Guild Wars 2

Ashen.2907:

Traits were not inherently tied to the post 80 XP bar before. Focusing on masteries, skill points, etc as part of a discussion specifically about traits implies a connection. The strength of the connection may be up in the air, but the connection has been implied.

Of course the other option is that the decision to suggest masteries as a focus point in a discussion about traits could, in theory at least, have been an attempt to change the subject (which would be odd since the attempt to change the subject would then have been made in the very post where the subject was defined) or an attempt to troll. I do not believe wither of these alternate options.

Note that this thread is not titled, “Future Progression Systems,” it is titled to be about traits and specifically to make reference to a previous thread on the topic of the current trait system.

And Gaile said she was sorry to imply a connection.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Colin recently shared some information related to the Traits system. In addition our article on Masteries provided other early info that could be part of any conversation about traits or character progression. (Edit: I don’t mean to suggest that the two topics are intertwined, only to point you to two discussion about character progression that have been released in recent days.)

Here’s a sparkly new thread to discuss the subject. Please read the post and article linked above. We’d also encourage you to keep up on future information releases so that this thread can be of the greatest value and relevance to other forum members and, of course, to the dev team as well.

Thank you.

oneply.9586:

the pve dailies are dumb.
the worst is when you ahve to kill a specific npc but have to stand around forever waiting for it to spawn….that is not fun!
the only pve daily worth the time and effort is the gathering ones.

Who stands around forever? Check the train schedule, comes through ever two hours, I’m sure you can find something to do other than standing around. Set an alarm. This morning I woke up, had breakfast, spent the 15 minutes to do the pre-event through FE and logged out.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Behellagh.1468:

With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

I don’t see your interpretation there. I see “Hey we once again rethought the whole character leveling thing while adding in the mastery and specialization systems so we are redoing traits yet again.”

Yes, they are re-doing traits, and keep speaking about this new system in how it will relate to the the new things being dropped with the xpac. Not, “Hey, here is the new trait system we have reworked, lets talk about IT”, but rather “Hey we are reworking the trait system so it works better with masteries, specializations, etc and we’ll talk about it at some point…soon…ish. But in the meantime, talk about traits amongst yourselves even though we still have yet to give you anything of substance other than its coming soon.” Whatever “it” may be.

There has been literally nothing for us to even discuss in here. Anything and everything we might say is 100% based upon whatever crazy thing we can come up with and the ONLY framework we have right now is the info on masteries which is part of the xpac. That’s literally it. April of 2014, and to date all we have to even “sink our teeth into” information wise is that the new “simpler” system will mesh better with something in a paid expansion. Somehow.

But they haven’t said that interpretation anywhere. Full Colin quote.

Hey folks,

Now that the HOT is out of the bag, we’re able to update this thread with more details. With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Thank you for all your passionate feedback on this topic – it not only helped our dev team lead to this decision, but has played a large role in helping us define how to build our exciting new account based mastery system for end-game progression in PvE as well.

Where oh where does it say anything that you are saying? Only says “more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future”. If we look at the trends, that stuff is being shifted from per player to per account (dyes, minis, skins, WvW and PvP tracks) and that masteries will be account based maybe an argument can be made for account wide unlock on traits and if we are very lucky, the whole NPE post 1st character leveling locks being unlocked earlier or always.

Again I’m reading that post on face value. They’ve rethought about character progression and the trait changes will mesh with this new idea/philosophy, but that doesn’t mean that they are all one big system.

So I’m guessing they are turning a blind eye to music macros, otherwise you just posted proof of using macros.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Shaaba.5672:

Did you see that last POI? Don’t get your hopes up.

Plus, the POI is about masteries. And Traits aren’t masteries, but they might be kinda like it, but they definitely aren’t linked.

And although they aren’t linked, they sort of are, if you read what Colin had to say about the new simplified traits system. Which wasn’t much, except that it was meant to synergize in some way with these new forms of progression.

I think I just pulled a muscle trying to keep on top of all the PR jargon.

In either case, we are now all gathered here to speculate (or not, since you know, our choice to also sit on our hands and just wait. Like we have been. Since April. Of last year).

Thats the kicker here. We can wait silently or we can play a guessing game about a fairly serious issue to us that we just want real substantial info about, and even though something has been made (is being made?) there’s not enough of whatever it is that they can discuss it with us as per their communications policy.

