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Why I think teleport costs are unreasonably hight

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

So walk.

The WP costs offend me, too. So I walk a lot of places.

Do you walk from Cursed Shore to Frostgorge Sound often?

How about AC to CM? Do you walk between different dungeons too?

If I’m going from zone A to zone B I go through the Heart of the Mists to LA for free, then to the nearest racial city (IOW getting to CM or AC or TA from anywhere is cheap) and swap out to whatever travel boni I have (traits, spells, or passive utilities) and it doesn’t take very long at all. Or I’ll use WP from within the same zone if I’m impatient.

Could the WP costs be toned down a bit? Yeah, I think so. But y’know what? I’d rather they start off a bit high and as ANet data mines and makes adjustments they lower them. And I’d much rather see them start high and go down than the opposite.

Botting.. botting and more botting.

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I hate to break it to you, but botting isn’t what ruined the GW2 “economy”. The TP is a buyer’s market, viciously slanted in favor of the buyer.

Who sets Gem prices?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

We all know this already, Elfa. It’s been mentioned no less than 3 other times in this thread.

What we are griping about is that the GW2 Gold for Gem exchange doesn’t work that way.

Hence the title of this thread, “Who sets Gem prices?”, ‘cause we all know it isn’t the players.

Why I think teleport costs are unreasonably hight

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

So walk.

The WP costs offend me, too. So I walk a lot of places.

Can't access BLTC

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Given that the TP interface is an in-game Web browser, I suspect corrupted cache data is to blame for my never ending yellow circle.

Deleting the local.dat file, as pointed out by Space Monkey Pilot.7135 above, might be the needed fix. I’ll give that a shot next time.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Basically the system is the same as in GW1 for traders. In GW1 it took some time but in the end prices stabilized. Some events seriously shaked the economy and could influence prices but on average ecto was extremely stable in the long run.

That’s not the way I understand the GW1 economy. From what I understand (didn’t play long enough to know personally) Glittering Dust (or maybe it was another commodity) became the de facto currency of GW1

Also, traders could run out! The same can and will happen to the gem trader, where some day all his gems are spent and he can’t sell any, not even at 100gp/100gems, until someone puts gems into the system again.

And that right there is the natural balancing factor of the system. Long before 100Gold = 100 Gems someone will say it’s worth their while to buy Gems with cash and sell them.

However, if you read one my earliest posts in this thread, I don’t believe that will be allowed to happen naturally.

The moment a seller puts Gems on the market they receive Gold in return.

How is this possible when players can’t place Buy Orders?

And what’s to stop ANet from supplying the Gems to fill a player’s order when they buy some Gems with Gold?

The problem here is based on three things

  1. ANet supplies all the Gold
  2. ANet supplies all the Gems
  3. The process of buying Gems for Gold from other players is NOT transparent.

Why are Black Lion gathering tools soulbound?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I may be mistaken, but aren’t ALL gathering tools soulbound?

I seem to recall putting a set of gathering tools in my personal bank for my next new character, only to find I couldn’t take them out on the new character.

Remove the Ability to mail gold!

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

The whole stick of butter trick doesn’t work because they would have to buy every stick of butter between that one and the one the guy has.

You would have to find some junk item nobody is listing.

When did the market interface change? Last time I was in game I could put a check mark by the offer I wanted to accept on the TP.

So... how do I go about investing and getting a return?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I have nothing against PvP.

I have quite a lot against the market not being a tool for everyone’s use.

As it is, the economy of the entire game is garbage. Is that what everyone wants?

Buying more gems should lower the unit cost, no?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Yeah, I still don’t get it. If someone wants to spend $50 US on gems they should get more than 4,000 Gems. I mean why not? They bought in bulk for the discount. The spent a larger sum to get something extra.

Frankly 800 Gems for $10 is a ripoff anyway, at least at the prices on the Gem market. And I’m not talking about the Gold for Gems market.

So... how do I go about investing and getting a return?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

If you want to play a market sim, go play a market sim. Be here to fight and be a hero, not mess over anyone who’s trying to actually USE the market.

