Guild Wars 2

Wanze’s post is pretty much spot on, except that not all rare weapons sell at a profit. They are still a pretty good option if you are happy to list matching the lowest seller, because the losses won’t be very big and it acts as a drain on mithril and elder wood, rather than ori, ancient wood and ectos. Also if Wanze were to tell me that placing sell orders at break even for rares would fill within a week I’d believe him because I don’t know the market well enough to gain say him on that.

Also, BIG WARNING! Salvaging crafted equipment will not yield an insignia or inscription, no matter the stats.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

Question, if a high percentage do not like and event is that acceptable and deemed a success? I would really like to hear if the QP is working as intended or needs tweaking and/or fixing. But I’m not naive enough to think I will ever receive such infomation. After 10 plus years of playing mmo’s I’ve learned one constant. Mmo companies never, ever admit they goofed, until years later when it’s completly worthless, and irrelevant.

The general way of admitting they have done something wrong is to couch in bland terms. “We have been monitoring user feedback and have been discussing it with a view to improve future updates.” is about as good as you’ll ever get. The writing team have said stuff like this in the past and there is evidence that they actually did things based on feedback (just not enough to appease the “LS is messd, Scarlet = Mary Sue, kill LS and release expansion” crowd).

I would expect reference to this in a couple of months time indirectly talking about how they looked at grouping players in open world events and what sort of indicators players need, and as long as they show some signs that they’ve acted on the mistakes of Boss Blitz then I suppose that is satisfactory. What I would love to see is a statement along the lines of “While we worked very kitten the latest ‘Boss Blitz’ and are very proud of the way the event works when played as we envisaged it has come to our attention that certain design flaws have meant that many players’ experiences of this event have been extremely negative. We understand these problems and accept that there are thing that could have been done in the design phase to have prevent them. The cooperation and organisation shown by many players has been a goal we have been working towards and our new focus will be to achieve these goals without disenfranchising so many other players. Rest assured that we are listening to you feedback and have been busy discussing ways to avoid these problems in future without losing sight of our goals of interesting and challenging group experiences.”

Based on what I’ve seen the writing team seems to have learned a bit about pacing and exposition. For all the vitriol that has been directed their way they seem to have taken on board a good number of constructive criticisms. Story telling wise I really hope they pick up the pace a little. On paper it probably looked fine, but spreading out a small number of revelations over more than a year was far too slow.

Gameplay wise the devs also seem to be improving, but as boss blitz has proved one or two fundamental design problems can make an otherwise engaging event a horrible experience for many people. I am generally confident events will be strong, although I also imagine there will be one or two train wrecks.

Rewards wise I agree with the less RNG thing, but am not as optimistic. I would like to see one of the new bosses for organised groups (there will almost certainly be one) give out a guaranteed token on completion, and have the token directly tradeable for skins. They seem to be going down the absurdly rare drop liner the moment, but hopefully the backlash on Chaos of Lyssa will cause them to reconsider.

Palador.2170:

Fourth, we need choices. Yes, I realize that this makes the storyline much harder to do/make, but the investment when you get to make real choices is astounding. And if they’re tough moral choices, all the better. And to be clear, the choices you face when choosing an order in the personal story are NOT important ones until the final one. Until then, every choice you make in that part of the storyline costs you nothing. Even the one moral sounding choice in the human storyline (disturb a dead person’s spirit, or infiltrate the pirates) turns out to be a case of grey/grey morality when that infiltration involves summoning the undead to attack them. Give us choices that matter, and give us reason to consider carefully.

I am sure developers curse Bioware under their breath every time someone mentions choices or branching story lines. Wonderful to play, but really hard to execute. The PS didn’t really dish out many serious consequences. What we got was an Order to belong to and a few NPCs in our home instance. Most of the decisions were along the lines of “do you want to go to Chicago by plane or train?” You went through a slightly different journey but ended up in the same place, with a different boarding pass.

The problem is that I don’t know how you make choices matter the way I want on an MMO. Voting in an election doesn’t really go as far as I’d like.

