Guild Wars 2

I’ve also noticed the rare occasion that I still cannot move even after it’s been cleansed or wore off.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

there is no real logical reason why a player should not be able to target a specific set of tasks in order to get a specific item. There are many methods of limiting output without random. To be honest random is one of the worst means of limiting output. However, i think the strength of random is, surprise, and the possibility of coming out ahead.

I would not eliminate random, however aside from streak breaking mechanics, i think that specific methods that are slower, with limited output also can work well when properly designed into content.

You may have never played gw1, but they had a zone called domain of anguish, beating each submission had a guaranteed way to get tokens, but also you could get random tokens from enemies in the zone. The random tokens was exciting when you got it, and made it interesting, but the tokens for beating an area made it so worst case scenario by defeating the area, you could achieve something.

Like i said, if players could target specific tasks, they could greatly increase the supply of an item. This could devastate a lot of markets. Having RNG slows down the rate at which they acquire these items.

Would bringing back the collector NPC’s from Guild Wars help resolve the issue? It’ll still cause an increase in supply but perhaps it would be easier to manage than trying to track which players haven’t received a particular drop.

There’s a lot of junk items that really have no use other than to sell to vendor. If players needed to farm 15 shocking crystals to exchange for a charged lodestone, perhaps that would be an acceptable alternative? There’s still RNG involved but at least your efforts won’t go entirely wasted.

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

There are some pre events that are best to have only one person doing such as those for shatterer. Pretty much any pre event that is prone to scaling and from which player cannot benefit from.

RoseofGilead.8907:

Ayrilana.1396:

It always seemed like I do more DPS when in front of Claw using my ranged weapons than I do with the bazooka.

The bazooka is only meant to be used on the ice wall. It does basically no damage to Claw.

I was referring to the wall. There’s a spot at 900 range right in front of him that you can reach the wall and not be standing in the chill radius.

I’ll edit my previous post to prevent future confusion.

I’d personally list blast combos in-between basic and advanced mechanics. Doing blast combos is not really needed (well, used) for the majority of the game so a lot of people are not exposed to it. Even a large percentage of pug groups don’t do it. I would not personally consider blast finishers on the same level as mitigating damage through dodges and blocks. Would it be nice to have? Yes. Would I expect it from the average pug? No.

Noah.4756:

Ayrilana.1396:

Noah.4756:

Although I generally do not like to make statements with regards to drop rates without a large sample size I tend to agree with the OP in this case. From my personal experience chopping saplings near Orr statues does not drop as many foxfire clusters as it did before.

This confuses me because I feel like the Community Manager is hinting at the opposite. Which makes sense because if something was changed it should be shown in the patch notes. Although some changes are not always described in the patch notes (most noticeable for dungeon changes).

You can’t base perceived changes on qualitative observations without there being sufficient quantitative data to back it up. The thing is that the human mind tries to find patterns in things and quite often it’s in things where there are no patterns to begin with.

So you’re basically repeating what I said in my first sentence. Concluding that it’s just patterns of the human mind is equally as likely to be the case as a change to the drop rate of the foxfire clusters. We shouldn’t ignore it just because we can’t back it up with quantitative data. Although I personally believe it would be a lot easier if ANet came with a clear statement whether or not it has been changed.

What I said is the complete opposite of your first sentence and your entire post for that matter. You openly admit to not going by a large sample size but by your own observations.

Concluding that it’s just patterns versus it being a change in the drop rate do not have the same probability of occurring. I’m also not saying that observations should be ignored. What I am saying is that you cannot make claims without quantitative data to back up those claims. Anet does not have to make a statement every time someone perceives a drop rate for something has been changed. Otherwise, they’ll constantly be making those statements.

Noah.4756:

Although I generally do not like to make statements with regards to drop rates without a large sample size I tend to agree with the OP in this case. From my personal experience chopping saplings near Orr statues does not drop as many foxfire clusters as it did before.

This confuses me because I feel like the Community Manager is hinting at the opposite. Which makes sense because if something was changed it should be shown in the patch notes. Although some changes are not always described in the patch notes (most noticeable for dungeon changes).

You can’t base perceived changes on qualitative observations without there being sufficient quantitative data to back it up. The thing is that the human mind tries to find patterns in things and quite often it’s in things where there are no patterns to begin with.