Thank you.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

This does not explain the 300% increase in price over a 4 day period around when I started this thread.

Which 300% increase would that be, exactly?

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

Looks there like the most recent maximum for coin -> gems was about 80s for 100 gems. A 300% increase would require that it was ever 20s for 100 gems. Which I’m pretty sure has never been the case.

IIRC, back around the 10th or 11th it was in the low 20s for silver to 100 Gems conversion.

Last time I looked (and it’s been a few days) it was in the mid to upper 60s for silver to 100 Gems.

And I phrased it incorrectly, the price was 300% of what it was. That’s not a 300% increase.

And a 200% increase in a 4 day period is still ridiculous.

Who is setting these prices? It’s not the players.

Stop TP flipping by applying a selling cooldown

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I personally feel that playing the market is a good element of the game. If anything the 15% should be reduced to allow more market play. I just find it intellectually stimulating for people and those who manage to make a lot of money off of it good for them. They are utilizing their brains (not game mechanics) to gain an advantage.

The problem with this is it makes the market another form of PvP played by a few, rather than a tool that should be useful to all players.

If you want a market simulation game you should probably go find one that isn’t in an MMO.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

More likely, you looked at gold>gems, instead of gems>gold. Well, then again I’m still used to daily fluctuations on the order of +/-2s in the price. I wish I knew what was up with the current growth in the rate.

It has been speculated that there will be Halloween items in the Gem store for a brief period and people are snapping up Gems in hopes of this. Given that we have multiple holidays, possibly with an event for each, over the next few months I’m guessing we can expect this trend to continue till early January.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Was it not inevitable that the exchange rate would and will continue to rise? The longer the game exists, the more gold is generated in-game and the higher prices for all items will become.

This does not explain the 300% increase in price over a 4 day period around when I started this thread.

Yes, mudflation is inevitable. Yes, the current prices will eventually be reasonable. But not today.

@John Smith: Why the huge tax on a good which ANet wants to sell? (Gem transfer tax)

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

While I am less than thrilled about the 30% transaction fee on Gold/Gem exchanges I have to say it serves a purpose.

And while I don’t know what John Smith’s purpose for it is, I’m grateful that it serves the two purposes I see. One of which is to prevent short term speculation or “flipping” in the Gem market. The other is as a money sink to help prevent triple digit inflation.

But frankly the Gem market needs a complete overhaul. I’ve started a thread, Who Sets Gem Prices?, to address the main issue – the complete lack of transparency in how the Gem prices are set on the Gem market.

Change the Gem market to be a double blind Dutch auction with only the last 25 sales, how many hundred buy orders, and how many hundred Gems for sale visible. Make the 30% transaction fee a 15% listing fee for the Gem seller and a 15% transaction fee for the buyer. Allow buy orders.

Please change Buy Orders to forbid pricing lower than NPC price...

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

It’s my understanding that this is already in place. We still have some unfulfillable orders up that we need to clean, but no more should be created.

And you can, in under an hour, write an auto updating SQL script to clean them all up.

It’s not hard if you cheat and use Excel to set up your values.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

EDIT:
i missed the key question – i dont think it matters if its controlled by market or anet. it just needs to be fair and transparent.

I was going to comment on your post prior to the edit.

This IS the key question. ANet has a vested interest in Gems costing much gold. It encourages people to invest in Gems using real money, which goes in their pocket.

With no transparency, who’s to say ANet didn’t “rebalance” the numbers on the back end to jack up the Gold cost of Gems?

And mind you I’m not saying they did. I’m just saying they won’t prove it either way. We trusted them, we gave them $50 or more in cash just to get in the door. And I mean even for the “open beta” (which was neither open, nor beta as far as I could tell), if you didn’t pay, you didn’t play. So we all bought a pig in a poke, trusting to ANet to write a good game and play fair with the cash shop.

So why won’t they trust us with the information we need to justify giving them more of our money?

500,000 Locked Black Lion Chests

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

As I have posted repeatedly in this and other games…

50% of something is worth infinitely more than 100% of nothing

And the latter is mostly what you’re going to get at these prices.

Unlike physical items, virtual items are created ONCE, and only one needs to be stored in order to be sold multiple times.

