Guild Wars 2

QoL enhancements, especially at the BLTC interface. The two things I would like to see is maintaining the search results when swapping between tabs and allow me to specify the number of gems I wish to purchase as well as gold I’m willing to spend. And vice versa if I want X gold, how many gems do I need to sell.

Also, but I know we will never get this, a time stamped transition log of the last X sales for an item on the market. Even just total number of sales and average price over the last 24 hours would help immensely since will buy and sell numbers are just snapshots and may not reflect the actual activity surrounding that item.

Tallis.5607:

And yet, here we are, with gems prices raising month after month after month after month. Odd, isn’t it?

Sorry I wanted to include more of your post but the message limit kicked in. You really not grasping it are you.

The exchange doesn’t care how much gold or gems are sitting in player accounts. All it cares about are its two internal pools. One seeded with a billion gems (number made up, all that JS said was large enough to prevent player manipulation) and one seeded with gold to pay out to players selling gems.

When you buy gems with gold, gems are removed from the exchange’s gem pool and given to you while your gold goes into the exchange’s gold pool. And when you sell it gems, whether it’s gems you bought from the exchange or with actual money, the opposite happens, gems go into the exchange’s gem pool while the gold you receive comes out of the exchange’s gold pool. These transactions affect the ratio of gems to gold at the exchange and this ratio is used to set the price.

Let’s use smaller numbers here to illustrate and outline a method on how the rates could be determined. GmP is the amount of gems in the gem pool, GdP is the amount of gold in the gold pool.

The exchange rate, cost of a single gem, when buying gems is GdP/GmP * 1.15.

The exchange rate when selling gems is GdP/GmP * 0.85.

The 1.15 and 0.85 adjustments is to simulate the gap between the two exchange rates. I could have just used one value on only one of the equations but I like the symmetry. And in my example I’m not destroying any gold that comes into the exchange.

So let us begin. For this I’m seeding the exchange with one million gems and three thousand gold (the actual numbers are likely many orders of magnitude higher). This sets the rate at 34.5s for buying 100 gems and 25.5s for selling 100 gems. Please remember the actual rates are exact I’m simply rounding to two decimal places (copper) for display purposes.

So first player buys 5g worth of gems (honestly I would love the exchange to let my buy based on the number of gems I want rather than play binary search to determine the price of say 250 gems but that’s a QoL/UI discussion). So he buys, rounding up, 1,449 gems for 5g. Now the gem pool has 998,551 gems and the gold pool has 3,005 gold. The new exchange rate is now 34.61s for buying and 25.58s for selling 100 gems.

Next player buys 5g worth and they get 1,445 gems. Gem pool is now 997,106 and the gold pool is 3010. Rates are now 34.72s and 25.66s.

Now a player comes along and bought one of those 2000 gems for $25 cards (yes I know they weren’t released when the game was) and decides to sell 1000 gems for some quick gold. He gets 2g56s59c for his 1000 gems. Gem pool is now 998,106 and the gold pool is 3007.4341g. Rates are now 34.65s and 25.61s.

Now lastly let me buy some gems and then turn around and sell them back. Again buying 5g worth will now net me 1,443 and the pools are now 996,663 gems and 3012.4341g. Rates are now 34.76s and 25.69s.

So immediately sell those 1,443 gems back and get only 3.7073g. The gem pool returns to 998,106 but the gold pool is now 3008.7268g, which is 1.2927g higher than before. So yes in this method you see systematic “inflation” of the exchange rate for equivilent exchange of gems, which is now 34.67s and 25.62s.

Now iterate through hundreds of thousands of these transactions. Gem pool decreases, gold pool increases, exchange rates go up. As long as more players buy more gems through the exchange than sell to the exchange, the rate will continue to go up and up and up. Even if the number of gems bought and sold are equivalent, the rate will drift higher with this method I outline.

Hopefully this gives you an example that illustrates how

1) The rates are solely affected by the players.
2) How the rates keep going up.
3) How an equation and initial pool sizes once isn’t “regulating”, a word that to me means active external interference.
4) How after initialization, no gold or gems are being created by the pool and certainly none are being destroyed.

Of course I’m talking completely out of my hat here, I’m basing this method solely what John Smith hinted at when describing the exchange’s gold and gem pools and how I would approach this if the coding assignment landed at my desk.

