Guild Wars 2

Rhialto.8423:

To which the Theist would undoubtedly reply that we aren’t looking hard enough or that Allah is the force BEHIND the force that we observe. An agnostic would leave the possibility for a god as the explanation, whereas the atheist wouldn’t consider the possibility of a god without evidence leading us to that conclusion in the first place.

That sounds like a fallacy to me. Just because we do not have evidence of something, doesn’t necessarily imply that it doesn’t exist. Sure, it doesn’t imply that it exists either, but I said still holds true.

For example, we have no evidence that alien lifeforms exist, yet most scientists that you ask today would think that they do. In other words, they have “faith” that they do exist even though they have no real evidence to support that other than just probability. Sometimes even the progress of science and technology requires a leap of faith.

Bryzy.2719:

By that same logic I could discuss disliking a particular race of people, because that’s my opinion. That opinion would be very offensive, but by what you’re saying I should be allowed to express that without consequences.

People are already doing that, in and also out of game, whether you allow them or not.

People can say whatever they want but there are always consequences, even though they have the freedom of speech. The law doesn’t protect us against jerks, bigots, or idiots. You have the freedom of speech, but that doesn’t imply that everything you say would be popular with the people around you.

And really, people of any religion is and should continue to be allowed in this game. There would be Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. around you, so what? Not everyone should be an Atheist and not everyone should be FORCED into a single religion called Atheism (yes it is also its own ‘religion’).

lordkrall.7241:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Then they can simply say to their clients that payments would be in the form of X. It is still up to their clients if item X is valuable enough as payment.

For example, if they can get you Twilight for just $10, it is definitely worth it for most people.

True, it can work with very high tier items that have a very high price. But I would say that most people that buy gold, do want the gold, not a Legendary, and thus it would still be somewhat low-tier items being given in place of gold. Which would change in price several times per day, and thus it wouldn’t really be a reliable trade.

If they can get their desired amount, or more, in gold, most people wouldn’t care what they are paid with.

As long as when they get the item they can satisfy a buy order which returns at least the amount gold that they need or more, it would be just fine and dandy for most people. $10 for a Twilight, why not? That is definitely worth it because people know that its buy orders are a lot higher than just $10 and it would continue to be worth more than $10 for a very long time.

But yes, I agree that gold sellers would need to find items with the right balance of profits from then on. This is not going to stop them though.

lordkrall.7241:

maha.7902:

so lets get this straight

to counter RMT, anet have decided to restrict gold transfer via emails so that RMT simply start to transfer items of equivalent value instead

wp anet you just annoyed the minority of people who transfer large gold sums legitimately and made no effect on gold sellers

I wouldn’t be so fast as to claim that it will have no effect on gold sellers. Sure, it can easily be bypassed by trading items and such instead, but items shift in value rather often, ESPECIALLY if a massive amount of them are being bought up by gold sellers in order to trade them. Which will make the whole system rather annoying for them, since the prices might change from one day to another.

Then they can simply say to their clients that payments would be in the form of X. It is still up to their clients if item X is valuable enough as payment.

For example, if they can get you Twilight for just $10, it is definitely worth it for most people.

maha.7902:

so lets get this straight

to counter RMT, anet have decided to restrict gold transfer via emails so that RMT simply start to transfer items of equivalent value instead

wp anet you just annoyed the minority of people who transfer large gold sums legitimately and made no effect on gold sellers

Yes, it does seem that they have not thought this through before proceeding.

If gold sellers decide to use another in-game item as currency, then all you need to do is to simply sell that item in the TP for gold.

I suppose gold sellers can always deal with some other transferable in-game currency, other than gold. For example legendary weapons, or some other high-valued items can also be used as currency.

Sariel V.7024:

I’m still against it ;D

Actually it doesn’t really matter even if AreaNet doesn’t implement it. If players really want their apps to support the discovered MF recipes then they would spend time to create it from the wiki one way or another. (ahem…some people already have but they are not going to make it public).

What this amounts to is that, those who take the time and effort to create these recipes for their apps would gain the advantage over those who don’t.