So the overhead is extremely minimal with virtual items. Pass half that savings on to your customers and you’ll make twice the money you make now.

Or you can continue to be penny wise and pound foolish.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

If anyone cares, this is about what I’d be willing to pay for things in the Gem Shop:
Character Slot – $5.00
Character Bag Slot – $1.00
Bank Space – $2.50
Black Lion Key – $1.00 for four
Dye Pack – $1.00
Consumable Buffs – $0.50

If prices were closer to this level, I’d be buying stuff several times a month.

I’d pay $4 for an extra bank tab, that’s something that useful across all your characters.

But the point here is one that all these microtransaction based games miss.

50% of something is worth an infinite amount more than 100% of nothing.

I know, and I’m not the only one who knows, that;

  1. digital goods are created ONCE
  2. They have an infinitesimal storage requirement

This means that the usual overhead associated with selling items is almost completely absent.

So why am I paying extortionate rates for virtual items?

The answer is, I’m not. I refuse to.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I can’t imagine ANet is artificially setting gem prices, as I’m fairly certain the gem store is just players buying and selling gems from each other…

Really? Then you haven’t read my post post from the first page (not the OP).

The seller doesn’t get to set a price for their Gems.

The buyer doesn’t get to put in a buy order. In each case they put up a number, either the number of Gems they want to sell, or the amount of gold/silver/copper they want to spend, and the TP gives them the other number, i.e. how much Gold you’ll get for X amount of Gems or how many Gems you’ll get for X amount of Gold.

So if neither the buyer nor the seller is setting the price, who is? There are only 3 parties in this transaction, it’s not rocket science.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Plum,

The comparisons to EVE’s market are about PLEX vs. Gems, not about the player market in general.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Out of curiosity, how many feel that a 100% free market would be a good idea?

I do.

And the whole "no real free market exists’ thing is red herring.

What we have now for gems is a completely fake free market – you guys made an algorithm that lets the trade value shift slightly – but the algorithm has aa strong attractor for the point you would prefer.

So what we mean when we say we want a free market is that people make sell and buy order for gems with no restrictions.

The intent of this was to provoke an academic debate over whether players thought a free market would be superior.

I’m not asking if you want a free market, I’m asking for players to discuss why or why not they think a free market would be better.

In other words you have no intention of addressing the issues I brought up in the OP.

The main issue here is that you should let players place buy and sell orders for Gems on the TP.

The secondary issue the way the TP is setup to begin with.

Who sets Gem prices?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I’ve about given up on replying to my own thread because I can’t quote people any more. Fix the bugs in your board software please! Or better yet go buy some quality board software.

To whomever challenged me on the legality of arbitrage, you were mostly correct. Thank you for setting me straight.

The Securities Exchange Act prohibits directors, officers, and shareholders to profit from arbitrage transactions on short-swing speculation in corporate securities in certain instances.

Source: http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/arbitrage/

Who sets Gem prices?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

lackofcheese.5617
How exactly does flipping inflate the market?

Yer kidding me, right?

If flipping is disallowed the price settles at what people are willing to pay and what people are willing to accept for the goods

A flipper buys up the lowball sell offers and relists them at a higher price, thereby artificially inflating the price of that good. And this doesn’t stop after one cycle. Once the higher price is the new norm a player wanting to dump his full pack while in the field will list for the new low, only to have his goods snapped up by a flipper and relisted at the new high price.

When enough flippers do that to enough goods the value of the unit of currency is degraded.

This is one reason that arbitrage is illegal IRL. And while flipping technically isn’t arbitrage it has the same effect.

(edited by Colonel Kernel.7506)

Who sets Gem prices?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Flipping does, in fact, serve a useful market purpose. It reduces the gaps between buy and sell orders, which means that players who want to buy/sell their items right now instead of waiting have to pay a much lower relative premium.

Sorry, I completely disagree. Flipping artificially inflates the market. Let the market find its own level.

Besides which, your statement makes no sense. If you put in a lower buy order you will probably have to wait longer to get it filled. You lower your price if you want to sell faster, you raise your price if you want to make more profit. Raise your price too much and you’ll constantly be undercut by more reasonable sellers and your good will never sell.

