Guild Wars 2

On average you get 1.85 crystalline dust per salvaged ecto.

I double down on checking with the shard alchemy portion of gw2shinies to see what’s cheaper.

http://www.gw2shinies.com/shard-alchemy

Also remember that the yield amount spans a range and I’ve seen the yield come up 15-20% short on occasion. For T5 fine to T6 rare mats the average is 6.91 T6 rare yield per 50 T5 fine but costs 1 T6 rare as a catalyst, which you can reuse for each conversion. Their calculations assume sell price for the T6 and buy price for the ingredients.

Simple, give us an option to disable gliding. If we fall to our deaths because we forgot to toggle it back on, our bad. It’s just not perceivable to me how long is too long. I could do 8 jumps fine with no glider deployment and then floof, glider and now I don’t make that jump. It’s aggravating as all kitten.

Didn’t realize, since it’s a reward from a collection, that the calculator can do the actual skin.

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/77645-Winter's-Presence-Skin

Other than the 10K drinks, all the other parts of the collection need to or should be (due to materials availability) accomplished during Wintersday.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Winter's_Presence

Note that according to GW2 Efficiency’s crafting calculator, the three items you need to craft for the collection, Essence of Mischief, Essence of Snowfall and Magnanimous Obsidian Crystal will cost you around 325-350 gold in mats, mainly due to the cost of Mystic Coin (150), Superior Sigil of Mischief (50) and Superior Rune of Snowfall (50).

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/77584-Magnanimous-Obsidian-Crystal,77659-Essence-of-Snowfall,77650-Essence-of-Mischief

But at the very least you should do the other four, the JP, Bell Choir, Toypocolypse and Snow Ball Mayhem before Jan 13th.

coso.9173:

it’s more of a “be aware your playerbase really wants this, so it might be worth your time and effort”.

“Time and effort” costs “resources” from another part of the game or “money” to hire more “resources”. For it To be a “good” decision to move those resources or hire additional, what’s created by those resources have to contribute to the game’s cash flow to warrant the cost.

ANet decided a while ago that 800 gem armor sets don’t generate the income they would need to see from an item that “costs” so much to create while 700 gem outfits do. ANet has released 21 sets of armor, 7 for each weight, in the gem shop since launch and they know how well armor sell and the profits they can expect. It’s not like it’s a gut decision.

Gwaihir.1745:

Stop making outfits when you have legendary armour pushing a year and a half late.

How can it be late, you can’t even craft it yet. Raiders are still farming mats to even make the fugly pre-cursor armors.

All that they advertised was the reward from raids, didn’t say how many raids, was the ability to earn Legendary Armor.

maddoctor.2738:

Behellagh.1468:

Looking at the audited annual reports reveals an ugly truth. ArenaNet as an entity never made a profit from Guild Wars.

You should’ve said that in page 1. But really Anet made no profit from Guild Wars? That sounds extreme to be honest

Not really if you watch the industry, game studios close all the time while distributors are forever. NC Interactive and NC Europe had banner years in 2012 compared to 2011 because of their cut of the Guild Wars 2 pie in 2012.

How many sales they don’t make because the player keeps postponing because the item is always in the store, “I’ll get it next time”. Limited availability focuses players on items about to leave or have returned after a long absence either getting them off the fence to buy or create pent up demand for older players and hype for newer ones who never had the opportunity to buy it.

A set of gem shop armor, all three weights, takes 10x longer to create than an outfit, about 9 dev months according to Micheal O’Brien, it’s in one of the reddit AMAs this year.

Armor takes 10x longer than outfits – https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0o34v3/?context=10000

Armor takes 9 months – https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4uqx15/out_of_the_shadows_devs_here_ask_us_anything/d5s52tj/

We’ve known that armor set are no longer being developed for the gem shop for 1 1/2 years. We will still get pieces like hats, boots, gloves and shoulders but full sets? That’s an expansion only feature now due to their development cost.

