Guild Wars 2

The problem is items with high demand and a very limited flow of new supply will always be priced so only the most wealthy in the game can afford it. Especially if supply is entirely not within the player’s control. T6 isn’t as much of a problem because if the price is sexy enough more players could go out and harvest those mats bolstering supply. Playing the mystic slots for a precursor is a rich mans game.

So the problem is not a growth in the overall money supply but the concentration of it among a few so if only the wealthy, say 10%, are the only ones who can fight for those items and what some are calling inflation is really a bidding war among the wealthy while the rest of us sit on the sidelines sighing at the price rise.

The problem I’m having with some of the replies is that it entirely negates the notion of player customization. You’re focusing on the mechanics only and not the RPG nature of character creation.

You all are saying that the devs should make the higher level content only be done if players use a min/maxed build of traits, skills and weapons for that profession. If that’s the case then why bother providing all the other options, all the possible combinations if only those playing “the right way” have any chance? That’s like building a maze where every path that isn’t the way through is a death trap. That takes choice away from players. That’s the opposite you want to do in an open world MMO.

Here we have a game where you aren’t led from one quest giver to another, gives the players lots of ways to earn XP to level up. But you all are suggesting having content where only one set of choices will work. Not work better or faster, work at all. What you all are suggesting is a game where characters may look different but underneath are all identical. I’m sorry I’m from the school where there should be no way to make a broken character that can’t do all the content. That’s the whole point about balance, that you don’t have tiny Gods or fodder as possible configurations.

IngamerX.7064:

@Behe

Ofcourse I would agree with you if I would see the CPU being fully utilized. But the game doesn’t. As seen in the picture it doesn’t show the CPU usage as a whole, but the usage per CPU core. And even if only 3 cores are utilized, than I would at least expect them to be fully utilized in order to produce the maximum possible framerate.

Right now I’m really wondering if it’s my system that is not powerfull enough, or if it’s the engine which doesn’t make good use of the availlable hardware.

In other words: if I were to upgrade my system (i7 920 + GTX 460) to i5 4670k + GTX 770, would the game even run better as it doesn’t even make full use of the calc power it now has?

But that’s not how an multitasking OS works. Specific threads aren’t assigned specific cores. There are ways to force it but robs the OS some of it’s ability to manage the resources it’s trying to share. The game has something around 40 threads (portion of the overall program) of code running but only 3 are major consumers (over 50% of a core each) of CPU cycles and roughly another 6 minor consumers (around 10-20% of a core each). The rest run quickly and infrequently to contribute.

But what you won’t see is two cores running at 100% with a third at 50%. That’s not how an OS distributes work. It attempts to balance the workload across all available cores. That’s because a thousand times or so a second every thread running can move from running on one core to running on another. That’s the heart and sole of a multitasking OS. No task/thread can monopolize a core. Every one is halted periodically and another is allowed to run in it’s place. It runs again only when it’s turn comes around and a core is available, which may not be the same as the core it was running on. It’s a oversimplification but that’s why you don’t see some cores at 100% while others are near 0%.

You can use a tool like Process Explorer to see the overall CPU% per thread in this game. So for a quad core the best you will see is 25% for a single thread. This (1st pic) is what I see standing where you are.

I have my GPU running at 80% while my combined CPU is around 66%. As you can see I have one thread running at 20.73% (or 83% of a single core) while the next two are at 9.65% and 9.49% (roughly 35-40% of a core each), one being the primary graphics driver thread.

However if I pop downstairs using my royal pass I get a boost in my frame rate (2nd pic). My GPU is up over 90% while my overall CPU dropped to under 60%. The primary thread is now running at 15.07% or 60% of a core but the next two are at 12.78% and 11.76% or nearly a whole core split between them. I believe these two threads are tightly synced to each other, one feeding the driver and the driver processing the data and synced with the GPU hardware and together will never exceed 25% or one core of performance.

The major difference between the two spots are number of other players present and one being on the second level of DR and one being on the first so more geometry is occluded (blocked) in the first picture than the second.

