Guild Wars 2

I know, 150k globs per day. My answer was yours, a week ago. Try looking yourself though. People don’t normally constantly try to sell their stuff 2 silver below the price. It ain’t normal. And with watching I mean constantly refreshing to see what’s going. During peak times, the rest barely counts.

Yea I’ve been seeing it too the last few days. Some wealthy people are contantly trying to push the price down artificially. Prepare for a big push up soon.

Actually, 1 crystalline dust now sells for more than 1 rare weapon or armor. And certainly more than 1 ecto.

Ursan.7846:

You miss the point. These items are not your property because they are “code.” Anet owns the software and the game is hosted on their servers. The virtual property you “own” on your account are virtual items hosted on their servers. You don’t own your account, you’re licensed to access their system through your account. In the legal world, that is a big difference. Hence any virtual items your account “owns,” you don’t actually own.

Ursan, I’m just gonna quote you here and provide you a link to the material which led the Dutch the Supreme Court to its conclusion.

http://jure.nl/ecli:nl:hr:2012:bq9251

It’s in Dutch, but translate it using google translate or something.

They were very aware of the attention this case was getting from abroad (which is even stated), so the reasoning was very extensive.

To your argument regarding ultimate ownership of virtual items by the mmo company (and that of the defense, one of the best paid lawyers in Europe), the court made the analogy that your passport isn’t yours either (it’s property of the state), but it can certainly be stolen, the act of which constitutes theft.

I think you’re missing my point, or not reading it entirely. Your claims related to virtual property ownership and court rulings thereon. Now you’re moving to the area where I stated 3 times that, legally, there is no issue. And again, whether or not a company acknowledges a right to a user is, as I explained before, irrelevant. A court ultimately decides what rights you have, based on the law which defines your basic rights – not a company, whatever the contract says.

So if I have a hard disk with detailed schematics of how to make the most efficient petrol processing engine in the world, that’s worth nothing?

Btw, your article refers to talks of the police deciding an issue; in other words, it never went to court. It (2011) also predates the actual Supreme Court case by a year (2012). Moreover, no case law is cited in that article. One professor is alluding to existing case law in the US, although those never made it to a higher court. The other person, Kwong, is someone who “attended college” (ie. a law student), wrote an article in a law review I’ve never heard of, but it was on a hot topic so he got some media attention.

You gotta enlighten me though, “the majority of the world”? Where did you get that from? That article you cited is even talking how the trend at that time in South Korea was going in the direction of virtual property being equated with real property.

While, again, I believe there is no legal issue involved here, I do have to correct the above poster (ursan) that the Supreme Court of the Netherlands begs to differ with your conclusion. Within the game, they said, you have exclusive decisive powers over the items you have, and since the items had real monetary value to the defendants and the plaintiff, they were goods in the traditional sense of the word. Moreover, I’d like to point out that any contract you sign which contains clauses that are not in line with the law or the case law, those clauses will be declared null and void in any court – for the purposes of determining that case. No contract can change the law, so to say.
However, again, a discussion on whether virtual goods are “goods” in the traditional sense of the word dilutes the issue at hand. Namely, Anet didn’t do anything wrong on the legal front.

It’s a good and valid question. No, in fact my specialty lies in criminal law. But in order to get to anything that requires specialized knowlege, you first need to pass some very general, basic hurdles. We’re not even close to getting there in this case. Heck, we’re not even in a “gray” area of the law yet. But let me expand just a tiny bit on the runescape case, cited above. This case was against the backdrop of physical violence against a person. They abused a kid, and threatened him with knives, in order for him to give them his virtual goods (an amulet and a mask). The problem there was, can theft of a virtual good also constitute theft in the sense of article 310 of the Dutch criminal code (which normally deals with physical goods)? In order to answer that question, they needed to know if a virtual good in an MMO could also be interpreted as a physical good, which has value in the real world. Now, while the court found that it did (in that case), that was not the central issue in the case. The central issue was theft.

Now, getting back to fused skins, if you can formulate a proper question that refers to an actual problem, I’ll get back to you. I have seen nothing thus far – including the gambling argument (although only remotely relevant at this stage, let’s not forget you can convert gold to gems) – that comes close to a court case, either of a criminal or civil nature.

So I’m trying to understand this. Is everyone selling their globs low because the patch didn’t involve anything requiring globs? Or do people just need cash to buy gems for the new skins? What’s the deal here?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Gasoline.2570:

And here’s some further information on the issue at hand

Dang. Someone undercut my Dusk. I’ll have to fix that when I get home.

