Guild Wars 2

Forum Bug, she’s on it.

The issue is really for a game that eschews a subscription or optional VIP plan choosing instead a cash shop, needs to keep the cash shop fresh with a stream of new items. Of course this means as time passes the number of items that got introduced becomes huge.

In the end, it doesn’t matter that old ones are forgotten as long as the new items keep the cash flowing into the store. Old ones can be pulled and brought back for a limited time and “seems” new, especially for those players that haven’t been here since the beginning.

Somebody pointed out to me today that we went from a holiday slot, a booster, and two slots with random items to a holiday slot, two slots with common items and a chance at another slot with uncommon, rare and super rare items. By that analysis all we lost was the booster and it’s slot.

Sure we also had all the uncommon, rare and super rare items shunted onto their own wheel/slot that has a chance to come up rather than them showing up in either of the two slots. As long as the general drop rate is the same then it’s a wash.

Interesting notion. However since the purpose of chests is to sell keys, promoting chests, a “cheap” item will only accomplish a reduction of keys needs, keys ANet wants to sell players for cold hard cash.

Never got more than 200 ToT bags in an hour while in the leading edge of a large zerg with a multi-target 1 skill tagging everything in sight.

And yes, ToT bags are more valuable unopened if you intend on selling their contents.

But you’re missing the point OP. They are suppose to be so awesome looking that people will spend real money to buy gems to spend them on keys to get one. It’s a “reward” for supporting ANet.

Problem is there use to be a 2nd major source of keys, key farming now nerfed to once a week. These “free” keys undoubtedly led to many of the skins that were sold on the TP but now that source is all but gone, the more popular BL skins are becoming extinct.

Then there’s the issue with the exchange, it’s been “smarter” for a long time now to convert gems to gold and buy the skin you want off the TP rather than facing RNG bought keys, at the previous drop rate for tickets and scraps.

That’s why I think we’re seeing this “new” BL chest. Ticket scraps look to be dropping even more frequent than before, so a better chance that 25 keys yield at least 10 scraps. Combine that with the chance of getting skins directly from the rare and super rare BL sets, there is also a chance to get a random BL skin (doesn’t include the most recent) unlocked from the Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock Ticket.

That’s my two copper.

I haven’t finished the bandit ones yet. Nor any of the the other “current events” that have been introduced since March? Don’t remember. Got a lot partially done but not any one event fully, yet.

As for the Mordrem in the Iron Marches. As long as LWS2 has portions of the episodes in the open world, they have to be there.

When you get a daily gather in a region like Kryta, the using home instance nodes will count toward the daily. Just like synthesizer nodes in your Guild Halls count tower “Heart of Maguma” daily gather.

Candy Corn counts as “ore”.

You can save a little bit of coin usually by crafting items like damask or deldrimor but you can bypass the time gate crafting ascended mats by buying them.

To see how much you might be saving you can use the crafting calculator at GW2 Efficiency .

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/46739-Elonian-Leather-Square
https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/46741-Bolt-of-Damask
https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/46738-Deldrimor-Steel-Ingot
https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/calculator/46736-Spiritwood-Plank

The first slot was always suppose to be a booster in the previous iteration, which I thought has been that way for well over a year. Before that I believe it was a mystery tonic (beast) or maybe the time before that.

But they’ve tried to change up the standard drops from the chests several times in the past so it’s quite possible I’m not remembering the time when that happened or it was a very rare occurrence.

The first slot was NEVER a random reward but a random booster.

Electromagnetic Ascender I think. One of the game’s pseudo mounts. Electromagnetic Descender is the glider.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Behellagh.1468:

Manasa Devi.7958:

We are now more likely to get the common items. It used to be possible to get no common items (except for the booster). Now, you always (yes always!) get 2 common items.

We don’t know that’s true because we had no idea what the various drop rates were in the old chests. All we knew was that either slot seemed be able to drop any rarity but not what the rarity was other than what got crowd sourced.

The chance to get at least one common item in the 2nd and 3rd slots was less than 100%. I know this from experience. In fact, one of my last pre-patch chests had a ticket scrap in both 2nd and 3rd slots.

Now, we have a chance of exactly 100% to get one common item in those slots.

