There may not be a large segment who buy gems with cash to buy charges, but what you are asking ANet to do is to eliminate that source of income for a one time spike by selling such an item at a price everyone can afford, especially for the minority dropping cash for charges.
You are also eliminating gold being spent to convert to gems for these items. Gold that others have argued are providing an inflated exchange rate to encourage gold purchases with cash bought gems, another source of income. Not to mention the 27.75% of gold that is sunk by the exchange between selling for gold for gems or selling gems for gold to help keep the money supply in check.
You said “critical phase” which implies to me what I suggested. Again crucial, via definition “involving an extremely important decision or result; decisive; critical”. I don’t see anything being extremely important decision wise going on.
The cake is in the oven and now all they have left to do is decide what type of frosting and decoration it’ll have. That has always been ANet’s modus operandi before telling us anything so why now assume it’s only half baked and the head chef needs to be hanging around to micromanage?
What an unlimited item does is reduce the potential income from players who currently do not have a problem spending gems on bulk charge purchases.
Let say that your 2000 gem unlimited charges which is around the same cost as 80 or so charges. It would only be a good deal if you burn through more than 80 bought charges in the life of your account. It would certainly be snapped up by the players who can drop $50, $100 or more a year on gems. That’s the future income you are losing with your $20 item because once a player buys gem shop armor, outfit, slots, etc. Items with no or minimal repeat sales, what’s left are items like keys, charges, boosts, and if you use a lot of keys, you would have boosts up the wazoo so lets remove them from the repeat sale list. And with the uproar over keys being a bad deal if you only care about ticket skins that leave transmutation charges as the repeat sale item.
We have a lot that we got free because we don’t feel compelled to use them or realize that we should use these sparingly unless we will be forced to buy more.
But we do understand that for those who do transmute frequently, that this is a source of income that ANet wishes to tap, otherwise we would be able to transmute freely from day one.
Pretty sure they know how many charges are bought by each player for actual gems (not the occasional free one they toss out there). And if they did offer an unlimited transmutation device, it would be price beyond the 2 or even 3 standard deviation amount of charges a single player had bought. It would not surprise me if it cost 8,000 gems or more. Certainly not at the lowball prices that are being tossed around here.
My point is to me “critical” implies in midst of a crisis, a turning point that could mean success or failure of the whole game. I don’t see that. I see business as usual.
It’s also not uncommon for a lead designer to move on once their baby is born and got over their “teething” years. They live for the creation process and not the “maintenance” phase of a game.
The GPU isn’t the limiting factor in most cases but the CPU. This game isn’t one where high end GPUs help as much as they do in FPS games.
My CPU isn’t having a trouble at max settings. Never uses more thank 60%. That’s why I’m thinking GPU
And that’s the common misconception about how CPUs work running programs.
This game has two primary threads, in terms of CPU usage, and a handful of helper threads that use considerably less CPU usage. This is why everyone stresses the performance of a single core on your CPU, for this game. Not that this game uses only a single core, it will use all the cores, it’s because each individual thread in a program can never exceed the total performance of a single core.
Now I’m not saying that moving up from a 660Ti, which is kind of slow these days, won’t improve your performance, I’m just saying it won’t improve it as much as you would expect if you went nuts and got a GTX 980. Considerably less improvement than what you would get in FarBattleDutyCrysis 43.
Your idea of improving it is denying ANet a source of income which in turn may lessen the longevity of this game.
As others have repeatedly pointed out, there are plenty of ways to earn free charges, you just have to have the self control not to use them up faster than you can get them.
Can’t control your armor appearance impulses? Crack open the wallet.
Show some backbone people. “Gee I have a few of these things that would let me alter my armor’s appearance, should I save them until I’m level 80 or change my looks everytime I upgrade my armor as I’m leveling to 80? But that’ll mean I would have to actually spend money to get more. True, it’s less than going to see that new movie this weekend even without the popcorn and soda but shouldn’t I be able to play the way I want for free?”
rofl!
So true… so true. My husband and I went to see Insurgent last weekend and it cost us $50 after tickets and snacks (2 sodas, 2 pretzels, and a popcorn to share). That’s a lot of freaking trans charges!
Not as much as you would think, 155 of them with 130 gems left over (or 150 with 400 gems left over for a simple armor piece or Bobblehead Lab).
Show some backbone people. “Gee I have a few of these things that would let me alter my armor’s appearance, should I save them until I’m level 80 or change my looks everytime I upgrade my armor as I’m leveling to 80? But that’ll mean I would have to actually spend money to get more. True, it’s less than going to see that new movie this weekend even without the popcorn and soda but shouldn’t I be able to play the way I want for free?”
