Guild Wars 2

There is an underlying philosophical question here, which is “should the game have items which are so hard to make that on average less than one can be crafted in a day among the entire player base?” I actually like the idea that such an item exists.

Wanze.8410:

Cormac.3871:

1. The set up looks fine to me. Jeweler and chef can really be used by anyone, but having chef on your main is a good idea. As you acknowledged though, it doesn’t really make a huge difference.

2. I don’t know of anything that is soulbound once crafted. Ascended armor and weapons are account bound on crafting, so you will be fine with those.

I think the dungeon specific slayer potions are soulbound after crafting.

Wow, you’re right, the extended potions are soulbound. That’s a bit of bad design right there. 400 tokens for a recipe that can only be used by that character, or 1 token for one potion that lasts half as long, but doesn’t require any t6 fine crafting mats and can be used by any character.

To answer the OP’s question, you should do whatever you did with blues and greens before luck essences were introduced with a few adjustments based on the market.

With the current prices of ectos all greens are worth throwing in the forge, except light armour which should be salvaged for silk. Personally I try and skew my results towards weapons because rare greatswords, swords, stave etc. have a higher value.

Salvage blue light armour and use the tp for everything else that can be sold straight away, vendor ink the rest.

klemen.8439:

Cormac.3871:

Klemen, why do you not feel that dungeon tokens do not currently fill the role that your suggestion is intended to?

Well for once, when you hit level 80 with 8 characters and want them to look nice, dungeon tokens are useless. I never use dungeon tokens anymore to get armor. From level 80 dungeons, I buy rares and salvage for maybe few ectos but that’s about it.

Are you saying that you just don’t like the skins, or that you already have the skins?

I’ve been doing that for over a year now and here I am, still 0 legendary, still 0 rare drops (not rare as quality but rare as rare), only shinies I grind gold for because that’s the only guaranteed way of getting something.

I’ve had about two years of heavy play for one precursor drop in the open world (plus two from MF but I wouldn’t count them for the surrender conversation), one ascended weapon and one ascended piece of armor and two rings. Is that what you mean by rare drops? Other than that the best drops I have were worth about ten gold thanks to their runes or sigils. Is this what you would call a good drop rate for someone who got too embarrassed to look at his account age when it reached 3000 hours some time last year?

I am not really sure what you mean by rare here, but I suspect that it would become significantly less rare under the system you propose. If on the other hand when you say that you have never got anything rare you mean you have never got a named exotic after thousands of hours play, then OK, maybe your account is cursed.

John Smith.4610:

At the heart, there’s 3 basic options:
1. Mostly RNG
2. No RNG
3. Hyrbid RNG (where most games are)

I see no problem with having both 2 and 3 in the game. In fact for items as common as rares as and unnamed exotics I see not reason to move away from pure RNG.

Dungeon tokens are a good example of number 2, as were the LS season 1 meta achievement rewards. Both of these were great, but I wouldn’t want these to be the only ways to get rewards in game.

For stuff like precursors, teqatl skins and fossilised insects I would favour a method that guaranteed one after a certain amount of time but left the rest to RNG. The reason pure RNG is bad here is that you can be working towards something for a long time, and unless you get that one lucky hit you are no closer to your goal than when you started.

Examples of hybrid RNG I would prefer.

1. An achievement related to something with a number of possible rewards. Eg. Kill teq 50 times and unlock your choice of teq skins.
2. Hidden pre-ordained lucky strike. If you are supposed to get a teq skin every 30 kills, then each player has a random number between 1 and 30. Once they hit that number of kills they get their skin.

I can’t see either of these solutions working for precursors. I am also not sure if they could have been applied to Queen’s Gauntlet challenge given the rarity of the backpiece. For stuff like fossilised insects though I would find either far preferable to the current system.

1. The set up looks fine to me. Jeweler and chef can really be used by anyone, but having chef on your main is a good idea. As you acknowledged though, it doesn’t really make a huge difference.

2. I don’t know of anything that is soulbound once crafted. Ascended armor and weapons are account bound on crafting, so you will be fine with those.

Can’t tell if trolling…

Klemen, why do you not feel that dungeon tokens do not currently fill the role that your suggestion is intended to?

Dungeon tokens rock, and moving away from them for Aetherblade path in favour of an RNG system was a mistake Imo.

For something like fossilised insects in Dry Top I would have favoured something like system 1. Say there is a 5% chance of receiving a fossilised insect from a chest. Every player gets a hidden random number, n, from 1-20. When they open chest number n they get the fossilised insect.

But in general I would like to see anything other than pure RNG. While pure RNG is fair in theory, the results it produces are not.

