Guild Wars 2

This past week, the blue side has been seriously and consistently outnumbered when I play. I know that happens sometimes but I can’t figure out if I’m just ending up on a low population overflow while others are on a “full” server or if Blue is just that disinterested.

I don’t think load balancing the population is really the answer but it has been frustrating.

Even though the foods do seem expensive, Anet did introduce a gem store item to make any food last 24 hours.

I had some drop in a BLC but found that they can be bugged and were not always extending the time of my food but I’m guessing a lot of people have received a Metabolic Primer in a daily or a chest – these new foods might be good justification for that item.

I got the Zephyr pack in the gem store last night (because just the 15 keys alone for 1000gems was great) and I ended up with one of these items.

It’s sitting in my bank because I have all of the non event dyes unlocked.

I didn’t realize that some red dyes were worth up to 2+ gold.

I took it to mean – if you’re going to take the inherent PVP aspect out of it, why not go all the way and just have Anet handle all of it on our behalf.

Zenguy.6421:

Wanze,

Sorry if I missed it, but I don’t think you’ve answered my suggestion for Anet to take over flipping on the TP.

Anet could do the flipping far more efficiently than we can (always on-line, instant access to full market information, unrestricted ability to execute trades, able to sustain flipping at margins less than 15%, etc.) and instead of siphoning gold to a small portion of the player base, this would act as an even bigger gold sink than the 15% trading fees on their own, thereby further reducing inflation.

This seems to achieve everything you want from your proposal and does so in a way that increases (rather than decreases) the rate and efficiency of trades in the market (plus it acts as as even bigger gold sink with the corresponding deflationary benefits).

I’m struggling to see how your proposal would be better than that.

Your thoughts on this please, Wanze.

Yes, in this age of technology and automation, why not let robots take over the whole process of playing the TP and just do it on our behalf, distributing the profits fairly among everyone.

This has potential.

Buttercup.5871:

Did you even read his proposal or the elaborate explanations he has given on many complex questions? If you provide no basis for your assumptions (shortages + fewer people

participating as a result of a white karma tax) they can simply be ignored. I’m not saying that to be rude, but perhaps you don’t see you’re shooting yourself in the foot by

not providing a more careful analysis for your very broad assumptions.

Yes, I’ve read it.

It’s hard to take seriously because it’s transparently self serving, it’s goals are dubious and it’s ability to achieve the stated goals is completely unproven and equally dubious.

" if the wealth disparity gets too big, chances are higher that those rich players start to become Real Money Traders, which is not good for the game at all."

Make no mistake, the primary goal of this scheme is to curtail the ability of players to become wealthy and to make profit. The justification is that “bad things might happen” if people become “too wealthy”. Those bad things include “Real Money Trading” – which seems like an add-on to get the developers attention.

Equating the means to break the rules with the motive to break the rules has always been the argument of the tyrant. "We can’t let people be too free because they might become criminals – better to keep them locked up so they don’t do something that would cause them to end up in prison.

I’m not buying it at all. If someone wants to engage in illicit RMT, they don’t need to first become a successful TP player any more than an embezzler first needs to get a degree in accounting.

Imposing burdens on everyone to possibly reduce the illicit behavior of a very small minority of people is not OK. If you’re worried about RMT, go after RMT directly.

“A fundamental aspect of taking profits off the TP is acquiring items on buy orders. So in order to limit profits each individual can pick up, we need to limit the value (note: not quantity) of items that can be purchased through buy orders.”

To me, this is where the OP gives the game away. This is the abolution of consumer consent and the revocation of your power to set the prices of the goods you wish to sell.

This mentality enshrines the right of first seller to hold, as if it were land claimed, the price point of the items he wishes to sell.

I reject this mentality in whole and any policy supporting it because the market must have free consent from both the buyer and the seller and there must be room for competition.

What more could a TP power seller possibly want than to remove or inhibit your ability to easily place a buy order? Why, the alternative is that you must accept his selling price. Why?

