Guild Wars 2

Is it really necessary for there to be two levels of protection to bind items to players and remove items from the economy? As is soulbound is completely unneccessary and I would argue for it’s removal for the following reasons.

1- It’s an annoyance to the player.
2- It’s a throwback to old grind based games. Soulbound was invented to make players grind for loot if they ever have an alt, such as needing to grind multiple sets of magic find armor when only one should be needed. With the gameplay of GW2 this is unneeded.
3- Account bound removes items from the economy already. Not much more to say here, things that are account bound won’t end up on the TP any more than something that’s soulbound will.
4- It doesn’t make sense in game lore. Why exactly are these dark stained claws bound to my characters eternal soul again? Are we really afraid I’m going to bank them than use them to some malicious end on some other character?
5- Ascended items you pick up from Fractals are account bound AND soulbound on use. This is just ridiculous.
6- It punishes the player. A player accidentally buys a set of medium dungeon armor on a heavy armored character just wasted 1200 tokens because of a simple mistake due to the armor being soulbound. Whats the difference between tokens being account bound and giving tokens to an alt and buying the armor on a character for one of your alts?

Is there something I’m missing here? because to me it would look a lot cleaner and less redundant if things were just account bound.

legit the worst encounter in the game and you made it worse.

(as in boring and tedious)

Cyberg.5064:

Erik Kain, Contributor

In other words he is not a Frobes employee, just a random nobody giving his opinion.

Which forbes thought was quality enough to publish under their name. So I’m not sure that I understand the point you think you have.

Besides, I’m asking people whether they think this review resonates with them. Not what irrelevant details they’re able to spot.

Aelaren.3784:

They might as well look into champs&vets drop tables only – judging by that response. It`s not a clear answer, it`s AMA, it`s been more than a week and there are NO dev responses in this or similar threads.

It’s going on a month now, I think they are hoping this will go away.

From what I can see right now in the game, the non-grinding philosophy of A-Net has failed. People grind events for karma, grind dungeons for armors, grind for catching up with the storyline requirement.

A non-grinding solution would be to get the necessary experience to complete storyline in a row. This means that a player can start a new character and just follow the storyline and unlocking WP or zones and get all the exp he needs to continue its personal story.

But away form this, A-net is just forcing people either to do zone completion or just grind a small aria for events.

This is absolutely ridiculous. So explain why this jewelery is 15 times more materials to craft? I’ll tell you why.

Passion flowers drop from Consortium Chest.
This is a blatant attempt by Anet to make you spend REAL money for GEAR. Poor show Anet, poor show.

Cerise.9045:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

hotfixes don’t require a patch, and the solution was very simple. The hatchery was a complex problem to my understanding (I didn’t fix it personally), and Bjarl will be fixed in the next patch. If you had to fight Bjarl every time in every path, that might get elevated to a bigger issue worthy of an emergency patch since it blocked an entire dungeon.

There are farms available in the game, but when a farm comes up that spikes charts and can upset the economy, we try to act quickly.

I’m starting to believe you don’t understand how your own game works.

You act quickly when you see spikes that can upset the economy? Really? How long was it since the karka event finale? I’m pretty sure it was less than 2 weeks ago. Did you forget what happened there already?

A lot of people randomly got a legendary base weapon that sells for 100-300 gold on the TP, some of these people got TWO base weapons and made 400 gold for 10 minutes of effort. Are we to assume ANet thinks giving people this much money for 10 minutes of effort is healthy for the game, but having people being able to make a few gold per hour for actually working hard and dedicating themselves to playing the game is “upsetting the economy”?? Are you kidding me?

Where are the metrics that say “well maybe giving random people 400+ gold for 10 minutes of work would damage the economy”? Why do you think having people get 400+ gold for no work causes no damage but having people make a few gold for hard work is so damaging it has to be removed from the game?

Please explain this to me because I’m dumbfounded by your words.

Another hero. Yes it’s my multipost day.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

hotfixes don’t require a patch, and the solution was very simple. The hatchery was a complex problem to my understanding (I didn’t fix it personally), and Bjarl will be fixed in the next patch. If you had to fight Bjarl every time in every path, that might get elevated to a bigger issue worthy of an emergency patch since it blocked an entire dungeon.

There are farms available in the game, but when a farm comes up that spikes charts and can upset the economy, we try to act quickly.

I’m starting to believe you don’t understand how your own game works.

You act quickly when you see spikes that can upset the economy? Really? How long was it since the karka event finale? I’m pretty sure it was less than 2 weeks ago. Did you forget what happened there already?

