Guild Wars 2

Once again, I reiterate: spend less time whining on here about not being able to get a precursor, and more time playing the game. I think the setup is fine, as it is. If anything, I’d like to see it be harder!

Now for the tip you’ve probably heard about in real life:

DIVERSIFY.

1. Put in buy orders at what you want to pay, not market. Spend 25% of your earnings on ectos.
2. Do some map completion.
3. Do some WvW for your badges.
4. Run the required dungeon for the 500 you need from that.
5. Grind Orr events for your karma, don’t waste your time waiting for a dragon.
6. Pick up your orders, do your crafting/forge/whatever
7. List your output on the trading post at what you want to sell them for.
8. Chat with your friends, review the forums.
9. Go to sleep
10. Back to step 1.

Oh yes, and DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT GRINDING!! You don’t have to – you choose to, to get the skin you want.

If you think 500g is too much, then forget about the Legendary. Not everyone gets to be a rock star in real life, the same thing applies here. Those who succeed are the ones who make a plan and follow through.

If you want a Legendary, you might also be someone who sticks around for years, playing. If you are, then relax, you have plenty of time to get it: the price of the Legendary doesn’t change and eventually you will get your precursor.

The only thing I worry about right now is that ANet dilutes GW2 to suit the laziest common denominator.

You don’t like it? There are plenty of casual games out there…

Allisa

This works just like the real stock market.

Armchair traders get the smack down from professional investors every minute of the day. Cries of market manipulation flow like water from the lips of the losing end of a trade.

If one wants to play the game, they must learn the rules to be effective.

Yargesh.4965:

That said the profit is good even with the 5% cut to the game

The game take 15% of the total sale, not 5%. The 5% is only the non refundable listing.

If you haven’t noticed the additional 10% being skimmed off your incoming funds… ouch.

There may be no “listing fee risk,” but there are still listing and sales fees on every transaction, which aren’t even clearly noted. I’d really love to know where this “projected profit” number comes from. Am I to believe the game is looking at my original cost for the items? If not, it’s pure BS.

John,

I think Dreamslayer is referring to Lionel Robbins.

As for your second statement, I must wholeheartedly agree that economic data in a closed system that doesn’t pass through a human interpretation filter before it reaches your screen, does offer a deeply insightful view.

Like a super-Bernanke, you have the godlike ability to shape the economy to suit the needs of the game. Was it iron that you first tried out these powers on, when there was the glut that crashed the value? Or was it butter? My apologies for it slipping my mind.

For all the accusations of players manipulating the economy, I’m quite shocked that I haven’t seen any fingers waved in the direction of those that do hold the keys to the kingdom. Suspected currency manipulation (to stop the rampant inflation we’ve been living off of since the opening game crash) through the gem exchange rate is a great example.

There is one major differentiator between the Guild Wars 2 trading system and the real world stock/commodities markets: the age of people using it. What percentage of Guild Wars 2 players are under 18? What percentage are under 15?

As a result, I suggest it is significantly easier to increase wealth in here vs. real world trading.

I’m surprised no one mentioned the free camera switch.

With this enabled, using the right mouse button to rotate the camera will result in your character moving in the direction the camera is looking when you start moving again. If you use the left mouse with the camera, you will continue to walk in the direction your character is facing, regardless of the camera.

Simply tapping either of the two buttons acts as a “switch” for each of the two modes.

A

Play with the Free Camera toggle to correct your mouse movement. Holding right click turn will rotate you and your toon, while left click rotate will rotate only your camera. If you JUST left click or right click, it will switch between those two modes so after you start moving forward, your camera will either follow or watch from a fixed angle when you turn.

You can use both buttons to move at the same time, but I believe you are stuck in the following camera mode with that…

The drops problem, as I have experienced it, is that if I kill a lot of foes in a short period of time (ex: zergs), I’m likely to see what I suspect is DR.

If I log in the next day, before 5pm PST, I get very little in the way of loot. BUT, after 5pm, it goes back to normal.

So, if you get hit with DR, try scheduling your next play event for after “DR reset” and please let me know how that worked out for you!

Got it again yesterday. It completely took my machine out and forced me to hard reboot. This is the behaviour that I experienced in the beginning, but just before Wintersday it was only sound bugging without the full crash.

