Guild Wars 2

Some supporting math to establish perspective. I’m basing this on the chance to not get 0 success results over a given number of trials:
1-(1-p)^attempts

If 10 people complete the event once per day for 7 months (210 days) they are deemed “likely” to have at least one Final Rest.

• A 95% chance would require a 0.14% drop rate.
• A 50% chance would require a 0.033% drop rate.

To compare to major events, lets look at Claw of Jormag:

• 6 times/day
• Average of 30 people (often many more on my server, but my server is full; I welcome community participation to find better numbers, but we’re just estimating for now)
• 180 days of farming to-date
• 51 servers
  This comes out to 1652400 looting attempts.
• At 0.0005%, this is > 99.9% chance of at least one.
• At 0.0000000001%, this is very unlikely to occur (4.5899E-08).
• At 0.0002500001% (the average of the previous two—it was strongly implied to be at least this value) there is a 98% chance of at least one.

So if we have had 2 people complete the event once per day across all servers since launch, with a 0.033% drop rate, we’d be looking at >99% chance….

So, if we assume the numbers and techniques I used are correct, then we can conclude any or all of the following:

• At least one has already been looted.
• The event is only very rarely completed—fewer than 100 loots/day.
• The event does not require a lot of people to complete.

moose.6973:

munkiman.3068:

Final curse is an pretty common drop (about 2g on the TP), it does make sense that final rest would drop from a dragon, however, if so, there would at least be a couple on the TP, as often as they are farmed.

Anet can make the drop rate as microscopic as they want without any of us knowing. You are assuming the drop rate is fairly decent, at least enough that a few people would have gotten it, but that might not be the case.

As far as I’m concerned, as old as the game is now, every event in the game should have been farmed enough that at least 1 would have dropped SOMEWHERE. The fact that there are none reported means the drop rate is extremely microscopic, and could drop from anywhere that matches the criteria the developers hinted at.

Obviously dragons are farmed more than some things, which would mean it’s less likely that is the proper location, but you can’t rule anything out.

The problem is that we don’t know how farmable the event is. Most heavily-farmed events run at 15-minute intervals. We know the boss that drops this is “rare” and I don’t know anyone that thinks a 15 minute spawn time makes a boss rare. I would like to think that a rare boss can be killed at most 6 times per day—once every 4 hours (roughly the Claw of Jormag frequency). To provide for the other end of the spectrum, let’s consider once/day to be “rare.”

The “large chest” nature makes me think either female norn are involved or “group event” so let’s surmise that it takes 2-5 people to accomplish (a fair estimate in either case).

The game has been out for a little over 150 days. This is a nice estimate considering occasional downtime, missed opportunities, etc. Furthermore, there are 51 servers on which the event can be done.

Now we’re left with defining the “very low” chance of dropping from the event. 0.1% is actually pretty common for a specific item, so we’ll use that as the upper bound and 0.001% as the lower bound.

Using our upper bound numbers, the chance of at least 1 dropping in the 229500 opportunities that have been present to date is effectively 100%.

The lower bound, however, is only around 14% over 15300 opportunities. Increasing the drop rate by a factor of 10 still only puts us at 78% with the other parameters left unchanged.

It is possible for none to exist, especially if:

• The boss is solo- or duo-able
• The event is not completed as soon as it resets

One of the possible locations is Rotbeard in Cursed Shore. Most people in the zone don’t go to that area, so the event isn’t always triggered after a reset. You need to go through the ship to know if it can be triggered or not, so that, too, adds to the delay between activations. He is an easy duo and a lot of soloists can take him on, so there wouldn’t be many looting attempts—this is pretty close to the 14% chance of having found at least one.

If 35 people kill Claw of Jormag every 4 hours for 150 days across 51 servers, at 1:1000000 odds we’re looking at an 80% chance that somebody would have gotten it… and killing him more won’t really skew the data much since he is already killed a lot.

While we can’t rule anything out, I think we should be focusing on finding more Rotbeard-like events than Claw of Jormag ones—if it is from the Claw, we’ll find out eventually anyway as tons of people always do that. If it is a rotbeard-style event, then we haven’t found it because there are just so few people looting that particular event.

My wife and I tend to run together, and our runs can last upwards of 4 hours. Generally we will pick an objective at the start of our session and that will determine what armor I wear. Most often, I end up in MF gear (a mix of crafted greens with a couple rares) while she wears combat gear.

Neither of us gets a lot of rares or exotics. I happen to be leading on both at the moment, but not by so many that I would call attention to it.

What is notable is that I’ve done almost twice as many salvages this month as her; she has about 200 salvages and I am around 400.

The other night I respecced and wanted to try breaking in the new spec with a new armor set. At the end of that session, we were pretty dead-even on loot.

So my experience is that it does have an impact, although you won’t realyl notice it in the short term.

Winfernal.9208:

Chuo.4238:

As long as Legendaries can be bought and sold on the Trading Post, I have no interest. I’m not going to put in all that work to create one when someone who happens to have some extra disposable income can just buy one with real money.