All in all all this new thread then does is make it seem like there never was an 83 page post for roughly 10 months on the forums that never left the top three forum pages about this subject. (And yes i know that those enterprising enough can go back and find it to read it, but it means new players to the forums will never see that black eye..i mean, post.)

But please, speculate away on Traits, but let’s not try to repeat those other suggestions anymore as they’ve probably been said so much that its no longer constructive to read them again.

I think we will need to capture rabbits in cages to earn traits that relate to Queendale, and perhaps need to douse fire imps around Mount Maelstrom for others. I mean really, anything is on the table since all we CAN do at this point is…speculate.

You are reading to much into Pookie, let me quote the quote again.

With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

I don’t see your interpretation there. I see “Hey we once again rethought the whole character leveling thing while adding in the mastery and specialization systems so we are redoing traits yet again.”

What’s annoying are the people who call out WP and the event is no where near them so they don’t register on the map or they call it out with seconds left until completion. That’s one reason I hate doing them on maps that I’ve not memorized through shear repetition.

At least I give general compass heading with the waypoint.

I’ve gotten better at some of the simpler WvW ones if I don’t want to wait for a boss event or traipse around a map I’m not totally familiar with. But these dailies are changing that but some days simply grabbing a ruin in WvW, claiming some land or offing a caravan is so much quicker.

Asia is not one monolithic culture with similar architecture. I sense that the three predominant cultures there, China/Japan/Korea would be upset if whatever style used didn’t reflect their own. If Cantha had too much Japanese influence, I can understand why Korea and China would be upset. There is still a lot of bad blood between those countries and Japan over WWII (Japan thinks everything is peachy). The current year of the lion event is very Chinese/Korean being that what we call Chinese New Year is actually centered around the Lunar New Year cycle.

broken forum is broken

Vukorep.3081:

interesting how nexon shows up with their proposals when HoT is knocking on the doors off players wallets…

If this is all about money then i hope NCsoft looks into how much HoT will bring them money and how much more new players would buy the game and how much gems will be bought (with real money)…and then compare that with the money they would get by accepting Nexons proposal and doing things their way…

also, if nexon is proposing stuff they added in maplestory into gw2, please know gw2 players are a different kind of breed that will take it to heart and not like it

… sigh …

It’s not about us. I always find it amusing when players think that some corporate politics is somehow about them. It isn’t. It’s all about Nexon not feeling the love from NCSOFT over their joint projects and the suspicious cancellation of one joint project last year only to have NCSOFT come out with a similar one later this year.

We are merely a blip. The one successful MMO NCSOFT has in NA/EU who is doing so-so in Nexon’s preferred market, Asia. Nexon only gets 6% of their income from NA/EU.

oneply.9586:

Behellagh.1468:

You are thinking rather binary here. WildStar was coming out regardless on the decision of bringing B&S to NA or not. Carbine had been working on it for years. And since it was a localization port originally they didn’t need an studio or a studio size budget so it’s not as if the money was tossed Carbine’s way. It’s not A or B.

Here’s the thing. When NCSOFT released Lineage II, their income doubled. With AION it doubled again (AION was HUGE for NCSOFT). Now they hyped B&S to their stockholders as the next AION. When it came out, income barely moved with income from B&S offset by a similar size decrease in AION’s income. That’s why they doubled down with China but the port took a lot longer due to it’s more adult (some would say 12 year old boy) nature of female character design. And it’s looks like they lost that bet now that it’s out as well. They recently expanded into Japan using an anime series as advertising.

you literally said the same thing over again and i said thats not all there is to it. seems to me youre the one thinking binary. youre neglecting a whole gray area of other issues and trying so hard to make your point that its the sales its the sales, well thats not the only reason.
and as for wildstar, i fully understand why they choose to push back their plans for BnS to make wildstar happen, as it turns out that was a bad decision cause the game is an aoe suck fest thats failing.
just because 2 old games were successful doesnt mean that they know what they are doing. especially considering those games hit their hay day long ago. the only reason Aion is even relevant anymore is cause the current mmorpg scene is rather lackluster.

What other issues? What gray area? This started with you implying WildStar benefited by their decision to hold up the B&S port. WildStar has been in development since 2007. It was due to come out in late 2013/early 2014. If anything it’s late. But they certainly didn’t benefit from B&S’s port delay here.

In the end corporations make decisions based on what they think will bring in the most money, the fastest, for the least cost. Nexon had a huge surge in sales when they went to China. NCSOFT chose to chase that rather than port yet another Korean MMO into a market that wasn’t terribly enthusiastic over their previous games. That’s why B&S got the back burner here. If B&S did as well as hoped in Korea, they wouldn’t have delayed the port. It didn’t and we have a web page where the last news was from Dec 2012.

