Showing Posts For Behellagh.1468:

New Laptop

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

You can use the following two links to compare performance. Unfortunately you didn’t give enough info about the two CPUs.

CPU – http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

GPU – http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

It appears that the 5650 is the faster of the two GPUs

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Sonic Periscope Audio Logs

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

My bad, I saw the one in Diessa and assumed it was just universally not marked.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Sonic Periscope Audio Logs

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

They are in the same spots as before, just not marked.

The one in the Wayfarer Foothills is across from the refugee contact on the green side/lower part of the map where the road cuts through into the snow side. It’s near, relatively speaking, to the gate to Hoelbrok .

The one in the Diessa Plateau is near, again relatively speaking, to the gate to the Black Citadel, near the Nolan Waypoint. There are others, I just don’t know where they are, those are the only two I ever used.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Why is it the BLTP interface so bad?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

The current UI appears as if it’s tab based but in reality those tabs are just bookmarks. What we need are real tabs with their own states so if you check out the price at the gem store for something and then switch to the gold→gem tab to buy gems that when we return to the store we don’t have to look up that item again to buy it. Same is true with the search in the buy tab if we switched to the sell/history one or what’s pending for pickup tab.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Fused weapon drop rate data

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

It’s the same reason casino’s don’t readily publish your odds of winning. (Although, strangely enough, I think laws regulating contests require them to post your odds. See: Pretty much every contest ever. McDonald’s monopoly states this. Every online contest I’ve ever seen says “Odds are determined by number of contestants that enter.”)

If gamblers knew how much the odds were against them (and in favor of the house), then perhaps the reasonable person would stop gambling. (But this is, of course, assuming that gamblers are reasonable people, which is a faulty assumption in and of itself.)

Nearly all casino games have well known established odds and from that the house’s cut is easily determined. Slots are advertised as what percentage is returned to the player. If a slot is 98% then if you play $100 (I’m talking small denomination slots here like quarter slots) then on average after you spent your initial $100, you’ll still have on average $98. If that was in a course of an hour then it’s $2 an hour for the “entertainment” of trying to win money. Of course if you keep playing eventually the casino will have all your money. You have to think of games at a casino solely as entertainment and not as a source of income. Unless it’s a game where you play against other players and then skills rule.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

New computer

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

No problem downloading the game again, except for the time it takes. All your characters are up on the server. You’ll lose any screenshots you had saved but that’s all.

It’s your account that you are “buying” when you bought the game. As long as you know your ID and password, you can install the game everywhere, you just can’t log in more than one at a time.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Is it me or GW2 feel like a chore [merged]

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

If you think the dailies are an imposition and the rewards useless, ignore the darn counters and just play. Some days you may get it, other days not, depending on your preferred style of play.

It’s only a grind if you let it.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Check my Math please.

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I pretty much said what needs to be said other than…

Arena-net needs to do the following:

  • Put set prices on end game items on how high an item can go to be sold on Auction House.

Because price control works so well every time it’s tried. (this is sarcasm)

  • Add Gold to Leader Boards for Public Records. (World Wide)

If you are hoping to shame people with this, know that the opposite is likely to occur as players strive to be the Daddy Warbucks of Tyria. Also revealing their virtual wealth will simply make them more of a target for hacks and spam from players looking for a handout.

  • Remove Legendary Weapons (Not Pre-Cursor) from the Auction House.

Because if you are Daddy Warbucks you shouldn’t be able to use your filthy lucre to buy anything you want? I don’t think people in the real world are buying expensive European sport cars as kits so why shouldn’t the same rules apply?

That should balance out the entire economics of the entire game.

One last thing, the more you guys try to argue over this on my thread, the more you just prove my points.