Taking gw2spidy example again:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/9269

I can create a better minimum acquisition cost for an item by including other forms of acquiring said item or its ingredients. These other forms for acquiring ingredients would include MF upgrading/crafting. But of course that would mean creating the discovered MF recipes by hand and giving an average or user-inputted value for the number of output items.

This just means I would probably decide to charge some money on the App Store for my app since it takes me longer to write such an app without ArenaNet providing the MF recipes.

StevenL.3761:

I think it would be more interesting if you could punch in the number of items that you are planning to craft. It should then give you detailed instructions and statistics for the first, the second, the third,… all the way to the last item. If instructions and statistics remain the same for several items in a row, then they should be grouped together.

For bonus point: plot the overall returns on a graph

Sure, we can do all that for bonus points. We can input the number of items to craft and have the profits returned.

This is an interesting problem for recursion and gives a much more useful result, if your goal is to maximize profits through crafting, than the single min cost tree from gw2spidy, which strictly speaking, only applies to crafting 1 item.

quenoz.3859:

it has been done more effectively by someone, yup.

http://www.gw2craftgold.com/

Not really.

I don’t see a a minimum cost tree on how to craft an item (assuming it is cheaper to craft than to buy). Which ingredients should you buy and which ingredients should you craft? If buy, then how many ingredients can you buy at such a price? Which would determine how many final items you can craft at such a profit.

AfterXII.2761:

Sariel V.7024:

All the known combinations are already on the wiki. What are you REALLY looking for in terms of an interface?

To enhance a tool I just made.

http://gw2shinies.com/alchemy

Good job on gw2shinies. I like that website. Do you have the MF recipes in JSON format that we can download?

My feedback:

Would be even better if you can show the crafting tree like in gw2spidy if I click on a line of item:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/9269

So that I know which ingredient to buy and which ingredient to craft to maximize profit.

I admit, I was first inspired by what gw2spidy has in their website. For example:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/9269

There are problems with that calculation though:

1. How updated are the prices? Prices change all the time. What can be profitable to craft one minute may not be profitable anymore in the next minute.

2. Those recipes do not include mystic forge recipes. For example, certain ingredients can be obtained more cheaply through the MF than the TP.

3. That most-profitable-path-to-craft tree is only guaranteed good for ONE craft. It doesn’t tell you how many of its ingredients can be bought at those prices by looking at the sale offer queue or how many intermediate ingredient or final product you can craft and still remain profitable.

If you want to do this right, the algorithm would have to be smarter than what they have in gw2spidy. Some less profitable items may turn out to be even more profitable considering the total amount of offers that are higher than the crafting cost. And how many you can actually craft based on the recommended crafting tree would depends on the number of ingredients you can get at those prices.

Am I the only one that finds this problem interesting? Has anyone wrote an algorithm to come up with profitable crafting trees for each stage quantity of output to sell to offer prices and find out how many you can actually craft in order to be profitable and total profit?

I am thinking what a nice interview programming question this would be, if I ever do get a chance to be an interviewer again next time. Write a recursive algorithm to print out most-profitable-crafting tree and calculate total profit from offer prices. Am I evil?

If they don’t release the MF recipe, that just means there would be greater demand for apps that has the known MF recipes built in.

Otherwise someone else would have to go through the pain to do it, then give it away for free. Any volunteers?

I have always thought this trait unlocking system was counter productive.

1. It discourages build experimentation.
2. It discourages you from playing in different formats by optimizing your builds. If I have bought traits for PvE, I would have to pay for new traits for WvW/PvP if I want to optimize my build.
3. It gives an unfair advantage to older characters who do not have to unlock traits, especially in WvW/PvP as they do not have the current restrictions to optimize their builds, like the new characters do.

Dr Ishmael.9685:

Oh kitten it, you’re not listening.

listening doesn’t imply agreeing.

I don’t see how throwing in more new terms is going make this any less messy.