A lot of people randomly got a legendary base weapon that sells for 100-300 gold on the TP, some of these people got TWO base weapons and made 400 gold for 10 minutes of effort. Are we to assume ANet thinks giving people this much money for 10 minutes of effort is healthy for the game, but having people being able to make a few gold per hour for actually working hard and dedicating themselves to playing the game is “upsetting the economy”?? Are you kidding me?

Where are the metrics that say “well maybe giving random people 400+ gold for 10 minutes of work would damage the economy”? Why do you think having people get 400+ gold for no work causes no damage but having people make a few gold for hard work is so damaging it has to be removed from the game?

Please explain this to me because I’m dumbfounded by your words.

Excisidium.1723:

This is the biggest upset I have had with ANET in the past 7 years of playing their games. I have no hope for getting my legendary now. What ever happened to no grinding in the game? First you take away Plinx. That literally killed Cursed Shore. Then to put life back into dungeons so we aren’t speed clearing them you make bosses drop these special bags and loot. You want people to do your dungeons? Make. It. Worth. The. Time. We shouldn’t have to spend an hour and a half in Arah for 6 blues, 3 greens, 20-60 tokens, and 1800 karma. Did you see how many people did the Lost Shores event once we knew that spending 2 hours in the event chain for 4-5 exotics was the reward? People wanted to do that event. Right now there is no motivation to do anything except sit in LA and stare at the screen.

The most money this farm brought in per hour was 4g for my group. That’s not that much when mats are 30s a piece and we need 250-500 of Powerful Bloods/Ectos/Dust/Icy Runestones. If it all comes down to how much money is being earned per hour, you better get rid of the trading post as well. You’re slowly pushing the best profit in this game towards buying off of one of those Chinese gold selling websites. Fix it.

To those who say you haven’t grinded at all, quit sucking up to ANET. Be honest and tell the truth. ANET, you have done a great job with this game. But the things you have promised us are falling apart. There is still a massive amount of grind.

My hero here

KyleQuest.4639:

It’s pretty obvious they wish to frustrate the player to the point they’d rather just buy Gems, instead of playing to get whatever the want.

This. 100% and without any discussion, this. This should be stickied somewhere so everyone knows exactly what to expect.

I was never a fan of being able to buy any type of ingame currency with real-money, on the level or through 3rd party sites, and now we are seeing one of the major drawbacks of that system. As someone else said in another post, high end gear is either “time consuming or wallet breaking”.

It’s just that ANET has now made the term “time consuming” something almost unreachable by giving us Diminishing Returns, gating rare materials needed for recipes (only drop from one place, i.e., Ectos only gained from Salvaging), and making the amount of those rare materials monstrous. They have specifically done this in the attempt to drive players to spend real money on ingame gold/gems in order to continue to make a profit. It’s disgusting, but those are your options. We know in which direction ANET is pushing the players.

Kindayar <><

there are not going to bother fixing the bugs or old content or even new ones. We never got the scavenger hunt during the Lost shores.

Stop being so selfish. Everyone is entitled to the same content. These type of posts really disgust me.

People are always going to choose the path of least resistance, deal with it.

As always, we do not encourage anyone to spend more money in the Gem Store than they are comfortable with.

Not to be disagreeable, but this statement is highly inaccurate. You do encourage players to spend more money in the Gem Store than they are comfortable with, in deed if not in words. The evidence is in the post above, "the nature of random chance items means that you could get lucky and get a rare item after opening two chests, or… you could “roll” badly and open hundreds of chests and not get one. "

The entire mechanic is designed around getting players to spend more money than they are comfortable with, otherwise you wouldn’t reward them for “pulling the lever” continually. You can say that you do not encourage such behavior, but saying it doesn’t make it so. The only way to actually not encourage such behavior would be to not reward it, and to instead reward players for spending no more than a reasonable amount, for example a guaranteed “Spend X, receive Y.”

Cash money and randomized rewards should never interact, that is just straight up gambling. Or you could just go “all in” and add a bunch of slot machines and video poker to Lion’s Arch.

Obviously bank slots and inventory slots are what most people hope for. I’d also like character slot discounts. Of course I don’t have 5 lvl 80 characters, it’s just that I’d like the option to have a character from each class.

However I too believe the discount will be for useless vanity items and boosts. The only non-upgrade items that I would buy if they were discounted are the mystic stones and the black lion salvage kits. Right now gems cost a lot of gold so the salvage ktis aren’t worth it but with a 70% discount I would buy one or two.