Why is that seller price somehow more worthy of protection than the buying price? We are all equals here and we are all buyers and sellers. (Except that most people do a lot more buying than they do selling so giving even a small degree of protection to the sell price will significantly empower a dedicated trader)

“The karma tax will introduce a new market force that will help to spread the profits obtained from trading (no matter from who) more evenly over the whole player base, no matter which content they enjoy most. "

This is the most objectionable part of the proposal. First, because it’s blatantly ideological and second because it assumes that all current behavior will continue exactly as it would otherwise. This is demonstrably false – whenever you change tax rates, people adjust their behavior and move toward the thing that grants them the most utility – often they end up working less to recover more time (raising taxes makes time more valuable in relation to money)

All of these proposals distort the market. Most of the people who propose them have a specific angle and the term for this is “rent seeking”. It means petitioning the ruling powers to implement a law or regulation that tilts the playing field in their favor. You will often see large companies backing proposals to raise regulatory burdens (for the people – of course) because proportionally, it hits small, insurgent competitors much harder than it hits them and it buys them good PR with people who don’t understand economics.

This is the worst idea proposal I have ever heard for this game.

If I were an actual citizen of Tyria and you got anywhere near implementing this, I would raise an insurrection and there would be war.

A constraint on the ability of anyone to engage in commerce is distortion of the market. You will have fewer people participating which will mean shortages which actually makes the market easier for fewer people to control.

I don’t care if you’re a trader or a flipper or whatever – this is a horrible idea and it will only help power traders and hurt casual TP users.

You guys are right of course – having multiple anonymous instances that you cannot easily, intentionally join makes an API state call very difficult.

There are a couple additional artifacts of the new system that compound the problem:

My World Map can no longer be trusted.

We used to be able to look at our world map and see when a temple or waypoint was contested. The interface is designed for a server based system which we no longer live in; we can no longer trust the game state as indicated by our world map because the game is a mesh of unnamed parallel universes. I love that there are always people in Orr but I think the map functionality needs to be fundamentally re imagined.

If we can’t trust the contested/open indicators then why have them?

Before the Megaserver update, it was possible to use one of the many API connected websites to see the status of the temples on your server and other servers.

However, in the last few months, these websites no longer work because of some sort of change in the API.

This makes it extraordinarily difficult to engage in a temple event except by luck – this is made even more frustrating by the fact that you need some of these events to unlock certain traits.

I was able to do several events a few days ago by basically camping out in Orr and once I found an event and did it on one character, I would start looking for the temple event to recur about 2 hours later. Not something normal players are likely to enjoy.

What I don’t understand is why Anet can’t have some kind of temple state calls in the API – let websites ask when the temple was last cleansed or when it’s predicted to be contested, etc.

Is this something that will be part of the new API once it is implemented?

I’m also curious if anyone has any techniques for catching these events?

Thanks

If you really want to see something look up the “Keepers” (Ascended Zealot stats) recepies on the TP.

60g buys you the recepie for the Staff…

Looks like 200-250g just to learn how to make a suit of heavy armor….

I played GW1 since the public beta and really enjoyed the UW Speed Clear scene for the first couple years when that was a thing.

The thing was, you had to run a specific build and you had to ping your build and if you had a strange build that you “made up yourself, but I’m sure it will work guys” you didn’t get in to a group. As much as that was necessary at the time due to the cost of a run and the extreme ease of making a minor mistake that resulted in the ejection of everyone, I don’t think that would be great for GW2.

When Fractals started to take off, higher level fractal runners would immediately make you ping your ascended gear. As more people acquired AR and learned the fractals, we saw less of this.

The reason we don’t see a lot of it is because there is no way to sure that the item someone is pinging is an item they own. We’ve all seen someone ping 5 Twilights or something else equally silly because while you could have made 5 Twilights, it’s more likely that you pasted the chat code 5 times.

First: I think it’s an important design decision to decide whether to main this same level of ambiguity when sharing your build: “Here is a build, I may be running it, I may be not – but you can’t be certain”

Maintaining that ambiguity will discourage but not prevent gear/build checks. The fact that we’re not locked into a build at any time outside of PvP means that builds can always change when you’re out of combat so it can’t be used as a proxy for competence.

Second: I think I would like to see a template slot system implemented first since that is probably a relatively simple implementation. Give us 2-3 slots that we can use to define a trait build and a way to swap them and visually see which one we’re using while we’re playing. That, in my opinion, would solve about 65% of the problem since most people probably use just a few builds that they switch between. The sharing and saving and cataloging features are all nice, but I think those should be a second phase.