When I see someone with a Legendary, I don’t think “wow, what a dedicated player.” I wonder if they bought theirs. And if they didn’t, I feel bad for them because they put in the work, and others just bought them.

So lame.

Are you me?

EXACTLY what i’m thinking.

I see legendaries pretty often. Often enough that I’ve stopped grabbing screen captures of flying unicorns and the like. So there are a lot out there. If you want to buy one off the TP, it will set you back the better part of 2000 gold. 100 gems will, on a good day, get you 1g while setting you back US$1.25. This places a legendary at approximtely $2500.

This is a sum of money that goes well beyond “some extra disposable income.”

• It is my monthly mortgage payment.
• It is 40% of the cost of a home near my wife’s hometown.
• It is 2 months of daycare.
• It is my annual electric bill
• It is your pay for working 11-hour days for a full month (7 days/week) at minimum wage with no overtime or taxes or other witholdings/bonuses.
• It is the cost of a used car.

I’m sure people out there have this much money to spare. Most, however, do not. So, given the number of legendaries I’ve seen and the number of people that can spare this much money, I think it is a pretty safe bet that anyone that has a legendary has earned it.

As for me, I have a long way to go on mine, yet. I’m maybe 15% of the way there.

Every time I hear the progeny break out these jokes I have to stop and listen. Anyone have any of their own (or other asura jokes)?

• Your mother’s IQ is so low she thinks a broadsword is a sword for women only.
• Your mother’s IQ is so low she thinks Lion’s Arch is a podiatrist’s diagnosis.

My understanding (and I realize this is not oficial) is that Legendaries will get a stat buff when ascended weapons are deployed, being buffed to their ascended forms.

A transmuted item does not use its natural stats, so the stat buff wouldn’t affect transmuted legendaries (although, I suppose, if you transmuted and kept the stats, you might?)

I would expect, given the widespread dissent on the preferred handling of this issue, that there will be NPCs (or a MF recipie) to hand in a transmuted legendary and get a soulbound, non-transmuted one back with the buffed stats.

I like the idea, but…

My magic find set is green, so this would be a liability with my inventory. I tend to carry a couple items which may be blue or green in rarity, but have skins I intend to transmute. Also, I carry multiple qualities of salvage kit, so something like this would be best found on the context menu of a salvage kit to ensure the same type is used consistently. This needs a safeguard above and beyond a confirmation dialog (nobody pays enough attention to them) to ensure nothing really bad happens—yes I want to salvage all white items-OH CRAP I MISCLICKED AND CONFIRMED SALVAGE ALL EXOTICS!

Mazrim.2167:

Make the process difficult, but something you have to actually actively EARN — Not just throw a pair of dice down a table and hope you get lucky 7.

RNG crafting was silly when it was implemented years ago with other F2P MMOS (Nexon, anyone?). It’s silly NOW.

I’m not saying you don’t have a valid point, and I don’t mean to sound unduly confrontational or rude, but this point comes up a lot and I have one question for you: How?

You need a ton of money, loads of karma, etc., and these are not “difficult.” Maxing titles is just grinding. What would be difficult but not grindy? There is no reasonable solution. You could ask that each player perform a “feat of strength” and make such actions things like solo an entire dungeon (which has a class bias) or take a keep solo in WvW (more class bias and promotes cross-server collusion). Things that are actually difficult do not make good “anyone can do it” events and lead to people ignoring the content entirely. As it stands now, some people see a legendary as a 3-month goal, some as a 1-year goal, and some as an “eventually” goal. If you start requiring things that some people can’t do, then people stop caring, stop trying, and just ignore the content. Nobody wins in that scenario. So, again; how do you make it difficult without introducing class bias or excluding an excessive number of players?

The clovers aren’t that bad for me so far… running at 26/34.

Jacen AlThor.4630:

If you are in Sanctum of Rall server I would help you out and run a dungeon with you. If not ask around in your guild for the PvE officer/leader and he should help set something up. If he doesn’t find a better guild more PvE focused.

My family and I also play on Sanctum of Rall. We don’t run dungeons often because of baby aggro, but if you don’t mind the occasional break for tending to the little one or my son’s less-than-stellar skills, we have 3 players (all 80, including 2 guardians) that are more than happy to run dungeons, and we honestly don’t care about your level, the only restriction we have is that we don’t group with jerks—something I don’t think will be an issue if you look us up.

Also, look up Glitch’s Operation: Unity post; theres a lot of folks in there of a like mindset across most, if not all servers.

When I first arrived at Moriarty’s Hold to find a troupe of pirates under the command of Captain Penzan, I got the Pirates of Penzance reference. I completed the heart, escorted the captain through the swamp, and moved on. It wasn’t until a few months later (about 5 minutes ago) that I was with my wife as she completed the heart and I got to hear the captain sing… Absolutely priceless. Thank you for this.

Captain Penzan

I am the very model of a modern pirate general,
I’ve information magical, mathematical, and mineral,
I know the Queens of Kryta and can cite matters historical,
From Bloodstones to the dragon spawn in order categorical.

