Guild Wars 2

After redoing every heart on the map, I learned the missing one was Saidra’s haven, apparently I just never came across doing it, and quickly realized why. It’s so boring.

I never really missed Hearts, I gotta say. Also map compleition rewards weren’t too hot either.

What was so hard about it? What class are you playing? You’re really just running in a circle pressing 1 and sometimes F. I missed like most of the counter magics too. One thing that may help is to always have Cadedcus selected so you don’t have to worry too much about missing.

I actually did die once in the instance, but it was to the fight upstairs before since I was on the phone while playing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3xd0ex/ascended_vs_exotic_updated/

I think the most significant stat in there is the just over 2% difference between exotic armor with ascended weapons and trinkets and full ascended. Most can get weapons and trinkets, but armor is the real cost people complain about. It’s better, but you really don’t need it for anything other than fractals. I’d rather have a good player in exotic armor than a bad one in ascended.

I would avoid the Digital Deluxe upgrade. The banker golem sounds nice in theory but I found it cumbersome and you’d have to start a lot of new characters for it to really matter.

Same thing for the HoT one, though I guess if you were planning to get an extra slot, you might want to pick it up with the glider and other stuff. But in terms of in-game benefit, there’s pretty much none.

Oneira.7691:

I think for those who are trying to convince us that everything is fine with leather here thanks to the leather farm, I would like to quote the original post which contains a point that apparently has been forgotten about:

“I Speak from experience: Leather wasn’t a problem but then Anet said “leather is too cheap” and instead of slightly tweaking salvage rates they 1) changed refinement ratios, 2) nerfed drop rates, 3) nerfed salvage rates, and 4) added leather to a ton of recipes. Instead of doing 1 or 2 of these, THEY DID ALL AT ONCE.”

One of the main reasons why leather is not dropping in price is that the demand has skyrocketed because of 1 and 4. I know that I do not sell any leather anymore because i need it all for crating ascended gear. I am constantly buying leather off the TP because I don’t have enough. And it costs.

If you have a spare character slot, opening bags on a mid-level character can be pretty useful.

I understand that’s not the best of solutions and a screwy mechanic, but you can get a lot of t3-t4 mats like that. I thought it was a pretty good investment over time.

Geez, if you’re going to whine do it right.

High Fractals.

Ider.1276:

ArchonWing.9480:

So our poor “new player” in 2 months will have gotten about 80-90 gold. Even if we want to go all out and spend about 200 gold on equipment (a one time purchase mind you), they would have to do the equivalent of 2 months worth of dailies.

Think of it as having to wait 2 months to craft something of basic necessity. Its not ascended (or legendary) gear, its exotic. It is heavily implied by Anet that exotic is normal (or “default”) lvl 80 gear, all HoT openworld content was balanced for it. Talking about balance: exotic weapons are much easily and cheaply crafted, and materials for a whole set can be easily gathered in several days by any player.

Even considering that exotics are essential, I do not believe that Anet balanced around HoT exotics. We’re not just talking about someone getting geared, but rather someone getting geared on a very specific set of stats. The essential exotics you speak of are somewhere between 1/5 to 1/10 the cost. I was deliberately picking the worst case scenario aka “I must have niche meta stats or bust” in order to keep things somewhat interesting.

Incidentally with 200 gold, one could max out leatherworker and be finishing up their first piece of ascended armor., So to me, it seems to be a failure of how HoT stats are acquired.

As for weapons, this is something notable about cost in this game. That being the most important things aren’t as costly while they make you go the extra mile for the extras. This is why Amulets < Rings < Earrings in cost even though in terms of effectiveness, it’s the exact opposite, as well as exotics having most of the effectiveness of ascended gear. And also why the small things like +stat infusions and backpieces carry the premium. And weapons are more important than armor.

Now, I can’t say why it’s done like this, but the result is grind typically is concentrated towards the last few percent of min-maxing, of which I think is a good thing.

Ider.1276:

ArchonWing.9480:

Ouch. Seems pretty atrocious even if I got a bad RNG roll.

Still though, this farm isn’t bad. It’s just not good for getting hardened leather. It almost feels like it’s good for getting everything but hard leather.

Not complaining. But it seems clear why it hasn’t affected hardened leather.

Its bad for everything but T5 leather. Unstable hides from events in Doric (or farming WM clerics) give much more t2-t4 leather than centaur ones. I’m really surprised you didn’t know that. As it was stated when first threads on hardened leather came in, just doing events in Doric gives more t2, t3, t4 and t6 leather than centaur farm. And still it is not enough (at least in the case of t6).

I didn’t know that, because this was the first time trying out the leather farm, and I haven’t done much Lake Doric But thanks for verifying you don’t get t6s. I’m not really sure why you’re surprised, given that I have pretty much suggested multiple times that I have little concern or need for leather. I obviously have no real interest in a leather farm.

My friend wanted to play condi engeneer cause he likes the sole idea and gameplay/rotation. Couldn’t afford it, because viper/sinister gear is crafted only.
My other friend liked WvW a lot. Shame that a lot of viable in WvW stat sets like zealot, marauder, commander, etc are also craftable.
Personally I don’t think that its a luxury to play GW2 in a way you want to play it.