A key person in design leaving mid-project is troubling. People come and go from game studios all the time, just not usually during such a critical phase. Sky ain’t falling or anything. Eye brow raising for sure though.
Critical phase? What critical phase? The game’s been out for over two years. Nothing “critical” was going on other than what some may feel to be a PR problem between players and developers. The expansion was likely simmering for the last year or more, simply waiting for the right time to announce it.
Honestly, they are just the ears of ANet since acknowledgment of hot topics seems frowned upon. It also lets them spend time elsewhere than reading the forum themselves.
I would never buy bag slots because with the kit I can break down white, blue and green items into mats that I can deposit remotely into collections. That leaves me with yellow and gold items and junk with junk cleared as I pass a NPC vendor.
Bank slots is understandable if you ride the boss train for all the ascended mats that will drop.
Gathering tools, especially the watchwork pick. No need to carry extra tools and since the gathering tools have their own slots, these never impact inventory.
Then the permanent pass to the Royal Terrace. I think it’s better than the Airship one since you are in Divinity’s Reach and the gate to Ebonhawk is also there, getting you to Fields of Ruin. But these permanent passes aren’t always available.
Lastly the two salvage kits. True they only save a little bit of coin but the convenience of never running out of either a basic or master kit outweigh the cost. And never running out also means never needing to carry spares, also an inventory saver.
When they eliminated the UniDye drops with the account wide unlocks, they boosted the viability of crafting dyes. Why craft if UniDyes drop from every other carrot harvest?
But when they were first introduced ALL that I heard was you got to have them for Fractals. Save your laurels for Ascended stuff for Fractals. You’re an idiot if you spend them on anything else. Blah, blah, blah. NOBODY was talking about their stats outside of Fractals, only about the infusion slots you needed to get your AR up so you can do Level 10 Fractals and up.
Also if you are buying 150 kits, you will be buying the 5 or 25 unit packages which lower the price to 100 gems each or 15,000 gems, somewhere around 2100g currently.
I see a lot of drive activity on Process Explorer when monitoring the game when I zone. I’m talking 20-40MB/s for 15-20 seconds at least. If you are zoning into somewhere crowded, a fair chunk I imagine is assembling the character models and textures of the players near you. And after that it’s not necessarily syncing with the server being the next most time consuming activity, a considerable amount will still be your CPU processing all that data being read from the drive.
I’m sure someone with the game on SSD will chime in to tell you that’s it really is noticeably faster.
I’m totally being misunderstood here. I personally have no intention to ever do Fractals, ever. This makes the need to have trinkets that can hold an infusion slot rather pointless. I spent my first 75 laurels on a puppy and since then on Heavy Crafting Bags, selling off the T6 fine mats inside.
The notion that buying ascended jewelry is a no brainer assumes that players will naturally line up to run the Fractal treadmill to earn what exactly? The continuation of gear, stat and profession snobbery that permeates dungeons? Gee, that sounds like so much fun. Got to get in on some of that action.
The real problem is that transmutation is three times as expensive on sub level 80s than it was before wardrobe. If we still got three transmutations from zone completion and it only cost one transmutation for levels 1-79 and cost three transmutations for 80 it wouldn’t be nearly the problem it is.
Transmutation Stone – 125/225/500 gems for 5/10/25 (Level 1-79)
Transmutation Crystal – 200/360/800 gems for 5/10/25 (Level 80)
Versus
Transmutation Charge – 150/270/600 for 5/10/25 (all levels)
The difference now is you only get one free Charge Vs 3 free Stones. It’s a quantity, not a cost issue since free is free. Charges are 20% more than Stones but 25% cheaper than Crystals, in terms of gems. And since players seem to spend more time at 80 than 1-79, we get a break since T-Crystals were never free.
What about Rox’s Quiver? I just got back to the game and id really love to have this for my Ranger! I know there is the one you craft, but I think its ugly. Really want to get this
The quiver’s been back a number of times. Just keep a look out for skins in the Gem Shop under the promotions tab.
YES it sort of explains it BUT it comes under the same heading as outfits ..
sure i understand having to use transmute for gear changes WHEN you didn’t already spend $10 for the unlock ..
JUST because it has been there for “ages” doesn’t mean it is right
MEH I will take this cost and remember it and pay nothing more for these kind of items and the game will have fewer purchases and make less money and go under in time due to lack of income..
JUST because people put up with it doesn’t make it right .. it isn’t like it adds armor or anything it is just an appearance item nothing more .. it is an outfit that you can choose individual slots for AND that you paid the same amount as you would for siad outfit item.
