Guild Wars 2

A good example is elder wood logs.

The cost of me going around chopping elder wood logs is no longer economically feasable. I costs me 4 copper per whack of an orichalcum axe and the log sells for 11 copper on the TP. Once you factor in the TP tax of 15% your left with about 8 copper per log minus the 4 copper per whack with your axe and thats 4 copper per log. The net return on chopping elder wood logs is very very low.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Yourself.6870:

eisberg.2379:

I disagree. If it cost me nothing to achieve, then I consider them as free. Doesn’t matter if they can be sold on the TP, if I didn’t spend any money on it, then it is free.

You are certainly free to think so, but in economics there is a term called “opportunity cost”, which means that by doing one thing you can’t do the other. i.e. if you use your resources for crafting, you can’t sell them and vice versa. The cost in this case is represented by the potential market value of your harvested resources.

Also it didn’t cost you nothing to get those resources. You invested time gathering them after all. Granted, most of the time it’s simply a matter of just hitting up nodes along your way, but it’s not nothing.

This is why picking up pennies off the ground costs you more than the value of a penny, mind you, so you should totally leave any on the ground and not pick them up. It’s losing you money, and that’s been scientifically proven.

True.

If you can pick up 1 penny every ten seconds off the ground; thats 6 pennies per minute, which is 360 pennies per hour, which is $3.60 per hour. The question is, what could you be doing instead of picking up those pennies that would net you more than $3.60 per hour?

Attic.1562:

He’s asking about how much 1 percentage point of critical damage is worth in other stats on gear. Or its ratio in other words.

And the answer is that it has no fixed cost. It depends on what piece you’re looking at.

For example, on the exquisite jewels 1% crit dmg is worth 5 stat points, but for the normal orbs 1% crit dmg is worth 7 points.

There’s a chart here that will give you the ratios. Note that these are for exotic gear only. Ascended is different.

Yes thank you.

This is what I was wondering because some pieces of gear weigh critical damage differently than other pieces. If you do the math, you can actually build your character inefficiently.

Take orbs for example.

Ruby Orb = Power/Precision/Critical Damage = 20/14/2%
Emerald Orb = Precision/Toughness/Power = 20/14/14

Is 1% critical equal to 7 of any stat?

How much weight does 1% critical damage have? I appears that Power, Vitality, Precision, Toughness, Healing and Condition Damage are 1:1. If you added 1% critical damage how much of stat X would you need for it to have the same weight?

Estriella Faerie.4029:

Calae.1738:

Arenanet doesn’t know how to make encounters challenging enough without artifical gear gates. It took Blizzard awhile to pull it off.

Pretty funny comment, talking about a game where most raids have at least one gear-check boss, if not several…

That’s not what I meant.

Remember resistances? You needed fire resist for Ragnaros. You needed those stupid capes for the dragons in Blackwing Lair. Agony works the same way. It’s a resistance to an unavoidable type of damage. In reality, this mechanic is a gating system designed to slow down progression in order to give enough time for the developers to develop new content. The player base consumes the content much faster than it takes them to build it.

Once the developers become better at what they do, they’ll be able to design a dungeon where your amazing group of 5 will be wiping on the same boss for a month.

You might get midnight fire dye which is worth 7g.

What are some ways we can thin out large zerg tactics without renovating the landscapes?

Control Points
-Towers could have another control point above the gate.
-Keeps could have multiple control points inside the outer and inner walls.
-SM could have multiple control points in the courtyard and on every floor.

Mobility
-All waypoints disabled in WvW.

Orbs
-In Eternal Battlegrounds there would be 3 orbs to control. These control points would be in the same place where the Dredge, Orges and Hylek camps are located. Orbs cannot move, when captured they provide stat buffs. In the borderlands, there would be 3 orbs. Each located at the south, north east and north west supply camps.

Player Resurrection
-Only 1 player can revive a downed player; revive is interrupted by damage.
-If a player is defeated, that player cannot be revived.

Greatsword and dual scepters. Greatsword could be a melee weapon (300 yards) similar to dual daggers and the off hand scepter would have offensive abilites at (900 yards).

The only people that will stop JQ is JQ. There’s only so much queue and PvDoor you can tolerate before transfering off.