It sort of is a luxury, if you intend on doing something specific.

The condi engineer I think is one of those cases where I think it holds some degree of water. Of course, this is more of an issue of these stat combos being soulbound and required crafting. Nothing’s to stop your friend from using rampagers as a stopgap though, and eventually saving up for ascended, since the HoT mats in of themselves cost a lot considering for exotic stats. Also note that the Living Story trinkets can also compensate, though admittingly that’s a lot of grinding.

Of course, even excluding armor, you can hit +85% burning/bleeding already: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqKSYLKwPsEDAA-TlBuwAyM/IUPwmHAAAlgL3fQsyPCBoYOA-w

It’s not the best, but it certainly doesn’t mean you can’t do condi.

As for WvW, it’s really more of the same. Sure, marauder/commander might be nice, but they’re not really required to play WvW at all.

But let’s be serious for a moment. You say people can’t afford these things. But as I’ve brought up time and again in this thread, which keeps getting ignored for some reason is that gold is easier to come by.

Login rewards give 55 laurels and 20 mystic coins every month. Dailies give 2 gold a day. So let’s assume one spends their laurels on heavy crafting bags for (hey, let’s lowball it) for 25g a month and they sell their mystic coins for 20g.) That’s 45g in one month for simply having a pulse.

So our poor “new player” in 2 months will have gotten about 80-90 gold. Even if we want to go all out and spend about 200 gold on equipment (a one time purchase mind you), they would have to do the equivalent of 2 months worth of dailies.

This is assuming they want “optimal” stats. If they actually play the game, it’ll happen a lot faster. In practice, they could just get set up for 10 gold, and start building wealth from there.

There are some other obvious facts such as armor parts being a smaller contributor to stats like weapons and trinkets, as well as the chest/legs parts being a bigger deal. That’s what I take into account when I don’t want to craft full ascended, but rather the parts that have the most impact.

Ouch. Seems pretty atrocious even if I got a bad RNG roll.

Still though, this farm isn’t bad. It’s just not good for getting hardened leather. It almost feels like it’s good for getting everything but hard leather.

Not complaining. But it seems clear why it hasn’t affected hardened leather.

Man, quick thinking with the ram, lol.

I tried the leather farm, and got around 60’ish hides in a little under 30 minutes. Then DR started kicking in, and I think the culprit is this.

Also, Out of those I think I managed to salvage one hardened leather section. Now, this might be RNG. I mean, should I use a mystic kit for these things?

On the other hand, it doesn’t seem too bad at getting the other leather. But it’s not much of a leather farm when it comes to hardened leather.

I’m a bit wary of putting something like that in the gem store, as it directly impacts gameplay by a bit.

Would you be willing to pay a gift of exploration for the same privilege? It would give that item some use beyond legendaries, and would literally be a gift of exploration to your next character.

PvE dailies often contain a jumping puzzle and event completer. If you used the level booster to prop yourself to 80, it’s possible you may not have access to too many areas. Event completer can be problematic if one lacks tagging ability and people are just running around doing every event they see.

WvW dailies (veteran slayer, and sometimes land claimer) can be very easy to get, though you may have to be sneaky.

A final and IMO not fun, alternative is to go for Hotjoin PvP. Those aren’t serious games and a lot of people are there for dailies.

Ider.1276:

ArchonWing.9480:

Drop the sentimental downpour. I’m all for improving leather farms. But that’s with a purpose and not carried by guilt tripping people.

Anet should improve recipes or salvage rates, not the farm. In 3 weeks that farm will be locked behind another paywall (when LS ep5 comes in) from new players.

I said Farm(s). It doesn’t have to be locked behind an LS, though frankly locking entire maps behind one is something I’ve never been a fan of.

There is no reason for leather to be more rare, expensive and obtained by farming in comparison with cloth.

I don’t accept this premise. This has been an assumption since the beginning of the thread, and it is up to people to prove it. Prove a need beyond people being too lazy to look up exotic armor names, ascended crafting, and various niche stats. Here’s one: Guild Halls.

But we’re talking about “new players”, and every time I’ve actually asked anyone why new players need leather, they fail on the specifics. Instead I’m getting ridiculous arguments about new players needing ascended. Which is true for basically 1 endgame area of the game. Maybe 2. It’s almost like people don’t understand progression or something when they try to educate new players and try to drag them to the endgame areas immediately. I wonder why that would make for a miserable experience.

Go into any open world HoT map, or WvW map. Click on people and see if they have any food buffs that aren’t Magic Find. Most won’t. Heck, I’ve had people refuse advice on food, just because. That means they don’t care about the 150-200 stats food/utilities can offer even if it costs less than a waypoint. The difference between a piece of ascended armor and exotic armor is less than that! And a lot of these players probably aren’t new, since they’ve gotten to these maps.

I also speak for myself. I want reasonable leather aquisition or prices. I speak for my friends that are still playing this game. They want tha same. Should we make a poll or something?

Sounds better. So can we drop the “new players” out of this discussion?

It’s not like I would mind if dropping prices would help new players in droves. But I think there’s been a pretty disingenuous move on these claims. Though it’s not just by you.

While we’re at it, 10 messages seems small for an inbox, I would think.