No, your entire premise is because there are outrageously expensive but desirable items at the TP, this somehow negatively affects the entire economy of the game. That this drives players to “earn” money by jacking up the price of everything else. Problem with your hypothesis is there isn’t widespread evidence to support it.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

Gem exchange rates

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

John Smith has talked about it around the edges. He’s says the exchange contains two pools, one gem, one gold, both initialized at launch with a very, very large pool of gems. All payouts are taken from these pools, all payins go into these pools and the relationship between the two are used to set the price. Gems are neither created or destroyed by the exchange. He wasn’t that specific on the excess gold from buying gems due to the difference in exchange rates.

The idea behind it is for players with a lot of gold to get gems, causing the rate to rise so it becomes more attractive to players who just want gold to use gems they bought with cash to do so. It provides a legitimate way to buy gold while trying to shaft RMT services.

I tried to illustrate how I would have implemented what JS outline to illustrate the general rise in the rate over time.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/IMO-Gem-Prices-need-to-be-regulated/1914084

Of course a lot of that is guesswork but it does show how prices can rise they way they did.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Wrong gem prices for euro.

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

This issue has been discussed already. Primary reason is 20% VAT built in for European prices.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Euro-users-paying-30-more-for-gems

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Give me a price break already.

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I don’t think that any currently running NCSOFT games have a discount on their proxy currency. City of Heroes did but that’s gone.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

RNG on Fused skins - DEPRESSING

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

You’re new here aren’t you? There’s been much nashing of teeth over the RNG nature of getting Fused Skins here in the past month.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

i5 or i7

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

The i7 does have a touch more L3 memory cache but that’s because by having the ability to run 8 threads simultaneously rather than four means each thread has less cache which leads to main memory access which affects performance in a negative way. Since HT is all about improving the utilization of the internals of each core by giving the instruction scheduler a greater pool of non dependent instructions to rearrange and assign, the last thing it needs is a cache stall because that will just wipeout any gain made.

So the i5 line can have up to four threads sharing 6MB while the quad i7 can have up to eight threads sharing 8MB. So it depends on how much other stuff you are running at the same time as to whether an i5 or i7 is better, if that $100 premium is worth it.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

We we bite again with the new RNG chest item?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Okay, I admit I shot right past the other items that are available. I can imagine the quiver weapon skin doing quite well and the drill is a rather neat idea. Can’t wait to see a cloud of dust approaching across a field indicating a tunneling zerg rush.

And being able to buy a specific mini (yes I know they are new) rather than pot luck is attractive as well.

Then again, we are talking RNG back skins. Not sure how prestigious a killer whale backpack will be.

So I withdraw my assumption that the playerbase didn’t learn from last time. It appears that there are some nice items at the shop this time around.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Give me a price break already.

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

There are no discounts. 80 gems = $1 US, 1200 gems = $15, 2000 gems = $25, 8000 gems = $100.

Sorry, no bulk pricing for gems.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Why so serious?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

The rage you see here is equivalent to some people who play a three on three pickup game down at the schoolyard. Most just enjoy playing while getting a bit of a work out but there are a few who think they are in the NBA finals and their team is down by two. They are the ones who yell at the players on their own team for not taking this seriously and doing hard fouls.

Remember, gaming is serious business.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

We we bite again with the new RNG chest item?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Considering the sturm und drang from the last chest RNG fiasco, do you thing the playerbase learned their lesson?

I will say no seeing how gems have spiked to 4g for a brief period and is now 3.5g per 100.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

Deceived by the gem exchange

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Deceive is a strong word. You have to realize it’s a moving target and like the rest of the TP, it’s servicing requests from all the servers (likely only the servers in your region, US/EU). It’s like complaining that a stock price ticked up while you were quickly checking out the current short positions.

But I do agree whole heartily that the UI needs to allow us to enter either the amount we want to spend or the amount of gems we want.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

What should the first thing I should do?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Leveling is fairly linear in this game. Takes about the same amount of time to level from 1 to 10 as it does from 71 to 80. And if you can’t level every hour or two you are doing something wrong, like standing in one spot for an hour or two.

