’m awestruck.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Just wanted to give a quick update on this topic. We’ve completed verifying every update from the november release, and there were zero changes to anything what so ever that would have negatively affected loot in any way/shape/form. We can officially confirm this as an X-files level conspiracy at this point.

We’re in the midst of evaluating every loot table in the game and running massive random roll evaluations table by table, as well as evaluating every system game wide that causes a player to qualify for items to determine if any issues exist in those systems from launch.

Will update again when we have another round of concrete information.

Colin, I invite you to look at my account, specifically, at the drops I received before and after the lost shores update. It’s a difference of day and night. Four rares an hour vs 1 per 2 to 3 hours. Really, you have full permission. If you find out why my loot drops went down, perhaps you’ll find out what happened to everyone that has replied in this thread, and the merged thread that preceded this thread.

What mystic said. Furthermore, if you want to craft end game (“ascended”) armor and weapons in this game you’ll need items of nearly all levels. Hence the relatively stable and decent prices on them. Although the lowest tier is not used to craft them (jute, copper), there are mystic forge recipes through which you can bump those into items of the next tier, like jute—->wool (which is used for ascensed crafting). That’s why even the lowest tier items sell relatively well.

I’m becoming more and more angry about these “lick wounds” threads. Rangers were sitting ducks for a year. We are not entirely sitting ducks anymore, because the pet is now working as intended. But people don’t want to think when killing a ranger, they just want to dps. Like before! Because, hey, that was so nice and easy! Free glory!

But now, they have to deal with the pet, and interrupt it, the way it was designed from the start. Oh no! That requires thinking! We already have to pay so much attention when killing a mesmer, we don’t want more of that!

I’ve actually seen a mesmer saying that he wants his clones to heal him while he quietly teleports away. And I now I see warriors… (yes, it’s true!) complain about a skill that a ranger has – because they don’t have it themselves as well! It’s mind boggling. Lack of perspective is getting out of whack.

Rangers are sitting ducks when downed, we always have been. It’s easy to kill rangers in downed state. Just think before you act, and you’ll see that the downed state of other classes is superior to that of the ranger.

Haha smooth, good luck with that! In the meantime, let’s crunch some numbers.

Saulius.8430:

not as ridiculous as pulling numbers out of thin air

Hardly thin air. I personally opened about 5k bags. But if you don’t want to take my word for it, take Wanze’s word for it: while an opponent of change, he did provide info that after opening roughly 100.000 loot bags in 4 months, the success rate of obtaining silver doubloons is much smaller than I calculated:

Wanze.8410:

From those 100k lootbags, nearly half of them were Light Bags of Booty because for me, they have been the most profitable at certain times, when their supply was high, so those are the ones i bought the most.

I wont give you the exact percentage of the Silver Doubloon droprate but you can expect between 0.6-0.9 Silver Doubloons per stack.

One of the bags with Silver Doubloons on the loot table has an average droprate of over 1.0 per stack but usually the value of the other items on the loot table were abysmal, so not really worth it.

So my 60 thousand bags was a generous estimate, believe it or not, which in practice is closer to 75 thousand bags (0,8 doubloon per stack, which is still generous in light of Wanze’s data).

I hope you won’t contest my figures for receiving one bag per three mobs. That was a generous estimate as well. Even if the figure is lower (1 bag per 2,5 mobs), you’d still come close to having to kill 190 thousand mobs to obtain the necessary 75k bags.

Oh, and forging gemstones doesn’t make this any better btw. At a 4% success rate (I’m personally consistently much lower, but I’ll use a more generous estimate), you need about 100 gemstones per doubloon, which means you’ll need 25k gemstones and roughly 6250 forges. So that’s 25.000 gemstones currently hovering at around 2s each…. again, that’s 500g in gemstones and a broken wrist/permanent carpel tunnel syndrome. The only “upside” here is that you also end up with roughly 60g worth of gemstones that you can’t use but can sell at 51g. Making the silver doubloon “only” 1,8g instead of 2g.