It always seemed like I do more DPS to the ice wall when in front of Claw using my ranged weapons than I do with the bazooka.

Edited to clarify what i was referring to.

Sube Dai.8496:

Mk2 – they would need to dramatically reduce its HP if they remove the boxes, as most people don’t know how to handle the electricity field and melee it.

Then they can learn how to. I’ve done it and it’s not that difficult.

Ayakaru.6583:

Ayrilana.1396:

They should also remove the crates from the platform as well at Golem.

Maybe, until they still get hit by the machine gun and the shockwave. But that isn’t by far as deadly as the electric fields. If they make the machinegun just as deadly as the fields for the onstanders I would be happy, too. What matters is that people can’t go AFK or slack about without getting killed.

That’s what removing the boxes would do as they’re 99% safe when standing on them except for the final shockwave attack.

They should also remove the crates from the platform as well at Golem.

A dev is looking into those two events. They were never part of the world boss chain because they required people to do the event chain to spawn them. Dredge only showed up on the old timer when it spawned and Foulbear only came up when you got to the part to destroy the huts.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ogre-Wars-1/first#post4459188

This is from the update last April. Go to any of the traits and hover the cursor over the looking glass symbol. It’ll show you what you need to do to unlock them. You can also buy them as well from the same NPC’s that used to sell the three trait books when you reached various levels.

laokoko.7403:

well he probably have to wait since he wants’ wupwup. You can just buy the damask of the TP if you don’t want to wait 36 days.

True. He could do that. It’s just when relaying it to him as the total cost for light armor, it should be mentioned that it’s not the cheapest as crafting it would be cheaper. If there’s a 2G difference between the buy order price of damask bolts and their cost to make, that can quickly add up. For the entire set, that would be an additional 72G. If there was a 3G difference then it would be 108G. Or it can be 36G if there was only a 1G difference.

laokoko.7403:

It’s ok. Not everyone is a TP Guru or patient person like you.

That’s why Thanatos and me got our Zojja’s armor for around 640 gold.

That’s great that you both were able to obtain your ascended armor! All that I ask is show how you reached that total. You don’t necessarily have to do a breakdown like a spreadsheet but list the assumptions used.

You don’t need to be very patient or a TP guru to get the components at low cost. You can analyze the trends or you can simply see what the average low price is for everything and buy them whenever you’re online. You have 36 days so there’s no absolute rush. I believe that I often bought a weeks worth of ingredients when I went for my light armor.

laokoko.7403:

Ayrilana.1396:

laokoko.7403:

Ayrilana.1396:

Sephas.8793:

Ayrilana.1396:

Wow. Is everyone buying the materials immediately off the TP rather than placing buy orders? Are people buying off the TP rather than crafting the time-gated materials? The last I checked, it was 520 gold for light armor.

At least half of the cost for ascended armor IS in the insignia. This is due to them requiring 3 damask bolts each. For medium and heavy armor, that cost percentage is greater as they use less cloth than light armor.

If you’re going to state that such and such costs such and such amount, please be specific in how you arrived at that. There’s a difference between buy and sell prices just as there’s a large difference between crafting a component and buying it. I can make 2G profit off crafting damask bolts after TP fees if I plan out when I make my purchases of ingredients and when I sell it.

With all due respect, did you even read the OP?

We are talking about light armor.

Did you even read my post?

his only 7% of, I would say your 2g profit which should really be 1.15 gold per damask is far more off than him. I dont’ know why people keep arguing about such minor difference.

Not really. It’s all about when you place your buy orders and when you sell the bolts.

honestly it is getting annoying.

I’m not sure how to publish google sheet

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f5so3iMA1QWsbYESd3jD_69wsmsqPIMXNe72hSuoBWE/pubhtml

basically that is current price. ya if you sell gossamer at 18 gold, be patient with that you can get 2 gold.

and your price is of by 20 gold too. Im’ not sure why argue about things like this.

at current price using buy order it is 539 gold. if you really good at buy order you can probably push it to 520 gold.

Prices fluctuate throughout the day and throughout the week. This is what i meant when it depends on when you place your buy order and when you sell the damask cloth. It wasn’t by accident that I included that.

