Guild Wars 2

The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head (with the exception of holiday festival content) is the Super Adventure Box, but that will return in the future with additional content added to it.

Perhaps ANet need to make a new rule that whenever Colin says something that “over hypes” the content that will be (or has been) released, he has to buy coffee and doughnuts for the forum moderators. It just seems to me that he gets a bit too enthusiastic about the work the team is doing and lets that enthusiasm turn into hyperbole.

Personally, I’m happy with the amount of content (and systems) that has been introduced since the game launched. I also realise that there are still improvements that can be made to the game in a number of different areas, but I’m confident that the team at ANet are actively working on improving the game. (Of course, that doesn’t mean they will always get it right, or that we the players will agree with their decisions).

dulfy.1493:

They will be gone in 7 days with the latest gemstore update

I guess that means I really need to decide whether or not I want the quiver skin for my ranger. Thanks for the info Dulfy.

Mystic.5934:

I grab the +200%, so I have 220% mf, and when I go around killing karkas I’ve gotten an average of 0 crates from 10 total hours of killing.
maybe mf increases the chance of them dropping, but the +200% mf is bugged?

I had my first crate drop yesterday while running with 220% MF. I haven’t kept track of my total time on the island since the patch, but I’d estimate it to be in the 7-8 hour range.

@Curo:
While I admit I have purchased a few of the limited time offers recently, I haven’t gone completely overboard and purchased every gem store offering with a limited window of purchasing opportunity (and I have never been tempted by the RNG lottery boxes).

I don’t personally mind limited time offers as I’m able to make my purchasing decisions based on whether the item or service is one I truly desire. In some ways, having a limit on the availability of items will help me reach a decision in a more timely fashion. For instance, I’m still undecided about purchasing the quiver skin for my ranger, but once the “countdown” begins for its removal from the store, I will be induced into making a decision one way or the other about spending gems on it.

Chasind.3128:

I can’t farm CoF fast enough to be able to afford the mini’s in time- the one I wanted is gone because gem prices are so high & I couldn’t meet the demand of converting lol

400 gems is about 13 gold. While I can understand that this may be more than some people have available to convert to gems, you have 7 days to make enough gold to buy it. This should not be a problem if you are willing to put in the effort to obtain something you truly desire.

I love these conspiracy theories as they always give me something to laugh at. For instance from the mmorpg.com blog link above

threw 7 years of game philosophy (whether you agreed with it or not), trust, and credibility down the drain in order to, apparently, introduce a gear-treadmill monetization scheme that would require people to either endure a massive grindfest to keep up with top gear stats, or pay to keep up by buying gems in the cash shop, converting them to gold, and then buying Ascended gear and infusions off the trading post.

Essentially, the game has become a pay-to-win scheme.

Given that there is no way to actually acquire ascended items with gold (or gems) 6 months after the new tier was introduced, the author of this blog has absolutely no credibility.

Behellagh.1468:

So you could by Factions and not own the original game and it would be playable?

Yep. Both Factions and Nightfall were playable out of the box without requiring you to own the original Prophecies.

CrazedJediWannabe.3019:

Seriously this. Drangonbrand server was just beginning the Shatterer event at 5pm PST and the server goes restarts and the timer is reset. Honest to god how stupid do you have to be to plan restarts at this time. Only reasonable excuse would be if it was patching critical bugs. Otherwise, Anet needs to get with the program.

If you care to read the update notes you will see that the new build did indeed patch bugs in the new Southsun content and fix an exploit. IMO, this is a perfectly good reason to push out an update despite it being “peak time” in your timezone.

Astral Projections.7320:

If you have a guild bank and the necessary permissions, you should be able to trade the gold using it. Worth a try.

There is a 1-week “cooldown” period for access to a guild bank for new guild members iirc.

Firegoth.6427:

Just checked some pictures (can’t check vids, at work)
It seems that it creates some kind of lava/molten animation + effect that is quite visible every time you use it. Is this true?

Yes, it has an animation effect when used.

SijjvraVisz.7159:

I said CHARACTER CREATION which meant males as well as females. There are some MMO’s that do character creation much, much better… GW2 is pretty lame in that aspect. Yeah, the male faces are pretty awful too and smack of bishy anime 12 year old pretty boys. Boring.