Hahahahaha! Nice one

There is no poor expectation management, and – speaking as a lawyer – there are no legal issues involved here. None. Please drop it, it’s futile. Even if it went to court, what would you claim? And how would that weigh up against the cost of litigation? It’s a non-discussion, any way you look at it.

marnick.4305:

Don’t blame the lottery, blame the uncontrollable urge to gamble, which you and only you can control.

Take responsibility for once. Don’t gamble, no one is forcing you to.

This.

And if you do decide to gamble: never do it with gems/gold/money you can’t afford to lose.

Noviere.7309:

Anet continues to do this because people are so eager to throw money at them.

And right they are! Come on, Anet is a business, and it needs to make money to keep one of the biggest MMO’s in the world running smoothly. They need to pay investors, stockholders, developers, servers, maintenance guys, buildings, administration staff and whatnot to keep this thing going. Let them have it.

They made awesome skins, as store skins always are – and should be (otherwise, no money for Anet, and no money for Anet means less money for development). Yes, I was lucky; I opened 40 chests, but my ticket was already in the first 10 chests. Before opening, I had already read the stories, so I knew it was a gamble, and I knew the odds were against me. First rule in gambling; never bet with money that you can’t afford to lose.

:)

@Lert: it’s the Fused Longbow. [Yes, I read about the horrible chance to get a ticket. I was lucky, for once]

OK OK. So our longbow is still not fixed. OK OK. We still got a HUGE set of problems that needs to be resolved.

But c’mon, our new longbow looks awesome.

http://img856.imageshack.us/img856/5278/bowac.jpg

[pressed print screen while using the "5" skill]

Does it matter? Even if he currently only has 10 gold, his argument is backed up by experience. And I find his argument credible, ie. the precursor market is mainly dominated by (1) a few people that gamble, and write it on the forum so that (2) a lot people panick, and buy their precursor at an increased price, driving up the price even further, and unknowingly fulfilling the gambler’s prophecy.

It’s a well known phenomenon, I believe. People like Soros made their money like this; He speculated on overvalued currencies. He sold his Pounds, and later, his Bahts, he explained why he did it [these currencies are overvalued!], and people followed him in his speculation. As these people also sold all their Pounds and their Bahts, those currencies literally crashed as a result. Soros is now one of the richest people on the planet.

Now, the precursor people are doing the opposite. They’re saying: look, there’s all precursors that are undervalued. They publicly compare them to the prices of all the other precursors, and buy enough of them so that the price spikes. Now, low and behold! People will follow them in their argument and start buying them too. So the price goes nuts, and stays nuts.

It’s not the speculators that drive up the price, it is, in fact, the people that panick as a result that drive up the price.

And then, one day, a little birdie from arenanet implements a lil’ update in the loot tables…. and everyone is poor again. Except the speculators of course; they have already sold their precursors at top prices long ago, and have moved on to the next market.

To answer John’s question, I think there are two solutions.

1. Soulbound items. Exclusive items you cannot get through the TP; you can only acquire them by playing the content. The guild commendation system is heading in that direction with its new weapons skins. Strictly speaking, this is not an answer to John’s question, but an answer to the community that believes that “playing PvE” should be more rewarding than “playing the TP”.

2. Implementing a fee for placing buy orders, or getting rid of buy orders altogether. Given that I made quite a bit of gold on the TP through buy orders [although I’m in the toddler league compared to most posters here], I wouldn’t like this solution one bit. However, I think it’s the only truthful and logical answer to John’s question.

One comment: people that are angry because the price of globs of ecto rose following the mega boss event change, should realize a very simple fact. Everyone has a certain amount of coin. Some have more, some less, but there is an average out there of the amount that people have. People need to buy a certain amount of “necessities” with the amount of coin they have; vials of powerful blood, globs of ecto, lodestones, and other t6 materials, to make the most wanted items in the game. When ecto becomes more expensive, they suddenly have less coin to spend on vials powerful blood. So, they wait until the price of vials drop. And low and behold, it does, because supply is going to outweigh demand until we find a price that people are willing to pay. So if the price of ecto rises, somewhere else on the TP, the price of another item drops.