For what it’s worth, here is my example of how something might work. In one episode of the living story the players need the help of a grawl shaman to summon some spirit which can thwart dragon minions. Fortunately there are two such shamans in the area, one from the red tribe and one from the white. Players must choose one of these two tribes to ally with. Every now and then there is a siege event. Each tribe sends a shaman to attack the other’s temple. What follows is a tower defense game with each team trying to defend their ally’s temple as the shaman summons waves of creatures to attack with whatever anti-Zerg mechanic the devs think will work. Once one team’s temple falls the other team wins. The winner gets whatever the max reward is and the loser gets some percentage based on how long they lasted.

So, here is how consequences work. The game keeps track of how many wins each side has had and at the end of the update period the tribe which has had the most losses declares that their shaman has failed them and scatter. The other tribe becomes the dominant tribe in the area, and help in the next part of the story. But the grawl do not forget who took their side and will be actively hostile to those who opposed them. This makes it harder for players who chose the losing side in general, but is offset by some bonuses such as items sold by remnants of the defeated tribe, or access to secret passages.

So, anyone have a good idea on how to make choices matter in LS? It’s a path I’d like to see gw2 pursue, but I am not sure how feasible it would be.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Could be that only Exotics have the wider range of output? All my tosses have been Green and a few Rares (and not nearly as large as your sample). I’m still gearing up all my toons with Exotics, so I don’t toss them in the Flusher yet (still need Ectos).

It’s only exotics that come out below level 80. Four level 80 rares can lead to a 76-80 exotic or an 80 rare. Four level 80 exotics lead to a 76-80 exotic.

Fangs, blood and scales in the water on the west part of Southson Cove.
Totems from grawl in FGS (also HotW dungeon drops a few)
Claws from various creatures in northern FGS
Bones from undead in Orr.
Venom from spiders in Orr
Crystalline dust from ghosts in Eternal Battle Ground theoretically. In practice salvaging yellows from world events for ectos and salvaging the ectos, but only if you want the magic find because you will generally be better off selling ectos and buying dust with the money (haven’t checked exchange recently)

The questions as I see them are:

1) How many maps?
2) What level of map?
3) What style of map? (How big, are there hearts etc.)
4) What new resources?
5) What features?

So here is what I expect and what I hope

1) I expect one new map / I hope for more.
2) Level 80 / I hope for a range of levels
3) Southsun style map, no hearts small number of dynamic events mostly for groups, don’t go in alone / traditional map with some standard content and some tricky group events. Hearts appear after living world moves from that map. Some heart vendors sell armour with a new skin.
4) One new ingredient, and my long shot bet is occasional azurite drops from ore nodes / two new ingredients. Maybe the azurite drops would be nice too.
5) A new world boss / two new world bosses, one for organised groups, one Jormag level of difficulty (ie, not hard, but there’s a good chance you’ll get downed) and a new dungeon.

Trahearne haters always confused me. Why not be Destiny’s Edge haters? They always downed during the fights too. Trahearne does work behind the scenes and comes to you with two viable options which you choose and all of a sudden the player thinks that he made all the important decisions? Trahearne takes credit for forging the pact because he forged the pact, and for cleansing Orr because he cleansed Orr, but he specifically credits the player for defeating Zhaitan.

Gewd.8125:

Cormac.3871:

Gewd.8125:

You obviously assume that because you think there is actually a significant number of level 20 tp gurus affecting the market.

Obviously? No, I don’t think that. You read too much into what I say. This is why so much of what you say is irrelevant. Not even going to bother with the rest, you bring nothing of value to this discussion.

So… what exactly is your point?

That you can list 1 possibly minuscule contribution to inflation that I didn’t specifically mention and somehow that means I think gold creation is the only thing that causes inflation and everything else I say is wrong?

You call someone out into reading too much into what you say when that’s the first thing you did in this thread.

You know what you could have said? You could have said “Of course I don’t believe that traders only have a deflationary effect. But here is how I can prove that trading activity actually prices things so that more players can afford them….”

But you didn’t. You made assumptions about me that were well off and didn’t make any arguments substantially beyond “gold sinks good, people who criticise the TP are whiners”. You certainly didn’t prove that the inflationary pressures put on desirable items was minuscule compared to the deflationary pressures provided by TP gold sinks.