Armor is priced at 800 gems while Outfits are priced at 700 gems. Armor needs to sell nearly 9x as many units as Outfits simply to pay off the development cost. Now since gem shop sales is what’s paying the bills, items sold in the gem shop need to payoff their development cost quickly otherwise they aren’t helping to pay for everything that’s not sold in the gem shop.

Yeah but he hasn’t updated since mid October. That’s a lot of stuff missed.

I never do the middle path as I’ve heard it’s the most difficult. And I’m posting suggestions for everyone who have issues, not just you. To be fair I never completed Shaman’s Ran without needing a mesmer’s help until this year, ONCE. But that JP is quite annoying with the ravens kicking you off.

As I said it took me most of last year’s Wintersday to get through the JP even 3 times. Besides learning to remain calm and not rushing, you need to remember where best to jump from one snowflake to the next to another, especially the ones that alternate tilt or are significantly different sizes as positioning for the jump becomes important.

As for you @Nightshade, you also have to remember that both the snowflakes and peppermint sticks do vanish as someone uses them and it takes time to regenerate. I’ve NEVER seen the snowflake you are standing one vanish as you are waiting for the stick or next flake to reappear. It may take a second or two for them to appear depending on how recent the players in front of you used them.

Now you either have a 2nd account or one to give to a friend/family member.

Another trick. Turn down your graphic to best performance (leave sampling to native) to maximize your framerate. It really helped me as I normally favor pretty over framerate.

First they’ve never said when something is returning until it shows up so it could be anytime. On top of that it may return for only one day as part of a monthly sale with something different returning or on sale every day. Or a weekend sale. So it’s on you to keep watching everyday.

Gemstore updates usually happens at 16:00 UTC.

Issue is that unlike gloves, helms, shoulders and backpack, butt capes aren’t a separate armor piece but an integrated part of the leggings. That would like asking for the ability to toggle off some other detail from an armor piece you don’t agree with.

They would have to rework every single set of leggings/outfit that have a butt cape and add a checkbox in the hero/equipment panel. Everything has a development cost that has to be paid from something else. It’s like one college basketball coach’s standard reply about why player X doesn’t have more playing time, “well who would you want me to sitout?”.

Alga.6498:

I want NEW armorskins from gemstore!!
But if they’re going to add something old back, please add Aetherblade bundles back!!

They’ve said that is extremely unlikely numerous times. Armors “cost” too much to make to only sell them for 800 gems. Items in the Gem Shop need to be quickly profitable and that’s what outfits can do that armor skins can’t.

One way off the top of my head to “fix it” is to lock the map instance, preventing any players from entering that instance during the time the vaults are open. No rightclick join on map, no Teleport to a Friend. Leave to purge your inventory, you can’t come back, you’ll just end up on a new instance of AB with the event over.

Well the audit reports aren’t as easily retrieved as the quarterly numbers are which only reveal game and regional sales and NCSOFT’s profit. In the early days they included some but they “simplified” their investor information over the years to the basic facts.

Repeat after me. This is not WoW, or any other MMO you’ve ever played.

There is no sharing of loot or XP so feel free to help anyone you see in a battle in PvE.

Everyone gets their own shared resource node.

Everyone can rez everyone including downed NPCs.

There is a weak MMO Trinity as multiple professions can fill rolls and everyone handles most of their own healing.

Don’t expect to be led from one area of the map to another or pushed into other maps. The game is very self directing.

Nearly everything you do in PvE gives you XP. Exploring, gathering, rezing, beating up critters.

Learn to dodge and move in combat. Armor doesn’t absorb too much incoming damage and your self heal isn’t very much. So best way to avoid damage is to not get hit.

Lower level areas will automatically down scale so you can do events in lower level areas and still earn an amount of XP relative to your current level. You could level to max without leaving your starting map, but that’s boring.

Don’t automatically use your level 80 boost, if you got one, since this game isn’t heavily loaded with “cool content” only at max level. There is a lot of stuff to do in “core Tyria” all the maps that aren’t tied to the expansion.

