Guild Wars 2

Watch it, they’re pretty positive about their analysis of GW2. Dems fightin’ words according to some in these here parts.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Behellagh.1468:

thefantasticg.3984:

I love in this thread the “I don’t like the way you play the game. I’m glad they nerfed it so you don’t play the game how you want to.” replies. Fark you guys. I like to farm. I enjoy it. Quit trying to make me quit playing this game, Anet!

Probably wouldn’t have happen so soon if the train wasn’t so possessive of the champs and bullied any who took out a champ out of order. I would imagine that it was a GM nightmare. And I’m sure that the worse were always just this side of what was considered banable conduct.

Maybe you should not assume all players are represented by the few who were rude.

I don’t but it only takes a few bad apples to sour the mash. Take any victory celebration that turns into a riot after the last game of a season or a big rivalry. Do you think a small army of law enforcement is needed if everyone just milled about celebrating? No it’s the few that equate victory as a license to cause property damage and other mischief.

Now if Anet had a visible rep in every train or at every champ spot waiting to hammer the few bad apples then maybe they would have left it alone but they simply don’t have the manpower to do this proactively.

… sigh …

So how are they regulating it Dromar? Because they set it up as a simple closed system to pay for Gem to Gold exchange? Because if you aren’t paying a monthly subscription and they provide a means to dodge paying real cash at the cash shop that it’s unfair that they want to be paid occasionally for playing their game monthly?

Again, the exchange wasn’t meant for “casual” players, only players who can accumulate large piles of gold through play. This means the merchant class who leverage other players impatience, indifference or ignorance as a means to riches. This includes those who pay for items to salvage and sell the mats or buy lower quality items and play the mystic slot machine for profit.

Yes, the aren’t “adventuring” in the wilderness doing whatever farm of the month to maximize income. But they are keeping the wheels of the TP greased by absorbing excess items and turning them into desired ones or providing immediate coin at prices much higher than a vendor is willing to pay.

And what they do is considered anathema to those who simply use and not participate in the workings of the TP. They are simply making profits that you decided to pass up on when you sold them your stuff than selling it yourself or weren’t willing to wait for someone to sell you an item at what you would be willing to pay. You get some item you don’t want so you take 10s for now rather than waiting for 12s later because you want to buy something you would use now for 10s that you could have gotten for 8s if you were willing to wait. Or you didn’t care if it cost a little more or a little less. Well guess where a good chunk of that 4s difference ends up? In the pockets of those who are willing to do the waiting for you by providing what you want, coin or item, now.

thefantasticg.3984:

I love in this thread the “I don’t like the way you play the game. I’m glad they nerfed it so you don’t play the game how you want to.” replies. Fark you guys. I like to farm. I enjoy it. Quit trying to make me quit playing this game, Anet!

Probably wouldn’t have happen so soon if the train wasn’t so possessive of the champs and bullied any who took out a champ out of order. I would imagine that it was a GM nightmare. And I’m sure that the worse were always just this side of what was considered banable conduct.

Sorry, I tried to bite my tongue but what you are asking for is like asking for a $15,000 car with 0-100 mph in under 4 seconds.

Most laptops at the price point don’t come with separate GPUs and integrated graphics that aren’t all that great for gaming. Also the CPUs tend to be low end dual cores.

Lets see what’s available in the states and maybe you can find something similar over there in Europe.

I did not find a lot. I restricted myself to under $600 USD, 4GB or more memory and any GPU better than an Intel HD Graphics 4000. What I ended up with is a solo Haswell i3 and a couple of AMD with discrete graphics. But that brings up back to the old conundrum of faster CPU or faster GPU.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834257665

This is an i3-4000M with HD Graphics 4600, $565 USD. Fast CPU, meh graphics.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834312830

This is an A8-5550M with discrete HD 8570M, 4GB, $530 USD. Meh CPU, faster graphics.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314181

This is an A10-5757M with discrete HD 8570M, 6GB, $600. Slightly less meh CPU, faster graphics.

All three are 1366×768, 15.6".

That’s the best of a not so great barrel.