Dr Ishmael.9685:

DarkSpirit.7046:

On the other hand, the /prices endpoint may be implemented in a similar way: If the provided item id, given to /prices, does not exist within its set of valid item ids, it is regarded as an invalid item id. This is confusing. Classifying an item id as invalid because the item is not being sold maybe counter intuitive to customers which is the point of this thread.

Wrong. That is NOT what the /prices endpoint is telling you – that’s the whole point of what I’ve been trying to say. Instead, it’s telling you that it’s an invalid Trading Post ID, because that’s the limit of what /prices knows about.

You see, now you just threw in a new term, “Trading Post ID” which so happens to be very close to “item id”. So much for confusion…. oh by the way, don’t forget “Listings Trading Post ID” too because they have their own set of ids distinct from prices as it is on a different endpoint but hey they maybe the same but potentially not. I am so glad that everything is much clearer now!

I had a hunch that the items, prices, listings endpoints were implemented similarly right down to their error-handling.

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/prices
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/listings

They each have their own set of valid item ids. These sets are not static, items ids are added as they are discovered and can also be removed. I assume that the discovery process is different between /items and /prices (they better be!).

For the /items endpoint if the provided item id does not exist within its set of item ids, it is regarded as an invalid item id. That makes sense for /items, since it defines the set of valid items in the game.

On the other hand, the /prices endpoint may be implemented in a similar way: If the provided item id, given to /prices, does not exist within its set of valid item ids, it is regarded as an invalid item id. This is confusing. Classifying an item id as invalid because the item is not being sold maybe counter intuitive to customers which is the point of this thread.

This is not optimal but there are two options for app developers to workaround this:

1. Show a generic error message (e.g. “item not in trading post”) and let the customer figure it out whether it does not exist in the game, it can’t be traded, it is removed, or it is simply not sold. Most apps would probably take this option. Pro: Fast and simple, Con: May confuse newer players.

Or alternatively,

2. Do a second web search on /items to determine why the item is not in /prices or /listings. Pro: Able to offer a more informative message Con: Slower

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Dr Ishmael.9685:

I’ll take a shot at explaining this a different way to try to help DarkSpirit understand.

The /v2/items endpoint tells you that a given number X is a valid item_id. Great, you know a valid item ID in the context of items.

You take this number X and pass it to the /v2/commerce/listings endpoint. It tells you it’s an invalid ID in the context of commerce.

The different endpoints have complete different contexts. Just because X is a valid ID in an item context doesn’t mean it’s also a valid ID in a commerce context. That’s all any endpoint will tell you: whether the ID is valid within the context of that endpoint. These endpoints have no knowledge of each other – commerce is only concerned with its own commerce context, it doesn’t care and it can’t tell you about whether X is valid in an items context.

If I understand you correctly, that would cover items that have appeared in the game, but never been listed or requested on the TP. That is, when item #12345 is first dropped, that number would be a valid v2/items item_id. But until it’s also offered for sale, it would still be an invalid v2/commerce id.

Seems to me that’s reasonable for the API and then it would be up to 3rd party developers how they want to deal with the distinction, as opposed to ANet imposing a solution.

Precisely why that is confusing. I don’t know how 3rd party apps can know the difference between an item that has not been offered for sale and an item that can never be sold (e.g. item id 123456 or account-bound items), since I would imagine that they return the same error code in both situations.

+15 agony infusion should be tradeable but at this point in time, none are being sold. They give the same 400 http error code.

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?ids=49438

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/prices?ids=49438

Perhaps the way to tell these cases apart is to also check against /items and see if the item exists. If it exists in /items and not in /commerce and it is not soulbound or accountbound, then maybe it is just not sold. If it doesn’t exist in /items and doesn’t exist in /commerce then it is an invalid item or an old item that was removed from the game. If it doesn’t exist in /items but it exists in /commerce then it is a bug maybe?

Dr Ishmael.9685:

DarkSpirit.7046:

That is what I fear that the idea of a valid item would have to boil down to the context of the endpoint which would be confusing because an item may be valid in one end point and yet be invalid in another even though it is a valid item in the game. But I would have to live with this.

It’s not confusing, at least not to me. Context is supremely important: you shouldn’t “boil down” to it, you should start from it.