The wiki is your friend. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

I’m an explorer, it was my purpose when I started to play to clear all the fog of war on the map, get every point of interest, every hero point, every vista and every waypoint on a map.

Don’t forget to have fun.

They had their Black Friday sale last month. Expect a sale after Christmas going through the New Year if the last few years taught us anything.

Devata.6589:

Behellagh.1468:

Vayne.8563:

You say having a less intrusive cash shop is the answer, so if expansions cant’ be made as quickly, how are you planning on paying rent, insurance, electricity and 300 plus employees?

That’s because @Devata believes at the core of his being that ANet “could” do it.

I might be wrong. We do however know that their current approach was good for the first 1,5 year or so and then started to drop off more thenthey had hoped.

Didn’t want to resort to this. Air the dark dirty secrets of ArenaNet but if this doesn’t change your mind I don’t know what will. All you have to do is examine the audited annual reports from NCSOFT which breaks out the income and profit of their subsidiaries including ArenaNet.

Looking at the audited annual reports reveals an ugly truth. ArenaNet as an entity never made a profit from Guild Wars.

In 2005 GW sold 41,308 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 10,608 million KrW of that and almost made a profit, their loss was only 168 million KrW.

In 2006 GW sold 52,560 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 13,400 million KrW of that and their loss was 2,022 million KrW.

In 2007 GW sold 42,058 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 12,020 million KrW of that and their loss was 2,975 million KrW.

In 2008 GW sold 26,228 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 8,131 million KrW of that and their loss was 10,148 million KrW.

In 2009 GW sold 17,127 million KrW. ArenaNet only saw 5,254 million KrW of that and their loss was 21,658 million KrW.

ArenaNet had to pay off the development cost of GW just like an author or a band paying off their advance. And in 2009 they announced work on GW2. [sarcasm]It sure looks like that box expansion plan for GW really worked out for them.[/sarcasm] By the end of 2012, the last time ANet was broken out as it was “absorbed” into NC West Holdings along with NC Interactive and Carbine, ANet had liabilities, aka debt, of 128,000 million KrW. That’s the year GW2 sold 164,854 million KrW and ANet saw 68,000 million of that and actually had a profit of 28,000 million KrW.

This is part of the reason they decided that to maintain their B2P/no subscription approach, went with the cash shop.

Edit: This also makes the taking over of distribution by ANet for HoT a lot of sense so they could book more of that income without letting NC Interactive suck up a sizable cut.

I use https://www.gw2tp.com/gems , this one updates roughly every 30 minutes. It’s up a little bit today due to the outfit. If you look at selling then maybe the next sale in a month or so. When something popular comes up there should be a spike.

Then none of you are going to like this.

Some say Quaggan path is the easiest. I prefer Gingerbread Man path. Took me nearly all of last Wintersday to be able to do it 3 times. Earlier today I did it 7 times in the 1/2 hour session. I’m more Zen now doing it, which is how I finally did it last year. I use to panic thinking the flake will dissolve under me because someone got to it first and really you have a second or two.

I earned about half last year, including buying them for karma. Other half took six months of buying around 30 drinks a day. Now I’m getting some of that back by selling the ones I’m getting from gifts.

They were high during the last year due to the desire to get the shoulder piece which requires 10K of the wintersday drinks, which dropped 80% of the time. I would imagine there will be fewer people working toward that over the next year.

I rarely play in the HoT or LWS3 areas and I see lots of players at boss events. However right now it’s Wintersday so there’s a lot of players in Divinity’s Reach doing the Festival content.

Vayne.8563:

You say having a less intrusive cash shop is the answer, so if expansions cant’ be made as quickly, how are you planning on paying rent, insurance, electricity and 300 plus employees?

That’s because @Devata believes at the core of his being that ANet “could” do it.

I’m figuring we’ll have one after XMas or into the New Years.

Don’t forget wings and trenchcoats. And while you don’t need to see the platform you are on, it’s nice to see the platform, especially the tiny ones, you are jumping to. Until it’s in muscle memory.

