Guild Wars 2

George.8192:

Well I am very glad I looked here before buying gems…. while I would buy some other upgrades, they too would be considered ‘account upgrades’ and I would not be able to gift them -_-

From the way it sounded on https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-holiday-gifting-event/ …even reading it again ‘everything blah blah’ … ah well

But there wouldn’t be a gift button next to the buy button to begin with. You have to gift first and if the option simply isn’t there then that stops you from doing anything stupid.

It’s gift item first, buy same item for yourself at 40% off second. Makes it tough to shoot yourself in the foot that way.

Diminishing Returns.

Why? The EU customers always had to pay taxes, it’s just that their tax (20%) is built into the price.

No it’s not hard to judge. Virtual cores via HT are roughly 60% the performance of non HT Intel cores. There for you are comparing 2.4 cores to 4 cores so you would roughly need a 66.7% clock speed increase in the i3 compared to the i5. It doesn’t come out exactly and it depends on the multithreaded benchmark but it’s in the ballpark.

Now auto overclocking of single core benchmarks muddle the results somewhat since the amount of OCing can vary between CPU models, MBs, coolers, and other external factors. Only drawback in comparing single core benchmarks.

It’s straightforward if you knew that was the Collections Tab, most would simply look at it as the materials/minis tab. Doesn’t matter if that’s it’s official title or even if it says it in large bold letters along the top. People don’t necessarily think the same was as developers who have been living with the naming conventions the entire history of the game and not make the connection.

tolunart.2095:

Brother Grimm.5176:

You do understand the concept of SALES taxes, right? It doesn’t matter WHAT is being sold (a haircut, a lap dance or a sports car) the fact that a PURCHASE is made requires that a percentage of that monetary exchange takes place is paid to the state (or whomever is collecting the tax).

You don’t have to be able to touch something to pay taxes on it.

But there are a lot of exceptions to sales tax, which differ from state to state, let alone the policies of other countries.

For example, in my state soda and similar drinks are taxed, but fruit juice, water and tea are not. But if there is less than a certain percentage of juice, if the water or tea is flavored (raspberry tea instead of plain black or green tea), then it is taxed. Every manager, every company policy is not always correct – I’ve gone into a store to buy a plain green tea and got charged tax for it, when I explain that it’s not taxed the cashier argued with me about it.

And I work for a non-profit company, which is exempt from paying sales tax altogether, but when making a purchase for the company I need to obtain paperwork from the store first…

It gets complicated.

Yes and in theory the company that is now handling the purchase of Gems in game is knowledgeable enough to know when to tax and when not to tax. Gail has posted that ANet has total confidence that this company, maybe it’s PlayNC wide, is complying to all laws that require them when and when not to tax.

Sorry I muddled things up with gem card sales in retail stores but if I try to buy a gem card from Amazon they will charge me tax and virtual currency, whether it’s console or MMO is taxed upfront because they aren’t like a store/restaurant/iTunes gift card which is a proxy for actual cash value and when it’s spent the tax is collected then. You aren’t taxed when you use your Microsoft/Sony/Wii points at use time so you are taxed beforehand and same is true with MMO proxy currently.

Salvage 86 and got 74 ectos. I tad low but close to normal. However during this I did get a run of 6 misses which led to only 2 ectos out of the first 10 rares I salvaged. It then got better. Also the rate in general of no ectos was noticeably higher than previously. I had seen a 33-35% chance of 0 ectos since I started recording ecto number per salvage but this batch was 43%.

Flippers are the natural side effect of a free market system that isn’t 100% efficient. They “live” in the inefficiency. By inefficient I mean there isn’t a “perfect” price for an item due to supply and demand as well as the fact that supply and demand is always influx to a certain degree. You can’t get rid of them with out eliminating the whole free market aspect of the trading post.

Flippers make sure that there’s someone willing to pay coin now for a particular item, then takes that item and put it up for sale for someone who would want it now. The only reason flippers exist is because the original seller and the eventual buyer aren’t on the market at the same time but both want immediate transactions and are willing to sacrifice optimum pricing to get it.