Lastly I’m attaching a chart where I simply made 1,000, 5g transactions starting with the initial conditions of 3,000g and one million gems. At the end the gold pool had 8,000 gold and the gem pool had 425,826 gems with the gold to gem exchange rate at 2g16s05c and the gem to gold rate at 1g59s69c. The last 5g purchase resulted in only 232 gems, the next if made, 231.

No because when GW1 first came out most of the reviews pointed out that PvP was it’s strong suit. Like I said I’m not really a PvPer (I look at WvW more like capture the flag than a test of skill). Maybe it was flashbacks to the UO beta when ganking newbs was so bad that most players disrobed and carried everything in their packs so a passing PKer would think you were on a corpse run and didn’t have anything to loot. Fun times.

So no I didn’t play GW1. I understand that the later patches significantly expanded upon the PvE aspect of the game as well as the game lore.

I’m not a min/maxer other Vayne but I have a tough time connecting to an archetype that I’ve played for decades since I first got into AD&D over 30 years ago.

The last MMO I played, City of Heroes, I was able to connect to my character. Not roleplaying per se but identifying with them a lot more. Maybe because even at level one it was about how you look to the rest of the world due to the games character editor. Maybe it was because the setting was mainly just one urban center and a few suburbs. You felt more connected with the world.

Here the world is quite beautiful. And until you explore it you have to see it all on foot but for the most part it’s empty countryside with the occasional random encounter between outposts and farms. The cities are actually rather safe. I’m enjoying the game and to me it’s not about just the loot. I hated PvP from other games but I actually enjoy WvW here.

It’s just that I don’t have an identity for my character other than a female norn mesmer runt, with a puppy. I’m a handful of POI and Vistas in the EB to complete the world and when I do I’m likely to role something new but there won’t really be a compelling reason to come back and play her again. I had dozens of characters in CoH and I played the ones that suited my mood for that day. Do I feel like sniping from afar or take on a room full of critters. Maybe I want to fling people into the air or force them to attack their fellows. Here it’s just smash, smash, zap, zap.

I would argue that there isn’t a lot of roleplaying in any MMORPG. Yes there is a roleplaying sub group that plays a game in character but for the vast majority it’s all about leveling or loot.

How do you rollplay “Hmm, it looks as if the Sons of Svanir are trying to corrupt the grawl, for the 5th time today, we must put a stop to it!”

If we had things like player housing or a player written bio for all to read to connect us to our characters more but to me my mesmer is just a variation of a Diablo II sorcerer that I played years ago. Generic female spell slinger, Mark 7. I feel no personal connection to them so it’s impossible for me to rollplay even if I wanted to.

Zacchary.6183:

GW2 is an MMORPG. MMORPGs are NEVER PvP games.

If you are playing an RPG for PvP, then you need to find another genre.

Sorry a lot of MMOs are faction based. Here it’s by server. EVE it’s player corporations. Factions fight with one another. Poof, you have tPvP. sPvP is more about making a name for yourself. Being #1 on the high score screen down at the arcade, where you’ve beaten other players to achieve that score.

Hmm. An MMO based in an arcade of mini games where you play against other players or NPCs to get tickets that you can cash in for sweet duds …

Ohoni.6057:

Basically, if any item sells for less than you could get on a vendor (after fees), then something is wrong with either the drop rates or the vendor prices.

Well if an item sells for less than a vendor after TC fees it’s because there is a significant imbalance between supply and demand.

The demand could be low because there are similar items that are perceived as “better” by the players. Usually there are multiple variations of a weapon or piece of armor for a particular level, if the drop rate is equal then preference in stats or appearance can skew demand.

But excessive supply is usually the problem and it’s not because of drop rate. Usually. For instance a number of T5 common mats are created as a side effect by salvaging high level rare items for ectos. Light and medium armors give you cloth and leather and instead of taking the 30 seconds to realize that selling them at the TC is the wrong thing to do so trot over to a nearby vendor to sell it to them for a few copper more, it just gets added to the million plus pile at VP+1. What is interesting is this “irrational” behavior helps to reign in gold supply due to the TC fees acting as a sink rather than injecting new gold into the economy by selling it to a vendor.

Another source of supply is crafting. But why craft something that has no profit in it? Well there’s a secondary motivation, player XP and crafting skill XP. I can’t think of a real world example of this, a secondary direct benefit other than money.

