Guild Wars 2

In the days of City of Heroes they added a “streak breaker” to their RNG hit code that guaranteed a hit after X number of misses, based on the hit percentage chance.

If your to hit was over 90%, it allowed only one miss in a row, the next attack is guaranteed to hit. Over 80 but under 90, 2 misses, etc. It still allowed “lucky” people to exist but significantly helped players on an unlucky streak.

Now here you would track loot roll percentages. As for implementation, it could be as simple as number of “misses” needed for a guarantee drop at a specific quality or a more complex statistical analysis that would trigger if the player’s count falls below say 10% of a standard distribution. Depends how much you want to “mess up” the aggregate drop percentage.

Example. A player for his level and luck he has a 5% chance for a rare. The streak breaker would kick in after 19 misses. Or you could, using the stats method make the trigger after 44 or log(0.10)/log(0.95) where 0.1 is the lower 10% distribution threshold and 0.95 is 100% minus the 5% chance to get a rare.

So a 1% chance would have either a 99 miss threshold or a 229 miss threshold.

Of course upon getting a drop or triggering the streak breaker code would reset the miss count.

Just some thoughts.

For 840 EVO SSD users.

http://techreport.com/review/27212/samsung-840-evo-update-fixes-slow-reads-with-old-data

It may be cheaper to buy rare armor over level 68 and using master kits salvage them and the then the ectos they drop and sell the mats. Ectos drop a lot of luck relative to blues and greens.

http://legendsrpg.com/gw2.php?luck=yes&purpose=sell&lower_limit=100

Right now you can buy ectos for under 41s and sell T6 dust when you crack them for 22s. At roughly 1.8 dust per ecto that makes the cost of roughly 7.4s per 100 luck. Blues drop around 10 luck on average. There isn’t a lot of fine (blue) items you can buy (via bids) at 74c each.

The TP is driven buy sellers since they have the power whom to sell their loot to. Buyers have to fight among themselves in an attempt to have the highest bid to attract a seller. You want that frenzy for bids because the sellers have the power, which is why you charge the sellers and not the buyers.

A “lottery” with one $1 million dollar reward with the next prize level being $5 doesn’t sell lottery tickets. Reintroducing it at a low but not nonexistent chance increases the likelihood that players will spend their gold and more importantly money to buy gems to acquire one.

But it’s still a niche item, now at 1600g. Most of the 13.6K bids, 11.4K are at 1c with only 16 above 100g and 11 above 500g. There simply isn’t a lot of “honest” demand, yet, due to the price.

Avster.1935:

A game were aesthetics is the end-game, and we are presented with outfits. Oh the irony.

And the outfits aren’t aesthetically pleasing?

Heibi.4251:

Basically, they are now losing money. I can’t buy any gems. I’ve restarted my computer, cleared my browsing cache, and of course re-logged into the game. Fix this soon ANeT.

Not your browser’s cache, the game’s browser’s cache.

Only problem I can think of is guild name/tag issues over naming. So read the naming restrictions and think carefully upon choosing a name.

Imaginos.3756:

There are things that you have done that are confusing and I’d really like to know the thought process behind how these decisions were made and why they were made…..

WHY?

1. Why did you make town clothes into tonics instead of Dye-able outfits?!
2. Why aren’t we able to craft aqua-breathers, similar to the new crafting backpacks?
3. Why, after two years, are aqua-breathers still not dye-able?
4. Why are there no lower level “celestial” gem recipes, that can go into the new backpacks seeing as they can have celestial stats but are too low for the L80 celestial gems via jewel crafting?
5. Why are outfit head pieces linked to our regular helmet for toggling on/off? This means I can’t wear an outfit with a different headgear.
6. Why was the Tribal outfit never added for PvE and currently removed from PvP? Will this ever make it to PvE as an actual armor? I’ve been wanting to mix/match it on my necromancer for years now.
7. Why are there still crafting materials from two years ago that still don’t have crafting tabs for them, such as all the doubloons? Unidentified Amber could use a tab too, same with foxfire clusters and blade shards.
8. Why does it take far more material to make damask bolts then elonian leather. This is rather unbalanced for cloth wearers. It would be a great gesture to have the amount of silk needed brought in line with the leather needed.