Just stay away from anything with just Intel HD Graphics 4000. And the integrated GPUs in the higher end A8 and A10 are in the same ballpark as the HD 4600 but you end up with a much weaker CPU.

Astral Projections.7320:

Strangely enough, the paper bag helms are in Guild Wars 2 wiki and it doesn’t say currently unavailable. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Paper-Bag_Helm_4-Pack

But players can edit the wiki. Someone seeing the datamined jumped the gun.

Once more from the top …

Gold to Gems is and never was meant to be the primary means to acquire Gems in this game. Gems are the proxy currency of the cash shop and this game’s primary source of income is the cash shop. Having a low gold to gems rate defeats that purpose and would be cutting their own throat.

Gold to Gems is how the currency exchange funds itself for Gems to Gold purchases. This way no gold or gems are created or destroyed by the exchange, merely stored. This way the exchange is self funded beyond the original allotment of gold and gems at launch time. The rates are based on the simple ratio of gold to gems in the exchange. As gems are taken out while gold is added, each remaining gem is worth more and more gold and therefore the rate is higher. If gems are added and gold taken out the reverse is true.

In most MMOs with cash shops, there isn’t a way to acquire cash shop items with in-game currency. We should consider ourselves fortunate that we don’t always have to pony up real money.

I know you don’t want to hear this but the exchange is a reward for players with lots of time to earn in-game coin and little cash as oppose to the other extreme where players have cash but not a lot of game time to earn in-game coin. The exchange also doubles as the legitimate way to buy gold with cash through gems.

But after more than a year of sales and in-demand items the Gem supply has been reduced enough that the rate is now 8.8x higher than just a year ago. This will keep going until players start buying gems with cash and exchanging it for gold enough to counter the players who only buy gems with gold. And it will keep being driven buy sales and attractive offers at the cash shop.

So the choice is yours. Pony up real money to buy those shinny trinkets at the cash shop and/or in-game gold or learn to go without or with a lot fewer purchases.

I’m not familiar with the various D&D novels so pardon my ignorance. Is Umrae a drow character? I google search is showing a very high popularity of the name Umrae in relation to drow. If so it might have run afoul of the “Reference names of copyrighted or trademarked characters, materials, or products” clause in the naming restrictions.

You can always submit a ticket and ask for a detail explanation.

Which is edited by players who read reddit data mine threads.

Claymore outfit in general is a full body unitard with armor gauntlets, boots, shoulders and skirt with the weapon being a wide bladed greatsword (a claymore, who would of thunk it).

And this is where you are going to have problems. Only some classes can wield a greatsword as a hitting weapon, Mesmers use it more like a focus. That leaves Guardian, Warrior or Ranger and since tween boy or even younger girl isn’t a valid pet option that disqualifies Ranger. :p

Problem is Guardian and Warrior use heavy armor and even female armor in this game doesn’t include a full body unitard. Standard chainmail armor might be a passable bottom (it has leggings) but can’t find a suitable top. The worn chainmail set is somewhat close but not really. Not that flexible when it comes to armor.

It’s not City of Heroes.

laokoko.7403:

^ I dont’ even understand what he is trying to say.

So I buy a sword for 100 gold. and If I resell it for 130 gold, I’ll end up only getting 30 gold?

No you’ll end up with 10.5g after fees but that’s neither here or there. The guy I was quoting was suggesting yet another artificial means to reduce flipping when flipping isn’t what’s driving prices up. The player who bought it from you for 130g could have competed with you to acquire it in the first place for 100g. Nothing prevented him other than either his own indifference or impatience which is what a flipper capitalizes on. At the end of the day one player gets an item they wanted, the flipper got 10.5 gold, the player who sold it for 100g got 85g after fees and the TP removes 34.5 gold from the game.

In feudal Japan, merchants were considered the lowest class because they were considered parasites on the rest of society and I feel that’s what a lot of players believe the same about those who play the TP. But they are necessary in keeping the economy flowing.

