Guild Wars 2

Beat me to it. I assume it was KongZhong’s dime because we all know Guild Wars 2 doesn’t advertise in the west anymore.

Awfully tall, naked Asura. Or is it the proto-Asura that was blogged about way back when?

Woot?

I’m honestly surprised.

There’s an interesting story on ArsTechnica on how Wildstar is bucking the trend of making MMOs more accessible as a way to save MMOs from the F2P death spiral. That difficult gameplay is the key to get a returning player since when they do win, the win is more satisfying.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/06/impressions-wildstar-revels-in-its-old-school-mmorpg-rigidity/

I know there’s been several threads advocating making the game tougher, this is the first time I’ve seen an article stating why that may be a good thing.

For an $80 unlocked dual core, it should rock the game when overclocked.

I’ve not seen anything indicating that ANet is working on making the game work better on the AMD FX class of cores.

Chase.8415:

Behellagh.1468:

Chase.8415:

PS4 and XBOX are x86, the same processing used in home computers. It would be easy to port it into the console, the only issues is the updating restrictions set by Sony and Microsoft, they would also have to pay extra money to them to grant the ability to use the service online without PS+ and Live.

ugdup.2371:

Guild Wars is a game that requires a mouse and a keyboard to be played properly.
It wouldn’t work on console.

Diablo is a hack and slash click to move based game, the entire game was designed to be played with mostly just your mouse… and they released that on the consoles and some people argue it is superior to the PC versions.

Guild Wars coming to console would be easy to implement, there’s only 10 skills. The difficult part would be redesigning the interface to work with controllers.

Wrong. The new consoles may be x86 but they are considerably less powerful than your average PC. The game currently uses only 2-3 significant threads which means additional cores aren’t helpful but fast cores are. Due to the slow clock speed of the cores in the next-gen consoles their per core performance is painfully low, 25% slower than the cores in the old Core 2 Q6600. A “simple” port wouldn’t work since CPU core performance is everything once you get into mobs of other players.

Could it be possible if they started with a cross platform game engine from one of the big game engine companies? Maybe. UE has been used in some MMOs already. Same with the CryEngine. But it’s something you don’t decide to do later, you have to go in with cross platform development on day 1 otherwise it’s like adding more floors to a bottom of a skyscraper.

Where are you pulling “less powerful” than current PC’s right now?

The average graphic card right now is the Intel HD 4000/5000. This is because they are included with the processor so its cheaper for laptop manufacturers to use it. They are also powerful enough to run modern games on medium settings, including Guild Wars 2.

Also Final Fantasy ARR runs at full speed on max settings on the Playstation 4. Integrated graphics could not handle that.

ugdup.2371:

Chase.8415:

PS4 and XBOX are x86, the same processing used in home computers. It would be easy to port it into the console, the only issues is the updating restrictions set by Sony and Microsoft, they would also have to pay extra money to them to grant the ability to use the service online without PS+ and Live.

ugdup.2371:

Guild Wars is a game that requires a mouse and a keyboard to be played properly.
It wouldn’t work on console.

Diablo is a hack and slash click to move based game, the entire game was designed to be played with mostly just your mouse… and they released that on the consoles and some people argue it is superior to the PC versions.

Guild Wars coming to console would be easy to implement, there’s only 10 skills. The difficult part would be redesigning the interface to work with controllers.

Diablo III was designed to work for consoles since the very beginning. They had it planned from the start.

And so was Guild Wars 2, you can actually find controller buttons in the interface hidden in the data files since the beta. Diablo 3 is obviously a game designed for a mouse, they ported it perfectly for the console.

Because the XBone and PS4 essentially contains two Athlon 5350, well the CPU portion, the GPU is more like an HD 7790 (XBone) or an HD 7870 (PS4). So on the CPU side of the equation, each core is slower than the cores found in the 1st generation Intel Core 2 CPUs from 2006. It’s just there are eight of them and if you code your game knowing you have X number of weak cores you can still make a game awesome.

However as I stated GW2 only has a few CPU intensive sections that can only use a few cores. The extra cores don’t help. Also the drop in framerate players are seeing in WvW and Boss events is due to CPU and not GPU. You could have a nVidia Titan and you will still see a drop in those instances while the GPU % load is barely breaking a sweat.