But seriously… WHY would any viking-esque woman wear a ton of makeup? Do you -really- think warrior women in history decked their faces out and slapped on some high-heel thigh high boots to go fight in? That’s all pop culture. And depending on the time period and culture, women may or MAY NOT have been showing skin. Victorian era, for example -you showed your ankles and that was risuqe’. Instead of doing anything remotely interesting with cultures or remotely taken from history save for the boring stereo types of the Nord (obviously viking influenced), we get pop-culture influenced underwear armor that would look more natural in a Victoria’s Secret magazine. Sorry, I find it stupid, uninspired, and utterly lacking in creativity. GW2 took the easy way out with character creation and armor design, and I don’t like it at all. Hard to be attached to my character when I can’t stand how any of the options for the races look. You may have a differing opinion and that’s fine – but I’m old school and I prefer armor to look like armor and warrior women not to look like little fashion models on a catwalk.

Off-topic:
I can appreciate your point, but I haven’t really found it too difficult to find heavy armor for my Norn guardian that suits my (very similar) tastes. In fact, I quite liked the look of several of the heavy armor skins I came across while leveling.

Ideally, there should be enough different skins to satisfy many different tastes, so hopefully we will see more added over time. I found it hard to get excited about the dungeon or cultural skins, but I did like the primeval skin from the gem store (screenshot below), so hopefully you will eventually find the armor skin that works for you.

On-topic:
Thanks for your post OP, it is good that GW2 finally “clicked” with you.

I’ve encountered this quite a few times (and my page count is much less than yours). It seems to come right after a short while if I go to my selling or buying page, click through one of the items listed there, then refresh the affected page.

The best strategy for buying gem store items with gold is to buy gems before the exchange rate spikes with the introduction of new items. Personally, I buy a few gems every day with gold in order to build up a reserve of them I can call on when I want to buy something in the gem store.

@Mystic: I think you misunderstand how the gem exchange pool works. Gems bought with real money do not enter the pool until someone exchanges them for gold, so buying gems with real money won’t affect the rate until after the transaction has been completed.

In addition, once gems are bought with gold, they leave the exchange pool. Gems held by players (whether bought with gold or real money) aren’t factored into the exchange rate much as gold held in player’s accounts doesn’t affect the rate.

I think it boils down to how much new gold is being created in COF runs. That is, how much coin drops or is gained from selling items to vendors. Items sold on the TP aren’t inflationary as was noted in the OP, so how much gold is this dungeon path actually creating (and how does this compare with other similar activities).

Shadowlancer.7102:

Legendaries, thanks to Arenanet making a big deal out of them, are a high value item of desire. Since most of the trade skill system, mystic forge, and vender all revolves around the Legendary; yes Legendary weapons “set the value” of economic items.

While there are some items whose price might be impacted by the demand for them by people creating legendaries, this doesn’t hold true for all items on the trading post. While the price of the “finished product” (i.e. a specific legendary) as listed on the TP might influence someone towards either crafting one or buying one outright, it’s a step too far to say that raising the price of the finished legendary directly affects the price of materials required to craft one.

Additionally, you have yet to answer Ursan’s point that Eternity has been in fact decreasing in price since January.

Nike.2631:

We’ve got some comparitively new and cheap skins in the store now. Buy one and make your case in terms they’ll listen to…

Agreed. I don’t buy keys to use on the RNG chests, but I will buy skins, the odd mini or other convenience items where I know what I’m getting. I consider that buying these items (and not the RNG items) helps provide some feedback for what I want to see in the gem store.

Pandemoniac.4739:

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I find it a little hard to believe that half of the people want to put in the amount of gold they want to spend versus putting in the amount of gems they want to purchase.

Most people I know are not just randomly converting a set amount of gold to gems. They are trying to acquire a set amount of gems.

Unfortunately, most of the folks you know are not a representative sampling of the entire player base. Some folks convert their excess gold to gems a little at a time so they don’t get stuck with an unfavorable conversion rate the next time something cool is added to the gem store, or they can take advantage of an improved gem to gold rate when it happens.

I’m one of the people who convert excess gold to gems a little at a time in order to avoid exchange rate spikes, but even then I buy a set number of gems. I’ll admit my behavior might not be representative, but it’s a personal preference to have a nicely rounded number of gems stocked up.

Perhaps the answer is to include both options in the UI to allow you to enter either value. I am surprised that the split of opinion is so even however, as I would have predicted that most people would be looking to purchase a specific number of gems to spend in the gem store.

Ohoni,
Could you please describe what you believe an “optimal economy” looks like.

Syeria.4812:

Ohoni.6057:

Because it goes against the purpose of the TP, which is to take unwanted items off the hands of players, and to provide desired items to players. Any element that gets in the way of that process is a corrosive element to the TP.