The /items endpoint is the only proper place to determine the validity of an item ID precisely because that is this endpoint’s context. The context of the /commerce endpoints is limited to the trading post, and this limitation means that the validity of an ID in this endpoint does not imply the validity of that ID in a general context.

It is confusing because there is no single endpoint that defines what is a valid item and what is not. Each endpoint would have its own definition.

The /items endpoint does not determine the validity of an item id, because the /commerce endpoint can invalidate any of them within its own context (e.g. 18753). I would think that the items listed in the /items endpoint would be the superset of the items listed in the /commerce endpoint such that some item ids are valid in /items and /commerce while others are only valid in /items. But I am even sure if that is the current situation right now as far as the current states of the APIs.

Dr Ishmael.9685:

I’ll take a shot at explaining this a different way to try to help DarkSpirit understand.

The /v2/items endpoint tells you that a given number X is a valid item_id. Great, you know a valid item ID in the context of items.

You take this number X and pass it to the /v2/commerce/listings endpoint. It tells you it’s an invalid ID in the context of commerce.

The different endpoints have complete different contexts. Just because X is a valid ID in an item context doesn’t mean it’s also a valid ID in a commerce context. That’s all any endpoint will tell you: whether the ID is valid within the context of that endpoint. These endpoints have no knowledge of each other – commerce is only concerned with its own commerce context, it doesn’t care and it can’t tell you about whether X is valid in an items context.

That is what I fear that the idea of a valid item would have to boil down to the context of the endpoint which would be confusing because an item may be valid in one end point and yet be invalid in another even though it is a valid item in the game. But I would have to live with this.

Pat Cavit.9234:

We aren’t going to change this behavior right now, I’m sorry you find it confusing but it’s not something we can easily workaround given that /v2/items and /v2/commerce/prices are going against different systems that have different ideas on what valid items are.

I’m not comfortable with special casing the commerce APIs right now, so they will continue to return the standard error.

Thanks Pat. I understand that it is difficult to change the APIs right now but it is already special casing what the valid item ids are, based on what endpoints that you query against.

Clarification: By the way, I am not trying to be a “hard-kitten ” demanding a fix, I know you guys have your priorities. I am just stating an opinion.

I don’t understand your point. Why do you have to add a new property item_id when there is already id? The id property is the item id.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/API:2/commerce/prices

Sounds like you are making broad assumptions on how they may have implemented this internally without confirmations from them. Going down this rat hole of assumptions would only lead to more confusion as more broad assumptions are made. Please stick with the facts that we already know so as to not detract this thread.

Dr Ishmael.9685:

The wiki documentation was written players/users, not by Pat or Stefan or anyone else at Anet. If it’s wrong, change it (if you’re not in the API user group, then post on the talk page and ask for someone else to change it).

What would you decide to change? The documentations or the API? What is a bug and what is a feature?

Doesn’t someone in Anet review the documentations depicting how their APIs should behave in their official wiki? What is the expectation Anet has for developers to learn to use their APIs correctly, if not from the API documentation in their official wiki?

Again, it benefits both parties (ANet and their developers) to have good communications, which should be one of the reasons for this forum to exist in the first place. Distancing themselves from their devs who support their APIs and the people who maintain their API documentations is not a good start.

StevenL.3761:

Your argument is based on the assumption that the listing service knows (or should know) about both listings and items. It doesn’t know about items,

Then it should know about items which is what the API documentation on the wiki depicts. Otherwise, API documentation wouldn’t match behavior.

StevenL.3761:

It doesn’t say that there is no item with id 18753. It says that there is no listing with id 18753. Just forget that they are using item ids as listing ids. They could have picked any other number.

No it says that item id 18753 is invalid:

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/prices?ids=18753
returns http status of 400 with:
{"text":“all ids provided are invalid”}

But if you ask /v2/items, 18753 is a valid item id. The 2 services shouldn’t contradict each other and there should be a distinction between items “not found” (status 404) and invalid item ids.