As for a hardware upgrade. The reason your performance will be better is because the an i5-4670k can do 50 to 60% more work per second than an i7-920. If it takes X amount of CPU cycles to do one frame, being able to do X faster means more frames per second. Even with the same GPU you should see a marked improvement.

They returned with the ax so I’m assuming they will be around a similar time to that of the pick, 7 days.

I could be wrong but if you want them, get them ASAP before we have another rousing chorus of “when will the Toxic gloves be back”.

Which tells us very little since we don’t see his graphic settings or what CPU he’s using.

Oh heck yeah, perfectly fine to play on highest settings. Standard caveats about lower performance around lots of other players as well as in multitiered cities.

In general the game generates two to three “cores” of work most of the time. That means on a quad core like you have you’ll see only 50-75% average usage. In a town setting with not a lot going on but a lot of players, it will lean toward that 50% end of the range.

As for the GPU at 35%, that simply means the CPU side is doing a lot more than just talking to the GPU, mostly because there are a lot of players about. Toss in DR’s multilevel design, rarely seen in open world to that extent (but most cities are), that’s more work for the occlusion pass of the renderer. The card can only do the work it’s being sent. If the CPU is to busy with overhead to keep the GPU well fed, GPU utilization will be low, as long as the GPU is fast enough.

I have a relatively slow GPU and alright quad core CPU and my GPU doesn’t hit 100% at that location either, maybe only 60-70%.

You got a week. 400 gems each. That is all.

And now one of the axes are available.

Surprised that monitor it can’t handle 1280×720 which is also 16:9. It’s a pretty standard resolution.

There’s a file called local.dat in the users/<your windows account name>/AppData/Roaming/Guild Wars 2 folder. Delete that before starting the game.

neonreaper.4805:

Vagrant.9105:

Figured I’d post the math for anyone interested.

nerd

You did that wrong. Here.

You are seeing the default generic placeholder character for a player. The frequency of seeing that is determined in your graphic settings, the character model quality pulldown. Lowest will have everyone (well a specific profession/race/armor weight) as that, highest will have virtually no one displayed with that. The setting above that, character model limit, will determine how many other players you can see at one time around you. If limit is set to highest and quality to lowest, you will see lots of players and they all will be displayed as faceless generic suited models.

As for if that armor exists for players. Don’t know. But here are a few armor links you can look through to find.

http://www.gw2armor.com/

http://argos-soft.net/GW2/ArmorGallery/

What you can’t do is target a specific server. You can’t prevent your stuff from being sold to your WvW sworn enemy.

Nick.6972:

15-20G for 100 Gems by the end of this year.

At that point Gem to Gold will be 8.67-11.56G per 1 USD/Euro. $10 for 100g without fear of being banned or have your account stolen. That might open up some previously closed wallets.

Also remember that gold from the exchange isn’t “new” but had been sequestered from the rest of the game by players buying gems with it. It would be like water from a thawing glacier.

I would not be surprised that it plays better in China since they are use to, or at least accept upfront, that these type of “grab bags” are luck of the draw.

Call Outback. Tell em you have a deal.

The three player started sticky threads at the top of this sub-forum.

But it’s more exciting with the slot machine animation.

Cities?
Hearts?
Temples?
Fort Trinity?
Bazaar?

Not sure where else you found a karma vendor.

Sorry, the notion of using “flames” to gather logs, herbs and vegetables just doesn’t compute.

All I can imagine is this.

Yes, over the long term the price will keep rising. Never underestimate the “cheapness” of a player. The only advantage is since the exchange rate is going up at a faster pace than general inflation, dodgy’s point of the gem to gold price of BLC skins on the TP coming down to the $10 minimum gem purchase level is quite valid. As it stands now, at 65.75g per 800 gems, 100 of the 224 skins on the TP have high bids under that price.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Behellagh.1468:

If players ultimately buy the chest for the ticket then they’re dumb. That’s like buying a shipping container of cereal because there’s a chance of winning a new car.
…..

That’s a rather bad analogy as I HAVE gotten a ticket out of BL Chests, but I doubt anyone has ever found a car at the bottom of a shipping container full of cereal….tho I guess that IS also possible.

