Guild Wars 2

Satori.3256:

What it comes down to is: Do you think the price of gems can go up until the gold sellers/botters price themselves out of the market? Or do you think gem prices will stabilize at some point that botters will always be around?

No matter how pricey the gold/gem ratio gets bots and gold sellers will always be around, it’s a fact of life for any MMO like a runny nose that lingers after a cold.

marnick.4305:

Yes you could buy theoretically gold from these bots. However the cost is the following: they hack your account, strip it of valuables and steal it for botting.

While I’m not endorsing buying gold from 3rd party websites I’d like to point out that what you’ve said fundamentally incorrect since after sending you some mail they can’t auto-magically hack your account unless you give them those details, in which case you’re an idiot.

Saint.2043:

Soulbound was invented to make players grind for loot if they ever have an alt, such as needing to grind multiple sets of magic find armor when only one should be needed.

You have your answer right there but I’ll just expand on it.

More soulbound gear means more time spent by someone (even if you simply purchase the gear from the TP, someone at some point made it or looted it) grinding.

More players gearing up alts is an increase of concurrent users.

More concurrent users is an increase in the likelyhood of gem purchases.

Don’t forget about the space those multiple armor sets with the same stats take up, that’s less space you have to buy things, don’t worry though, you can purchase more inventory space with those nifty gems I mentioned.

tl;dr Soulbound exists alongside accountbound as a basic monetization route.

To be fair they did announce it twice in game but I think it’s reasonable that both of those messages could have been missed if you weren’t around to see them.

Some people don’t give two fluffy kittens about WvW, at least not until they add more content to it. Like other posters have said Warrior has everything going for it PvE wise and is ok in PvP. WvW comes down to a portal bomb zerg on my server.

Try PvE for a few levels on a mesmer in an area, than try the same area on a warrior of the same level.

The reason should become very obvious.

vvp.8512:

legit the worst encounter in the game and you made it worse.

(as in boring and tedious)

My sentiments exactly.

The trading post and other menus now have some hideous brown background.

Helenorz.2547:

wait, how is that bugs or exploits? isn’t that more like you’re using the pillars as a shield, more like a tactic?

That’s exactly what it is. People just like to throw around the word exploit on these forums the same way Bioware made people throw around the world entitled.

Tarvok.4206:

As well they should. So far as I can tell, the gems market is their only way of getting funds, beyond initial game purchases. Everything on the gems market is extra—not required to play the game. You don’t like the price, you don’t have to buy.

Complaining about the high price of gems is like complaining about how much NPR charges for coffee mugs.

I’m not complaining, I’m stating the facts.
If I want something from the gemstore I’ll dip into the 40k+ of gems I got by buying them when they were 1g/300. I do feel bad for the people that have to pay for their gems using real money though.

I’m sure for some people there is a warm and fuzzy feeling they get from “supporting the developer” but I’m not so easily parted from my money.

Q1. When did you begin playing? (post bw’s)
A1. 3 day headstart
Q2. how many hours total do you have? (/age)
A2. 1289 Hours, 13 Minutes
Q3. What’s your most gold banked so far?
A3. 350g
Q4. Do you have a max level character (s)? (number if more than one)
A4. Engineer and Guardian
Q5. List 1-3 areas / zones / events / tp; where you spend most of your time for income.
A5. AC/FotM
Q6. Do you mainly use MF or not?
A6. 5 Pirate 1 Traveller and MF Food
Q7. Have you ever got an exotic weapon from a mob? If so, how many and total?
A7. 3
Q8. Have you ever got an exotic weapon from a chest? If so, how many and total?
A8. 2, barring the karka event
Q9. What’s the most number of rare weapons you have looted in one day or 8hrs time?
A9. 7
Q10.0
Q11. How many lodestones have you looted total so far? (all types)
A11. 100-150
Q12. Do you craft? If so, do you have a 400 crafter? if so, how many?
A12. All profession maxed.
Q13. Do you sell your looted crafting mats? (specify optional)
A13. No.
Q14. Do you feel your return, (in terms of items, completion, income, etc) for your time, has been worth it?
A14. No.
Q15. In NE word, what needs improved most; from your perspective?
A15. Fixes for poorly designed content. Dev transparency. Loot tables.

TheRiddick.1976:

Timze.7980:

Brutal Arts.6307:

When is the next patch?

In every thread they post they only say in next patch.