So we have crafters producing items with limited regard whether the item is profitable or not as long as it helps them to level their skill and then simply dumping them at the TC to recover at least some of the cost. This is especially true with partially crafted goods. It’s usually cheaper now to buy an ingot than the ore or a plank rather than the logs. Extend this up to sword hilts and imbued plated dowels or partially crafted jewelry. They get made because they will help level the skill or level a character or satisfying the crafting daily and not because it’s filling a demand that’s profitable. Value isn’t being added in the crafting process, a lot of the time the opposite is true.

The thing is you don’t want to muck with a database without first knowing all the problems and scenerios. Plus we don’t know how the player database is weaved into the TC database. What’s the best way to do this?

Do you look at every player’s character, see if they have any bids in, check to see if those bids are too low and if they are to low cancel them.

Or is it better to look at each item on the market, check to see if the bids are too low and then access the character to cancel the bid. If the character’s been deleted, too bad (but I suspect that deleting a character will clean up any pending bids or sales on the market beforehand).

And you can’t make a mistake. Ever. Whatever the process is it has to be bulletproof eight ways to Sunday. Problem is it’s not going to be quick. The safest way is to take the market off line and that’s not going to be fun. Okay you do it during a scheduled server downtime and you may have to do it piecemeal like first doing mats one day, weapons (or blues) the next, etc.

There’s a lot of potential downside for something that only affects demand perception.

As odd of a request as this might seem, assuming the game isn’t installed on an SSD, have you thought of defragging the drive the game is installed on. Reason I’m suggesting this is the game’s dat file that holds everything is 16GB in size and a patch will rewrite the entire file. If your drive is fairly filled, this could force the dat file to be chopped up and spread out across the entire drive plummeting read performance due to all of the additional seeks.

Again this isn’t a problem with SSDs, never defrag an SSD.

Yes it’s a grasping of straws suggestion. I am assuming of course you’ve already looked to see if you are simply running out of available memory due to other apps running, like a browser with lots of tabs open with animated gif or video ads going.

I also am assuming you’ve rebooted to make sure there isn’t something crashed that is causing mischief like chewing up a chunk of video memory so this game has to swap textures more frequently.

I’m 80 and I haven’t completed my personal story yet. I just go wherever I felt like going as long as it didn’t outlevel me. I simply did all the cities and level 1-15 areas first and went from there.

Do hearts, don’t do hearts. Try to complete a map or not. Wander the countryside as a traveling hero helping out when you stumble upon an event. You don’t even have to complete the event, just help out for a while. Even though this isn’t a sandbox style MMO it feels like it at times because you aren’t dragged around by your nose. You can even just do level 1-15 content until you hit 80. But travel does broaden the mind and changes the scenery.

What hurts is these under priced bids skew the impression of demand. It can make a low demand item appear to be in high demand. I don’t know about you all but I feel better posting an item for sale when it’s supply is noticeably less than it’s demand. Now if a large chunk of that demand can never be filled ever, it changes my opinion as well as the price I’m likely to post it at. However I do understand that if the highest bid is less than the vendor price that it’s the same as no bids at all.

When I say money sink I mean in-game gold sink. No actual real cash is required.

You can level very quickly in this game. Just about everything you do, including crafting, will give you XP. Random player or NPC is down, revive them for XP. Wander into a new area this character hadn’t been before, XP. Visit a new waypoint, POI or Vista, XP. Help a random stranger take down a critter, XP and a chance of loot if you do as little as 10-20% of the critter’s HP. Dynamic Events or tasks assigned by a Renown Heart contact, XP. I was nearly level 80 after just fully exploring every city, and level 1-25 area.

As you earn a little coin buy or upgrade the extra bags/boxes to expand your inventory. So you need to stop less frequently to unload items at merchants that’ll make additional coin. Even junk is worth a copper or two.

And if you really want to craft and minimize the costs. Check out the crafting database at GW2Spidy. Select your crafting discipline. Then simply specify your current rating as the max rating for your profession and it will show you the craftable items from most to least profitable. Click on an item and it will list the cheapest way to make it in terms of materials. Often it’s cheaper to buy partially made items than craft them entirely from scratch if profit is your goal.

Also remember to research new items as it levels your skill faster by discovering a new item than simply creating the same already known thing until it isn’t worth any crafting xp anymore. Also some recipes can only be bought with Karma from NPCs in the field. A number of these Karma paid recipes create items that are more profitable than those simply given or can be discovered by all since they produce rarer items for that level.