And again if you know going into production that your game will be cross platform, you take that into account in your design. But if you start with “dual core required, quad would be better running a Dx9c video card on XP” you aren’t looking to make a rendering engine that scales across n cores. A development that went from 3 to 5 years isn’t going to go back and work in newer driver technologies or 64-bit or any of the advancements a company that sells their game engine would, like CryEngine or Source or Unreal Engine. And they do have console support.

Yes. Almost the entire delay while zoning I’m seeing a major uptick in drive reads, several hundred megs. Between the slow seeks and 100MB/s max transfer rate of conventional hard drives, SSDs easily double if not triple transfer rates and reduces seek times by a factor of 100. Coupled together you are talking 5-10x faster.

Plus during play there is constant minor drive activity and again the speed improvement of an SSD will make sure the game isn’t stalling significantly waiting for data from the drive.

They were last available in March. It’s only been 3 months.

You set small goals. Today I’m going to explore this zone. Conquer that JP. Get that achievement. Along the way you may get drawn into DEs, rez fallen players, gather mats, etc.

Chase.8415:

PS4 and XBOX are x86, the same processing used in home computers. It would be easy to port it into the console, the only issues is the updating restrictions set by Sony and Microsoft, they would also have to pay extra money to them to grant the ability to use the service online without PS+ and Live.

ugdup.2371:

Guild Wars is a game that requires a mouse and a keyboard to be played properly.
It wouldn’t work on console.

Diablo is a hack and slash click to move based game, the entire game was designed to be played with mostly just your mouse… and they released that on the consoles and some people argue it is superior to the PC versions.

Guild Wars coming to console would be easy to implement, there’s only 10 skills. The difficult part would be redesigning the interface to work with controllers.

Wrong. The new consoles may be x86 but they are considerably less powerful than your average PC. The game currently uses only 2-3 significant threads which means additional cores aren’t helpful but fast cores are. Due to the slow clock speed of the cores in the next-gen consoles their per core performance is painfully low, 25% slower than the cores in the old Core 2 Q6600. A “simple” port wouldn’t work since CPU core performance is everything once you get into mobs of other players.

Could it be possible if they started with a cross platform game engine from one of the big game engine companies? Maybe. UE has been used in some MMOs already. Same with the CryEngine. But it’s something you don’t decide to do later, you have to go in with cross platform development on day 1 otherwise it’s like adding more floors to a bottom of a skyscraper.

Game uses it’s own browser, doesn’t matter what you use.

PC or Mac? If PC try this.

Cutting and pasting

Try this.

Honestly needs to be a sticky.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Tabs-in-Gem-Store-not-loading/3739993

Didn’t the permanent pass for 1000 gems just popped up again at the Gem Shop?

checking news

Yep, it is.

Wall

of

text

Please if you want people to read what you write, throw in some blank lines.

Zaxares.5419:

But don’t they fundamentally come from the same source? Gems on the gem exchange were initially created when a player bought them with cash, and then sold them on the exchange. I can see your distinction, but it seems to be just a matter of how you’re looking at it.

The exchange was initially seeded with a huge amount of gems, according to JS. Since then gems are created when cash is paid, whether or not they are then destroyed in the Gem Shop or sold to the exchange for gold.

Not surprising that’s their is two (or more) camps of thought on the game’s economy. Ever been in a room of economists?

As much as I agree with you tolunart, I disagree that the original seed of gems have been exhausted and we are only trading on player bought gems now. I would expect greater swings though the day if that was true.

laokoko.7403:

Behellagh.1468:

The rate isn’t the same because the exchange takes 15% of gold going into and out of the exchange. That’s why the Gem->Gold is 72.25%, or 85% x 85%, of the Gold ->Gem rate. It discourages market players from playing the exchange over the short term.

and Anet just want your money. Having a different price means people get less from buying gold, so they’ll have to spend more real cash.

Quite honestly, some people want Anet to look good, so they come up with various reason(stop inflation, stop people from flipping). But the button line is Anet want your money, and people are complaining they have to pay real money or grind more gold.

You make it seem like ANet takes your fake gold to fill their fake gold vaults so they can go fake swimming in it during lunch.