Now, perhaps you were making big bucks of the Mega Events. Well, RIP Mega Events, but up next: another profitable way of making a buck in PvE. But why didn’t you take a step back to see how the mega-event changed prices of items sold on the TP, and use that knowledge to your advantage? PvE and the TP are not mutually exclusive, they complement eachother very well, if you take a step back and consider what is happening around you, and consider what it does to the price of items on the TP. You can join the crowd in mindlessly grinding PvE content, or you can use that knowledge – the fact that a crowd is doing certain content because it is the most profitable kind at that moment – to your advantage. And make more than the crowd as a result. In fact, since you always have the TP at your fingertips – even while doing PvE – you can do both at the same time.

The graphics are already in the game for this.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Whip

Also, there’s a whip that you can buy from an NPC in PvE that does the same animation.

What Arenanet could do is, like all conjured elementalist weapons, make a weapon skin out of this. If you don’t want to add a weapon to the ranger’s arsenal, you can make the whip a skin for an already existing weapon. Like an axe, or a dagger.

Nope. Speculating is very risky business. One small update and a 100+g investment vanishes into thin air. Their risk is your loss, yes. For now. But once an update does go live, every speculator and their mother will be selling your precious precursor at bottom dollar, making your life a lot easier.

Yup, reaver, or golden axe (instance) and seraph axe (cultural, same axe but silver in color).

But why don’t you look for yourself:

http://dulfy.net/2013/01/04/gw2-axe-skins-gallery/

I always have the feeling that there’s people with vested interests posting in these precursor threads. Either it’s the people selling mats (i got my precursor in 10 tries) or the people that sell precursors (I made 10 thousand rares/exotics, still nothing).

Dante.1763:

i want The Crossing but at the moment im focusing on getting all my toons kitted out with exotic armor….

but 40g+ for anything but a precursor is silly i think

Soooooo, ehmmmm, me buying 450 lodestones to make volcanus was silly?
Of course it was! But darn, that’s what makes the game fun, you look funky every day, I can really enjoy that element of the game. Skinwars for the win!

Next goal: 100 charged lodestones for the Wings of Dwayna! Soon, I hope.

Oh, and no, I don’t have my legendary yet, I’m missing a precursor like everyone else. But I’ll get there some day. I’m in no rush.

If the ranger class is in the hands of those guys, we are all doomed. There is no enthusiasm whatsoever when talking about this class. None. It’s more like the necessary chapter that needed to be addressed. And read out from the notes as well, despite the fact that there was so little to remember in the first place.

This interview shows you exactly why the ranger is where it is now, with persistent bugs that haven’t been fixed since beta. They don’t give an ounce about this class.

Same problem here. Character: Norn.

Yup. Anything other than a perfectly flat terrain is too difficult for your pet. As a result, your pet will do nothing, your health bar will go down because the system stops your use of the 5 skill (and even puts it on a cooldown), and you will die.

Yesterday, I met a ranger in WvW. I was in an ally, alone, trying to recover from a big zerg fight, and I was on the floor, downed. The sad part was, the ranger could not kill me through lick wounds. His damage was simply too low. It was so sad, it hurts. [mainly because I am a ranger myself, too].
When I got up, he ran away.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Is this a fair summary of the thread so far?

• Someone took the time to post results for salvaging 800 L80 rares, half with BL Kits, half with master’s.
• Statistically, the results show that BL kits have a much higher ecto drop rate than master’s, but not enough to justify the increased per-use costs, given the current TP value for ecto.
• The results strongly suggest that, for the purposes of deciding whether to TP or salvage any particular rare, we can use the rates of 0.9 for Master’s and 1.25 for BL Kits.
• People who have studied stats have chosen to act as if those conclusions are valid.
• Others are not yet willing to accept the conclusions, for a variety of reasons.

(On a personal note: thank you Geotherma.2395 for taking the time to post your results, respond to questions, and to have an open mind about how to go about collecting/posting/summarizing data.)

Finally someone talking my kind of language. Thank you for this summary kind Sir! I was just about to ask whether someone could please convert all the math flying around into plain English.

Articluna.4509:

Data? Allright.

BLSK 1,261 (recorded sample size 306)
[…]

Mystic 0,911 (recorded sample size 6295)
[…]

Master 0,892 (recorded sample size 43,485)
[..]

Naturally it’s not sample size large enough, as everyone likes to point out, but would be in line with “BLTC gives more ecto than master/mystic”.

I used only crafted lv 80 rares for these figures. Also, it did take bit longer than weekend or two. I didn’t track down invidual ecto per salvage, since that’d been too much work.

There should be special titles for people like you that can be displayed proudly in-game. You give yourself way too little credit for your work of recording your salvage rate. I believe the wiki page on this topic should provide a summary of your conclusions with a link to this page. [Could anyone savvy with Wiki please do this, we’re not gonna get a more solid sample size than this].