Slacker.2679:

While I would love to see sales on bank or inventory tabs (would finally upgrade my characters), they’ll probably be on consumables and things that nobody really uses unless they get them from story rewards or chests.

I think so too.

While I would love to see sales on bank or inventory tabs (would finally upgrade my characters), they’ll probably be on consumables and things that nobody really uses unless they get them from story rewards or chests.

El Hefe.2814:

nope. the game should be challenging.

Challenge doesn’t have to revolve around gear. Challenge has to do with actual game mechanics. Powerful gear does not make the content challenging, it actually makes it easier.

AcidicVision.5498:

Dont play with pugs. Join yourself a nice active guild with people you get along with. A small effort finding a guild that fits and your experience will improve greatly.

this all of this way is this so hard,

Dont play with pugs. Join yourself a nice active guild with people you get along with. A small effort finding a guild that fits and your experience will improve greatly.

The purpose of agony is to be a hard gear-check to stop you from progressing unless you have the right gear. Anet in its infinite wisdom decided that after swearing up and down they wouldn’t make a gear treadmill that what people really wanted was a gear treadmill.

If you could avoid agony it wouldn’t be a hard gear check and there would be no point to it.

Agony isn’t SUPPOSED to be a clever mechanic. It is supposed to be a mechanic that checks your gear and kills you if you don’t have it. It’s really that simple.

Below is a synopsis of where the market is, and what profits can be made buying and selling right now. My apologies that the tables didn’t come through cleanly.

Profit margins are based off of fulfilling buy orders at the current high bid price (when buying) or creating listings at the current lowest listed price (when selling). Credit goes to www.gw2spidy.com for the data.

Summary

What’s Hot: T6 crafting mats for known ascended quality Mystic Forge recipes are through the roof, with prices ranging from 45-120% above normal. Other mats for the new ascended items are also high (for example, Glob of Ectoplasm: +31%).

What’s Not: Logs and Ore are selling at big discounts, with Logs offering a 40% profit currently, and Ore at 23%. Tier 1 crafting mats (in particular, Tiny Fangs, Scales and Totems) are at a huge discount as well, offering a 40-76% profit range. New recipes were promised in the Lost Shores content, so the prices of all fine crafting mats spiked, but as there have been no low-tier recipes introduced, the fine crafting mats are dipping back to below their norm.

What to Buy

Ore and Logs are low due primarily to a lack of people leveling new characters with the FotM dungeon. The demand has dropped sharply for ore and logs across the board, as well as for tier 1 fine crafting mats. The best deals are as follows:

Best Buy (Greater Than 50% Profit):

1) Hard Wood Log (6c per): 113% profit
2) Platinum Ore (11c per): 85% profit
3) Elder Wood Log (13c per): 77% profit
4) Tiny Fang (7c per): 76% profit
5) Tiny Scale (20c per): 62% profit

Good Buy (25-50% Profit):

1) Tiny Totem (16c per): 41% profit
2) Mithril Ore (16c per): 41% profit
3) Soft Wood Log (13c per): 34% profit
4) Tiger’s Eye Pebble (20c per): 32% profit
5) Iron Ore (11c per): 31% profit

What to Sell

Obviously, the ascended crafting mats are in high demand right now. Any T6 crafting mat is spiking, as well as common commodities like Unidentified Dye. T5 crafting mats and T6 dust are spiking slightly less, because they can be converted to T6 mats in random quantities at the Mystic Forge. Top profit margins are:

Best Sell (Greater Than 50% Profit):

1) Vicious Fang (17s, 49c per): 121% profit
2) Vicious Claw (9s, 85c per): 104% profit
3) Powerful Venom Sac (4s per): 71% profit
4) Unidentified Dye (8s, 25c per): 66% profit
5) Potent Venom Sac (1s, 13c per): 64% profit
6) Armored Scale (19s, 39c per): 63% profit
7) Vial of Powerful Blood (25s, 2c per): 60% profit
8) Vial of Potent Blood (2s, 29c per): 56% profit
9) Ancient Bone (2s per): 50% profit
10) Large Scale (1s, 33c per): 50% profit

Good Sell (25% to 50% Profit)

1) Sharp Fang (2s, 32c per): 50% profit
2) Large Claw (1s, 6c per): 48% profit
3) Sharp Claw (1s, 35c per): 45% profit
4) Pile of Crystalline Dust (5s, 47c per): 44% profit
5) Full Venom Sac (1s, 5c per): 37% profit
6) Scale (98c per): 34% profit
7) Glob of Ectoplasm (24s, 60c per): 31% profit
8) Rugged Leather Section (24c per): 30% profit
9) Totem (90c per): 30% profit
10) Heavy Bone (1s, 21c per): 29% profit
11) Carnelian Lump (75c per): 27% profit
12) Bone (96c per): 26% profit

Breakdown by Category

A detailed breakdown of the current profit/loss for buying/selling categories is below for reference.