I don’t recall having it happen at all over Wintersday, for me at least.

Wintersday boxes, but they are gone.

You can buy them directly from the trading post, which would likely be a lower cost than if you bought RNG boxes until you hit one.

Fabulous advice, Minion. I have a spreadsheet to track how many of each I purchase, as I go, and mark in the current daily value to have an idea of my remaining budget. I also mark in the latest trends for each item and follow it all up with a watchlist on GW2Spidy.

Are you just mad that you didn’t get the character slots yesterday and are faced with 3 garbage skins today?

In case no one hast suggested this in the past 5 pages (I need to go to sleep after reading the first one), how about modifiable listings without having to re-pay the listing fee?

You pay 5% of what you initially list it for, then you can lower by 1c all you want until you find a buyer. Then, you pay the 10% “hidden fee” based upon the selling price.

If it means “0.01 punks” take the price down to vendor, so be it. It will correct once the pee pee contest is over.

Of course this was the plan. The statistical likelihood of someone getting a rare item like this on their first day, by opening a black lion chest they just happen to know how to get the key for.. and that they understand the economics of the game well enough..

Didn’t the lack of any capital letters in Duke’s message give it away?

The question is not “What?” but “Why?”

Because you are using a trading service that charges for selling items through them. That’s not unique to video games.

BLTC does have real life people working on it .. just as programmers, not sales representatives.

So, in a way, I see some justification to the taxation, even if I don’t particularly like it.

It sucks gold out of the game to slow inflation, too.

That said, you don’t have to pay a listing fee if you don’t go through the BLTC. (disclaimer: I am not condoning any actions contrary to the Terms of Service agreement)

The part of this whole Legendary selling that makes me cringe is the listing fee.

I’m with Hexgame. Sit on it.

We wear hot pink dresses, not black suits.

AXEL.5746:

Let me repeat that again….it’s not supposed to be the same. It’s a great lesson for life. The amount of entitlement and people whining how they don’t want to work for their legendary weapons in this forum is sickening. Look, it’s a game. It’s optional to play and optional to get a legendary. One of the greatest reasons people want them is because they are rare/hard to get. If they weren’t then they lose all their value/appeal.

Thank you, Axel, for taking the time to respond to our respected colleague.

My personal experience is that there are more males (who play this game) who want the Legendary Great Sword over the Legendary Short Bow. Demand is demand.

I want to shoot rainbows, why don’t you?

To me, it’s a much cooler effect to see in combat than a big flat sheet of shiny metal on a Commander’s back as they show their prowess at following a zerg they learned by repeating a hundred times from those who figured it out through research and planning.

Blue Ace, are you the only person left alive who doesn’t work in marketing, or at least understand how market psychology works?

If any ArenaNET staffer was able to provide us with the honest-to-goodness truth about why they would do RNG, it would probably work a lot toward establishing trust in such business practices.

The only exclusivity it provides now is those with the most real life money have the best chance of maintaining their collection. Quite uncool.

All this soulbound and accountbound garbage that has been done in the name of protecting our economy from RMT has done more to upset the hardcore GW2 fans than to achieve their (stated) goal. In GW1, everything was just fine. Experimenting with the minis system has been a brutal disservice to those of us who are embassadors for ArenaNET.

I was fortunate to get the set of Wintersday minis and retain my collection, but it put a very sour taste in my mouth about the ethics of NCSoft (who I believe is more likely to be “at fault” than ArenaNET themselves).

Lost Shores minis were done in the way I feel was the most fair. Now, they have the potential to be more rare than the exotics that come in 3 packs (who got sucked into buying a bunch of those at discount on the 5th of January, in hopes of getting a Jack-a-lope?)

All we can hope for is that at some point, ArenaNET will remove account bound from collectible items, or AT LEAST separate their acquisition from the RNG lottery.

On a positive note, at least it’s possible to get the Miniature Collector title with the standard 55 minis!

How about replacing all instances of EXCESSIVE with “too much” ? EXCESSIVE is just.. EXCESSIVE. I don’t need to be admonished by my video game for sending 3 emails in a row (for example).