There were two “Foulbear’s lucky feathers” on the TP the other day. But it looked so ugly that I didn’t want to invest in it.

Any news on Dwayna’s bows?

Solo.9027:

Heavy moldy bags are nice but the leather/cloth trash drop rate is too high to get me excited when they drop anymore. Another possible fix would be to tone down their inclusion in these bags.

This would be a very smart and elegant solution to what is indeed now becoming a problem. This solution looks a bit like the vanilla bean fix that was implemented recently. By taking out black pepperkorn from the mature herb loot table, the vanilla bean price was fixed within a month.

I would merely add to this proposed fix that it shouldn’t only be applied to “heavy moldy” bags, but all bags within that tier (so that you’re not confined to killing stuff in Orr, but you can equally kill stuff in Frostgorge Sound and/or other places).

Actually, there’s a few additional benefits to this approach. T6 prices would drop a bit, and a leather/cloth will finally be a material worth storing in your bank, as they’re currently selling around vendor value.

I salvaged more than the OP with both sets (mystic/master vs Black Lion), and have gotten similar results (regarding ectos). They fixed the Black Lion kit so that the ecto return rate is higher than the mystic/master kit. Makes sense too, because the Black Lion kit is very expensive when you actually buy it with gems.

The Wings of Dwayna (longbow) is held by the Tengu, who reside here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dominion_of_Winds_

With the fix to the behemoth meta event, perhaps the meta event that takes place in the Tengu area is now also fixed?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeat_Xolotl

cargan.5689:

o freedom o.9028:

i love when a dev comes in with the cold hard facts and is like BOOM

Problem is now im stuck with this as the image of Mr Smith owning some on in the forum

Smith: “Tell me, Mr. Cargan, what good is a forum… when you are unable to speak?”

[disables forum rights]

I made a suggestion regarding the Wings of Dwayna here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Current-List-of-Undiscovered-skins/first#post1545613

In short, I think it may drop from the final “Champion of the Sun” event:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeat_Xolotl

I looked into this. The Wings of Dwayna (longbow) is held by the Tengu, who reside here:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dominion_of_Winds_

With the fix to the behemoth meta event, perhaps the meta event that takes place in the Tengu area is now also fixed?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Defeat_Xolotl

Yes, when I did that I got 10 chocolate bars. And some butter, too. They’re still expensive though. Because what will happen once your lowby character outgrows queensdale and becomes lvl 40? That’s right, no more peppercorn for him. On the other hand, most food items he’ll use all the way to lvl 80 still require those base items. And won’t your lvl 80 necro like 30% magic find and +70 condition damage while doing events in Orr, and in dungeons? Anyway, I should stop giving info now. Sorry for the spam.

Yes, you can buy one earring every… 40 days. Yay. Oh, and you can also do guild missions instead of paying with globs.

You clearly are not into cooking. Some of the products made with black pepperkorn sell by the thousands per hour, amongst others, cup of lotus fries. Yes, there is pepper stock, but this will run out over time.

True. On the other hand, people don’t have the patience to step back and think. What will this mean in the long run? Well, the amount of nodes giving pepper is cut in half, whereas the nodes that were cut were the most popular nodes, giving a better chance at vanilla beans. And because of the now altered loot table on mature/verdant herbs, the price of vanilla beans should start to drop over time.
Tldr price of pepper should rise over time, whereas the price of vanilla beans should drop over time.

@ Verdelet: you are showing us achievements that can be managed by investing time in a character, nothing more, nothing less. You have lost 2 out of 3 tournaments you played, and lost 1 out of 2 tPvP matches you played. Now, to be entirely clear, I’m not saying you are not playing your ranger correctly, or that I would have done a better job. I’m saying these screenshots only show you’ve played your ranger a lot, and that your contribution may not have benefited the teams you joined to the extent that you appear to be advocating.

More particularly, your screenshots do not address the issue that Jon Peters promised said would be fixed: (i) shouts and signets being “subpar” and “lackluster”, (ii) trait lines which lack viable choices, and (iii) skills that are too specialized to complement a weapon build. All of these are Jon’s words. If a dev states this, not recently but 5 months ago, this means there is a BIG problem. There is no point in talking this right. And not because I said it, but because the developer himself has said these are problems deeply rooted in the ranger class.

But congratz on those 2 legendaries!