So again, what other issues? What gray areas?

Edit: Oh, and those games, Lineage, Lineage II, that hit their hey day long ago are 36.5% of NCSOFTs annual income with Lineage, old original Lineage, being 29.6% of their annual income.

oneply.9586:

Behellagh.1468:

oneply.9586:

NCSoft blows too. they trolled BnS in our faces for years but never delivered. be real easy to increase profits, bring the games with hype to the regions beggin you for them!

The wasn’t the hit they expected in Korea, seeming to eat into their existing player base of their other games rather than being the next AION and be an entire new massive income stream. With not as much income they decided on China rather than NA/EU for the first port.

But because the China port took a lot longer due to the censoring requirement since the original game’s body physics engine and sparse clothing options for women was frowned upon in China.

That might have led them into rumored decision to port the China version to NA since an MMO with an MA rating probably won’t do as well when all others are rated T. However if that does come to past, there is a fairly vocal group who will be disappointed that the “pervy” nature of the game got nerfed.

there is alot more than that holding it back, but primarily it is bad decisions one after another on ncsofts part.
and personally i dont care if the clothes are pervy or not.
but i guess wildstar is a fair trade off for BnS…lmao

You are thinking rather binary here. WildStar was coming out regardless on the decision of bringing B&S to NA or not. Carbine had been working on it for years. And since it was a localization port originally they didn’t need an studio or a studio size budget so it’s not as if the money was tossed Carbine’s way. It’s not A or B.

Here’s the thing. When NCSOFT released Lineage II, their income doubled. With AION it doubled again (AION was HUGE for NCSOFT). Now they hyped B&S to their stockholders as the next AION. When it came out, income barely moved with income from B&S offset by a similar size decrease in AION’s income. That’s why they doubled down with China but the port took a lot longer due to it’s more adult (some would say 12 year old boy) nature of female character design. And it’s looks like they lost that bet now that it’s out as well. They recently expanded into Japan using an anime series as advertising.

Xillllix.3485:

yes, of course, but it would have to be an option, like in ESO.

So another case of “I like this game but I wish it was more like this other one”?

Of course it’s another outfit. Easier making a set that all works together than a group of parts that can be mixed and matched with other groups of parts. Unless you don’t mind the occasional clipping issue because every set vastly increases the number of combinations to test across every race.

oneply.9586:

NCSoft blows too. they trolled BnS in our faces for years but never delivered. be real easy to increase profits, bring the games with hype to the regions beggin you for them!

The wasn’t the hit they expected in Korea, seeming to eat into their existing player base of their other games rather than being the next AION and be an entire new massive income stream. With not as much income they decided on China rather than NA/EU for the first port.

But because the China port took a lot longer due to the censoring requirement since the original game’s body physics engine and sparse clothing options for women was frowned upon in China.

That might have led them into rumored decision to port the China version to NA since an MMO with an MA rating probably won’t do as well when all others are rated T. However if that does come to past, there is a fairly vocal group who will be disappointed that the “pervy” nature of the game got nerfed.

phys.7689:

Behellagh.1468:

Felkes.2759:

Anyone who says there’s no grind in GW2 is delusional. There WAS no grind in GW2. Since the devs released “updates” that force players to do more and more specific things in the game in order to progress or get rewarded, the game has become nothing but grind.

I only log in once a week or so anymore just to nab any new living story in my journal so I don’t have to pay for it later.

GW2 is more work than actual fun.

But that’s the result of players saying they were sick and tired of RNG based rewards and wanting reward tied to specific content. To be “special” it has to take a long time to get or everyone will end up with a dozen of them.

interesting, but there are otherways of feeling special.
like player gradual player customization
unique looks from a pool of unique looks
overcoming a specific challenge before getting item

Honestly, in theory, mastery can be a good progression system utilizing some of these possibilities, however, i think they are probably going to overdo the numbers and thus turn it into a grind, rather than an adventure.

I was referring to the reward as being “special”. Not the player who possessed one.

140% but I don’t salvage ectos for EoL, just blues and greens that drop.

phys.7689:

Behellagh.1468:

Colin said the following …

With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Basically because of the introduction of the mastery system, it gives them the excuse to fiddle with the rest of character progression and that trait acquisition is certainly changing. It’s like painting the living room gives you the excuse to change the flooring and furniture, at the very least the drapes.