I also agree that your (Gaile) line is perfect.

The best way to make money in this game is spend less time writing novels on the forums and more time in the game.

500 Deadly Blooms for Twilight Arbor… if I get a 66 a day, it’s less than 8 runs.

500 Badges in WvW. Well, I’ve decided to do it with blood, not jumping puzzles. I’m getting about 15/day, which means just over a month of daily play.

The rest is just selling what you get and buying dribs and drabs of the items you need for them.

All this to shoot rainbows at people.. works for me

Keep Legendaries for the legendary players. If it takes 2 years to get, that’s fine by me.. I’ll be here for as long as the game is around. I expect it will get more fun when the “I want my legendary today!!” whiners run back home to WoW.

A

Having commendations still available while the receiver of them is not, now that’s the real exploit of CUSTOMERS.

Well I am playing at this minute, and they are spawning within a few seconds of me killing them, so my user experience is different than yours.

Running the whole story single player and finding that at the very end, you are OTL unless you find 4 more people to play with is not very MMO IMHO

I love randomly running across and helping people in the game.. playing WvW with lots of people.. but making core content unplayable is beyond my understanding.

This game’s dungeon system is… stupid.

I can’t finish my storyline without recruiting others to help?

I can’t fight the FIRST group of foes in TA because I can’t target the animals, the game would rather target the instantly respawning deadly blooms.

GW1’s HERO NPC system worked like a dream. Forcing players to try to make pickup teams to play their own game is… STUPID.

The second I get tired of waiting and salvage all the items I’ve been keeping for commendations, they will bring her back…

Nope, still no Lyns. >:(

Gaile,

I suspect that you are probably one of the most experienced players of the Guild Wars franchise, at ArenaNET (who else has their own custom minis? ), so I implicitly trust that you are working from the perspective of the players’ interests.

I know these are early days in what will hopefully be another 7 year adventure.

Over the whole time I played GW1, I never worried about being banned. I knew several people who probably SHOULD have been banned, but it didn’t seem like anyone was really paying attention. When I would make a report of someone being abusive in chat, I was always reminded that ArenaNET staff were really on the job. To me, this is how it should be. (ie: no police state, but response to community reports). I used to farm for Nick’s gifts every day in Pre.. sometimes for long periods of time. It just worked, and it worked well. Eventually, it was more time efficient for me to make my living with WTS/WTB, so I did that.. and made sometimes great deals and sometimes bad ones.. but it worked well.

Now, I’m in Guild Wars 2, and I’m afraid of my shadow. I’m afraid of getting DR’d for getting stuck on a batch of Cursed Shores foes who respawn faster than I can kill them all. I’m afraid of getting banned for moving inventory between my accounts (I have moved completed sets of minis without a peep of concern, which gives me the impression that eyes do indeed review these permabans before they are executed).

The number of real bans is small, and I suspect most are deserved, but from my perspective (can’t speak for everyone), the FEAR of losing an account I’ve already invested nearing 1000 hours on has burned a lot of the fun out of playing. Even the fear of in-game logic hurting my chances to be competitive in the drive for gold takes away from the fun.

Perspective is everything. Is there more factual information (ie: hard numbers) that ArenaNET can divulge, to comfort this fear in me (and the community, it seems) without giving away the secret sauce?

I’m willing and happy to put up with the teething pains, as this is the best game I’ve played in the 32 years I’ve worked with computers, but please don’t let the end result be a mouthful of screwed up teeth!

Thank you so much for being one of the ArenaNET team willing to take on the hard questions.

Allisa

If the gems to gold exchange rate (pegging game gold to real $ value) is at 100 gems gives 1 gold, that makes 1 silver equal to ONE PENNY of real money.

So next time you cringe on spending 3s to get to your destination, remember that the time you spent fretting already ate up the 3 cents you are concerned about.

:D

I too was annoyed by the pay-WP at the beginning, but now I don’t even notice it, and I never carry more than 5-7g at any time (usually invest it in one commodity or another to hedge against inflation).

When I am in a screen full of windows (or the map), and get attacked.. or when I want to STOP attacking.. I often end up with that red menu blocking my play.

Even worse, not always will pressing ESC again even get rid of it.