The exchange is a solution to the problem of setting up an official $$ to gold supplier without the problems of creating gold from nothing for those willing to pay. The “cost” to ANet is selling cash shop items for free to players willing to fund the RMT setup. It also allows players to buy items from the gem shop who would never if it wasn’t free. The hope being that once accustomed to it, a situation will come up that a player would finally drop some cash for once to get something they want.

A cash shop business model doesn’t require a lot of players paying, just those who can and don’t have some reason not to.

The purpose for each of these currencies is to allow only players who participate in a particular activity to get rewards available only to those who participate.

You want “that” dungeon armor, then do that dungeon. You want “that” WvW armor, do WvW. Etc.

If everything is gold or a shared currency for a type of activity like dungeons, then players can choose an easier event to accumulate currency to purchase items currently available from doing a much tougher event. This will drive the skill=exclusive reward players through the roof.

You can’t just do open world PvE and expect to be able to get all rewards available from all aspects of the game. Having rewards tied to specific activities that aren’t required for general gameplay is perfectly fine. I’m actually disappointed that they backtracked from this philosophy with PvP (I’m not a PvP player).

The rate isn’t the same because the exchange takes 15% of gold going into and out of the exchange. That’s why the Gem→Gold is 72.25%, or 85% x 85%, of the Gold →Gem rate. It discourages market players from playing the exchange over the short term.

Mystic.5934:

gems are for all intents and purposes infinite. JS describes it as finite because it makes math easier. anyways, the price is related to how many gems are left in the reservoir. So until the price increases exponentially, we aren’t running out anytime soon. by ‘exponentially’, I mean you buy 1 gem with 100g and the price goes up to 200g.

So you don’t consider the conversion rate increasing roughly 4x in 12 months, 2x in the last 8 months or 25% in the last month as portent of an ever quicker escalation in price? So you think Gem to Gold conversion will step up before it hits 45g per 100 gems at Christmas?

Use can air to blow out your CPU and GPU heat sinks. Clean the case fans as well. Make sure the vents in the case aren’t being blocked.

Shouldn’t have to say it but you do this with the system powered down.

… sigh …

It’s not a video card problem. The game only generates enough work for two to three cores so an eight core CPU like your’s doesn’t help the game’s performance.

Now because there are only really 2-3 main threads and since a thread can perform more work than what a single core can deliver, the game likes CPUs with high performance cores. The FX-9370 isn’t one of those. The FX core architecture is built around the idea of lots of slower performing cores to help with heavily multithreaded tasks. That’s why it does “all right” in benchmarks like Cinebench or software video compression when compared to Intel.

The game also bogs down when the number of players near you goes up. So boss events, WvW, hanging around cities (which have additional issues) all slows the frame rate over what you will see wandering alone in the frozen north.

If you put up a screen grab of your graphic settings in game, we might be able to point out a couple of things you could try. Other things like using GPU-Z to confirm the video card is using the full PCIe width. Use a utility to track CPU temp and clock rate to see if it’s throttling due to high temps. Just tossing out ideas here to eliminate hardware issues.

Nerelith.7360:

Not sure why you decided to respond to me, since I never said Buying Gold from a third party was a good idea. Your response seems to indicate that i advocated it.

No I’m responding to the notion that buying gems and converting them into gold is Pay 2 Win, the point you made. If buying gold is Pay 2 Win then buying gold from any source including RMT sites would count as P2W therefore every game that ever had their currency available from a RMT site would be P2W.

Secondly, I am not talking about NEW DR. I am talking about ANY DR.

But that’s a dead horse you’re beating. Nothing new here so why dredge it up again? DR allows the player who isn’t pumping one type of content full rewards while “encouraging” those who are to shove off and do something else for a while. Or did you forget those players devoted to running CoF 1 exclusively. Or players getting ticked because someone other than they dared to kill a critter from “their” farm?

Thirdly: I am not saying REPLACE the TP with a Trade Window. I am saying that many games, include a Trade Window so players can deal with one another directly. That it is an option with MANY games. Along with their versions of the TP, they allow players to completely avoid the TP by letting them trade directly. Here, Players cannot. Here, they MUST trade through the TP, where Anet takes a huge cut.

I noticed you Included a way for Anetr to also get a cut of any trades through a trade window. Why must Anet have their hand in these trades as well? Why must it get a cut?