Geotherma.2395:

Well, there is a lot of things going on with that statement. And a lot of things to consider.

1. It is a “sink”, arguably a needed one as far as gems and gold are concerned.
2. It removes gems from the BLTC and then destroys them through purchases.
3. It benefits them in a broader sense that players see it as a positive, and enjoy it while playing the game knowing they have options aside from $ to spend. Players who have cash and players who have gems can buy the same things. This is definitely a benefit for everyone.

I’m no economist, but I’m sure someone, even John Smith, could explain exactly how they benefit and the entire economic impacts that are beneficial. But sadly, I was never very good and macro/micro in college :P

I disagree with the assertion that the exchange is either a gold sink or destroys gems. Yes it removes them from the game world at large but the exchange simply stores them.

As for the question at hand. It provides a service to “hard core” gamers who play a lot of hours in a month to earn gold, which doesn’t flow like water in this game.

It provides a source of gold for those who purchase gems with cash and wish to convert them into gold as the exchange consists of two pools, one of gems and one of gold. The relationship between these two pools sets the two exchange rates. As more gold is exchanged for gems the rates go up, making the opposite transaction more attractive to a player who wants to purchase gold with cash via gems, which then lowers the rate. As the rates go up, it puts the squeeze on RMT services since gold/$ goes up.

Things I imagine.

In The Grove by the TP and bank.

“I’m bored”
“I know. Let’s invite someone to dinner and eat them. I see a Norn and a Human.”

Yes, sometimes I think Sylvari are humanoid shaped Triffids.

Second question first. That’s what the Black Lion Trading Company is for. Buy mats you need, sell what you don’t usually for more that a vendor will sell for. Also buying newer armor and weapons that are closer to your level. It’s nice to think you can make your own gear from materials you gather yourself but the crafting skill leveling process is usually a gold sink or extremely slow otherwise. I’m a level 80 mesmer but several months after I leveled to 80 my artificer skill still only allows me to make Level 65 rares (it’s in the low 300s). Grinding out those last 70 skill levels is like pulling teeth to me because I have so few items that will give me crafting exp and they are all major money sinks.

As for your first question, there is a combat setting on the options screen (F11) called fast attack ground targeting which will always use the current cursor position as the target. You just have to center it and then it’s just positioning yourself so the target is near the cursor.

And if you want to pause, outposts and camps are mostly safe, cities absolutely safe.

Don’t forget the “Deposit all collectables” in the options in the inventory screen as a quick way to squirrel away materials. You can access them at the bank or crafting station. If you are short of cash, sell materials that have no use in the crafting disciplines you are working on. Most materials will sell for more at the BLTC than a merchant but not all. Remember you will need to sell the item at the BLTC for more than 20% of the vendor price (hover over the item to see that) to make more money than just selling it to a vendor.

darkace.8925:

Consider a thief with a shortbow, a warrior with a longbow, or an engineer with a grenade kit or a flamethrower.

… walk into a bar.

I know this isn’t additive to the discussion but it really sounded like a lead in to a joke.

I look at it as if I bought Gems with cash and convert it to gold, I will need to spend 39% more gold to get back to the same about of Gems.

As for think of it as a tax, I think of sales tax. Item costs $10 and the sales tax is 5% then I pay $10.50. I don’t think of it as 1-(10/10.5) or 4.76%. It’s 5% on top of the cost not 4.76% of what I finally pay.

But I freely admit I think oddly at times.

Maybe it’s a VAT vs sales tax POV.

You forgot the 0.9 ecto part. You forgot the 15% TP fees.

Also you can eek out a bit more looking at the distribution of sell prices and price both the ectos and sigil/runes at prices well above the highest bid (well ectos are fairly close now but have a huge churn rate on the market).

Still a good overall analysis.

Gold->Gems / Gems->Gold is roughly a 38.4% markup.

The 19:25 EDT prices (according to GW2Spidy) are

Gold->Gems of 2g95s45c
Gems->Gold of 2g13s46c

Divide the two and the first exchange rate is 38.41% higher than the second.

Of course if you do it the other way, the loss of converting one way and back again then the loss is 27.75%.

So I say that gems cost 38.41% more than what you can sell them back for instead of saying the exchange will only pay 72.25% of what you paid for them. Same difference, just a different way of looking at things.

So wouldn’t it be less misleading then to say daily in the case of TP income.

He totally messed up a couple of notions.