It doesn’t make any sense to me that it is set up to work this way.

What would make sense is to merge this red menu with the log out key (F12).

PLEASE. It is one of the key things that drives me CRAZY on a daily basis.

(The other thing is the F-key, but I digress).

It would be nice to see WvW out (just like why is it in the non-PvP monthlies?) BUT that said, since I have gone crazy and decided to do the Legendary path, the badges are required anyhow, so I will be spending the time in WvW to get those.

Sure, I am stuck at 98% and can’t get it NOW, but do I need it NOW? It’s going to take a while to get the badges and the Deady Blooms (which is even more frustrating since I already don’t like needing to find other people to play dungeons with).

If someone is desperate to have their Legendary NOW, then either buck up and buy one on the trading post or find a game intended for short lifespan play. I am working on the premise that I’ll be playing this game for the next 7 years (lifespan of GW1).

My experience with DR is that when I would do a Tixx event in the evening, if I did a Tixx the following morning, it would give me almost no foe drops and only sweaters and sprockets in the chest. I repeated this 3 days in a row. When I did the evening run (even though it was the same as my morning run), I’d get plenty of foe drops and semi-decent loot in the chests.

I read that DR resets at 5pm PST (I’m in the same time zone as ArenaNET), which would corroborate with this.

Has anyone else noticed time related changes in drop rates, such as this? Originally, I was under the impression that DR was a time-amount based penalty, along the lines of “stay out of this area for 20 minutes and you can have loot again.” Now, I see that it is not…

The main problem that I have is that the targeting system appears to place yellow NPC’s at the top of the targeting priority list instead of the bottom. This is new to whatever the latest “fix” was when the new checkboxes appeared in the configuration menu.

Grieve.1432:

Well, I will be looking forward to some compensation. I opened close to 300 chests.

Where did you get keys for 300 chests?

Follow this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wintersday/Lionguard-Lyns-sure-is-taking-a-while/first#post1097819

Hahaha yes.. she is there all right. Good catch

Well, as someone who had no idea about the travails of Lyns before hand.. I discovered after researching, on my own, about what these Commendations things in my inventory are. I looked at the Wiki and thought, “Wow, finally Anet gives us a realistic way to open the stacks of Black Lions chest that accumulate! How sweet of them!”

So, I do some experimenting and get together some coins. After a bit of hunting, I find Lyns, and… WTH?!

Anet, if you are going to disable the recipient of an item, you have to disable the giver too!

I don’t find it reasonable to expect that players should be learning about these things through the forums. Since when did playing video games become about spending your time reading pages of complaints in a forum? (Please don’t answer this, it’s rhetorical, I’ve been playing for 32 years). Unless you have the patch notes since released all memorized and/or refer to them every time to discover something new….don’t tell me I should.

Anet has a stellar track record. Account bound minis in RNG boxes. How ethical is that to force the collectors to gamble with real money? Someone mentioned the Korean origins on another forum and got hogtied as a racist, but they do have a point that culturally, gambling is more of an expectation than in North America. Look at NCSoft’s latest quarterly earnings report and you will see the US market is a pittance compared to Korea. Even Europe is better! So, as much as all of these (in my not so humble opinion -> SCAMS) turn me off playing the series I love most, I understand, as a software business owner myself, the desire to maximize the profit on the game.

I’ll bet 10 gold that there won’t be keys (at least, at 285 or less) when Lyns’ returns. If there are, I’ll be happy to pay up!

GW1 Pre Searing Ascalon had 2 districts going today… hmmm…

Opening evening was farm fest, but I avoid the boxes at all costs now. Big fat time vacuum they are..

Festive Dolyak minis (or the endless gift dolyak tonic) all around.

..and before anyone says not possible.. what stops ArenaNET from putting a single new mini slot into the page at the same time they add the mini to the build?

Now, since the tonic is already in the game, I’ll take that as a the more likely prediction..

I had fabulous luck yesterday, but my son had a horrible experience today at a cost of about 10 gold for two tonics. Of course, that was my gold…. LOL

This sound bug has been ongoing since September and it hasn’t been resolved yet?! It’s annoying and it’s obviously quite real… though I suspect it’s more likely a DirectX implementation bug resulting, the sound driver may be running out of polyphony (or memory) and somone forgot to put a limit on the size of the array for number of sounds. Whatever it is, it has been THREE months. Get on it, sound department!