And what we got last week simply answered a few of the myriad of questions about the Mastery System.

if your take on this is correct, it means there is little connection at this stage. So the next question becomes
What are the goals anet hopes this new trait system can achieve that the current one lacks?
What is their overall plan for this (if there is one)
Is it at a stage where our feedback can change the course of design?

etc.

Otherwise, we really can only talk about whats currently wrong with traits, but then again we could have done that in the old thread, so i assume there is another focus for this one.

Well now we know traits are changing where most of the old thread was pitchforks and torches about trait changes last April. So knowing it’s changing and seeing their plan for the Mastery System, lets talk about what can be done to traits that may be similar to the Mastery System.

Off the bat my idea is the notion of unlocking a specific trait, as in 3rd trait track, 2nd Master trait is now account wide. Doesn’t matter which profession. The downside would be the likelihood you can’t buy your trait, or if you can that the price will increase. This would keep Richie Rich from account unlocking all the traits the first moment the change goes live.

This is the type of discussion I think they want to see here. But that’s my opinion, I could be wrong.

Felkes.2759:

Anyone who says there’s no grind in GW2 is delusional. There WAS no grind in GW2. Since the devs released “updates” that force players to do more and more specific things in the game in order to progress or get rewarded, the game has become nothing but grind.

I only log in once a week or so anymore just to nab any new living story in my journal so I don’t have to pay for it later.

GW2 is more work than actual fun.

But that’s the result of players saying they were sick and tired of RNG based rewards and wanting reward tied to specific content. To be “special” it has to take a long time to get or everyone will end up with a dozen of them.

Colin said the following …

With the introduction of the new account based mastery system for end-game progression and growth in PvE, we’ll also be re-evaluating our other systems of character progression to ensure they match our over-all pillars and goals for Gw2.

In doing so: we’re going to be removing the current trait unlocking system currently on live and replacing it with a more simplified system that supports where skills-traits-specializations are going in the future. We’ll go into more details between now and the release of HOT on how skills, traits, and specializations will work in the new Gw2 world.

Basically because of the introduction of the mastery system, it gives them the excuse to fiddle with the rest of character progression and that trait acquisition is certainly changing. It’s like painting the living room gives you the excuse to change the flooring and furniture, at the very least the drapes.

And what we got last week simply answered a few of the myriad of questions about the Mastery System.

My major problem is the removal of SP post 80. I would earn around 5 SP a week with the my level 80 which I used to earn some addition gold through the MF. Now unless the new SP sources from HoT are repeatable, I see this change as yet one more means to earn a bit more gold being removed from play forcing me toward mindless trains and speedruns as the only way to supplement my “income”.

On top of that, the lack of earning additional SP beyond what’s available from leveling 1-80 and doing SP challenges means I’m going to be forced, when leveling my next character, choosing between skills and buying traits. Now it’s been mentioned that traits are changing again, without knowing how they are being changed, I can’t say that my fears of running out of SPs for skills are assuaged.

Like grind it depends on your definition. If you define P2W as buying better items for cash that you can get in game then no. If you count “winning” as getting a particular skin that’s only available via a lottery or paid up front on the Gem Shop then you and I have different definitions to “winning”.

As for buying gold indirectly for cash to buy items off the TP, by having an official means puts pressure on the RMT brokers who would have existed anyways. People with money would be paying someone cash for gold to buy desired items, just not ANet.

Edit: See what you did there.

The incremental cost should be less than $150 over an AMD FX-6 series in terms of parts.

Xhyros.1340:

Guild Wars 2 is probably not Nexon’s issue for these shenanigans *cough*Wildstar*cough*. Y’all can probably stop worrying *cough*unlessyouplayWildstar*cough*.

It’s not, they are annoyed that their joint venture shop N Square isn’t getting the attention from NCSOFT that Nexon thinks it should be getting. And as I said their first joint game being developed, which was canceled about a year ago, a fighting game, except now NCSOFT is putting out a fighting game this year.

This has absolutely nothing to do with NCSOFT’s NA properties. It’s all about getting NCSOFT to do what was promised when Nexon bought 60% of NCSOFT’s CEO’s stock. They feel they are getting the short end of the stick with the value of the stock still off 12% (stock shot up over the new hostile intent of Nexon toward NCSOFT, was down 25% before the declaration of war) and the joint venture not working they way they thought it was going to be like.