1.) The game feels rather spammy as is.
2.) Already there.
3.) Already exists with “on swap” sigils. It’d be nice for sigils to have more conditionals or interesting effects though.

Ider.1276:

ArchonWing.9480:

And as one of these old players (btw still need ascended on some toons), my opinion doesn’t matter? I don’t need gold? See that’s the problem. I don’t see why I should have to accomodate for these percieved problems.

And new players can benefit as well.

So, why leather only then? Lets skyrocket the prices on all T6 mats because we (old players) need gold. And new players will have to grind silverwastes for weeks just to level up their crafting or craft gear with the stats they need. Oh, wait, I tryed to be sarcastic but failed. Now a new player HAS to grind silverwastes for weeks to level his craft.

I agree, leave it to other people.

I’m constantly trying to drag my friends into GW2. Its all fine untill they level 80 and start gearing up. But when they open up TP and look at the prices (which are obnoxious because of h.leather) their reaction is “OMFG to hell with this game”. New players don’t know what the hell is Zhed’s armor. They search “berserkers” and see armor 15g a piece. Then they ask me if it is better to try and level crafting and make that armor themselves. And I reply: “no, its even more expencive, but you must level your crafting if you ever want to play fractals with me, cause this 75g armor set (or 20g for Zhed’s, as I tell them) on TP is trash, and you need ascended”. And my friends leave the game, frustrated and fully convinced that its some kind of korean MMO where you have to grind countless hours to get the bare minimum to start playing (or donate real money and convert them to gold).

So being a friend, why not just tell them there’s Zed’s armor? Problem solved. Or tell them about filters.

Or if they don’t want to do that, they can use level 78 exotic armor as I suggested above.

I’m really glad you decided to tell your friends to not even think of doing fractals with you unless they crafted ascended and exotic gear was trash for this game. (I’m sure you meant fractals?)There weren’t anything like low level fractals, and of course the fractals themselves were intended to be a grind. Maybe walk before running, do other stuff, etc.

See, when I tell friends, I assure them that they should gear as cheaply as possible while remaining effective in level 80 zones, with 2 gold a daily, selling materials whenever they get them, and most importantly just to play the game without any dedicated attempt at farming. Eventually, they’ll save up enough to pick their content of choice. I warn people up and ahead that certain content is grindy and they should avoid it, and we can do something else.

Most importantly, I tell them ascended armor is a marginal stat increase and a lot of work. Having that in mind, it is their choice to attempt for it. No crying.

No wonder why they left. It’s not the leather.

So, sir, I can understand position of yours and Obtena. I do not respect it though. Mostly because I love this game, I want it to prosper, I want its community to prosper, and I want new players (and my friends) not to be scared away and frustrated. For me the health of community outweighs virtual profit of the few. But please, by the Six, don’t talk bulls*** about how current leather situation benefits anyone besides traders. Lets at least be honest.

I wish you understood it.

See, unlike you, I speak for myself, instead of speaking on behalf of new players. And as indicated above, you don’t seem to be able to deal with them very well or understand what they need. I don’t think you should be acting on behalf of them for their interests. You’re probably going to do more harm than good.

Drop the sentimental downpour. I’m all for improving leather farms. But that’s with a purpose and not carried by guilt tripping people.

When you do get HoT do note that wanderer’s armor can be a reward from Dragon’s Stand though it may take a while to get it.

It would seem more bag slots seems simpler.

OriOri.8724:

But that doesn’t account for ascended gear at all. A lot of people will eventually want to go for ascended gear for various reasons (min/maxers, skins, character progression, bored, etc…), and this does include new players. Even ascended weapons can now require large-ish amounts of leather if you choose to go the route of crafting weaponsmith marks and then buying the weapons. And if you ever want to change the stats on your gear, it requires T6 leather in large quantities for how infrequently its obtained through regular gameplay.

It does nothing but give players who are done gearing up their characters a bit of extra gold, at the expensve of everyone else.

And the fact that there are still posts being upvoted to the top of the subreddit about once a week about leather shows that large communities in GW2 are not ok with the price of leather either.

We’re talking about new players, and you’re talking about ascended gear?

I’ve been playing for a few thousand hours, and not all my characters are using ascended armor. It is a luxury. Plain and simple.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArchonWing.9480:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArchonWing.9480:

OriOri.8724:

But it doesn’t benefit them to sell it, becaue then they would need to buy it back again just to craft anything!

There is zero benefit to new players with these high leather prices. Zero.

Craft what?

I added this to my previous post while editing, so in case you missed:

“But wait…. there’s also a lot of exotic armor that’s gotten cheaper. At 70s they’re not even that much more expensive than rares. Sure, they’re not good stats, but they’re still level 80 exotics. You can get a set of medium exotic rampager armor for 1.5g a piece, less so if light/heavy.

But you want to be meta. Okay. You can get level 78 exotic berserker armor for less than 80s a piece. Level 80 Zhed’s Gloves has 133 defense, 45 power, 32 precision, 32 ferocity. The level 78 berserker’s gloves has 129 defense, 43 power, 41 ferocity. Yea, it’s not as good, but for a new player that enters 80 zones, I really doubt that’s going to make a difference."