Gewd.8125:

You obviously assume that because you think there is actually a significant number of level 20 tp gurus affecting the market.

Obviously? No, I don’t think that. You read too much into what I say. This is why so much of what you say is irrelevant. Not even going to bother with the rest, you bring nothing of value to this discussion.

The blades are for the back piece and extra bits can be traded off. It feels like the devs have been second guessing themselves about what they should be used for. If the merchants had appeared right after end of season 1 it would have been quite reasonable. Sure, a single shard is only worth a copper or two, but it’s nice to not just be deleting it. Having them clutter up my inventory for 2 months to get about 4 silver per stack wasn’t worth it though.

Palador.2170:

Oh, that was good!

Well, it was your post that inspired it.

The way I think it should have been doe is this.

Each update should have open world content and instanced content.

The bulk of the story telling content should be done in the instanced content.

The open world content should have story content for those who seek it out, but mainly to do with character development. And yeah, every time I notice Braham and Taimi talking I will seek them out.

The instanced stuff should be playable at least once for players who return. A bit like the personal story.

As a regular player I enjoy the feel of living world stuff, and far prefer the feeling of development this brings over what a straight expansion in one hit would feel like. It’s one thing to walk past a ruin and have an NPC tell you that there a back story to it, it’s quite another to remember it.

“Skritt knows how to make your box. Skritt know why you want it. Skritt knows you plant lady, who was once called Ceara but now calls herself Scarlet. Skritt knows you will fail. You want to try and rid this world of oil by setting it on fire. You may control the winds of this world but you can never control its magic. Skritt tried and skritt failed. Skritt also saw the dark places of this world and it destroyed us as it will destroy you.”

Unnerved Scarlet pushed back all the levers and the skritt cages were taken from room leaving only Chipachir, who in a stupor tried to grasp at the understanding that had been his just moments before. With blank eyes he expressed the only part that remained clear to him “The horror. The horror.” Shaking his head to clear his mind Chipachir looked at the dented anti-gravity device, plucked out the flux oscillator and dashed out of the room with his shiny.

This was disappointing. Scarlet was going to have to get back in contact with Mai Trin. She didn’t like the risks she was going to have to take controlling parts of the inquest and a group of pirates, but anything was better than this.

“Excuse me!” came a voice. Scarlet started, she had forgotten about the Etin. “Would you mind using that Asuran intellectual amplifier to reduce my cerebral capacity back to its original level. I believe that I would be much more comfortable not understanding what I have just witnessed here.”

“Your plans are misguided good lady.” Said the Etin as he placed down his cup of tea, " If you do to my compatriots what you have done to me you will find us quite capable of doing what you wish, but controlling us will take more than camomile tea. Really I don’t know what to be more impressed by, the Asuran intellectual amplifier you acquired or your camomile blend. But we are not your main difficulty. The manifesting of skritt intellect will provide unforeseen difficulties."

The sylvari narrowed her eyes. She didn’t trust this Etin, but then she didn’t trust anybody who was confident around her.

“Conduct your test” prompted the Etin, “you will see.”

“Chipachir!” the sylvari called. A skritt came rushing in, gratifyingly nervous. “Tell me what this is!” She commanded.

The skritt beamed “Chipachir knows what this is! It is a shiny! Plant lady will give shiny, yes?”

The sylvari handed it over, then pulled a lever by her side. A cage holding four skritt descended from the roof. “What else can you tell me about it?”

“This is an Asuran shiny!” said Chipachir, “but it needs a place for skritt to put it.” He looked around and his eyes settled on the housing for the flux oscillator in his hands. “Here it is!” he exclaimed excitedly. Chipachir then placed the flux oscillator on top of the housing and arranged an assortment of tools and other parts around it. “All done now, very shiny. Plant lady like, yes.”

The sylvari did not reply, but instead pulled another lever. Another cage of nervous skritt appeared.

Chipachir looked at his arrangement and suddenly reconsidered. He picked up the flux oscillator and inserted it into its housing and flicked a switch. It began to hum.

“I would posit that you are still ignorant of this device’s purpose.” Said the etin.

“Oh no skritt knows what this does. Asurans very clever. This thing both is shiny and makes noise. Very clever.”