Third: I think you need to work on the Hero UI. I don’t think it should ever default to wardrobe since that is going to be the least used section. When I open that hero panel, most of the time, I’m probably wanting to swap a weapon or other piece of gear, not transmute something.

Fourth: I think you need to distinguish between in combat weapon swapping and convenient weapon grouping. Elementalists have long asked for a second weapon group that could be switched only when out of combat. Really, all classes need something like this.

You could either create reserve weapon slots that can be quickly switched into the active space when out of combat (perhaps with a channeling timer or a cool down)

You could also just enable better filters on the gear selection screen. Give me some radio buttons so I can display only Exotic and Ascended gear and/or a filter for Soulbound and Account Bound items. There is no reason I should see 8 green/blue items when I right click a weapon slot when almost all of my weapons are Ascended save for a couple exotics.

Fourth and a half: I should first see a simple, easily recognizable icon telling me what kind of weapon I can select, followed by the description. It gets silly when all of your weapons start with the same prefix. Let me see a Pink Great Sword Icon and a Pink Staff Icon and then include the text after that. Most distinguishing information first please.

Fifth: I’m sure you thought of this already but make sure that when you do implement your sharing and saving system that you include room in the data structures for expansion.

Thanks,

Most gifts are account bound after you make them so it’s probably not practical to have someone make this for you.

According to http://www.gw2crafts.net/artificing.html you can become an Artificer 400 crafter for well under 10g

If you use their fast guide, it’s very fast and only about 1g more.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Facepunch.5710:

It would be awesome if ANet would create a courtesy pop-up box for people making mistakes of this caliber.
……

There IS a popup when salvaging ANYTHING RARE or higher…..the fact that people click past warnings without thought is NOT something Anet can (or, IMO, should) fix.

I disagree.

I think we should be able to put some kind of lock on our characters and soul bound items. If my account got hacked, a lot of my secondary characters are in exotics and those could be salvaged for ecto and my Ascended stuff could be sold to a merchant for gold.

I would like to be able to add a 72 hour time lock to character deletion and stuff like that to make it harder for a hacker to burn down everything I’ve created.

I got hacked in GW1 and lost two sets of Obsidian Armor (basically legendary armor in that game) Vabbi Armor and tons of other stuff – the sad thing is that armor that cost me over 1 million platinum probably netted someone about 30-50Platinum in salvaged mats. It’s like those idiots that destroy a $3000 air conditioner for $30 in copper parts – grrr.

If I could have made all that stuff permanent, I would have. That would be a great feature for people in the “never delete a character” club.

I think what everyone is overlooking is that even if you had stat-swappable armor, you’re going to be held back by having the same runes.

Runes have a very big impact on how your armor behaves and what builds it is optimized for. Sure it would be nice to dial in some toughness or healing power, but if you only have one set of Runes, you’re a bit hobbled – especially in light of just how much such armor is likely to cost to make.

Unless they introduce some other unforseen feature, I would much rather have 2-3 suits of Ascended armor with different stats and complimentary runes. My next set of armor will probably be PTV with Soldier runes (or is it Trooper now?)

I wouldn’t put those on DPS armor and I wouldn’t put DPS runes on tanky armor so there is no way I would go for Legendary Armor if it follows the same model as the weapons do currently.

I made most of the money to make my Juggernaut from crafting as a Tailor.

I personally see skins and items as distinct. If I can craft an item, I don’t care what it looks like because if it’s something I will use regularly, I’m probably going to transmute it.

Also, at least for weapons, there are items you can craft with better skins, but they are cost/item gated, not crafting skill or experience gated.

As annoying as whisper spam can be and as severe as I would like to punish them, I like legit players being able to whisper me.

I recently got a very nice message from an opposing player after a round of spvp and we had a nice conversation. I sometimes get compliments on my character and I also sometimes like to whisper people who ask for help.

If you put some kind of captcha on whispers, almost all of that will just stop and the game will be worse off for it.

One thing I would like to see is that if you block someone, their messages disappear from your chat window.

Better yet, there should be a blockedd chat channel – you turn it off of course, but once you block someone, they get added to that channel on your client and their chats basically become invisible – unless you need to see it for some reason.