In addition to this “craft what?” There’s level 80 karma armor. The last level 80 I made I fitted out with karma temple armor (with beserker stats). I did no armor crafting or buying of leather at all to get him geared up.

To be fair, Karma takes a while to farm if you’re starting from scratch. For a new player, they’d need to have some level of gear so they can comfortably farm it at a good place, as well as merely reaching the vendors in Orr.

Anyhow, I made a spreadsheet plan on how to set up a fresh 80, assuming you came in with nothing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LhXRuxjD5L0CFfLmx_e_lPyrIl5_dC6DOy5sa2Xkz40/edit?usp=sharing

It accounts for medium armor atm, since it’s the most expensive by a bit. Other types will spend a bit less.

I didn’t include the cost for weapons as it is variable, though I would recommend people get the best weapon they can afford and then dump the rest into the suggested list. Particularly cool people can use ruby orbs, and you could use whatever the hell orbs/runes you want, but I figured there should be some degree of leeway for new players.

Edit: Updated the sheet to have some weapon examples. So pretty much for a little more than 20-25 gold, you a character geared with mostly exotics and a full compliment of consumables. That takes about 2 weeks of dailies, assuming you played entirely passively.

True, it does take a bit of karma. That’s why I made sure to do any daily vistas at 1k karma/day as well as doing one Tequatl a day which give a player around 15k karma for the first one done that day and can be started around level 60-65 and can be done on level appropriate masterwork gear.

Right, which is why I always recommend https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scoop_of_Mintberry_Swirl_Ice_Cream as an easy way to boost your karma as well as having other beneficial effects.

And indeed, Teq is a great prelude to people heading to Orr, to level up and build wealth.

Edit: Wait why did it suddenly go up in price?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

ArchonWing.9480:

OriOri.8724:

But it doesn’t benefit them to sell it, becaue then they would need to buy it back again just to craft anything!

There is zero benefit to new players with these high leather prices. Zero.

Craft what?

I added this to my previous post while editing, so in case you missed:

“But wait…. there’s also a lot of exotic armor that’s gotten cheaper. At 70s they’re not even that much more expensive than rares. Sure, they’re not good stats, but they’re still level 80 exotics. You can get a set of medium exotic rampager armor for 1.5g a piece, less so if light/heavy.

But you want to be meta. Okay. You can get level 78 exotic berserker armor for less than 80s a piece. Level 80 Zhed’s Gloves has 133 defense, 45 power, 32 precision, 32 ferocity. The level 78 berserker’s gloves has 129 defense, 43 power, 41 ferocity. Yea, it’s not as good, but for a new player that enters 80 zones, I really doubt that’s going to make a difference."

In addition to this “craft what?” There’s level 80 karma armor. The last level 80 I made I fitted out with karma temple armor (with beserker stats). I did no armor crafting or buying of leather at all to get him geared up.

To be fair, Karma takes a while to farm if you’re starting from scratch. For a new player, they’d need to have some level of gear so they can comfortably farm it at a good place, as well as merely reaching the vendors in Orr.

Anyhow, I made a spreadsheet plan on how to set up a fresh 80 assuming that you are new to the game and don’t have anything in reserve. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1LhXRuxjD5L0CFfLmx_e_lPyrIl5_dC6DOy5sa2Xkz40/edit?usp=sharing

It accounts for medium armor atm, since it’s the most expensive by a bit. Other types will spend a bit less.

I didn’t include the cost for weapons as it is variable, though I would recommend people get the best weapon they can afford and then dump the rest into the suggested list. Particularly cool people can use ruby orbs, and you could use whatever the hell orbs/runes you want, but I figured there should be some degree of leeway for new players.

Edit: Updated the sheet to have some weapon examples. So pretty much for a little more than 20-25 gold, you can character geared with mostly exotics and a full compliment of consumables. That takes about 2 weeks of dailies, assuming you played entirely passively.

The only gap between a character geared in full exotics is entirely the difference between 78 and 80 gear for the armor and inferior rune/sigil choices. This gap is bridged by the food, of which I’ve noticed most people don’t even use anyways.

And they don’t have to worry about leather at all, besides selling it. The only time it will be an issue is when they craft ascended armor of which is a small portion of the cost, or if they want more advanced stats to hit more intense pve content, but that would occur a lot longer down the line until they get more established.

OriOri.8724:

But it doesn’t benefit them to sell it, becaue then they would need to buy it back again just to craft anything!

There is zero benefit to new players with these high leather prices. Zero.

Craft what?

I added this to my previous post while editing, so in case you missed:

“But wait…. there’s also a lot of exotic armor that’s gotten cheaper. At 70s they’re not even that much more expensive than rares. Sure, they’re not good stats, but they’re still level 80 exotics. You can get a set of medium exotic rampager armor for 1.5g a piece, less so if light/heavy.