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?ids=18753

StevenL.3761:

Okay, but these are the IDs of the actual buy/sell offers, not the ID of the item being bought/sold. An item does not have to have a listing.

Whether an item id is valid or not would depend on how you define what a valid or invalid item id is.

I define a valid item id as one that is returned by /v2/items, otherwise it is invalid because it would not represent any known valid item.

Therefore /v2/commerce does not get to contradict /v2/items and redefine that 18753 is not a valid item id when /v2/items already says that it is. /v2/commerce can say that item id 18753 is “not found” (i.e. status 404) in its commerce database.

StevenL.3761:

You seem to be under the impression that an item will not appear in /v2/commerce unless it has outstanding buy or sell offers.

Nope. My impression is that calling an item id as ‘invalid’ if they are not traded is wrong.

There are many valid items, with valid item ids, that can’t be traded.

Furthermore, a good service conveys as much pertinent information to the client as it can. Differentiating between an invalid item id (e.g. the string “RE78y63”) and a valid item that is not found in the trading post (e.g. the item id string “18753”) would be a start.

StevenL.3761:

valid ids: https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/prices
invalid ids: https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items unless also on the /v2/commerce list

That is one interpretation. My interpretation is that /v2/items defines what a valid item and its id is, not /v2/commerce.

StevenL.3761:

HTTP 404 doesn’t exclude the possibility of the item being listed at a later time. Why are you including /v2/item IDs in your request for /v2/commerce endpoints?

404 just means that the item is “not found” in the database, in this case the commerce or TP database.

If you don’t include /v2/item IDs then how would your app know the names of the items and their stats just from the /v2/commerce endpoints?

Also, how would you search for the prices of all the armor, for example?

StevenL.3761:

HTTP 404 doesn’t exclude the possibility of the item being listed at a later time. Why are you including /v2/item IDs in your request for /v2/commerce endpoints?

There are only two categories:

• valid: ids returned by the /v2/commerce/prices endpoint
• invalid: everything else

With that definition, then /v2/items is returning some invalid item ids as these items are not traded and not returned by /v2/commerce.

However, with 404, I am saying these item ids are valid because they are returned by /v2/items but they just “not found” in /v2/commerce.

StevenL.3761:

Items that have the “AccountBound” flag can never appear on the trading post, so 404 would be less accurate than 400.

AysonCurrax.3254:

StevenL.3761:

Items that have the “AccountBound” flag can never appear on the trading post, so 404 would be less accurate than 400.

Also, its Dungeon Armor :P

Then they are “not found” on the trading post and thus should be 404. The item ids are valid, just not traded.

10823567815618, “hello” or even the string “^IFuihrqwudo3”, however, would not be a valid item id and I correctly get 400 back. I just don’t consider 18753 to be of the same category. But since they both return 400, my code has to handle them the same way regardless of whether they are not traded or truly invalid.

Looks like some valid item ids are flagged as invalid?

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/prices?ids=18753

returns http status of 400 with:

{"text":“all ids provided are invalid”}

This is a valid item id:

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?id=18753

If they are just not being sold on the TP, shouldn’t it be returning 404 instead? Same with these ids around the same range:

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/prices?ids=18117,18118,18119,18120,18121,18122,18123,18125,18126,18127,18128,18129,18130,18131,18132,18133,18134,18135,18136,18137,18138,18139,18140,18141,18142,18143,18144,18145,18146,18147,18148,18149,18150,18151,18152,18153,18154,18155,18156,18157,18158,18159,18160,18161,18162,18163,18164,18165,18166,18167,18428,18429,18430,18431,18432,18433,18434,18435,18436,18437,18438,18439,18440,18441,18442,18443,18444,18445,18446,18447,18448,18449,18450,18451,18452,18453,18454,18455,18456,18457,18458,18459,18460,18461,18462,18463,18576,18577,18578,18579,18580,18581,18582,18583,18584,18585,18586,18587,18588,18589,18590,18591,18592,18593,18594,18595,18596,18597,18598,18599,18600,18601,18602,18603,18604,18605,18606,18607,18608,18609,18610,18611,18724,18725,18726,18727,18728,18729,18730,18731,18732,18733,18734,18735,18736,18737,18739,18740,18742,18743,18744,18745,18746,18748,18749,18750,18751,18752,18753,18754,18755