Going from less than 100%, regardless of the actual number, to exactly 100%, that means, as I stated, that we are now more likely to get a common item. So likely in fact that we’ll always at least get one.

But now with have a 10%? chance of getting a 4th slot that is uncommon/rare or super rare. That’s where they shunted those drops to. So like Overwatch or Hearthstone which telegraphs rarity with color before the item is revealed, if you see a 4th slot on a chest as it’s opening, you know you got something that wasn’t common. Before, you had no idea unless you’ve open tons of chests or look up crowd sourced and possibly unreliable drop rate data the rarity you got from a chest.

I agree the guaranteed seasonal item is a disappointment. But I have half a bank tab of boosters that I rarely use, including boosters long since pulled. I can at least sell the ToT bag.

Manasa Devi.7958:

We are now more likely to get the common items. It used to be possible to get no common items (except for the booster). Now, you always (yes always!) get 2 common items.

We don’t know that’s true because we had no idea what the various drop rates were in the old chests. All we knew was that either slot seemed be able to drop any rarity but not what the rarity was other than what got crowd sourced.

Djinn.9245:

Behellagh.1468:

Djinn.9245:

Behellagh.1468:

This is the first time in the history of the BL Chests that we know with absolute certainty what drops in the 1st slot as well as which of six items can drop in the 2nd and which of six items can drop in the 3rd. We also know there is a fix chance for a 4th slot with the uncommon/rare/super rare item, from a published list of items, and that account bound dups will transform into keys.

Not strictly accurate. You don’t know what list will be used for the 2nd or 3rd slots. It could be the Common for all 3 slots as we have seen from many reports of what people have received. And this is the issue for many of us: if there is the possibility of 3 items from the Common list, we don’t want one of those possibly-useless items to be an item that it’s almost impossible to AVOID getting in game they are so common. At least boosters were something that didn’t end up in my inventory every other second. I’m not going to pay money for a chest that 1/3 of the contents is something that common.

I, and most other people I’ve seen, aren’t saying all items in the chest need to be great, or not-Common, its just silly for us to pay money for something it costs us no effort to get in-game.

But we do. Look at the preview of what you find in the chests and look at the Commons section.

First item in the first row is the guaranteed seasonal item. The remaining six items on the first row are the “convenience item” that shows up in the 2nd slot. The 2nd row contains the six items that “will progress your account in some way” which shows up in the 3rd slot. It’s very apparent if you watch vids of players opening the new chests.

I see what you’re saying but I’m not sure what your point is. We’re still just as likely to get the Common items as we were before – they just gave us the preview so those who are easily tempted could see the Uncommon and Rare items that they aren’t likely to get.

You said we don’t know what drops in the 2nd and 3rd slot. My point is we do.

Djinn.9245:

Behellagh.1468:

This is the first time in the history of the BL Chests that we know with absolute certainty what drops in the 1st slot as well as which of six items can drop in the 2nd and which of six items can drop in the 3rd. We also know there is a fix chance for a 4th slot with the uncommon/rare/super rare item, from a published list of items, and that account bound dups will transform into keys.

Not strictly accurate. You don’t know what list will be used for the 2nd or 3rd slots. It could be the Common for all 3 slots as we have seen from many reports of what people have received. And this is the issue for many of us: if there is the possibility of 3 items from the Common list, we don’t want one of those possibly-useless items to be an item that it’s almost impossible to AVOID getting in game they are so common. At least boosters were something that didn’t end up in my inventory every other second. I’m not going to pay money for a chest that 1/3 of the contents is something that common.

I, and most other people I’ve seen, aren’t saying all items in the chest need to be great, or not-Common, its just silly for us to pay money for something it costs us no effort to get in-game.

But we do. Look at the preview of what you find in the chests and look at the Commons section.

First item in the first row is the guaranteed seasonal item. The remaining six items on the first row are the “convenience item” that shows up in the 2nd slot. The 2nd row contains the six items that “will progress your account in some way” which shows up in the 3rd slot. It’s very apparent if you watch vids of players opening the new chests.

Black Lion Chests were ALWAYS from the very beginning, a gem shop sampler with a chance of a higher value gem shop item. That’s why the notion the player base got that somehow they are required to have something of significant value in them is weird to me.