Simply reporting and blocking is good, but it does not remove the offending text and it’s annoying to have to sit and look at it. Placing people into this invisible blocked channel would really help players and help hinder those who abuse the feature.

Cooking is a really cheap 7 levels – it’s usually about 2g.

This is what I did for my Ranger, Warrior and now Necro:

Stack as many XP boosters as you can:
1. Birthday
2. XP Booster
3. Laurel Booster
4. Food
5. Potion
6. Banner/Guild
*7. Killstreak Booster

I’ve made the killstreak booster last over 2 hours – it helps a LOT but you need to be in a zone where you can kill things quickly without having to rest or without any chance of being killed. It’s best to get comfortable with a zone before you pop one of these – make sure you know the area and there are enough mobs that you can keep moving without any dead spots that will make you lose the booster. (you need a kill every 30 seconds)

You get decent XP for the killing the mob, but the gravy comes from killing mobs that have been alive a long time. You need to look off the beaten path to find these areas, but it’s not that hard. You will get 3-5 times the XP by killing these “old timers” compares to mobs that just spawned.

If you can get all those boosters and find a good area, you can get an easy 5 levels per hour. It can be monotonous and it’s probably not worth it unless you can stack nearly all of those boosters for maximum effect.

Edit: I would not try this until you are about level 30. I would also try to stack power in your weapons and armor and ideally a perma speed boost and some emergency skills in case you get in trouble. Farm an area where you are at least 2 levels above most of the mobs.

I run all pink and purple gear on my main, but I don’t play my other level 80s enough to worry about it too much.

It’s nice to have all the crafting disciplines leveled as some items can be made cheaper with Elonian Leather than they can with Damask or DSteel.

I’ll probably make the mace and trident I still need for my Guardian and then slowly make primary weapons for the others as I acquire the materials

You can make about 40 laurels per month. I’ve made a full set of heavy armor and about 5 weapons and if Laurels are the only thing holding you back, then I salute you.

For me, it’s usually Dragonite/Empy.

While you could make weapons and armor for every character, you might consider the flexibility of them being account bound and start with the items you can use on your favorite characters. It’s mildly inconvenient to move the gear around but as long as you’re not doing it every hour or so, it’s not bad.

I made Volcanus about a year ago after finishing Juggernaut. While I do see a few more than I used to, it’s still fairly rare and while there are a few other “fire-ish” swords, I don’t think any of them look as nice.

Now that you can re-use the skins for other characters, there has never been a better time to make one!

When I was making mine, I would just farm Orr or dungeons or FotM and whenever I made enough for a lodestone, I would buy it and stash it in the bank.

Charak.9761:

Dreamslayer.7659:

I made a set of Assassin stat Ascended armor a few weeks before they announced the change in crit damage.

I have all Ascended Zerker trinkets and Zerker weapons, but I don’t have a good sense of the current difference now between Zerker and Assassin.

Is anyone else in a similar situation?

its not worth trading power for crit

Assassins trades power for precision – the difference was very slight, but I’m not sure how it is now.

I made a set of Assassin stat Ascended armor a few weeks before they announced the change in crit damage.

I have all Ascended Zerker trinkets and Zerker weapons, but I don’t have a good sense of the current difference now between Zerker and Assassin.

Is anyone else in a similar situation?

I attached a pic of my stats (all traits refunded)

This always happens when they roll over the BL weapon skins – nothing sneaky about it and they are giving fair warning.

I bought the GreatSword and was a little regretful at how it looked on my Guardian – I was very happy to hear about the wardrobe system so I’ll be able to use that skin on my other characters.

I decided to get the Shield too.

ODB.6891:

DHK.8406:

The problem is simple, it is not complicated, it does not take pages to explain. It can be summed up in once sentance.

In PvE if you learn to dodge, you can survive any encounter in the entire game regardless of gear and/or traits.

So if you dont need toughness, or vitality, or healing to survive they instantly become useless stats and you are left with only berserker.

Which is why I keep saying that non zerker gear sets should never have been a part of pve. The game/combat system simply wasn’t designed around them in pve. Pvp is an entirely different matter though. The simple solution…reduce pve to one gear set. Add training wheels for our current trinity huggers by increasing base survival stats as needed per class. Make all other gear sets only equippable in pvp. Problem solved.