But you want to be meta. Okay. You can get level 78 exotic berserker armor for less than 80s a piece. Level 80 Zhed’s Gloves has 133 defense, 45 power, 32 precision, 32 ferocity. The level 78 berserker’s gloves has 129 defense, 43 power, ,31 percision 31 ferocity. Yea, it’s not as good, but for a new player that enters 80 zones, I really doubt that’s going to make a difference."

edited: Corrected stats

OriOri.8724:

ArchonWing.9480:

Ider.1276:

This threads keep popping up not without a reason. T6 leather price is broken and some fixes should be done. The only people who benefit from the situation are old players with fully geared characters, who make a profit on obnoxious leather prices

And as one of these old players (btw still need ascended on some toons), my opinion doesn’t matter? I don’t need gold? See that’s the problem. I don’t see why I should have to accomodate for these percieved problems.

And new players can benefit as well.

How do the new players benefit from this?

Much like any other t6, they can sell them. It’s the same reason why the high prices of low-mid leather/cloth benefits them for the same reason. It’s very easy to collect up gold as such when they have little practical use for these materials.

Same goes for things like mystic coins and crafting materials they get from the daily rewards.

See, while exotic armors was less expensive in the past, the ability to earn gold has greatly increased for players just starting out thanks to dailies and log in rewards. Back when I started out, armor might have been 2-3 gold a piece (wait it still is), but it was a lot longer to get 2-3 gold. Heck, 30 gold would get you a bunch of gems already.

But wait…. there’s also a lot of exotic armor that’s gotten cheaper. At 70s they’re not even that much more expensive than rares. Sure, they’re not good stats, but they’re still level 80 exotics. You can get a set of medium exotic rampager armor for 1.5g a piece, less so if light/heavy.

But you want to be meta. Okay. You can get level 78 exotic berserker armor for less than 80s a piece. Level 80 Zhed’s Gloves has 133 defense, 45 power, 32 precision, 32 ferocity. The level 78 berserker’s gloves has 129 defense, 43 power, 31 precision, 31 ferocity. Yea, it’s not as good, but for a new player that enters 80 zones, I really doubt that’s going to make a difference.

Finally, armor is not as important as the weapon and trinkets. This doesn’t mean one shouldn’t wear armor, but it’s not as big as a deal, if say you use rare armor for light pve. This is also why ascended armor is of low priority as well.

Anyone that brings new players into this discussion literally doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

I know! We can’t do stuff like this then.

Simply put, is the gem price 20% more then what you typically see it as a non-sale situation? Let’s say you consider 100g/400 gems to be your “rarget”. If it’s at 125g/400 then you shouldn’t bother. If it’s 110 gems/400 gems and you don’t forsee it (or just not willing to wait for prices to drop down below 100g/400 gems, then you can give it a shot. But only if you really can’t wait for whatever reason. Maybe it’s limited time.

But yea, most of the time the only real way to take advantage by converting gems from gold is to do it when there aren’t sales, in advance. I usually convert gold I don’t need into gems.

Ider.1276:

This threads keep popping up not without a reason. T6 leather price is broken and some fixes should be done. The only people who benefit from the situation are old players with fully geared characters, who make a profit on obnoxious leather prices

And as one of these old players (btw still need ascended on some toons), my opinion doesn’t matter? I don’t need gold? See that’s the problem. I don’t see why I should have to accomodate for these percieved problems.

And new players can benefit as well.

No point in rubbing salt in the wound. NSP is a t3 server. SoS has been, uhh, KDR challenged, for a while. Though I think that’s more related to the amount of organized groups as opposed to pug groups rather than an excuse to measure kitten. It seems like T2 doesn’t actually exist anymore.

Not that Mag wouldn’t have a high KDR anyways, but it’s a blowout match and things snowball. They’re already a fav KDR wise vs even t1 servers, so what did you expect? So I don’t get the point of this thread.

I will say that the general attitude of Mag at some point in time as observed is an active approach. They have been good at forcing ANet to recognize and fix certain issues by pushing certain flaws in gameplay to their logical extremes and could have been responsible for fixing the symbol bug. Instead of crying for glicko adjustments or sending 5 people to make 20 threads about needing to illegitimately stack their server because they have 50 relatives that they’d like to play it, they took matters into their own hands as a server. That might have some correlation with success….

And conversely, I know there’s a strong correlation between QQ and badness. That is, if you made a whine thread 5 minutes after you got rekt, I already know what’s going on and would suggest you order a cup of L2p.

Yea, almost. I have a i5-6500/1060 6gb and 8gb of ram.

In crowded events, I can drop to 30’ish-40’ish FPS, and the worst would be world bosses like Teq where it drops to the 20s.

Here’s some sample gameplay on my computer: https://youtu.be/6WaoUJlhFcs

They were giving so many sales on random things. I thought it wasn’t going to be surprising.

Still, though being so close, ask support nicely.

Whoa. I knew hard leather was expensive. But thick leather? Never mind, something needs to be done about that!

Thanks for the heads up, folks.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Rauderi.8706:

It doesn’t even have to be that. There just need to be some other uses for it.

ArchonWing.9480:

It doesn’t have to help much. It just gives people something to do with those stones.

There already are uses; the OP has chosen not to make use of them.

Like nearly any item, some people think they have too many and others can’t get enough. That’s a statement more about players having different preferences rather than whether there are too few uses.

I don’t think it’s worth ANet’s time to even consider repurposing the stones; there’s simply not enough benefit for the community overall.

