Guild Wars 2

Gem bought skins tend to have one transmutation baked in. The glider is skin costs nothing to change, just the backpack.

You get 3 charges a cycle of login rewards, you also get them from map completion of the cities. Lastly they are relatively cheap from the gem shop.

Seera.5916:

Behellagh.1468:

How do you break people from hording? That’s the issue. The relatively sudden rise in price encourages hording more than the attractiveness of selling.

I think we can agree that when Mystic coins were under 2s that they were undervalued partially because there wasn’t an overwhelming demand for them as supply on the TP was over 250K, peaking over 500K. Price drifted up to 15s due to the changes in daily rewards but what spiked it was Wintersday. 2015, there was some recipe that required Mystic Coins for some goodie and that simply drained the TP and nearly doubling the price and draining supply under 100K. A 12-13x increase in price from Jan 1, 2015 to Jan 1, 2016 isn’t a value correction makes everyone sit up and take notice.

Now if ANet introduces a windfall of Mystic Coins, what percentage will actually make it to the TP where it can affect the price? And what John alludes to is that they are seeing there is plenty of mystic coins in the game, it’s just those who have them aren’t selling.

Increased prices could also get those hoarding to sell the mats. If Mystic Coins get over 1.5 g each and are steady there with them appearing to sell decently at that price, I’ll probably dump about half of the stack I sit on (I have 250 Mystic Coins, I sell any that I get currently as I get them).

And that is what JS is saying. At some point the price will break the hoarding dam. Problem it’s a waiting game and unlike a real economy, players can choose to check out which would be bad for the game overall.

How do you break people from hording? That’s the issue. The relatively sudden rise in price encourages hording more than the attractiveness of selling.

I think we can agree that when Mystic coins were under 2s that they were undervalued partially because there wasn’t an overwhelming demand for them as supply on the TP was over 250K, peaking over 500K. Price drifted up to 15s due to the changes in daily rewards but what spiked it was Wintersday. 2015, there was some recipe that required Mystic Coins for some goodie and that simply drained the TP and nearly doubling the price and draining supply under 100K. A 12-13x increase in price from Jan 1, 2015 to Jan 1, 2016 isn’t a value correction makes everyone sit up and take notice.

Now if ANet introduces a windfall of Mystic Coins, what percentage will actually make it to the TP where it can affect the price? And what John alludes to is that they are seeing there is plenty of mystic coins in the game, it’s just those who have them aren’t selling.

If you have an hour to kill, here’s the presentation at GDC 2015 of the revamped AI engine they introduced with HoT.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1021848/Building-a-Better-Centaur-AI

Actually, looking at major runes specifically, the ones you get out of dropped armor tend to have a vendor price of 1s8c, this puts the minimum on the TP at 1s28c and not 1s54c. And craftable runes have a vendor price of 30c which sets their minimum at 36c.

Yes, there are a few bids at the old vendor plus 1c while below the “new” vendor / 0.85 price but a quick survey shows these bad bids are less than 1% of all bids so they aren’t distorting “demand” significantly.

Not sure if you can build a completely new rig at that price point to do what you are asking. You need a true quad core CPU, not a dual core with Hyper Threading, with good single core benchmarks, something like the i5-6500. Fortunately you don’t need anything close to a top of the line video card as the game is limited by CPU performance more than GPU. Something like the RX 470 or the deceivingly named 3GB GTX 1060.

Everything else is fairly straight forward, 8GB, a good quality PSU, case that suits your aesthetic. You might be able to get it under $600.

It’s vague because they can customize aggro based on each enemy type. I’ve seen “smarter” critters break off to go after downed or healers. Some simply focus on DPS, others toughness. It makes sense in a game with no pure tanks and few methods of taunt.

Oh sorry, this was the only witch hat wearing cat I know.

This is how I found out how.

Several scribe mats aren’t in collections. The crystals from the ore synthesizers and the lumber cores from the lumber synthesizers in the GHs. Unless the lumber cores can’t stack, I sell them when I get them so I don’t know.

Doubloons?

I would love a head/face zoom for the dye tab as well. Some light head pieces are very small and are difficult to see what each dye channel affects.

Acrisor.8097:

Behellagh.1468:

Acrisor.8097:

OP forgot one thing: the conversion gold > gems is made by ArenaNet. They establish the price of gold and price of gems as they wish, with a formula they created based on amount of gems and gold obtained in game. For example, they increase and decrease the price of gems (with gold) based on how well gems are sold for real money.

If, for one day, nobody would buy gems with money, price of gems with gold would go sky high.