JasonP.4028:

All sales in a real world Auction businesses take money up front and/or after the sale in many cases an many auction businesses don’t hold the item tell sold they hold it for that sale period, To help deter people just buying a reposting things after raising the price 50%-100% something like reposting item that you just got off the trading post should charge the full sale’/posting tax up front with out the charge after the sale so that people that buy an item will not get there money back if they raise the price so high that people will not buy to repost. (OR) have the sales of exotic to legendary items be on a one week turn around with a vary vary small posting fee each time like .5% every time you wish to post a item of a certain rarity for a day week month (aka the WoW mechanic)

But it’s not an auction. Player putting it up for sale says “will sell for X” and it’s up to other players to decide if that’s a price they want to pay and others with the same item to sell it at the same price or less.

And you are trying to play the “ebil flipper” card. Flipping isn’t evil. Playing the TP isn’t evil. Flipping isn’t raising prices, that’s primarily shifts in supply and demand plus the recent injection of coin into the game since the start of the Queen’s celebration and raising the champ rewards.

Hermes.7014:

Havvy.4897:

Really, the champ farming was driving up the prices of gems, making it so that those who don’t farm look at a steadily increasing price over the past few months. Look at this chart:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

Zoom it out to see the price for all time. Notice how for most of the game, 100 gems was steady over time, with a couple bump ups. And now the price is raising in a linear fashion.

When you get 8gp/hr doing something boring and skilless, but doing something fun that requires skill gets you not even 10% of that, those who are looking to have some fun are forced to ignore the gem store completely, because each day they are making comparatively less gems.

I want gold to actually be worth something…and having less of it enter the system is a way to make that work.

Woah, that’s definitely not right. Whatever happened in July started it.

What happen in July was the graph broke. The one on GuildWarsTrade fills in the gap starting in August but that leaves the 15% gain in July that isn’t charted.

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/gems

Basically every major jot up in the exchange rate happened when something new and desirable hit the gem shop, returned to the gem shop or went on sale.

ANet can’t change the belief that some players have that the only way to be “successful” is to acquire large amounts of coin. That’s the only reason I see for farming whether it was repeated dungeon speed runs, champ trains or traditional critter farming.

If you look at all the so called reward “nerfs” all of them was to discourage “farming” the same thing over and over again because in their eyes that can’t be enjoying the game as a whole. Like dungeons, just don’t do the same one 4 times an hour. Like boss events, fine but you only get the big reward once per day per event per player. Diminishing returns so you will move beyond that one tiny area and into the rest of the whole wide world. It was true, before champs were ignored as often as they were taken out so they upped the reward. However that inadvertently created the champ train and that style of play wasn’t healthy for the rest of the game so they dialed the rewards back some. Maybe after a month or two of data mining they will turn it back up a tad if champs persist in the world too long once again. It’s a fine line.

ANet doesn’t have stock. It’s 100% owned by NC West Holdings which is 100% owned by NCSOFT.

No, they don’t have a continuous free trial offer or as far as I know a “friend” pass. They have open free trials every so often but not right now.

Well I have what passes as minimal broadband in the US, 3Mb, so this last 300MB big patch took about 18-20 minutes. Which is also why I backup the game weekly because downloading the entire game from scratch is 16+ hours for me.

I don’t mind calling it out in map chat. That’s being open and sharing info rather than keeping it to yourself. It lets more players know and gives them a chance to waypoint in to participate since when I announce I also list the closest waypoint. As long as someone doesn’t charge past the group of players gathering around me I’ll wait a bit before charging in.

Not to sound preachy but this game is all about helping each other in a spirit of cooperation. That’s why no tagging and no XP/Loot splitting, participate and get the prize. It’s other MMOs that treat every encounter, ever resource node as the one true ring and all the players are competing Gollums wanting their precious.

Gasoline.2570:

Really? Why did you nerf the gold drop???

Because we can’t have nice things.

They throw us a bone by making champs more worthwhile, someone figures out how it can become the next big money making activity since speed running CoF and now they have to take most of it away because it caused some very unsportsman like behavior in a starting zone.

When within five posts of a newbie asking what should they be doing is “Champ Train”, the behavior of players is broken. The game is suppose to be about exploring and helping but it keeps devolving into extremely limited activities because players have been weened in other MMOs to believe that only through acquisition of items (via wealth here) via grind is where an MMO shines.