Please don’t defend the blatantly unreasonable. And don’t defend a fundemental design flaw and call me, of all people (as I said, I can buy this legendary straight off the TP had it been available) “wanting it easy” in the process. It’s not worth defending that position. You profited from the botter silver doubloon price? Good for you. But don’t obstruct others in trying to obtain a very, very necessary fix to a bug/oversight/design flaw.

A bathing suit!

Pwetty please???

26 August announcement: “September 2014 Feature Pack: Improvements Galore”. The improvements listed are:

- Dungeon Instance Owner
- Crafting UI changes
- Performance updates

Don’t get wrong, these three under the hood improvements are great and all, and I appreciate that a lot of work went into them, but why galore? Could you elaborate?
The word “galore” makes me feel there’s something substantial I’m missing?

She’s gonna die. It’s kind of obvious. And with her, the balance of power is flipped. Completely.

If Kiel wins, we’re all gonna be nuclear toast; if Evon wins, we’re gonna all be deity toast. In the end, we’re toast. The only thing that is up to you is how we are to be baked. If this choice matters to you, vote.

Dawdler.8521:

People complain because they still like the game.

This. Some people, when they see a problem, they do something about it. They raise the issue. Others call it complaining, and cheer when the problem has been fixed for them. Without realising it would never have been fixed in the first place if it hadn’t been for rhe people that raised their voice. They raise their voice because they care.

Wanze.8410:

Behellagh.1468:

As pointed out in other threads, changes to the MF was mentioned in the patch notes.

Some Mystic Forge recipes have been updated to provide a wider range of results.

All Mystic Forge recipes for crafting PvP items have been removed along with PvP crafting materials.

PvP items and mats may have been removed from forge recipes but they are tradeable now. Hooray for those that didnt keep them in the pvp locker, when the patch went live.

Wanze, c’mon. That’s technically an exploit. You knowingly sold an unusable item that you knew should have been removed from the game. No sympathy from me, sorry. I find it similar to buying vendor items that can’t be salvaged and selling them on the TP to unsuspecting buyers.

I don’t trust Ellen Kiel one bit. But c’mon. Who doesn’t want bikini wear, drinks on the beach, and free precursors?

I say: Vote Ellen Kiel. We’ll deal with the cost of that decision later.

Is it me or did they pretty much copy and paste most of the lion cub’s animation to the the kitten animation?

Daywolf.2630:

We grind to 500 by putting the lime in the coconut.

http://youtu.be/1wg_L0wGTyA

But honestly, going through that much trouble for account bound food?
Please no.

Yes, let’s all fill up 2-hour-queue WvW servers with people that only want to farm skritt for silver doubloons! Brilliant idea, I’m sure you’ll get a lot of support for that.

Did you open a chest recently? It even looks like a slot machine now. The whole gambling experience is intended. Remove the BL ticket from the BL chest loot table, and no one will ever buy a key again. It won’t happen.

Even if Anet would be remotely interested in this idea, you’d better add a zero to your cost proposal. And replace the word “ticket” with “bundle of ticket scraps” (RNG included, gives 2 to 5 scraps).

I did it without the bug. I just read there was one. I had presumed others would do it like me; kill the robber at their spawn point. If you get aggro for some reason, hit the water. You will lose some supplies hitting the water, but so be it. Completed it multiple times this way.

@diamond: I agree with you. However, using these tricks allows people to think that nothing is wrong with pet health, because look, there’s all these rangers that never have a problem with pet health. Moreover, it will increase the already bad image of rangers that the bots gave us.

So in the long run, using these unintended mechanics hurt us more than people realize.

The whole thing makes no sense, a skin is a skin, this is probably the only time in my history of 10 years of MMO’ing I’d encourage people to do it. And I am strict on following the rules, more than anyone probably.