Items selling for less than the vendor price isn’t the worst thing that can happen on the TP, but it does represent at least a minor flaw. The glaring problems are items that sell for far too much, or items that are so volatile that people can buy them for one price, and sell them at a higher price to turn a profit. Balancing the vendor price to the TP price helps to decrease that sort of volatility.

Those aren’t issues, those are opinions stated with a negative tone.

Why is it a problem that items can sell for more to an NPC than on the TP? How do these things cause a negative impact upon the function of the TP or the economy itself?

Additionally, why should vendors pay “fair market prices” for all goods. This would discourage people from using the TP to sell items and increase the supply of gold in the game. It is also likely that TP prices on desired items would rise as a response to the increased NPC “competition” for these items.

azazil.9541:

Guys are you serious ? You all try to sailing without sail.

Arena.Net need to make money and for that Gem Prices must be go up up up with wind and why they are hired John Smith (BIG DOT)

John Smith On Economics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EGpWe5Q4nU

For ANet to make money, they need to sell gems for real money. This means the gem store has to contain items that people wish to purchase, which will also lead to the gold -> gem rate rising as new desirable items are added to the gem store’s offerings.

Yes, this higher rate does benefit ANet by increasing the amount of gems that are purchased with the intention of converting to gold, but the primary “lever” is offering desirable items in the store. In my opinion, ANet are managing to do this without undermining their “no significant advantage” philosophy.

LoneWolfie.1852:

So… 60000 times divided by 21, yup, return starts after 8 years.

Or alternatively, the return is immediate as I’m able to enjoy the skin and animation as soon as I purchase and equip it.

Aurisai.3416:

Now I’m going to really drive our Anet friend crazy with my next statement (please don’t take offence) The very fact that it is possible to buy gold with rl money, albeit through indirect trade of gems, introduces a large amount of gold into the in-game economy that wasn’t “earned” through farming. If this increase in the gold supply is not counteracted strongly enough with gold sinks, we have a textbook economic definition of inflation (an expansion of the money supply, which cannot but eventually lead to higher prices).

The gem → gold exchange increasing the money supply in the game might be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that the gold → gem exchange reduces the money supply.

Are these two equal? I don’t know with any certainty, but given the gap between the 2 rates, as long as the quantity of gems converted to gold is no more than 30% more than the number of gems bought with gold, then the net effect should be to actually remove money from the economy.

Vayne.8563:

I’m not 100% sure, but I think the price of the mystic kit is probably cheaper than the master over the long haul. yes, you need 3 forge stones, but then the kit has 250 uses.

I’ll look into that. Thanks.

My biggest problem with GW2 is that my friends aren’t playing it, in fact most of them never even tried it.

I just finished the last of my BLSKs (free from dailies) and am using master’s kits now. While there is a noticeable difference in rate of return, I’m still getting a good rate from the master’s kits and the math in the thread Geotherma refers to leads to the conclusion that the cost of BLSKs outweighs the increase in ecto return, so I’ll just wait till I get some more free ones.

@Tallis: I’m unaware of any mechanism in the game that stops casual players from using the gem exchange to purchase gems with gold. If you perhaps mean that they can’t buy as many gems as people who spend 8 hours a day farming, then that’s not very surprising really.

And while I concede that the algorithm behind the exchange may indeed be weighted towards an increasing exchange rate (as I cannot provide evidence to prove or disprove such a theory), observing the history of the gem exchange rate has yet to show me any incidence of active manipulation by ANet.

roamzero.9486:

Like I said my first post was worded poorly. Im not suggesting the other way because I think the way it currently is is somehow wrong in the math sense, but in the balance sense (65% flat reduction is just OP, particularly considering damaging conditions are always rounded down on their ticks). The reductions should be flat out nerfed, or the calculation changed, or damage conditions should be rounded differently.

That’s how I interpreted your post, so you did manage to convey your meaning to at least one person. I can’t argue the pros and cons of your suggested change as I’m not fully conversant with the pvp meta.

Hi Goatjugsoup,
As a fellow kiwi with a limited income I can empathize with your predicament, but there are some options you could try. I’ve been able to use my visa debit card to buy gems in the past, but failing that, you could look at getting one of the prepaid visa cards (think they may be called pressie cards or something similar). Another option could be to ask your local gamestore (such as EB Games) if they would consider carrying gem cards.

Hope these suggestions help.

I believe roamzero was suggesting the reduction and duration bonuses be applied as follows:

4 + 4 * (100% – 65%) = 5.4

Charming Rogue.8071:

Proxcel.2596:

I was wondering why people don’t stack up gems when its a bit cheaper
and… you know.. this kind of spark will keep on coming….. with every exclusive (limited)
items that they will release in the future.