Basically the AMD FX architecture puts two low(er) performing cores in a package that each can do one thread but if it is only processing one thread, can’t use any of the resources in the 2nd core. Intel’s tack is have a single very powerful core that could squeeze additional performance out when processing a two threads (i3/i7).

Now the FX-8350 and the Intel i7-2600K have similar performance in Cinemark when running 8 threads but lets see how each get there.

Intel i7-2600K: 20.8% – 41.7% – 62.5% – 83.3% – 87.5% – 91.7% – 95.9% -100%
AMD FX-8350: 15.6% – 31.3% – 46.9% – 62.5% – 71.9% – 81.2% – 90.6% – 100%

Now AMD scales overall performance more linear than Intel but when a program doesn’t have a lot of CPU intensive threads, like GW2, the difference is a lot, like Intel being 1/3 faster. And that’s 2 generations old, it’s closer to 55% faster today.

I would look for a system built around an i5-4xxx rather than an FX hex core. There is a reason why the FX systems are less expensive.

mtpelion.4562:

Neural.1824:

Vayne.8563:

Actually they can’t make changes. What they have to do is get the bulk of the stock holders to become dissatisfied. That’s what they’re attempting.

They’re saying here NCSoft isn’t giving you enough return on your investment. So they can try to get a block of votes.

But NcSoft isn’t going to sit there and let this pass unchallenged. And most saavy stock holders will know this is a power play anyway.

Stockholders are why we can’t have nice things.

I’ll bet there isn’t 0.1% of shares held by people who have actually played an MMO. Heck, most of them probably don’t even know Guild Wars 2 is part of their investment. All they care about is their ROI. They are too busy jetting around on their Gulfstreams visiting real life exotic locations and full service luxury hotels to ever have the time for a game.

The majority of stock is probably tied up in working people’s 401(k) plans via mutual fund bundling. People who can afford to buy their own airplanes tend to have a much more detailed knowledge of where all their money is.

Well roughly 11% is in the South Korean National Pension plan. Another 55% are owned by various small individuals/organizations/funds. The founder/CEO/Head of Board of Directors still owns about 10%. NCSOFT still has about 9% in reserve. The remaining is Nexon’s.

Actually buying 750g is a bit under $100 USD (8,000 gems) at the moment. Outrageous true but it’s a item that is currently no longer available for 5 BL Tickets. At the time would require on average 100-125 BLTC keys that would cost 8,400-10,500 gems and that didn’t (still doesn’t) guarantee that you will get 5 BL Tickets after opening all those chests.

BLTC are for suckers unless you want a bank tab of Gem Shop boosters and miscellaneous items. Getting tickets or enough ticket scraps is like finding a two gun arm Samus Amiibo. It’s a happy surprise which you could turn into money or hold onto it yourself.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Vayne.8563:

Milennin.4825:

Oh, I don’t know… character bound dyes, RNG boxes, gear grind.

And before you say dyes are account bound now. Yes, I know. Only 1+ year after launch and after they broke their promise made in their pre-launch blog post. Little late with that. They probably had a good reason to make them account bound: incentivise collecting all dyes for your account, buy all the dye packs in store NAO!

In Guild Wars 1 the dyes weren’t even that. They were one buy one use. Did Nexon do that too?

Ah right, I remember when you could access some dyes only through the cash shop and resell them in spamadan for gold to other players that got that gold without even playing the game and acquiring it directly from the cash stop with the gems to gold conversion, oh no wait… gems to platinum right right.

Milennin.4825:

Nexon has been influencing design decisions in Guild Wars 2 since launch. It’s pretty obvious if you look at all the things that are bad about Guild Wars 2, the majority can be blamed on what Nexon would have done.
It’ll only get worse once they are given more power.

Well at least it’s not like they put Cox, responsible of the (imo horrible) gambling system of the game, in the dev team that is working on the playable content. Oh wait…

They didn’t. ArenaNet hired someone who had experience running a cash shop for MMOs since GW2 was going the cash shop route.

Edit: Since the other thread got purged. Ms Cox, a former ArenaNet employee, was rehired in March 2012. Nexon bought NCSOFT stock in June 2012. The two companies then founded a joint studio called N Square.

Every 28 days of logins you are guaranteed 3 transmutation charges and a chance for one 4 time in that 28 day cycle with the Chest of Black Lion Goods. Otherwise as others pointed out about getting them on map completion, and they are one of the cheapest items at the Gem Shop with 5 for 150 gems; 10 for 270 gems; 25 for 600 gems.