But we aren’t suppose to be a bunch of sword sells looking for the best pay just because some armor catches our eye.

Galtrix.7369:

Behellagh.1468:

Game isn’t subscription based, it’s cash shop based. So they need to replace a $15 a month subscription from all with items bought by few. Therefore the price.

Guild Wars 2 is basically pay to play after you want new armor. “Oh, you want new armor? Buy the armor skins from the gem store or buy the transmutation stones for your armor. Oh, and the transmutation stones come in increments of 5 or 10. Have fun spending money on transmutation stones you don’t need!”

They already replaced the $15 a month subscription fee with the insane amount of RNG they place in the gemstore every few weeks, and then some. They could lower the prices by 90% and they would still have a steady income due to all the people giving in to the RNG.

So you are going to go with the whole buns come in six packs but hot dogs in 10 argument? Sorry things coming in 5 or 10 has more to do with the number of fingers on our hands then any “ebil conspiracy” notion that crystals come in five packs so you are forced to by two packs so you can skin an entire set.

I grant you the RNG with ticket and ticket scraps. As I’ve said before that if you are able to figure out the average cost to get enough tickets to trade for a skin that it would make the cost of a monocle in EVE, which caused a big uproar over cash shop costs for purely cosmetic item, look down right affordable. And this is where they’ve fallen down. But it must still be a big money maker because this wouldn’t have become status quo with every 3rd living world update if buying keys dried up. So instead they throw us a bone, making sets only 1 ticket so we buy now while it’s “affordable” before the price goes through the roof.

But they have to hit their sale goals and as long as whales are buying keys, equating them to the cost of their habits like their morning Starbucks or carton of cigs or 24 pack of beer for the weekend, no reason for ANet to change.

Game isn’t subscription based, it’s cash shop based. So they need to replace a $15 a month subscription from all with items bought by few. Therefore the price.

Sorry but Gold for Gems never was meant to be the primary means to buy Gems. They want you to spend cash, they need you to spend cash. This is how a cash shop game stays open.

stale.9785:

whole thread is empty? huh?

Forum software glitch. If the previous page is full (50 posts), you get a blank page.

Just another forum software problem.

You don’t think that ANet watches how players play and if gameplay devolves into something they disapprove of they will change the reason that style of gameplay popped up in the first place?

It use to be when the Troll popped up someone would announce it and then whoever wanted to participate shows up. Do that now and if the train isn’t there yet you will get your butt handed to you over chat and that’s in most likely the most popular starting zone. Let’s leave the impression on the new guys that there is a rigid order in playing the zone as oppose to the relative restriction free of do anything in any order style that this game was promoted to be.

Yes champ rewards needed to be improved because too many players simply skipped them leaving them running wild. As what happens quite often in games the pendulum was swung too far and players were ignoring the overarching event simply to farm champs (Scarlet, Tequatl).

I’m looking at the Gem Shop and they have added all of three armors for each “weight” class. Just three and one of them just recently. Tons of Town Clothes. They do have backpack skins and mask skins but armor sets, only three.

How many armor skins are available from crafting, karma, cultural, order and dungeons in game for each race? Looking at human light I see 37. Some may be PvP only but still we are looking at 10 to 1 between in game and gem store.

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/human-light.htm

Problem with champ rewards was they were “exploited” into champ trains in Queensdale. Waypoints weren’t being cleared, regular content not being done, open hostility if the sequence was interrupted by another, etc. At least back in the day of speed running that one dungeon path you had level limits and instances to limit participation and not in the open world or a starter zone.

I understand that players will naturally evolve their game play to the most optimal means to achieve their goals whether it’s XP or coin but what champ trains did was disrupt the game play of newcomers and that’s really a no-no. The reduced rewards are likely a means to reduce the attractiveness of trains so players will actually go off and participate in the rest of the game than mindlessly running/waypointing from champ to champ for an entire evening.

Or it’s a means to limit the color mapping on the texture to 2 bits per pixel while the rest of the texture identifies material type for light scattering and general tinting for detail.