If, on a simple Tuesday patch, new shiny items come in Gem Store, many people will buy gems with gold (to obtain these items) while price of gems (with gold) will go very high. To confirm this, please have a look on Gem Store this Tuesday (2016.10.25) when outfits Lunatic Guard and Raiment of the Lich will most likely return to Gem Store.

ANet only created an automated way to set the exchange rate based on gold->gem and gem->gold usage. If more players buy gems with gold than sell gems for gold, the rate will increase, more selling gems for gold than buying with gold, the rate will decrease. This is why the exchange rate spikes quickly when something very popular is added/returns/put on sale. Players rush to convert their gold to gems creating an imbalance which suddenly increases the exchange rate.

Today every gem bought with gold was first bought with cash and converted to gold, don’t forget that.

Exactly my point. Thank you.

No, ANet does NOT set the price. You keep saying ANet sets the price and that’s not true.

Acrisor.8097:

OP forgot one thing: the conversion gold > gems is made by ArenaNet. They establish the price of gold and price of gems as they wish, with a formula they created based on amount of gems and gold obtained in game. For example, they increase and decrease the price of gems (with gold) based on how well gems are sold for real money.

If, for one day, nobody would buy gems with money, price of gems with gold would go sky high.

If, on a simple Tuesday patch, new shiny items come in Gem Store, many people will buy gems with gold (to obtain these items) while price of gems (with gold) will go very high. To confirm this, please have a look on Gem Store this Tuesday (2016.10.25) when outfits Lunatic Guard and Raiment of the Lich will most likely return to Gem Store.

ANet only created an automated way to set the exchange rate based on gold→gem and gem→gold usage. If more players buy gems with gold than sell gems for gold, the rate will increase, more selling gems for gold than buying with gold, the rate will decrease. This is why the exchange rate spikes quickly when something very popular is added/returns/put on sale. Players rush to convert their gold to gems creating an imbalance which suddenly increases the exchange rate.

Today every gem bought with gold was first bought with cash and converted to gold, don’t forget that.

Two reasons. First is to build hype for the Halloween festival. Second is to reward players who consistently log in.

• Witch’s Outfit returned for a week on the 4th.
• Bloody Prince Outfit returned for a week on the 11th.
• Mad King’s Outfit returned the 18th and since it’s a Mad King version of Halloween, I expect it will be around until the festival is over.

Maybe we’ll get the Executioner’s or Lunatic Guard Outfit next Tuesday.

We don’t need exclusivity built around cash only. Everything you listed are exclusive to those that run that particular game mode/content. Exclusive items for those with disposable income would not be looked upon by the cash poor portion of the player base fondly.

I still see many complain about the current exchange rate being too high.

It’s only effective if you close on an enemy rather than plinking them at range.

It was back for a week Oct 4th-11th.

I hardly call the movement of ecto price significant. Most of the time it’s still below 30s a piece. It’s only down 44K to 800K for sale on the TP, that’s roughly only 5% since Halloween started.

Items in the collections tab of the bank can be used at crafting stations without first removing them from the bank. Everything else you need to have on you to use such as using the Mystic Forge.

Skins, miniatures, dyes, and outfits are account bound and accessible from your hero panel once unlocked. Note that purchased skins from the gem store are physical items that include a baked in transmutation charge while the version in the wardrobe tab will require a transmutation charge and not use the item even if you have it on you.

You get 3 to 4 candy corn from every ToT bag and you can farm the Halloween labyrinth for hundred or more ToT bags per hour IF you are running with a large group and tagging as many mobs as possible, so equipping a weapon with a multi-target 1 power is best as well as running up near the front so you can get a tag in.

Note you need 3000 candy corn to create a 20 slot Halloween Pail. The basic 20 slot bag/pack/box can cost anywhere from 10-18 gold to craft or 13 to 17 gold to buy off the TP. You can sell 3000 candy corn for roughly 17g.

No for all the bad reasons one can imagine. And the API does not allow any “write” action, only reads.

I’m sure they aren’t. Festivals should require very little dev time, with the exception of a few new drops. Let them focus the effort toward the LS, the next raid and the next expansion.

You can not trade items from a P4F account, only to one. So not a good idea.

Buy Gems. Convert them to gold or buy something shinny from the Gem Shop.

Game engine doesn’t work well among crowds of players. LA is busier now since it’s the hub for Halloween activities.