Cause Gems rarely lower in price anymore, and we’re fools to believe that they won’t rise any more in price.

While I agree that gem prices (in terms of gold) are unlike to get much cheaper, it’s important to realise that new additions to the gem store (or discounts on desirable items) will cause spikes in the gold → gem exchange rate. The best thing you can do to avoid getting stung by these spikes is to purchase gems when the rate is more stable before you actually want to spend them.

@Tallis : There’s other threads talking about the molten picks, but you’re forgetting both the cosmetic appeal and the fact that people will often pay a premium for convenience (it’s not just laziness, it’s also how they value the time they will save).

Lane.3410:

Not everyone has the disposable income to “support” Anet. The fact that GW2 doesn’t have a subscription fee is going to be a draw to those who cannot afford an extra $15/mo. for entertainment in the first place.

Having said that, there are very few ways in GW2 to make gold and all of them require grinding except for the TP, which not everyone is gifted at playing (I’m certainly not).

I currently fall into the lack of disposable income category, so I can understand why someone might be unable to pay real money for gems, however I also don’t have a problem with the rising exchange rate starting to become more favourable to those who do.

Also please bear in mind that while large sums of gold aren’t necessarily easy to come by without “grinding”, you don’t actually need large amounts of gold to play the game and access the content. Sure, gold buys you nice things, but none of it is strictly required to enjoy the game.

Being able to buy ascended items with gold largely defeats one of the stated reasons for the introduction of the new tier. That is, to provide players with a medium term goal to bridge the gap between acquiring exotic tier and legendary tier.

Allowing people to shortcut this by spending gold may still be possible, but IMO it’s an area that ANet may wish to be cautious before they implement it (and the same can be said of crafting ascended items because of the possible interactions with the economy).

John Smith.4610:

You’ve made two false assumptions, fix them both and you have your answer.

So is one of the false assumptions that the prices of Orichalcum and ectos aren’t somehow tied together? I’m trying to think this one through, but I’m no economist, so the only possible linkage I can see is on the demand side of the equation (i.e. people buying ectos to craft exotics often buy orichalcum as well, so if the fall in ecto prices is due to softening demand for ectos, there would be a similar softening in demand for orichalcum).

Having read some of the responses here I’m a bit puzzled. We have someone who has been farming COF for the past 2 months making up to 5.5 g/hour complaining about the exchange rate being slightly over 3g/100 gems. What have you been spending your gold on?

I don’t make anywhere near that sort of gold/hour, yet I have a small supply of gems and a couple hundred gold in reserve that I can call on, despite my tendency to make impulse purchases.

Try thinking of the pick as a cosmetic item that happens to have unlimited charges. Do you expect to be able to swap cosmetic items freely between all your characters?

@Kaiza: I only started doing this at the beginning of March with the daily sales that were taking place for that month on the assumption that any desirable sale offer would spike the gold → gem exchange rate and thereby diminish the potential savings. I like to think of the gold invested into gems as my “hedge fund”.

As for making money, I make about 50% of my funds with crafting, so I’m a net buyer of ectos and T6 mats. The prices of these may rise and fall, but that doesn’t hurt my income to any great extent.

As someone who buys the bulk of their gems with gold rather than cash, I can understand why someone might balk at the rising gold → gem exchange rate, especially when it spikes upwards in response to increasing demand when new goodies are offered in the gem store.

The strategy I employ to counteract these spikes is to exchange gold into gems on a regular basis, regardless of whether there is anything I currently wish to purchase or not (in my case, I buy 100 gems with gold every day that I’m able to play for a reasonable length of time, but obviously you may wish to use different amounts/criteria based on your circumstances).

Over time, this has led me to build up a stock of gems that I can spend whenever I desire something without worrying too much about what is happening to the exchange rate in the short-term. It also gives me a rough target for a minimum amount of gold I want to make while playing each day.

Gibson.4036:

Cameirus.8407:

dont buy it them, its not compulsory.

This reads as “If you don’t like the price, you’re not allowed to say so,” which is strange for a discussion forum about the game.

What’s wrong with saying, “The price of these items is high”?

Nothing wrong with stating an opinion on the price of these picks, but as they have a cosmetic value in addition to their convenience value, don’t be surprised if others values them differently.

As for the matter of account bound vs. soul bound, it’s possible that the cosmetic factor played a part in ANet’s decision to make them soul bound (I’m unaware of any equipable cosmetic items in the game that aren’t soul bound).