In fact, I write my washing bills in old Canthan cuneiform,
I’ll tell you every detail sewn on Caudecus’s uniform.
The skills and builds of warfare are essential to my strategy,
You’ll say a better pirate general has never sat-a-gee,

For when you know the habits of the charr and the Elonians,
When you can tell at sight a Kurzick from an Ascalonian,
You’ll know my martial knowledge, quite extensive and still myriad,
Myriad…myriad…myriad…ah!
Has only been updated for the Interregnum period!

But still in matters magical mathematical, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern pirate general!

Does the champion risen lich in Sparkfly Fen spawn a chest? I’ve never seen the event work right, but it strikes me as meeting the criteria of a “rare boss” and is thematically sound.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destroy_the_champion_Risen_lich

This may have been discussed earlier in the thread; 3 months of speculation is more than I can remember in detail.

Excursion.9752:

Maybe its me but I when I see someone with a legendary, world completion, or a rare title I assume they would know how to play the game. I’ve never had the experiences some of you all had in groups with people that had any of those. Maybe its someone else in your group?

I’ve had a few bad experiences, and no, I’m not going to say that anyone with a dungeon title or legendary showing is necessarily or even likely to be bad. However acuqisition of these items does not make you a good player, and it certainly doesn’t make you a player I want to group with; you establish that through your observable interactions with players.

This is like saying you can trust somebody with your 8-year-old daughter because he is wearing a nice shirt. The presentation might lend to giving the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not going to give you free run to do whatever you want; you are still accountable for your conduct and I will keep my eye on you because there is nothing about the achievement that vouches for past conduct.

The ‘traditional’ MMO endgame exists because players want to feel progress, so virtul carrots are dangled in front of them. You have to let the players catch the carrot eventually, so then you have them pay you for a new carrot that will be held in front of them until the next expansion, i mean carrot, launches.

Guild Wars 2, by design, rejects this model. Play it because it is fun. You will not step away from the game for a couple months and come back to find that your once top-end gear is now long-since obsolete. If you like dungeons, there are dungeons, and there are content designers creating new and tweaking existing dungeons because people like them and want new experiences. Lore, events, WvW, PvP… all are changing as more content is developed. I do all these with my characters on a regular basis. I do them in zones where you wouldn’t go on a level 30, but I also go to lowbie zones and the content, though easier, is still fun, some is mildly challenging, and it is all rewarding.

Now, I know somebody is going to try to point out the post-release addition of Ascended gear as counter to the no-gear-treadmill point. The change in stats is trivial. The loss of flexibility is significant. Ascended quality gear was planned since before release, it just wasn’t ready until the game had been out for 3 months, and even then it wasn’t ready for an across-the-board rollout. Even if another tier of gear is added, your old gear will not be obsolete.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I think the people that are for removing it altogether are missing the point. the problem is not that these people have the right to kick you, it’s that they are ok with, and sometimes enjoy, abusing other players. Removing this feature won’t change that one bit and they will always find a way to ruin your experience. By upping the required votes it at least allows the honest people in the party a chance to stop them in their tracks. Will you still get parties full of jerks willing to kick you on a whim? Yeah, but I can also guarantee that removing this feature won’t change anything. They will find a way to grief you, because that’s what they do to fill that void in their souls.

This.

Also, the kickee doesn’t get a vote. Requiring 2 is 50% in a party of 5, 67% in a party of 4, and 100% in a party of 3. They could make it “over 50%” required, but you’re back in the same position with 3 jerks instead of 2 for a group of 5 and the situation is unchanged in any group smaller than 5. The problem is not that jerks can abuse a system that allows groups to deal with jerks, the problem is people are jerks—and you can’t solve that, all you can do is learn a lesson, take names, and move on.

Excursion.9752:

Wethospu.6437:

most Dungeon Masters suck.

I laughed literally out loud when I read that. I really can’t believe that statement seeing how they have had to at least experience all the dungeon content. It’s hard to believe they were carried through all of it. Path1 and 4 Arah you really have to hold your own weight in and if people are making it through that content I would go out on a limb and say they don’t suck that bad.

If you have a 3 to 4 baddies in a group its really hard for the others to carry the load. There is not a class in this game that can take 100% of the damage all the time.

You only had to do each one once.
It doesn’t say you did it without anybody getting killed.
It doesn’t say you didn’t use an exploit.
It doesn’t say you weren’t carried through (any or all).
It doesn’t say you didn’t try several times for each one.
It doesn’t say you learn from your mistakes.
It doesn’t say you remember any of the content.

A title that says ‘I did stuff’ doesn’t have much weight when it doesn’t say how long or how many times or how much help you had to do it.

Dee Jay.2460:

The fact that you are comparing a level 80 exotic crafted item worth multiple Gold with food that gives you a 30 minute buff is pretty…./facepalm.

And saying “just buy it” is a pretty lame excuse. I leveled cooking specifically so I didn’y have to.

I don’t mind Food trays being complicated to make or even something a little more long-lasting. But for food that is giving you a 30 minute buff I think some of these recipes are missing the point.

