Guild Wars 2

Rank is meaningless as it can be farmed by PvE players.

Even before, when you could still see rank, I always saw people at 20+ rank who would all do pvp brawls over one point while someone on the other team would cap the other two without any resistance.

No it won’t. All it will do is prevent the leeches from joining the winning team. You will still have unbalanced teams. If you want to fix the “100V500 hotjoin matches” then perhaps you should look more into why there is such a gap.

It’s because they have not emotionally matured yet. The best thing you can do is just ignore them.

I’ve attached a nice screenshot of few whispers from someone that I received a few weeks ago when I was on my warrior (not running the meta hammer build nor even had a bow equipped) who got upset when I beat his super squishy ele. I still get laughs from it.

phys.7689:

6)reasonable means that it is backed by reason, or logic, and mathematics,my relationships are reasonable.
What strong economic theories are you talking about that explain something? you talk of these strong economic theories, but you never present any. Being that my logic and mathematics is pretty simple, im pretty sure economic theory already has much of it somewhere in its thought process.

Well I was going to respond to your posts until I read the bolded part above. It shows that you do not know much about economics, did not make an effort to look, nor read (or comprehended/remembered) what I was posting. This explains why this is just going in circles and why, against my better judgment, should have ducked out of this thread long ago.

So with that, this thread is yours and you can do what you wish with it.

phys.7689:

i dont even really get your point, are you contending that items with high demand, and low supply will not be marketed to the wealthy? because that is the basic premise of what i am saying.

Yes. I’m saying items are not marketed to the wealthy. You are saying the exact opposite of that as evidence by your post with the made up drop rate and how long it would take for players to supposedly all get a precursor.

phys.7689:

It is totally logical, and makes total sense within this economy, that the people with more money are the market for rare, sought after items. in previous posts you said this is normal and expected. Mathematics is about relationships, you can plug in different numbers but the relationships are the same.

There is no niche market in this game where items are specifically available for certain players. Also, nowhere did I state this and that this assumption was normal and expected. This assumption was created by you so please do not say it was from me and then twist my own argument that was against it as a way to support it.

I agree that math is about relationships between numbers. However, you’re missing the point that I was making. You created some arbitrary calculation using numbers you pulled out of the air and then passed that “relationship” as some evidence to your point. I can say that X + Y = Z to argue for argument A when X and Y have nothing to do with Z and Z also has no bearing on argument A. That’s what you did.

phys.7689:

given that it is normal and expected, if the wealth curve is constructed in certain ways, these items will be disproportionally difficult, and time consuming for regular players to get.

If 50% of the population earns 40 gold per week
and 20% of the population earns 400 gold or more per week
and an item is rare enough that only 1.8% of the population can get one per year, who do you think thats items price will be aimed at? what the 40 gold per week player thinks is fair, or what the 400+ gold player thinks is fair?

Again you’re using a made up number that you got from some arbitrary calculation that you used to pose as having a mathematical relationship with the prices or whatever. I will also point out that players only need one precursor as the legendary they create from it will have its skin saved to their wardrobe.

As far as the gold rate, yes it is fair. People who put the time and effort to earn more gold deserve the item more than though who do not. Self entitlement does not get people very far. The percentage are not set in stone and players are very easily able to earn more money if they choose.

phys.7689:

As far as having no data, JS specifically said, try to come up with reasonable logic, because we have no data, this means we have to assume things, to get a better understanding, By coming up with data, you can test your hypothesis by comparing it to data, and see how the changes in that data change the relationships. You can figure what data is the most relevant. Its pointless to say you have no data in science. You still hypothesize, then you test, or approximate, and repeat the process.

I bolded the part that you’re missing. Reasonable normally means that it’s backed up by something. Pulling something out of the air and plugging the numbers into some formula you created is not that. Especially when there’s strong economic theories that explain it. That last bit you did not do so I don’t know why you included it.

phys.7689:

With these mathematical relationships, you can then figure out at what supply would a high demand item, be able to be priced so that the people in a certain segment of the wealth gap arent the target.

Yes. But these mathematical relationships are based on proven economic theory. Something of which yours are not. Again, items in this game are not priced for a certain segment of wealthy players in this game.

phys.7689:

but to be perfectly honest, the problem is more one of philosophy, the current descsion is gold earning is the meter of success as far as itemization goes. As long as this is the case, the most desired items with low supply will always be out of the reach of most players(the ones who dont play gold focused), until the demand drops.

Gold is not the only measure of success in this game. So you’re telling me that highly desired items should be obtainable without gold?

Sigh. You’re using biased numbers that could have been filled out of nowhere and then using them into some mathematical equation to argue how the economy/market is. Unless you can actually site your numbers from a credible source, their credibility is very questionable. Your assumption from the result of your equation is also incorrect and goes back to what my posts were about.

You likely do not have a good understanding of basic economic principles and there roles. You argue that the people with the most money control prices when it does not work that way. This thread has been primarily based around precursors and I had referenced a post from John Smith that clearly showed that richest players were not setting the prices.

A basic understanding of economics would show that aggregate demand and supply sets the price of goods. Money supply also plays a role as well. I’ve have held back in my arguments from thorough with my explanations as I don’t feel that I should have to give a lecture on basic economic principles. I’ve also had to dumb down how I write my arguments because if I’m too technical or use but words, my arguments are attacked. This happened to one of John Smith’s posts earlier in this thread.