Guild Wars 2 has had about half an expansion’s worth of stuff IMO.

What would I expect to see in a full expansion?

1. Quest line with at least ten hours of play through time
2. At least 4 new maps
3. QoL and UI improvements
4. Several new dungeons
5. Class skill expansions
6. Either a new class or new race
7. Expanded crafting

A quick survey shows that 1 passes easily if we include content that is gone, but we’ll have to wait until next year before it qualifies for permanent content.

We are half way there for 2, and an acceptable way through for 3.

For dungeons we have FotM, which some might argue is enough for the dungeon component of an expansion. I probably wouldn’t.

For 5 we have only really seen one new heal skill and one new elite skill.

6 is not there

7 is about 3/4 of the way wrt 500 crafting. And then there are a few more ingredients and stats that have also become available.

I don’t know if my expectations of what an expansion should contain are off, but I think that the piecemeal nature of delivery hides the fact that we have got a fair percentage of the way to an expansion for free. to be honest, I have no idea how my list compares to a WoW expansion, so if someone wants to tell me how my expectations stack up let me know.

If I’m feeling whimsical I sometimes put in references to dialogue.

SE p1: Employee reviews are due next month, impress me by helping Ferg
SE p3: Yes, yes yes! Let’s go to the armoury, that’s where Zadurojhny is likely to be
CM p1: KABOOM! I mean, that will do nicely.
TA up: It’s Fyonna’s horrid beast, a staff guardian!

I still favour the four significant figure option. For everything under a gold bids can be placed at 1 copper increments. From 1g to 10g it is 10c increments. From 10g to 100g it is 1s increments etc.

The advantage is that the UI could be adapted reasonably simply to make it intuitive to the user what they can and can’t bid.

The disadvantages include that the increment is too small for low velocity items and that dealing with items listed on the market already may require some clever programming to deal with. The first problem might be solved by going to three significant figures, if you believe that bidding in 10c increments is ok for t6 mats and ectos.

I would personally go for leatherworker and cook first, particularly if you intend to get most of your ingredients gathering as for the most part they use different ingredients. You could also use jewelcrafting instead of one of these if you prefer for the same reason.

FenrirSlakt.3692:

In the end no one would associate with such leaders, as they would acquire a bad reputation over time.

Really? In a game as big as GW2 where you aren’t allowed to mention names on the forums how many times do you think someone would have to perform kicks before a majority of dungeon runners knew about him?

As far as I’m concerned changing the system to one where the leader can kick on a whim is going to create far more problems than it solves. The system would be great for dungeon sellers, but terrible for 80% of people who run paths normally. Remember that the reason old system kicked everyone when the party leader kicked was because there were too many instances of the party leader leaving the party and then invitin guildies to join. For the life of me I can’t see why people don’t think it will be a problem this time around.

DonQuack.9025:

This is assuming things.
CS would look and see who replaced the people instance owner kicked. At end kick last 3 and replace with 3 guildies/ people on friends list mighty suspicious. Kick various parts of dungeon and relist party standards.

doesnt really need to be “policed”. A person who consistently kicks at end will be known. A person who kicks for “high standards” shouldnt be given the chance as people should leave before kickage.

also start your own groups :/

Maybe I’m not making myself clear about the high standards thing,

Say an instance owner the preserves the right to kick a bear ow on sight. Or doesn’t like people who use the “wrong” tactic on a certain boss. Or will kick someone who mentions they have a non-meta build. I think somebody who owns instances with these sorts of attitudes will end up kicking a lot of people. I don’t think many of these people will pre-emptively drop out.

As for starting your own groups, well that may be sound advice for 20% of people, but that leaves the majority of players in a riskier system than is in place currently.

DoctorOverlord.8620:

Armed Silon Il.4597:

I got this along with every other resource in the home instance. Why.

1. Because I can.
2. It gives me daily gatherer in 2 mins
3. I can concentrate on other aspects of the game that I like PvP/WvW (yes I can get daily gatherer in WvW. Although no nodes in PvP)

So for me these items are convenience items which amazingly I find convenient.

PS I get chilli more often than not from the herbs and yams more often than not from the Root veg node

Misinformation like this is something I can’t stand.

You left out the fact that you need ALL of the other nodes to get Daily Gatherer in 2 mins. Deliberately misleading statements like that make me suspect your claim about getting chilis ‘more often than not’ from the herb node, I have it as well and I doubt the RNG is any different for you, but then it is the Internet so why should any kind of accuracy be expected.

There are two errors of fact in your reply. The very first sentence said that he got the other nodes.