It’s a balancing act and should not be interfered with by someone who adds zero value to the process.

Who sets Gem prices?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Would I be mistakened by saying that purchasing diamonds AT ALL is bad or this “economy”? By purchasing these products you’re literally taking the gold out of the game and making it more scarce, thus, more in demand. Unless this is intentional…

Of course that’s intentional. That’s part of the reason for the price differential I noted earlier. It’s also the reason for WP costs that scale up as you level, and for the TP listing fee, and for armor repair costs.

Money sinks are a healthy part of an MMO/MUD economy. I’d hazard a guess that a good player can generate about 1G/hr at the level cap. If there wasn’t some way to remove 80%-90% of that from the game we’d have rampant inflation on a scale that would make 1932 Germany look like an economically desirable place to live.

Think about this;

For the past century (give or take a few years) the price of milk and the price of gasoline have remained mostly equal in the United States. Now I guarantee you neither one of those was $3.50/gal. in the 1960s. But they sure are today.

The point being that goods have value, and that value remains mostly constant. The difference between the 1960s and today being that there is a lot more money in circulation. Supply & Demand cuts both ways. If the supply of each individual unit of money (in the case the dollar) increases the value of each individual unit decreases.

Who sets Gem prices?

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

“Oh yeah, one more thing.

Checking Gem prices I find that I can sell 100 gems for 44g70s.

However buying Gems I find that if I spend 44g70s I get 72 gems."

Wait wait wait, this math is completely wrong and misleading to everyone reading this thread.

100 gems as of this writing nets 46 silver 1 copper, not GOLD, silver.

My mistake, I was tired when I wrote that. Everyone knows that I meant 44s70c, and I have corrected the post you quoted.

Thank you for pointing that out though.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Out of curiosity, how many feel that a 100% free market would be a good idea?

I wasn’t going to involve the woes of the TP in this discussion at first, but given that Gold is linked to RL money via Gems, I don’t see a way around it.

Real life markets are regulated for a number of very good reasons. I see no reason that in game markets should be less regulated.

The question then becomes “How much regulation is good, how little is too little, and how much is too much?”

The answer to that being “That depends on the nature of the regulation.”

Unfortunately, a monopoly is bad. And there is precious little way to get around the fact that we have a monopoly (ANet) in the Gem market. I consider this to be a monopoly because neither the buyer nor the seller can set the prices. Since ANet controls the pricing, we have a de facto monopoly.

Move the Gem market to the regular TP. Let people put in buy orders and let those with Gems to spare sell them at whatever price they see fit. This is the only way to break ANet’s de facto monopoly.

And I am 100% certain you don’t like that answer. The TP is quite obviously set up to be a buyer’s market due to the nature of the interface and the type of consignment house you have elected to implement. And a strict consignment house is what you have created, with a listing fee rather than a selling fee. As both the selling price and the asking price are visible to all parties the price is constantly driven down on any item that may potentially be rare enough to have value. IOW an item must be EXTREMELY rare, not simply rare to retain any semblance of value on the current BLTP.

CoH used a double blind Dutch auction system and had mixed results (i.e. hyper inflation but a functioning market where players could usually get what they wanted…. for a price) until they stabilized their economy by introducing a way for players to grind out most of the really desirable items in a reasonable amount of time (10 days of 5-6 missions a day).

Obviously, this is not an option you can use in GW2 because you live and die by cash transactions. Completely stabilizing the economy by allowing players to quickly and easily grind out top tier items is not an option for ANet.

What I would propose is a many fold solution that starts with redesigning your TP. First off, make it a double blind Dutch auction. No one knows what price items have been offered at, nor at what price they are bid at. Keep a sales history of the most recent 25 sales on that item, how many bids (buy orders) there are for that item, and how many of that item are for sale.

Secondly, kill flipping. Market PvP is all well and good fun until real money gets involved. And real money is what we have here when one can exchange Gold for Gems. The practice of flipping (buying an item for a low price and selling it for a higher price) is arbitrage. Oh, not technically since there is only one market involved. But the fact remains that the flipper adds no value to the transaction. Simply making an item purchased from the market unsellable on the market for 90 days except to fill a buy order will fix this issue.