You don’t need to do your personal story. It’ll still be there when your Level 80. And talking about levels they dynamically scale based where you are. You can level to 80 in the 1-15 zone, it’ll just be really boring.

You get XP from EVERYTHING. Go into a region of the map that you haven’t been before, XP. Gather from a material node, XP. Pass close to an unvisited POI (point of interest) or unlocked waypoint, you guessed it, XP. Craft even if it’s converting logs to planks (well until you become proficient at it), XP. Rez a fallen NPC or player (everyone can), XP! Find and do a jumping puzzel, XP!!!! Notice I haven’t even talked about bonking things on their head and going through their pockets.

XP and the result of getting XP, leveling, is so unremarkable that you simply stop paying attention to it and just appreciate wandering through the world helping out when you can.

And speaking of that, there isn’t tagging, KS or loot rolls. You do like 10% damage on something and when it dies (assuming it doesn’t heal back up because no one bothered to finish it off) you get full XP and a loot drop. Oh and if you hunt in out of the way places that nobody has been to lately, you get bonus XP based on how long that critter has been around since the last server reset.

There’s no trinity, few dungeons, no reason outside of dungeons to formally team as dynamic events scale based on the number of players involved.

If you play the game as a wandering adventurer looking to see the world it’s rather fun. If you need to be continually guided as for what to do next, you probably aren’t going to enjoy this game as much.

Oh, and no need to stick to your race’s area and City. Roll a human and go to the Sylvari areas and then pop over to where the Charr roam. It’s all good. You may find factions there that will attack you regardless of race but there isn’t any these races are this faction and these races are another. The real enemy is out there (pointing to the wilderness).

Well enjoy. Have fun storming the castle (that’s WvW btw).

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Why is it the BLTP interface so bad?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Well the TP UI is really just a browser displaying pages formatted on their end. Plus the TP is a separate server the game needs to connect to and it’s handling the entire TP for all the servers in that region. That’s a lot of transactions going on.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Moulten Dungeon

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

All I can imagine is a dungeon full of feathers or is populated by risen chickens.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

use other language in US server, acceptable?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I don’t think you’ll attract much grief, but you may still want to wait. The closed beta test for the Chinese edition of Guild Wars 2 is next week. and the live version may not be very long after that.

I wouldn’t say that. Blade & Soul is on their 3rd closed beta in China and they still aren’t anticipating it to go live for at least another three to six months. This is our 1st closed beta. There are bound to be other aspects that the authorities will find “disagreeable”, besides the already fixed armor pieces that no show less skin, that will require to be fixed before the game is allowed to go live.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

This spring I'm attending dragon camp, yay!

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I use the dragon timers just to see if something soon is going to happen in my area.

I too would rather have more events occur spontaneously rather the feeling like I’m standing in line waiting for the Apple store to open on new iPhone day.

The patience of these players are ridiculous, waiting for many, many minutes because the “window” is now open for it to begin. Even waiting when the timer is just counting down for the event window to open. For a battle that lasts for under 5 minutes and is a laggy, slideshow for most players. All for a rare they can buy for 25s. Yes I understand there is a snowballs chance to get a precursor but are the odds any better playing the Mystic slot machine?

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Done, and Boycotting

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Ever thought, all you elems out there, that the ANet devs did listen to their customers and the customers are saying the elems are too darn powerful in PvP/WvW? Did you think that the devs may actually have data mining that proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt and which skills are the problem?

Or do you think they have some big dart board somewhere with all the skills on it and they throw darts to see what gets nerfed in the next release for kittens and giggles?

I understand that your favorite character is likely your most powerful one and that it hurts when it gets toned down. But it’s like complaining you got caught taking someone else’s drink out of the community fridge at work. So it didn’t have a name on it but if it wasn’t yours then by elimination it was someone else’s. If one profession noticeably stands out over the others then it should be a surprise when it finally gets brought in line with the rest. Should it? Improvise, adapt, overcome.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Virtual economies and real world applications

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Again, not the same. An Olympic gold medal has value, a monetary value. An Arah set has only a look, nothing more. The earning potential alone in real world medals and awards are far more withstanding than “earning” an armor set in a video game. Simply comparing the two in economic terms makes a rather large distinction. This not to mention how disposable getting an Arah set actually is.