You haven’t done much crafting, have you? Jewelcrafting aside, the weapon example is no more complex than crafting most other weapons from 1-400 skill. The JC recipie listed is only slightly more complex than the least complicated end-product JC recipie.

You think this is complex but it is not. The recipies are simple, even for the multi-step products; they are simpler than what you will find in other crafts on average.
The one valid complaint is you have less categorization in the list of ingredients and often have to borrow some low-skill recipies to make high-skill products—you just use the search filter to whittle it down to a few items and you’re done.
You think it is bloated, but it really isn’t; most items are end-products and they fall into tiered results that fit different patterns. The intermediate items are no worse than any other craft produces—the only reason people complain is because they blindly discover recipies and don’t want to part with their creations.

If you want to talk real-world analogies, then fine: Real-world cooking is harder than real-world weapon and armorsmithing; I do all 3, so I have some sense of the relative difficulty. Cooking might be faster, but it is far, far more complex.

For appearance, mesmer is the only scholar class to use a sword, and is probably the best visual representation of the archetype you will find.

In terms of skillset, the mesmer is a little lacking on the deathgates and lightning bolts, but the attacks are clearly magical in nature—I don’t think any one class combines magic and physical attacks as well as the mesmer, so it is probably your best bet, although not quite the ideal you’re hoping for.

Bonus: Carry on a conversation with your phantasms and illusions when they aren’t visible to everybody else.

Dee Jay.2460:

This isn’t about leveling cooking.

This isn’t about it being “easy” or “cheap”.

This isn’t directly about how “fun” it is to cycle through millions of possible combinations only to find out you’re missing one of 200 possible ingredients.

This is about how unnecessarily complicated and inconvenient it is to cook some of the higher level recipes, especially considering we’re talking about something that is fairly trivial after all.

Why must a diagram for cooking some pretty standard food compete with a Legendary item as far as complexity goes?

How is it complicated?

Level 80 exotic necklace:

1. Refine Orichalcum Ore into Bars.
2. Craft Filligrees
3. Craft Setting
4. Craft Chain
5. Craft Jewels
6. Craft Necklace

Level 80 exotic weapon:

1. Refine Orichalcum into Bars
2. Refine Ancient Wood into Planks
3. Craft Dowel
4. Craft Inscription
5. Craft Component A
6. Craft Component B
7. Craft Weapon

Omnomberry Bar

1. Craft Baker’s Wet Ingredients
2. Craft Baker’s Dry Ingredients
3. Craft Omnomberry Compote
4. Craft Omnomberry Bar

Sesame Roasted Dinner (the most complex cooking recipie off the top of my head):

1. Craft Pile of Salt and Pepper
2. Craft Bowl of Mashed Yams
3. Craft Bowl of Spiced Mashed Yams
4. Craft Sesame Ginger Sauce
5. Craft Filet of Sesame Roasted Meat
6. Craft Sesame Roasted Dinner

Electro.4173:

snip

The wiki is your friend when it comes to finding out what crucial ingredient you are missing. If you don’t like the act of discovery on your own, the wiki has a pretty exhaustive list, just search for what you think is the least commonly used ingredient that is a match.

Rather than selling everything, how about holding on to the items that are ingredients. These are easily identified by the presence of “Cooking (275)” or however it is worded.

Cooking is not as complicated as people want to make it seem. I would love to have the UI that lets me make component parts on the discovery tab work on the regular UI as well, but using the search and filter options, it is pretty easy to find the right ingredients to make and, best of all… if feels like real cooking in that regard.

I leveled as and continue to play sword/shield on my guardian.

I’ve used a few different builds. One was a condition damage/boon duration build. It worked fine, although it really only found its strength 60+ with grandmaster traits. In retrospect another build may have been better leveling, but I honestly can’t say for sure.

I’ve toyed around with several other builds and they all were fine. The key part is the sword/shield playstyle:

Sword #1 will do the vast majority of your damage.
Sword #2 is a great opener and blind mid-fight.
Sword #3 should be saved for a ranged attack while immobilized or to block projectiles.
Shield #4 is to give protection to yourself and allies.
Shield #5 is a knockback, projectile absorber, and heal—use it for one or all, as necessary.

This is not a playstyle that lends itself to people that obsessively put all their skills on cooldown; you need to wait for the right moment. Autoattack is fine as long as there is no reason to use the other skills.

A lot of people prefer a focus offhand to a shield because it does more for your personal survivability; the lack of an interrupt is the dealbreaker for me, but you may want to consider it.

I keep a scepter on weapon swap. It is a very underappreciated weapon in our arsenal, but a lot of the underappreciation stems from what it used to be and what people what it to be, not what it is.

Sword’s autoattack cycle takes 2.5s and consists of 5 attacks, making it proc burn faster than any other weapon—so it makes better use of condition damage than other builds.

My 2cp:

1) This is already done.
2) This would be nice, especially for cooking. For the others, not so much so.
3) If it has a cooking skill requirement, it is used in recipies. If it does not, it isn’t.