This is the first time in the history of the BL Chests that we know with absolute certainty what drops in the 1st slot as well as which of six items can drop in the 2nd and which of six items can drop in the 3rd. We also know there is a fix chance for a 4th slot with the uncommon/rare/super rare item, from a published list of items, and that account bound dups will transform into keys.

If with all this knowledge you still get annoyed with what you got from opening up X chests, then that’s on you mate.

I’ve always argued that one person’s “junk” is another person’s useful utility item.

Usually those who keep using “junk” when referring to the common drops from BL Chests either didn’t understand the “gem store sampler” concept behind chests from their introduction before BL tickets/scraps or expect every chest to include some highly valuable item they could sell, which if true that item would no longer be highly valuable.

Correction (of my previous now deleted post). The two intermediate steps are account bound but the final precursor can be traded. But I believe you can only craft one of each precursor unless this got changed recently.

GW2Efficiency’s craft’s page on precursor/legendary crafting shows you the crafting price relative to the TP price.

https://gw2efficiency.com/crafting/legendaries

Ticket scraps were common before but the drop rate now seems higher.

You can preview what the chest could give you, not what it has other than the 1st slot seasonal item.

We do know what of six items and drop in each of the other two slots. And we know the uncommon, rare and super rare will only drop in the occasional 4th slot which may be a 10% chance of getting.

Now if none of that floats your boat, then don’t buy keys. If you farm a key a week to see if you get lucky, great. But this transparency is a mark up from a crowd sourced list of what’s available and if it’s common, uncommon, rare or super rare.

There are many festivals so Wintersday, Lunar New Year, SAB. I’m just hoping whatever else will be sellable or easily converted to coin. Not sure what that would be during non-festival season.

Well I think the changes are to make them more rewarding for players who already or use to buy chests and were growing tired by the 99% similar drops. Now you can get a chance of one skin from two currently unavailable BL weapon sets.

While the 4th slot in the chest will look like a “win” the common Guaranteed Wardrobe Unlock could be a new common favorite drop. Downside of that item is if you don’t have all the “easy” and “cheap” wardrobe items, you could get what would be a couple silver unlock Vs a 10s or 100s of gold skin unlock.

In the end I think this BL Chest change is more geared to the occasional player with cash than the daily player.

No path to quick money.

Charrbeque.8729:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/2016-11-01#Improvements

Every chest contains a guaranteed seasonal item that will change regularly.
Every chest contains a convenience item.
Every chest contains an item that will progress your account in some way.

They’ve completely undone everything with ticket scrap drops. On at least 1 or more occasions in the past they’ve increased the drop rate of ticket scraps in black lion chests because players complained it was too hard to get the black lion weapon skins.

This is the reason why people here are saying the drop rate was reduced by quite a lot. A single ticket scrap takes up 1 of the 3 item slots in the chest, meaning, before this update you could get up to 3 ticket scraps from 1 black lion chest.

But, now the slots are specifically set to give you specific items. 1 slot is for a seasonal item (ToT bags right now), 1 slot for convenience item, and 1 slot for an advancement item (such as a tome of knowledge).

I’m not sure what type ticket scraps (convenience or advancement), but it takes up 1 slot in the chest while the other 2 are reserved for other categories. This means that no matter how many chests you open, you’ll only get 1 black lion claim ticket at most from any single chest, thus decreasing the drop rate by quite a lot. The same is true for anything else, where we had up to 3 chances per chest to get an item, now we just have 1.

I don’t like the idea of being guaranteed to get specific types of items because overall it reduces your chances of getting anything good.

They couldn’t have dropped 3 scraps because the first item was always a booster.

The unlock will unlock just about anything you don’t have in your wardrobe, including minis, dyes, mail carriers and finishers. Exceptions being recent BL Weapon, exotic, ascended or legendary skins.

This unlock is a common that can appear in the 3rd slot and is one of six items that can appear there, (BL Mini claim ticket, Tome of Knowledge, Unidentified Dye, Toy Mini Egg, Guarantee Wardrobe Unlock, Black Lion Scrap).

You can see what it could drop for you if you preview the black lion chest and then preview the Unlock found in the 2nd row of common drops.