There’s a certain prestige associated with Arah sets. Because it’s only attained through a certain unique activity. It can’t be purchased with gold.

There’s a certain prestige with winning an Olympic Gold Medal. It’s only attained through a certain unique activity. The achievement of winning an Olympics can’t be purchased with gold.

I believe the original topic was “rewards which are gated behind certain unique activities do not exists in the real world.” Well, that exists in the real world too.

Then you misunderstood. Rewards gated behind certain activities that hold little to no economic value. Prestige value is also questionable, I’d certainly place far more prestigious value on a gold medal over Arah armor, but that’s nether here nor there.

If they hold no value why are there so many threads complaining that it’s not fair gating them? Obviously to the those who desire them they have value. They are willing to trade coin for it so that establishes value.

Oh and earlier I wasn’t directing my comment specifically at you munk. You were just the most recent person echoing the sentiment that somehow assigning a set of items for doing a particular activity is wrong, that those items should be freely available for all if you have the coin.

Those big stuff animals you can win at a carnival can be purchased if you know a supplier but it’s value to the person who received it is knowing that someone spent a stupid amount of money to “win” it for them. The suggestion that everyone should act like Veruca Salt a demand to be able to buy whatever instead of earning it disturbs me.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

Virtual economies and real world applications

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

@Behellagh You’re missing one very important difference. None of those currencies have any value at all. In your sandwich example, the personal reward isn’t particularly special since i can buy that same sandwich for cash. There’s nothing in society that would even remotely “gate” a completely unique personal reward behind fake money. But, yet Anet does this with a very large amount of things in comparison. What’s the value of Ascended gear? Or dungeon gear? Or fused weapon claim tickets? The list goes on and on, yet somehow it makes sense to someone that these extremely gated items make people happy.

But all of these in game rewards that use different currencies and unique stores are there to encourage and reward participation in an aspect or special event. Where everyone starts with an even playing field. And that is what bugs the heck out of people. “But I have X amount of gold, why can’t I by that armor skin or mini-pet.” Well it’s only for those who are willing to participate moron! Sorry but it ticks me off that people can’t grasp that concept.

Yes we live in a world where everything is for sale, even if we don’t deserve it. Want a Super Bowl ring, an Oscar or even an Olympic Medal. No problem if you have enough cash and the means to find one for sale. “Why yes I walked on the Moon and here’s my rock to prove it.”

Sorry, in games, that type of prestige reward isn’t for sale. Man up and do the darn content if you want the prize. Don’t complain that the economy isn’t realistic because you can’t spend the fortune you made flipping on the TP to get an item that is only available to those who earned it.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Guild Wars 2 Economy Review

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Why do I remember talking about this already.

Oh that’s right, because we did.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Guild-Wars-2-Economy-Review/first

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Does ANet Benefit At All From Gold to Gems?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I don’t quite consider it a sink because when I think of a sink in a game context I think destroyed. JS hasn’t made it clear if that 0.6 is destroyed or accumulates in the coffers of the exchange and is used indirectly to drive up the exchange rate over time. Yes it’s gone from the “world”, as in another player can’t spend it, but it affects the exchange rates between gold and gems over the long term.

And as others have pointed out the benefit is with Gem→Gold rates increasing, it can attract players to buy gems who wouldn’t just to get gold.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Virtual economies and real world applications

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

snip

The initial question was:
“what basis is there for considering the world of video game ‘economics’ has anything to do with ‘real world’ economies.”

Virtual economies have a lot to do with real world economies, IF you look in the right spots. If you look at the right economy, instead of the current EU and U.S. economies which are the most advanced in human history.