1) Probably easier to classify armor and outfits which skin armor as usable outside of cities than to have outfits that are city only. They probably data mined that for the vast number of players, time spent in a city is relatively small as well as wearing town clothing, thus the two hour limit.
2) Fair point, only slotted piece we can’t craft.
3) See 2.
4) Because along with Legendary and Ascended, it was meant to be a Level 80 look.
5) Likely because that’s how the character model generation code works. Head with and without head piece, not with or without skin.
6) Valid question.
7) Another good question since they drop and not bought from an NPC.
8) Probably because when the recipe was developed, silk was plentiful? But yes, it’s still twice as much T5 cloth as leather. Plus on top of that it’s used everywhere for insignia which bolstered demand to the point where silk scrapes are in short supply while leather is only used for “basic” armor components for light and medium. Maybe in the future there will be a need for Elonian Leather Squares as great as Damask has with insignia. There’s 11 million Thick Leather Sections on the TP, 1.5 million at vendor adjusted minimum versus 275K of Silk Scrap and nearly 400K drop in supply since the announcement of profession skewed drops.

Malediktus.9250:

I have way over 1000 skins and wont use most of them. Why? Transmutation charges are a pain to farm and cost a lot on the gemshop. So I only use the most expensive/exclusive stuff I have because its not worth to waste charges on anything else.
Would buy an infinite transmutation charge item.

$15 gets you 50 charges. Costs a lot? That’s 8 full 6 piece armor sets.

That’s because right hand is decomposition while the left is regrowth.

Am I the only one who watches The Irregular at Magic High School?

I don’t think there is anything salvageable in that system. Maybe the optical drive if it’s SATA (type of interface from drive to PC).

As for what to buy at that price … I don’t think you will find anything reasonable at the price already built. Here’s something prebuilt that will run the game but it’s far from ideal.

http://www.amazon.de/CSL-Sprint-5672W8-inkl-Windows/dp/B009VDMOH4/ref=sr_1_9?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1413227308&sr=1-9

Here’s one from Alternate

http://www.alternate.de/Lenovo/H535-57324111-PC-System/html/product/1132346?

I stand corrected then.

Yea, no force perspective here. Mine is the one on the left.

It’s a … quirk with the TP. If you sell an item to high bid before the high bids are loaded, you sell for minimum price allowed.

Honestly there are a lot of people who need to slow down just a smidge during their selling frenzy to avoid these accidental sales. Of course they could lock out the sell button on the TP until the current bidders are loaded but I imagine the delay would generate a lot of complaints as well.

The R7 250 is the higher performing of those two cards, actually the Zoltac is pretty bad despite the GDRR5 memory. That said this card is a lot better.

http://www.amazon.de/HIS-Radeon-R7-250X-Grafikkarte/dp/B00J2CA9KS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1413152423&sr=8-3&keywords=r7+250x#productDetails

In any case you really should look at upgrading that PSU because even the two cards you suggested do use noticeably more power than the card you currently have. True the 250X I just linked uses a lot more over the 250 and needs a 6-pin PCIe power connector from the PSU to power it. This should do nicely.

http://www.amazon.de/Thermaltake-Munich-PC-Netzteil-ATX23-Watt/dp/B004YIRYAS/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1413155533&sr=1-1&keywords=thermaltake

Blude.6812:

DonQuack.9025:

Blude.6812:

LOL—pure theft!!! Retail price is 25

Not theft. Not a troll.

Amazon can sell it to you for same ingame prices because they most likely buy it at a reduced price in much larger bulk directly from arenanet and can sell to a larger population.

Seller most likely can/does not buy in a large enough bulk from arenanet(if at all) to get a discount from them to make a profit. Thus the seller has to sell for higher price to hopefully gain a profit.