I agree with you conceptually – my first character was an Elementalist and I gave up after a few months of trying condition stat items and being frustrated at my killing ability and survivability (especially compared to the impressively flexible range of the Ele in GW1)

I the rolled a Guardian and focused on a more bunker build (as many did and some still do). I got my PVT Armor but had trouble tagging mobs and in Orr, I could not always kill things fast enough for comfort.

It was almost unthinkable to go full Berserker, but I did it and like almost everyone else, I never looked back.

I don’t understand why it took me 3 months to do that and why it wasn’t more obvious. Even now, I talk to leveling Guardians in my guild and they really don’t believe me that a Guardian will PVE best in DPS gear – it just goes against every RPG trope you’ve ever learned but once the light comes on and you understand that the meta is not Attrition Warfare but something more like Shock and Awe – pushing the attack and getting inside the enemy’s OODA loop (look it up) – as frail a thing as that is in an AI creature.

I think builds and maybe gear should focus more on the type and style of DPS – condition, sustained, spike, etc. We should be able to shift toward a more dodge based style or a more block/reflect style – perhaps choosing slower, more powerful attacks, or rapid strikes.

Do all greatswords really need to hit the same way? Why not have a weapon meta where we we can either choose a more heavy/light weapon in a class or shift the way we use it?

The DPS/zerker meta is an enjoyable play style, but I think it needs more options and specializations.

Part of the problem with “play how you want” is that build flexibility is significantly and artificially inhibited.

GW1 was actually like this for a very brief time – you had to earn some sort of “play points” or something to respec your character. It was only a month or two after release that they allowed you to assign your skill points freely between instances.

Because of the number of skills and the dual professions, the meta was always changing and creative builds were always emerging.

The simplified nature of GW2 and the lack of build flexibility pushes players to specialize in a specific meta rather than just loading a template and swapping your gear (which should also have templates).

I had dozens and dozens of templates for my GW1 Elementalist (nuker, terra tank, perma shadow form, etc) but my GW2 Guardian runs DPS only and always because as much as I’d like to play around with some builds, the game makes it a hassle and there really is no point.

GW1 had so much variety in zones that you had to carefully outfit your character to go to Underworld or Fissure of Woe or to run certain missions. There was no one build that worked equally well in every area and part of the fun was working out the kinks and trying to refine things until your build was as good as it can be.

There is almost nothing in the PVE content that challenges a zerker Guardian, and if there is, I can swap around some gear and take care of it.

We need more creative enemies – just off the top of my head:

1. Mobs that are healed by critical hits but very vulnerable to conditions.
2. Swarm style encounters where “death by a thousand cuts” is a threat that an Aegis won’t counter effectively.
3. Mob teams that remove blind and use CC and conditions against players.

Also:

1. Why is endurance ONLY used for dodging? There should be more ways to gain it, and more ways to lose it and it should be useful for at least one or two other things.

2. Why should Aegis absorb all damage? GW1 had skills that would limit an attack to 10% of your health. Maybe clipping spike damage would be better than blocking all damage.

3. Why does retaliation only reflect 33% of the damage? This should scale with perhaps Toughness and Power or Healing – perhaps Healing makes Retaliation heal you, Power makes it damage the enemy and Toughness makes it absorb damage – all at the same time based on how much you invest in each stat.

Lamir.6702:

So after people have gone out and bought ascended armor and weapons for their characters best possible builds, Anet now wants to change the meta completely? That’s completely unfair.

I just completed my Ascended (Assassin) Armor on my Guardiakittengnificant expense.

After making an Ascended (Berserker):
Staff
Scepter
Focus
Sword
Greatsword

So yeah, just shake up the meta, I can just do it all over again.

My first post patch level 30 run was incredibly frustrating and took forever – I left at the end boss because I was physically exhausted after nearly 2 hours (due to being mildly ill).

I had very high hopes that many of the little details would be addressed and the overall quality of life would be improved for those who enjoy Fractals.

My disappointed started during the dev live event on twitch.tv – it was overall very good, but they admitted that there were no titles for fractals and no new uses for Pristine Relics.