Listen to this radio show episode:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/12/07/166747693/episode-421-the-birth-of-the-dollar-bill

In GW2, any item you can trade is basically a commodity, but also somewhat similar to the 8000 currencies of the pre-civil war U.S. Instead of location being a factor for value, think of time and population tides as important factors. Instead of a phonebook for conversions, you use Excel and gw2spidy.

There is no currency in GW2, but in some way everything exhibits partial features of a currency. The economic approximation ArenaNet is running is still far to the left of the uncanny valley. It is as far from reality as the Loony Toons are from photorealism. But that does not mean the fragments aren’t based on very real things. This is when the virtual economy has everything to do with the real one. The motivations of interacting agents can be the same as in the real world, even if it leaves out as many things as an impressionistic drawing. The laws governing booms and busts can be the same, even though they depend on entirely wacky time tables and population density patterns. Even though something is perceived to be a currency and that something has some resemblence to a currency, it might not be a currency at all. Just as Daffy Duck is not really a Duck.

I was writing part two but I think I’m starting to understand your position with this post.

There isn’t just one universally accepted currency in Tyria. You can’t walk up to any vendor anywhere that’s selling anything and pay just in coin. And because of that, there is no true currency in the game. That’s the point I’m getting from your posts.

I counter that these specialized “currencies” handed out in dungeons, fractals, dailies, and special events should be treated like any customer participation reward program from any business out there. We are rewarded for participating and those who don’t are not. Whether it’s free food at a sandwich shop or cooking ware at a grocer or tickets at an arcade that can be traded for prizes. We are not eligible for that benefit if we don’t participate while the event is going on and past participation before these rewards were offered don’t count.

And yes selling your free pots and pans from the grocer or that cool phone strap from the arcade isn’t going to net you a lot of actual cash. Just as converting Karma, etc doesn’t yield a lot of coin if it’s possible at all. But just as often what you buy with one of these alternate rewards simply can’t be converted to coin because it’s a personal reward.

However none of these event participation currencies alter the value of coin. What you could buy with coin it back in November is still available today. Who took coin back in November still takes coin now. What a vendor charges or pay in coin for an item is the same as it was last November. I believe a new player bonking critters for 100 hours in April will have the same value of coin and items as a new player bonking critters for 100 hours back in November.

The only difference is that today there are more sites to help a player be TP savvy than back then when it comes to converting items to coin. That the general TP IQ has gone up. But the thing is the TP doesn’t create wealth. It shifts it around between players but in the end it always destroys 15% of the coin being used. Yes you, an individual, can make money by exploiting the lack of patience that the majority of players have but everyone can’t if everyone uses it the same way.

But what about TP inflation (or deflation)? Is it truly inflation (or deflation) or just a more mature market settling or the panic buying or selling caused by rumor? Just look at the roller coaster ride with the price of ectos. 22s to 13s to 40s and back to 23s. It’s like using the price of Crude Oil as a measuring stick. What we need is a chart showing the total amount of coin traded at the TP daily. An argument could then be made if the data shows a regular rise as a sign of inflation in terms of a growing player supply of coin. But if it’s flat or decreasing is that a sign of game wide hording or deflation?

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

Virtual economies and real world applications

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

First of all FourthVariety, if you use the popular definition of currency then yes we have a currency, coin.

For a currency to work, it needs more than to meet one of the criteria of a currency, it needs to meet all of them.

medium of exchange
unit of account
store of value

I’m going to have to break this up due to it’s size, let me just do medium of exchange first. But first, popular definition doesn’t mean economic definition. For the average player who hasn’t taken an econ course in high school or college, currency is simply a medium of exchange.

Let’s test GW2 Gold for those criteria:

Medium of exchange
Too meet that, money needs to be

1. easily measured to gauge the value
We do not have numbers on the gross domestic GW2 product, average incomes, size of the market, etc. We know how much time we spent earning the ingame gold, but we do not know if that was fast or slow. Basically each player makes an uninformed guess about the value of gold. Right from the start, we have a problem determining its value. Using the gem shop to convert to Dollar does not help either.