Remfin.4892:

Azure WebJob to download database, generate deltas: free
Azure Storage: pennies
1MB/day per mobile client in updates (probably a higher number than reality), free tiers proxying around your Azure storage (avoid Azure bandwidth charges):
AppHarbor: 3000 clients
Heroku: 60000 clients

Offline, in-app searchable database that is never more than two hours out of date for 30MB/transfer a month for the mobile user.

The hard part is about building the app, not paying money to host it.

Alright if you say that it is very easy and cheap, so are you volunteering to host it and share out the searchable data to the community?

You can start out with gw2spidy open source, since gw2spidy api provides search functionality, and update it for the v2 API then release the PHP source so that others can also distribute the content. Drakie (gw2spidy owner) and many others would probably be grateful to you for helping him out to revive gw2spidy and you save ArenaNet that work of incorporating search in their api too.

If you can do all that then I would have no choice but to agree with you that setting and hosting it is easy and cheap. It is always easy and cheap when somebody else is doing the work and paying for it at the same time.

Remfin.4892:

As to the rest…I’m simply saying there are ways to work around whatever challenges. And you hardly need to pay money to serve files on the web from a known location (and I don’t mean file sharing services). Even with a paid option (going over the free limits) you’re talking at most dollars a month for such a thing.

Yes yes, I know, if you try hard enough and you are not that poor, you can write a mobile app for it, setup your own database web api service, religiously syncs up your database upon new items, and pay the monthly bills, etc., if ArenaNet decides not to provide you with a search functionality.

I hate it, but If that is the expected cost of developing mobile apps with a search functionality then so be it…

Pat Cavit.9234:

Remfin.4892:

If you’re following the link from this forum, it looks like their exit page escapes ampersands in URLs no matter what you do. Paste the URL directly into your browser and you’ll see the 300 page size blows up: "{"text":“page_size out of range. Use page_size values 1 – 200.”}"

Yup, forums has a link encoding bug and is breaking multiple query params. I’ve verified w/ every link posted so far (after fixing) that all the headers are correct.

Yes that must have been the issue. I apologize for the scare.

Remfin.4892:

300 is an invalid page size; it’s probably substituting in the default.

I’m not sure why you would MD5 item data since AFAIK build+id+lang represents a unique piece of unchanging data; just replace it.

There are other paths to take on mobile, such as a server compiling daily snapshots of the DB to download compressed, detecting when on wifi and updating then, etc.

I think the real problem on mobile would be the risk of ANet breaking your app because your object model couldn’t handle some new item.

I see the same results for 200.

Then you incur secondary cost just to release a free app. You can pass the cost to your users instead, but that is not a good long term plan either. ArenaNet already has such a server, it doesn’t make sense for developers to have to host their own just to support their mobile apps.

Remfin.4892:

DarkSpirit.7046:

50 to 30 minutes is still too long for a user to wait while the app refreshes its local database, not mentioning mobile apps which would probably take longer and incur a ton of network traffic should the user specify a search for something that is not in its local database and the app decides to refresh it.

It should not take remotely 30-50 minutes on a PC, and it’s not that much data. My program pulls it down in 5-20 seconds (for one language, depending on how my connection is at the time), and the JSON is only 22meg (it’s a lot smaller when gzipped, although I can’t measure that currently).

Mobile may be a different story, but you just have to be smarter about it. But considering how (in)frequent builds are, those numbers aren’t out of the realm of possibility for mobile either.

Well unfortunately, I am thinking of a mobile app and I don’t think it is fair to expect developers to update their apps immediately after a new build.

In other words, you can expect weeks or months before the app is updated meaning that the new Halloween items would not be searchable until Halloween is over, if the search has to rely on a static local database within the device. Pulling in a huge amount of data through the cellular network and parsing it would be detrimental to the data plans of many users, not to mention how slow it is going to be and all this while displaying a busy cursor prompting the user to wait. That is just bad design coupled with terrible user experience.