There’s exactly 2 uses, one is specific, and the other as Rauderi stated is of dubious quality due to stone representing a random weapon. That’s not much room for preference. I mean, I meant more uses.

As for benefit for the community, as vague of a value as it seems, I would point out that mystic stones are granted via AP chests and sometimes daily rewards. So since all players get these things as they play, I would say that changing these things does affect many players.

Bridget Morrigan.1752:

ArchonWing.9480:

Proof? Why should new players craft to get exotic gear when they can buy the named exotic armors? Don’t forget crafting itself costs a lot, and I would never recommend new players to craft.

Even when I was new running around Cursed Shore in green, I avoided crafting like the plague due the complexity and potential to waste money and materials. If we weren’t forced to craft with ascended gear, I would never do it at all.

I never tell new players to craft, because I feel they are wasting their time. And I’ve helped people plan how to get up. You know, I actually help newer players that you claim to want to help, so I know this is nonsense. .

I think this is the crux of the issue, though—should crafting be only an obligation for high level gear, not a reasonable (or even enjoyable) part of the game itself? Should new players be effectively barred from this part of the MMO experience, due to the cost? Is it good for the game that one major aspect of it is something that players generally avoid like the plague?

I don’t really have an answer to what role crafting should play in the game, but I’d say that the advice that you give new players to stay away from it and the fact that experienced players hate it enough to never want to do it except when they have to—well, these things are indicative that something is out of whack, that this is an aspect of the game that has a negative effect on players, and the leather price situation is the most egregious offender.

The main reason I disliked crafting from the get go even when materials were cheaper and had actual uses like gaining levels when tomes were uncommon was simply the sheer complexity of the system, with all those components and things that can’t be deposited. And the prices on the TP were not that far off, so as a new player, I just can’t see they should have to deal with that sort of complexity for minimal gain.

Crafting is ultimately endgame content as it works. Mostly for those that choose to craft high end items which are too expensive for even casual, much less new players. And those looking to squeeze profits out and play the TP.

So are players really barred from crafting? Entry level crafting does exist in chef, after all. (And Jeweler to a small extent). And the weapons crafts. These things except for jeweler have great endgame paths if one were to partake in them. Leather is not going to stop a person from crafting. I don’t recommend people take that course, but that is just me.

When I was gearing my 4th to 6th toons— they were the last of mines that I traditionally leveled— I simply salvaged everything that dropped. That was enough for the characters to gear themselves. This was the time where mid-level leather/cloth went up in price thanks to ascended gear. With every equipment drop salvaging mats worth a few silver a piece, it was quite profitable given the effort.

This is why people have mid-level characters solely to open champion bags. They get more expensive mats!

tl;dr New players don’t need expensive mats. They in fact, stand the greatest chance of making gold off them relative to their current standings. Once they hit level 80 and start hitting 80 zones, they can just sell their leather, and all t6 things and get whatever they need.

Add in 2g dailies, and you may start to realize it’s easier now for new players to self gear.
Someone does 3 dailies and it’s a new piece of equipment with a good rune. That simply allows me to conclude that people that push the "think of the new players’ argument as at best misinformed and then it really becomes clear why people don’t have things.

I think something like that is important for it to be ready when it’s ready.

Prevent potential issues, rather than let them in, as fixing them could be much worse.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

rabidsmiles.5926:

Wish they could take the place of a mystic coin in the clover recipe…

How would this help much? The faucet for mystic stones is even more anemic than that of mystic coins — it might reduce the clover costs for one session for tiny subset of the population; it won’t have any long-term impact.

It doesn’t have to help much. It just gives people something to do with those stones.

mtpelion.4562:

As long as other areas of the game can produce higher gold per hour returns, the majority of players will skip the leather farm and do those activities instead. This will continue to result in ever-climbing leather prices, until such time as farming becomes profitable enough to warrant large-scale attention.

As I already mentioned, the players farming now are doing so to satisfy personal demand, thus they are not impacting the transactions on the Trading Post (other than a very minor drop in demand due to those players no longer buying any).

That seems to work fine. General farming is when you just want gold to buy whatever you want, and specific farming if you want a specific thing.

OriOri.8724:

ArchonWing.9480:

But I make gold selling it. What’s in it for me?

I hate it when people bring this up in these discussions, because they focus on themselves over retaining new players.

Give me a break. At least, I’m honest and stand for my own intrests. You are speaking on behalf of new players that you may or may not know, in order to justify why your self interest is more important than mine.

The exhorbitant price of leather drives away newer players to the game. Its literally only a good thing for those people who don’t have any more crafting to do to gear up their toons, and can afford to sell off all of their leather. For everyone else, the price is so out of line that it hurts their experience in this game.

Proof? Why should new players craft to get exotic gear when they can buy the named exotic armors? Don’t forget crafting itself costs a lot, and I would never recommend new players to craft.

Even when I was new running around Cursed Shore in green, I avoided crafting like the plague due the complexity and potential to waste money and materials. If we weren’t forced to craft with ascended gear, I would never do it at all.

I never tell new players to craft, because I feel they are wasting their time. And I’ve helped people plan how to get up. You know, I actually help newer players that you claim to want to help, so I know this is nonsense.