Another lever, another cage full of skritt. This time the skritt wre slightly more agitated

“Also, it makes things stop falling! We just need other bits” Chipachir scrambled around, found what he was looking for and hooked it up. The device started floating. Chipachir let out a startled yelp, grabbed onto the device and clambered on top to stop it floating away.

“It is an anti-gravity device.” explained the Etin, “and you could simply switch it off.”

“Quite right, quite right.” said Chipachir flicking the switch. “You are much smarter than most two headed ones!”

“We need this to be more powerful, at the moment it can’t even lift a skritt.” Said the sylvari.

“Build more!” suggested Chipachir.

The sylvari said nothing, but pulled another lever. Another cage of skritt appeared and the background level of noise increased noticeably as the trapped skritt became even more frantic.

Chipachir gasped “Not need to make so many more. Maybe one more to lift a two head. Just need to change this part.” He pointed at the circuit “These should be next to each other, not in a line!”

“But if you put those in parallel the etherial diodes won’t do their job!” the Etin objected, interested despite himself.

“No problem, no problem. Move those here.” Chipachir pointed excitedly.

The sylvari leaned forward, more alert now. She knew what the skritt was talking about but she had never considered it. This was genuinely exciting. After five minutes of frantic soldering the skritt was ready. He attached two tethers to the boxes housing the equipment and flicked a switch. The device whirred into operation, but sat on the floor. Chipachir climbed on top and flicked another switch and was lifted up smoothly.

Chipachir started dancing on top, singing “Skritt made it, skritt made it. Now it’s shiny and noisy and floaty and,” he paused to sniff, “and smelly. Ooh, not good”

An orange smoke had started to seep out the device, and the combined smell of lightning, charcoal and magic that came with burning Asuran circuitry insinuated its way into the room. Chipachir flicked a switch and came crashing down. “Not good, not good”, he muttered, picking himself up and pacing. “Something is wrong, but skritt doesn’t know what.”

The sylvari pulled another lever and more skritt appeared in a cage.

“Skritt knows! Skritt knows!” Chipachir declared. Then turned to face the sylvari and fixed her with his eyes. Eyes she had never seen from a skritt before. Eyes that mirrored her own, full of knowledge, intellect and also, there was no use denying it, madness. “Skritt knows.” The room had gone quiet, the noise of the hyperactive skritt inexplicably silenced.

Oh, and “The market forces have a strong influence on weak minds”

Rouven.7409:

Is it funny?
Yes it isn’t.

It wasn’t unamusing.

Wanze.8410:

Cormac.3871:

Well, I already said the guardian example was an extreme case, but it was meant to demonstrate that by increasing demand and not contributing to supply it is possible to increase inflation. I wanted to point out that gold generation and destruction are not the only factors in inflation. If half the materials in the world were to disappear overnight and 20% of the gold, what would happen to inflation?

TP Players (flippers/speculators) actually DO contribute to supply.
If we assume that there are no flippers/speculators who buy items that have less demand than supply, their value would inevitably go down until it reaches vendor value. At that point, everybody will vendor it, destroying the item in the process.
The flippers/speculators give people more gold for those items than the vendor and keep it in supply.

That’s true. It depends on which parts of the economy you are talking about though. Maybe silver ore would have reached vendor price by now if it weren’t for speculators waiting for JC 500 to come out. T5 leather is a recent example too I suppose. For flippers, I am guessing this would only apply to obscure low volume items like mid-level equipment (although most of these a valuable for salvaging, so it is unlikely that someone would vendor). I’m guessing that you would know these items better than me, but I’m struggling to think of items where flipping keeps the price above vendor value and even then it is only saving items from being from players who aren’t willing to put up a piece at a sell offer.

Strictly speaking I was not wrong though, because not all speculating and flipping contributes to supply, in fact I would guess that very little of it does. But it was still an aspect that I overlooked.

Gewd.8125:

Yes it is possible, but if you use a ridiculous example, it is about as “probable” as getting 3 precursors in a row from the mystic forge.

1) It is relevant because you think trader earnings is not proportional to the amount of money in the system. Traders are affected by inflation just like everyone else, they are not immune to it.