Outfits have the advantage of changing between them for no transmutation charge cost and without affecting the current skin on your armor. Their disadvantage is the complete lack of mixing and matching that many players with an eye toward fashion do with armor skins. Also unlike armor, you can only hide the helm so if you hate the shoulders, you are out of luck.

Another way you can think of the difference between outfits and skins is outfits is like wearing a costume over your clothes while skins permanently changes the appearance of the armor until you use another transmutation charge.

While the game has lots of “free” armor skins (I’m including dungeon and temple skins here), the full armor sets at the Gem Shop do come with a built in transmutation charge for the first application for each armor piece (helm, coat, pant, glove, boot, shoulder) and it’s then stored into your wardrobe so you can then apply them anytime on any character for transmutation charges. There are a few individual armor skins they too come with a built in charge for the first time you apply them. Do note that some Gem Shop skins are for particular armor weights and that transmutation charges will NOT let you apply the skin of armor from one weight onto another of a different weight. So no applying the skin from a light helm onto a medium or heavy helm.

If anything this move shows that Nexon wasn’t calling the shots … ever.

The whole reason of trying to oust the current board of directors is because they feel that NCSOFT isn’t holding up their end of the bargain on their joint venture N Square. It’s first project got canceled about a year ago while their second project, MapleStory 2, looks like a smashup between MapleStory and Mindcraft is still moving forward but I don’t know how much help from NCSOFT.

It really doesn’t help that NCSOFT’s game in development, MXM is in the same genre as that canceled N Squared project.

But to oust the board Nexon needs more than their 15.08%.

Serophous.9085:

God this thread is just going in circles, brick walls talking to brick walls, no one looking outside to see if the game was catered to them, it could make it bad for others, etc etc. It can all be summed up so easily.

Player 1: this is my definition of Grind, this game fits it, this game is grindy.
Player 2: this is my definition of grind, yours is wrong, mine says the game isn’t.
Player 1: no mine!
Player 2: Mine!
Player 1 and 2: MIIIIINNNNNNNEEEE!
Anet: Hey guys! This is our definition!
Player 1: your definition is wrong! Mine is right! I can prove it cause many people said so!
Player 2: no, they matched my definition, so I’m right. You can’t prove many people!
Player 1: yes I can!
Player 2: how?
Player 1: because people say it in message boards and map chat and guild chat! That’s many!
Player 2: out of how many total players?
Player 1: that doesn’t matter! Its many!
Player 3: hey guys, you’re both wrong! My definition is this, so the game is grindy!
Player 1: see!? He agrees with me though his definition is wrong. Mine is correct!
Player 2: you’re both wrong, and I’m right.
Player 1: no mine!
Player 2: mine!
Player 3: mine!
Player 2: now let’s right long winded posts about our definitions, compare the game to other games with other different or same versions of grind to prove our points, not budge on any issue, attack each other for how the other plays, and continue on with the majority of the thread dominated by the same few people going around in circles.

In the words of Emerson Cod … Oh Hell No!

joe.7684:

My local Best Buy – I don’t know if they’re the retailer referred to in the OP – had lots of gem cards of both denominations ($15 and $25) when I went by there the other day. They weren’t on a discount, though – full price.

Went to one of my local Best Buys today (parents TV died right in front of me while I was visiting). They too had plenty $15 (1200 gems) and $25 dollar (2000 gems) cards. Even a copy or two of the boxed Heroic Edition on their meager PC gaming shelves.

You’ve hit upon the penalty, it’s time to go off and get them repaired. For those who want to maximize there play time it’s a valid penalty for repeated death.

DavidH.7380:

Behellagh.1468:

DavidH.7380:

Devata.6589:

The game itself has less or really no influence from the cash-shop and there is less grind (like the type we see in Gw2) for these type of items, you earn by far most of them directly ingame.. what is what we were talking about, not what company was more greedy.

You seem to mention earning items directly in game in some kind contrast to grind or as a way to mitigate grind in GW2 fairly often. I understand how that might affect the perception of grind, but I don’t see how it relates to presence of grind.

Obtaining / collecting mounts in WoW was discussed earlier. Deathcharger’s Reins can only be obtained as a 1% drop from a dungeon boss. If the RNG is running at average for you, that means you need to complete that dungeon and kill that boss roughly 100 times to obtain the mount. That seems to be the kind of “earned directly ingame” you are talking about, but it also seems to clearly be a grind/farm.

