Just because something is worse doesn’t mean the thing its worse than is good.
No but MMOs require a constant stream of income. And it’s either through subscription or cash shops. GW was an anomaly and while it sold a far number of boxes, it was the fact that GW2 was being developed that kept the servers up when it’s income was less than $15 million in the two years before GW2 came out. Not $15 million a year, $15 million in two years.
Therefore various techniques are common place to keep players playing and one is requiring a lot of time gathering and processing materials to craft the top rung items or to accumulate enough currency to buy some high end item.
Another is slow travel and running back to quest givers to finish it. GW2 eliminated these which makes the overall game faster but now makes the previous farming that’s found in all MMOs really stick out like a sore thumb.
Well while you are waiting on Laurels you can get your crafting up to 500 and farm those ascended materials.
Laurels were added in response to players not wanting to do fractals to be able to get some of the rewards available from fractals. 1 per completion of the daily, 10 per completion of the monthly. When ascended weapons and armor were finally added ANet looked around for a currency that showed devotion to the game.
Since components crafted with ascended mats were time gated at one of each per day, why not make the final recipes partially paid for by a time gated currency? Crafting your ascended items are suppose to be a long term endeavor.
Yeah, MapleStory defined grind for me. Bland outfits, microscopic storage. Grinding a ton of critters to get X drops of Y only to get to go back and get X drops of Z from the slightly different color critter in the same area that takes five minutes to get to and get back from.
Are you talking day 1 GW2 or are you flashing back to GW? NPE swung the pendulum of a in game tutorial all the way to the other side versus the original, exit the game and watch this YouTube video or read the wiki.
While I could puzzle most things out quickly when I started since I played MMOs before I could understand that to a true newbie it could be too much. And the one true fumble with NPE is not noting and disabling some of the tutorial elements for those who already made it past level X.
And with Traits 2.0 they tried to fix a problem that a lot of MMOs have, dead maps. I saw map specific dailies, Living World chapters, and other attempts to direct players into areas that may not have a lot of players in them because playstyles in PvE degenerated into “farms” (boss trains, champ trains, etc). Now you have a reason other than map complete to go there, a reason to look for and do some event, if you are SP and gold poor. However do to tying them to existing content, too many traits end up behind higher level content then when a player wanted to learn it, which means SP and gold farming. Nobody likes it when you are given a choice but really not.
I wasn’t complaining, I just can’t understand why people think that the new fabulous traits system came with the NPE.
Edit: And it should change with HoT/shortly before HoT – anet is aware of the issues – and expect this thread to be merged with the already existing NPE thread.
Because both Trait 2.0 and NPE came from the China client. It’s just Trait 2.0 was easier/quicker to port so we got that sooner than waiting for the more unified client which was when we got the NPE.
Devs mentioned that Trait 3.0 will be out before HoT.
Explore. No need to follow events. Visit all the race cities and their starter zones starting with yours. There should be a portal to your race city near where you started. Cities are safe unless you fall.
This isn’t an MMO that will push you from quest giver to quest giver until you are pushed out of the area for being to high of a level. What you do is up to you.
Because with Dx9 memory management of the ram on the video card is entirely under programmers control rather than DirectX as it can be in 10/11. Likely for the reason to be friendly to as many players as possible, it seems that the game shoots for around 1GB of graphics memory max. Likely because the era the game engine was being designed in 1GB cards were common while 2, 3 and 4GB cards weren’t.
It also seems that the game engine met their expectations right up to the point they started adding lots of players to the mix. 5 man parties worked well, 50 man zergs not so much.
Also the 32 bit client can force a dreadful amount of disk loading in crowds as you move among other players, very obvious when you have Character Model Limit and Quality not set on their highest. My drive is running at 10-20 MB/s or more constantly during boss fights as I move around the crowd of players. Setting quality to low which leaves them as generic figures eliminates nearly all of that. A 64 bit client should be able to hold more character models longer in memory rather than discarding them as you hit the limits so memory is released back with a 32 bit client.
Hey nobody is going to believe me here. Everyone thinks that software automagicly adapts to whatever hardware in the system. More cores are automatically better, more VRAM is automatically better, faster GPU is automatically better. But without understanding how code works from the client to the OS to APIs, I’m talking to a wall.
The game always monetized cosmetics. Besides services and convenience items, that’s what’s left. The game isn’t subscription you know, so it’s like F2P, nor does it have a subscription like VIP program or feature paywalls, so it’s not like converted to F2P.