You’ve been trying to inject some subjective reasoning on how YOU feel the economy should be for the people. You don’t see how an economy benefits the people an feel that people do not benefit from it unless they can readily have access to whichever item they want with ease. People also have not understood exactly how the game’s economy currently functions as well.

You’re also arguing that players have no upward mobility as far as gold. This is far from true as others have pointed out including me. You can do dungeons which will net you quite a bit of gold from completion and drops. I think someone said they average about 60 gold a day for 3 hours of doing dungeon runs of the easier/quicker paths.

There’s also farming particular items that are worth a lot. You can farm crafting materials which people have posted useful explanations of the best locations to do so. You can learn to play the TP and even someone just learning it can make a decent amount of gold. There are several other ways to make gold in this game too. All of which adds up over time.

Prices for precursors have not gone up all that much due to supposed inflation or the mean ole’ rich trying to stick it to the poor. If you look at the trends of sell orders, you’ll see that it has been fairly stable. Any fluctuations, whether small or large, can be explained by looking at what occurred within the game at that time. An example could be nerfs to champ farms, nerfs to drops, an increase of chance for precursors (karka event), and so on.

Because people lack a basic understanding, they do not look at what could cause changes in the demand and supply curves as this is what would most likely affect prices of a small segment of goods. They only look at the prices and mistakenly assume that the increase is because of inflation. They also do not even know what inflation is as well. The fact that this thread would not have gone on for this long had people had this understanding just further proves my point. You do not go into a discussion about quantum mechanics and try to participate without knowledge of the basic principles. You also do not try to argue things about that subject by using arguments that defer from widely accepted, basic principles of said subject area.

I’m sure that this post is probably all over the place as I’m not at a computer and have been writing this off and on over the course of several hours. My basic argument is that if people had a basic understanding of economics, we would not be having this discussion. I’ve pretty much come to the point where I’m just regurgitating my same arguments over and over and over and over and over. I see this discussion will go nowhere just like the discussions about people who feel they should be entitled to additional items from new collector/hero editions if the game that were not included in the version that they had purchased.

phys.7689:

The point of the thread was that desirable items are rising faster than their ability to earn, and that gold sinks could curb this. IMO its not a correct assumption that gold sinks will solve that problem. But the real problem the OP has, is that desirable items are rising faster than the ability to earn, which is a natural course for top end demanded items, its mathematics.

If an item comes into being one per hour of 500,000 peoples playing time, it would take 20833 days, or 57 years for every one to get one. This means in the first year, this item is only actually marketed to the top 1.7% of earning potential. With new users coming in all the time, it means it wont nessecarily be marketed to the next 1.7% in year two. While this is not absolute because it is not neccarilly true that every body wants it, it essentially means out of the people who do want it, the price will be determined by what the top players think is ok.

So essentially, for an extremely long period of time, a low supply item, will only be marketed to the richest players. just being conservative lets say its marketed to the top 30% of earners.

Now if you realize that hey the top 30% of earners make 10 times or more the amount of say 65% of the population, you realize the prices will not reflect a value that is approachable for many of the players.

And yes it happens irl too.

socialism is not the opposite of an economy, its actually a socioeconomic structure, much like free market is. It is just one of many possible answers to how a group of people agree to deal with economics.

And yes the point of an economy IN A GAME is to foster the type of gameplay you want and make it enjoyable for players. Keep in mind an economy is not just about the TP, but its actually about the rewards systems, the goods and the services that are available, and their relative value. You can have economies without having money at all.

They’re not rising faster than the ability to earn. The recent spike in prices for precursors started in mid-March. Gee, I wonder what happened here and in the following updates that could have possibly impacted precursors in the market.

If you put the effort to farm for gold/drops then you can make enough to buy desirable items. There are people that do not want to do this and pretty much want the items to practically be handed to them. That last bit was a bit of an exaggeration but there are actually quite a number of players that feel that way. People who have a lot of gold worked hard for it and likely spent a lot of time as well.

I won’t address your sections about the drops rates and such since you’re using exaggerated, biased numbers to support your argument. There’s no point in proceeding with it until they’re more realistic.

I never said that socialism was the opposite of an economy. People were making arguments for an economy that would be similar to one under socialism which is I I pointed it out and also mentioned that the current economy within the game is not designed that way.

Yes, you can have economies that don’t involve currency. Bartering first comes to my mind. The market is there as a means to exchange unneeded items food gold which can then be used to purchase other items listed from other people. All of this without having to get the said items from their sources. The benefit to players is that they do not need to go to the source to get what they want and they can make additional gold off unneeded items.

laokoko.7403:

I like the “do you have an understanding of economy attitude”.

If you have an understanding of society and mmorpg. We whine and complain about grind and unevenly wealth distribution. “just like in real life too”

well the pool people complain, the rich people just laugh at them. The government keep telling people they are doing a great job. And they do what best for the economy, which really just mean people in power trying to get rich so they don’t care about poor people and wealth distribution.

The moral of story, is people complain. You think there is something wrong with people complaining?

well, there is probably nothing wrong with the economy, but there sure is nothing wrong with people complaining. Because you know… every single labor force complain about their minimum wages. Even people in Sweden complain about it.