By Category Sell Profit at List Buy Profit at Bid
Basic Crafting -15.00% 9.23%
Fine Crafting 14.37% -17.87%
Rare Crafting -16.19% -2.67%
Gemstone -10.87% -5.56%

Basic Crafting – By Tier Sell Profit at List Buy Profit at Bid
1 -13.90% -2.12%
2 -23.52% 12.72%
3 -7.43% -9.92%
4 -20.27% 41.37%
5 -24.97% 25.69%
6 2.20% -13.21%


Basic Crafting – By Type Sell Profit at List Buy Profit at Bid
Cloth -2.25% -14.08%
Leather 2.82% -13.59%
Ore -26.87% 22.73%
Logs -31.73% 39.64%

Fine Crafting – By Tier Sell Profit at List Buy Profit at Bid
1 -24.32% 26.07%
2 -10.44% -7.17%
3 1.93% -17.26%
4 20.98% -27.21%
5 31.05% -31.18%
6 67.02% -50.50%

Fine Crafting – By Type Sell Profit at List Buy Profit at Bid
Bone 14.78% -20.07%
Claw 31.97% -30.25%
Dust 7.11% -18.55%
Fang 14.32% -7.78%
Scale 14.34% -14.21%
Totem -4.45% -6.58%
Venom Sac 19.73% -18.82%
Vial of Blood 17.15% -26.72%

Gemstone – By Type Sell Profit at List Buy Profit at Bid
Power -20.79% -1.10%
Condition Damage -7.37% -12.28%
Magic Find -9.06% -5.82%
Healing Power -10.44% -4.48%
Precision -5.89% -4.94%
Vitality -13.84% -3.40%
Crit Damage -8.31% -7.19%

Gemstone – By Tier Sell Profit at List Buy Profit at Bid
1 -9.20% -0.72%
2 -15.24% -4.26%
3 -1.27% -8.26%
4 -16.22% -2.66%
5 -7.49% -12.19%
6 -15.58% -4.59%

Seriously I thought Anet learnt their lesson from Halloween, players had their fingers burnt once with this gambling mechanic.

Nicolle Rodgers.4926:

You also have a rare chance when opening chests to get an Exotic Mini Pet, which could be very valuable. Some of the crafting mats are also infrequent drops in the world.

why does this sound like you are aware that they are kitten but you just don’t care and who cares about a exotic mini pet. From what I’ve seen there are better things to spend your gold on than mini pets atm. Just get rid of the chests because clearly you are upsetting more people than making happy.

I spent $30 against my better judgement, as I was still annoyed by the terrible class balance patch and thought that I might get a nice skin to compensate or something. In the end, all I got was shoulder skins that look exactly the same (all ugly) and rebreathers. Didn’t get a single tribal weapon skin or anything. Uuugh.

I’m noticing a pattern. Social clothes sold on the cash shop, everything else being put in chests and chests or keys sold in cash shop.

Time for me to stop bothering with this games cash shop because I do not gamble and have no use for social clothes which only take up my inventory.

Nicolle Rodgers.4926:

You also have a rare chance when opening chests to get an Exotic Mini Pet, which could be very valuable. Some of the crafting mats are also infrequent drops in the world.

My state has an education lottery for college tuition assistance. My English professor had a rather astute description of it. “Taxing the dumb to educate the desperate.” You can try to entice me with how many millions the jackpot is, but I’m smart enough to know better then to throw money into a system that takes in more than it gives out. I hope you can see how the principle applies here as well.

neon.4863:

The rates are still pretty low, but I agree that it is much better than last time.

a change from .01% to .02% was a nice change

You also have a definite chance of wasting a lot of hard earned money to get Nothing At All. Some of the crafting mats can also be gotten in the game world.

I agree with OP.

They are crap
some crafting mats you will get anyways for free and very ugly skins (which you propably will get also for free)

nothing awesome to get here, just wasted 17g on a 10 pack.