Your other statement is correct, however. Unfortunately, since BL Chests are the only player “selectable” source of the BL tickets (or scraps), they ARE viewed that way by nearly all players.

I will say that the new method to combine boosters is a nice change and makes every box at least somewhat useful. The reduction of those silly tonics is a welcome change as well.

So never seen a “mail in proof of purchase (box tops) for a chance to win …” promotion?

Annoyed that the effect goes away if you zone.

PartyPanda.1960:

Right, I know that the fee is shown for listing, but what I am saying is that there is a chunk of money missing, as shown in the example of my original post. I was aware that I was paying 4 gold 25 silver for listing that item, but I was not told up front where the rest of the gold went to between what it was sold for and the fee I had paid.

I would rather be told in plain writing that the market would be deducting a total of almost 10 gold than to have money unaccounted for in my transaction.

You listed for 95g. Posting fee is 5% so that’s 4g75s paid up front and non-refundable and is listed as “fee” in the interface. Upon sale there’s a 10% sales tax deducted from your asking price meaning there will be 85g50s waiting for pickup, which is what gets listed as “profit”. The 4g75s posting fee is NOT included in the calculation of “profit”.

For the items I use it on, the recipes are correct. Each their own.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rare#Quality

If players ultimately buy the chest for the ticket then they’re dumb. That’s like buying a shipping container of cereal because there’s a chance of winning a new car.

The BLCs are primarily gem store samplers. Originally they had a few really good items and keys. When that didn’t keep the key sales up they added weapon skins tickets in various forms settling on what we have today.

Profit is the wrong word. That number represents what you will see when you pick up the cash from the sale, since the bid fee is already paid upfront.

Mystic posted this a while back.

http://legendsrpg.com/gw2.php?forge=yes

They’re no trainers, in case that was really his question.

Mckeone.9804:

Mystic.5934:

this scenario was why I liked having gold in the bank vs. on my characters.
turns out when you have access to all your gold, you tend to make this mistake less often.
sorry it happened to you.

Just create a bank guild, use the guild bank as your personal savings account.

Just remember that it can’t hold soul or account bound items and it doesn’t move servers if you do.

Which is why the watchwork pick will never grace the Gem Store ever again. The Devs realize that they stepped in it that time. Therefore all remaining unlimited picks are the same other than looks and animation.

emikochan.8504:

There’s a language filter? Wha?

Since megaserver. People on underflow maps didn’t want to see people chatting in “foreign” languages on the EU servers.

DR is necessary or farmers would become overprotective about their spots and then you get the kind of abuse players got from champ train devotees if they took down a champ out of order. And now since megaservers generate underflow maps you aren’t guaranteed to find some deserted map you can farm at your leisure relatively unmolested guesting on a low pop server.

Did anyone else read the title as consumable ettin cub?

I average two to three gold a day and I don’t do dungeons, boss trains, farm or play the TP. This is from going around killing things and selling their drops. What are you doing so wrong Trice?

Changes brought on by the wardrobe is a mix bag. Pros, skins are account bound. Skins can be unlocked via salvage which a lot of players are doing for luck so it’s “free”. Trans Charges are cheaper than crystals but more expensive than stones, which hurts skinners on under level 80 characters. But unlike gem gathering tools, skins are still the same price unlimited copies as it was with only one.

The only thing I remotely see as a “cash-grab” is the exclusiveness of new armor skins to the TP. Come on, throw us a bone every now and then and add an additional look to each of the armor weights.

Hmm. That motherboard does have an HD 4200 but the GPU suggests it’s either an HD 4350/4550, which is only a minor step up.