2) They didn’t lose purchasing power, they just decided to spend a premium to buy and sell immediately.

If I am wildly rich compared to everyone else, and the top bid for rare item X is only 50g, I am going to bid 51g. I am not going to bid an amount proportional to my total wealth.

3) It is relevant because the number of traders earning significant amounts is far smaller than you think and is smaller than the rare goods on the market.

First off, having admitted that it’s possible you should conclude that gold production is not the only source of inflation. You seem to think you are good at maths, well this is classic proof by counter-example.

1. Why would you say I think that? It’s a silly point anyway, inflation adds a nice safety net for traders whereas it has a habit of putting things out of reach of someone who happens not to want to concentrate on the TP game.

2. Yes, but most items that others struggle with, like enough silk for ascended armour or a precursor you will also be able to purchase those. It’s not a case of either/or it’s a case of both. Higher consumption and lower production means inflation.

3. Again with the assuming what I think. Why would you assume I think that?

Maybe the problem is that our assumptions are about what we assume the other person believes. Based on reading what you write here is what I think you believe.

A: Gold faucets and sinks are the only factors in inflation.
B: Traders are all wonderful people who keep inflation in check and players should be thanking them for keeping the economy healthy.
C: People who say anything against the TP are just jealous because you are rich.

My motivation for arguing with you is not point C, it is because I think you are wrong about point A and B.

That’s nothing. I killed fathers and mothers. Now, I hunt their children!

Ascalonian Catacombs became easier recently. Also, 1.5 gold a pop is pretty good. If you have an ele you will be all set as long as you equip frostbow. Also, be up front about letting groups know that it is your first time. It also wouldn’t hurt to have a look at gw2dungeons.net, or go to the dungeon forum here and look at the dungeon mentor post (stickied near the top).

Zaxares.5419:

Since the Festival end date is now fixed at July 1st, I’m hoping that we’ll see this addressed before it goes away.

My three preferred solutions (I’d be happy with any one of the three):

1. Increase the drop rate of the Chaos of Lyssa recipe to 2% from a Gauntlet Chance, and 10% from beating Liadri.

2. Allow people to trade 250 Gauntlet tickets for a recipe.

3. Allow people to trade a Favor of the Festival for a recipe.

Actually, I’d say a few favours, but this would be a good way of doing it because it means that you will have have had to open quite a few chances, but it evens out your odds and you can actually make progress towards it.

Gewd.8125:

Your concocted story of the level 20 guardian increasing inflation is similarly ridiculous with a lot of flaws you haven’t considered.

1) The amount of gold a TP player can earn is proportional to the gold in the system. If the average player has less gold, buy and sell orders will be smaller, meaning smaller profit margins.

2) The TP is a zero sum game. For someone to make money off the TP, someone has to lose money, thus lowering demand.

3) The room in any part of the market is very small. Even if there are only 2 people in the market, they will undercut each other until profit approaches 0.

The number of people able to play the TP in any meaningful amount is much smaller than the people who buy gold and farm pve.

Well, I already said the guardian example was an extreme case, but it was meant to demonstrate that by increasing demand and not contributing to supply it is possible to increase inflation. I wanted to point out that gold generation and destruction are not the only factors in inflation. If half the materials in the world were to disappear overnight and 20% of the gold, what would happen to inflation?

As for your numbered points:

1) I don’t see how this is relevant.

2) You are essentially agreeing that people who get rich on the TP reduce the purchasing power of other players.

3) again, how is this relevant?

Gewd.8125:

I don’t think anyone is going to believe the value of the items you farmed comes anywhere close to the gold you get.

Do you really think this, or would you like a chance to take it back?

Gewd.8125:

Inflation is caused by gold generating activities. Playing the TP takes gold out of the system. Farming monsters creates gold out of thin air.

Gold is inflated because the average players went from 2 g/hr to 6 g/hr from champ bags, queen’s pavillion farming, and the removal of repair costs.

You seem to be under the misapprehension that raw gold generation is the only factor in inflation. You may be aware that it is otherwise, but I see no indication of this in your posts.