More expensive per salvage than mystic kits only if you don’t need to buy mystic forge stones. You may think you have plenty mystic forge stones today but if you do any amount of wholesale salvage, it goes through them quickly. In the last 30 days I salvage 1500+ rare armors. That’s 7 mystic salvage kits or 21 MFSs. At 135-150 gems of MFS per mystic kit, silver fed quickly pays for itself at 500 gems. For me personally.

Now that said I only use the silver on rare. In those same 30 days I salvaged 28,000+ white/blue/green armors, 9,300+ green with minor runes. My cost with copper fed is about 8.5g but I get roughly 3g in minor runes. My cost with a silver fed would be 170 gold with 12g in minor runes. So yeah, using a silver fed on w/b/g gear, not worth it.

But I’m way outside the norm when it comes to salvaging.

Those two persist even when the Festival is over and disappears from the Achievement list.

Nothing is ever really gone from the gem store forever. When the story gets back around to Marjory her dagger and sword will likely show up again.

Yes copper-fed. With the new(ish) right click "salavage all <fine/masterwork> or below> option, converting those 2 blues and a green into mats you can send to collections quick and easy.

My haul from last night, 26 BL chests. Some day Mini Southsun Kasmeer will be mine.

Well first get to a map early, like 30 minutes early. Then you don’t have a problem unless you DC.

I hope they don’t lower it. I spent a lot of coin over 6 months to get the additional 5000 I needed once Wintersday was over. Bought a few every day.

maddoctor.2738:

Some interesting statistics on player retention, it’s important to note that it’s hard to 0 those due to how they are earned and how they are spent:

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.airshipParts
It’s clear that a vast majority of players (90%), at least of those registered on gw2eff, have Airship Parts, which means they bought Heart of Thorns

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.lumpsOfAurillium
Aurillium is different, about 75% of the total continued to Auric Basin, which means a lot of players lost interest in the expansion before even leaving the first zone. This tells us a lot about the accessibility of the expansion and how the first zone has to be accessible enough to grab the player’s attention.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.leyLineCrystals
Ley Line crystals tell us the same story.

Take a look at Bloodstone Rubies next:
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.bloodRubies
We are down to 50% playing. Did they stop before Dragon’s Stand, or after Dragon’s Stand? We don’t know because there is no statistic for Dragon’s Stand.

Petrified Wood and Fresh Winterberries come next and it’s quite clear that even more players stopped playing:
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.petrifiedWood
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.freshWinterberries
We are now at 20% of the original playerbase that continue playing

We can’t get exact numbers, a 75% might be 76% or 89%, so got to work with what is available, even though they are by no means accurate, they do show us a lot about player retention. The data could also mean that players don’t visit the new zones, but still continue to play the game otherwise. There are lots of assumptions here but I think the data can be used constructively, they show a clear downward trend.

90% of players on that website got Heart of Thorns, 75% progressed beyond Verdant Brink, 50% remained active when LS3 started, dropped to 20% with episode 2, and remains at 20% with episode 3.
It does look like the game is struggling in keeping the players busy, maybe Q4 2016 results won’t be as good as I wanted.

Do remember that many people on these forums claim that those with registered accounts are the more hardcore players which means they are the kind of players that will unlock their elite specializations and more likely to complete the meta of a zone and get the rewards. Which means the actual numbers will be lower.

Did they stop playing or simply not gotten to that content yet? I have HoT since it launched but haven’t done any of the story there or any of the LWS3 episodes even though I have them unlocked. Heck I’m on year 4 and haven’t finished the PS on any of my level 80 characters, stories in MMOs don’t float my boat.

Kudos on the clever use of GW2Efficiency.

It also provides ANet a pool of items that they can rotate in without needing to produce brand new items every week.

Some are seasonally rotated, some are thematic, some are likely rotated out because their sales are low.

Psientist.6437:

Behellagh.1468:

Psientist.6437:

Behellagh.1468:

Ashen.2907:

Behellagh.1468:

Psientist.6437:

The gem exchange can increase the supply of gold (which isn’t the only factor in inflation). Players generate gold and anything that prompts players to generate gold will increase the supply and demand for gold. New gold generated specifically to buy gems is gold that would not have existed without the gem exchange and 1g taxed at 33% still leaves you with some silver.