You really have to go out of your way not to unlock some skins assuming you have been playing all this time.
The ping you see on the settings screen is not only network ping but server processing. It does go up as more and more players are around you and even more if they are in combat.
The confusing thing is that this sounds like Scroll of Knowledge > mystery crafting mat > Mystic Forge wallet currency. Why make the intermediate conversion at all? Why not go straight from Scroll of Knowledge to the new currency?
Could be technical reasons for that
Or there could be additional uses for that intermediate material other than converting them to Djingots.
Honestly they’ve obfuscated the relationship between stats and their impact that I really don’t pay to much attention to it other than bigger = better.
Now before you all get up in my face about the wiki and formulas and spreadsheet analysis but I’m not playing EVE. And while the large stat values allow fine tuning that you wouldn’t get with small numbers but it isn’t obvious what +42 power does for my damage. Is it that I’m doing 42 points more damage?
So for me moving around where those numbers are coming from, not really all that important. As long as they are reasonably similar to what I currently have, no problem.
Honestly people, blank out the phishing web address from your screenshots. So many people are doing this it almost seems that the phishers are starting threads like this so it’s seen by more people than just those they send it to.
Box product does serve as advertising in store. Target and Best Buy still have tiny PC game areas that aren’t entirely dominated by Blizzard and EA Sims.
I thought it was a bad buy once as well. But never having to carry extra or worry about not having the right one is worth the price. It’s entirely about convenience. Same goes for the copper fed salvage kit.
The FX-8350 has slower individual core performance relative to the last few generations of Intel cores. The game doesn’t generate enough work to keep 8 cores, even 4 cores busy.
Internally for code development I guess it’s more modern than awesomium. TP at least scales now without turning fugly or unreadable.
The transition was a bit rough for some, there was an initial issue with proxies and since the startup screens are also web driven, there were many who flocked to the forums with patching problems. Most were worked out in a week or so.
They should give out the new Currency or Hero-Points for SP spent on Skills, too.
It would be unfair to those people who bought all Skills when they could have bought Mystic Forge items or just saved them aswell.
Which could be possible if they tracked it. Question is did they have the foresight to track how you got your trait, quest or purchase.
If leveling again after 80 fills a mastery bar, I can see the tome doing the same post 80. That fits with what was said in the zam article previously linked.
Rumors, rumors, rumors. Until you see info in print from ANet ignore them. Remember the “you’ll need to use Gems to identify an Unidentified Dye”?
People like winding up others when info is scarce or difficult/annoying to find (4 hour Twitch, summary please beyond “its a work in progress, stuff will change”).
Guess you haven’t been watching all the bank commercials showing how easy it is to transfer money from accounts or raising self declared daily spending limits. Not to mention that bank ATMs allow transfer between accounts. That RL barrier is vanishing.
They changed it because it was a QoL issue. The urge to twink a character from a wealthier sugardadddy or running low due an off night or premo loot drop you want to sell but don’t have the 5% for and you don’t want to head to the nearest bank branch to transfer your funds.
While a 2nd line at the bank is interesting if you can only use it at a bank branch then the same complaints that led to it’s removal will still pop up from time to time and allowing transfers at anytime defeats the purpose unless you think that one extra step will stop players from raiding their savings.
But the wallet was introduced because players got tired needing to dash back to a bank and transfer the money they needed to do whatever they were trying to do before they got the lack of funds message.
It’ll keep us busy at least. But the new preferred meta will be posted in short order. Of course if it’s different from what you locked yourself in (hadn’t heard about repecs but I imagine gem shop if any) you are hosed.
I can see merits with the new system from an underlying feature standpoint. Of course everyone who got their cheese moved won’t be happy.
The lack of self control over gold in your wallet is mind boggling. But I understand, you want it out of site, out of mind.
Why is your mind boggled over human nature? People store money they are saving up in a “piggy bank,” savings account, retirement account, under the bed, in a coffee can, etc.
I don’t blame ANet for reducing things to a simple wallet (which, as you note, is mostly much better than each character maintaining their own currencies), but neither do I blame people for wanting a reserve in addition to the main coin pool.
Still, I doubt ANet will act on the suggestion, because they have never offered much sympathy on the topic.
I understand the desire to “hide” money from yourself for non RP purposes but a Guild Bank isn’t all that safe. And since you are limited to number of guilds and since guilds are account wide not character, they are simply one step removed from you character over the wallet. Or are you going to limit yourself to 4 personal guilds and the one you normally rep?