Nuzt.7894:

I don’t think its the Zerg in particular, its more the culling, maps so small that avoiding a zerg every 5 feet is next to impossible. Culling needs to be fixed and this new culling has got to go. The map size … I doubt they will do anything about it but as long as they remain small, Zerging really doesn’t use any tactics, just run to the next keep/tower/supply and lay waste, after all its only 30 seconds away.

Zergs are not forced to make choices, everything is within spitting distance. Its mind numbing.

I’d like to add that waypoint travel also allows zergs to have superior mobility. I like the idea that you can counter zerg mobility by contesting waypoints but, how much fun is it for someone to be on waypoint contesting duty?

Zergs tactics display very poor map design.

Arenanet’s servers and game engine are unable to handle 3 servers fighting for Stonemist Castle on reset Friday. Abilities have unbearable lag delays and culling makes most players completely invisible.

They designed a sandbox without multiple critical objectives. This is why zerg tactics work. If there were many critical objectives to defend or assault, zerg tactics would be completely ineffective.

Shear Force.9154:

Calae.1738:

You cannot make difficulty scale forever. You cannot make rewards scale forever. It doesn’t make any sense. You will hit a mathematical wall whether you like it or not.

As a developer, to get around this you have to create the illusion of progression.

This is how I would do it. At lvl 20 you have 1% chance to get a charged lodestone from the chest. At lvl 30 you have a 2% chance. At lvl 40 you have a 3% chance. I would monitor where most people are and adjust the drop rates accordingly. Say for example that my threshhold is 50% of the active FoTM population. Lets say that 50% of the population is at lvl 30 and I find the drop rates acceptable. Once 50% of the population reach lvl 40, I change the lodestone droprate from 3% back down to 2%.

Theoretically, the community wouldn’t notice but, if they did; I could deny changes in the drop rates.

Denying, or effectively lying to your community is the most horrible thing a company can do, if it wasn’t for us there would be no Guild Wars 2, a little gratitude would be nice, and I hope ArenaNet never goes down that road, where they have to lie to their customers to keep them playing.

Give it time.

Arenanet doesn’t know how to make encounters challenging enough without artifical gear gates. It took Blizzard awhile to pull it off.

You guys are funny. This thread delivers.

Blizzard pays investors 80 cents on every dollar you give them for World of Warcraft. Think about that for a minute. 20 cents on the dollar pays for all the servers, all employee salaries, developement of patches, content updates and expansions.

You cannot make difficulty scale forever. You cannot make rewards scale forever. It doesn’t make any sense. You will hit a mathematical wall whether you like it or not.

As a developer, to get around this you have to create the illusion of progression.

This is how I would do it. At lvl 20 you have 1% chance to get a charged lodestone from the chest. At lvl 30 you have a 2% chance. At lvl 40 you have a 3% chance. I would monitor where most people are and adjust the drop rates accordingly. Say for example that my threshhold is 50% of the active FoTM population. Lets say that 50% of the population is at lvl 30 and I find the drop rates acceptable. Once 50% of the population reach lvl 40, I change the lodestone droprate from 3% back down to 2%.

Theoretically, the community wouldn’t notice but, if they did; I could deny changes in the drop rates.

Your average person has very little undertanding of probabilities.

Just look at a casino and see for yourself. In the old days, people didn’t understand that playing against the house in poker was almost the equivalent to stealing. Once the probabilities are well understood, people played poker without the casino. In order to entice the players back into the casino, the house had to change the rules, which reduced thier profit margins.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If you gamble without knowing the mathematical probabilities, you deserve to lose.

Player culling should be thier number 1 priority. That alone breaks it for me. I cannot tolerate culling.

The designers should also change certain rules and place multiple crtical locations in order to force zerg tactics to be ineffective. In addition, there should be much tougher penalties for dying. Only 1 person should be allowed to help another person up from a downed state. If a player is dead, they cannot be ressurected. They will automatically respawn at the start. Waypoints in WvW should be disabled at all times.

I am very heavily against a group of 5 people killing a group of 50. Not only would this be impossible to balance but, the game would degenerate into an AoE spam fest.

Loot DR was never meant to stop bots.

Arenanet knows just as well as any other company that people are willing to pay more money to obtain items faster. Loot DR is a system used by Arenanet to generate revenue. Think of it like a knob that they can turn. Turn it one way, and more loot drops but, less neeed to buy gold. Turn it the other way, less loot drops, more need to buy gold. Its tricky to find the right balance because turning the knob too much in either direction has negative consequences.