Sorry, didn’t mean to be so harsh. It’s just there’s a lot of forum hate for lock boxes and too many think it’s a the path for quick gold rather than a fun thing to do on occasion. So I deleted that post.

I have to agree that the ToT bag isn’t a positive. But they wanted something they could change frequently, that doesn’t break the TP or fill your bank with what some call “more useless junk”.

The other items in the first row of common are the “convenience item” and the second row in commons are the “progress your account in some way” item. If you are going to pull tomes, what would you replace them with? Also not everybody gets tons of tombs. Sure I get 8-10 a week but I know many people who barely get any because they aren’t here daily or frequent WvW or PvP or acquire enough writs from doing dailies to convert.

Question is who buys keys? Is the greater number of keys bought by those who don’t play frequently or those who do? If it’s players who can only play a day or two a week, then it’s a good reward.

And I’m going to repeat the apparent organization of the preview.

1st item in the 1st row of common is the seasonal item in the 1st slot.
2nd – 7th in the 1st row of common are the items that will appear in the 2nd slot.
The 2nd row of common are the items that will appear in the 3rd slot.

Uncommon, Rare and Super Rare will drop in the random 4th slot with looks to be around 10%, data still to early to nail it down. If you get a duplicate bound on acquire item here that you already have, it will be converted into a key.

At least we know for certainty what’s in the pool and their “chance” classification as oppose to gathering data and guessing at it.

From what I’ve seen reported, it looks as if the “bonus” fourth slot is in the 10% range.

At least with the preview we get to see what’s being offered and know what chance pool each item falls in.

No, just if you listen to the forums and make decisions based on it, you might make one group happy but likely tick off another.

I love how the community wants it both ways. There’s one faction that said boosters were overvalued and worthless drops from BL Chests. Now that they replace it with a seasonal item, you have another faction saying that boosters were useful and are worth the 100ish gems.

CMM.6712:

tot bag , transmute charge, ticket scrap

not the worst ever… the tot bag is a kick in the _ _ _ _ _ though

Use to be a booster. Rarely saw anybody jump up and down about a booster. At least you can sell ToT bags.

Plus it’s looking like the 2nd slot is first row of common and the 2rd slot is 2nd row common and if you get a 4th slot, it’s uncommon/rare/super rare.

I just clicked on support and got there as the old link from google didn’t work.

List of differences. If you upgrade to a paid account there isn’t anything extra to download.

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/230165307-Account-types-Free-Core-HoT

Edit: Okay, they made the support site different. Font is a bit on the large side.

Shaaba.5672:

I guess my major gripe is that if I want to gear up a leather wearing toon, it is much more expensive than similarly gearing up a heavy armor toon. It seems to me that there shouldn’t be a supply hurdle in such a basic function of the game. It kind of shuts down that whole ‘play how you want’ theme they try to promote. If it was just as expensive/time intensive to get the same building blocks for a metal suit of armor, I wouldn’t feel that it’s so imbalanced.

I just went through this when deciding which toon to focus on next. My first thought was druid, then I looked at my leather stores and went with mesmer instead because it was less of a hassle.

And before the change to inscription recipes to include leather, light armor was more expensive than both medium and heavy and only light classes were complaining. So they “fixed” that. But since the mats for heavy can be widely farmed, unlike leather and cloth, it will always be the cheapest.

mauried.5608:

Theres no such thing as a reasonable price for anything.
Reasonable is a totally subjective term and is differant for every player.
The market as it stands is working exactly as it should.
The price is simply being set by supply / demand economics, and over the 3 days over 3000 Mcs have been traded.
Thats roughly 10% of the total MCs available to buy.
If the price was unreasonable or too high then no one would be buying, and the sellers would have to drop their prices.
There is nothing that needs fixing, which is exactly what Anet is saying.
All MMOs over time suffer from inflation in the price of commodities that get bought and sold, simply because of the infinite resource supply, but this game is by far one of the better ones at controlling the inflation rate.

As I said earlier, GW2BLTC tries to estimate the actual amount traded in the last 24 hours by examining the changes in the bid/ask lists every 5 minutes and sum up differences. They estimate currently that in the last 24 hours that 8400 were bought immediately and 4400 were sold immediately. Also that 8500 new MC were put up for sale and 9300 new bids. Now I may not trust the sold immediate number as much, because it costs nothing to place a bid, as the bought immediate number but I will say that even the 8400 bought immediate number shows a healthy volume of trades.