It’s not like they went out of their way to make to prevent the GPU from being the primary limiter of performance rather than the CPU. It simply ended up that way. The decisions they make early on in engine development, which they outlined in a reddit post last year, made the game engine scale poorly when many players are present.

Which is likely why PvP and Raids are limited to 10 players in total because beyond that the main thread becomes the limiting factor rather than the rendering thread which the performance of the GPU would impact.

Also most other games are built using game engines that is also sold to 3rd parties so you have market forces driving continuous improvements, cross platform support, multiprocessor scaling, and multiple API support. ANet rolled their own, an improved version of their original GW engine. Building a game engine from scratch is costly in terms of time and manpower (which is equal to $$) and licensing an existing game engine costs isn’t cheap either and is an exercise in figuring out if you can work around the engine’s limitations when you want to add something the the engine designer didn’t anticipate.

They voted for the strike a year ago with a 96+% yes vote. Since talks haven’t produced an agreed upon outcome, strike is all they have left.

This is what they are looking for.

http://www.sagaftra.org/interactive/what-we-stand-for

A lot of which is already afforded to voice actors who do animation.

Programming is the easy part. It’s all the assets that need to be developed and integrated and then tested to see if it’s “fun” that’s the tough part.

The time gate was established to slow down crafting of ascended gear by the rich and those who happen to be sitting on a ton of mats. It wasn’t established to be the upper time limit to manually acquire the rare materials by hand. Assuming it did is what’s unreasonable.

Whitehawk.5398:

I find it extremely frustrating that i need to sit in WvW and grind out a reward track for gift of battle.I do not like WvW even a little i have no clue what anet was thinking when they decided to add this im sure most PvE players can agree its absolute crap! just let us buy it with badges or put the track in PvP anything but this.

ANet’s thinking that spending the WvW currency, Badges of Honor, to buy Gift of Battle while you can get said currency outside of WvW contradictory to the intent of playing WvW to get said currency. So now no currency needed just participating in WvW. It’s not that bad, faster if you do the WvW dailies and use the Guild Hall WvW track point booster.

And you don’t even have to be good at player kills.

I guess if nobody is happy that counts as a win.

Not talking quality tier but quantity.

OriOri.8724:

Behellagh.1468:

Can’t believe someone can’t acquire 200 thick sections a day. Oh that’s right, lets not spend any coin to get what you need.

The purpose of the TP is to provide what you can’t get on your own and sell off what you don’t need. And I don’t just mean buying the actual Thick Leather Sections themselves. You can get a nice discount by buying items that salvage into Thick Leather Sections, salvage nerf or not. Use the entire player base as your farmers for tougher materials while you focus on farming and selling off the materials that are easier to farm to buy what you can’t.

There is a way, it’s just some steadfastly refuse to use the methods in game to get what they need. Their loss.

You are deliberately missing the point. People shouldn’t be forced to buy mats off the TP to get what they need in a reasonable time frame. Wood, Ore, and to a lesser extent thread can all be farmed easily, yet leather (which you need in greater quantities) cannot be farmed. The only way to acquire the amount you need to craft anything worthwhile in a reasonable amount of time is to buy it. That’s broken.

But its clear that you are refusing to listen to arguments considering this has already been stated multiple times, by different people, in different words. Its not about whether people want to spend gold on the TP. Its about whether they should be forced to spend gold on the TP to gather all that they need in a reasonable time. And they should not be forced to do that. Thats some next level ignorance right there to believe that.

And you are missing the point that the entire economy is designed around forcing players to use the TP so it can take 15% off the top of EVERY trade in the game as the primary gold sink. That’s why drops are RNG. If players got everything they want without trade, the economy stops and nothing has value. RNG makes sure players don’t get everything they want and get lots of things they don’t need or can’t use which makes using the TP a requirement.

Sure you can choose to gather everything on your own but realize it will take longer than the time gate because if the drop rate was high enough for anybody, for instance, to get 200 thick leather sections a day, it’s price will once again be NPC minimum. That’s a price that doesn’t reflect the true value of thick leather sections.

The only way you can farm an RNG reward system is with large numbers of items, which means either a lot of time doing it yourself or you indirectly “contract” the job out to many by buying what others don’t want on the TP.

By not using the TP, you are ignoring the very keystone the game’s economy is built around and is only hurting yourself.

Biggest problem looking at the TP for price guidance is that the sell price may simply be the price that NOBODY is willing to pay for it. We get samples of the the current state of the TP around once every 5 minutes on the 3rd party sites. Item may show up and be sold between samples so we never know the price above the immediate sell price that players are truly willing to pay for it. That’s why I advocate transaction data (x of y sold for z) as oppose to the state (x bids, high bid, y for sale, lowest ask).