I hope you guys have alts.

Feb or March. Not sure.

They did say they’ll release new combinations in future patches. I don’t think it’ll take them long to make a piece of gear. It should take 1 person a few minutes. They could patch it in today if they considered it critical.

I think in trying to appeal to a wider audience they have to design for the lowest common denominator. I wonder if it would be feasable as a designer to build a game that encourages players to get better at the game rather than to make thier players feel like Charlie at the Chocolate Factory.

It is quite strange. The NPCs that have the least HP, deal the least damage, provide far more gold per hour.

Assuming players could avoid all damage 100% of the time using skill and timing; the developer faces an interesting dilema with thier fractal design. A dungeon that scales in difficulty to infinty cannot scale in rewards infintly for obvious reasons. When you get to lvl 10000; what is going to be in that chest?

I’ve stopped running Fractals as well. The loot felt like it was gutted and I’m getting more gold per hour out in the open world. I prefer the open world to be honest, it feels alive and I also feel immersed into it. Unfortunately, the open world events are so easy you could train a monkey to complete them.

When I see a Legendary I should also see a Legend. A back story. Something that explains why it’s legendary.

Suppose you had to rally your entire server to take down a summoned demon as part of your journey to aquire that legendary. If you fail, that demon rampages throughout the world and would require a war effort from the entire server in order to nutralize. When it’s all over, that tale alone will make people remember that weapon. The weapon itself is legendary because it is backed by a legend that many people will remember. There would be conversations in cities of people talking about it.

“Hey, you see that cool looking sword over there? Let me tell you a story…”

Blueshield.6291:

Calae.1738:

Blueshield.6291:

Calae.1738:

Legendary = Remarkable enough to be famous; very well known. Celebrated or described in legend: a legendary hero.

What is Legendary about the steps that is required to obtain this item exactly? Do you think that people will be amazed at these accomplishments? I personally don’t think Arenanet understands the meaning of the word Legendary.

In spite of your citation of the definition, it’s apparent that it is you, not ANet, with confusion over the meaning of the word.

Legendary weapons are “remarkable enough to be famous; very well known” (from an in-universe perspective), regardless of your or anyone else’s scorn towards them. They are widely recognizable and, to most players, need no identification.

Legends don’t have to be positively regarded. Mordred (of Arthurian legend) is a legendary villain.

I don’t regard legendaries that way. I look at a legendary in the same way I look at a diamond ring. A shiney, useless and expensive rock which you can aquire at your local jeweler.

Okay, but then you’re delving into the area of opinion, not definition, which is a far cry from your original argument.

Would you like to enlighten us on how much of an achievement and accomplishment it is to purchase a shiney object from your local corner store?

Blueshield.6291:

Calae.1738:

Legendary = Remarkable enough to be famous; very well known. Celebrated or described in legend: a legendary hero.

What is Legendary about the steps that is required to obtain this item exactly? Do you think that people will be amazed at these accomplishments? I personally don’t think Arenanet understands the meaning of the word Legendary.

In spite of your citation of the definition, it’s apparent that it is you, not ANet, with confusion over the meaning of the word.

Legendary weapons are “remarkable enough to be famous; very well known” (from an in-universe perspective), regardless of your or anyone else’s scorn towards them. They are widely recognizable and, to most players, need no identification.

Legends don’t have to be positively regarded. Mordred (of Arthurian legend) is a legendary villain.

I don’t regard legendaries that way. I look at a legendary in the same way I look at a diamond ring. A shiney, useless and expensive rock which you can aquire at your local jeweler.

Ouroboros.5076:

People saying that you just buy a legendary from the TP are lazy and angry people. People that are just mad about how hopeless they are themselves, but instead of getting mad on themselves and try to get better, it’s much easier to denigrate the others.

Legendary = Remarkable enough to be famous; very well known. Celebrated or described in legend: a legendary hero.

What is Legendary about the steps that is required to obtain this item exactly? Do you think that people will be amazed at these accomplishments? I personally don’t think Arenanet understands the meaning of the word Legendary.

I believe they ran out of time. They didn’t have enough time to do what they initially wanted with Legendaries and just threw a couple of ingrediants together and voila. Theres your Legendary. Took them 6 minutes.

Dreamslayer.7659:

Gisei.5749:

Calae.1738:

Dreamslayer.7659:

I just finished Juggernaut today and let me tell you – it feels like an achievement to me.