What I think the failing of this whole issue is regardless of changes, it’s going to affect someone. But a lot of you have taken it on yourselves to decide that you need it more than them. Well, I don’t agree.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, one can purchase a 64GB flash drive on eBay for 8 dollars. That doesn’t seem like very much to pay for convenience.

Good luck.

Well, I understand if people don’t want Ebay stuff, as it can be quite sketchy relative to other vendors.

That being said, I think having some kind of backup medium to be an essential thing to have with a computer because data loss is probably going to be quite problematic. Even if not, it’s good to have to transfer to another computer, as those things aren’t immortal.

Of course, even a portable version will still need to update. There’s really nothing that can be done about that as fixes can come at any time and it would be impossible to make all the downloads standalone.

Mystic stones are a finite resource that can not be actively farmed. The Silver Salvage kit is sort of a way of futureproofing yourself from the day they run dry. Therefore, mystic salvage kits are not a valid comparison. And not to mention it’d make mystic stones worthless if the kit was buffed.

And honestly, it’s really not worth the investment because you could use the coins/gems for something else with a bigger impact. I really doubt the extra copper you save from salvages, even over time will make a big difference.

And yes I have one. But I do think mystic stones should be used in something.

I actually don’t have a problem if they decide to create a need for storage space. That’s just how things work. But there may be needs that they could fulfill, and people willing to pay.

But I make gold selling it. What’s in it for me?

Really depends on your legendary plans. Selling 250-500 isn’t a bad idea.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

I love cap and hold tower, don’t like camp, and keep is not impossible but highly improbable for my guild. My guild plays desert borderland about 98% of the time during our runs, we usually have 5-10 people. Tower is the most engaging as it is perfect for the size of our guild to take and defend, yet upgrading it can be tricky at times. Yak missions at the least will keep us out of trouble because if we go too far from the primary camp…it’s gone. Staying close and applying pressure to the nearby keep is also a red flag as that usually summons a group of 20-30 enemies which either roll us and then the tower or we can hold them at the tower but all supply gets cut off for an extended period of time while the time runs out. Still we always do but the response time of large groups nowadays is fast any time a keep gets flagged and they are usually hungry for anything they can flip nearby which is what we’ve worked on.

Cap and Hold WAS originally designed for automatic upgrades but the mission didn’t change when the yak requirement did. Perhaps something could be adjusted? Time would really be the only thing needed.

Maybe easy should be 5 yaks, medium 10, and hard a full t1. Easy missions shoukd be…. Easy

Neural.1824:

ArchonWing.9480:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If the ‘vast majority’ of players do not like the Desert Borderlands, I wonder why it was voted to stay…

I mean, the playerbase did get to choose whether to keep it, or have it removed permanently.

At least, WvW gets polls for the playerbase to choose what to add/change/remove; and more than any other game mode, it seems.

I believe it required a 75% vote, and that’s a pretty high threshold.

The problem there is it is only 75% of the people who are aware of the vote, meaning only those who visit the forums or Reddit.
Anet long ago dropped the ball when dealing with this sort of thing. A voting system should have been implemented in the client launcher that rewarded some sort of in game item for voting, along with an option to disable surveys. Only then would they have accurate information on what the player base wants, as they would not only have the votes from all players interested, they’d have the IP addresses to determine when 10 votes came from 10 accounts owned by the same person.
A great example of the difference between the internet community and the in game community is the vote between Evon and Ellen.
Here on the forum and on Reddit, you’d have thought that a win for Evon Gnashblade was going to give everyone a free precursor of their choice, plus 80,000gems in their account and a Lamborghini delivered to their house the next day, yet when it came down to it, Ellen won. The vote was taken via the use of support tokens in game, not via Reddit or the official forum.
There are a lot of people who play GW2 that aren’t involved with the forum or reddit. Some don’t even know the two are used for things as important as voting on the direction of the game.

You’re missing the point. It was 75 % to remove, meaning a majority could dislike it yet it could remain. Thus these two things aren’t exclusive.

As for actually voting. Excuses. If you were active that week, they sent a poll. In this day and age, information travels freely. If people cared so strongly yet dont bother to keep an effort, then it is on them.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If the ‘vast majority’ of players do not like the Desert Borderlands, I wonder why it was voted to stay…

I mean, the playerbase did get to choose whether to keep it, or have it removed permanently.

At least, WvW gets polls for the playerbase to choose what to add/change/remove; and more than any other game mode, it seems.

I believe it required a 75% vote, and that’s a pretty high threshold.

That being said, there is a great dissonance between what you read on the forums and what seems to actually happen. For example, if you read WvW threads enough, you would never assume things like mobile cannons and focus on scoring to count because lol PPT ALL ABOUT THE FIGHTS, but then they do. And this is frequently reflected in actual gameplay, so that is why I brought up that there’s a much more diverse population in WvW who have very different interests and this is quite difficult to reconcile.

There’s a ton of problems (and I feel many are self-inflicted) that no one entity is going to save things. Which is fine. I generally dislike targeting specific individuals especially when they’re trying to help matters that may or may not be in their control.

First off, balance. As WvW involves player to player combat typically, skill balance is a difficult issues because combat fundamentally changes as numbers changes. However balance is decided by a single team in this game that does it for 3 game modes. This would be bad enough, but given the lack of splits, changes intended for other game modes also affected WvW. It’s only recently that we started seeing more skill splitting but this is going to require a ton of work.