I have an understanding of society and MMORPG’s. People complain (the other word you used is a naughty word on these forums) about everything. It’s not limited to just a few things. Almost everything in this game as been argued for and against. And yes I understand that people complain and I don’t have an issue with it.

However, you missed the point of my post.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Ayrilana.1396:

[…] I also don’t see where it was ever stated that the economy in this game was specifically supposed to benefit all users. Please cite your source.

That’s just the distribution of wealth. There’s more to the economy than just wealth. Unless they took a completely socialistic approach, there’s no way they could benefit all users. The way that everything is set up in the game does not suggest that this is the case.

I know that I could probably explain this better and be more detailed but it’s late.

phys.7689:

The point is the thread is as you say, how the user feels about the value of top end items, does not necessarily reflect strict inflation.

The fact, is within this system it is normal and even fine that certain items prices fall out of reach, as the earning/gold by the top players increases. This isnt really inflation, because its normal that the people with more money can buy the best item.

The point is you are saying the economy is functioning as it should, and are missing the point that the economy functioning close to a real economy is not necessarily a very satisfying experience for the user. And the main purpose of this economy is to be satisfying for the user, unlike our economy whose main purpose is very different.

No. It’s not about how a player feels. That whole subjective concept is something you introduced into this thread. The thread was created as a complaint that prices appeared to be rising more than gold could be earned blaming inflation and that there were not enough gold sinks to prevent this.

Others then chimed in who did not know basic economic concepts (the same as if I entered a quantum mechanics discussion when I knew nothing about it) and made it off as there’s rampant inflation going on based off the sell prices of a handful of items. Not once did they think to check for underlying factors that could be causing price increases in a few items.

Prices of items and how much the top players make have little to no correlation. Prices of items are determined by how much demand there are for them and the supply. There’s obviously much more to it than that but I wanted to point out that how much a few people have, and their ability to purchase items, does not influence the price of said items. The only way those few individuals could affect the price is if they manipulated the supply.

No, I am not missing the point. You don’t understand the role of the economy/market. Your reasoning reminds me of socialism. I also don’t see where it was ever stated that the economy in this game was specifically supposed to benefit all users. Please cite your source.

Siege is good if you have the people to man them. The new thing now is for the attacking zerg to use an arrow cart and wipe out all of your siege completely before attacking the tower. If you don’t have people to fend them off immediately, all of your siege is gone no matter where you place it.

phys.7689:

what i get from this exchange is you believe in gold focused gaming. This is why everything seems good to you, you expect the game economy to mirror our economy. The thing you are not getting, is there are signifigant number of people who do not like gold focused gaming, and thus the type of system that rewards doing whatever makes the most gold, over whatever is the best content, does not entertain them in a game.

There is also a signifigant number of people who dont really like our real life economy, or the choices we have to make in it. Mirroring a real life economy in a game means you will mirror its faults as well as its strengths.

and it really isnt in every economy, its dominant in our economy, but not so much in others. I think many people want gold to trade with others, and get things they dont get on their own, but they also want their adventures to feel like they have value, and be entertained.

See the key here is a game is about entertainment, the game is best played by ignoring the rewards, or just learning to balance grind versus fun for many people, thats not really that optimal.

Ummm… yeah. This has absolutely nothing to do with this thread nor my posts.

phys.7689:

It doesnt matter if its life threatening or not, even if you go to a doctor with a tummyache, hes supposed to try to see exactly whats wrong and offer the best solutions, even if you think its meningitis.

Read the second paragraph of my post. The conclusion was that tree was nothing wrong and the user did not understand basic economic concepts. Hence why he was told to read up on them.

phys.7689:

That said, i will accept that JS isnt really the doctor, its not literally his job to cure anyone. However, as the designer, and maintainer of an economy whose main purpose is to foster exchange AND make the user feel satisfied (more so than a real economy). He should be concerned if a signifigant portion of players are complaining of tummyaches when he is the nutritionist.

Sorry but a handful of people on the forum is not significant. I know the current generation was raised to think otherwise but it’s not true. Alluding back to my previous response, check the second paragraph of my post as well as my response above.

phys.7689:

As for his response, my interpretation of the exchange was that the poster was saying that inflation should be measured on items of high demand, rather than overall, and basing that on the way some countries calculate inflation.

You cannot measure inflation on such a small number of items. It’d be like us trying to measure real world inflation on automobiles. It just doesn’t work like that. You have to take a much broader look over the entire economy. There are a lot of variables that could influence a particular item or group of items that have nothing to do with inflation.

He was trying to do an inflation index but lacked the knowledge of the economic principles behind it.

phys.7689:

John smiths response was more to the effect of, inflation is within acceptable ranges in this game.

Yes and no.

phys.7689:

Which i dont really think is false, in a strict sense, but i think the reality in the street, is once you start looking towards the goals that are supposed to inspire/direct you to keep playing, players are seeing prices that grow faster than they like. And when the items are expensive enough, that rate of growth is uncomfortable when compared with their rate of earning.

Yes but that does not mean inflation is the cause.

phys.7689:

but i dont think this can be avoided, we have come to a fairly unbalanced economy in terms of the haves and the have nots. Basically anything of value is marketed on top earner basis first and foremost, and they earn money faster than other people. Im not just speaking of TP barons, but anyone who is somewhat focused on the economic side of the game.