If you have a support ticket that hasn’t been handled in 3 days, I beleive there is a thread where you can post the ticket ID for review. That said, relatively few people have this problem and, given that millions of people do not, the problem does not seem to be on ANet’s end, which is why they can only offer limited, if any, help.

The one time I had to contact support, I had a response from a person stating it was being escalated in 5 minutes. A full response arrived about 4 hours later.

Resource permitting… find a friend that lives nearby and doesn’t mind troubleshooting; isolating the problem is a lot easier when you have a known-working computer/account/connection.

Accounts can have connectivity issues if a hacker has compromised the account (I don’t know if that would fall under this error code or not).

Malware, drivers, in-use ports, firewalls, antivirus, etc. can cause bizarre issues on your computer. I’ve had issues with a power supply that couldn’t handle heat + load, but could handle either with no issue; make sure your computer has been thoroughly de-dusted including the various motherboard chipsets.

Bad cables, router ports, routing settings, ISP throttling, etc. can all manifest with the same symptoms you’re describing. Mismatched MTU size and a crappy ISP (I’m looking at you Bell South DSL*, the bane of my tech support career) can also have some strange issues.

*Bell South DSL was infamous where I worked 7 years ago for having a MTU size hard-coded in their routers but truncating packets to about 80% of that on their end.

Zonzai.2341:

I’d rather pay a sub.

One of my friends does. Every month he buys $10 worth of gems.

Nike.2631:

Rimmy.2014:

But I also think it could add praise. People get to see the cool stuff you’ve worked so hard to get!

What cool stuff? All gear is pretty uniformy orange once you are level 80, and being kitted out with full orange isn’t exactly brag-worthy. The only step beyond orange stat-wise is Ascended, and the ascended back pieces at least are very visible if the player chooses to show them off.

All other cool stuff is cosmetic, which means they can see it directly without an inspection tool.

That cosmetic side can be difficult to discern and getting a name to go with an appearance can be quite valuable when you try to reproduce the look. The difference between different dyes can also be very subtle, but important (It is easy to mistakenly think that some common and uncommon dyes are significantly mroe expensive rare dyes). That said….

Catisa.6507:

no, if you wanna know what someone is using, be social and ask them. We don’t need another excuse for people to judge others.

I agree with this entirely. If you see something that you like that is unique, ask the person. At worst they won’t respond or will be rude, but at best you just made a new friend.

There are a few zones with 11, but I don’t know of any with 10. So it seems most likely that there is a zone that you are overlooking—my wager is on the Shiverpeaks region, but the far reaches of Ascalon, the Mount Maelstrom area, and the Harathi Hinterlands all come to mind as likely candidates.

It is fine, but there are advantages and disadvantages.

• Con: You will find appropriately-tiered fine crafting materials to be severely lacking if you don’t stay in level-appropriate zones.
• Pro: You will have access to more karma-based cooking materials by exploring more.
• Con: You will level slower.
• Pro: Completing the other maps earlier often makes them feel less tedious.
• Con: The drop quality will be lower—you may need to craft or purchase gear to not face an undue challenge.
• Con: You will earn less money and karma in lower level areas.

It can be done, but given the pros and cons, I wouldn’t call it either a good idea or a bad idea, just “An idea.” If you mitigate (e.g. the mystic forge can be used to upgrade crafting materials) or don’t mind the cons and the pros appeal to you, then go for it.

vinceftw.5086:

Warriors hands down. Tons of hp and damage so you can facetank. Hundred blades hits like a motherkittening truck. There’s a reason why speedrunning dungeons involves 4 warriors and 1 mesmer for the best results.

Someone said mesmers are one of the best for pve. Just lol. They are pretty bad.

Oh, and my necro had an easy time leveling as well. Pulling mobs of over 10 easily. Just kiting and dropping marks of staff.

I know its trollbait. I’m at work and bored, so I’ll bite.

Hundred blades does 0 damage if you can’t hit your target. Being immobilized and constrained to melee range has its drawbacks. Facetanking is great as long as you can kill your target before they kill you. Mediocre heals and avoidance have their drawbacks.

Marks are target-capped at 5 like other AEs, so pulling 10 is needless; you should be pulling 5…. and make sure they are all melee, because otherwise kiting won’t work so well.

A guardian, on the other hand, can round up a group of melees and/or ranged and pound them down quickly while avoiding taking damage and staying in melee range (people that have problems with adds in Orr while kiting take note), ranged enemy or no.

A mesmer may not have the flashy numbers that a warrior does, but that doesn’t mean that confusion, projectile reflection, chaos fields, and buff/condition transfer/stripping aren’t good.

Not every problem is solved by brute force. The mesmer is far less intuitive than a warrior (warriors are the simpelst class out there) but this only means it is comparatively easier to play a bad mesmer. A good mesmer can run circles around a warrior, while killing it and not taking damage.