How is there a title called “Volunteer” (which was so easy, half the people who have it probably attained it by accident) and yet there is no title for completing all the fractal achievements or hitting Fractal 50+?

Those of us who ran fractals regularly are swimming in ascended rings and we held on to them hoping they may have some other use (like salvage for ascended material) – yet, not only do they have no other uses, this is still only use for Pristine Relics – why?

So no title for some of the most difficult PVE content in the game, and no compensation for those who reached the highest levels before the patch and no new reward for one of the most pointless tokens in the game.

But at least we can get a fractal weapon chest – that will more than make up for the 17+ fractal weapons I received – none of which I could use on my Guardian.

Yeah, that chest will be pretty sweet.

Someday.

I’m disappointed because this was the part of the game I actually loved, but now it’s unrecognizable and – I hate to say this, I truly do but it feels to me like the update was designed by someone who just didn’t “get” fractals – it feels like a missed opportunity.

I believe the infusions drop in larger denominations at higher levels – if that is true, it would help.

A lot.

The best thing about Legendary Weapons is their unique ability to change their stat group while out of combat.

Before I made the Juggernaut, I used to carry 2-3 different hammers – all Berzerker stat, but I had one with a Dredge sigil (fractals), one with a Sigil of Speed (for farming) and another that I would change from time to time while I tried to find the ideal sigil.

Once I built the Juggernaut, I figured that the stat selection would be so useful that I wouldn’t need more than one hammer and in one sense, this is true – I alternate between Berzerker for maximum damage and Magi when I want a bit more healing out of the symbols.

I’m currently using the Sigil of Energy which refreshes your endurance after every kill – I’d like to try more sigils, but here is the problem:

1. The “vs. X monster” sigils are very inexpensive and offer high utility under very specific conditions. There are so many of these on the market and their cost is so low that you could easily buy a stack of the ones you need and alternate them as necessary.

2. While continually swapping the “vs” style sigils might be an effective strategy in dungeons and fractals, there are times when you may want to add a more valuable sigil – however once you do this, there is no practical way to recover it for future use. A Transmutation Splitter would work, but it costs many times more than almost any sigil out there.

3. If you would like to have more flexibility, you can carry two weapons (as I used to do) and use your two favorite sigils, or use one weapon with a permanent sigil and the other weapon to regularly re-apply your inexpensive “vs. X” and similar mods as you prefer.

So while it is possible to utilize multiple weapons and multiple sigils to achieve flexibility, this is wildly impractical for all but the most dedicated min/max style players.

One of the major problems is that because the “vs X” weapon mods are so situational and so common, they are rarely used and the market is flooded with them.

My suggestion has two effects:

1. Give players more flexibility in the area of weapon sigils

2. Reinvigorate the oversupplied, underdemanded market for (most) weapon sigils:

Implement Limited Sigil Swapping.

As a starting point, I would propose that:
Exotics Weapons support 4-6 (or possibly not allow this for Exotic tier)
Ascended Weapons support 6-12
Legendary Weapons support 10-20+ (unlimited?)

To add a sigil to your weapon, you would need to acquire 3 of the same sigil, then execute some recipe which would include other items – maybe a gold or ecto sink

After you upgrade/charge/ascend your sigils into some sort of “super sigil” or “sigil essence”, you add it to your weapon and it becomes part of the weapons sigil roster.

This would do a lot of interesting things to the Trading Post and it could spike the market so it might make sense to add some sort of time gating (make it require some of the Ecto refinement?)

It would also allow for some nice customization and give us another dimension of flexibility.

Most people have multiple weapons on multiple characters – how many of them currently use a “10% vs. Krait” sigil right now – not many, but how many people would use them after something like this?

Bismuth.3165:

Fractal Weapons RNG were probably based on “One man’s junk is another man’s gold,” I only have 2 fractal longbows which I don’t need and rarely use, but I read somewhere that a person was farming level 48 fractals for 7 months to get the fractal longbow…

Yes, I have 3 Shortbows, 3 Longbows and 2 Axes that sit there mocking my Guardian.