Also, you don’t need to buy every other node if you got the upgrades from Living Story. For instance Candy Corn node, sprocket generator, crystal formation, ore nodes and herbs are enough to get there without the trees.

I would accuse you of spreading deliberate misinformation, but I think it best if we give others the benefit of the doubt, so I’ll just assume you made a couple of honest mistakes.

I don’t see how the instance owner kicks system could be effectively policed. How could ANet distinguish between a player who kicks a lot because he gives paths to guildies at the last boss and players who kick a lot because they “have high standards”?

The annoying thing is that with the new way of doing LS a new set of dungeons could easily be implemented. With permanent content something like the Molten Facility could have been kept as a permanent story dungeon. I would love to think that LS will take us to a new dungeon and add paths every couple of months, but it looks like it’s off the table for a while at least.

Given that we have only seen eight chapters of LS in nine months this year I can’t see them devoting more resources to dungeons any time soon.

It’s also used for superior rune of the ranger, which with the September update is more desirable thanks to the minis tab.

Mystic.5934:

carey.3169:

would of been better spent converting the gems to gold then buying the skins

I think there is not a single person who would disagree with this sentiment. keys are not priced for the one thing you want. they are priced for everything they give. Like: how much would it of cost you to buy all the boosters you just got from the gem store? revive orbs and repair canisters? etc.

This is sort of right, but I would argue backwards in its reasoning. Without key farming the cost of new skins would be based on the cost of the keys it took to buy it minus a percentage of the value of all the other stuff you get.

Key farming however means that people are basing the cost of skins on the time it takes to farm enough keys for a scrap, which in turns drives down prices lower.

Anyway OP, the data for scrap rates is available, as is the knowledge that the economy is player driven and that scraps are subject to RNG. You should be able to draw your own conclusions as to whether they represent good value. If you did not do your research or got bad luck with RNG you should consider it a learning experience rather than complaining about it.

There are a number of ways they could make ascended cooking work. A 10% effectiveness boost that requires bloodstone, empyreal and dragonite would provide a useful drain on these materials. Or maybe the recipes themselves could require the use of a vision crystal.

Either way, there has been no indication that they are going to release it any time soon.

Farming charged cores and lodestones is next to impossible. Sparks can drop them, but at a really low rate. Crucible of Eternity might be useful to run, but my guess is that on average your gold reward for the dungeon would net you more lodestones than drops themselves. Salvageable aetherized metal scraps will also sometimes give them, but as far as I know they only drop in the Aetherblade fractals and the Twilight Arbor Aetherpath. Even there the salvage rate isn’t high.

Most of the lodestones that I have had drop for me have been from champ bags, and that is not an efficient way of getting them.

Zaxares.5419:

Really? If so, I think that’s a good change. Dungeons were a big step up in difficulty from the open world content which newbie players were doing before. A lot of players struggled with the learning curve, and I suspect many just wrote off dungeons completely after that. The added levels should help ease the transition.

It was an even bigger shock back before Elite mobs were marked as Elite. I still remember first time in CM waiting for others to deal with their inventories or something, and thinking “Yeah, I can take on these four bandits solo, it’s not like any of them are Veterans.”

The pwniversity guide is about using the least number of raw materials, which is a bit of an odd goal. If you want to spend the least money on crafting go to gw2crafts.

It is not an entire reward. It is part of a reward. For something you never used to get a reward for. If you were being histrionic you could say “nothing is more underwhelming than this!”, but nothing is exactly what you used to get.

Labjax.2465:

It might bother some people in terms of “making sense for professions,” but they could just adjust the number of each component needed, so that there isn’t such a huge disparity in number of Damask needed for Light compared to the others.

Yes, I would actually support this suggestion.

So, you’ve seen how a scythe works, right? It cuts grass at the bottom. The scythe is designed to cut things down low so the action makes sense, and would look awkward decapitating someone.

The story I heard was that the scythe was supposed to sever the silver thread that connects the soul to the body. It may have been a golden thread, I can’t remember for sure. Anyway, I have no idea how you would animate that.

Silk scraps trade for 3 silver, wool for 3 silver, cotton for 4 and linen for 5. Silk may end up being the highest cost component, but it’s not clear that silk is the bottleneck in supply. I can’t see a scenario in which reducing the quality of silk required for damask wouldn’t drive these prices right up. Personally I am always short on wool.

In my opinion, the most likely result of reducing the silk requirement is that silk prices would plummet to be almost worthless while wool cloth and linen would more than double in price leaving damask at around 10 gold. The slight reduction in price is down to the fact that at 10 silver a pop enough people start farming mid-level areas specifically for cloth to stop prices going much higher.