KyreneZA.8617:

Behellagh.1468:

But at 3c a salvage for master kit stats? That’s a significant discount. As it is/was, it’s only 15% off of the basic kit cost per salvage. It would have to be 1/2 a silver a piece to be equivalent for master stats.

This would only be true if the initial gold cost (if you bought the gems with gold) for the item wasn’t factored in. A lot of people don’t see it as a purely “convenience item.”

And that’s why I don’t own one. While I see the advantage of the convenience I can’t rationalize the initial cost.

This isn’t about AMD vs Intel fanboyism but simple fact than an FX core is significantly slower than an Intel core in performance and reducing the multithreaded-ness of an app to 2 to 3 is in Intel’s favor even if the threads have similar loads.

The strength of the FX design is when all cores are similarly loaded and not when it’s being under utilized. Intel’s strength is a faster core that can be more efficient, usually, if it’s given two threads to do simultaneously rather than sequentially as is normally done via multitasking. The FX competes with that by wrapping two thread, lack of a better description, cores within “a module” as AMD calls it.

Yes but you are running a tiny God so naturally your rig is an outlier. For mere mortals however the rule of thumb is pretty consistent, more than two, rarely above three cores of load.

If everyone is ticked off then ANet is doing something right.

The store is not smart enough to prevent you from gifting a limited use item like an upgrade, bank slot, collection expansion, etc to someone who has already hit that limit (or have them waiting in their mail already). That’s why you are not allowed to.

But at 3c a salvage for master kit stats? That’s a significant discount. As it is/was, it’s only 15% off of the basic kit cost per salvage. It would have to be 1/2 a silver a piece to be equivalent for master stats.

I’ve seen talk as high as 60 character slots but I don’t remember seeing an actual limit mentioned. There is in all likelihood one, just beyond what the vast majority will every get close to.

sorudo.9054:

if they really want ppl to buy gems trough real money without removing the gold->gem exchange then they better make a bonus gem system for that, so you ether spend your time farming gold all the time or you buy gems with real money and get more gems then you can get trough the exchange.
just look at this:
http://www.lotro.com/en/buy-turbine-points
Anet can do the exact same thing, it makes buying gem trough money allot more profitable while keeping the exchange the way it is. (and if this keeps up, only the extreme farmers can use it properly)

Except I don’t remember seeing NCSOFT offer bonus proxy currency in any of their games ever. Turbine has been able to keep DDO and LotRO alive with offers and discounts on their proxy currency as well as sales in their cash shop. But those games have been around much, much longer and may need offers like that to keep the cash flowing. GW2 is only 15 months old, not 5 plus years.

Septemptus.7164:

Behellagh.1468:

Yes you have a point to. This is the first item that is only available outside of the gem store and does set a bad precedent. But it’s a solution to a problem they created by having a mini as a con exclusive in the first place. It wouldn’t have been such a problem if they gave away funny town hats or even a special title. They stepped in it when they made it a collectible. This is their way to dig out of it and as long as it’s a one time thing, great.

1 question.

Why don’t they put it in gem store for 1k gold?

It would work. Buy 4k and get present for 1k or spend 1k gems for the mini.
It would work fine without making this exclusivity problem…

Yet they want to go the outside gem shop way.

That is disappointing to me.

Because gem store items can be bought buy gems which can be bought by in game gold which sort of defeats the purpose of paying ANet cash which they want and don’t think it’s too much to ask for a mini that most every collector wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. It’s probably cheaper than the entry fee to either of the cons where they game it away or what they went for on eBay and still have the assurance that the code hadn’t been used already. It was an exclusive mini available to those game con attendees, now it’s exclusive to those who buy $50 in gems.

Yes I know, you don’t want to spend cash. Too bad. Their toys, their rules.

But what if the player you are gifting already upgraded? That’s the problem. The current system doesn’t/can’t check if what you are gifting, a gift that can only be applied a limited number of times, has hit the limit and block the transaction from going through.

No, if GW2 was built for 2-3 main threads AMD would not win out because when an Intel core isn’t trying to handle two threads at once with HT on the i7 it is significantly faster.

GW2 has 40+ threads with around 6-10 having around 1/4 core or more worth of CPU load with 3 threads over 50%.