First players can’t trade gems directly with each other. Players have no say in what the price of those gems are, it’s all done automagically.

And while the TP does take 15% away from buyers, the cost of buying and then turning around and selling gems back to the exchange is much greater than 15%, a simple calculator shows that.

Lastly he downplayed karma saying it’s scarcer than coin and worth less than copper. I had a quarter of a million karma to buy my Orr armor before I became someone who intentionally did dailies for the 4500 karma. It does have a use, just toward the end as a means to get some exotic class armor or cultural weapons and the occasional unique crafting material.

And one other thing that’s ignored. Need doesn’t drive innovation in the game. The stats of all the items that can be crafted or dropped were determine before the playerbase determined whether it would be useful or not. Because of that lots of crafted items simply don’t have a demand as the playerbase collectively steer away from them. This causes one of the imbalances between material cost to create an item vs what an item can sell for. The other is players level crafting by building what ever is cheapest to them. Demand or profit doesn’t factor into it usually. This then creates items or sub-assemblies that are much cheaper than what it costs to make because the market is flooded with them by players who just want to get their crafting skills up than satisfy demand for a profit. A little compensation at the TP is better than none since there aren’t any NPC to my knowledge are looking to buy staff head or sword hilts so it’s that or deleting them so sell them at a loss.

If you don’t like the game then leave and spare those who do your opinions. I have no idea why you would hang around a game that you all find so broken IYO. What? never bought a game you didn’t like before or just one you couldn’t trade for $6 at GameStop?

It doesn’t have the “trinity”.
It doesn’t have WoW style raids.
It doesn’t have open PvP or PvP specific servers.
It doesn’t have a market/craft system that you can make a bajillion gold with.

And in all likelihood this isn’t going to change anytime in the future so why hang around? Go. Shoo. Find another game or go back to the MMOs that you wished this game was just like.

Hey, I understand, different strokes for different folks. No hard feelings but go. Leave us in peace.

If you haven’t looked, here’s the game’s wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Main_Page

You have to look at a profession’s skills with various weapons because what you wield determines your abilities and they are different with each profession.

And you can check out each profession on YouTube. Some one around here threw together a rather comprehensive look at each skill with each weapon for every profession. Example

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_warrior_skills

I play exclusively (well it’s my first character and I have nearly 5 months invested in her) one of those icky mage classes, a mesmer. But depending on the weapon load out, you can set up two on most professions that you can swap between during combat, both range and melee attacks as well as AoEs of either kind. I believe most classes have mixtures of range/melee, burst/AoE damage skills depending on what is being used as weapons. I think the only class left out of that are Elementalists but I could be wrong because I’m not sure what profession can wields lightning infused whips (at least that’s the effect, my mesmer wields a greatsword but it’s acts more like a beam rifle than a whack on the head sword).

There are two pools of gems. One in the exchange and one that represents all the gems sitting in player accounts and the 2nd pool has no affect in regards to the exchange rate.

JS did state that the exchange pool was created with so many initial gems that practical market manipulation by a player or group of players is impossible due to the massive difference between what a player would have Vs the pool in the exchange as well as the 38.4% markup over the Gem→Gold rate. So any arbitrage at the gem exchange is really just long term investing and not arbitrage at all (even though their may be cyclical trends in the exchange rate due to various times populations come on to play).

I think in a video game you can look at an aspect of economic theory and examine how thousands of people’s interactions move a market. Of course it’s still an artificial environment but how is that different than studying bacteria in a petri dish and applying what you find there to the real world.

We’ve seen swings caused by influxes or sudden shortages of raw materials. We see changes in the market caused by shifts in actions (selling vs salvaging rares). It’s a global commodities market.

I still sell of any greens that are profitable on the TP and use those that aren’t or have no outstanding bids in the MF. And any rare I get I will first check if it’s better to post them on the TP or crack them open for the gooey ectos and rune/sigil inside.

Of course it’s a formula because the exchange is autonomous or do you think there is someone is sitting in a room changing it minute by minute. And you actually think someone is going “hey, lets tweak the equation after a vending machine run to tick off all those cheap skates that won’t part with the money”? Simply putting something popular on sale can do that all by it’s lonesome.

I know you don’t want to take JS at his word but I believed he’s said that the method the exchange uses to set the rates had NOT been touched since launch just as the initial supply of gems and gold the exchange has hadn’t been adjusted by ANet either. It’s only changes based on player actions with the exchange.

munkiman.3068:

Curiously, if gems are destroyed (which i still doubt happens), what happens when a person buys gems with gold and spends those gems in the store, removing the supply from the exchange?