This was discussed to death when the wallet first came out.
True ANet was the one that suggested a guild account for a personal bank but as I said in my previous post, it’s obviously being used to funnel RMT gold to players as a way to avoid mail tracking so BAM 500g weekly transfer limits. I can’t imagine players with personal guilds hording so much gold and transfer it so frequently that this is really a serious problem for many and is simply complaining because a limit that they hope to reach one day got slapped on it.
Normally, your posts are on target and get me to rethink my ideas. This one… it didn’t respond to what I typed. Maybe you meant to quote someone else?
I asked why you were surprised that humans, who in RL separate savings from spending resources, would want to do the same in GW2? I didn’t say anything about guild banks, enabling RMTs, or anything else that you commented about. I spoke generically about the concept, not about any specific solutions offered to date.
I support ANet’s actions to simplify currency and to make things difficult for RMTs. I also am sympathetic with people who want an alternative place to securely store money. I don’t see those as incompatible ideas and I’m surprised that you seem to.
No, you were questioning about how I labeled the the inability to have the self control of not spending all the gold in your wallet as not understanding the desire to want hidey-hole for it. I do understand but all this commentary is about the 500 gold per week restriction from a guild bank and the need for some kind of account wide unlimited storage that could be used to protect your hoard from TP errors as well as enforced savings for something. I just think there are bigger fish to fry than the guild bank limit or holding all your gold in your wallet and NOT spend it.
But all the “but I was using it as a savings account” nonsense, don’t you use a savings account IRL? Yes but why do you have one in RL? It’s normally because you can’t help yourself from using it if you don’t hide it from yourself and/or the bank pays better interest on a savings account Vs your checking. But you can function without a savings account in RL. You just need some fiscal fortitude.
Like I originally said there is an easy workaround with posting bids on high price legendaries or even precursors. Especially if that’s what you are saving for.
We went from a billfold and bank passbook to a debt card usable at all times and everyone in your family got one as well. And it has overdraft protection so money will be pulled from your savings account, money market, etc.
Mine actually does not, my card gets locked if i spend over X dollars in a day, and if i go to low in my checking(Which i very rarely have) I cant use my card till i transfer money, it does have overdraft yes, but i can only do that once a month. My bank might not be typical but i prefer it over what my parents have.
I still would love the ability to store gold in the BANK again. You know, what a BANK is supposed to be for. It wouldnt be hard to implement, heck the code is probably still in the game.
But as the poster above said, ANET has shown very little care about this topic after the introduction of the wallet, which in my opinion was one of the best: No more hoarding tokens! and the worst: No more ability to have a savings account. and this probably wont ever happen despite us being able to have it in the past. But this suggestion will still be thrown around the forums, much like dueling and mounts but less rabid because this doesn’t affect everyone!
But we didn’t have personal banks before. We had a per character gold storage on our inventory that you could use at NPCs and the TP and an account wide bank that all characters could access and deposit/withdraw gold from but only at bank NPCs.
I never thought of the gold on my character as in a “bank”, it was my wallet. If I put it in the bank it mingled with the gold there from all my other character and I would have needed to track it manually. What we lost was our individual wallets, not individual savings accounts. We NEVER had individual savings accounts.
The lack of self control over gold in your wallet is mind boggling. But I understand, you want it out of site, out of mind.
Why is your mind boggled over human nature? People store money they are saving up in a “piggy bank,” savings account, retirement account, under the bed, in a coffee can, etc.
I don’t blame ANet for reducing things to a simple wallet (which, as you note, is mostly much better than each character maintaining their own currencies), but neither do I blame people for wanting a reserve in addition to the main coin pool.
Still, I doubt ANet will act on the suggestion, because they have never offered much sympathy on the topic.
I understand the desire to “hide” money from yourself for non RP purposes but a Guild Bank isn’t all that safe. And since you are limited to number of guilds and since guilds are account wide not character, they are simply one step removed from you character over the wallet. Or are you going to limit yourself to 4 personal guilds and the one you normally rep?
This was discussed to death when the wallet first came out.
True ANet was the one that suggested a guild account for a personal bank but as I said in my previous post, it’s obviously being used to funnel RMT gold to players as a way to avoid mail tracking so BAM 500g weekly transfer limits. I can’t imagine players with personal guilds hording so much gold and transfer it so frequently that this is really a serious problem for many and is simply complaining because a limit that they hope to reach one day got slapped on it.