That’s in every economy and it’s supposed to be “unbalanced” in the way you stated. Just look to the real world’s economy.

phys.7689:

Someone who concentrates on earning gold amasses wealth at a considerably greater rate on average than those that do not. This means high end items are priced within thier demand curve first to them, and then filter out to everyone else, depending on time, and supply.

Of course they earn more as the should. If people want more gold, they have to put in the time and effort for it. There’s also a very smaller percentage of players that have a lot of gold compared to the rest of the player base. With only needing to get a legendary once for the skin, and the few people with large amounts of good compared to the player-base, their impact is negligible.

phys.7689:

If someone tells a doctor they got stabbed in the gut because 5+5 is 55. you could argue that 5+5 is not 55, but the fact remains he has an abdominal wound, the doctor shouldnt really be focusing on telling the guy to go back to school, and should be trying to deal with the wound.

Its exaggerated, but the even with a less exaggerated analogy, if some one goes to the doctor with an incorrect self diagnosis, the doctor isnt really helping the guy by telling him to go to medical school.

No. Your whole argument is hinging on the fact that a wound is a life threatening situation so of course a doctor will have to treat it. When you ignore the whole life threatening part, your argument falls apart. It’s also questionable as to whether this is a logical fallacy.

John Smith addressed a user who was arguing that high prices of precursors and such were caused by inflation. That user did not understand basic economic concepts and was arguing that there was an issue when there wasn’t for reasons that were incorrectly applied. With an understanding of basic economic concepts, it would be seen that there isn’t an issue and it’s what you would normally see in a market.

Vol.7601:

Prices for backpieces have dropped 100%! We are in a period of massive deflation!

PANIC!

Wow. Just wow. After reading this entire thread I’m just amazed. This is probably the worst thread that I has seen that has so many uninformed responses trying to pose as informed, so many responses committing logical fallacies such as distorting someone’s responses or diverting attention to some nonsensical point, responses from people grasping at real life scenarios and distorting them to fit their viewpoint and this game, responses from people using said scenarios who know absolutely nothing about what’s going on, and so on. It’s just ridiculous. This is probably not the best way to start a post but I’m just so flabbergasted.

John Smith was not incorrect when he stated that some people should learn a bit more about economics. You cannot have a discussion about economic topics unless you have a foundation. This thread is evidence to that fact. A very basic understanding of economics would have shown that inflation is not occurring as that term is rampantly being misused.

Inflation is caused by an increase in the money supply (there’s more to it but since most people do not know what inflation is, I won’t overly complicate this). If everyone in the game received 1,000 gold one day, you’d have inflation. Inflation also affects the economy as a whole and not just specific goods. A basic understanding of the definition would lead you to understand that it’s not a inflation issue but rather a supply and demand issue. I believe one of the first responses pointed this out and John Smith was probably alluding to this.

Isolated price fluctuations in some goods are most likely caused by supply and demand changes. It’s not 100% because like most things, there are always exceptions. An increase in price is caused by an increase in demand, decrease in supply, or some combination of the two. Demand has normally been very high for these items and always exceeded supply. Supply has fluctuated since game release.

What could be causing the changes in supply? Well take a look at all of the previous updates. Notice how many champ farm locations were nerfed? Also notice the lull in content that provides loot? There’s also the drop in players to play ESO, Wildstar, taking a break, and so on. If course that is more observational as I don’t have access to player data.

I also want to point out from another thread that the sell price does not always mean it’s the real price of the item. There was a thread about TP manipulation of precursors where John Smith provided us data for the last 50 or so transactions. If someone wants to provide a link to it then please do as I honestly don’t care enough to search for that thread. The prices people were purchasing precursors for was much lower than what the sell price was. So also don’t dismiss an increase of precursor prices as being caused by overly ambitious sellers.

TL/DR;

Inflation is caused by changes in the money supply, not prices.
Demand and supply likely the reason.
Be aware of TP sellers artificially inflating the sell prices.

Fluffball.8307:

Jerus.4350:

Saw a mention of COE golem being agro from the start now, anyone able to confirm? if it’s true is it back on the list? I so want to see someone good die to that laser field and rage

Someone explained to me a surefire way of making it through that laser field. I’ve actually never tried it since I can almost always make it normally. It’s not a cheat or anything, just a way of measuring the distance to jump, apparently infallibly. I won’t mention it in case someone doesn’t know it and that will make CoE runs more fun to watch.

Just do short jumps. I rarely hit the lasers unless I get a lag spike or someone does an AoE speed buff randomly.

Miroe.2054:

As a mesmer most of my gameplay relies on positioning, dodging and timing my utilities. Im using exotic celestial gear since it gives me a little bulk as well as making both my direct dps and my conditions relevant.

Unfortunately in most dungeons the most viable tactic is zerker stacking which is boring and a little too easy. Especially popularity of the zerker-only farm run is getting out of hand and the damage you are getting from a boss can be completely migrated if you use your two dodges right.

So here is a solution that does both, reward a more defensive playstile as well as improving the challenge for people doing speed runs:

The idea is to add a buff that lasts 1 minute and boosts the movement speed, attack rate and damage by 25% and is triggered whenever a boss loses another 10% of his health. the total base Movement Speed of each boss is set down to 80% of its current total, so it gets back to 100% whenever he has one stack of the buff.