It’s the OS that assigns threads to cores. Yes there are ways to force the issue but I doubt ANet used any of those techniques since they don’t know every player’s system and what else they are running. That’s the whole purpose of the OS, arbitrate fix resources across multiple application while convincing each application it has the whole system to itself.

49% across 6 cores or approximately 3 cores worth of actual CPU load and that’s normal. Why is it so difficult to understand that the game only produces around 3 cores worth of CPU load?

Oh and the same thread doesn’t have to keep running on the same core so just because one core gets used a lot, doesn’t mean one thread decided to camp there. For individual thread load use Process Explorer from Microsoft, bring up the properties for gw2.exe when it’s running, click on the thread tab and sort by CPU %. You will see no thread goes past 1/number of cores in CPU %. That’s the single core limiting factor people talk about.

Welcome to taxation as the new purchasing system makes sure you are taxed based on state and city sales/use tax.

And if you try to rollback via your bank or credit card, your account will be terminated and totally unrecoverable.

There was likely fine print somewhere that warns you that taxes will be charged.

Bad language filter replaces bad words with kitten. Even if the bad word is split between consecutive words with punctuation and spaces. Makes a funny read sometimes.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/There-is-Luck-and-then-there-is-RNG-Luck/2924633

The Order knows how to hide, grant them that.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Sales-Tax-for-buying-gems/3356869

6g per 100 gems is 4.8g per $1. Or 100g for $20.83. True it’s a 30-50% premium compared to gold sellers but you don’t have to worry about your account or identity stolen.

Playing on Mac or Windows?

They said anything that could have a player limit can’t be gifted.

Mac users had a different problem from ANet’s end, this latest patch should have fixed it.

I know it’s so easy to generalize and bash AMD CPUs, especially the FX series, with this game. Some of that is due to player misconceptions that more cores automatically mean every app will run faster or not understanding, blame AMD marketing, that FX cores are considerably slower one on one compared to Intel’s. Sure AMD’s 8 core can give Intel’s two generation old quad a good run in certain heavily multithreaded apps but it’s hardly universal and seemingly never in games unless the game is GPU bound.

To the average neophyte DIYer the question is black and white, Intel good, AMD bad. I applaud your defense of a platform that seen it’s best days behind it which doesn’t mean it’s automatically horrible.

Since this is an upgrade for low cost situation getting an Phenom II or FX quad or hex core like the FX-4350 or -6350 and OC the kitten out of it with a decent after market cooler is probably the cheapest route for the OP.

The fact the kneejerkers come in, blow past “on a budget” notion and scream about how AMD sucks and Intel rules is sad.

If you are buying a new desktop, go for one with an Intel i5 quad core.

CursedShaitan.9720:

i’m traveling so these are screenies I posted that are still on the forum from 23 days ago. I’ll take more if you need.

So if you overclock the shiznit out of a Phenom II you’ll get good performance. When is that NOT true with a quad core and this game. <eyeroll>

You really need to frame the post with the fact you overclock since you have no idea if something like that is in the OPs bailiwick.

Did you check all your weapons and armor for Traveler gear?

http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/

Look up your server’s match here, check the live map and use it to determine if it’s worth popping over for a quick grab in area’s your server controls. If you are on a server that doesn’t do well, then Friday night after the reset should have the most territory under your server’s control. If you are on a dominating server like Blackgate, go anytime for they rarely lose their starting locations and can dominate several maps at once, depending on the time of day.

Mesket.5728:

Scarlet is NCSoft CEO’s daughter.

Only logical explanation.

Can’t except that. Ex-wife … I can see that.

The game essentially uses, from a system load perspective, more than 2 and no more than 4 cores. More than that and you really don’t see any significant improvement, which is why the FX-8xxx seems like a disappointment. Of course if you have other stuff always running while playing more cores are helpful in general, just the game will barely have enough work for more than 3.

Right now with an AM3+ socket, a Phenom II 965 would work nicely if you can find one. An FX class CPU needs about a 20% clock boost over the Phenom II clock speed for similar performance with the same number of cores.