If you dont understand that then you have never attempted to sell anything on ebay.
Never worked in a small store only to have a walmart/home depot pop up.

That price is not theft. And considering that the seller has only made (48434 sales) in its lifetime and is competing against Amazon I would buy it from them just to support a small company. If I werent a cheap bum who could get 2000gems for less than $25

Give me a break. you’d spend 52$ (with tax and delivery to be added as well)for a 25$ item??? He’s likely bought all up the stock from legitimate retail store and artificially ups the price to look make a quick buck. It was 30 dollars a few months ago, then 35,now 52+. You could get double the gems plus free delivery if amazon would bother to stock them.
If he wants to sell it on ebay more power to him/her. But for a lagre retail site to allow that kind of rip off for 3rd party sellers instead of stocking the item is wrong.
There is a sucker born every minute, I won’t be one of them, but feel free to support him if you have that much disposible income.

Darn flippers on Amazon.

Gnashblade mode doesn’t change the limits on the TP, just the number visible on the page.

For whatever reason ANet has decided only to tell the player base what they are sure about delivering and even then the details are kept under raps until the patch is about to drop.

We could speculate the reasons why they do this but that’s just us spinning ever increasing wild theories on the subject.

Now since the Gem Shop is their primary source of income month to month, they are very sure about dropping new items, returning old and putting some on sale. This is to both encourage players to buy gems, deplete any they have on hand and drain gold from the economy into the gem exchange. And because of that need for monthly income, that’s what a lot of players see and wrongly assume that’s all that ANet is doing.

So yes every Tuesday and Friday, normally, something is done to the Gem Shop to try to keep the income flowing.

On an auction house, other than setting a minimum reserve, the seller has no power in determining how much they will get for an item. That is entirely in the bidders hands.

At the TP the seller has all the power in what they are willing to get paid for an item. It’s their choice whether to sell it to the current high bidder or ask for more and wait for someone to meet their asking price. The bidders are reduced to trying to attract a buyer to them by having the highest bid when a seller looks. The bidder has no power over the seller because there isn’t a seller yet.

Thank you, much better.

So only 18 amps at 12 volts or 216 watts on the 12 volt rail and a combined 180 watts on the 3.3 volt and 5 volt rails. Not a really great PSU since the move to emphasis on the 12 volt rail started well before the Athlon II/Phenom II came out. More modern designed PSUs of that total output have at least 50% more power available at 12 volts while some can provide nearly it’s total output to the 12 volt rail.

The reason I’m focused on the 12 volt output is that’s what both the CPU and video card “feed” on for power while 3.3 and 5 volts combined rarely exceed 50 watts combined in a system.

I would suggest you take part of your budget, 40-50€, and get a better PSU. Doesn’t need to be bigger in terms of overall output just more amps at 12 volts. For example both of these aren’t much larger in terms of overall wattage but are a huge upgrade over in terms of 12 volt power. It should also have at least one PCIe 6-pin power connector for video cards. Example:

http://www.alternate.de/Corsair/430CX-Netzteil/html/product/1034735?
http://www.alternate.de/Thermaltake/SMART-430W-Netzteil/html/product/967213?

(yours – 18 amps/216 watts, Corsair – 28 amps/336 watts, Thermaltake – 34 amps/408 watts)

You may be able to have enough for a GTX 750 or an R7 250x (HD 7770), R7 260 or even an R7 260x (HD 7790). Key thing to remember with higher end video cards, faster memory always trumps more memory because the quickest way to cripple a GPU is attaching it to slow memory. Look for GDDR5 memory and ignore DDR3 or GDDR3 memory, even if they offer twice as much.

The GTX 750 and R7 260x have similar performance. The R7 260 and 250x are faster than the GT 740.

Tiny scales were around 1s each as high bid and now they are half that since end of September. Same with T2 and T3 scales. Supplies of tier 1 to tier 3 scales have surged. Is there a lot of lower level farming going on? New characters rolled? Big influx of new players from the free trial? Or has LS2 finally petered out and players are returning to their old stomping grounds?