And that’s what counts.

What you’ve felt is not an achievement, it’s relief.

You’re glad its finally over.

Oh, tell me how I feel next!

I’m not “glad it’s over”, I’m enjoying the natural progression of effort to reward. I enjoyed the process and the level of sustained motivation and effort and now I’m enjoying the fruits of my effort – what could be more natural than that?

Its sad then. It really is.

Theres nothing difficult or challenging in aquiring a Legendary. It’s a long and tedius process where I would rather poke my eyes out with a spoon. I find playing tetris or pac mac for a high score to be more challenging and entertaining. At least with tetris and pac mac I practice skills like hand and eye coordination, problem solving and reaction time.

Thats why I don’t think its an achievement. It’s also why I think no one would consider this an achievement. Something that is easy and takes a long time to do is testing your ability to do what? Your patience to not go completely insane?

Go outside. Real life MMO.

-Highest resolution graphics
-Billions of players
-Fully PVP

Dragon’s Tooth is the only skill on that weapon that prevents me from using it. Everything else is fine. The fact that the Scepter is condition heavy is also another reason.

20 in Arcana is OK because you can add 10 more in Air for Bolt to the Heart. You can live without Evasive Arcana. Only 10 points in Arcana makes for some really slow attunment switching.

Its not like we have many other effective options. The ?/?/?/30/30 build has great synergy. Boons make you deal more damage. You have increased boon duration and very fast attunment switching which grants boons. The condition removal and healing tools that this build provides is very powerful. It might not make you hit very hard but, it allows you to withstand a lot of punishment.

Games where players die in 1 second are poorly designed games anyway. It’s not the fault of the player; its the designer that doesn’t know what he’s doing.

They could have us kill Veterans and Champions to get a stacking Magic Find buff. If we go to a downed state we lose the stack. That’ll be a good way to get people out into the world.

I remember the old Curse Shore.

The place was packed with people. There were dynamic events everywhere. The Plinx area had a ton of dynamic events. There were so many that some of them were overlapping. Groups that were formed stayed together for hours on end.

Now, when Plinx shows up, a group is formed. When Plinx is over, everyone leaves the group.

The new Cursed Shore is a boring place.

Dreamslayer.7659:

I just finished Juggernaut today and let me tell you – it feels like an achievement to me.

And that’s what counts.

What you’ve felt is not an achievement, it’s relief.

You’re glad its finally over.

ThiBash.5634:

If you swap attunements regularly, without any boon duration buffs, Sigil of Battle gives you 6 stacks of might (210 power & 210 condition damage). There’s no sigil that comes close to that. With boon duration buffs, it goes up as high as 315.

To be honest, I think they should tone it down a bit. Getting nearly a 20% damage boost from a signet is just crazy.

Not easily balanced when you factor the weapon switching and in-combat requirements.

Ride the Lightning has spoiled me. The mesmer isn’t mobile enough for me. Although you can argue that you really don’t need it with all the clones but, it’s just not my playstyle.

Daharahj.1325:

I don’t see the need to make summoned weapons so strong, right now they’re a niche skill that works in specific circumstances, like frost bow in AC, or Fiery Greatsword to run away. I’m fine with that personally.

They should just rework some staff skills and make it an actually useful weapon for pve.

I don’t think it was the intent from developement to make the Firy Greatword an escape mechanism. Although, I find it quite comical that most people who do use it; use it for that purpose only.

Solori.6025:

covenn.7165:

Some people spend too much time playing with math without being able to apply it properly to the situation. With that said, a few people need to think a little more about what they posted.

Im looking for other viable options besides our standard PVT bunker.
I dont expect that build to be around much longer and with it being in the front of anets watch list, i expect the build to go the way of the grenade engi’s.

This forum is going to explode when the 0/x/x/30/30 build implodes, but it doesnt have to if we can discover other viable options that people can help others learn.

We just have to start exploring..

0/30/0/20/20 is the build I use in WvW to run in the back and hit stuff.
Its ok for 2v2 + skirmishes, and 1 v 1 mesmers are they hardest for me

The day they nerf that build to uselessness and replace it nothing tangible; will be the day I uninstall GW2. I tried every single class and none of them keep me awake enough to continue playing the game other than the Elementalist.

Power is a much better investment than precision by a long shot.