There’s actually a few questions specific to debating over regulation.

Then there are less gems in the exchange and the exchange rate rises. Yes that means at some point the exchange could run out of gems but before then the Gems->gold rate will rise to a point where players will buy gems just to convert it into gold thus restocking the exchange and lowering the rate. The exchange also has it’s own pool of gold so it’s not creating that either. We’ve simply haven’t reached a point of equilibrium yet.

The only thing that isn’t clear (ok maybe not the only thing) is the question of what happens to the gold caused by the difference in exchange rates? When you buy gems does that 38.4% markup from the gold->gem rate acts as a sink or just added to the pool causing a “natural” rise in the exchange rate over time since the gold pool is increasing during equivalent exchanges of gems?

My experience puts the upgrade at 1 in 5 pulls on average. So 16 greens to get a yellow and then hoping the crafting RNG doesn’t wimp out on the ecto roll (using Master). I say 16 because if you crap out the first 4 times you end up with 4 greens to try one more time making 5 pulls of the Mystic slot machine.

Well the GT 640 is better than the integrated Intel one in their i3 so to they average consumer it is better at gaming. Plus it’s not just a rectangular black box. It has a window and lights up and the keyboard has the arrow and WASD keys in red. That’s the thing about box store gaming computers. It’s like the sporty edition of an economy car. Yes it’s faster, yes they gave it some aerodynamic skirt pieces, a sexier paint job and lower profile tires on fancy rims but nobody is going to confuse it’s performance with a true sports car.

Most of the time the reason a low end card is being used is because of the extremely low end power supply that the system is built around. They are just barely above the requirements the equipment in the box needs so it’s not uncommon to find older designed 250 and 300 watt PSUs with sub par 12 volt wattage. But they buy them by the shipping container for like $5-10 a unit.

/facepalm

It’s Friday, it must be time for another “how much gold do you maker per hour/day/week” thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/What-is-your-gold-per-hour-and-how/first

I never understood the need for “an end game”. But I’m more of “it’s the journey” kind of adventurer/hero. When most people say “end game”, they mean grinding for elite loot running the same set of raids ad infinitum until they are purpled out.

Why bother with making all that beautiful scenery or complex stories and interesting quests if everyone simply blows by it to reach “the end game”? It’s an MMO trope that really needs to be retired or heavily curtailed.

As for the lack of the trinity, everyone in the army knows how to use a gun and do rudimentary medical triage. Doesn’t matter if you are in logistics, a tank jockey or a cook. You can specialize rolls as much as you want but when the crap hits the fan it’s all about shooting back and stem the bleeding. Trinity been around for a long time, as in the first paper RPGs with fighters, mages and clerics. But over time multi class characters became the rule of the day because players want to able to do more than just be the meat shield or the DPSer or the healer. The healer wants to kick butt too. The DPSer doesn’t just want to be the glass canon.

Shouldn’t a player want to able to day any of these rolls rather than being stuck forever and ever in that one role they picked at the moment of character creation?

You have to realize that from JS’s point of view, he’s arguing baseball coaching strategy with a bunch of people who only have the box score from last night while he has data on every pitch and play in every game.

He can see everything. How much gold is being added to and removed from the active money supply. Every TP transaction with volume and price of the sale. How many Gems are left in the exchange, how much gold converting gems is actually injecting into the economy. He knows what’s being gambled away in the Mystic slot machine and if the number of Fused skins handed out is according to predictions.

And I can understand that his omniscience of this game’s current economic state causes him to facepalm at every accusation that the economy is broken or out of whack or needs “guidance” because someone doesn’t bother to notice that there’s two million of a T5 mat for sale and that might have something to do with their low price at the TP or how the gem exchange’s price will continue to rise until it becomes an attractive way to convert cash to gold via gems.

He has the real time data, we don’t but some simply won’t believe him when he does supply some fraction of the data that disproves a point a group of players insist is happening.

I’m picking off the remaining POIs, it’s just going to take an awful long time unless I’m willing to WvW full time and tag with the zergs raiding those remaining points.

My problem is as JQ we are paired up with a server that has a lot of Oceania players so the balance always ebbs and flows based on the time of day. Sadly most of my playing time is when JQ is the weakest so multipronged attacks in EB isn’t possible as JQ is pushed back on all the WvW maps, putting those remaining Vistas and POIs even further behind enemy lines.