Edit: de-kittening the post.

Selling to bids being the auto choice was exactly what the old TP did. When they did try to make selling match the current low sale price there was an uproar.

The TP was removed from the starting zone because the TP isn’t explained to new players until level 8. But instead of phasing him out for new players or tell them to come back later, they chose to smite them from the world.

I concur.

15 charr

Looking for that on the web hasn’t really instilled me with a lot of positive vibes for that PSU. And the only picture of the sticker that lists the amp breakdown per rail is too small/blurry to read.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Behellagh.1468:

Karma like many of the alternate currencies is designed to reward certain activities with their own pool of items you can use Karma to purchase. Buying Karma with gold would circumvent this. What’s next Dungeon and WvW badges/tokens for gold? Laurels for gold? Buying ascended mats with gold so you can avoid chest grinding?

Ascended materials may not be the best example, as many of them can already be bought and sold on the TP. Or were you referring to Bloodstone Dust/Empyral fragments/Dragonite Ore?

Of course I’m talking Bloodstone, Empyreal and Dragonite. You can’t buy those on the TP and you can’t make Vision Crystals without them. True they are a possible gift from Mawdrey II but I wouldn’t depend your ascended armor/weapon crafting on what Mawdrey II gifts you.

Well if it’s a prebuilt then in all likelihood the PSU is minuscule which is why the HD 5450 was used. It’s an under 25 watt card. Dell and HP for example aren’t know for using PSUs with emphasis on 12 volt amps.

The CPU is essentially an Athlon II X2 270 since it lacks the Phenom II’s usual L3 cache. It’s not that bad of a CPU all things considered. Dual core hurts a bit.

Keeping low power availability in mind I’m leaning toward an R7 240 and even that may be too power hungry.

The HD 5450 is used mostly to offload video decompression for video playback and not as a gaming card. So yes IMO the video card is seriously holding you back.

As to what to replace it with, need more information as to what could fit in your PC. Can your case use full height expansion or just low profile cards? Is there space adjacent to you video card to support a large heatsink/fan or are we looking at only a single width slot solution? What is the limitations imposed by your power supply as the HD 5450 was extremely low power?

So if this is a pre-built system you are looking to update, make and model number can help us answer these questions without you cracking open your system to look.

Karma like many of the alternate currencies is designed to reward certain activities with their own pool of items you can use Karma to purchase. Buying Karma with gold would circumvent this. What’s next Dungeon and WvW badges/tokens for gold? Laurels for gold? Buying ascended mats with gold so you can avoid chest grinding?

IndigoSundown.5419:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

I generally consult this site to see current prices.

That’s been inaccurate since mid August for some reason. This isn’t updated as frequently but it matches the actual exchange in the gem shop.

http://www.gw2tp.com/gems

Using the API it’s around 113 to 114g to buy 800 gems at the time I’m writing this. Buying 8000 gems is roughly 10x as much. But the exchange rate is always changing every time gems are bought or sold.

Terrin.2685:

One of the big reasons I keep logging in is because Arena Net left out a lot of the terrible game mechanics other MMO developers use that have caused so much trouble over the years. Fighting over resource nodes, gear, quest kills, environmental quest goals are all gone. And the awful need and greed mechanic …. wow is it nice to see that gone. This has help contribute to a much friendly playing environment.

Yeah, the “hardcore” players just don’t seem to get this. They simply reduce the world and gameplay of any MMO is set in to a super optimized set of mechanics, due to MMO similarity, to level to max quickly and then achieve BIS items for said maxed level character. And in this game nearly none of that matters. Leveling is very quick and nearly BIS gear is easily obtained.

So kick back and enjoy the journey.

Not Amazon but a retailer through Amazon. Most are never competitive.

dodgycookies.4562:

for lower end laptops to play games with, i would get an amd apu rather than an intel unit as the integrated graphics on the amds are significantly better. The Intel hd5xxx series are pretty capable, but are only offered on high end ultrabooks/macs, at which point buying an actual gaming laptop (with intel cpu and discrete graphics) would be better.