However, if it takes less then a Minute for the team to cut 10% of the boss’ health, the buff starts to stack up increasing the overall challenge forcing the group to put more effort into support and evasion.

Im well aware, that the threshold and the timers are not optimal for every boss and that they may vary.

What do you think about the idea? And what are your own? Am I a noob? And do you like the current state?

Better solution:

Create your own group for players to join who want to play how you want to play and not tell others how they should play.

beporter.9254:

I’m sorry Ayrilana, but it’s pretty clear that neither of us are going to manage to convince the other to see things from our own perspective, and that we’re both pretty confident the other person is missing “the big point.”

I’m afraid I don’t see any value in continuing to try to persuade you. Thanks again for your contributions though.

Same. I was tempted to end it too as we’re both essentially repeating our points and this is how most discussions end of. Thank you for see where I was coming from and keeping all of this civil.

beporter.9254:

Ah, but you see, this is exactly what we need to know. Eri actually explains this extremely well in their follow-up post already, but I can’t resist expounding a bit on a more theoretical level:

Actually, his post didn’t as you can see in my response to it. He used an extremely unlikely scenario that discounts the impact population has on outcome. You will not likely ever see a server with the fraction of the population of the other outperform that server. Population is a widely proved and accepted fact that determines performance which you can see in the majority of threads on this subject in the nearly 2 years of this game.

It’s the primary reason why BG was able to dominate in Season 1 and how JQ/TC were able to ban together and dominate in Season 2. Player hours is derived from player count. I’ve stated this a couple times already. You cannot have player hours without the player. Where there’s a player, you’ll have a count of them.

beporter.9254:

The score already tracks objectives captured, kills, etc. The condition we can’t track is if a server is racking up serious WvW player time, but(!) their score isn’t going up as fast as their opponents’. Right now we just know they aren’t scoring as well, but with the benefit of knowing how much participation they have (but are really wasting), we would then also know that they AREN’T putting (the right kind of) effort in! Their ratio of time-logged to score-earned will be very low, which tells us they aren’t working as hard as other servers! (They’re crafting or managing inventory or afk or otherwise not playing WvW. )This is vital information and can’t be determined by player count alone.

Participation is measured by player count. In real life, when you measure participation, how do they do it? Most likely by head count. When they measure how many people participated in the race for the cure, for example, do they go by number of participants or the aggregate of their total run times?

You’re forgetting that player hours is derived from player count. Player count would also be low too. You’re just convoluting the process to receiving the same result. Also player count, and player hours, does not accurately show effort. People can be AFK and still be captured as participating. There is no way to determine what a player is doing to benefit their server. You’re saying player hours does this with absolutely no reasoning nor evidence to back up your claim.

beporter.9254:

We need to compare the way the score goes up to how much time players are (or aren’t!) actively spending playing the WvW “game.” So by comparison, a server playing smart coverage is going to have relatively low time logged compared to the points they earn, which again speaks volumes all in one ratio.

Player hours is derived from player count. When player hours are low so will player count. And vice versa. I’ll also stress again that neither player count nor player hours accounts for players that AFK, surf the TP, etc.

beporter.9254:

There is a tangent point to be made about the difference between truly “away from keyboard” and “idle” (in the sense of crafting or inventory management but not actually out fighting and contributing), but I’m going to save that for a new post.

Both are the same. You’re not actively participating.

Eri.7085:

In your example, the servers are equally efficient. It averages out so that each player on Server A and B contribute 1 point/30 minutes.

The extra data that the OP is suggesting becomes interesting if for example Server A has 2,000 players who spend 30 minutes to gain 1,000 points, while Server B has 500 players who spend 30 minutes to gain 1,000 points. As a result, each player on Server A only contributes 0.5 points/30 minutes while Server B’s players are contributing 2 points/30 minutes. Then you can see that even though both servers have the same amount of points in the same period of time, Server A is “coasting downhill (exploiting coverage)” while Server B is “driving uphill (working hard)”.

Yes, the efficiencies are the same and that was intended to prove my point. You can refer back to that post to see what that point was. Also, your example would most likely never ever happen as population is the determining factor in why a stacked server beats a non-stacked server. Also notice that you needed the player count to calculate player hours which came to the same result as if you had used only player count.

beporter.9254:

Ayrilana.1396:

Throughout the entire post you are referring to the number of players. You do mention player hours but all of your arguments are centered around the number of players. […]

Yeah I’m really not, but arguing the point isn’t going to get us anywhere so let’s let that go, eh? In fact, I get what you’re saying across the board, but most of it strays away from the goal of this thread.

True. I was tempted to quote your entire post and bold every instance that player numbers was mentioned. One of the biggest contradiction I had seen was in the first paragraph after your bullet points. The first sentence mentioned your theory on player hours however the rest , which was bolded, mentioned that player numbers play a role in which server has an advantage and you even said it is the largest determining factor.

beporter.9254:

You have at least helped me refine my idea though. I do now believe the best way to implement this is to still record player time, but to do that within each PPT tick and publish the “player minutes” via the API along with the tick score.

I’m glad that I was able to help you with that regarding the PPT as it would help show which time frames a server is the weakest compared to the others.

beporter.9254:

You could definitely also publish a raw “player count” (I wouldn’t complain) but on its own that metric is disappointingly useless because there’s no good way to count how many players participated “in a tick” in the first place and any way you counted it would be completely inaccurate without measuring the amount of effort those players exerted in that 15 minute window in the second.