The question of the high price being a problem has come up. My 2 cents is that in isolation 15g for damask isn’t a problem, but when comparing it to Deldrimor steel ingots at 3.8 and Elonian leather at 2 it is a problem, because it is inequitable for those playing light classes.

I had this problem too when I tried to unlock CoF on an alt. completed the dungeon, got the chest, but no notification for the PvP reward track, and I can’t open the dungeon with that toon. It happened about a month ago, so I can’t remember any useful details, sorry.

Amurond.4590:

How many precursors have dropped in the game as loot but weren’t picked up for whatever reason?

If you are able to track such a thing…

Well, for a start, every single time the dungeon instance owner closed the instance before I could get to the chest I know for a fact there was a precursor and a dungeon recipe waiting for me there

In all seriousness, I am also curious to know if drops that weren’t picked up are kept track of. It happens a bit in WvW I am guessing, but if anything I would guess that because people are a lot quicker to pick up boxes than bags that there are a very small portion of, for instance, precursors missed.

On a similar topic, is there much of a discrepancy between precursors destroyed and legendaries created (taking into account the fact that Eternity is an anomaly)?

Bags of jewels are soulbound on acquire.

Bags of Jewels still drop, and yes, fractals is a good place to get them. They have the same icon as the bags dungeon token appear in, so you have to be careful before double clicking.

The Goblet currently sells for 9 gold on the TP. Of the components there are about 5 gold worth of gold ingots, 40 s worth of Mystic Coin and an Eldritch Scroll, which costs 50 skill points. The skill points alone are worth more than 9 gold if you use them correctly, so I would buy the goblet directly rather than hope the bag of jewels drops for you.

Have you been to the vendor with the characters you think you unlocked the recipe sheet on after you unlocked it? Just to make sure you character has learned it.

Weaponsmith and armorsmith on the first character maskes it hard to mine everything you need. The southern half of WvW Borderlands are usually good for iron. There is this map for open world permanent rich iron ore nodes (I haven’t verified its accuracy)

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/rich-iron-vein-map-location/1778/

Zui.9245:

Ceesa.1350:

This will only happen if you are selling Arah. Easy solution: stop selling Arah. No one’s going to do anything to stop this from happening to you because selling dungeon paths was never supposed to be part of the game in the first place.

I’m having trouble with your reasoning. I’m sure you thought before you posted (you did, right?), so perhaps you could explain the flaw in my understanding… Here it goes…

An AC P1 or P3 group is 3/5. It advertises it is at the last boss. Two people join, enter the dungeon, and kick everyone. They invite their 3 friends. They kill the last boss. Each has made 60 tokens and ~1.5 gold for virtually no work. This dungeon is not Arah, and the people who posted the LFG were not selling.

I can’t remember the last time I saw an LFG posted with only 3 members in it at the last boss aside from selling posts. If you really wanted to employ this method of making money you would be sitting around so long that you would probably make more money doing just about anything else instead.

So, here’s what I’d like to see. We get word that our Mawdrey 2 backpiece is unstable, so we tell Phlunt that Taimi has discovered a new backpiece and is 87% sure she knows how it works. Falling for the bait Phlunt confiscates it. One night Mawdrey 2 goes wild killing Phlunt and the half of the council that I don’t like. The rampage through Rata Sum is only ended with the release of a new level of SAB, when Mawdrey 2 goes in and becomes a computer addict. Mawdrey 2 is now most often found beside the SAB offering to give items in return for game tokens (or bloodstone dust if you have it).

altiera.6304:

The drops are completely random. Witch I think is incredible unfair. Since ANet decided to make a achievement track for collecting all the weapons. Basically you have to be LUCKY to get the collection achieve. You shouldn’t be having to trust rng for achievements.

I myself have opened hundreds of chests, so far I have 5 drops of the fossils. But like u guys I know people that opened 2 as many as me and to this day didn’t get a drop.

This is just broken

This to me would seem like the ideal place for ANet to put a Dry Top Achievement. Open 100 lock boxes and get a chest with your choice of a fossilised insect or 50 geodes. It means that those 2% of people trying for the fossilised insect who don’t get it after 100 boxes opened because the laws of probability decided to be a jerk to them are at least guaranteed 1.

I will say that a nice side effect of doing these runs is the ability to afford a couple of the items needed for collection.

And as someone who made an “I will just grit my teeth and do it” comment earlier, I found harvesting the foxfire to be much more annoying. Yeah, I know, I could have bought them, but I prefer to do it all myself if I can (though I buy t6 mats for legendaries).

Leather crafting is intrinsically cruel to animals. I do not support cruelty to animals and demand that ANet bring in vinyl crafting!