There is a gauge, how much does X cost. You think the average consumer cares about GDP or size of market? How about a child that buys something for the first time? What they care is that it costs $1.50 for a two liter bottle of Pepsi and $1.00 for a candy bar in the check out line. That’s the gauge they use. For us, it’s what the devs set the vendor prices at. They aren’t affected by inflation, shortages or demand. It’s suppose to be “fair market” value before we all came along adventuring.

2. divisible
GW2 gold fits that perfectly, check.

Obviously.

3. widely accepted
within the confines of the game, yes, the currency is accepted (at least until you hit ascended gear/special motivational items). BUT ArenaNet does not accept gold as payment, which says a lot. First a player has to spend real Dollars on gold, before you can spend gold to buy gems. This is extremely important to note. If ArenaNet does not attribute value, then why should you?

Honestly? Coin is not a legitimate currency because ANet won’t accept it in the real world? You’re missing the point that we are talking “virtual” economy with “virtual” currency here. The only value is within the system.

4. relatively safe from inflation
absolutely not. Every player is his own money printing press. A real currency is created by a central bank and a central bank alone. You cannot print Dollars in your basement! You can, however, create GW2 gold from nothing.

Don’t tell the Zimbabweans or even today’s Argentinians that. And yes it’s true, a game currency is created from nothing solely due to player activity. And unlike the real world it’s also utterly destroyed, again by player activity. The trick is to balance these two artificial forces or at the very least keep the growth due to the difference within reason. Every vendor purchase, every armor repair, every TP purchase, every less than successful salvage destroys some amount of currency or value from the world. You can’t acknowledge just one half of the equation here.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

Making Money with Black Lion salvage kit

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Does anyone know how i can maximize my profit using these? Current have around 3 kit laying around and trying to get rid of them.

I remember seeing a thread somewhere recently about buying a certain item on the TP, salvage it and the Rune would sell more than the purchased item, + etcos… with a black lion salvage kit…

Trolls will be trolls. Why would you even care about making money with 3 Black Lion Salvage Kits when you already have…..8448g in your inventory?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gold-useless-more-ways-to-spend-it/first

It appears he photoshopped it. However fool me twice and you’re on my ignore list, troll problem solved.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

How do you get rich?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

On another thread it appears that Photoshop is the preferred method. :p

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Game Mode Consistency is a Flawed Idea

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Actually I hate the idea that two skills work radically different in PvE and PvP. I don’t want to adjust my playing style when I go between the two. I don’t want to relearn my attack chains, I don’t want pay to swap around my traits because the skills those affect most are no longer as effective.

Having different rules is fine if you are going to spend the majority your time there but for a lot of players who want to play all modes, it’s a turn off.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Gold useless, more ways to spend it?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Maybe if they ever introduce player housing you could have a nice villa in the country.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Virtual economies and real world applications

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I think in GW2 the necessities are almost too affordable, and the “nice-to-have” things start looking like necessities, and there’s not much in between those and the high end luxury items. That leaves folks with expendable income that isn’t enough for the high end items, but isn’t needed for anything else. I think that the problem isn’t that precursors are too expensive, but rather there just isn’t anything a little less expensive that is desirable enough for us to spend our extra gold on.

There’s a thread by a player today asking what he should do with the 8000+ gold he has in the bank (he included a screenshot of his bank).

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Race Change

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

There’s been several threads about this already. I would point them to out to you but as you probably know the forum search function is terrible.

Google to the rescue, here’s the longest.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Race-Change-4/first

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Gold useless, more ways to spend it?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Like real life once you reach a certain threshold of wealth it suddenly becomes easier to make more. It’s tough to flip homes or own rental property from scratch if you only have $100 to your name when it’s a lot easier if you start with $100,000. Every success brings in more money that will allow you to flip the next home or buy another duplex which brings in more money, etc. Soon you are a tiny Donald Trump, making your money in real estate.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

The Tunnel Vision of the GW2 player base

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

The problem is with definition.