I sadly believe it’s no before than wintersday patch

Hey man just be happy that the Dev team listens and understands whats going on. I have to compliment them on the amount of communication they have with their player base I am glad a fix is in the works.. as for me I am happy running fractals for now. My CoE armor can wait a bit it seems

This is the type of communication I’d expect to see between an unfit parent and an unruly child. Simply answering “Soon.” or “When it’s ready.”. It’s easy enough for a moderator to go back and edit the post, as they’ve done previously with patches. As for bugs being fixed I won’t hold my breath unless it’s to reduce the amount of income players can make, legitimately or otherwise.

Dye drop rate, Arah running, etc garner hasty hotfixes (more gold earned by player means they can purchase more gems, resulting in less sales), but things like opening the gates of arah, fixing disconnects on FotM, adding the remaining stat spreads to fractal capacitors/rings, adding a simple offensive infusion, story quests, sound bugs etc etc will have their threads merged than promptly closed or void of any posts aside from a simple “We’re aware of the issue and will fix it soon.”

Tallis.5607:

Now, why isn’t Anet doing anything about it? Probably because they make money with higher gold-gem prices. The more gold it cost for people to buy gems, the more people will use dollars to buy gems (all other things being equal).

This is the one and only reason. anet/ncsoft cares about the player insofar as their wallet. Keeping the exchange rate low is beneficial for them.

It’s not a priority fix (read: it doesn’t allow players to make money) so it will be fixed whenever anet pleases. Perhaps around the time they fix the gates of Arah

When is the next patch?

Fabsm.5897:

Brutal Arts.6307:

Fabsm.5897:

You know, you don’t HAVE to grind for the rings. You’re perfectly efficient without them, if you’re a good player.

You know, you don’t HAVE to be able to survive Jade Maw at rank 20. You’re perfectly useful being dead after the initial agony, or being dead weight for your team. Oh wait, that’s wrong, looks like you DO need to grind out 2 rings if you want to not drop like a sack of bricks afterall.

Sorry, i am copypasting from another of my posts, but the answer is essentially the same.

But then, why are you even doing Fractal 20… to get even more rings or backpiece?

If you’re a good player, you’ll be good even without them. You choose to keep grinding, and you lament you aren’t dropping items that merely make possible for you to … keep grinding more.

I am doing Fractals as i do all other things of this game, as a possibility, not as the ONLY possibility. But maybe it is because i don’t make pugs and only play with friends and guildies. I play to enjoy the game, not to have the xxx-stats-more-than-you.

I probably will stop doing fractals at lvl 10 for this reason. And then move to my long-term goals, building a legendary, a good tPvP team, and a good WvW squadron.

Oh, the last two things don’t drop in dungeons. Nor do skill. And i am glad that in PVP, all your rings and backpieces mean nothing.

I hope this could make you think twice on this insane WoW-style grinding.

Thanks for attempting to read my mind with your condescending copypaste however you’re wrong on all counts. I’m doing fractal 20 for a shot at the weapon skins. Anet, in their infinite wisdom, decided to make these a random drop from fractals 20+. If I want to get a few of these nice looking skins to spread across my characters I have no choice but to keep going into fractal 20+

No matter how much “skill” you have Jade Maw’s undodgeable unblockable agony will sitll hit you, hence the need for agony resist.

MacLeod.5386:

raxx.8914:

The other reason is black lion kits are too costly, there’s no way i’d waste money on them anymore. I was hoping for half price black lion kits on the sales.
The entire gem store is a complete waste as everything is too costly.

I was getting those kits out of the Black Lion Chest(Locked) once in a while, but I have opened at least 30 now with not a single stack of kits. I don’t know if they removed them from the chests or not, so I’m done with both the kits and the chests myself, until they fix whatever they intentionally or accidentally changed.

Seems like simple monetization for me.

1) Increase demand for ectoplasm (New gear requires 250/precursors from karka)
2) Decrease salvage rates from normal kits
3) Reduce rate of BLSK from BLC

Buy your kits now for the low low price of 300 gems.

Fabsm.5897:

You know, you don’t HAVE to grind for the rings. You’re perfectly efficient without them, if you’re a good player.

You know, you don’t HAVE to be able to survive Jade Maw at rank 20. You’re perfectly useful being dead after the initial agony, or being dead weight for your team. Oh wait, that’s wrong, looks like you DO need to grind out 2 rings if you want to not drop like a sack of bricks afterall.