Moreover, I have not seen anyone from Anet stating this is an exploit, and I cannot imagine they will as there is no way to enforce it (benefit < manpower). Never issue a warning you can’t enforce. The lawyers at Anet will know this adagium all too well.

For the record, I haven’t done this myself, but I may consider doing it in the future. An unused skin is an unused skin. The artificial distinction being created is beyond absurd.

Reann.9480:

All I want is an option to create the final product after discovering it if you have all the materials. Takes just ages to do all the soups and fillings and whatnot before you get to the final product you want. Would that be too hard to implement?

This. Times one thousand. This would make me enjoy cooking much more. The time and effort spent doing a zillion substeps X to create final product Y takes the fun out of cooking. To a point that it’s no longer worth the monetary reward to cook for coin. All other crafts (except, at times, artificer) do not suffer from this problem.

Another example. Recipe: Bowl of Orrian Truffle Soup.
To make this, combine:

(i) Bowl of Cream Soup Base
(ii) Shallot
(iii) Orrian Truffle

In order to acquire (ii), visit a karma merchant [in Timberline falls]. It cannot be purchased on the TP.

In order to make (i), combine:

(iv) Glass of Buttermilk
(v) Bowl of Roux
(vi) Pile of Salt and Pepper
(vii) Bowl of Poultry Stock

In order to make (v), combine:

(viii) Bag of Flour
(ix) Stick of Butter

In order to make (vi), combine:

(x) Packet of Salt
(xi) Black Peppercorn

In order to make (vii), combine:

(xii) Jug of Water
(xiii) Slab of Poultry Meat
(xiv) Onion
(xv) Carrot

The process to make this is simply too onerous for something that sells for three silver, has little profit margin, is not in demand, and is not “better” than other foods that merely require you to combine 3 or 4 ingredients.

Domo.1798:

Except the achievement doesn’t even work like that as is. It says when you soulbind but in PvE it awards you for when you buy it and not soulbind (and I’m pretty sure it’s account bind on acquire)

I just checked in-game: it’s soulbound on acquire
That said I think Anet should implement that skinning the armor piece should count towards the achievement. I don’t have PvP cultural armor but I don’t want people that did go through considerable trouble in PvP to get cultural armor to have to go through pointless grinding -again – just to get this title. They earned the skin. So they earned the title.

Dear John, as you are Anet’s champion on this part of the forum, and highly respect your opinion, can you please offer some guidance on this issue.

- Zicore
- Gold Wars 2
- Others programs developed to offer even more functionalities than the above.

My concern is that it is possible for players, through a third party tool, to be notified for every item they are selling on the TP whether they are overbid or not. For me, this crosses a big line, which caused me to stop crafting and stop doing anything TP related. Others have indicated this sentiment as well, as you are probably well aware (see closed thread on this). Just to be clear, the point of this thread is not my opinion on whether these programs are “right” or “wrong”, or whether they violate any party of the EULA/TOS. For the purposes of this thread, those questions are moot.
The point of this thread is guidance.

I seek guidance because it feels wrong to me to use these programs (again, whether it feels right to someone else is not the point of this thread). In the same way, I’m not sending my ranger pets up a WvW battlement with the “guard” skill, because I don’t think it’s intended for them to be gravity defying vertical climbers. Unfortunately, there’s no guidance yet on this issue either, but it certainly does not impact the game in the same way as the use of third party tools for the TP.

So I would like to ask: where is the line? What kind of third party tools, or more specifically, what third party functionalities are we allowed to use to compete on the TP?

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t believe the Trading Post should be removed, but I do believe that all items should be made “Account Bind on Purchase,” so that you can sell whatever you own on the TP, and you can buy anything you like on the TP, but you cannot buy stuff with the intent to sell it.