How would you measure effort though as a lot of people could join and just afk? Effort cannot be measured unless you tally it up by objective and once again that would have to be based on player count. It’d be how many people got credit for that objective. There are also other things that people do to benefit the server that you can’t quantify their effort.

beporter.9254:

Imagine if you had 400 players all log in and immediately log out inside of a 15 minute tick. That “400” count doesn’t mean anything without also knowing that only 5 total minutes were logged in that tick! On the other hand, “5 minutes” on its own tells you plenty even without knowing the exact number of players that logged it, but I can see the utility in having both—again, I wouldn’t complain. The more useful of the two is definitely minutes though, hands down.

This goes with the previous statement but I wanted to address it separately. Using 400 is an arbitrary number and unrealistic scenario but I’m sure you realized that as you wrote it. I could say that 400 people logging on and then afking the entire 15 minute tick wouldn’t mean anything either.

I think that you don’t know the difference of the two ratios such as when you do one over time versus resources. Whenever something is done over time, it’s always eff8iicieny regards to usage of time. That’s not the same as if you used player count when it would be your efficiency with the resources/assets that you had.

Servers lose because they either lack the numbers to compete with the other servers and/or they lack the coverage. You can see countless threads that back this up. It’s a pretty widely accepted fact.

Since player numbers is the determining factor, this would be the variable that you would use. Let’s say Server A has 1,000 players who spend 30 minutes to gain 1,000 points. Let’s say Server B has 500 players who also spend 30 minutes but only gain 500 points. What was the reason for Server A performing better than Server B?

Notice that you calculation of player hours would contain the player count? It adds an unnecessary calculation where you’d reach the same result. Player hours would be 500 (1,000*0.5) and 250 (500*0.5) respectively. For every player that is on the map, you’re going to have player hours that go along with it. It just adds more work for the servers when the same result will occur.

Ayrilana.1396:

WvW is won by numbers. Coverage is just having the number of players during a particular time frame.

You’re probably right, but neither you nor I can prove it either way without ANet publishing more “numbers” than they currently are. That’s what this thread is really about.
[/quote]

I answered that above but didn’t want to leave the impression I was ignoring this part of your post. Posting more numbers may be good but it’d just be “gee wizz” information which wouldn’t really matter.

Why have people craft that portal? Do you have the components for them stashed in your bank to later sell for mass profits? I say ignore the need for items to access hard content and just focus on the hard content itself.

I’ll address your posts later when I’m at a PC but I did want to bring up something. Yor initial post is contradictory to what you keep suggesting that you want. Throughout the entire post you are referring to the number of players. You do mention player hours but all of your arguments are centered around the number of players.

Anything divided by hours shows how efficiently something is per unit of time. In WvW, this would show how efficient a server was in using its time to gain points. an example would be that it took Server A 15 minutes to gain/maintain 300 points. This is more in line with skill level of a server.

Anything divided by resources shows how efficiently something is per resource consumed. In WvW, this would show how efficient a server was in using its players to gain points. An example would be that it took Server A 20 players to maintain 300 points.

These are two completely different ratios. Your miles per gallon analogy is wrong because gallons is a resource. Gallons also isn’t dependent on an outside variable unlike player hours. Player hours relies on the number of players as you take all of the players involved and add up their time spent.

WvW is won by numbers. Coverage is just having the number of players during a particular time frame. With servers that have disproportionate populations, the ratio based on resources would be better used. For servers with equal populations, the ratio using time would be better used. For the latter, data to calculate this is already available.

Don’t even need to dodge the attack. Just walk through him when you see him preparing it.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

stachekiller.2591:

I actually don’t think this encourages elitism. I think it helps people new to dungeons be forced to learn some mechanics. I went with two casual groups yesterday and cleared the spider queen in about the same time as before with no wipes because we went in together to clear the gargoyles and then people actually saw the spider queen AOE on the ground and dodged out of it. I think this has the potential to make players better overall by forcing them to learn a core mechanic. “Elitists” might try to stick to the old way of doing it and FGS the thing in that corner, but to the credit of the PUGs I played with they adapted quickly and successfully. Once enough people run through it I doubt the elitist mindset your guildie had above will really resonate.

It does nothing BUT encourage elitism
Remember that elitism is not about player skill/experience or wisdom
Elitism is about what you’re wearing, if you can afford it and if you’re using meta

It does nothing BUT encourage elitism
Now in PUGs, you won’t be accepted unless you are using a perfect serk meta in AC
Because people want to complete the dungeon run in 15 minutes, not 45 minutes
No one has time, nor would they want, to dance around The Spider Queen
For 20 to 30 minutes, while wearing Cleric’s gear, before killing it
Especially when considering the grind required to build ascended gear

And again, this is supposed to be the introduction dungeon
The first dungeon in the game, able to be completed with level 35 characters

Changes like this are bad because they eliminate a middle ground difficulty mode
You essentially go from “easy explorable maps”
To “UBER hard required level 80 ascended Berserker mode”
There are no middle ground stepping stones for new/casual players
To learn and build wealth, to prepare for such challenges

People want meta builds in berserker gear for experienced, speed run groups. If they’re advertising for a specific type of player, and you don’t meet that requirement, don’t join. It’s that simple. People have as much right to choose the type of group they want and who’s in it just like you do when you start your own group. It also helps to read the description of a LFG posting but that’s an entirely separate issue.