Then I hear people complain “great! another Staff/Sword/Shield/etc”

Awesome! let’s make a trade – oh wait

There have been rumors that there will be an “upgrade extractor” consumable – this would be very useful if we want to preserve our existing infusion to combine it with a new one…

I would like to know what is happening to our vials/globs/shards – will those materials serve any function at this point?

I would hope we could convert them into infusions…

I don’t always use boosters, but when I do, I get them from Black Lion Chests….

I think that, at the very least, we should be able to forge 3 fractal skins and 5 Pristine Relics to get a chance at another fractal skin.

I also think they should make some “super skins” – like a black or white version or something that only drops at 40+

somsom.5201:

I’ll just say this: no way am I re-leveling 4 characters to 48 again.

#ggnothxkbyenomoregemsfromme

I think you’re focusing too much on the number and not enough on the difficulty level.

In current fractals, the odd levels are basically filler because there is no Maw / chest. In the new fractals, every level will be like the current even levels and 30 is the new 48.

I can understand people who are at 80 being annoyed, but for those of us at 48-58, I don’t think we’re losing a lot.

It looks to me like the new fractal scale is 1 new level = 2.6 old levels.

People are annoyed that weapons will appear at level 10 – well, they currently appear at level 26 but the rate is super low – you have to run 38 and 48 to get consistent weapon skins.

I do think they should make fractal weapons able to be put in the forge – throw in 4 fractal weapon skins and get 1 random skin back. That would at least help those of us with multiple weapons we aren’t able to or interested in using.

I agree – I am only level 52, but it’s very hard to get a group together for progression beyond 48.

There should be, at the very least, a title for people at the highest levels and another one for hitting all the achievements.

Seriously – how is “Volunteer” a title, but doing 500+ fractals is not?

Most of the skins under level 80 are pretty boring because people don’t stay at a level long enough to make it worth investing in a nice skin.

You can buy a higher level weapon and use a transmutation stone or crystal to put the skin on your lower level item.

I did this when I was leveling my Guardian – be careful though, if you want the skin from a level 80 weapon, you need a transmutation crystal which costs more.

I had been lucky enough to get some out of some Black Lion Chests early in the game…

Fractal weapons can currently drop in the mid/high 20s, but it’s super rare.

I got a Fractal Speargun at 28 or 30 a long time ago and it wasn’t until I got into the 40s that I saw another one.

Currently, doing level 48, the drop rate is actually pretty high.

I thought Laurel infusions were for amulets and the agony infusions were either the simple infusion (75 relics) or the super expensive MF combo infusions.

12 globs, 4 vials and 34 shards.
55 Pristine Relics
3100 Fractal Relics (and I just spent 1000+ on shards)

I also made and infused:
Ascended Staff (150 relics)
Ascended Scepter (75 relics)
Ascended Focus (75 relics)
Ascended Sword (75 relics)
Ascended GreatSword (150 relics)
Legendary Hammer + Spear (300 relics)

If I understand correctly, all of those infusions (900 relics) are going away?

The main problem with Fractal rewards has been that the rewards were not designed for consistent players, they were designed for people to dabble a bit, get a couple rings and then do something else.

I really hope there are some retro active rewards and some new uses for people who have put a lot of time into Fractals.

who knew that armor could move so fast at that price?

if it was some sort of arranged buy, you could try to throw one up for 50-100g and they would have to buy it – which is probably why they are using a level 36 white armor – it’s probably not something you could come up with quick enough to do that.

I made it a few weeks back and as posted, you can glitch the aura.

I prefer the spear to the trident but you really only see ghost sharks on (Guardian) skill 2 and skill 5

Skill 2 is your money maker but I think they should have at least made the projectile into a shark for skill 1 or given us sharks on any crit – I think other classes get a little more out of this than Guardians.

Enough that I should be getting a Christmas card and a thank you note from their CFO…

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Wait, are you saying we should all be under the impression that absolutely no players abuse advanced knowledge of game changes and updates because Anet got them to “pinkie promise” not to do so?

Yes. Thanks for agreeing with me.

In what universe is asking a question an indication of agreement?

Behellagh.1468:

If they want to maintain their relationship with Anet, If they value early access to the game content over a quick buck, then yes. Does that mean do I think they are all angels? No. It’s always a temptation but I don’t think it’s as wide spread as implied Dreamslayer. There is a big gap between nobody and “rampant”.