I’m always a bit suspicious if I see ppl stating they can effectively manage two squishy pets (such as a Moa and a fernhound) in a high lvl fractal dungeon. The pet rotation is borked because, inevitably, these pets die too fast. You need at least one bear to keep the pet swap cooldown in check. You can manage to keep both these pets alive, it IS possible, but your damage will suffer considerably in doing so.

Probably it’s much simpler than that. I think people are banking on flame and frost and/or guild missions to take place in the areas where said items drop, meaning a huge influx of those items, meaning a price drop.

The point is that this thread “casually” lends legitimacy to something which is, reading the policy at face value, obviously not legitimate.

What you really mean is that we should wield clubs?

Oook ook. Me Robin WOOD. Ook. You Jon Peters. Ook.

You’re looking for Vatlaaw’s armor set.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vatlaaw's_armor

Goes well with sigil of the Lich. Gives you that extra vitality you’ll be needing, as well as 10 percent condition duration. Combine with rare veggie pizza food and you’re good to go.

What disturbs me is that out of the 1100+ posts in Jon Peter’s own thread, which was viewed over 140 thousand times, only two of those posts are his.

Come on guys, get your communication act together! You can do it!

They fixed it. Black Lion kits now give more ectos than master/mystic kits. Tested this recently with a reasonable sample size (any number I put here will be disregarded anyway, as there will always be people that say “but you cannot claim this without having at least salvaged over 20 thousand rares while recording the whole thing”).

TL;DR

I’m 100 % positive that Black Lion kits now wield considerably more ectos than rare/master kits, while they wielded the same amount of ectos in the past.
Given that 1 black lion kit is 300 gems (and 300 gems is what, 7g these days?) this fix makes sense.

When I openly asked for guidance on this program, I was referred to the Third Party Program policy of Guild Wars 2, which states, in the relevant part:

“The best way for a player to assess whether a specific third-party program could have any impact on another player or a PvP opponent is to ask:

“Does this program allow someone to play faster, better, longer, or more accurately than someone who doesn’t use it?”
“Does this program allow someone to ‘play’ when he/she is not at the computer?”
“Does this program allow the user to gain undeserved rewards?”

If the answer to any of these questions is “yes”—or even “maybe”—then we strongly recommend that you do not use the program because to do so may place your Guild Wars or Guild Wars 2 account in jeopardy."

My answer to question 1 and 3 regarding “Zicore” and “Gold Wars 2” is “yes”. Even if you were to be in doubt, and would fill in “maybe”, it would still mean that making use of this program is against the official policy. My answer to question 2 is only “yes” if the program includes an option to receive a notification when your products have been outbid by someone else. Because this means you’re still playing the game while logged out, even if you don’t log back in to change your original bid.

Don’t get me wrong, you guys made something very nifty and inventive. Something the developers perhaps ought to have implemented themselves. The problem is, they haven’t, and using these programs gives you an unfair advantage over anyone who is not using them. I’m just applying a very plain reading of the policy; I’m not interested in analogies with GW2 spidy or other programs, so that I can bend something that is crooked into something that is straight.

Bump. This problem won’t go away if you ignore it. And don’t tell it’s not a problem, because the opinions on this topic remain split.

I keep wondering: should I be a programmer to compete in a level playing field on the TP part of this game? I don’t thinks so.

Healix, Arenanet not telling is the root of the problem. I do not believe that the silence of the developers means something is “OK”. If the law in my country, or those that make the law, does not tell me explicitly that putting young kittens in the microwave is not allowed, does not mean that it must therefore be allowed.

My only point of reference is the User Agreement and the Rules of Conduct. If I believe something is an unintended game mechanic inside the game, I don’t use it. If I believe something is an unintended game mechanic outside the game, which affects what I do inside the game, I don’t use it. However, Goldi, DarkSpirit and others who argued the opposite, have valid points too. Maybe they’re completely right. I don’t know. This is why I am requesting guidance. To know what I am allowed to do, and to avoid any hostile discussions back and forth about it on this forum. I’d like to know the boundries. What is permitted, and what is not. It’s unclear for those in favor and those against, and it’s creating a divide between players. I’m OK with the outcome either way.

Kilrain, as much as I appreciate that you share your views, the point of this thread is not to seek individual player’s views on what functionality is right or wrong. It will only degrade into a debate on players disagreeing, and re-hashing the same arguments as have been made in other threads.

The point of this thead is to get guidance. As Goldi and Protoavis have pointed out, such guidance will hopefully also help avoid further quarreling on the forum on what is “right” or “wrong”.