Dynamic implies change or variance. How much change or variance can you get while running the Plinx chain? There’s only so many outcomes, loot/reward is not scaled very well to difficulty, most DEs follow similar quest structures “hidden in the background”, etc.

While I hope it doesn’t end up like it, I see GW2 rapidly approaching collapse under its own hype, just like SWTOR. TOR was supposed to be the Second Coming for MMOs, but failed because it oversold a very limited mechanic, story. There’s only so much change and effect each player can have in an MMO, after which it becomes painfully obvious that your character’s story doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Other MMOs like WoW acknowledge this, and basically sell themselves as GUIs grafted onto a Pavlov’s Dog system of respondent conditioning. Push the button, get the treat as it were.

Agreed. I think most people think that dynamic events, as a general term, is good for MMO’s. However Dynamic Events in GW2 are a complete misnomer; they are scripted events with a few different outcomes. GW2’s big innovation is to remove player limits for these quests, making them super accessible for all players. OP’s suggestion that players should be more focused on DE’s is wrong: GW2’s scripted quests are not superior to scripted quests in other games. To make an event “dynamic”, you need player interaction, and the only place where this really occurs is WvW.

In which case you will need a player trigger in addition to a timer. The way traffic lights still change every x minutes even if nobody is waiting. They have sort of implemented that with the big chest events except with a minimal timer plus trigger.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Gold useless, more ways to spend it?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

See how badly you can spike the exchange market with a single 8000g purchase?

Put on a Santa Suit and hand out money to new characters as they first appear in the world (can you mail to anyone or do they first need to be friended?).

Try to fix single-handedly the T5 material pricing problem by buying up all of that +1c mat and sell them to a vendor. 8,000 gold is 10 million silk scraps. Market has only 2-3 million currently. At the end of the day (or week, that’s a lot of scrap) you will only be out 1,000 gold.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Virtual economies and real world applications

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

First of all FourthVariety, if you use the popular definition of currency then yes we have a currency, coin. Otherwise we would be trading copper ore and logs directly directly for armor, weapons and additional gathering tools. A currency is needed as a mediator for trading commodities and all that’s need is wide spread acceptance. Since we aren’t given a choice and that there is no direct player trading, that’s that. Coin is the currency of the realm. Now it’s value is entirely artificial, as in the demand for items are not taken into account when their price was fixed. This is one reason certain items are glutted at the TP at one copper above vender price. We simply aren’t letting it float to a price where they market will accept it.

Now since this isn’t a true real world economy, vendors both create and destroy gold and the items they buy and sell. Crafting materials, items and coin are created as drops by critters who themselves are not a slowly renewing resource but often respawn in the same are within a minute or two. The only thing that slows down the creation is DR and that’s by a player by player basis.

Now they’ve tried to combat out of control coin growth through the familiar gold sinks of player to player trade fees and equipment repair. The Mystic Forge and salvaging are attempts to control excessive amounts of low price enchanted wares through random chance by either consuming four of one rarity for a chance to create a single rarer item, failure will simply replace the four with one of the same rarity; or by breaking an item down into a reduced number of the most basic materials.

So from a macro economic perspective, a game economy does not resemble any real economy on the planet. There is no real scarcity and there isn’t a true limited sized money supply existing on day 1. And there is another problem, population. In the real world the population tends to grow at a slow and methodical pace. In a game it can have wild swings day to day. I’m guessing more hours are played overall on a weekend than a weekday. In the real world it would be if there was a massive die off every week followed by a population boom of participates who inherited the money a few days later.