It should be noted production of items has a deflationary effect. Any measure of the average item value by which we measure inflation is going to be proportional to the number amount of gold in game (more gold => higher prices) and inversely proportional to the amount of materials in the game (more stuff => lower prices).

When the champ bag farmer opens a champ bag he gets gold and some items. The gold has a straight inflationary effect. As for the items, if they were sold straight to the vendor there would be more inflation, but in general this is not what happens. The t5 or t6 items will either go on to the trading post increasing supply of that item and reducing overall inflation, or be banked, having no effect (except maybe reducing demand). The equipment could have a number of things happen to it. That item might be vendored (inflation), it might be salvaged or mystic forged and the byproduct stored (no change), it might be salvaged or mystic forged and the byproduct sold (deflation). So, does champ bag farming lead to inflation? On balance it probably does, but it’s more complex than saying “the bags have gold therefore yes”. In short, because PvE provides materials there is also a counter inflationary component to these activities which can’t be ignored, even if it doesn’t offset the inflationary aspects.

Now consider the following hypothetical example. A player gets his guardian up to level 20 and notices a few anomalies on the TP. “That’s odd, why aren’t people using that to make money on?” he thinks, and then proceeds to make money on it himself. Discovering that the TP is his thing he makes a lot of gold, wonders what to spend it on, and then levels up his character with crafting, does enough open world to collect ascended mats for ascended armour and buys legendaries of the trading post.

So what is this player’s impact on the economy? Minimal open world activity means minimal contribution to gold creation, and yet the player has created demand for large numbers of materials while producing very little of it himself. By increasing demand without increasing supply this player has put inflationary pressure on the economy. Is it enough to offset the gold that got sunk into the TP thanks to the tax? That’s really hard to calculate, especially given the various ways of making money. The overall effect however is that he has made various items harder to get because he has been competing for them without significantly contributing to their production. Increased demand without increased supply is a recipe for inflation. I would argue this more than offsets the TP tax.

I know most people will object that this example is extreme, and that is true. My point is that you can’t pretend that gold sinks and faucets are the only factors in inflation. Supply is just as important a factor as demand, and the availability of gold is not the only factor in demand. Even with this absurdly large wall of text I haven’t touched on how open world players modify their behaviour based on the economy, so pretending the economy is as simple as gold faucets and sinks is just wrong,

TL;DR: meat to go back down to 5 copper, silver doubloons back to 1 gold.

John Smith posted here just after the great dye run saying that a lot of people who bought up dyes panicked and sold at a loss. Buying at 70s and selling at 50 s probably hurt a lot of people (but they are probably feeling relieved that they got rid of them before they reached 20). This is probably why a lot of people get burned, they jump on a bandwagon without really thinking it through.

One of the great things about GW2 is that when you see somebody in a fight you are very rarely unwelcome. The game has been very well tuned to make cooperation welcome in open world. This event breaks that principle, which is unfortunate.

A lot of what they are trying to do here is fine, and it’s an OK event on an organised map, especially if you are looking for a farm. It is just a badly flawed design as it has been implemented. I think putting up gates would be a far better mechanic than unnatural, counterintuitive upscaling. YMMV.

Bugabuga.9721:

Tachii.3506:

It is inherently anti-zerg though. People will still zerg, but more whose at least somewhat intelligent will move to organized maps.

Also a good way is to LFG this in the Opening world content.

So other than begging for someone to ferry you into a “good” instance, is there any other practical way to get into organized map?

That’s pretty much the only way, but it seems to work pretty well. It looks like it filters out the “I just want to run with the Zerg” crowd. I don’t know if the need to do this is an indictment of the event design’s lack of direction, or the average player.

Mystic.5934:

I had no idea this couldn’t be sold. I knew other components (like damask coat linings) could, and just assumed they all could.
does it go like this: armor components are sellable and weapon components are not? or are some weapon components sellable and others not?

I would say it works that way based on searching gw2spidy, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some bizarre exception. Ascended inscriptions and plated dowels can be bought and sold though.

The crown pavilion actually has gates to each area, so with a little tweaking it could actually have worked. I think ANet just figured people would organise themselves into areas the same way as happened with Marionette. It would have been a much nicer solution than unnatural scaling which an inexplicable number of players seem to still be struggling with.