Pat Cavit.9234:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Pat Cavit.9234:

Hey folks, we’ve just enabled /v2/items. Documentation isn’t quite ready yet but I’ll be talking to poke and we’ll go from there.

Querying it is identical to the other /v2 APIs.

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items/12138
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?page=0
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?page=1&page_size=200
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?ids=12138,57

By the way, your page_size parameter seems to be ignored. X-Page-Size always return 50 when specifying pages.

RedBot and my browser agree that it’s fine.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Language: en
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Link: </v2/items?page=0&page_size=200>; rel=previous,
</v2/items?page=2&page_size=200>; rel=next,
</v2/items?page=1&page_size=200>; rel=self,
</v2/items?page=0&page_size=200>; rel=first,
</v2/items?page=195&page_size=200>; rel=last
X-Page-Total: 196
X-Page-Size: 200
X-Result-Total: 39108
X-Result-Count: 200
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 18:15:06 GMT
Content-Length: 8706

Looks right to me.

Really? Perhaps I misunderstood the syntax. Can someone else verify this?

URL: https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?page=2&page_size=300

Fiddler:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Language: en
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Link: </v2/items?page=1&page_size=50>; rel=previous, </v2/items?page=3&page_size=50>; rel=next, </v2/items?page=2&page_size=50>; rel=self, </v2/items?page=0&page_size=50>; rel=first, </v2/items?page=782&page_size=50>; rel=last
X-Page-Total: 783
X-Page-Size: 50
X-Result-Total: 39111
X-Result-Count: 50
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 01:34:54 GMT
Content-Length: 27415

Dr Ishmael.9685:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Are there plans to add a “Search” functionality to the items or commerce api?

Getting the item record only through its id is too limiting as items in the game gets added faster than we can update our apps.

My database program takes 50 minutes to scrape the entire items API. And that’s on the slow end – Smiley’s takes less than 30 minutes (IIRC).

AND that’s only necessary for the first run after a new build – after that, you just need to diff the item ID list from /v2/items against the IDs in your database and grab the new items (changes to existing items can only occur with a new build).

That is not applicable for all situations unless you are volunteering to host your database on the internet for all our mobile/pc applications to access plus promise to keep it up to date as frequently as possible for free. I am only kidding of course, third party data providers do exist (e.g. gw2spidy). But in my opinion, relying on third party providers api is not a good long term solution. Just look at how outdated gw2spidy database is right now.

50 to 30 minutes is still too long for a user to wait while the app refreshes its local database, not mentioning mobile apps which would probably take longer and incur a ton of network traffic should the user specify a search for something that is not in its local database and the app decides to refresh it.

Pat Cavit.9234:

Hey folks, we’ve just enabled /v2/items. Documentation isn’t quite ready yet but I’ll be talking to poke and we’ll go from there.

Querying it is identical to the other /v2 APIs.

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items/12138
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?page=0
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?page=1&page_size=200
https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/items?ids=12138,57

By the way, your page_size parameter seems to be ignored. X-Page-Size always return 50 when specifying pages.

Are there plans to add a “Search” functionality to the items or commerce api?

Getting the item record only through its id is too limiting as items in the game gets added faster than we can update our apps.

Thanks everyone, after reading your replies I believe that most people buy their desired precursors from the TP and I agree with your analysis.

azizul.8469:

DarkSpirit.7046:

I don’t see what is wrong with buying gems. If not for the people who actually bought gems with real money, ArenaNet wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

You either spend your time farming mindlessly in the game or you spend it earning real money. The latter option earns you more gold over the same amount of time if you ask me so it makes better sense where gold farming is concerned.

except that not all countries have the similar wage system as in the USA, and their pay may not be as high… so these players opt to earn their gold by farming mindlessly like you said…

Sure if you get better returns by farming mindlessly then by all means. Minimum wage in Seattle, Washington where I live is $15/hour so does it make sense for us to farm mindlessly for gold? Probably not.