Essence Snow.3194:

I don’t like the pick or any other gem store only item. The reoccurring releases only raise the ratio. This serves to make gold>gem less attractive and rl cash>gem more attractive. It seems to me that with each new release they are seeing how much they can get away with.

Take an inch…we will get used to it. Take another inch…we will get used to it. Take another so forth and so on until next thing we know we are far past inches into the realm of yards. The distance from were we started to where we will be staggering.

Imo the same practice applies all over the game. It’s hard not to think back to arguments over gw1 and see that some were right about direction. In the long run it’s obvious, but in the short term players are blinded by numerous ideologies.

It’s both a cosmetic and a convenience item, which is exactly the sort of thing that ANet said the gem store would offer, so I’m not really sure what problem you have with it.

You seem to be arguing that the gem store should never have anything desirable in it that can’t be obtained in-game (unless I’m misinterpreting your statements), which would largely defeat the purpose of gems in the first place.

I bought one for my main even though I was aware that it would be a very long time for me to break even on the cost of it.

But thinking about it some more, the picks are both a convenience item and a cosmetic item, so you’re not just paying to free up bag space or to reduce the hassle of buying new picks, but you’re also getting the cosmetic value from them too.

FourthVariety.5463:

@kitanas

That is another angle to screw with ArenaNet. Find the right judge and he might rule that gambling as well. Often enough the question is “shouldn’t that be gambling?” Most of the time the answer is “sure, yeah, but nobody sued yet, so lets continue doing it for as long as we can get away with it”.

Just because nobody is judging you for having dirty boots, doesn’t mean you hover over the mire.

It’s not gambling. Despite your apparent desire to “screw with ArenaNet”, I think you’ll have difficulty finding a judge who will support the legal argument you’re attempting.

Money is not required to open these chests. Chests will always give you something when you open them. Most goods received from opening the chests are not transferable to other players, so any intrinsic monetary value that could be attached to them is based on what you could buy them for separately (in cases where it possible to do so).

Clipbord.8726:

This feature is gonna happen, it’s not a question of if, but when. Anet will realize there is too much money to be made from this, and I am one of those suckers.

While this may be true to an extent, developing a feature like this takes resources that may be committed to other (higher priority) areas of the game currently. I’m guessing that from ANet’s perspective developing the character makeover kits and name change contracts were a lot easier to justify putting resources towards given that these features also don’t have the technical complications that a race change feature needs to overcome.

I’m against the idea of allowing players to change the race of their characters, as I think it diminishes the whole “what’s your story” concept behind the game. I also realize however that some players could care less about the story aspects of the game and would like the convenience such an item would offer, but I’d rather development resources were put towards other things (such as a lfg tool) at this stage of the game’s life.

@Ursan: I believe that’s part of what Amun Ra was referring to the last sentence of his post. If you have enough gold to do this sort of thing, you’re also likely to realize the risk isn’t worth the reward given the other profitable flipping options available on the TP.

FourthVariety.5463:

European GW2 Servers are in Germany:

Relevant Legal Passage #1

Legal Text
§ 3 Abs. 1 des Glücksspielstaatsvertrages (GlüStV)
Ein Glücksspiel liegt vor, wenn im Rahmen eines Spiels für den Erwerb einer Gewinnchance ein Entgelt verlangt wird und die Entscheidung über den Gewinn ganz oder überwiegend vom Zufall abhängt.

English Translation:
Gambling is defined when money is being charged for the chance to win something and the decision over what is won being subject to a totally or partially randomized process.

Google translate gives me something slightly different, but I won’t argue the point as legal interpretation is an area where lawyers make their money. Where the BLCs may fall short of this definition is that money is not always being charged to open them. You can obtain keys in-game, or use in-game gold to buy them, so strictly speaking, money is not required to take part.

FourthVariety.5463:

Online gambling is heavily regulated/prohibited by law. I only hope ArenaNet know what they tinker with. Because Black Lion chests sure fit the description.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the chests don’t fit any legal description of gambling I’ve ever encountered. If you can show me otherwise, please do so.

Edit: I’ve just looked up the legislation regarding gambling in my jurisdiction and the definition of gambling is as follows:

“gambling—

(a) means paying or staking consideration, directly or indirectly, on the outcome of something seeking to win money when the outcome depends wholly or partly on chance; and

(b) includes a sales promotion scheme; and

© includes bookmaking; and

(d) includes betting, paying, or staking consideration on the outcome of a sporting event; but

(e) does not include an act, behaviour, or transaction that is declared not to be gambling by regulations made under section 368"