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Behellagh.1468:

Here is something else I’ve noticed but unsure if it’s true. I’ve seen a lower salvage rate from items that can be created by crafting Vs those that can’t and are simply dropped. GW2BLTC notes which items can be crafted when you mouse over items.

There’s some old research that documents this and I doubt ANet’s ever normalized things (it’s one of those changes they should make, but never get around because it’s labor intensive, prone to error, and it’s very hard to explain why consistency matters that much to the community).

Similarly, salvageable gear bought from NPCs has yet another rate of salvage.

Before “salvage all” was a thing, I mostly ignored this inconsistency, because it just wasn’t worth buying in bulk and salvaging stuff one-at-a-time. Currently, however, it might be worth noting any important differences, as there might be some substantial arbitrage possible in certain tiers. However, it would be a nightmare to collect the data — we’re basically assuming that it’s important to keep track of every single item, regardless of name, and get data on 500-1000 salavages and ensure a statistically meaningful difference (if there is one).

Tell me about it (stares at meta data of 30K salvage).

Can’t believe someone can’t acquire 200 thick sections a day. Oh that’s right, lets not spend any coin to get what you need.

The purpose of the TP is to provide what you can’t get on your own and sell off what you don’t need. And I don’t just mean buying the actual Thick Leather Sections themselves. You can get a nice discount by buying items that salvage into Thick Leather Sections, salvage nerf or not. Use the entire player base as your farmers for tougher materials while you focus on farming and selling off the materials that are easier to farm to buy what you can’t.

There is a way, it’s just some steadfastly refuse to use the methods in game to get what they need. Their loss.

Here is something else I’ve noticed but unsure if it’s true. I’ve seen a lower salvage rate from items that can be created by crafting Vs those that can’t and are simply dropped. GW2BLTC notes which items can be crafted when you mouse over items.

GW2 Profits list the following rates

Basic Materials Salvage Drop Rates:
- Crude has 10% chance of higher tier
- Basic/Infinite has 12.5% chance of higher tier
- Fine has 13.75% chance of higher tier
- Journeyman has 15% chance of higher tier
- Master/Mystic has 16.25% chance of higher tier
- BLSK has 22.5% chance of higher tier

http://www.gw2profits.com/basic_salvage.php

firecy.8651:

Behellagh.1468:

Well CPU wise you are still in the same ballpark. Both CPUs are 2 core/4 thread clocked around 2.5GHz with boosts a tad over 3GHz. Due to generation improvements maybe 10% to 20% improvement with the newer CPU, depends on which ones each had/has (there was a choice of two in each). GPU is definitely and improvement but if the CPU performance is throttling then the impact can be minimized.

Check to find out what else may be running in the background on the new system.

I would suggest checking the thermals to see if the CPU and GPU aren’t being clocked down because of heat. GPU-Z can monitor GPU clockspeed and temperature and there’s a lot of utilities that can monitor CPU temps and clock speeds.

I’m not sure exactly how to tell if something is being clocked down because of heat, but I tried running hwmonitor when playing the game. For the intel processor (i7 5500U) the clock speed seems to be hovering around 1000MHz, with a temperature of ~50C. All 4 cores seem to be at 80-100% utilization.

For the Nvidia Quadro K620M, the temperature is also ~50C. It doesn’t give me a clock speed, but says utilization is 30-50% only. (GPU-Z gives a Core Clock speed of ~600MHz and a memory clock speed of ~1000MHz).

I’m not totally sure how to interpret these numbers, but the load on the CPU, combined with the fact that the rest of my computer seems to slow down substantially when GW2 is running in windowed mode, suggests that maybe this is a CPU rather than GPU problem? In which case, I suppose, there’s not much to be done. Would that be a reasonable conclusion?

Okay, 1 GHz is very low as the 5500U should be running between 2.4 and 3.0 GHz so something isn’t right there, you may have to look at your power profile and switch it to high performance. GPU clock also seems a bit slow.

I found this review – http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-W550s-Workstation-Review.137989.0.html

The review does indicate the laptop overheats and the CPU speed will be reduced.

I use HWiNFO to provide me system and sensor information.

Well CPU wise you are still in the same ballpark. Both CPUs are 2 core/4 thread clocked around 2.5GHz with boosts a tad over 3GHz. Due to generation improvements maybe 10% to 20% improvement with the newer CPU, depends on which ones each had/has (there was a choice of two in each). GPU is definitely and improvement but if the CPU performance is throttling then the impact can be minimized.