Considering we can’t zoom in onto a piece while dyeing, having more than 4 would become A) tedious depending on the number of dyeing zones and clutter up the UI. And since the color info is sent to all players around you for them to see as well, it’s not like they would/could provide a free form coloration of your character (ie draw a unique pattern on it).

Also rezzing NPCs and other players grant XP. Plus creatures away from the common areas, have bonus XP, sometimes the bonus is nearly triple, if they’ve been in the world for a “long” time since spawning. So explore off the roads and away from camps and the critters you find there will be worth a lot more than the one just off the roadway.

Also it doesn’t matter if you out level an area. The XP you get is adjusted for your actual level, not the level of the map you are in.

Maybe one shouldn’t believe all the stuff on reddit.

Wallace MacBix.2089:

Behellagh.1468:

I did note in another thread before this latest step up in exchange rate that compared to a year ago, the cost of Dusk is dollars has dropped 70% due to the change in the rate. So if you do have the money to burn, buying gems and converting into gold, it’s becoming quite attractive.

$25 gem card at this moment will get you 100 gold vs 12.6 gold a year ago.

While that may be true, if you want to buy a legendary right off the tp it will still cost $500-$600 right now.

Not really, the “still” part that is. Legendary prices are relatively flat compared to the increase in $ for gold via gems. Let’s look at one that isn’t a great sword, The Bifrost.

Nine months ago it was 2435g, now it’s 2490g. Nine months ago it was 1.1g per dollar/euro and now it’s 3.9g. So nine months ago it would have cost $2210 to buy with cash and now it’s $640. Yes outrageous and rarely acquired that way but it’s 30% of what it was with cash.

Of the two the CM 212 EVO is the better choice.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Gibson.4036:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can save the world without the optional luxury items.

Yeah.

This thread had me thinking earlier this morning. I was imagining a novel where King Arthur had to kill thousands of White Stags for Stag Hearts and Stag Antlers to refine them so he can craft Excalibur in order to defeat the Green Knight once a day for a month to earn the gold needed to buy the Holy Grail from a wealthy merchant.

But Excalibur wasn’t an optional luxury item Arthur needed to purchase. It was bestowed upon him by the Lady of the Lake after he became King.

“Oh, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.”

20% is the average up convert rate. If you miss you simply get another green. Miss four times and you get a 5th chance, thus 16 for 1 on average. I’ve been doing a lot of green up-converting for coin and that 20% is pretty much spot on.

And BL salvage kits are around 1.25 ectos per rare. But unless you get them for free they aren’t worth the coin to gem to get them for rare salvaging. I only use them for rune/sigil extraction when it’s a pricey exotic rune/sigil on an exotic item.

The game doesn’t require grouping to play, making it very solo friendly. But if you want to team with friends and guild mates it doesn’t prevent you.

It also doesn’t prevent you from tagging along with a group of soloists running from event to event or just taking the scenic tour around a zone. And since XP and loot isn’t divided and there is no “tagging” every one who helps with the kill gets full amount.

Traced.3495:

2%.

I don’t like the magic find update.

What? You didn’t get your 20% luck startup kit email?

Gibson.4036:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You can save the world without the optional luxury items.

Yeah.

This thread had me thinking earlier this morning. I was imagining a novel where King Arthur had to kill thousands of White Stags for Stag Hearts and Stag Antlers to refine them so he can craft Excalibur in order to defeat the Green Knight once a day for a month to earn the gold needed to buy the Holy Grail from a wealthy merchant.

And it would equally sad if every knight in the kingdom had an Excalibur.

Oh and I’ve been noticing this for a few weeks now. Don’t remember when it totally went away.

And yes I’ve done the flushing of caches and disabling addons (only run adblock) and it persists.

I do believe my list of authorized networks disappeared first, around the time I started to notice the NCSOFT currently logged in. Can’t confirm if it happened exactly at the same time or not.

There’s only about a 9% chance of getting 3 ectos from a rare with a master/mystic kit and about a 35% chance of getting 0 ectos. While the average is around 0.9 counting on ectos from limited salvage is a crap shoot at best.