But activity X leeds to reward Y, guarantee. It may take you 200 times to get one but you get it. And that’s the only place you can get it.

In our case you are not only grinding for a chance of the item but stuff to trade for gold to trade to acquire that item from the TP.

Is it more heroic, valiant, satisfying to receive that reward from defeating a particular boss at an event, even if you have to do that event a lot versus buying one from cashing in all the loot you get from repeating the event, from the corner shop?

In the first case you know everyone who has one got it the same way, doing the same activity. You are comrades in arms, you can kick back at the tavern with your flagon of mead and talk about that time when such and such happened.

Our way, someone who never ran level 80 content could earn enough to buy it outright. They heroic activity could just be shrewd use of the TP. While not forcing players into doing things they aren’t comfortable with while giving them the ability to get those same items sounds great, those of the first school of thought despise it. It cheapened the reward in their mind.

I don’t disagree, but that just makes the grind more acceptable, or worthwhile to do, or less perceived, correct? You aren’t trying to claim that doing things that way results in no grind existing, are you?

Oh no, it’s still grind, it’s just alters the perception of it. I got X because of defeating Y versus I got X because I earned enough gold to buy it. The 2nd case seems more like normal life than high fantasy. It turns it into a job. It’s the Looney Tune’s cartoon with the wolf and sheepdog punch in for work everyday. How is that escapism.

DavidH.7380:

Devata.6589:

The game itself has less or really no influence from the cash-shop and there is less grind (like the type we see in Gw2) for these type of items, you earn by far most of them directly ingame.. what is what we were talking about, not what company was more greedy.

You seem to mention earning items directly in game in some kind contrast to grind or as a way to mitigate grind in GW2 fairly often. I understand how that might affect the perception of grind, but I don’t see how it relates to presence of grind.

Obtaining / collecting mounts in WoW was discussed earlier. Deathcharger’s Reins can only be obtained as a 1% drop from a dungeon boss. If the RNG is running at average for you, that means you need to complete that dungeon and kill that boss roughly 100 times to obtain the mount. That seems to be the kind of “earned directly ingame” you are talking about, but it also seems to clearly be a grind/farm.

But activity X leeds to reward Y, guaranteed. It may take you 200 or 300 times to get one but you will get it. And that’s the only place you can get it.

In our case you are not only grinding for a chance of the item but stuff to trade for gold to acquire that item from the TP.

Is it more heroic, valiant, satisfying, rewarding to receive that item from defeating a particular boss at an event, even if you have to do that event a lot versus buying one from from the corner shop after cashing in all the “worthless” drops you got?

In the first case you know everyone who has one got it the same way, doing the same activity. You are comrades in arms, you can kick back at the tavern with your flagon of mead and talk about that time when such and such happened.

Our way, someone who never ran level 80 content could earn enough to buy it outright. Their heroic activity could just be shrewd use of the TP. While not forcing players into doing things they aren’t comfortable with while giving them the ability to get those same items sounds great, those of the first school of thought despise it. It cheapens the reward in their mind.

The only way better drops would work is account bounding them, otherwise the value of those items would collapse. Otherwise players will continue the grind to get those highly sought after items and flood the market with ones that don’t want. You will end up with players buying precursors for 100g, less than a full set of T3 cultural armor and soon legendary weapons won’t be so legendary. They will be common place.

In both cases the improved availability means more players get to reach reach their long range goal and “win” and then leave. Players are needed even in a F2P game. It’s counterproductive to let them “win”, at least all of them.

And that’s the problem with expansions, look at WoW. Players return, max out their level, raid until they get BIS gear, and then leave. It’s called churn and it’s been a fact of life for MMOs for nearly 10 years. That’s why F2P work because it sucks in players who had “won” at their last MMO and waiting for the next bit of content. That’s why SOE have their All Access subscription to try to keep churning players in the “family”.

ANet with the LS tried to keep players from leaving for long stretches by putting out new, yes temporary in LS1, stuff every two weeks. It’s all a way to keep players from getting hooked on something else. And that’s also true with these long term crafting goals of ascended or legendary gear. It’s all to keep players who are self motivated to acquire these items.

aspirine.6852:

Well Anet, how about you discuss this?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-just-opened-13985-bags/first#post4755387

How do you even try to explain this utter crap what you call drops.

What about it?

11180 Champ bags drop, 405 rare and 58 exotic items. 4% rare, 1/2% exotic seems about right for items classified as rare and exotic.