I may as well clarify my post as it seems to have confused people for some reason. It appears pretty clear but whatever. I did read the OP and my post was about light armor and its components. My post was not directed at the OP but at the others posting costs ranging from 168 gold to 800 gold without any explanation on how they reached that amount. Also, the most above mine with the links of each piece was posted as I was writing up my post.

My first paragraph was a comment about how random everyone’s numbers were and unspecific as to how they reached them. There’s a difference between whether you buy all of the ingredients on buy orders versus sell orders and also whether you craft the tine-gated materials yourself.

The second paragraph was in response to the post that insignias do not mostly make up the cost of the armor but it’s the cloth. I pointed out that roughly half the cost is from the insignias due to each requiring 3 bolts which is half of what you need for light armor. I then added a side comment that this percentage would be larger for the other armor types as they require less cloth and their materials are substantially cheaper.

The third paragraph was in response to the user who calculated cost based on the sell order price of damask bolts. I responded that the cost is substantially better if you craft it yourself. I brought up the profit one could make to highlight the large gap between the cost to make and what it sells for.

The second part of the third paragraph was me asking for people to include their assumptions as to how they reached their total. Did they go off sell order prices? Did they go down to the individual ingredients (e.g. Silk scraps) or the higher level ones (damask bolts). All of these have an impact in what the total cost would look like and should be mentioned so the OP has accurate information.

laokoko.7403:

Ayrilana.1396:

Sephas.8793:

Ayrilana.1396:

Wow. Is everyone buying the materials immediately off the TP rather than placing buy orders? Are people buying off the TP rather than crafting the time-gated materials? The last I checked, it was 520 gold for light armor.

At least half of the cost for ascended armor IS in the insignia. This is due to them requiring 3 damask bolts each. For medium and heavy armor, that cost percentage is greater as they use less cloth than light armor.

If you’re going to state that such and such costs such and such amount, please be specific in how you arrived at that. There’s a difference between buy and sell prices just as there’s a large difference between crafting a component and buying it. I can make 2G profit off crafting damask bolts after TP fees if I plan out when I make my purchases of ingredients and when I sell it.

With all due respect, did you even read the OP?

We are talking about light armor.

Did you even read my post?

his only 7% of, I would say your 2g profit which should really be 1.15 gold per damask is far more off than him. I dont’ know why people keep arguing about such minor difference.

Not really. It’s all about when you place your buy orders and when you sell the bolts.

Sephas.8793:

Ayrilana.1396:

Wow. Is everyone buying the materials immediately off the TP rather than placing buy orders? Are people buying off the TP rather than crafting the time-gated materials? The last I checked, it was 520 gold for light armor.

At least half of the cost for ascended armor IS in the insignia. This is due to them requiring 3 damask bolts each. For medium and heavy armor, that cost percentage is greater as they use less cloth than light armor.

If you’re going to state that such and such costs such and such amount, please be specific in how you arrived at that. There’s a difference between buy and sell prices just as there’s a large difference between crafting a component and buying it. I can make 2G profit off crafting damask bolts after TP fees if I plan out when I make my purchases of ingredients and when I sell it.

With all due respect, did you even read the OP?

We are talking about light armor.

Did you even read my post?

If they fixed the NPC, you can try the one in Mount Maelstrom. Both a bank and TP within feet of each other.

Wow. Is everyone buying the materials immediately off the TP rather than placing buy orders? Are people buying off the TP rather than crafting the time-gated materials? The last I checked, it was 520 gold for light armor.

At least half of the cost for ascended armor IS in the insignia. This is due to them requiring 3 damask bolts each. For medium and heavy armor, that cost percentage is greater as they use less cloth than light armor.

If you’re going to state that such and such costs such and such amount, please be specific in how you arrived at that. There’s a difference between buy and sell prices just as there’s a large difference between crafting a component and buying it. I can make 2G profit off crafting damask bolts after TP fees if I plan out when I make my purchases of ingredients and when I sell it.

Astralporing.1957:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

If BLCs are gambling, then by all definitions, so is purchasing a magic the gathering booster pack. Really, if you look at it, it really is the same thing.

Yes, it is. And card booster packs indeed operate on the same premises as gambling – they just use law loopholes in order to boost sales by hooking up individuals that hope that “this time they will win the big one”. And part of their target group is minors.