So you have plenty of power, a PCIe x16 slot and a $100 budget. Online you can get a 1GB AMD R7 250X, formerly the HD 7770, for $100.

nVidia doesn’t have anything that competes at that price point, the 1GB GTX 650 (not the 650Ti) is also in that price range but is much slower. The 1GB GTX 750 (not the 750Ti) is about $10-20 more but is much faster than the R7 250×.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r7-250x-graphics-card-review,3747-3.html

http://pcpartpicker.com/parts/video-card/#c=115,163,161&sort=a8&r=1024

(note you may want to cut and paste the pcpartpicker URL because the forum redirector mangles it a bit)

First use a utility like GPU-Z to give us the exact Radeon model. Second I’m assuming the current card doesn’t use a PCIe power connector. Power may be an issue and limiting factor, more so that your budget. So what size, in watts is your power supply. If your PC is a manufactured rather than DIY what manufacturer and model, you should be able to get that from Control Panel → System.

Also are you sure it’s a card? A lot of older AMD motherboards use motherboard based graphics that read as an HD 4200. Since it sounds like you are using a 1st gen Phenom and not a Phenom II, I’m guessing the system is fairly old in computer years.

Just trying to get a better handle on what you have.

Aidan, it’s not that they wanted to sell it to the highest bidder, it’s that they were entering a sell price, mistyped it and hit sell. I’ve done that with bids and I’ve unintentionally overpriced an item and in my rush clicked sell just as I realized what I entered. In that case I’m only out of the 5% order fee. If I underpriced it I would be out of the item (even in the old system that capped the price) but also out of a large chunk of money for it.

My point is user error shouldn’t be so harshly punished. You can’t assume that all underbids are intentional and therefore this punishment justified. You either cap it or generate an error, just as if they give the OK to buy something at price X and now there are no more at that price. The TP doesn’t assume the next price level is OK so why not error it out?

I use Dulfy’s.

http://dulfy.net/2014/04/23/event-timer/

If it’s fixed, calculating and charging the bid fee, then why suspend? I can see users being all thumbs or rushing messing up and clicking OK to soon. The two logical design responses of going below the current high bid should be either capping, which it did before, or generating an error message.

I don’t understand breaking existing unrelated behavior while fixing a bug. The software developer in me says that’s wrong Aidan.

If players have so much gold then why all the crying over loot nerfs and prices of luxury items on the TP?

You were fortunate then because I’ve always seen it after 30 seconds since I started Dec 2012.

I can understand fixing the exploit but there really wasn’t the need to add the penalty in the attempt by removing the automatic lower cap.

Read the stickies at the top of this forum. A lot of good info there.

Taiver.4395:

They should take both into consideration.

No they shouldn’t. Gem Shop items are priced in cash similar to items found in other cash shops in other games. They care ZERO about the price in gold because the exchange’s purpose is to provide the gold for those exchanging gems, gems bought with cash. This way no additional gold is ever generated, since it was paid in from the game for gems, and the exchange acts as a sequester for game gold rather than a sink that removes it permanently. That said the exchange does 15% of gold going in and out of the exchange which is reflected in the two exchange rates.

It’s not complicated. The more gold that’s used to exchange for gems, the higher the rate goes. The higher the rate, the more those items cost in gold, so more gold needs to be spent which raises the rate even more, ad infinitum until the exchange runs out of gems (yes it’s finite and depends on players cashing in gems to prevent that).

So no ticket scrapes either? That’s odd.

No I haven’t. Everything is from Gold converted to Gems.

But my reasons have to do with protesting NCSOFT for killing City of Heroes. They were getting annually over $100 a year from me which they decided to forgo. Now they will only get a bare minimum. Yes this is unfair to all the people at ArenaNet but it’s an option they allowed and it’s a minimum amount of money to NCSOFT. Wildstar isn’t going to get any of it.

Fortunately I can keep my desires in check, buy a few gems everyday (gem cost averaging), wait for sales and be selective.

From a GPU basis, the GT 740m is faster than the HD 8670m.

Yes the i7 with a “u” at the end is slower than one ending in X or Q because it’s a low power part, which is good for battery life. It’s also a dual core with hyperthreading than a true quad core. That said if your i7 is a i7-4xxxu model, it’s still a faster CPU than any AMD A10-xxxxm.

Without more info about the CPU models for specific comparisons, with what you’ve said so far, I would lean to the i7 “u” dual core and the GT 740m laptop.