Except it doesn’t. The exchange doesn’t create gold, or gems, out of nothing. The gold players get from selling gems comes from a “vault” of gold stocked by players buying gems with gold and the gems they are buying are from a “vault” of gems stocked by players selling gems. When the game launched the “vaults” were seeded but since then it’s all us pouring in and pulling out gold and gems.

He didnt say that the exchange creates gold. He said that some players do purposefully generate gold specifically to convert to gems. This is true. Some players do actively farm for the sole purpose of converting to gems when there is something in the gem store that they want.

True, my bad. But the exchange wasn’t meant to be the way to buy EVERYTHING you want from the Gem Shop, and sometimes it seems too many players think that. But I wouldn’t use the exchange rate as a gauge for overall inflation in the economy, just like I wouldn’t use Precursors, Legendary Weapons or Unlimited Contract Unlocks.

I’m sure many players use the gem exchange to supplement their cash shop purchases; buy some gems with gold and some with cash. That would be revenue the studio would have never seen without the gem exchange.

Yes, to supplement but many seem to treat it as the ONLY way. Yes the gems were bought first by someone and then traded in the exchange for gold before they are sold for gold. ANet isn’t making anything on gold spend on gems. But I too often see posts lamenting they can’t farm enough gold for the new 400/600/800 gem item in the shop every week. Well guess what, gems cost the same with real money as they did on launch day.

I am addicted to pedanticism .

Anet could make money on gold to gem sales. The potential for profit would depend on the percentage of gold sales that would have been cash sales assuming the exchange did not exist and the broader effect of those unconvertible gold sales. I would be willing to bet even money that the percentage would be low, below 20%.

From the value of that share (which likely conforms to the average of $3.88/month) you would deduct box sales that were motivated by the gem exchange, the value of having more skins from the gem store advertised in-game, and the value of the gem to gold exchange.

I would be very surprised if the gem store weren’t more profitable with the gold to gem exchange than without.

Well the truth is the exchange is there not to let players buy gems with gold but sell gem for gold as a way to thwart gold sellers. But to prevent the game from creating gold out of nothing, the other side of the exchange, the side that buys gems with gold was created. Toss in an additional gold sink for buying or selling and it’s practically perfect in it’s functionality.

GameProFreak.7893:

Bus Interface PCIe x16 3.0 @ x16 3.0 is what it reads when game is running

No issue with that then. You would be surprised how common that is.

GameProFreak.7893:

Bus width is reading 384 bit

That’s the video memory bus width on the card.

Certainly sounds like an issue reading data from the drive. Do you have only one Anti-Virus software loaded and active? Trying to think what could slow down drive throughput, multiple AVs runnings could do that.

By all means experiment to see what settings affect your setup the most and find where your performance Vs pretty tradeoff seems balanced.

Psientist.6437:

Behellagh.1468:

Ashen.2907:

Behellagh.1468:

Psientist.6437:

The gem exchange can increase the supply of gold (which isn’t the only factor in inflation). Players generate gold and anything that prompts players to generate gold will increase the supply and demand for gold. New gold generated specifically to buy gems is gold that would not have existed without the gem exchange and 1g taxed at 33% still leaves you with some silver.

Except it doesn’t. The exchange doesn’t create gold, or gems, out of nothing. The gold players get from selling gems comes from a “vault” of gold stocked by players buying gems with gold and the gems they are buying are from a “vault” of gems stocked by players selling gems. When the game launched the “vaults” were seeded but since then it’s all us pouring in and pulling out gold and gems.

He didnt say that the exchange creates gold. He said that some players do purposefully generate gold specifically to convert to gems. This is true. Some players do actively farm for the sole purpose of converting to gems when there is something in the gem store that they want.