Definitely look at dungeons for equipment. A full set of armour takes 24 runs. Sorrows Embrace p1&3 take less than half an hour together, so if you do those two dungeons once a day you will have a full set of exotic in 12 days, plus close to 30 gold. Just let people know that you are new, and avoid groups that specifically ask for experienced people when you start.

You will probably want to change the runes though.

Biohazard.7523:

The more gold the better…
I vote for more !

I was going to say, dungeons are already one of the more rewarding places in the game (they are also the largest gold faucets). If we just point to places where we think we should get more and ignore places that are over-generous then it’s more an act of selfishness than rebalancing.

Sparks The Rescue.5043:

I’m unsure of how much linen the OP farms /hr, but I’d go so far as to say that the price of linen could double and even triple(!)and farming dungeons would still be a better route. I just checked the TP, and it costs ~1.2g for a stack of linen. Just from doing 1 path of AC (in ~15 minutes), you’ve already netted yourself around 275 linen. Even if the price doubles (which realistically it won’t), 135 linen in 15 minutes is still a very efficient way of gathering linen.

Linen scraps are currently sitting at 4.9s, which makes them 12g per stack.

Mystic.5934:

Cormac.3871:

A nice little side effect of time gating gap charged quartz is that grow lamps remain profitable to craft weeks after they were introduced because it is impossible to flood the market for them. I am all for little niches like this that allow crafters to make a profit even if they don’t spot it in the first couple of days.

like I said: “after the first ~month”. It depends on the item, but after it reaches equilibrium, there is no point to it. grow lamps; sure, that can be time-gated right now to cause minimal disruption to the economy. But a month or so from now when it’s price is down to 8g (the cost to make it), there is no longer a reason for it.
also, it’s hilarious for the 1 charged quartz per day AND 1 grow lamp per day. like, the “can only get enough materials to make a grow lamp once every 10 days” wasn’t enough, they had to make double sure their time gating stuck.
another also: it defeats half the purpose of time gating to make the thing you’re making be tradable. If you want 20 grow lamps, you can buy 20 grow lamps right now. it being time-gated doesn’t slow down how quickly you get them. The only thing time-gating slows down is how many materials are consumed to make them, ie: market disruption. so once the market is no longer disrupted, there is no reason for them.

Yes, it will probably get close to equilibrium after a couple of months, but in the interim those of us who are crafters and aren’t in a rush to have the newest thing right away get a nice little earner. You also are overlooking the fact that people may have been charging crystals in the interim.

As far as I’m concerned time gating charged quartz and glow lamps works well for crafters and making them tradeable is a concession to those who want to have it now.

However, I do agree that the situation for celestial gear is not entirely satisfactory. I would personally like to see insignias and inscriptions tradeable.

It’s a bit boring, as it’s an upgrade component you mix it with other brilliant jewels to get a slightly better upgrade component.

EDIT: ignore this post, I am wrong.

Charming Rogue.8071:

I can’t remember exactly what caused it, but 2 years ago black lion chests rose up to like 1s each in price because of speculators. When they realized that you still needed keys to open them, and that the chests themselves are useless, the price started dropping to their original 3c.

My guess is on speculators. But black lion keys will always be useless without keys. People are too easily influenced by hype.

I think that rise was associated with Captain’s Commendations, which allowed you to buy keys.

cranked.3812:

Cormac.3871:

A nice little side effect of time gating gap charged quartz is that grow lamps remain profitable to craft weeks after they were introduced because it is impossible to flood the market for them. I am all for little niches like this that allow crafters to make a profit even if they don’t spot it in the first couple of days.

That would be a cool story, but it doesn’t apply here because celestial stuff isn’t tradable. Maybe if anet would be more consistent instead of pulling things out of a hat to decide how to implement things, stuff like this wouldn’t happen or, at the very least, things would be the same.

I was talking about grow lamps, which is why I mentioned grow lamps and not celestial.

Dagins.5163:

@Olvendred

And how do you explain selling gold ingots for 2 silver??? Why there is no option to make gold coins out of these?

Are you asking ANet to introduce counterfeiting currency?

A nice little side effect of time gating gap charged quartz is that grow lamps remain profitable to craft weeks after they were introduced because it is impossible to flood the market for them. I am all for little niches like this that allow crafters to make a profit even if they don’t spot it in the first couple of days.

Lord Kuru.3685:

• 25 keys sells for 2100 gems.
• If the ticket scrap rate is 1 every 5 keys, then it’s 4200 gems for each key.

That should be “4200 gems for each ticket”. It confused me at first.

I would like to add my thoughts to this thread, but let’s be real, Ropechef just soloed this troll far better than I would be able to. Bravo!