However various micro economic systems are very alive and well. Simply watching a single popular commodity being traded easily demonstrate supply and demand, trading cartels, pricing strategies, observing both rational and irrational participants, the effect of rumor vs fact. I believe showing the actual volume people traded daily would help allot but that’s a different discussion.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

Leaderboard explanation

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Just tossing out ideas off the top of my head. I normally don’t pay much attention to the leaderboard or guild membership lists.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Making Money with Black Lion salvage kit

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Well yes the difference between master and BLK with rares isn’t a lot as talked about previously except if you simply don’t have the space because you aren’t using the free ones that are dropped on you, and you don’t have a ready supply of valuable sigil/rune exotics, which I would say for most players no, then they it’s pointless to save all of them.

I’m like the OP. I had a 6th free one in inventory dropped on me a night or two ago and didn’t have the space anymore I would spare to save it so I used it for my nightly cracking of the rares. Yes, I got more ectos and oris than I usually get so it was more profitable than using a master kit (also cheaper since it was free) so I probably made an extra gold or two with it.

Yes I’m using the “good china and silver” for a peanut butter sandwich but it’s not doing me any good just hording them for a rainy day that never comes.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Leaderboard explanation

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Maybe it only shows those who are currently representing. Remember you can belong to 4? but only represent one at a time.

Also it’s by player not character. You can pad your guild with all your characters, it might even be by default.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

(edited by Behellagh.1468)

having more Health than i should ?!

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

It’s a carrot to encourage WvW play. Your server does well, everyone on the server benefits.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Gem Prices

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

If you look at the long term chart over at GW2Spidy you will see times where the rate did drop over a period of days or weeks. Just since the holidays we’ve seen a constant step rise of the rate with every sale of popular item (bank and backpack slots) or something new and sexy (like the pick or random luck in getting a skin).

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

set it to all

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Making Money with Black Lion salvage kit

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Oh don’t forget, only buy items with sigils or runes. They help with the profit since ectos are hovering is the 22-23s range. An extra 3-5s per can mean the difference between profit and loss.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Making Money with Black Lion salvage kit

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I would tell you how but I’m making a lot (relatively speaking for someone who doesn’t speed run) money this way.

Well, alright. Buy any level 68-80 rare or exotic heavy armor or metallic weapon (swords, greatswords) for as little gold as possible and salvage them. You should end up with a pile of rune/sigils, metal (mostly mithril) and ectos. Sell them by whatever strategy you prefer. I’m avoiding light and medium armors and most weapons because metal pays better than cloth, leather or wood.

Realize you will likely haul in around 7-8g, after TP fees, note NOT profit. Profit depends on how much you spent on the items you are salvaging which is likely around 5g unless if you are not putting in low price bids and waiting for them to be filled or find them in the wild.

Also remember salvaging is RNG based, you could get either lucky or unlucky and end up with a lot more or less high price salvage to sell.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Gem Prices

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Assuming 3g is a rate that’s attractive enough to buy gems with cash to convert to gold. It’s all a balance issue between buying and selling gems. If a large reason to buy gems goes away and is not replaced by something equally attractive, sure it will likely decline a bit. But if they offer some unique new item or sale on a widely desirable one, it’s just going to keep going up.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

use other language in US server, acceptable?

in Players Helping Players

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

Well if you are filling up the local, map or team chat channels in a language that’s not widely spoken on that server, that’s impolite. If it’s your entire party, squad or guild understand that language for those chat channels then I don’t see a problem because they won’t be overwhelming my chat display.

If you want to translate an announcement on a open chat channel about an event starting soon, no problem. Just don’t be the boisterous soccer team that takes over a nearby pub and drown out everyone else’s conversion (since on chat we all speak at the same volume level).

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes

Open world pvp

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Behellagh.1468

Behellagh.1468

I could see a personal duel system added to the existing game.

Two players, one challenges, the other accepts.

Both have their level adjusted to the current area they are in.

A field is erected around them that reflects any external attack back to it’s source.

Any other player going into the field, assuming it’s allowed, will take massive damage as in dead in 3 seconds.

This will let players watch a PvP duel while limiting the ganking problem that crops up in open world PvP.

We are heroes. This is what we do!

RIP City of Heroes