And you seem to overlook the notion that the game is funded by the gem shop. You buy the skin and they are nice enough to give you a one time per piece “free” transmutation charge (a 144 gem value at best price). Then it acts like any skin found in the game, needing a charge to apply from the wardrobe. But like keys it pays the bills since skins are a big part of the game’s horizontal progression and transmutation charges were in the shop (as stones) since day one.
Again, you are simply cheap and are just ticked that it didn’t work they way you thought it should. Blame yourself for not reading up on how skins and the wardrobe works.
Well it does say the following on the tooltip for Flamekissed.
“This full set of light armor skins can replace the appearance of light armor pieces, once per slot. The skins will also be unlocked in your account wardrobe.”
The “once per slot” is the free application. And with the minor exception of AP Chest skins like Zenith, skins from the wardrobe requires transmutation charges. This is immensely better than before the wardrobe when if we wanted a second set of skins we had to buy them a second time. Even back then you would use transmutation charges (stones/crystals) to move the skin to newer armor as you upgraded your armor.
Transmutation charges are considerably cheaper, worst case, or free from map completion or login reward.
The only sympathy you are going to find is from the incredibly cheap and lazy.
I wouldn’t go that far saying they are actively trying to break it but it isn’t their job to make sure add ons like GemFX and SweetFX are still compatible. If it is, great, if not, not their problem.
Even if you are only wielding an i5-750 Soren, that’s still a massive upgrade to a Pentium E2200 and since this game is all about the CPU performance …
It’s because you have enabled some feature in GemFX that isn’t supported in Dx9.
Godrays and 2 other – uncheck it and game will load
Ok then explain why it was working before, yet I changed absolutely nothing in my GemFX settings, or even on my GW2 game at all. Even with a fresh install of GemFX it still crashes my game.
Because it’s not ANet’s responsibility to make sure a 3rd party injector like that works.
The GTX 960 is described as an entry level card by those where a triple GTX 980 SLi setup driving three 4K monitors is a minimally acceptable gaming rig.
Now you are saying you are on a budget, I hope that’s part of a massive rebuild of the core system you say you have because the limiting factor right now for GW2 you have is the Pentium E2200. This game is way more CPU dependent than GPU.
Otherwise slapping a GTX 960 in your current setup is like putting racing tires on an AMC Pacer.
Also, there isn’t a gaming system today that can play GW2 “on full” without qualifiers. What resolution? What is your acceptable frame rate? Doing what? And this last update seems to have mucked up the frame rate noticeably for players who did have decent rigs before.
Interestingly I have a friend who bought the game a long time ago but just started playing recently (work, life, etc) and since he’s entirely ignorant about what got changed, he has no complaints. For players who alt a lot the change is like jumping into a frozen lake on New Years Day, a shock to the system.
I have a few, usually buy them when they are on sale. I tend to buy the theme ones. I have Pirate, Ninja, (sadly there’s no Robot), Lich (sexy Halloween outfit for ladies), Arctic and Ancestral. I bought my first one because I was getting bored with my look and I was too cheap to use up my transmutation charges. Yea, I know that doesn’t make sense.
Think of outfits as a costume you wear over your armor. You aren’t getting armor pieces modified to look different as transmutation does. The downside is you can’t mix and match but you can turn off the helmet piece (by doing that on your regular armor) and I’m told on some the shoulders as well but that’s it. It will dye but how it dyes is predetermined for the entire outfit.
Let me think of an example. Let’s say you want the boots to by black but doing that also makes your sleeves black. No way to dye the sleeves a different color than the boots. But outfits do have four dye channels, it’s just what each channel dyes has been predetermined. Upside is it’s a bit tougher to look hideous.
You can turn on/off outfits for free. You can swap them for free. You can change out the actual armor you are wearing and it doesn’t affect look and costs no transmutation charges. They downside is if you run into someone with the same outfit, other than the dye job and whether both of you are wearing your helmet or not, your look will be the same. But you run into that with normal armor as well.
Yes it is. True quad core beats fake quad core. Also the i5 has turbo boost to bump up the clock speed. The game does generate enough work load for 3 cores so a 3rd real core will help.
None of what? Before ascended armor Gossamer was in high demand, over 4s a pop while silk scrap was at vendor + 1c.
Now it’s true, and always been true, that light armor wearers need around twice as much cloth to make armor than either medium or heavy because inscriptions use cloth. Ignoring the time gate for Damask, 100 does seem excessive if you take the need for cloth on every armor weight. We can see that with think leather, 50 and essentially needed only on one weight wasn’t enough to clear the glut. Maybe thick leather needs to be 100 along with Mitheral while silk is dropped to 50.