“Boob window” is new terminology for me, but if female Charr have them, shouldn’t they have three?

Also, on the “get out, this isn’t for you”, the message a lot of people are getting is “if you are not in an organised guild with teamspeak this update isn’t for you”. Yes, I know it can be done on random maps, but I’ve never been on one where that has happened. I am willing to play the event the way it is meant to be done, I am even willing to help organise it, I just haven’t been on a map yet that’s willing to do it.

Jerus.4350:

It is a kick in the teeth, but that’s the point isn’kitten If people just zerg it they get kicked in the teeth. That way hopefully they’ll learn to be more organized. By offering little reward for zerging they’re basically telling all the people who refuse to split up “get out, this isn’t for you” so personally I’m all for that. The people who insist on zerging are the ones that are screwing it up for people who want to do it right.

I’m loving the blitz. Very fun when people are willing to organize.

It’s a kick in the teeth when it should be a rap over the knuckles. It should be a gentle reminder not common assault if they don’t want to loose their player base. Especially for those players who are trying to tell others to do the right thing but are being ignored.

Totally agree with this. Fortunately I looked up the recipe before buying, and thought better of it, but it is an unfair trap to lay out.

KorKor.9452:

That is Anet for ya though! I mean look at how many things use charge lodestones in the bloody game. They have all these resources that never get used but instead of tapping them they keep throwing charged lodestones into the mix even for tonics. It is sad really it is like they are out of touch with their own game sometimes.

I was actually pleased to see that there are a lot more sparks floating around Orr these days. It’s still hard to farm charged lodestones, but the overall supply should be higher these days. Champ bags and aetherized metal have also been added in the past to help. Having crafted Bolt recently I didn’t find it to be any more onerous to get 100 of those than it was to get 250 of any of the t6 mats. I can’t imagine forging Mjolnir, but hey, at least they’re not as bad as Giant Eyes.

I am sure that if I ever lucked on to a server that was doing it right I would agree with you. The ideas behind what it should look like when it works are sound. It’s just that they obviously didn’t consider what it would feel like when it didn’t work. Struggling through for 45 minutes in the first attempt before we understood scaling was a painful experience, and then to be only given 2 champ bags and a green after the ordeal was a kick in the teeth. For once the whiners have just grievance.

I am looking forward to getting on a map where people listen when you tell them not to scale the boss up, but unfortunately for a lot of players the damage has already been done. It’s a shame because I like what they have tried to do here, they just failed to consider the most likely outcome rather than the most desirable outcome.

I hope ANet are careful with how they read their metrics.

Imagine there are two servers. Over the course of an hour one server gets it’s groove on, and completes five gold runs. The other struggles, people try and Zerg one or two bosses at a time. Some people give up in disgust, others arrive only to leave five minutes later when they see the way the event is going. A bronze event is won over the course of an hour.

Both servers had the same number of people compete, meaning 50% of people experienced the aggravating train wreck that is a failed boss blitz. If ANet are not careful with how they read their stats however they might come out thinking that five out of six runs ended up being successful. Strictly speaking that would be correct, but it does not give an accurate reflection of the number of people who had success with the event.

Do the meta achievement for the current Living Story. With your rewards you will be able to buy a sprocket generator for your home instance.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

It makes better sense to me that this will be used in Cooking. You pointed out that the Electrum item uses jeweling mats and every craft so far has some basic time gated ascended mats to the slow the process down.

But we won’t know for sure until Anet says something, anything and they aren’t talking much lately.

I definitely agree that electrum will be used for ascended jewellery the way that ori is used for t6 jewellery. The question is if the devs have more than just crafting ascended trinkets in mind for jewel crafting. If they don’t have something new in mind then jewel crafting to 500 will be a relatively unrewarding field. That is why I am leaning towards the idea that it will be used for infusions.

It’s very much “toss a coin” for me as to whether they will be used in cooking or crafting though. I am more confident with my prediction of t2-5 dust being used as the ingredients.

This is one of those inexplicable oddities, given that ascended armour components can be sold. I guess the answer is either that ANet changed their minds between weapons and armour and didn’t get around to making retroactive changes or else they were making some deliberate decision based on reasoning I cannot fathom.