Lastly You did Not mention CoD in mail. This is also a way that Playrers have always used to deal and trade with one another without going through the TP.

Why must the TP be the ONLY way that players can buy and sell from one another? Could it be the huge cut Anet takes from each and every trade?

There are other games that have all three ways for players to trade with one another. A TP, Trade windows without the parent company taking a cut, and mails with CoD without the company taking a cut. And they don’t have Inflation issues.

Why is it other companies can do it without having to monopolize , and tax every monetary interaction between players?

In almost every other MMO I have ever played…The TP or it’s equivalent is there, to conveninece the player. The Player is given other options to deal and trade. In THIS one… Not so much.

I never said you were asking to replace the current TP, just question why should we have one, which you didn’t answer. And no “because others have it” isn’t a good reason. Why do you want a player trade window? What does it get you? Is it only to avoid the TP tax? Do you want to sell for less? Do you want to be sure to not sell to players you dislike or on another server (your WvW most hated foe)? Explain why?

And the TP tax is there to sink some of the gold that is flowing into the game. Otherwise players will accumulate gold faster which will lead to general inflation. I’ve seen what happens in MMOs where the gold taps are wide open and there isn’t enough sinks to stem the rising money supply. That’s why I included it in the player to player trade UI. If you don’t we will really start to see inflation and not what some are mistaking as inflation. The only other alternative is to reduce rewards further.

And COD as you call it is totally buyer beware. It’s Craigslist in a bad neighborhood. If you get ripped off, don’t come crying to ANet because you just wanted to avoid the TP tax. If you want to sell to a trusted friend, the mail system does work right now.

Investigating this further I noticed that the Gem Shop history does not track bank tabs bought in game, I’ve never bought bag slots. Now since I never bought them directly from the Gem Shop, I don’t know if the Shop’s history tracks those either. Which would definitely be the problem.

If direct purchases in game don’t get tracked, then that’s the problem. I’m not saying it’s not a bug but I don’t think they want the Gem Shop to dive into player’s game database just to make all the sums correct.

It’s not a statue, it’s a Charr tank.

Thundercharr Ho!

No it doesn’t, it simply remembers the last X number of things you bought. If it has a limited history then it can’t reliably look back and determine a total. That history is kept in the store’s database of you. Still can’t look into your account.

The reason why if you try to buy tabs of bag slots in either the bank or inventory screen and have it tell you that you can’t buy anymore is because the game database does know exactly how many limited items you have and can sanity check it before launching the store UI to complete the sale. Once you are in the TP window, that’s an entirely different program and different databases.

Nerelith.7360:

Behellagh.1468:

Now since nothing in our Gem Shop is better gear, the comparison to D3 doesn’t hold. It’s a straight up cash shop with a proxy currency that’s no different than XBox points.

Just have to disagree with you there. You say that nothing in the Gem store is better gear.

What is the difference between Using cash to then buy better gear, and using cash to buy gems, that you then use to buy Gold, that you then use on the tp to buy better gear?

To me , selling Gold, is borderline Pay2win. And the saddest part is, the devs now have a conflict of interest.

And the difference in buying gold from an illicit RMT site is …? By your definition then every MMO that a RMT site supported is Pay 2 Win. The difference here is that ANet’s service gives you less gold for your dollar while letting players using the other side of the exchange to use gold to buy cash shop items.

When handling the economy, they can make changes that improve the economy, or…improve their Gem – gold conversions.

Maybe sometimes they MIGHT be the same exact thing. But what happens when improving the economy might lead to less gem sales? Or what happens when what might improve the economy, may also hurt Gem to gold conversions?

I just think that Anet introducing DR is less about " Inflation" which we already have, and more about giving players less ways of accruing Gold…unless it is accrued the way they want. People gaining things they do not want, and then sell on the TP, to be purchased by people that want or need it, that cannot obtain it reliably, and consistently in the game… Outside of buying it on the TP…. while they take a huge cut.

Why else would they Not have a Direct trade window, or add CoD to their Mail system? Other games have it why Not Anet? unless it’s to keep the economy centered on the tp?