Most people who have solo’d spider queen have done so in under 5 minutes. If it takes longer to do that in a pug group then something is seriously wrong. It’s also the reason now that, if I do pug, I host and go ahead and solo her first so I don’t have to deal with pugs failing because they don’t realize standing in red circles is bad and/or bring condition removal.

I suppose I could solo her naked for you and post a video of it but I’m sure people have done that before already to prove how ridiculously easy she is and how boring and predictable her attacks are. In fact, I say she is perfect for pugs and new players since they can learn to anticipate attacks and avoid them.

The level of a dungeon does not dictate the difficulty of a dungeon. I’ve seen more failures on CM than I have for CoF and CoE (kind of surprised at that one). The rewards are also primarily for level 80 players. Sure there are rares but by the time you can equipment a set, they’re obsolete.

beporter.9254:

You may have missed it— I didn’t propose changing how scoring works, only adding additional information. Server A would still win in a landslide with 210,000 vs 50,000 vs 50,000. This addition wouldn’t change that in the slightest.

You may have missed the point of my example since I was probably not clear; however, I will provide an explanation about my initial take when I read your post.

When I originally saw your post in the other thread I had thought you were trying to change the way scoring was done. I saw the same thing done in your initial post too when you said you wanted to normalize scores. I also could see it being used to lessen the worth of a win by many people.

As far as my example went, it was to show how unreliable that metric would be.

beporter.9254:

You can’t use anything from the currently available data to “estimate” the values I’m talking about publishing. That’s kind of the heart of the whole issue, in fact. Average player count doesn’t tell you enough of the story. I’m sorry, I just don’t know how to explain it so that it’s easier to understand that the existing scoring sites can not help with this. Can anyone do a better job at it than me?

I agree with you there that there currently isn’t a good way to get a metric to use for player hours. All servers normally have an average amount of time spent in WvW during the off seasons. With help from other servers, you could get the general idea what this average is to do a preliminary calculation on what the normalized scores would look like? Would this be perfect? No.

I did player count as it was easier to estimate and would be likely what you would get from Anet. You’re not going to be given a list that this person played this many hours on this day. All maps have a cap which makes average players a more reasonable metric. If you were given the PPT on a map in the form of a line graph, and then overlayed the average players on the map, you’d probably get a good idea on how well a server was doing with gaining/maintaining points per player.

This is better than hours since anytime a player is spending time on a map, they’re holding a spot on the server. All data could be collected at set intervals (every tally perhaps?). There’s probably no usefulness to knowing how well a server performed during specific time frames so it could be brought to a broader spectrum of every 8 hours or every 24 hours. I’m pretty sure that they already monitor the number people on a map so it shouldn’t be too difficult to provide this data over a set period of time.

Server A gets a score of 210,000 with 400 players online the entire week.
Server B and C get a score of 50,000 each with only 96 players online the entire week.
Server A barely wins.

Your suggestion will not actually work or at least not to the effect of making a difference. Stacked servers usually crush lower populated servers. They can cap everything in all of the maps the first night and then have half their population prevent other servers from capping stuff. Stacked servers can usually produce a large enough lead where they can have fewer people on the maps.

In the above example, if Server A decides midweek to cut that population in WvW by half then they would average 300 players online the entire match. Each server would then to have no more than 71 players in order to win if the scores remained the same.

The problem is that a stacked server will always gain a large lead over the weekend. This large lead is usually easy enough to maintain with a fraction of their player base and they can just make efforts to prevent other servers from capping stuff. You could potentially see a rise in spawn camping.

You’re also completely ignoring coverage which play a larger role in why servers win than just larger numbers.

I suggest using past data and running the numbers under your suggestions. There are several sites that have past WvW scores logged. You can then make a reasonable estimation on what the average WvW hours were. I did it by average players over the course of the entire week in my example as that’s easier to estimate than hours.

It’s not difficult to legitly afk on maps without using a script. If you have a mouse that spams a key similar to those old game console controllers (turbo controller?) then you can just use that to prevent from being booted from a map. I believe I saw that it was allowed so long as it only affects one key at a time. If it does more than one then it’s not allowed.

There’s also the thing that you can be AFK for a long time on open world PvE maps unlike PvP or activity maps. One time I was able to tag a boss, leave to go shopping and pick up dinner, and I came back still in the game.

That won’t work as you’re ignoring coverage which is a more determining factor into who wins or loses. Larger servers can also usually gain a large enough lead over the weekend where they only need teams to go between servers capping stuff. This will keep their WvW hours low while maintain a high score.

Have you applied your suggestion to past results to see the outcome?

I said blind arrogance as in so arrogant that you cannot see how arrogant you are. You’re posting a video about server pride on these forums. You started out the video with sound clips including one about capping TC’s garrison. You have text across the screen about how outmatched you were but endured. You also posted this on the forums rather than BG’s own forums.

I mean no disrespect when I call out this thread for it. I’m just pointing out what others, including myself, see when they view this threads and others like it. If JQ or TC made a thread that featured footage of BG, I’m sure many people would take it as gloating.

Reslinal.2359:

Ayrilana.1396:

Reslinal.2359:

Vol.7601:

I for one cannot wait for the inevitable 2v1 in Season 3.