RNG, much like life, is not fair.

Rushed, gated content like this exists only to drive people into grinding each day. Afterall, people that play everyday are more likely to buy gems than those that don’t.

To offer a solution to your problem I’d recommend getting another character to rank 10 and preforming the tier 2 daily on as many different characters as often as possible so you can have extra chances at rings. Who know how long it will take for the devs to decide they’ve squeezed enough out of the player base and to patch in a guaranteed drop/change the vendor, they could certainly hotfix it immediately if they chose to, but since this issue doesn’t result in players ammassing wealth (which they can use to buy gems instead of real cash) it will sit on the back burner until the wintersday update or longer.

Of course since it’s RNG determined you may not get anything at all, at the least you’ll get fractal relics that you can use to buy a backpack.

IndigoSundown.5419:

nachtnebel.9168:

Arena Net is to blame for that, not the players, they are just acting in “self defense”.

Devil’s advocate question: What if the design of FotM was done as a reaction to certain players who raced through the token dungeons, got what they wanted, then complained about nothing to do? Does it not make sense then, that a developer might see a need to resort to mechanics to slow down progression?

I’m sure that’s a method lazy dev’s would take.

Nicolle Rodgers.4926:

The permanent items are rare, but the nature of random chance items means that you could get lucky and get a rare item after opening two chests, or… you could “roll” badly and open hundreds of chests and not get one. That is the way random chance works. However, Black Lion Chests do give useful items every time you open them. You may not get that elusive rare item you hope for, but you will get something you can use. As always, we do not encourage anyone to spend more money in the Gem Store than they are comfortable with.

Mz. Rodgers I have to say that is quite a disingenuous response. I’m sure by now everyone understands how RNG works and the type of mental reinforcement the Gem Store represents.

I’m not going to tell you how to run your business but I will say that if I felt the odds of me receiving a permanent item were greater than 0.01 or they were sold at a high(I’d be willing to spend 2000-3000 gems for the convenience) price individually/for a limited time only you would greatly encourage sales while removing what I feel is the horrible stigma of a terribly done cash shop on an otherwise profitable cashcow entertaining game.

As it stands my gems sit in the window with nothing whatsoever arousing me to purchase more gems, especially with real money, or purchase lottery tickets black lion keys.

1) 1
2) 0
3) 0
4) 0
5) 0

Ever since the lost shores update there’s been some of the original BGM leaking it way through my speakers.

Do I need to add a new folder to the soundtrack list to overwrite stuff that was added? It’s pretty annoying having to mute my speakers every time I go to mine the rich ori node.

Azjenco.9425:

When will it start, exactly?

They’re on now. Nothing of interest to me.

Keys at 50% off ONLY if you buy 25 at once. (RNG chests no thanks)
Fine T stones at 40% off. (Plenty of these from mapcompletion/chests)
Portable one time merchant 60% off. (Beyond useless if you have bagspace or aren’t in a dungeon.)

Was hoping it would be something useful like mystic forge stones or salvage kits.

Despite the fact that you’re absolutely correct, it’s not going to happen. Maybe in the future it will be available in the cash shop for the low low price of 3000 gems.

Obsidian shards, skins and cooking materials. Since balth is bugged and will be fixed “Soon” (Read: sometime between “Now” and “The End Of Time”) karma is useless.

But then they wouldn’t be able to entice you to buy more bank slots. I agree with having the slots but don’t hold your breath.

Tell us how he did it so we can break it on other servers.

Sadly, this is why I refuse rangers from my groups. It’s certainly not fair on them but until anet decides they want to address the issue it’s not going to change.

UnderdogSMO.9428:

AcidicVision.5498:

Dont play with pugs. Join yourself a nice active guild with people you get along with. A small effort finding a guild that fits and your experience will improve greatly.

this all of this way is this so hard,

Chiming in to echo their sentiments. Join a guild, be amiable and try to wedge yourself into/form a group that will do FotM regularaly. That way you can learn each others builds and strategies and generally work as a team, something that’s not possible with pugs.

Yukishiro.8792:

The purpose of agony is to be a hard gear-check to stop you from progressing unless you have the right gear. Anet in its infinite wisdom decided that after swearing up and down they wouldn’t make a gear treadmill that what people really wanted was a gear treadmill.

If you could avoid agony it wouldn’t be a hard gear check and there would be no point to it.