Due to the effectiveness of the 0/10/0/30/30 bunker build, precision is actually not needed. You’ll have 2.6 seconds of Fury after every attunment swap which will be on a 9 second cooldown. If you’re rolling with a pair of Daggers and Zephyr’s Boon in the Air tree, Shocking Aura will give you 13 seconds of Fury. Frost Aura in Water will give you 6 seconds of Fury.

This enables you to focus on Power, Vitality, Toughness and Crit Damage. I’ve found that might stacking with Superior Sigil of Battle is beast. 3 stack of might for 26 seconds everytime you swap attunment. While in combat, you can swap attunments 3 times in 18 seconds for 10 stacks of might. While in Earth, do a dodge roll into your ring of fire (Evasive Arcana) for 3 stacks of might then do an earthquake or churning earth for another 3 stacks of might. In just under 18 seconds you’ll have over 22 stacks of might if you swap attunments correctly.

In terms of gear choices…

Power/Vitality/Toughness
Power/Vitality/Crit Damage
Power/Toughness/Crit Damage (ascended only)

Use Master Maintenance Oil for a 30 minute 10% crit buff and Bowl of Curry Butternut Squash Soup for another 5% crit and 10% crit damage. Your base crit is 4% + 15% from buffs + 5% from the 100 precision in the air tree + 20% from fury and thats 44% crit without using ANY precision on gear.

WvW is extremely popular due to the rest of the game becoming stale .If theres anything that will keep this game alive is WvW.

WvW is Arenanet’s golden goose.

It did make it fun, unfortunatley its implementation did not take into account server side hacking. I hope Arenanet will reintroduce the orb but with some slight modifications.

Instead of making the orb a moveable object, make it stationary and have everyone fight over it.

Technically it’s not just about speed increases. It’s about ANYTHING passively increased. Its just lazy game design. Instead of creating an interesting mechanic with multiple applications in various situations, you have a passive effect that feels mandatory to have. It removes choice from the player and also removes depth in gameplay combat systems.

There are not many new people entering the MMO market these days. The average age of the MMO gamer is in thier 30’s. This target demographic has had thier brain hard wired and conditioned for many years to behave a certain way in the presence of rewards. Modifying the reward schedules even slightly causes severe consequences.

This particular demographic is highly sensitive to rewards. This is not common in other demographics. It is unique to the MMO player.

You know how bad you screwed up as a game designer when an important component of your game is called a “toilet”.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Calae.1738:

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Why does every other form of accumulating wealth in this game get nerfed but not the TP?

Because the TP acts as a currency sink. The 15% tax on all transactions is used by arenanet to curb inflation. Traveling, repair, mystic forge ingredients are also other currency sinks.

Except that it doesn’t curb inflation it fuels it. Inflation is the rise in price of goods and services over time. The price of certain items are suffering heavy inflation because of the super wealthy 15% that are able to control those markets and drive the prices up.

So, whether it’s a gold sink or not it’s still causing inflation.

The super wealthy do not own enough wealth to control high volume trade assests. They can control rare items though and artificially suppress supply in the same way Da Beers suppresses supply of diamonds to keep the prices high.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

Why does every other form of accumulating wealth in this game get nerfed but not the TP?

Because the TP acts as a currency sink. The 15% tax on all transactions is used by arenanet to curb inflation. Traveling, repair, mystic forge ingredients are also other currency sinks.

Aye.8392:

Calae.1738:

John Smith.4610:

Actually about 15% of the population finds making money very fun, irrelevant of the uses of that money. Ever gotten unnecessarily rich in a single player RPG like Skyrim?

I don’t understand how earning a virtual currency can be fun if the the intent is to aquire more. Sounds more like psychological disorder to me.

Nah, it’s just one more way that people keep score. Some people keep score with money, some people keep score with titles, some with experience points, some with achievement points, some with eye candy — I have a guildie who is constantly broke, but he always looks good! I have another guildie with plenty of money still running around in blues and greens because to her the money number is important. For me it’s my guild roster that is my major score keeper. Fifteen percent actually makes sense when you consider the different ways of keeping score.

Currency isn’t a high score. It’s a medium of exhcange required for goods and services. The purpose of money is to exchange hands, not to sit in one place. Money that isn’t moving is useless and serves no purpose. In the real world governments are forced to redistribute wealth to keep the wheels of the economy spinning. Especially if the private sector isn’t doing it.