This is what happens with arrogance, BG

The video is more about server pride and a thank you to our BG members who fight to the last. I would like to see a video by JQ to celebrate its victory as well (if you have the organization to make one:)), things you do for server pride is what keeps GW2 interesting to me.

BG has its own forums. Why not post it there rather than on here?

I think because a lot of militias on BG don’t read/join server forum:)

Also some of us think of this as a way to tell JQ/TC if they think their 2v1 will stop us from showing server pride they are wrong:)

Having server pride is one thing but being so arrogant to irritate and annoy everyone else will only make things worse. This thread was created to troll JQ/TC and display blind arrogance.

Reslinal.2359:

Vol.7601:

I for one cannot wait for the inevitable 2v1 in Season 3.

This is what happens with arrogance, BG

The video is more about server pride and a thank you to our BG members who fight to the last. I would like to see a video by JQ to celebrate its victory as well (if you have the organization to make one:)), things you do for server pride is what keeps GW2 interesting to me.

BG has its own forums. Why not post it there rather than on here?

Buffy.9246:

This trying I recruit more guilds to bg?

Like how your server bought SoR guilds so you could make it to tier 1?

As far as this thread goes, people on BG need to learn to be a little more humble. One of the reasons for last season was because of the arrogance that people like to perpetuate on these forums such as this thread.

No. It ended several hours ago.

The season isn’t even over yet, technically.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Ayrilana.1396:

Arenas should be fine. The problem won’t be fixed by cutting off communication as they could all be in the same guild and communicate that way or even TS3. The only way to fix that would be for there to be no way to join a particular server at all regardless as to who is on it.

I think there also was already a cap on how far you could progress in a day unless that was just in custom arenas. I thought I saw that was also applied to hot join but I could have read it incorrectly.

have you read up what i wrote for “hotjoin 2.0” because the only way to join the new official anet hotjoin servers would be via the “play now” button.

the game browser is only used to join custom arenas, player owned.

we could also disable “join friend in PvP” for new official anet hotjoin servers, so the new official anet hotjoin servers will behave like all other activities (crab toss, keg brawl) no spectators, games quickly filled up, cannot join particular server etc.

update:
i went back and edited the first post, removed a lot of unnecessary text to keep things simple and straight to the point.

You changed a lot after my post. Before you had it so that you could join friends.

Arenas should be fine. The problem won’t be fixed by cutting off communication as they could all be in the same guild and communicate that way or even TS3. The only way to fix that would be for there to be no way to join a particular server at all regardless as to who is on it.

I think there also was already a cap on how far you could progress in a day unless that was just in custom arenas. I thought I saw that was also applied to hot join but I could have read it incorrectly.

One problem. Your suggestion will increase the likelihood of there being people who will farm points by trading wins, kills, caps, or whatever. You’re better off finding ways to deter people who do not participate rather than change the entire system which gives an incentive to some players to not even play PvP but farm points together for the reward tracks. Don’t put it past people to also find a way so that everyone wins as I have seen that done already when joining random servers.

They could have gotten the armor from pvp before last month.

I never understood why people argued that Liadri needed to be nerfed when practically the entire fight is predictable.

Most people don’t know any better since they learned to play the game by doing the Queensdale train. Like what’s been stated already, you likely will not reach these players by posting on the forums.

Blame the thieves last time for farming it so much. I saw so many people announcing getting their legendary during that time.

Hanzlo.3148:

Well thank you kittening mega servers, there is no one in our map, and we can do nothing to change that, no way to get into better overflow.

Another way of ANET saying don’t play our game and go to bed

Guest. Which server you choose to guest does impact the mega server you go to.

Several attempts we not only missed gold, when we could have barely gotten it, but also silver because pugs would not listen and all zerged Boom Boom. Even having the people who were originally there leave didn’t help.

Google. Specifically “tts gw2” works.

Facepunch.5710:

I’m kinda miffed about this as well to be honest. I was so excited when Liadri came back, now I’m spending most of my time slowly making my way through Blitz events and those long cool-down Labyrinthine Cliffs events to get tokens to buy more entrance tickets, just so I can play the content I’d like to play.

Do aspect arena. You get about 15 for playing and more if you win. Don’t farm the events for tokens.

Azreell.1568:

Stooperdale.3560:

“No, From each patch – the reality is you can only play the way Anet wants you to play. That way of “playing” is directing you to the cash shop with each and every patch.”

That’s just the cynics view of everything in GW2. I’ve seen nothing in the gem store that I need to buy. I can play exactly the way I want to play without gems. I’ve seen nothing to convince me that other people can only play the game in the way they want to play if they visit the gem store. They might not be able to get the rewards they want but that is something entirely different.

What way do you want to play that is impossible without the gem store? Does it involve a reward of some kind?

Each patch has continually nerfed the ability for players to accumulate gold.

That forces players to the gem shop for gem to gold conversions – especially casual players.

There is nothing cynical about my viewpoint – I just happen to live in reality. GW2 has become a cash grab game – like it or not and apparently many other users agree with me as this forum can prove.

There’s logical fallacy in the argument you just made which I bolded.

There’s really a set way to do it now that dumbs it down enough to be done consistently in pug groups?

A Norn in a speedo. Yes. I’m sure that’s what the players want to burn their eyes witnessing.