I did not imply anything as to the degree to which this happens, other that to assert that it is something more frequent than “never”.

Most of the posts in this thread amount to people saying “how could we possibly have any insider trading crime when it’s illegal and no victims have come forth to file a complaint?”

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Even if you can’t prove that this sort of insider trading is happening, it would be foolish to operate from the perspective that “since nobody has proved it, it must not happen”.

That’s the opposite of a security mindset and since this is about protecting an economy from people using information to make large gains with little risk, while costing the community as a whole – it should be assumed that it is either happening or could be happening.

If I were in charge of testing new features, I would, when possible, withold some changes while mentioning some false changes.

That could compromise QA to some degree, but I doubt the change in silk was something that really needed to be play tested – or perhaps it’s tested on cotton, then implemented in silk, etc.

There are other things you could do with heuristics but it would be complicated. You can never completely prevent these things, but I think they should take actions to increase risk and reduce the reward and make the whole thing a bit uncertain.

Wait, so what you’re saying is that we players should always be under the impression that the company is allowing others to cheat the system? There isn’t enough tin foil to make a hat that big.

Wait, are you saying we should all be under the impression that absolutely no players abuse advanced knowledge of game changes and updates because Anet got them to “pinkie promise” not to do so?

Even if you can’t prove that this sort of insider trading is happening, it would be foolish to operate from the perspective that “since nobody has proved it, it must not happen”.

That’s the opposite of a security mindset and since this is about protecting an economy from people using information to make large gains with little risk, while costing the community as a whole – it should be assumed that it is either happening or could be happening.

If I were in charge of testing new features, I would, when possible, withold some changes while mentioning some false changes.

That could compromise QA to some degree, but I doubt the change in silk was something that really needed to be play tested – or perhaps it’s tested on cotton, then implemented in silk, etc.

There are other things you could do with heuristics but it would be complicated. You can never completely prevent these things, but I think they should take actions to increase risk and reduce the reward and make the whole thing a bit uncertain.

dbgamer.3407:

Good points Dreamslayer.

Curious though – why could there not be a unique sigil or something for legendary’s only? The idea came from the recent Tequatl sigils that inflict fear – why couldn’t there be a rare sigil that offers Legendary holders a unique skill or proc?

The point of a Legendary is not to give players an advantage or capability that other players can’t access.

Yes, you can say that stat selection is a huge advantage, but other players can carry multiple weapons and since you can’t change weapons or stats in combat, the advantage is purely one of convenience.

Whether it’s PVP or WvW, everyone should have access to the same skills and capabilities so that outcomes do not hinge on the use of exclusive abilities.

As someone who has two legendary weapons, I would be absolutely against having extra stats or abilities that others don’t have – it would create way too many problems.

It’s not going to work to give legendary owners some sort of proc / sigil / capability that others can’t get. Visual effects – yes, actual unique game mechanics, never.

I would like to see other 2H legendary weapons get the Eternity treatment: make 2 of the same type of legendary and form them into a super rare 3rd legendary.

It’s pretty unlikely but I would love having another Legendary Hammer to chase…

As a concession to your “legendary sigil” idea, it would be interesting to allow people to add sigils to their legendary to make the sigil become selectable.

3 of the same sigil plus a clover in the MF and you get a legendary version of that sigil that can then be applied to a legendary weapon and included in the selection function.

That would certainly help clear out the market and create a lot more demand even for the “vs Krait” type sigils that are useful only in narrow situations.

Adding a penalty fee for lowering prices is based on the idea that the TP exists for the benefit of the seller, not the benefit of everyone.

You don’t have a right to sell at the price you want, only the right to post for what you want – if someone else is willing to take less money, then they clearly want the sale more than you do and they are providing a better value to the buyer.

Would you impose an additional 5-10% fee on a buyer who “overcut” the highest bidder? Why not? This buyer is raising the price for everyone and should be discouraged for acting against the interests of other buyers – right?

Corporatist tendencies aside, what I would like to see added is the number of unique sellers of an item at a given price point. If there are 10,000 vanilla beans for a single price, I would like to know if that is 2 or 3 sellers or 20-30 sellers. Of course they still remain anonymous…