@Ameepa: Farming in the game is work to me because I would be forced to grind as I would be doing something that I dislike doing in the game.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

edit
@darkspirit gold is actually quite easy to come by in game, especially if you play a lot. daily achievements could net you a gold
a single dungeon path per day would guarantee a gold + tokens which can be turned into gold and a chance at decent loot that could also be turned into gold
flipping things on the tp is not a hard thing to figure out if you put in the time that will also make you heaps.

dont be so cynical just because your efforts have presumably come up short

I don’t see what is wrong with buying gems. If not for the people who actually bought gems with real money, ArenaNet wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

You either spend your time farming mindlessly in the game or you spend it earning real money. The latter option earns you more gold over the same amount of time if you ask me so it makes better sense where gold farming is concerned.

I guess that must have cost a lot of gems.

What do you think? And if you own or used to own a precursor, did you buy it from the TP?

I was surprised that Wooden Potatoes bought all his precursors. Is that the most common way of acquiring them?

Does anyone have problems navigating to the star of their personal story in the Black Citadel? That has to be the most poorly designed racial town in the game ever since release!

There are no levels, everything is thrown together onto a single flat map but in actuality there are many levels, so you are left with the confusing tasks of interpreting something on the flat map with its actual level in 3-d space.

I felt compelled to explain to my friend that the reason charrs hunch is because they spend too much time running up and down the black citadel, and staring at the map trying to figure out where anything is!

I wasn’t referring to you. But yes, at least PvE map completion is accumulative regardless of the time you play, even when you only have 2 hours/day to play in a low population server. WvW on the other hand, seems to be RNG to players in my circumstances.

khani.4786:

I now have all 13 of my characters fully mapped in WvW thanks to the easy week we’re having. I almost feel sorry for Mags and FA……but then I don’t because I got killed plenty while trying to map (and killed plenty myself).

That’s the problem with this thread. People belonging to active WvW servers are here giving advice on how easy it has to be for everybody. When they are not realizing that there are servers out there with low population that are not active in WvW plus there are players out there belonging to these servers, who do not have that much time to play due to real life responsibilities to begin with.

Phantasmal.5631:

And to the person who doesn’t believe that I captured SM on ET, that is fine. You can believe whatever you want, but it did happen. Heck you can ask people on ET that SM does indeed get captured from time to time and is NOT an impossible feat like people make it out to be.

Sure SM does get captured from time to time, just not by my server. Unless you have a concrete plan on how just 1 player, with only 2 hours to play each day due to real life responsibilities, can change his entire server to be a WvW god, I suggest you stop giving such advice.

Phantasmal.5631:

Let’s be honest. The people complaining on here are truly here for Gift of Exploration for LEGENDARY item crafting with fairly easy WvW completion to get. I’ve been on Eredon Terrace (The worst and consistently the LOWEST ranking NA server in WvW) where it has been difficult to get SM and I got it in 2 days.

I don’t believe you. Most people who got it in that time frame use server transfers.

Spiderbite.8049:

I hate the PvP in this game, which includes WvW.

However, to get the full achievement, I am perfectly willing to grit my teeth and get ‘er dun.
-everyone else had to
-you’re not exploring the whole world unless you explore the whole world

*—jumping puzzles should be added to map completion requirement as well.

Well if you want to be technical about it, WvW is not a part of the world of Tyria, it is in the Mist.

aerial.7021:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC2SaX45eV4

Just watch an old’ish video about it from wooden potatos interesting listen.

Yes that is a very fair analysis from him and I continue to watch him answer the question of the best way for getting precursor I was a little surprised that he got all his precursors from the TP!

This leads me to think that the acquisition of legendary in the game has a lot to do with either buying gems (for gold to buy precursors or server transfers), OR RNG (waiting for that garrison to flip colors in WvW so you can map complete or waiting for MF to drop that precursor that you need). It is like “yay awesome now I deserve that legendary because the garrison suddenly flipped or yay awesome now I deserve that legendary because of my dumb luck at the MF!” Both cases don’t feel all that “legendary” at all.