What does a direct trade window buy you, assuming it still takes a cut. Limits you to buying or selling to players logged in on your own server rather than all servers including the EU (or NA if you are on the EU servers). How does that maximize availability or provide you a better chance to maximize your income or minimize your costs? Or are you just trying to avoid the gold sink? If not enough gold is being sinked relative to the amount injected they will just turn the reward knob down again.

What new DR have they added recently? Downgrading most of the champs in starter zones is not DR, it’s a straight up nerf.

TA = Twilight Arbor

You can also buy with 400 festival tokens a sprocket node for your home instance. It produces 1 or 2 blade shards besides sprockets when mined.

Except they outlined that’s not how the exchange works. It has only a finite amount of gems. Astronomically huge when it went live but finite. That’s why the rate goes up. The exchange doesn’t create gems or gold, it merely hands out what it has in it’s own vaults.

Now buying gems with cash does create gems from scratch but that doesn’t hurt the game’s economy at all since the gold players get from selling gems was deposited in the exchange by players buying gems with gold. Gold that was created and dropped during the normal course of game play.

Sure, call them liars. Accuse them of manipulating the exchange rate directly minute to minute rather than accepting the exchange rate is in our bally-wick, that it’s an example of the “tragedy of the commons” and that all Anet can control is when they put highly desirable items into the Gem Shop. Sure, maybe they set us up, relying on human nature (aka greed) to get something for nothing and therefore herd the masses into a TotC situation to boost cash Gem sales. Personally I think it’s clever, getting players hooked on a “free” game and gradually increase the pressure to spend additional cash.

@tigirius

D3 was the case of have two AH, one where you could sell your loot for in game currency and one where you could sell it for cold hard cash. That allowed you to “pay to win” with Bliz taking a cut like eBay. So all the good items ended up on the cash AH.

Now since nothing in our Gem Shop is better gear, the comparison to D3 doesn’t hold. It’s a straight up cash shop with a proxy currency that’s no different than XBox points.

And since the gold from gem selling is gold players got from playing and used to buy gems, it’s not a source of new gold flowing into the game. Which is what hurt games that had set up legit gold selling in the past.

The purpose of any style of player market is to sell unwanted stuff to players who do. So unless you make all gear soul bound on acquire so you can only sell it at NPC vendors, players will strive to earn in game currency to buy what they want by whatever means including buying it from shady websites.

So how is ANet setting themselves up to be a gold seller hurts the game anymore than black market gold sellers?

You seem to be more against the notion of a player market than the gem shop. Or would it be okay if you couldn’t sell just high end gear there? You sound like a WoW raid refugee my friend. Grinding raids until you got your BIS gear proving that you earned them. Equipping them like a badge of honor.

Sadly for you that isn’t this game which tries to eliminate exclusionary play at every turn. No factions, everyone gets a copy of a mat node for themselves, no penalty to those you help in terms of XP or loot. Low participation requirements for rewards. Etc. Yes it’s a little like every child gets a participation trophy on the team even if their skills are sub average but that’s this game’s foundation. It’s not going to change. Want elitism go pay $15 a month for a game that has that as a core feature. This is just a F2P game with a one time upfront cost. It’s suppose to be accessible to all.

Vsync is what’s used to traditionally stop screen tearing. A newly rendered frame won’t be displayed to until a vertical sync, independent of the rendering rate. Assuming your refresh is 60Hz, the problem is if you are rendering frames at say 50fps then four frames would be displayed for 1/60th of a second while one for 1/30th and the motion will look jittery, but tear free. It’s a hardware generated limiter.

The Frame Limiter is to … well … limits how often a frame is generated. So if it gets a frame done early, the game kicks back and waits before it starts to render the next. Here it’s a software generated limiter. The idea is to provide a consistent frame rate of no more than 30 or 60 per second which lines up nicely with VSYNC on with a 60Hz LCD monitor. So reduced jitter and no tearing.

Plus if your system is overheating like on a laptop, the limiter is a way to reduce the workload at times when your generate more than 30 or 60fps like roaming around a zone on your own.

No. A bit much would be gloves with big cat paws at the end. All I can imagine is Felicia from Darkstalkers. Please excuse the Yaya.