Yes and no. Buy one of something for a friend, they you can buy the same item for yourself at 40% off but if the item has multiple purchase sizes such as keys, you can buy yourself the 25 key size at 40% off when you buy only 1 key for a friend. Sure not a lot of items have multiple sizes but it’s something.

Okay, read up on the subject. At some point in the future glory will be removed from the game. This hasn’t happened yet. As a matter of fact the PvP vendors have been tweaked so prices are a combo of glory and gold.

So yes it’s on the way out but why remove the booster from the chest now rather than when glory is finally, or a few weeks before, removed permanently?

Did they say it was obsolete or just that they weren’t going to sell them directly as an item anymore? There are several things you can only get in a BL chest rather than the gem store.

Buttercup.5871:

Behellagh.1468:

So it works on all slots in the bank, collections and 30 slot storage panes.

That’s a bit of a confusing statement. It works on any collectable. The ones you fill up by clicking “deposit all collectables now”. Gathered mats, dropped mats, minis, ascended mats, event mats etc.

Then how did you free up a bank tab?

Oh wait, so you moved mats from your bank tab back into the now expanded collection tab. Got it. Your statement about freeing up a bank tab misdirected me.

Really they need to put a sticky up about how to flush the game’s browser cache.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/TP-Empty-Not-loading/3247980

So it works on all slots in the bank, collections and 30 slot storage panes.

matemaster.2168:

this is just my opinion…

Lets take a look at the bigger picture
All T6 basic materials are tanking in price and the supply is going up like crazy

Here we have ascended armor and it requires to level crafting to 500 which requires tons of T6 material

here are 2 possibilities of what happened
1. Traders are stupid. They stockpiled T6 material before ascended launch was anounced and now selling it for the minimum price (in some cases the historic minimum price) so they are creating a loss guaranteed.

2. This is anet intervention (they are pumping T6 mats into the economy to lower the price for causual players so they dont get very frustrated in leveling crafting to 500)

I think that 2 is true because trades are not stupid and wont sell T6 mats for the historic minimum prices only to create loss

Respectfully disagree. Players are dumping to recoup whatever gold that was invested to now fund the proper items to level their crafting skill. True it’s at a loss but it’s relatively minor (50-60% loss). Also at no time to anybody’s knowledge has ANet simply posted items for sale onto the TP. It’s always been from increased drops that players then sell, so it’s not 2, but 1.

I’ve already done the Trading Places references twice so I’ll simply link the appropriate one.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Why-is-cloth-tanking/3351072

Umut.5471:

I’ve bought it and activated it but items in bank collections tab still stack up to 250.
What’s wrong ?

Because it affects collections as in the other tab at the bank. The one with all the mats and minis.

At least that is what I think it means.

But it’s not law yet (3rd time’s the charm?).

Also the USSC tossed the New York vs Amazon 3rd party’s tax case back to the circuit court Monday without comment.

Draknar.5748:

Behellagh.1468:

You’re on the strongest US server in WvW.

FTFY

In season 1 that is.

Yes but JQ has been in the top 3 since day one. Where was BG during several weeks during those first few months?

:p

Okay, different states, different tax laws (gift cards, internet/mail order purchases). However if ANet is charging sales tax when it doesn’t have to, something smells.

Sounds like it.

Maybe they are working on a big revamp of the TP interface (ha!) and they’ll be back better than ever (ha!).

Okay, gossamer prices have been dropping all afternoon, which means that everybody is waiting for it to hit rock bottom, so they can buy low. Which means that the players who own the gossamer are saying, "Hey, we’re losing all our kitten money, and Christmas is around the corner, and I ain’t gonna have no gold to craft my ascended armor! So they’re panicking right now, they’re screaming “SELL! SELL!” to get out before the price keeps dropping. They’re panicking out there right now, I can feel it.

Apologies to the screenwriters of Trading Places.

That’s “use tax” and pretty much every state has that kind of self reporting of mail order goods. Not really enforceable due to the lack of ability to track it but I agree that “Lucy got some ’splainin to do!” if they are collecting taxes that don’t need to be.

Two years aeneq? Wow you must be from the future because the published API on the API board isn’t that old.

So who wins the Super Bowl in 2014?