True, my bad. But the exchange wasn’t meant to be the way to buy EVERYTHING you want from the Gem Shop, and sometimes it seems too many players think that. But I wouldn’t use the exchange rate as a gauge for overall inflation in the economy, just like I wouldn’t use Precursors, Legendary Weapons or Unlimited Contract Unlocks.

I’m sure many players use the gem exchange to supplement their cash shop purchases; buy some gems with gold and some with cash. That would be revenue the studio would have never seen without the gem exchange.

Yes, to supplement but many seem to treat it as the ONLY way. Yes the gems were bought first by someone and then traded in the exchange for gold before they are sold for gold. ANet isn’t making anything on gold spend on gems. But I too often see posts lamenting they can’t farm enough gold for the new 400/600/800 gem item in the shop every week. Well guess what, gems cost the same with real money as they did on launch day.

And a defining design doctrine for PvE was no player should dread seeing another player. That’s why there are instanced resources nodes, no loot/XP splitting and everyone can rez. Dueling in PvE for instance, some see as a violation of that tenant. PvE is one big happy Co-Op area and we shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves but helping each other. The “flash mob with swords and spells” design of dynamic events support the helping each other design.

Also the lack of a hard trinity of healer/tank/DPS rubs some the wrong way even though ANet didn’t want a required set of professions for a party to do content (yes I know raiding meta violates that philosophy).

Assuming you don’t have an SSD, I would suggest defrag your hard drives or at least the folder with the game in it. The game’s datafile is huge and the time taken by the read/write head moving about is one reason SSDs are so much faster on random read and writes. A defrag should reduce that and improve load time of assets from the hard drive.

Also think you can push most of those settings back up. However shadows, reflections and character model limit (number of players drawn) are affected more by the CPU.

Ashen.2907:

Behellagh.1468:

Psientist.6437:

The gem exchange can increase the supply of gold (which isn’t the only factor in inflation). Players generate gold and anything that prompts players to generate gold will increase the supply and demand for gold. New gold generated specifically to buy gems is gold that would not have existed without the gem exchange and 1g taxed at 33% still leaves you with some silver.

Except it doesn’t. The exchange doesn’t create gold, or gems, out of nothing. The gold players get from selling gems comes from a “vault” of gold stocked by players buying gems with gold and the gems they are buying are from a “vault” of gems stocked by players selling gems. When the game launched the “vaults” were seeded but since then it’s all us pouring in and pulling out gold and gems.

He didnt say that the exchange creates gold. He said that some players do purposefully generate gold specifically to convert to gems. This is true. Some players do actively farm for the sole purpose of converting to gems when there is something in the gem store that they want.

True, my bad. But the exchange wasn’t meant to be the way to buy EVERYTHING you want from the Gem Shop, and sometimes it seems too many players think that. But I wouldn’t use the exchange rate as a gauge for overall inflation in the economy, just like I wouldn’t use Precursors, Legendary Weapons or Unlimited Contract Unlocks.

There are some who want a fundamental change to the core design philosophy of the game and constantly complain about that. You either have to accept the game for what it is and live with the things you don’t like or accept that the game isn’t for you and move on.

But some of those people make it their mission, because the game isn’t what they want, to drag the game down, to cause it to fail so they can say “see, if they only listen to me”. It’s those people who need to move on.

Psientist.6437:

The gem exchange can increase the supply of gold (which isn’t the only factor in inflation). Players generate gold and anything that prompts players to generate gold will increase the supply and demand for gold. New gold generated specifically to buy gems is gold that would not have existed without the gem exchange and 1g taxed at 33% still leaves you with some silver.

Except it doesn’t. The exchange doesn’t create gold, or gems, out of nothing. The gold players get from selling gems comes from a “vault” of gold stocked by players buying gems with gold and the gems they are buying are from a “vault” of gems stocked by players selling gems. When the game launched the “vaults” were seeded but since then it’s all us pouring in and pulling out gold and gems.

I’ve also used four soulbound weapons or armor of the same quality level or even buy the cheapest on the TP. I now promote fine mats everyday for profit and that’s how I clear that daily.