And thirdly, allow players to put up buy orders for Gems on the market, and allow players to sell Gems on the market.

Then you have a mostly free market economy, have removed ANet’s de facto monopoly, and have made the market a useful tool for many players rather than a PvP playground for a few.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Oh yeah, one more thing.

Checking Gem prices I find that I can sell 100 gems for 44s70c.

However buying Gems I find that if I spend 44s70c I get 72 gems.

They already gouged us for 800 Gems for $10, now they have to gouge us on the gold exchange as well?

Tell me this economy is not fouled up. And add to that the fact that anything on the market that has anything resembling value is quickly driven into the dirt.

Bottom line screams to me that ANet doesn’t want you having enough gold to buy Gems.

(edited by Moderator)

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

No, the reality is that it is supply and demand.

I’m going to call shenanigans on this. I just went to post 100 of my gems, and guess what? I didn’t get to set a price.

So, the price of gems is whatever ANet/NCSoft/Nexon wants it to be. As I stated in my first post.

It doesn’t need to be player set prices for it to be supply and demand. If more people are buying than selling then price goes up, if less people are buying than selling price goes down. All Anet have done is program the intervals in which the prices change. It is of benefit to Anet to let it be supply and demand and it should keep everyone happy, but some people just want things at the price they were 1 month ago and that is no longer their value. I’d like to buy a car at the price it was 50 years ago but unfortunately the price has gone up since then…

It’s not a player driven economy. The prices behind the scenes are driven by some formula that we never will see. And, given that NCSoft was just bought by the above and beyond greedy Nexon, I have little faith in the players being treated equitably where real money is concerned.

Or it may be a bunch of RMT companies who’ve farmed gold trying to snatch up gems as an investment, not only knowing the price will go up but forcing it to.

And again, I have little faith in the way ANet has handled that fiasco as well. Almost every anti farming measure that has been enacted has impacted the players as much as, if not more than, it has the RMT bots.

Kill the formula, let the players set the market value. If someone wants to meet my asking price, great. If not, it can sit there until I decide to bring it more in line with the reality.

Given that there is no lag between selling gems or buying them I have to say it’s not as if buy or sell orders were waiting to be filled. Which means that ANet is processing the transaction regardless of the availability of the goods. Which again means that, practically speaking, supply & demand is not the driving factor. The secret formula is. and said secret formula may have little to no bearing on the in game availability of either buyers or sellers.

So no, I do not believe that Supply and Demand are even remotely involved in the gem market other than theoretically.

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

No, the reality is that it is supply and demand.

I’m going to call shenanigans on this. I just went to post 100 of my gems, and guess what? I didn’t get to set a price.

So, the price of gems is whatever ANet/NCSoft/Nexon wants it to be. As I stated in my first post.

As I also stated, there are no buy orders. You’ll sell your gems for whatever you’re told to sell ‘em for and you’ll bloody well like it.

This is NOT a player driven economy.

As for the TP part, neither is that really. It’s a buyer’s market all the way due to the interface (among other things).

Who sets Gem prices?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I can’t even put in a buy order.

Very disappointing.

And the insane inflation of Gems is another matter. Rising over 30s/100 in just over a week is ridiculous.

Seriously, who’s setting Gem prices? Is it the sellers?

Or is it ANet/NCSoft/Nexon?

Boss Fights, No healing class, is there any point to this?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

No trinity? Fine, cool. Give us something that WORKS and is FUN instead, then. I’m no fan of the trinity system, nor do I hate it. I’m a fan of something cool and fluent, and GW2 certainly doesn’t offer such thing. Whatever they tried to do, they failed hard.

No, they didn’t fail. They did something completely different and you haven’t figured out how to make it work yet.

Go to the Wiki and search on Combo Finishers, read, learn, understand, apply.

"Hang in there" button

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Both suggestions are very nice, +1 each!