Agony isn’t SUPPOSED to be a clever mechanic. It is supposed to be a mechanic that checks your gear and kills you if you don’t have it. It’s really that simple.

This is exactly what agony is. Add this to the RNG for a resistance ring (time sink to keep you from progressing) and RNG for fractal armor (as opposed to the token system for skins in the rest of the world)

Ghostly.4162:

There are literally VERY few bosses that you can’t avoid agony on.

You cannot avoid agony on Jade Maw (without clever use of game mechanics)

It’s hard but you can avoid agony on every other fractal. Some are easier than others (most infact are really easy)

+0 – + 5 agony will reach you to 20, at 20 you need atleast 10 to survive during maw (with self heal + aoe heal)

Please tell me which attacks from Mossman and Archdiviner apply agony. It’s such a clusterkitten of effects when my group fights them.

Fell down there today. Super annoying since it meant i wasn’t able to get the chest.

That was informative, thank you.

What you all need to understand is that Anet patches work on something akin to Blizzard time.
You can expect a patch for this sometime after “Now” and before “The End Of Time”.

I’m just farming token and waiting for the patch between now and the end of the universe that adds ascended cleric.

Just tried Fractal 10 again, 3 members got rings and I did not, now I have to repeat it again while they move on.

I wouldn’t be nearly as bothered by this if I could just turn in tokens for a cheap ring with 5 agony resist.

Pretty pathetic that we have to grind tokens AND get lucky on RNG to get some agony resistance. I thought tokens were put in because RNG was “not fun”.

It’s clear you’re just padding content with a steep treadmill now.

Theres a rich ori node aaaaaaand…

Okay that’s all I could think of.

Apparently you get an account bound 20s bag and an exotic.

The new zone is pretty but pointless. Farmed up so crabs for an hour and got nothing but shells. Since I don’t feel the need to see the scenery again I wont be going back after the events.

CC Dalmarus.8397:

Keep an eye on the area around Fort Marriner waypoint–the event will kick off when construction is complete on the catapults. Note: Catapult completion time may vary a bit between overflows.

There aren’t even any of the event NPC’s in existence on the overflow I’m on.

Seriously, make this guy and Lionguard Tyrro shut up.

Wingchild.9830:

Gold sinks are handy to counter things like, say, endless Plinx runs. =)

Yes, because everyone in the game sat at plinx 24 hours a day.

To anyone that just wants a lionguard skin for their weapon, get 10 CCC’s and pick one up. There’s nothing else of value.

FallenAdvent.5904:

Level 80 blues got me close to 20 tokens. So I have no clue what your talking about. Its fine. Just play around with the different item levels and stop blaming A-Net for your impatience to learn better methods.

I’m not blaming them for anything. I’m commenting on the quality of their goldsink, which is toptier. I made 2800 tokens last night using low level greens for a cost of 20c/token, even still the rewards are just trash.

The whole point is to get rid of money and give you nothing in return thats why the rewards are trash like gathering/salvage and weapon skins.

Grade A gold sink anet.

It was boring, and the rewards from Lionguard Lyn are trash. 285 CCC’s for a Black Lion Key. The weapons are 1300 for exotic and same skin as the karma Lions arch.

All in all I’ll get the achievements than go grind fractals til anet decides to nerf it.

RNG Chests are and always will be kitten. Supporting them will only allow NCSoft to push more crap every month.

“Magic Find”

I appreciate you attempting to improve your previously horrible dungeon loot but encouraging Magic Find is quite possibly the worst approach.

Anet always takes their sweet time with patch notes. You’d think the developer would have it prepared in advance and posted the same time the patch went live.

I find CoE pathetically easy but it’s probably due to my teams composition.
1 full Cleric Guardian with AH, Writ of the merciful and pure of voice
1 full Knight Guardian with AH, empowering might and pure of voice
1 full Cleric Warrior with Shouts traited to heal/soldier runes
1 glass cannon necromancer with wells
1 glass cannon elementalist.

Everytime alpha comes up we simply fear/kb him into a wall, stand as close together as possible and check the trading post/salvage materials. Every once in a while he’ll actually aim the real ice circle at us so one of us will shout to remove the bleed and the symbols/regen/wells will pick anyone hit back up to full in a few seconds.

The only annoying part is the troll on path 3.

How useless are engineers underwater now?

Did they at least stealth buff the harpoon gun auto attack to fire more than once every 5 seconds?