Yes, i hope that eventually this sale practice will get regulated as strongly as it should be. Even if i don’t hold much hope it will happen anytime soon.

Ayrilana.1396:

So someone buying gems, converting them to gold, and then buying loot bags is gambling?

Depends. If he buys one lootbag and hopes for a lodestone drop, then he is. Most of the bag buyers however are quite aware of the chances, and do not go for “the big one”. They buy a ton of bags trusting in statistics. They will generally get more than they have put into it – and that’s the main difference.

When you have doubts whether something is gambling or not, ask yourself how the average person is likely to profit on it. If the answer is “unlikely” (or worse), then it is probably gambling.

Provide sources on how it’s gambling and how it’s a loophole in the law. What I’m seeing is a lot of people don’t understand what gambling is and then resort to calling the very reasons that make it not gambling as loopholes. Kind of flawed logic there.

MikaHR.1978:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

yawn

I think it was Vayne that compared BLCs to baseball cards? I personally feel it’s an apt comparison and the same general premise. If BLCs are gambling, then by all definitions, so is purchasing a magic the gathering booster pack. Really, if you look at it, it really is the same thing. You invest a token amount of money in the hopes of getting something good in return. The only difference between a black lion ticket and a valuable baseball card or mtg card is the real world value. You can sell the cards, you can’t (theoretically) sell that black lion ticket for real world money.

In my country TCGs are listed in same category as casino games and lottery: luck based games. And as such had same tax attached.

So yeah, you could earn decent student pocket money for selling those

And yes, its gambling, dont try to passit as something else, using loopholes is using loopholes.

On account of Anet…well…everybody is doing it so i dont see a problem with it. It would be different if there was some prederence or such.

So someone buying gems, converting them to gold, and then buying loot bags is gambling?

It’s not gambling as you’re paying real world cash for a game currency. Also, you can’t transfer game currency back to cash (at least not legitly) so it doesn’t qualify in that regard either.

Devs are aware that it’s not unlocking and are working on addressing it.

New expansion won’t fix anything. We’d be right back where we are now within a matter of months.

I had emailed support about the old miniature achievements, Hero of the People collection, and Brewmaster collection. They’re already aware of the issue.

Go to any town and speak with the bank NPC. It’s on one of the tabs.

Looks like Straits of Devastation or possibly Sparkfly Fen.

Sariel V.7024:

I’ll go digging… pretty sure it was explicitly stated.

Any updates on your search?

I asked customer support and was told they’re aware of the issue and working on addressing it. Exactly what about it that they’re addressing wasn’t mentioned so we’re really no better off than we were a few days ago. The same goes for the Hero of the People and Brewmaster collections.

I guess we’ll just have to play the waiting game and hope either the Halloween or next LS updates fix them.

I’ll respond to your posts later but I have a few questions in the meantime.

You say a puzzle should have multiple options. Let’s say a puzzle has five ways to complete it but they all take exactly the same amount of time. Would this be poorly designed?

List five puzzles within this game that you would say are well designed. Considering that you all allear to be in the same guild, or even set dungeon group, I’m sure you can easily come up with a list together.

What you listed is generally what most people do. There’s really no better way to do it and if there was, I doubt people would share it.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

Context? Really? I’m sorry but you cannot justify that we were saying players were guaranteed a precursor after so many forges or exotics. Please try again.

Nust because something isn’t 100%, does not mean that it should just be disregarded. You may have the general idea of statistics in regards to this situation but you do not know how to apply it.

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

spoj.9672:

The difference between the puzzles hybrid listed and aether puzzles is quite simple. The aether puzzles slow you down and theres no way to really counter that.

spoj.9672:

The oozes move a set slow speed which makes kiting very slow and there is no way to be faster than that set time.

Purple Miku.7032:

He said many times now that good design would be for there to be a puzzle that doesn’t restrict everyone to being capable of doing it at a set pace. He gave up on you because you keep misinterpreting him.

Here’s one of my explanations of what a non badly designed puzzle is

Ayrilana.1396:

Just because a puzzle can be completed the same by everyone when they do the mechanics does not make it any less of a challenge or poorly designed. I’m pretty sure Anet did not design the puzzles with the speed runners in mind. They wanted to create puzzles that got players to work together and coordinate their actions to overcome whatever obstacle laid in front of them. The whole concept of completing a puzzle and a quick speed or pace once you’ve gotten the mechanics down was created by players trying to add more challenge.