Yeah, boo-woo pwitiful w’ittle me, but I simply have to become cleverer or accept solo suicide runs and trying to stealth in close. What’s the point of getting a Legendary if everyone can get it easily?

The first Guild Wars was generally talked about as a PvP game with PvE trappings, which was why I never played it, I’m simply not good enough, due to age and not being weaned on multiplayer FPSs or fighting games like everyone under 30.

I think a lot of players who loved Guild Wars are disappointed by the amount of PvE GW2 has, the time required to level and gear up when compared to the first game. But what you can’t argue with are the initial sales numbers which are huge compared to the original game, like 7x, and it’s because of the casual/less formal PvE play that got trumpeted about in all the reviews. And as the game is starting to formally go into Asia, yes the PvP aspect is now coming front and center because e-sport is big there and a major selling point for any game.

Gasoline.2570:

Honestly what do you guys think of this thing they do where they introduce more buggy content before fixing existing bugs?

It’s not that many days since last reset and our orr is already filled with broken events again.

You know the usual fia, arah chain, packheart.

Then you go throughout other maps and there’s a bunch all over.

Can you just dedicate all your resources to fix as many bugs as you can in a month timeframe at least? The bug-patch?

This is the age old problem with software development. Developers honestly want to fix bugs but the market always demands new features. And it’s as true with MMOs as with CAD software or an office bundle. And with limited resources, a schedule that’s going many months out already in the works it’s tough to schedule the time for minor bug fixes and quality of life enhancements.

The current Flame and Frost multi-month story is one of these things that once you start it, you’re committed to a 30 day per chapter release cycle come hell or high water. And I’m sure there are plans for the next multi-month event to come after this one leading up to the game’s anniversary. Add in the possible pressure from Korea about a paid expansion, the beta starting up in China as well as other betas for Korea and Japan, they really could have their plates full.

I remember arguments in my coding days with those who are involved scheduling what the developers will be working on about trading one new feature to do 20 QoL/bug fixes. Sure this wasn’t game development, we had to keep up with features our competition was adding, even if we didn’t see the usefulness of it because it would simply allow us to say “we have that feature too”. MMOs need a fresh influx of content to keep players playing.

Sure GW2 B2P means they aren’t reliant on keeping players subscribed but instead depends on the Cash shop. And more people hanging actively playing means you don’t need as many, numerically, to drop cash to keep the cash flow up. I remember reading that Nexon shoots for 10% of their subscribers to drop $15 a month at the cash shop to say a game is doing well.

I get a similar delay when I zone via Gate or Waypoint. It use to not be the case but I believe that they use to leave you on the loading screen until the loading is done.

Mystic.5934:

the last time I suggested this, someone shot me down with “that’s running a scrap materials business at a junk yard”
Doesn’t matter. No matter what you call it, there’s profit in buying items and salvaging for the socket. This is how I currently get about 30% of my income

Flipping is buying an item just to resell it at a higher value where profit can be made. It’s preying on those who want cash now and aren’t willing wait for it by selling it themselves, then turning that inventory around and selling it to those who want the item now and aren’t willing to put up an offer and wait for it to be filled.

What you had described, and I myself also do, is literally doing the same thing as a scrap metal dealer. They rip apart cars, appliances, the occasional stolen school bus and sell off the raw materials for a profit.

I don’t see a problem with either method because the flipper or the salvager are simply taking advantage of the impatience of players who simply want their money or item right now. We simply make money on people who are unwilling to wait.

munkiman.3068:

Geotherma.2395:

munkiman.3068:

Geotherma.2395:

munkiman.3068:

Biohazard.4196:

Geotherma.2395:

This part is VERY specific, and definitely not always true. Again, like I stated before and showed in the pic, people have to do research. Because it will not always be like this. So it isn’t really one sided, there are far more examples of both instances being true, so its best to always check if you want to be the most efficient and profitable.

Isn’t it extremely easy to check, though? Can you not just hover over the picture of the item in question to see its vendor value? It seems as if this “research” takes nearly zero effort or time.

Even easier, when you go to sell it, it’ll tell you it can’t be listed for under vendor value anyway. No research involved.

I wouldn’t say “no” research. As you can often see something that looks like you would make more on TP but lack taking into consideration the fees associated. So while “research” may have been the wrong word, perhaps saying “attention to detail” would also work.