That’s because more games are GPU rather than CPU bound and the integrated GPU in the AMD mobile line is so much better for those games. Still not great but not crap either.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8119/amd-launches-mobile-kaveri-apus/4

Ya, so there’s plenty of time and therefore not a priority to get a double XL version of the UI done. The only reason it would get done sooner than later is if the UI devs are using 4K screens on their workstations and is done as a lunch project.

sirsquishy.8531:

innocens.1582:

the celeron is the least powerfull processor from intel.

i would say no.

Maybe so, but it still beats 80% of AMD’s CPU/APUs that are on the market today :-)

You need a winky there or some AMD supporter will get their knickers in a twist.

That lappy Bay-Trail based Celeron CPU (actually a revamped Atom dual core) is roughly the same power as an Athlon 64 X2 4000+ so it sort of meets the absolute bare minimum requirements for a CPU. But the embedded GPU just doesn’t cut it in any universe. It has an Intel HD Graphics not an HD Graphics 4400 and the difference is the 4400 has 5x the number of execution units.

There’s a reason it’s found in a $250 laptop.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

- Trinkets (rings, accessories, amulets, back items) are very worthwhile, but you also do not need to craft them. Save up on laurels (by doing daily and monthly achievements) and, optionally, badges of honor (by doing WvW), and you can simply buy these from laurel vendors. Make sure to go for an amulet first, as this has the highest stats.

And you can’t use two of the exact same ring. That’s what “Unique” means.

There’s two fees. First is a 5% nonrefundable posting fee. That comes out of your bank. Second is a 10% sales tax that comes from the buyer’s payment assuming a sale is made.

Also you aren’t selling to the highest bidder, it just appears you are. You are actually putting in a sell order that just happens to be the current, at the time the TP looked, highest bid. Once it’s created the TP infrastructure matches it to the high bid(s) and completes the order.

Yes they are better than exotic but it’s hotly debated whether that matters in PvE or only in WvW (since PvP doesn’t use your equipment).

And it’s a long, costly and drawn out process to build ascended gear. It’s like giving a man a hatchet and a stretch of woods and tell him to build a log cabin. There are materials that you can only gather doing various activities and can’t be bought on the TP. And the quantities required are quite a lot versus how much you receive per event.

This is the recipe for a heavy helm with berserker stats.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/7988

The stuff you can buy will cost you over 90g, for one piece. But it’s the 6 stacks each of Bloodstone Dust, Empyreal Fragments and Dragonite Ore for an entire armor set that can take a while not to mention the cost of 120 skill points and 189K of Karma. And you need to get your armor crafting to 500 as well because only you can make your own ascended armor.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor

I guess it depends on your definition of more from your OP, “as more people are moving to 4k res”. If more isn’t a lot, then the time laying out an XXL size wouldn’t be justified from a scheduling PoV. And since a 4K setup can easily run at 2K without the associated problems with monitor based scaling ruining the image it’s probably even less of a priority. They only have a limited amount of manpower so you apply it where it helps the most people for QoL issues.

My opinion of course.

Honestly the hardcore gamer will have it but most won’t have more than HDTV level resolution for the next two years at least. As you pointed out, your monitor and video card together is over $1000. I think that you’ve been breathing the rarefied air of hardcore gamer for so long that you think that kind of investment is mainstream.

Top resolutions on the current Steam survey over 5%

1920×1080 – 33.31%
1366×768 – 25.96%
1600×900 – 7.68%
1280×1024 – 6.21%
1680×1050 – 5.64%
1440×900 – 5.54%

Sure there’s a lot of upward growth since just about everyone is at 2K res or less but it’s not coming soon. 2560×1440 I can believe but not the 4K 3840×2160 monitors.