No one class is better than another in an abstract sense—in specific applications, possibly, but player skill, spec, gear, etc. all come into play. Some classes have affinities for different content, and the varied resource mechanisms also cater to different playstyles, but rest assured that all are good. If you geniunely beleive that mesmers are bad at PvE, you’ve never seen a decent one, let alone a good one. I’ve seen both, and they are an asset unlike any other—the same could be said of a good representative of any other class.

Cooking is one of the cheapest skills to raise to 400.

The cost becomes far closer to the cost of other professions when you buy an additional bank tab in which to store your intermediate results.

Thats the solution my wife and I used.

SteepledHat.1345:

Or they could, I don’t know, but a LFG tool in the game instead of putting off the responsibility to a 3rd party. What happened to holding a company accountable?

This has nothing to do with accountability. You make it sound like they are breaking the law and bribing public officials to cover their tracks. There is a need for a feature and it has not yet been implemented yet; this is not accountability, this is “we would like ANet to devote time and money to making us happier.”

They are working on it. They have said as much. So many people assume it is simple, but lets look at the reality.

They have sold over 2,000,000 copies of the game. Assuming this is all they sold, then if 10% of the population is online at once, that is 200,000 people that might be looking for a group. Let us further assume that only 1% of the online player base is looking for a group. That is 2,000 data points to be processed by the user. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to look through 2,000 “LFG” and “LFM” posts to find what I want. We need search criteria to make the feature worth anything.

What search criteria is needed? What content should be allowed (list the dungeon, or the specific paths? What about world events, story quests, etc.?), what about group creators that want to restrict applicants by level and/or class, what about all those other things that a full-featured group tool should support, like buttons to join, whisper, etc.? What about the time to have the artists create the assets, the testers to run it through its paces, and so on? Simultaneously, lets not forget we’ve asked the same people to provide us with new content at no additional cost and fix existing content. What about people on different servers—will it help get those groups together and explain how to pseudo-guest? What if, as is the case for story quests, it is restricted? What changes will have to be made when full guesting goes live?

Now face the reality that the earlier numbers are aiming low; the system has to handle a minimum of tens of thousands at once because, once it goes live, people will use it instead of chat—increasing the strain to which it is subject tremendously. If the goal of the system is to filter 100,000 posts down to a reasonable number, rest assured the usability concerns are non-trivial to work out as the goal of the designers is to match the exact desires of the searcher with the offerings of a provider, without complicated UI wizardry or false positives, but certainly no false negatives.

Creating a makeshift LFG tool only to replace it with another in a short time is generally a waste of effort and causes issues with user training; why learn one tool only to have it replaced within the next couple months?. It is most certainly a waste of effort when equivalent functionality has been provided by the community as a stop-gap while waiting for the real deal.

If you are so dead-set on an in-game LFG tool, use the same tools we used in EQ, GW1, SWG, and others; chat.

Mizuki Kusanagi.6584:

Give the small size of parties, it should require every one of the other 4 ppl to vote against the “kickee”

Suppose you have 2 people in your group being jerks (the case that is being singled out for abuse prompting this policy change). You now can’t kick either because the other will veto it.

The problem is not solved, you just replaced it with an even worse problem.

haviz.1340:

Fildydarie.1496:

-snip-

The truth is that the fastest way to do dungeons isn’t by playing balanced builds but straight dps. Until anet increases overall difficulty level balanced builds won’t be as efficient as they should be.

Exactly. Your priorities are not necessarily the priorities of others, and therefore the game is not broken, you merely want to experience it a certain way. You cite efficiency as the key metric but you ignored the fact that other people use other metrics. A novice group often doesn’t care as much about speed as they do reliability; ensuring they finish the dungeon at all takes priority.

Thank you for illustrating my point. It would have made me feel a little better about it had you read my post and processed the content, but the illustration is all the more apt as a result.

To reiterate:

NOT EVERYBODY CARES ABOUT RUNNING DUNGEONS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE. IT IS NOT A DESIGN FLAW OR FAILING ON THE PART OF THE PLAYER TO VALUE HUMAN INTERACTION, LOOT OR OTHER FACTORS OVER BADGES-PER-HOUR.

You know what irks me even more than people wearing MF gear in a dugneon? People that don’t stack boon / condition duration. You’re in the group for a reason—not to get your rocks off about how invulnerable your tank is or how much damage you can do without falling on the ground, you’re here to be a team player and that means duration enhancers. I don’t need to provide any numbers about how important these stats are because it is self-evident (plus nobody arguing before me in this thread has, so I don’t feel ompelled to look at evidence, I just have to spout rhetoric to have an equally valid viewpoint).

So yes, I desperately want an inspect feature like so many more have asked for, but I’m going to kick all you PVT and ’zerker leeches. L2Teamplay.

Has nobody realized that you will have the fastest run with a team of experts that are custom-tailored for the content but a well-balanced team, though not as fast, will be more capable of dealing with change and the unknown?

The OP has it right; you can bring in different gear for different situations and, generally, it will be fine. Here’s another novel concept: you can mix and match stats, so you have some magic find, a few pieces of berzerkers, and a few knights… You don’t need a full set of same-stat gear. Just look at the temple karma sets for evidence that mix-and-match was intended.