Syrpharon.7491:

I’m seriously concerned about this, it can’t be overlooked by Anet.
The option to get gems with gold is one of the key differences that set GW2 apart from most games with in-game shops, but if the price keep raising, we could reach even 20g or 30g for 100 gems at this point, and not so far in the future.

This would completely kill the reason this feature was added, and then, would somehow “force” players to actually spend real money on the game because otherwise the alternative would be farm big amounts of gold (for the average player 20g is huge, don’t forget this is a casual players game). The choice to farm or spend would just become illusory and fake then.

The primary reason for the gold→gem is to finance the gem→gold side of the exchange. This way no gold is created when converting cash bought (created from thin air) gems. They are simply being paid gold that other players dropped into the exchange to get gems.

It may be a feature touted in reviews but it’s not one touted in any official GW2 advertising or even listed on the box. ANet needs players to buy gems with cash since that is their chosen method, for now, of funding continuing development. But like F2P games, you don’t need everybody to pay but as the rate rises, it certainly encourage those with little gold and a “need” for that “thing” in the cash shop to drop a 10 spot or get a $25 gem card.

I can earn 20-30g is a week with my Level 80 and that’s 2 hours a night, 2 boss events, a handful of champs and making sure I get my daily done (usually in 20-30 minutes). That’s from selling gathered mats, salvaging items including rares and selling those mats. Sure, lower level characters can’t earn that much in a week but 20g isn’t huge.

So how did you come up with 0.43 seconds is equal to 7 seconds?

The problem with most spreadsheets on conversion is they include the cost of the single higher tier item for each convert as oppose needing only one to bootstrap the whole process. This makes the break even point higher than it should be when converting in bulk.

At an average rate of 7 you could even make a profit selling them. Using my previous prices 10 stacks up converted cost 27.075 gold while 70 Powerful Bloods after fees and taxes will earn you 35.105g. Almost a 30% profit or 8 gold.

It’s just that I’m not comfortable to try this bet with my own money. RNG is a harsh mistress.

Didn’t say it was a designed intention for the exchange, just another affect it produces.

So you want individual listings by player selling? So you can boycott players you don’t like? Why not display their net worth while we are at it so you can choose only to buy from “mom and pop” TP vendors rather than the Rockefellers or Morgans.

Except the store can’t look at a player’s account. That’s why items like Bank Tabs can’t be gifted. All it can do is mail the item to the player’s account. It’s the way you keep the databases from mixing.

At this moment

50 Powerful Blood @ high bid = 27.965g

Conversion
50 Potent Blood @ high bid = 1.5950g
5 Pile of Crystalline Dust @ high bid = 1.1125g

Total =2.7075g

So no more than 10 conversions to break even or be cheaper. So average 5 per. Note that I’m assuming you have at least one Powerful Blood to bootstrap the up conversion process.

10 @ 5 each will save you 89s
9 @ 6 each will save you 3.5975g and give you 4 extra worth 2.006g at low sell price (after fees and taxes).
8 @ 7 each will save you 6.3050g and give you 6 extra worth 3.009g at low sell price (after fees and taxes).

Since you get a minimum of 5 per convert … why not, you might get lucky but, and it’s a big but, you have to put in bids and be patient if you don’t have the raw mats. And by the time you do get the mats you hope that the price of Powerful didn’t plummet.

PC or Mac? If PC try this.

Cutting and pasting

Try this.

Honestly needs to be a sticky.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Tabs-in-Gem-Store-not-loading/3739993

If you have a source of cheap Potent Blood then if you get slightly better than average, you may break even compared to putting in a bid for Powerful Blood.

Thought there was one. “something of applied jumping”.

(looks up the wiki)

Nope, that’s for SAB jumping. My bad.

Some are obvious, a vista or POI “up there”. Then there are regions on the map that seem large but you can’t obvious get to on the ground. JPs are really an offshoot of exploration. If you explore every nook and cranny on the map you are more likely to find them. Then of course there’s spotting other JPers “up there” which is a good sign that there is a JP nearby (or a cave system).

Of course some are insanely difficult (one in Southsun Cove comes to mind).

@Dark Spirit – Don’t forget that gold spent on gems is gold that can’t contribute to inflation caused by excessive money supply growth. It doesn’t permanently remove all of it, since that’s what gets paid out when you sell gems, but it’s most certainly acting as control rods in the economy’s reactor.