Well the Steam Hardware survey shows all of 0.02% have 4K res screens. Even if you toss in “unknown” it’s less than 2% with monitors over 1920 wide and most of those are the 2560×1440 ones. We are still talking $500 plus and all those pixels likely also means a beefier video card setup which then needs a beefier PSU to power it and better cooling to keep it running a peak speed rather than Chernobyling your box.

Sure not as much a lot of uber video horsepower for GW2 but if you are blowing $500 and up on a monitor of that resolution and size, you aren’t just playing MMOs.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

1. More skins to choose from
2. They were available for a long time. Anyone who wanted one bought one.

Tempest are the new weapon skins that just came out. They haven’t been around for weeks, you’re thinking Chaos.

Iason Evan.3806:

• With Dye being moved to the gem shop(sans 5 laurels for 1 dye) and now with not having a Miniature Storage Tab so we could, you know invest in minis, where is the Gem Shop gonna be in two years? Are we just slowly moving toward an ArenaNet friendly paywall for consumers as the years go by? <——- That’s a serious question and one I don’t think is unfounded. I think as a consumer it’s a valid question to ask the people in charge. Where’s the Gem Shop headed?

First dyes weren’t moved to the gem shop. No idea where you latched onto that detail. Unidyes were always a chance from chests and the dye pack was there when the game launched. With account wide unlocks the population simply didn’t need dyes dropping like flies anymore which is why unidye prices in laurels went up by a factor of ten. Dyes can still be cooked up by a chef and forged into a common unidye. Fine dye prices still haven’t recovered although some masterwork dyes are being artificially manipulated by removing a chunk of of an already low supply.

As for minis, buy and hold is a terrible way to invest. Look at Beanie Babies and plates from the Franklin Mint. But for those of us who had dups, the move to account wide wardrobe finally got us to unload on the TP or drop in the forge. And now all my characters can have the same mini out. And since minis were always Gem Shop items, at least the ones you can sell, nothing has really changed there.

Probably not.

And that CPU doesn’t have an HD 4400. If a manufacturer or retailer is saying that, it’s a bald faced lie.

And it’s just “semantics” that’s the difference between ice hockey and football/soccer or American football from rugby.

As I said in an auction the seller simply offers the item and it’s the buyers who fight over who gets to buy it. That’s not how the TP is set up or who drives it. For buying something from a seller it’s the sellers who are fighting over potential buyers by making their item the cheapest available. That turns the auction model on it’s head.

Also the auction model doesn’t have anything equivalent to buyers requesting an item for a particular price to attract sellers. Nothing, zip, zero, nada.

You keep mistaking the TP as an auction site. It’s not. On an auction site a seller isn’t setting a price, other than possibly a reserve, and is looking for buyers to outbid each other.

The TP is either buyers outbidding each other so when a seller does come along, they are the highest bidder and the reverse is true with sellers fighting to be the lowest price when a buyer comes alone. In either case the “reward” of being first is ephemeral, since the other participant of the transaction isn’t there yet.

Riding Broom
Sonic Tunneling Tool
Magic Carpet

Nothing to see here.

Thematic. Why do we have more than one kind of ax or sword skin? They all do the same thing …

Danikat.8537:

Behellagh.1468:

But the mesmer still has to traverse the mini dungeon themselves first to place one end of the portal.

If that’s true all the players begging for a portal to Rhendak are simply a bunch of lazy bones putting all the burden on the mesmer who doesn’t get much of anything out of it.

Nice.

Yes.

This is true not only here but anywhere mesmers offer a portal to the end of a jumping puzzle, mini-dungeon or anything else. They have to complete it normally in order to place the portal.

There’s a difference in offering a portal because you were doing it anyways and you are being nice versus others asking for a mesmer to do the dungeon for them and then whip up a portal for the endboss so the crowd can just get the chest at the end.

So far they’ve gone back and gave each specialized pick the remaining two tools to complete the “family” of items. We’ve gone molten and bone/undead. Watchwork will likely be next but I don’t expect the other two will get any benefits.