The TP will not let you sell an item below projected profit which includes all transaction fees. Meaning you cannot post something at a loss, when it can be vendored for more.

Correct you cannot post for less than vendor. But you CAN post for a loss. If you sell for 1c above NPC you are losing money through fees.

Actually no, you’d be earning one copper. The projected profit INCLUDES ALL fees. The TP doesn’t allow you to list an item that vendors for less than the projected profit.

No you are not. Open your eyes and look. Pick something like Tier 5 gemstones that you can sell to a vendor at 1s10c yet the TP lets you post them at 1s11c. 5c listing fee with a projected profit of 99c (-10% of 1s10c). So that’s an actual profit of 94c Vs 110c.

Edit: Oops, 6 hours late to this argument.

Question has been asked a lot but no answer for ANet. And I think it’s the bottom 20 sale prices and the number given on that screen is the total number of items found at those bottom 20 prices.

WvW maps are full open to all zones while fractals and dungeons are instanced.

Good luck, I’m off to play some.

Listen OP, I feel your pain. I too originally thought SPs would be easy until I notice if I hover over the on screen tracking (Vs what’s on the achievement screen) of that and noticed it’s 150.

Fortunately I found dulfy’s periscope maps (linked above) and in four or five days polished off the 80 or 90 I needed by starting at the Black Citadel, do most of them in the Plains of Ashford, then go to the Diessa Plateau to get most of those and then go to Wayfayer Foothills and work my way down to the contact that will take them (contact in Diessa Plateau as well). Yes it takes an hour or so a day to round up roughly 20 and but you can end up doing a major chunk of your dailies.

Of course if you are one of those players who only do speedruns or fractals all the time, it will seem to be a “grind”.

Because the data file for the game is 16gb it doesn’t patch in place so it creates a new 16gb data file keeping the old one around until the patch succeeds.

And you probably should try to defrag your drive as performance can suffer with a 16gb file chopped up finely into 1000 fragments all over your hard drive. Excessive drive seeks suck performance, the primary reason why SSDs are so good.

I find that Auslogics free drive defragger faster and has more features (such as targeting specific folders) than the default one that comes with Windows 7.

I think that there’s an apron skin for street clothes you can get at the Gem Store (chef I think). It can pass as a simple dress. Saw a screenshot of a charr wearing one colored pink while wielding a bouquet of roses.

Well unless you cleared off some room from your D drive since you did that report and if the installer needs 2x the space to do the initial install (which like I said I’m not sure), then 31GB may not be enough.

Another possibility is the game is bootstrapping the new loader and some firewall or other security software is blocking it from running.

Again, I’m just tossing out ideas.

Where are you trying to save it because both your drives are pretty full. And since I installed my copy of the game from a retail box I don’t know if the game installs in place or needs 2x the space for the game. The game does take up nearly 16GB of disk space.

Eolirin.1830:

If I understand how it works correctly, all of the gold in the exchange was put there by players, so the exchange always removes gold from the economy, as the amount that the selling player gets is less than the buying player put in. No gold is being generated, and so there is no need to worry about weird interactions.

No. JS stated a while back the exchange was set up with both a (very, very large) pool of gems and a pool of gold. We as players add and subtract from those pools when we convert. And the relationship between the current amount of both pools factors into the exchange rate.

Players can’t accept that gems in the exchange are a fixed quantity that will only decrease as long as people aren’t buying gems with cash and use them to convert to gold.

That decreasing quantity of supply at the exchange will naturally raise it’s price.

“Yes, but gems are virtual they can just make more.” Yes but gems bought with cash is what keeping the game alive. You pay cash, poof, they’ll create gems. They aren’t going to create any just to keep Joe cheap skate happy.

Game’s been up for nearly 8 months and if this was a subscription game and if you played the entire time ANet would have gotten around $100 from each of you. So loosen up your purse strings, quite buying your Starbuck coffee or late night dorm pizza delivery for a day and buy some gems if you really want something on sale (since the spikes mostly happen when something widely desirable goes on sale). Or do a little gem cost averaging by buying some gems every week knowing at some point it’s likely something you want will come along. What are you hording that gold for anyways, if you are really that cheap/poor?

Sorry if I come off a bit harsh but ANet needs money too.

That first link doesn’t go where you think it does. Nice collection of friends and family pics.