Secondly, WvW is left in an awkward place after the controversial HoT changes. It seems to me that the plans were scrapped due to numerous complaints about HoT content, including sky high WvW upgrade costs, a unpopular map, and other new mechanics that introduced expensive power creep to the game mode.

Third, is the WvW has or had great diversity in its population. It is very difficult to cater to it all, and some of it is even contradictory and at odds with each other. As a single example, consider the group that wants variety in their matchups, and then consider the group that finds it outrageous that a 4th place and a 11th place could be in the same matchup.

Fourth, related to the second issue, the issue of community or identity has been pretty much abandoned. Not just talking about the server links, but the megaserver system has pretty much rendered the existence of servers irrelevant outside of WvW. I remember both Roleplayers and WvW’ers suggesting that the cities remain some kind of community hub, but these concerns were completely ignored. The guild upgrades in HoT inherently favored large guilds, and small groups that used to help their servers found buffs they had were taken away and placed behind very high paywalls. Guild halls seem to be quite the failure as well, being too small and keeping broken confusion/retal mechanics that really ruin fights.

And of course this isn’t just WvW. The problem with guilds is across the games, and the game has done a poor job of making sure guilds stay healthy. Look at Guild Missions, which really haven’t had much attention paid to. They basically made a bunch of ones, some good, some not so good, locked some ascended equipment behind its gates, and called it a day.

Fifth, the reward system has always been in a difficult spot, though improved over time. It is very difficult to find a balance between rewarding participation and curbing freeloading. WvW’ers generally have to spend the most gold playing their game mode, and make the least, which again simply puts in more disincentive.

And finally, population. It’s really a symptom of the above problems. You have a smaller, more insular player base that continually shrinks, resulting in more imbalance as the remaining crowds converge on places to play out their last days of this game because of low morale. This results in little more than a never ending cycle of decay, and not an environment that can keep or gain players.

To be fair, as with HoT maps, WvW has seen some improvements as some of these issues were addressed, but I think the damage has largely been done as some will never come back. HoT was just a perfect storm of numerous failings about this game just came to the forefront all it once. At this point in its lifespan, I think it has squandered a lot of its potential, and that’s not going to change. To be fair, I never thought that it would have succeeded in content with compeititive potential anyways (lol espots), and it’s honestly quite impressive that it got so far to begin with. But it still can remain a decent game despite all these issues as long as it manages to address these issues as well as it can.

I do these mainly with a non-WvW guild with a few people, and also in a guild that regularly does WvW. Unless a zerg comes to roll over the objective, we usually don’t have too much trouble.

If you’re really low in numbers, all you have to do is wait until you lose something up North or in your third of EB. If the server is too strong, then apply this logic to the weakest enemy position. Then you just follow the rest of your server mates to take the structure and most of the time it’ll take care of itself. If not, set up about 2 Sup ACs in the tower, and maybe a ballista. That alone is enough to drive away small teams looking to ninja stuff. Build alphas at camps just to stall for time if they get attacked. People are more likely to defend stuff if you set it up for them.

Balthazzarr.1349:

I almost hate to say it but the dreaded Desert BL is the best place for these types of missions… true story!

Yep. That’s usually the best shot. You can usually fire the escort dolyak missions as well. The best way to do this is just to tag up if you need help taking the towers and camps, and that will get people moving.

As Dawdler stated, you can always arbitrarily restart missions. If it’s too much of a bother, then you can always just pop them during regular play instead of a set time for guild missions. There’s no penalty for failure or constantly having them going, so why not?

Finally, just flat out ask people that you need help with guild missions.

Thanks. And yea GPU probably does matter, but I probably have more spare GPU power as opposed to CPU.

What exactly is annoying about it? You just have to upgrade it to tier 1 which involves controlling at least 1 camp and of course the structure itself.

The only change I would suggest is a more generous time limit. And maybe remove the Keep one. That’s sorta dumb.

So I’ve read around that if you have anti-aliasing on, then it’d be pointless because it is also a form of anti-aliasing, So is there no point stacking these things?

I hear it’s mostly just GPU usage and using it doesn’t seem to reduce fps, so I was just curious since the game being CPU bound at all, it probably wouldn’t matter.

Fermi.2409:

My brother had an OC’d 290 and a 4.7GHz G3258 running on a CX430. Possibly not his wisest moment. He also had a microatx tower at the time with an H100i, so he just took the side panel off and sat the radiator on the ground since it wouldn’t fit in the case at all

Lol, I have quite a few friends with open cases. For some reason that amuses me

In general PSU quality is more important, though. It just seems like a lot of people get fixated on wattage and grossly overestimate how much they need whic is why I brought it up. My 750W is complete and total overkill, it was just the best deal on a decent PSU at the time (and then I didn’t do the MIR so it wasn’t even a good deal. Oh well.)

Definitely. I had bought that CX 600 which was too much for what I needed, and clearly not high enough quality of what I needed. And I spent more money when there were better things to get.

So yea, it’s not just the W. But wattage or not, you got a quality PSU, so there’s that.