Certainly one of the most time consuming but each giant is relatively easy with a few other players helping.

I would lean toward the diving googles because the Not So Secret JP. I’m terrible at even simple JP so having one I have to do over and over again only to get to a set of googles to jump into a pool of water you can’t see while avoiding pipes on the way down … and then the waypoint is pretty far away, it’s really difficult for me.

Supply is only one side of the equation. Without equal demand for each type, the price will be all over the place.

The notion that everybody should be able to get all their mats in a reasonable amount of time simply by farming zones eliminates the entire notion of an economy because everything will be in excess and prices will be so low you will eliminate the need for a TP. You will be selling everything for a few copper and silver because we will all be drowning in it.

Could be worse … could have needed new minis from ToT bags and the MF.

Wanze.8410:

Behellagh.1468:

Amaimon.7823:

mauried.5608:

Theres currently 37800 MC for sale on the TP.
Doesnt sound like a shortage of coins to me.

37800/150 = 252 people can craft a legendary weapon at one time if they don’t rely on the meager personal income. I dunno, how big is the player base of GW2 at the moment? and this is just for the legendary weapons. Then there’s guild halls, recipes, mystic weapons etcetc

GW2BLTC tries to estimate the number of items sold based on the getting detailed stats every 5 minutes. Now according to it, it appears that over 4500 MC were sold from the supply side and 6500 put up for sale in the last 24 hours. There are also numbers for coins sold immediately but since there isn’t a posting fee, I’m not as sure about them. It lists 4700 sold immediately.

You pay a listing fee, even if you sell directly.

Badly worded on my part. I was commenting on GW2BLTC’s estimated volume of sales over the last 24 hours and my confidence on the count on items bought from the low seller Vs those sold to the high bidder.

Since sellers pay a fee to post an item for sale, when we see the low ask tick up it is much more likely that the item was sold than the seller pulling it and eating the fee.

Since bidders pay nothing to post a bid, when we see the high bid tick down, we can’t be as sure if it was due to an immediate sale or the high bidder pulling their bid.

Amaimon.7823:

mauried.5608:

Theres currently 37800 MC for sale on the TP.
Doesnt sound like a shortage of coins to me.

37800/150 = 252 people can craft a legendary weapon at one time if they don’t rely on the meager personal income. I dunno, how big is the player base of GW2 at the moment? and this is just for the legendary weapons. Then there’s guild halls, recipes, mystic weapons etcetc

GW2BLTC tries to estimate the number of items sold based on the getting detailed stats every 5 minutes. Now according to it, it appears that over 4500 MC were sold from the supply side and 6500 put up for sale in the last 24 hours. There are also numbers for coins sold immediately but since there isn’t a posting fee for those placing bids, I’m not as sure about this number, it lists 4700 sold immediately, than I am about the number bought immediately.

Edited to be clear.

juno.1840:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I don’t get it… the graph you showed has MC’s having a very stable supply and demand over a full year of time. The price has not reached equilibrium yet since people continue to hoard coins instead of sell them. This will stop when they reach correct market value and the number of people selling them equals the number of people buying them.

If the price is rising that means people have more money they wish to spend then they do coins. This seems to be functioning exactly like it is supposed to. With a nearly constant supply over a years time people clear have coins to sell so I don’t see the “problem”?

Clearly there is/was a problem, otherwise ANet wouldn’t have announced a change in behavior.

Is it a change in behavior or simply informing the player base that they aren’t going to intervene so don’t bother waiting for it?

9 times out of 10 when they do step in it’s to slash over supply on the TP. The only time I can remember them creating a substantial source of an under supply material was allowing ectos to be salvaged into T6 dust.

Cristalyan.5728:

Well, it seems that a lot of posters do not read the title of this debate. This is: ‘the market will fix itself’. What means “itself”? It means (in my opinion) – without any external intervention, by the normal flow of resources / no artificial barriers.