1st of all, CrossfireX or SLi isn’t going to help in WvW zerg battles. They are CPU bound and not GPU bound.

2nd, the i7-4790K default clock is 14% faster over your 4770K. 4.0-4.4GHz vs 3.5-3.9GHz.

Physically different server clusters. One in Austin Tx, USA, the other in Frankfurt Germany.

phys.7689:

really it comes down to incentives, Some people play games to get good, it annoys them that the best way to succeed in this game is not to do that. I do feel it detracts somewhat not to have incentives to improve. But regardless, the reasoning that a meritocracy based on game skills is not valid, why is a meritocracy based on gold earned any more valid? The cries of the Elite Skills people sound exactly the same as the leet money earners.

l2p
work harder
get good
be smarter
survival of the fittest

but now they are applying it to their own strengths. Its basically the same thing except the leet game mode isnt dungeon running, but competitive gold earning.

1st people always misinterpret “survival of the fittest”. They believe it applies to some kind of gladiatorial combat instead of who is most fittest to the environment. In that case if you judge accumulation of gold as the selector, then talented flippers are clearly the winner of “survival of the fittest”. Probably also winner of “be smarter” too.

But it still boils down to this false idea that gold is the only measure of success in this game and therefore the pursuit of it is the sole goal that any normal player should playing toward. Why? Is it because players are too cheap to spend cash for gem shop items? That enjoy playing doesn’t count for some reason?

And if they rank acquiring gold so high, then why do they throw away so much potential wealth by selling to the highest bidder? Why do they ignore the costs of waypointing to do the boss train if that depletes their daily income by 1/2 g or more a day? They complain about rewards but ignore the hole in their purse.

These weren’t suggestions silvermember. I’m making fun of the notion brought up time and time again that raking in money on the TP is somehow unfair to those that “play the game”.

The countless threads wanting more ways to filter the not LEET from joining your party. The threads complaining that you can’t sell your loot on the TP fast enough to get back to your next speedrun/boss train stop. The threads that insist that the most desirable items should only be dropped from the hardest content so only those “worthy” can get them. The threads asking for super tough content. The threads asking for mounts to show off on. The threads on how the new wardrobe devalues legendary weapons allowing them to be skinned onto lesser weapons over and over again. The threads complaining how expensive it is now to get free gems to buy exclusive skins.

They all dovetail together into a picture of a player who is upset that the game is unfair to the talented player, by allowing the untalented (in their eyes) to succeed. A player who values their appearance as a way to establish their skill who gets upset because others can achieve it without the same dedication.

Maybe this goes back to WoW style repetitive raiding until you “put in your dues” and get a full set of BIS for your character, thereby establishing this notion between BIS gear and ability level. If people can buy BIS gear, or the look of BIS gear, that destroys this notion. This leads to wanting to see AP, gear stats, trait picks, etc of other players because you can’t simply look at and judge. It leads to threads where players are upset that other players are earning more doing activities that they see as not core gameplay, ie bopping things on the head.

And some of these notions have popped up in this thread as well. That wealth is “unfairly” distributed across the player base. That it’s the wealthy’s fault that prices go up and that gems cost so much now. And how did they get so wealthy? Well it must be because they are filthy flippers who control the market and ratchet prices up just to see if they can. “Burn him, he’s a flipper!” hysteria.

I’m neither LEET or a flipper. I simply enjoy playing an hour or two and I feel that I earn enough for what I want. I’m patient. I place bids if I want something or price my own sell orders to sell off the night’s haul. 99.9% of everything sells in 24 hours and I’m earning 10-20% on top of those who sell to highest bidder. These are observations from reading this and the GW2 Discussion board.

I’m not suggesting fixes because I don’t see a problem. If the price spikes the first thing I check is it’s chart to see what supply and demand did. I don’t call every bubble inflation. Is there inflation? Yes. But it’s not what’s happening 9 out of 10 times someone drops that word.

Notable roles

Bubbles
Raven
Mary Jane Watson
most recent Harley Quinn
Batgirl
original Ben 10
Timmy Turner

and of course the role someone bashed her for over on Massively, Twilight Sparkle.

It always blew my mind when she opens her mouth and Bubbles came out.