URGENT- CAPTCHA FOR BOTS

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

FYI, robots (OCR software) are better at solving most CAPTCHAs than humans. I kid you not.

Unless Arena Net was willing to change its CAPTCHA “type” on an almost daily basis, it would be trivial to code a bot to solve them.

What the game needs is:

a) GMs that will actually check bot reports and ban them ASAP. If they stay in the game long enough to make a profit, banning them just means the farmers will buy a new account and come back within minutes.

b) Code to automatically detect bots (but this won’t solve anything without (a), because it can make mistakes, so it always needs human confirmation).

c) A way for players to sell gems to each other directly (ex., through the trading post), like Mike O’Brien said we’d have before launch. This is what Eve did, and it turned every player into a competitor for the gold sellers, which meant that their margins went down and 90% of them left the game to go sell gold somewhere more profitable (ex., WoW, and now GW2).

Do those things (especially (a) and (c)) and the bot problem will become negligible.

I am all in favor of C. Gold 4 Gem prices on the TP are ludicrous, and the 10s tax (approx 25%) is complete guano.

Boss Fights, No healing class, is there any point to this?

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Did not read most of the OP, nor even most of the thread.

For those of you crying for healers I have two words.

Combo Fields.

Learn how to make them, use them, love them.

My Mesmer can tank. My Guardian can heal, tank, or buff (Boon Bomb anyone?).

The ingenius of bonus XP

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I think this would not work because everybody will be killing everything meaning no monsters will gain that extra XP or reward so it might as well not be implemented.

Which means that people would be exploring, not camping one event.

I notice as I go through areas that I’ll kill 10 mobs with no bonus, one with a 5XP bonus, then one with a 36 XP bonus, then back to 6s or less.

In other words, people have been working that area but they missed one mob and I got it.

It’s just a fun addition to exploring and hunting odd corners of the map.

Make jumping puzzles less frustrating

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Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Jumping puzzles should not be easier, however they should be completely different. Vast majority of puzzles are technical jumping puzzles, and rely on tricky leaps and delicate control rather than planning out a path. As things are now the way that you are supposed to take is blatant, but you need to figure out which of the several equally viable looking paths isn’t blocked by an invisible wall. Probably the most fun i’ve had in one wasn’t even a jumping puzzle but a vista in a room with a series of tangled vines leading to it, you needed to plan out which one you would need to take to and the series of jumps necessary to reach the final vine. Basically emphasize the puzzle aspect of the jumping “puzzles”.

And that is why I just don’t bother.

Any GM/DM/Dev can wipe the party 100 times a second if they want to. The invisible walls have got to go. That’s not a “puzzle” with them in, it’s just stupid.

The Gem Store, Gold Sellers, and the Economy

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

There’s a “sweet spot” of cost at which they would have enticed almost everyone who is interested to buy those things. Lower than that spot would not net them any more sales (or not more than a miniscule amount), while higher than that spot is more than many (perhaps even most) are willing to pay. Somewhat higher is where I believe they currently are.

Yeah, I think ANet, like most companies, has not yet realized the phenomenon Steam discovered awhile ago: people really like sales and discounts. There have been a number of Steam games that, during one weekend of 75% or more discounts, have netted more profit than the entire year or however long the game had been up for sale prior to that. I’ve bought literally dozens of $2-$5 games that I haven’t even downloaded yet, for the primary reason that it only cost $2-$5, so why the heck not?

I suspect the prices that would actually net them the most profit are significantly lower than most companies expect, for most digital content.

I’m with you on the Steam sales.

And what these sellers of virtual goods need to learn is two very key things.

  1. 50% of something is worth an infinite amount more than 100% of nothing
  2. Virtual items are manufactured once, and only one item needs to be stored. contrast this with physical items (e.g. contrast eBooks with physical books) where multiple copies of a single need to be stored, shipped, and handled by humans.

The point of #2 being that there is not only a prototyping cost associated with a real item (as there is with the virtual item) but there are the substantial additional costs of manufacturing, storing, delivery, and handling that raise the cost of the physical item but should not impact the cost of the virtual item.

Between numbers 1 & 2 people expect much lower prices on virtual items then on their physical counterparts.