Any item under exotic was salvaged into mats and EoL. Hence the 350K of EoL and 14.5K of fine T5 and T6 mats, 21.5K of common T5 and T6, on top of the 378 ectos from the rare item salvage.

Core and lodestone drop rates of roughly 10% and 1% seem fine as well.

What do you all want from a single champ drop? Multiple gold? Endless piles of exotics? A precursor every other time? Bree was right. Everyone is now trained to expect only big loot for rewards when you’re playing “end content”.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/03/14/working-as-intended-endgame-is-the-worst-thing-that-ever-happen/

Sennar.2309:

I’m back after leave this game, because the HoT trailer have somethings connected to the first GW.So, i remember that they talk about this app:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/09/21/the-extended-experience-of-guild-wars-2-taking-tyria-outside-of/

Hoping that now they will bring back all the features that they talk about in the varius blog posts like mini games in the cities, this app etc

Hopefully links to massively will work after the 3rd.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2015/01/30/massively-that-was/

Also, necro post. Sure lets dredge up any thing else they may have said that was on their wish list in the midst of their development.

Did they shut down the LA portal from the PvP lobby? That works too after you get past the minor tutorial.

Sandpit.3467:

So this seems to work okay when you MF level is low but this is a really expensive way of getting your luck up there. Just to check I tried it and it cost me 3 gold to get 1/4 of a MF% at 224%

It’s fast but it’s very expensive and that was with quite favourable dust prices. I would only recommend this if you are planning to sell some ectos. It’s the TP listing price that kills this as a cheap method.

Well duh. The amount of luck needed for the next level goes up every level until 218 and then it’s 30K per level. That’s around 300 Ectos worth. At 4-5c per point, that’s around 14g per level at current prices in Sandpit’s case. Of course 30K EoL will get you into the 60s if you’re new.

And I think the conversion rate is closer to 1.8 than 2 for ecto to dust.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Luck

Noting Linen scraps are down to, after TP tax 4 1/2s each if selling yourself, 3.8s each if selling to high bidder. Linen prices have been going down for a while now.

Right now it’s north of 15-18K per gold according to this method with karma cost rising since linen price is dropping. You’ll need 60 of those gloves, 15 pulls of the MF slots followed by salvaging.

Edit: Fix kittening of numbers.

Azure Prower.8701:

Wanze.8410:

Azure Prower.8701:

The whole argument that an official personal trading system hasn’t been put in, is because of scamming, is flawed.

There is personal trading. The mail system. But there is no system in place to prevent scamming when you want to trade directly with some one. Thus people have to trade to each other on faith.

The mail system was put in place, so people can give (donate free of charge) items or gold to each other. It was never intended as a trading tool.

Yet still has been used as such.

Can’t be prevented when you allow players to mail gifts to one another.

It also means ANet can track gold and high value item transfers to track down RMT mules and shut them down.

The tax is just the price of doing business safely.

Other than the bid price going up a bit, otherwise the sell price looks stable. Dust price is down a tad but not too bad overall.

First, post a question like this in the Player Helping Player section.

Second, there is a sticky thread there on tips.

Best tip I have. Critters that are off the beaten path, that have been hanging around for a while unmolested by players, have a major XP bonus on them. So while staying in an area that’s level appropriate, step off the obvious path and seek critters away from the path.

It was bad when it first came out, when many complaining about it, it’s not going to get magically better the 2nd time around.

Other than the Light Flamekissed and the Silver Salvage Kit, Gem Shop items don’t change.

I think the Prima guide (I think it was Prima) for Masters of Orion 2 was pretty good. But for MMOs, when everything can change patch to patch for balance issues, it’s nothing more than a printed wikia wiki that doesn’t get updated anymore.

Echo.3741:

How far does Damask have to drop to get the armorcrafts equal?

Ignoring shared mats. Using crafting cost.

Light needs 12 extra Damask and 6 Elonian for roughly 138.8g
Medium needs 18 Elonian for roughly 35.8g
Heavy needs 1 Damask and 16 Deldrimor Steel for roughly 59.8g

So Damask needs to drop to around 3 gold be in the ballpark of the other two, that’s nearly 8g less and that’s crafting price. Of course at 3g ascended armor would be quite cheap as Damask is the costliest mat for a set.

Ah Prima Guides. Obsolete before they’re printed.

I don’t think that’s possible. Each armor weight has it’s own set of skins. You can add those skins to your account’s wardrobe by simply salvaging them (in this case there may just be an add to wardrobe in the right click menu) but it can only be applied to other light armor.