Now: “The real failure here is with players that invent their own indicators of what ‘good behaviour’ in the market is” - well, in my opinion this is one indicator of a free market, without external interventions. The players will try “their own indicators” – if the indicators are accurate they will be used by more players. If the indicators are false/bad, they will be abandoned. So, in my opinion, this is not a failure. Is a sign that the players took J.S seriously when he said ANet will not interfere with the market for a while. BTW – if ANet really wants to leave the market to freely evolve, that means the ANet indicators used until now are absolete. So, new indicators should be invented by the players.

“Anet must feel that at this point, for whatever reason, they don’t need to babysit the market anymore, so they aren’t.” - indeed, indeed, indeed. Agree, agree, agree ! Unfortunately, ANet do not agree. And instead of letting the baby to grow, they still interfere in the educational process. Controlling the amount of MC delivered on the game – no matter if MC are enough or not / the supply is greater or lower than the demand – is a contradiction with J.S statement that ANet will not interfere anymore with the market. With other words we can have here 2 possible situations:
1. The statement of J. S was a lie, an attempt to pull the wool over the players eyes, OR
2. The statement was a sincere one but someone else in the game staff decided that this control over MC should be maintained – and this is against what J.S said (and if what he said is not a lie, is against the health of the game economy)

And lastly:
“There is no caveat … MC’s will adjust to the price they should be based on supply and demand

Taking into account that the supply is strictly determined by ANet, that means the MC will adjust the price according to ANet will. This is a perfect example of a “free market, without any external intrusion”

Following this example of a “free market” we can say that the North Korean market is a free one, at least on the same level with the GW2 market.

First the supply was always at the whim of ANet, you never could just go out and farm for MC. The only agency the player had was deciding to do the daily and monthly or not which used up play time. Now the bar is significantly lower as only logging in is required. They only options now is doing the Mystic Forge daily if it’s available and introduced recently the anomaly event but that spawns only once every two hours and is dependent on when you are playing and for how long and if you are free when it does spawn.

I think the issue is a macro versus micro point of view. Now I’m going out on a limb here and suggest that game wide the amount of MC being injected into the game is roughly the amount being consumed by the MF before the change in acquisition method. And from a game wide, 10,000 meter perspective all is well. However from the player’s perspective the amount of MC they are getting is significantly less for the time they play the game. To them it feels like a shortage as if they did every daily and monthly before they got a bit over 600 a year. Now it’s only 260 (plus the optional ones). If someone only played on the weekend but was able to do the monthly before, they were still able to earn 340ish a year, now it’s around 70.

From the average player perspective it went from a nuisance amount where you would sell off excess without a 2nd thought to not even thinking about selling it. Where before selling excess to clean up your personal inventory space wasn’t an issue if the price was stable, it will only cost you around the same amount to get back what you sold, remember there was a glut on the TP which kept the price very low. But a 30-40x increase in TP price in less than two years, nobody will sell any if they think there’s even a chance they may need some in the future. And that positive feedback loop will just exacerbate the situation.

The problem now is that there isn’t a “good” way to let air out of this bubble without bursting it. ANet’s solution is not to be the one with the pin but let the bubble pop on it’s own. Problem is the bubble bursting isn’t going to fix the problem but simply reset the price and the cycle will start all over again.

Takes 3 days, listed in the fine print.

I like the grasping black spectral hands coming out of the ground when you stand still.

First, by check out I mean leave the game.

Second the game’s economy is designed around the fact that most players will not get what they need from loot drops, resource gathering or other activities which forces them to the TP with it’s gold sink.

Third for any item to have value, it has to have some degree of scarcity. Basically more demand than new supply entering the economy, specifically supply being sold on the TP.

As for Laurels, they’re an account bound currency, not a crafting material traded on the TP.

MC have always been tied to a loyalty reward system as the primary source. Do dailies, do monthlies, login daily. It wasn’t like you could farm them. And as a loyalty reward I doubt they will ever stop this “charity”.

Report and block. Content drops like Living Story Episodes and regular Festivals bring them out of the woodwork.

Just saw the GTX 1050 and 1050TI reviews. The GTX 1050 is only a touch slower than the GTX 960 for a MSRP of $110! That’s crazy. And the 1050TI is 20% faster than the 1050.

From scratch maybe. But that’s unlikely.