In Caudecus Manor paths 1 and 3 there is a chest just before the final boss, but if the other path has already been done (eg running path 3 after path 1 has been completed) that chest does not appear. I am 80% certain that this is unintended.

Vol.7601:

What did you guys exactly expect for your shards? Precursor? Free exotics? A bag of 10 T6 mats?

I would have been happy with this trade if was done immediately after the event. Being told to hold on for something for all this time only to find out that it has an effective value of 2 copper each is irritating, especially given the couple of times I have run into inventory management issues in the interim. I’m guessing a few people have lost money by holding on to these.

I was pugging in a group that had a level 46 warrior in CM with about 350 AP. Towards the end of the dungeon I told him he needed to die more because he was making me feel bad. 2,000 AP is a reasonable cut off if you absolutely must use AP, and even then there are plenty of reasonable players with less.

Another thing that irritates me: Thieves who insist on soloing the first part of CM1 when you are already inside.

I guess it just shows I’d rather spend an extra five minutes doing stuff than spending two minutes sitting around doing nothing.

Necro’s have a hard time in dungeons, but everything else is useful. Rangers have a bad rep though, and even if you become good you might find it hard avoiding getting kicked. Of the really useful ones, Mesmer is probably in the shortest supply, but it is not the most straightforward class to learn to play well.

On the guardian page there is a stickies thread for dps guardian for PvE. If you want to go guardian use your levelling up time to decide whether you prefer hammer or sword/focus and use the appropriate build.

Carighan.6758:

Selenya.6410:

This can’t work in Open World. End of the story.

Why not?
I’m serious. We saw it work on Marionette, LA 1 and LA 2. Also Tequatl and Wurm.

And now because of this, the underlying idea is flawed?

Here’s a few changes to make it easier for people to process:

• Cap the event at 10 minutes. Reward by number of bosses killed at that point.
• Show all HP bars in the event window.
• Show number of players in ~1500 around each boss in the event window.

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I really hope the devs take these points as the main lesson learned from this event. It’s a great event if you are in a well organised guild, or you luck in with a good map, but it disenfranchises everybody else.

Flissy.4093:

People that don’t use consumable buffs. I’m not after people popping the good stuff, but at least use something like Blackberry Pie or Steak & Asparagus just to show you’re at least trying.

I bought a whole lot of Griffon Egg Omelettes at 4 copper each specifically for doing low level dungeons with. Sadly they have gone up in the last couple of months.

Gendarran fields had its champs demoted in the April patch. I don’t remember seeing it in the notes, but I do remember seeing it before the May patch. On the plus side it makes getting the rich iron node near the spider easier as a solo player, but it effectively ends what could have been a good alternative champ train.

I will admit that the writing can be good and bad, but there are a few characters that the writers never seem to miss with. Taimi is one of those characters, the writers just seem to have a really good sense of her possibilities.

All of those items were fairly trivial to get, and the main reason people would have missed out on them was because they missed the two week window. I already have all of them, but I don’t begrudge others the second chance to get it if they missed out the first time. Even things like the sprocket generator where I’d be financially better off if they didn’t offer it.

RemiRome.8495:

Teach me Cormac-sensei.

Many say that to defeat the dungeon mob, you must become the dungeon mob. However, it is pointless drinking bandit tonic in Caudecus Manor.

An avalanche may begin with a single flake of snow. So too a wipe may begin with a single unintended pull.

Do not rage against the bear bow in your group, rage against the bear bow in yourself.

Every style has its place, every guardian staff its volatile bloom, but that doesn’t mean that you should do it all the time.

You will receive more wisdom when your mind is ready for it (or if I can think of something else I think is funny).

Wanze.8410:

The ingots are refined from silver, gold, platinum and mithril.

My guess would be that the mithril is used to make the ore and the three other ingots for refining it.

You are thinking of Xunlai Electrum, which will almost certainly work the way you suggest.

OP, anyone who answers this question for you will be guessing. My guess is that it will be used to craft infusions for ascended jewel crafting and will use various levels of dust. I could be wrong though, they might have cooking in mind and it might be made of something else entirely.