I’ve been getting cogs and sweaters from the chest every day, except for my second run on the first day. I haven’t been farming the events either, but now that I read about “DR,” I am afraid that because I am doing the events in the morning, it is catching if I did the previous one in the evening.

Ideas?

All of the emotes I tried so far work with the Princess. Love her dance…

So, since I was “on a roll,” I bought one of the 5 special minis and RNG’d to get that set of 4 (3 blue + 3 blue to make the blue drool machine). $70.

Grumble grumble. But I get it, we’re the ones that are the vets who are addicted enough to cough up the real money. Please, next time.. no gambling. Just let me pay and not end up with 5 useless hats in my inventory. (It is cool that they are dyeable).

I still have to buy three more miniatures for $30, since learning about this mystic forge recipe!

..see, I stayed on topic

Lady RNG shined on me..

Doll Tonic – 2 tries
Toy Soldier Tonic – 1 try

Of course, they are account bound.

2nd account

Doll Tonic – 1st try
Ventari Tonic – 6th try

It would have been nice to know this before I used up the Toy Soldier frame on my second account, but I’m happy with the ones I have..

Thanks for the information!

Well, if you had planned out waiting a couple of days to find out, you’d have your answer before you dumped your money into the gem store.

Personally, I am not a supporter of account bound anything. It might have seemed like a good idea for dealing with the value of rare items in the game, after their experiences with Guild Wars 1.

Unfortunately, the trading post shows us that there will always been expensive items.

He’s referring to the chest at the end of the event, which spawned typical chest loot on the first day, but has been spewing out sprockets (?!) and sweaters today and yesterday.

First, I will state why it is in ArenaNET’s best interest to fix this mini debacle:

Anyone who has the COMPLETE collection of Minis has at least 27 Hall of Monuments points from Guild Wars 1. Therefore, ArenaNET is kicking sand in the face of their long time customers, who spent the LONG hours in the original game to get these points.

Then again, I suppose that’s why we get the screw, because ArenaNET knows that we have invested so much time in the game that we will overlook this dishonourable cash grab.

If you need more money, stop dropping the price on the Deluxe Edition to remind me that I paid too much for the NINE copies I’ve bought for me, my son and friends. Well, at least I know where I will save up the money to get the new minis —> no GW2 presents for friends this year!

Aaryk.9168:

I’m a bit surprised no one mentions that you are nearly guaranteed a mini if you participate in the dungeon a couple times…

This is not a question about getting “A” mini, it’s one about getting ALL of the minis. Why? Some people want the whole set. I happen to be one of those.

Right now, ArenaNET is threatening to break my complete collection if I don’t spend money on lottery tickets, which is exactly what they are. Even worse, these tickets don’t even have a million dollar grand prize.

RNG+Account Bound => SCAM.

Pick one or the other, I’ll be happy to buy the Minis in game that I need, or buy them with gems in the store like the 3 of the 5 I won’t get through the events.

It’s only the 4 RNG minis that are a problem, and that problem is MASSIVE, as people like me who have expended countless gold and hours to get a complete set are up against the wall, forced to buy lottery tickets to keep our collections complete.

For those of you thinking, “I don’t know why anyone would waste their time on Minis,” what do you think about..

Stamp collectors, coin collectors, Star Wars toy collectors, etc.

One more reason to change this.. how many players in this game are under 18? Aren’t there laws against selling lottery tickets to minors?

Allisa Wonderland [THR]
theHotRepublic.com

Is this the end of the complete collection?…

I got sprockets (3/4) and 3 clothing items from the big chest on the first run of each of two separate accounts today. I did multiple ones the first day, which netted me an exotic pistol, worth 75s (2nd run of primary account)

What was with today’s drop? I didn’t even bother with account 3. Instead, I crafted 72-80 the for about $1/level. Not bad. So far, I find the best way to advance in the game is to craft…. which is the least social thing I believe one can do in this game!

Don’t worry, there are only sprockets and gifts in the chest today LOL