Check to find out what else may be running in the background on the new system.

I would suggest checking the thermals to see if the CPU and GPU aren’t being clocked down because of heat. GPU-Z can monitor GPU clockspeed and temperature and there’s a lot of utilities that can monitor CPU temps and clock speeds.

This has been asked for many languages. Even if they separate voiced and only do text it becomes a question of cost versus payoff for ArenaNet. Then there’s the added support cost for native speakers of additional languages outside of the core four NCSOFT games are localized for in the west.

NCSOFT games that support Russian are licensed to a 3rd party to run and provide additional language localization.

Improvised Armor set?

It shows a running average and instead of immediately dropping to zero when it’s done, you see it fall off until it reaches zero.

There are usually 3 download periods for a patch that will also patch the dat file with pauses in between. Also the dat file is really a collection of files and depending on the size of each of these files the download rate can vary greatly with large files showing a high download rate while lots of small files dragging the rate way down.

I’m just recounting what I see when I also have a download monitor up graphing the download rate while patching.

Nearly all runes have collapsed to near vendor pricing, they are simply too easy to get as a side effect of salvaging.

Now the collective belief of the player base is that only those upgrades that serve the current meta builds are useful. Same thing can be said with certain traits in specializations or stat prefixes. Most players rather copy a known “good” build than experiment to find the next one. At least when ANet does a balance pass it shakes up the metas a bit.

Things have gotten better since the HoT revamp in April. The core world is “alive” again.

The glider mastery in HoT can now be used in most parts of the PvE world (exceptions are instances and around some jumping puzzles) but not PvP or WvW. This gives a very different feel running around the core maps.

They’ve been sprinkling in “current events” leading up to and now between Living World Season 3 episodes. The first two include new level 80 maps.

WvW has been revamped with a reward track system for playing.

New legendary weapons have started again after a six month suspension.

Then there’s a bunch of QoL things they’ve added.

Overall, I know I’m playing more and that the royal terrace area of DR is certainly more crowded than in February.

Unless you are running out of space, leave them. If you are, simply kick those that haven’t played the longest.

Remember it’s account not character. Unless a player has lots of alternate accounts and are in the guild, that shouldn’t be an issue.

Honestly, don’t push the 100% rep angle. Guilds don’t need players repping 100% anymore as a means to earn guild currency. Simply include a message in the Guild message about standard times for Guild Missions or Raid groups. Players will rep with whatever guild helps them the most with what they are trying to do at the moment and won’t change reps unless they have a reason (like hoping over to a guild of RL friends, guild of players from now dead MMO, streamer is online playing with their guild of followers, etc.

I’ve found Discord to be a nice free way to add a message board and voice server to a guild if you want to build a community.

Kylden Ar.3724:

Kamara.4187:

The log thing is backward. As one who has actually milled my own lumber, a log should give you several planks. Just saying. Oh and pine is not a hard wood.

This is the thing that angers me the most about crafting and why I generally hate it.

I assume my troglodyte of a character, who only knows murder and war, looks at the 3 logs and just beats them against each other, screaming like a madman the entire time, until all that is left is one rough plank and a cloud of sawdust and sweat.

Don’t get me started on cooking…

Do you see the size of the “trees” we cut down? They’re saplings. Unless we are making window, door and floor trim, we aren’t going to get more than a couple of 1×3s.

Lite Ning Strike.5203:

Speaking of Gem purchases, anyone know why when you buy Gems from the Black Lion TP they charge tax but I go to my local Target or Best Buy and they don’t charge taxes?

Because laws. Not sure if it’s universal across all states but gift cards, which the gem cards at stores ars classified as, are exempted from tax. Internet purchases on the other hand lost their exemption a couple of years ago. EU has always payed tax but VAT is baked into the price while in NA it’s added on and is different state by state.

Always thought adaptive sync technologies were independent to the game, as in not needing a feature built into the game to support them.

I have no idea why the concept of buying them from the TP so anathema for some people and insist you are suppose to acquire everything from your own labors.

You can farm charged loadstones from map rewards (may take 4 or 5 months) and even craft them. It’s for a Legendary, it is suppose to take a long time to craft, especially if you choose to “free range” all the mats yourself.

On one hand, I think Legendary Weapons shouldn’t have been in the TP, precursors sure but not the final product.

On the other they are the ultimate item type one can craft. They require a lot of mats and alternate currencies. It’s suppose to take dedication, you may call it grinding to achieve.