Now if you want to change your arguments to talking about choice. Fine. I’ll address that. It doesn’t matter. Having multiple choices doesn’t make a puzzle good or bad. You’re limited on what you can do in the aquatic fractal. You cannot complete either of the two paths different ways. All of which require you to go from Point to Point B.

A well designed puzzle challenges players. This challenge diminishes over time but that doesn’t mean that it’s poorly designed because of that.

spoj.9672:

Also using the 3 types of players. Puzzles would benefit more from having multiple choices. Inexperienced groups would be able to find a method which works for them and experienced groups would be able to find a method which suits their goals (favourite, safest or fastest). So once again i dont know why you are disagreeing with us. Are you really against multiple choice? Do you really want completely linear dungeons and puzzles in the future?

Infamous darkness interpreted what i was trying to say perfectly. Can either of you please explain what you dislike about giving players more options to complete a puzzle?

I’m not against multiple choices. I never said that I was. It’s just that you cannot say that a puzzle is poorly designed because it lacks that. Choices is not the only criteria. Many other games have puzzles that pretty much have only one way to beat them. Are they poorly designed?

spoj.9672:

You are still misunderstanding us. Just because we use speed to measure variability of a puzzle doesnt mean we are talking about tailoring for speedrunners. Its bad design because there is literally no choice. If you give players multiple choices on how to complete a puzzle, naturally some strategies will be faster and some will be slower and some will be safer while others will be riskier. This is what i was trying to say.

The majority of the posts claiming bad design has centered around speed/pacing/whatever.

Hybrid’s responses against my examples were:

hybrid.5027:

Nope, that is a good puzzle. Here is why: disorganized groups with no communication finish it with 35 seconds left on the timer. Organized groups with good communication can finish it with 70 seconds left on the timer. The better you are the faster the puzzle can be completed. Unlike the electric floor puzzle, which takes the same amount of time no matter how many times you’ve experienced it.

The lasers would be an awesome puzzle if there was some punishment for failure. As it is the puzzle is just a time gate and bad design.

No artificial time gate.

All of those have to do with speed and time. None of it has to do with choices.

You’ve given the following reasons regarding time and speed as well

spoj.9672:

That means they should not be locked behind timegates and ideally they should have a combat element.

spoj.9672:

Unskippable cutscenes, unecessary timegates, excessively long dialogues, buggy hologram generator hitboxes, player count checks, puzzles that dont involve combat and just add tedious timegating upon replay. Its an explorable dungeon path. It should of been designed to be replayable and at the same time engaging while replaying. It shouldnt give any reason to cause irritation to players. Some people dont mind the puzzles and timegating but many do. Its current design suggests it was built to be played once as a story instance.

The parts that are not bolded I have stated at least once already that I actually agree with. The only exception being the statement that there needs to be a combat element.

There there’s another post of yours about speed and pacing

spoj.9672:

The difference between those examples and the ones in aetherpath is that dolphin and bombs do not slow you down. Yes they add extra time due to you having to move places to get them done. But you have the freedom to do them fast or slow. The aetherpath puzzles seem to force extra timegating on you which just makes things worse when you already experience countless timegates from cutscenes and dialogues. I feel non combat puzzles should be in jumping puzzles not dungeons. People dont do dungeons for puzzles. The only non combat puzzles i dont mind are ones like TAFU’s bee corridor. It doesnt slow you down if you know what you are doing. So its not going to cause irritation but it still makes you pay attention.

There’s really no particular order. If you find yourself playing a particular class most of the time, you can level the crafting professions that produce items that they can use. Keep in mind that if you’re just looking to equip one character, it’s cheaper to buy the armor directly.

Leatherworker will let you craft your own armor. Weaponsmithing will let you do the metal-based weapons just as dagger. Huntsman will do the wood-based weapons such as short bow and pistol.

Ohoni.6057:

So if all players from this point on unanimously decided to sell Dusk for 5k, that would be Anet controlling them to do that?