If your group’s goal is to clear the content as fast as possible, make that known. In cases like this, you are quite right to exclude novice players and players wearing gear or using skills that do not support this goal. But if your group’s goal is introduce a new person to the dungeon, or to meet new people, or to explore every nook and cranny, or to complete a monthly requirement… make it known. Everybody needs to be aware that there are people that both disagree with you and are correct; this doesn’t make you wrong, it just means you differ in your priorities.

If my 2-year-old can negotiate taking turns on the slide with other kids, I tend to think that a community of adults can work out how to run a dungeon together.

Warriors are the best PvE class because of simple mechanics and access to all major roles. It is easy to tailor your warrior to control/damage/support. You may not be the best at any one, but you can do all three very well. Banners are great for zipping around the map, tons of combo finishers exploit the combo fields your allies are sure to drop. In short, it is hard to be a bad warrior.

Guardians are the best because of their peerless support capabilities. Condition removal, projectile reflection/absorption, regeneration, protection, stability… guardians help a team focus on what is important. The tradeoff is that while you always have strong support capabilities, your control and damage aspects are weaker than those of a warrior—but the efficiency you give a group easily compensates for the difference.

Engineers are, despite the rantings of several outspoken community members, the best class because they are a very versatile option. They don’t have to choose between roles before the fight, they bring them all to the fight and change on the fly. An engineer can react to a changing situation better than any other profession.

Elementalists are the best profession because their wide variey of combo fields provide a group with far more utility than they have without. Tanking, healing, condition damage, direct damage… elementalists can do it all.

Necromancers are the best class because their survivability lets them work through anything. It is hard to kill a good necromancer, and they will whittle down their foes in a war of attrition.

Rangers are the best class because they have a never-ending stream of pets ready to soak hits to spare the party the pain. Coupled with decent mobility and long-range damage, rangers provide a steady stream of damage while taking pressure off the rest of the party.

Mesmers are the best class because they are difficult to kill, distract enemies with illusions, portal you to the end of jump puzzles, reflect projectiles, and strip buffs from foes and conditions from allies. Mesmers are great at turning an enemy’s strength against them, or just depriving your enemy of its strength.

Thief is the best class because their melee spike damage is is through the roof. They fade into the shadows and strike hard before fading back. A variety of poisons and similar effects provide support conditions—weakness, poison, and chill that mitigate the damage your foes can cause to your less-stealthy comrades.

Summary
I’ve played them all and, while there are some bugs that keep classes from meeting the ideal, they are all very viable choices. All can solo, all can farm, all can tag in DEs well, all can contribute to dungeons… all can do anything they want.

No class is bad, they just might not play quite the way you want them to. The best class is the one where you instinctively play to its strengths and the worst is where your playstyle pits you against its weaknesses at every turn.

I can’t deny the strengths of the mesmer, however it is not my cup of tea. I’m more of a guardian-engineer-elementalist player. I make a passable warrior but it doesn’t excite me.

mjharrison.3209:

Fildydarie.1496:

You’ll find your options were a lot more limited than you remember.

I realise where you are trying to go with this but the theoretical analysis doesn’t stand up to actual experience.

Case in point, there is only 1 “good” builds for a solo PVP Ele – D/D with cantrips. This is due to inherent glaring deficiencies with the other (3) weapons, with close to zero choice in utilities as cantrips are by far the most effective way to break stun & mitigate burst on Ele (also mandatory to avoid being 1-2-shot by BS thieves/warriors/mesmers) as well as being instant case and having good offensive and defensive uses.

Because cantrips are mandatory, and all the good cantrip traits are in water line, and 20+ arcane is virtually required to play Ele, and factoring in the other 1-2 “must-have” Ele traits, there is also minimal real choice in trait allocation.

1. “good” Ele builds in GW2 in practise: 1.

ut right there you have choen to limit the scope of utility to a single aspect of gameplay, and one that is largely dominated by the metagame.

If you want to do an UWSC, you need to have one of 8 builds, depending on which slot you fill. That is all. There was no variation then either. If you are a paragon and not playing imbagon, you are doing something wrong. No PvE warrior in GW1 could match the damage output of a HB+Whirlwind Attack warrior against multiple targets, or Dragon Slash for single targets. There were minor variations to the implmentation of these builds, just like there are minor variations to the implementations of D/D Ele builds in GW2, but there were only a couple viable builds, and this is after 4 expansions total (including original content)

Staff on Ele in GW2 is great, although, you’re right, not in PvP. Sure, that is a weakness, but we’re not talking about one tiny aspect, we’re talking about the whole game. You can take a staff into WvWvW and do fine, or any PvE content.

Edit: There are guardians that swear by Altrusitic Healing. They swear that there is no other way to play a Guardian. I, and many others, do just fine without. A direct result (or cause) of this is we have a different playstyle—it is effectively a different build, and it is completely viable. Some playstyles are better suited form some applications than others, however that does not mean the other styles cease to exist.

mjharrison.3209:

Fildydarie.1496:

Don’t believe me? Let’s do the math again, but right this time.