And we’re just not seeing it here.

Weapon swap for Ele's

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Cookie, you can switch out of combat. Open your inventory, and select the new weapon you want to equip. Easy as that. The suggestions to add weapon swapping in combat have been edited out, or removed, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t there.

And the reasons we are asking for a dedicated OOC weapons swap have been listed MULTIPLE times upthread. Please go reread.

I decline to repost them here. If you didn’t read them the first 5 times they were typed you are not going to read them just because I retype them.

And BTW, you Ranger does have control of the pet’s special attack, it’s F2 or F3 (haven’t played my Ranger in a while, sorry).

Secure Player to Player Trading

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

We need this as an alternative to using the Trading Post in order have a way to avoid paying all the transaction taxes.

And this is why ANet will never add this feature. They are serious about their gold sinks, and rightly so.

Could they stand to ease up a bit on them? I think so, but that’s a topic for another thread.

Auto-delete gold seller mail when I report it

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

The problem is some people may abuse the system to resport players don’t like and ban them until the player contact support. But I do agree that they should have more people cheking this kind of reports to ban these sellers faster.

It takes a CSR 10 seconds to review the flagged email and either apply the ban to the sender or to the reporter.

Auto-delete gold seller mail when I report it

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

When the 101st person clicks “Selling gold” under report that account should be banned till the owner contacts customer service.

In the mean time, the email should be deleted and the sender blocked automatically when someone is reported for selling gold.

Is an engineer going AFK with turrets up considered an exploit?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I have confirmation from a dev that it is considered exploiting as it is no different than a macro. He mentioned that there would likely be disciplinary action, likely a warning at first and up from there.

All in all, don’t do it. It really is no different than using a macro/bot. When you’re playing the game, you’re suppose to be playing it.

Except for the part where no third party app and no scripting is being used…
Was it a really a dev or just a clueless GM? Any proof of this exchange?

For privacy reasons I’m not giving names as it was his playable character. He had his ArenaNet tag and was telling us what he did on the game, and that he was a developer. He said what I said. It’s against the rules. If you don’t think it is, go ahead and cheat and be banned for it. That can be your proof.

Then drop him an in-game email with a link to this thread and request he post in here.

That is all. The game is working as intended.

Is an engineer going AFK with turrets up considered an exploit?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

I have confirmation from a dev that it is considered exploiting as it is no different than a macro. He mentioned that there would likely be disciplinary action, likely a warning at first and up from there.

All in all, don’t do it. It really is no different than using a macro/bot. When you’re playing the game, you’re suppose to be playing it.

That’s right! You preach it!

I mean after, no real life events ever happen like grandkids having a minor emergency, no one who plays video games ever has to go to the bathroom, none of us have spouses or lives and we can devote 100% guaranteed of our attention to the game every second we’re in it!

So cite your reference and prove your claim. Or we all call shenanigans.

how to get proof nothing is being done about botting.

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Need this really be explained again?

Yes. How long does it take to go the centaur bridge in Kessex and swing the banhammer?

30 seconds.

Relog an hour later and repeat. Do that 3x a night for a week. That’s one problem spot solved and probably a 1,000 RMT accounts.

It took me 5 minutes and 12s to kill all the bots there.

"Collecting" equipment skins

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

/signed

Again….

Some kind of bot control

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Yeah, that would make it nice and easy to grief people…. How about we just hand everyone a banhammer while we’re at it, and let people know that they banned someone for no reason when they do.

Or, what you could do, is just report them for botting, using the system already in the game…

And when will ANet get to them? It’s not as if they don’t know about a bunch of locations in the game that are frequented by bots, such as the “Centaur Bridge” in Kessex Hills. I killed all the bots there the other night and the owner came by and rez’d them all. ANet could swing by there with a banhammer once a night and wipe those 20 accounts. Elapse time? 30 seconds if that.

Solution for over supplied or vendor priced TP items : Charity event

in Suggestions

Posted by: Colonel Kernel.7506

Colonel Kernel.7506

Once the bots are cleared out CH prices will normalize.

Although I do support that all CH prices should be 10c higher than vendor buy prices.