No, but they wouldn’t do that because it’d be irrational. You can’t expect people to be irrational to justify the system as “player driven.” You have to expect people to behave as people will behave. ANet does this and manage the economy accordingly. Players will only sell Dusks at 5000 when ANet drive supply low enough or demand high enough that they can reasonably assume players will spend that much, and after the likely dozens of Dusks between the current price and that one have already sold.

“Players have the right to be stupid” is poor evidence of player agency. It’d be like saying that a very linear game has a wide variety of non-linear options because you can just run into a corner instead of going down the only corridor that offers forward progress.

Of course it’s irrational. It goes against your belief that Anet controls everything and players are but pawns.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

do you really want to compare statistics and gambling? statistics gives you overall analysis of large trends, it does not apply to single cases.

1/6 odds of picking a red marble out of a bag doesnt mean if you try 6 times you will get a red marble, it doesnt mean if you try 20 times you will get a red marble.

if a red marble is worth 60 dollars, you should not pay 9 dollars for 6 chances, thinking you will make 6 dollars, that is not the way gambling works.

statistics mean, that if i take a large amount of trials, overall i will notice a trend toward 6 attempts, within those attempts there will be a bell curve, this means a signifigant number of people will take 7 8 or 9 attempts (usually almost as many as took 6) some edge cases may take 100 attempts.

the flaw with using statistics for gambling, is statistics doesnt predict the future, it doesnt know whether you are one of the people in the middle, or the end of the bell curve. therefore, do not assert that every time someone throws 4 exotics into the forge they are 1/127 their way to precursor. You have no idea.

dont confuse gambling with statistics/probability, its a fatal flaw many gamblers have. probability doesnt normalize until you have an extremely large sample size.
you also can never predict any future occurences based on past occurences.

Nowhere did I say that you were guaranteed to get a precursor within X amount of forges. How difficult is that to understand? When I said on average, that’s just want I mean. Some people will get it in exactly that many, some will take more tries, and some will take less. What you seem to be suggesting is that you cannot use any form of statistics to calculate probabilities. You are wrong.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

Zaxares.5419:

Ayrilana.1396:

Zaxares.5419:

Ensign made a really good point above too. If the drop rate for something really has been nerfed, you’d notice it via the market very quickly. (Especially if the item is one that has a high trade velocity, meaning that hundreds, or even thousands, are being traded every day.)

For example, people have often made claims that Ecto drop rates were nerfed, but this has usually proven to be false. The one time that Ecto drop rates DID get bugged, we had evidence of this very quickly; supply of Ecto on the TP collapsed dramatically within a day, and prices shot up to almost 4 times its usual value. That got John Smith’s and the devs’ attention that something was wrong, and the bug got located and fixed.

I thought it was everyone pooling their salvage drops together and finding the percentage was way off?

Yeah, that was additional proof the community provided. But the first indicator that something was off was the sudden spike in price and drop in supply of Ectos.

I added the link. The jump could have been made as a result of the thread.

Irregardless, any changes would still be quickly noticed by players.

Zaxares.5419:

Ensign made a really good point above too. If the drop rate for something really has been nerfed, you’d notice it via the market very quickly. (Especially if the item is one that has a high trade velocity, meaning that hundreds, or even thousands, are being traded every day.)

For example, people have often made claims that Ecto drop rates were nerfed, but this has usually proven to be false. The one time that Ecto drop rates DID get bugged, we had evidence of this very quickly; supply of Ecto on the TP collapsed dramatically within a day, and prices shot up to almost 4 times its usual value. That got John Smith’s and the devs’ attention that something was wrong, and the bug got located and fixed.

I thought it was everyone pooling their salvage drops together and finding the percentage was way off?

Well here’s the thread. Haven’t read through it enough to determine if it was the changes in the market, everyone comparing results, or a combination.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Changes-to-ecto-salvage-from-rares/first#post2110272

I’ll try to rephrase my posts into one so this may or may not get long-winded. I’m not asking for you to agree with me. We all have our own opinions on what makes a puzzle a puzzle and what makes it challenging and engaging. This is also likely reflected in our play styles. I’ll likely be using challenges and puzzles interchangeably.

For simplicity, let’s say there are three groups of players. You have the new players and those that take time to learn content. You have the average players who understand the mechanics of the dungeons to not struggle and casually run dungeons or do their daily dungeon tour. You then have the hardcore players who compete with each other with their completion times.