So you take 16 green armor/weapon/trinket and on “average” you will get a rare that on average yield 0.9 ectos that have been hovering around 31s each, an 80% chance of a rune/sigil (assuming the rare has one) that sells for 4s/1.5s each and a hand full of mats with way too much T5 leather and cloth scraps.

Do you feel lucky?

Well it’s not like they can reprint the cards every month. And it wouldn’t be fair for gem card buyers if TP buyers get a better deal.

Lots of things in the world and life are unfair. This is trivial in the big picture.

Yea I know but I’m assuming not a lot of math majors in the audience. Since the rate was described as the ratio between amount of gold in the exchange Vs the amount of gems in the exchange and as since the first is increasing while the second is decreasing with the first rising ever faster relative to a unit change in the second it’s definitely more exponential than power.

But that doesn’t change the fact than until Gem for Gold increases compared to Gold for Gems, the rate will continuously rise, getting worse and worse as fewer and fewer gems are left in the exchange.

I did note in another thread before this latest step up in exchange rate that compared to a year ago, the cost of Dusk is dollars has dropped 70% due to the change in the rate. So if you do have the money to burn, buying gems and converting into gold, it’s becoming quite attractive.

$25 gem card at this moment will get you 100 gold vs 12.6 gold a year ago.

I remember a few weeks/months back the rash of “OMG I’m being hacked from Texas” posts which we know (if you didn’t realize the IP was NCSOFT’s" as false and I don’t see that anymore.

Actually I don’t see anything anymore. No current logins. No authorized networks even though I can login fine and dandy from the two places I previously authorized. While I appreciate not displaying NCSOFT related access I would really like to see my networks and current logins again.

So is this unique to just me or are others seeing this as well?

Edit: And I’m using Chrome.

If they want to maintain their relationship with Anet, If they value early access to the game content over a quick buck, then yes. Does that mean do I think they are all angels? No. It’s always a temptation but I don’t think it’s as wide spread as implied Dreamslayer. There is a big gap between nobody and “rampant”.

sorudo.9054:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

sorudo.9054:

for now i am forced to buy gems with euro’s and Anet screws over europeans every single day, they favor USD over EURO and even make an excuse that apparently some weak minded ppl believe.

Then you should tell Europe to get rid of your VAT, and then convert all your currencies to the US Dollar.

or have the euro prices corrected without the lame “but we rounded it up for you” excuse, i really don’t care about a price that looks weird, i rather pay a weird price then a unfair price.
euro INCLUDING VAT is €9,45 and no, it’s not ok to just round it up to €10,-.

But they are never going to base the cost on just the running exchange rate plus 20% VAT. Just as Sony and Microsoft isn’t going to price their next gen consoles that way.

You would think that since this question is asked every flippin’ time new armor is added to the store that ANet would learn to be up front about this in the description.

Guess it’s just another means to push sales so when the “limited time left” sign goes up, players will rush to buy gems with cash if they really want it rather than plan and budget for gold→gem conversions. Business wise it’s a valid tactic I guess. And we do have to remember that in the end they need to make money monthly.

If she had a fully enclosed helm then the rest of the outfit objectifies her more. It’s the proverbial bag over her head.

BTW Christmas 2 is a reference to “Santa Claus: The Movie”.

“A sequel. That’s it. We’ll bring it out on March 25, and we’ll call it… Christmas 2!”

KumajirouSan.3527:

Yeah, It’s not secret that AMD CPU’s have really weak cores. But there has to be a way to put all cores to use… Every game I own besides this one can use all cores.

Such as? Are they Dx11 or Dx9? Curious that’s all.

Almost guarantee they are using an underlying game engine that is marketed to other companies as a product. Even if they were the creators of it in the first place.

I’m going out on a limb here and guess next anniversary? Are you also looking for Christmas 2?

Right now it’s $1 for 4G or 100 gems for 5G. We’re halfway there already Smooth and the curve is exponential. It’s just going to keep rising faster and faster as time moves on thus forcing the time when players will start buying Gems with cash and just maybe trade them for gold.