The wallet IS the account bank. What they removed were per character banks.
Eh not really… they removed the BANKS Gold storage function. The per character gold was added to the wallet. At least thats how ive always looked at it. They removed the per character gold and added it to the wallet, and removed the banks ability to store gold in a separate location and made an accounts entire gold available at the same time. Something i have always hated. Just like i would hate if my bank got rid of my savings account and merged it with my checking account.
The point is, it was nice feature we had and while some didnt use it at all and dont mind it gone, the fact remains that there are players who are doing stupid work arounds to save their gold in a separate place when we had the ability to do so from launch. Not all because we have trouble spending gold.
Characters use to have their own gold reserve but you could transfer it to your bank along with various dungeon tokens and such. ANet yanked these currencies out of the bank and made the account wallet. Doing so they also removed the per character gold storage and made the wallet’s currency instantly accessible on every character without need to visit the bank. Since this is account wide like the bank was for stored currencies I’ve always looked at it as losing the character’s separate gold storage, replacing it with a streamlined bank version.
We went from a billfold and bank passbook to a debt card usable at all times and everyone in your family got one as well. And it has overdraft protection so money will be pulled from your savings account, money market, etc.
Copper for everything but rare and exotic. Silver for rare. Black Lion (I have a ton) for exotic salvage. While they are slightly cheaper than coin bought salvage kits on a per use basis, their primary advantage is never running out while in the field or using more storage space for salvage kits so you don’t run out of them while in the field. I salvage whites, blues and greens on the fly and dump the resulting mats back to collections as a way to keep my storage under control.
You all realize if your account gets hacked and your guild bank gets drained then you aren’t getting that gold back on a restore right?
The lack of self control over gold in your wallet is mind boggling. But I understand, you want it out of site, out of mind.
Want a character base safe way to “save” gold, here’s a work around? Put in low bids on high end items. The highest bid on Eternity is over 3500 gold. Max out each bid at 1000g and you will be safe from accidentally buying Eternity. You can get it all back by canceling. If you are saving for a particular item bid toward that item, upping the bid as you add to your savings.
But I imagine some of you Daddy Warbucks out there are also OCD about your TP and can’t bear to see unfulfilled bids more than X time units old.
As long as RMT use guild banks to move money around to avoid mail tracking, the 500g a week withdraw limit is going to stay. So adapt. The TP bid method I suggest seems to do the job of a per character method of storing money away from the wallet while providing instant access.
There are outfits and there are armor skins. Outfits hide the armor and cost nothing to change into, out of or between.
Armor skin sets alter the look of armor permanently and to change the look it’ll cost you a transmutation charge per piece. A six piece armor skin set will have one free change per piece. To change them to another look will cost additional transmutation charges.
Transmutation charges can be gotten for free a number of ways, the easiest is map completion of each of the 6 city maps. You can also get them fairly easily, so I’m told, from PvP.
I am curious as to why the sudden shift in attitude. Any reason for it, other than “oh, we finally realised what every other online gaming company has known for over a decade, that RMT involves fraud, identity theft and account theft”?
They’ve always realized that, it’s one of the reasons behind gems to gold. The hope that providing a legit means to convert cash to gold safely would stem the tide. But recently it seems they’ve seen a upsurge in the sub rosa economy along with the in game e-mail phishing.
Some of that may be related to the fire sales for new accounts. Not as good as two week trials but a few sales pays off the investment. But it does seem as the last straw came a few weeks ago with both the guild bank and mail changes plus gold tracking.
The uptake may also have something to do with cleaning house before HoT drops.
I wish there was more GW2 clothing just so I can rock the game I like so much. You see WoW players with their hoodies and “For the horde!” shirts all the time afterall. D;
Agreed.
I’m surprised they’re not already available — but I suppose it is one of the few markets ArenaNet has no interest in making money from.
They’ll do an initial run, set aside some to dole out at cons/events and once they run out, they run out. Out of game Merch hasn’t ever been a big thing for NCSOFT.
There was a huge negative uproar when the watchwork pick came out because it generated additional income. It seems that ANet took that as a lesson to never come out with another gem shop tool that did that. Instead we get what we got during Wintersday, gathering tools that collect snowflakes. They dropped like rain and it didn’t take long to get a stack of them (unopened).