Congratulations. You just increased inflation by one thousand percent.
You know those “speculation spikes” you see after almost every new patch? Millions of leather squares, silk, or peppercorn, going up and down in price in the course of an evening? They suck the money out of the economy like there’s no tomorrow. I know of no gold sink in any game that so successfully drains the economy of its currency than the TP. Nothing rivals it.

You clearly are not into cooking. Some of the products made with black pepperkorn sell by the thousands per hour, amongst others, cup of lotus fries. Yes, there is pepper stock, but this will run out over time.

The TP is easily the biggest gold sink in the game. Decreasing the potential to trade on the TP would decrease the money that flows out of the game significantly. The disparity between the Peters (the “haves”) and the Joes (the “haves-not”) will only become greater. Moreover, casual Joe will become very upset that he can’t buy the stuff that he used to, because it “suddenly all became so expensive!” People just starting the game, who don’t have any coin, will have difficulty catching up. As a result, word spreads the game is not for casuals, and new Joes won’t buy the game.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it now: the only way to limit TP profit is to disable the “buy order” button. Flippers live on the difference between the buy order and the sell order price. It’s really that simple.

A couple of problems with it though:
- You’d be killing off a large portion of the playerbase, namely, those that enjoy flipping items.
- Another major goldsink must be created to fill the void (because of reduced activity on the TP), and it’s very hard to create persistent gold sinks without major player opposition.
- Market manipulation: with no buy orders, you can more easily stealth sell a product at an insanely low price to tank a market very quickly.

Dante.1508:

The Pony Bow, how on earth can that be seen as anything but overrated..it doesn’t fit in this game even a tiny bit..

[…] I know they’re wrong, wait and see;

Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection
The the lovers, the the dreamers and me.

I’m sitting on 150 laurels and I haven’t yet seen a good reason to let go. I gave one character full ascended trinkets, and stopped after that.

Laurels are banked time.

The more ascended becomes the norm, the weaker the ranger will be. With half of the damage supposedly coming from the pet, why can’t I have ascended pet damage? It makes no sense.

For this reason, ascended armor and weapons are wasted on a ranger. You get half of the additional damage that other classes gain from ascended upgrades.

Vol, you forgot to mention that the sky will fall and we’ll all be doomed.

You need to sell your gems between tomorrow (because F&F dyes) and the next patch (because Vol’s reasons). It’s not that hard to figure out.

Oh, and while you’re at it, think about what people need after they crafted their ascended weapons for once. You’re all focusing on what materials are needed to craft ascended weapons, speculating like mad, but you’re not focusing on the obvious. What does anyone need after they crafted a weapon? (except for the obvious: love, peace on earth, and pizza).

Yea his response pretty much showed he hadn’t read the first post. Well, at least he’s not the only one

Echo echo echo. It’s almost funny how blatantly ignored the crafting forum is.

Let’s say I use all my glory before 18 March.
And let’s say I still have a ton of PvP crafting materials.
Let’s assume I need to buy consumable tokens, for example, to use up the majority of my forge materials efficiently.

Will I be able to buy, for example, consumable tokens with rank points after 18 March?

Thanks Aeneq and Darkspirit. Your combined thorough knowledge on this sheds light on some of the darkest stuff I’ve read since release.

I did not know it had already gone this far. If it’s indeed possible, and you guys know it can be done, TP botting is very real.

Have you guys talked to John about solutions? You guys need to put your minds together and figure this out. Seems to me the current TP road will lead to a dead end in the long run.

Two minis to rule them all;
One key to grind them;
Two minis to kill them all;
And in toilets bind them.

You only focus on what is “taken away”. Did you ever consider that PvP was dying and its environment had become downright toxic? You need new blood, and you need it yesterday. This is the best thing they could have done to ensure longevity and sustenance of a solid PvP community. We have nothing to gain from a shaky raging PvP community that tears apart every time the devs tinker with class balance. We need a solid foundation, and I truly believe they’ve done the right thing to create one. A rank finisher is worth nothing if you’re queuing 30 minutes just to use it.