All of these players have varying skill sets. The first group, least experienced players, will likely struggle when doing a lot of the dungeon puzzles. Some require coordination and team work to complete which they may not be accustomed to. As a result, a lot of these players will find the puzzles to be a challenge. Some may be easier than others, and easier to learn, but they’ll still be a challenge at first. Everything loses it’s challenge over time as you adapt and get used to doing it.

You have the average players who do dungeon runs casually for gold or armor. Quite often they do dungeon tours of the easier and quicker dungeon paths. They’ve likely mastered these paths well enough that it no longer poses a challenge for them. I’m sure many players can say that they can do CoF P1 without any effort. They’ve learned the mechanics and know how to properly use their skills for the most part. They may not be 100% efficient but then that isn’t necessarily their goal. Both this group and the experienced group’s experience will have a high degree of variability as the majority tend to do pug groups (I know that phrase is redundant).

You then have the hardcore players who know each encounter inside and out, which builds are the best for each encounter, and so on. Since they know everything so well, the puzzles themselves are not much of a challenge. What left is there to challenge themselves with? Time. They create a challenge for themselves by trying to find the quickest way to complete a path. This challenge was not created by Anet, but those players as a collective trying to get more out of the dungeons.

Is the puzzle that the inexperienced players facing and less of a puzzle because that particular one cannot be completed at a faster pace once you’ve gotten down the mechanics? Is it really that poorly designed if it doesn’t have any fail mechanism any option to complete it faster. I kind of duplicated the first question just now.

Think back to any game that you found challenging. Did you find them any of the challenges to be less challenging the second or third time through.? Probably so as this is the nature of how this progresses. Does this mean those challenges were poorly designed? How about if you had no means of completing them quicker?

Just because a puzzle can be completed the same by everyone when they do the mechanics does not make it any less of a challenge or poorly designed. I’m pretty sure Anet did not design the puzzles with the speed runners in mind. They wanted to create puzzles that got players to work together and coordinate their actions to overcome whatever obstacle laid in front of them. The whole concept of completing a puzzle and a quick speed or pace once you’ve gotten the mechanics down was created by players trying to add more challenge.

Some examples of what I would deem to be time-gates would be the dialogue at the beginning of the TA dungeon of the clown car from the old dredge fractal. Neither of these offered any sort of challenge to all skill levels of players and just dragged on the time spent in the dungeon/fractal. I’d even consider the NPC at the beginning of the CoE fractal after the 1st champ to be a time-gate even though you can speed her up. You’re still waiting for her to move slowly so you can progress the dungeon. The cannon phase in the Mai Trin boss fractal is also debatable. Sure it’s an endurance challenge but how long is really too long?

As I said at the beginning of this, I’m not asking for you to agree with me. I already know that we may likely not agree with each other as we have two entirely different viewpoints. The best that we can do is see where each other is coming from and agree to disagree. That tends to be the outcome of most discussions anyhow.

So if all players from this point on unanimously decided to sell Dusk for 5k, that would be Anet controlling them to do that?

One that doesn’t restrict everyone to doing it at a set pace? So me arguing that whether being able to do a puzzle faster or not doesn’t equate to a challenge; is me not understanding his argument? Maybe this is a langauge barrier issue with how words are used because when I hear pace, I equate that to speed.

I feel that a well designed puzzle is one that forces your group to work together using coordination and team work. There can be combat, no combat, or both. Whether you have the option to do it faster is not important. This is why I made the speed run comment because you all are focused on time/speed/pace or whatever you want to call it. No matter how challenging it may be, if you don’t have the option to complete it faster, it’s poorly designed.

So I guess people would consider the stock market an auction house…

mtpelion.4562:

Broken Forum paging is broken.

Got the bug where it sends you to the second page but there’s nothing there and you can’t go back to the first?

It’s not about the lack of understanding or at least it isn’t for me. I know exactly what’s he’s saying. I just don’t agree with it. This is most likely something that we will never agree on.

He’s viewing the dungeon from a speed runner perspective and that the only good design of a puzzle is one that can be done fast. How challenging it is or how much coordination it requires is irrelvant. He’s done dungeons so often in his speed run groups that he likely doesn’t remember what it’s like to do them with pugs. There’s more to how well a puzzle is designed than how quickly you can get it done or the number of ways it can be done.