Your analysis fails on so many levels frankly I’m not sure why you bothered:

• not considering the second profession’s skills. this is a major if not the most important aspct of the GW1 skill system
• not compensating for choosing from multiple attributes
• not compensating properly for skills that were viable with minimal attribute points in them
• not compensating for the much higher degree of skill interactions in GW1 (hexes + enchantments, energy effects, effects based on adding/removing conditions/hexes/enchantments)

• I did include secondary professions; it doesn’t change much.
• I did permit multiple attributes, however I capped it at 4. Anything beyond this is not properly balanced at 20 and has seriously sub-par performance. Some skills are exceptions, but they are in the noise. Honestly, there were so few of those skills they aren’t worth bringing to light because just as many skills were useless due to energy demands or other considerations.
• If you want to bring synergies into this, you’re reducing the number of viable builds because you’re raising the performance threshold any build must pass to be considered viable. Minion skills without a minion heal are sub-optimal, as is death nova without something willing to die.

Look at the prophecies skill lists, as they existed when the game launched, not after several rounds of skill balancing.

You’ll find your options were a lot more limited than you remember.

You also need to filter out skills that are not significantly different. At launch, there were no identical skills (as was the case after factions) but there were skills that were similar. The difference between Sprint and Rush, for example, is fairly minor. You won’t have a huge build disparity because you chose one over the other, you have the same build with slightly different resource management concerns. It isn’t just enough to slap a different set of skills on your bar, you need to actually do something different with them… although, if you want to insist that different skills make that much of a difference, we just added every possible rune combination and sigil to the list of GW2 build offerings.

Edit: Lets look at GW2 builds from a completely different angle: Traits. Lets assume that you only choose weapons armor and utilities that support your stat allocation. You only allocate traits in 5-point increments. There are 30 different stat allocations that use a 30-30-10 split. If limit yourself to traits 11-12 in the GM slot, etc., you have, for each of these, 13824 possible trait combinations. Granted, you can change these on-the-fly, but right here you have over 400,000 builds for a profession based solely on traits. There are certainly other stat distributions to consider, but that just makes the number of trait builds increase, not decrease.

I love the massive variety of builds that GW2 offers, and not just in terms of choices; I’m talking in terms of this-actually-works builds that hold their own and play the way I want them to. I am not pigeonholed into a certain role+implementation because there are only 1-2 viable paragon builds, or a choice between bonder or healer or smiter monk.

I still play it too—although less frequently than I used to.

Remember we’re talking strictly prophecies content here—it is unfair to compare 4 expansions of content against 1.

A lot of builds focused on 2-3 stats. This limits you to about 50 skills. Some of thsoe skills are energy management skills. Some are heals. Some are hex- or condition-removal or resurrection. If you want to bring a rez and you are a W/N, you are forced to bring rez signet. If you’re a W/E, rez signet. If you’re a W/Mo, you have a couple options. If you’re a warrior primary, there are a lot of necro skills that require 25 energy that place an unreasonable demand on a warrior’s energy management. Why bring riposte (tactics) if you don’t wield a sword? Why bring conjure air when you don’t have a lightning damage weapon?

Let’s take a quick look at a factions favorite, the assassin. We’re stepping outside the bounds of prophecies, but for the sake of an example, an assassin that has an off-hand attack requiring a lead attack, but no lead attack, has a useless slot on their bar—possibly multiple.

These are the bad builds we’re talking about, not merely sub-optimal builds, but builds that malfunction. These are builds that spend 75% of their time regenerating energy instead of contributing, builds that have skills they cannot use to any effect, builds that have skills they cannot use at all.

There are a lot, and they are the reason that you can’t just do abstract math to arrive at the number of viable builds.

GW2 has fewer bad builds. People keep bashing on the GW2 elites but you miss the fact that the GW1 elite has become your weapon set. That archetype-defining skill that caused you to take a couple supporting skills is now your weapon set, and gives you 5 skills. This ensures you have a certain level of functionality.

Stat allocation generally is more tolerant in that the only stats that can be considered worthless are condition damage, condition duration, and boon duration, for any build that lacks conditions and/or boons.

Looking at the stat distributions, you’ll find that they tend to be “sub-optimal” as opposed to “useless”.

You also neglect traits when comparing builds. 14 major and minor traits is a non-trivial augmentation to the build system. I can assure you that my guardian plays very differently than an AH guardian. Keeping skills identical but changing traits, there are differences.

Go ahead and list for me 20 significantly different viable GW1 warrior builds using only prophecies and core skills, as implemented at launch. I’ll give you 19 for GW2 right here: Each distinct weapon set a warrior can equip. I still have traits and utilities to make further distinctions if necessary.

Oh, I jsut realized I had forgotten to compensate for ordering…

40k → 13k
200k → 75k
140m → 1.16m
6.6m → 1.1m

This is even more favorable for GW2.

Nayru.3947:

Fildydarie.1496:

Now go through all those “builds” you assert exist in GW1 and remvoe from that list all the oens that don’t make any sense.

Because GW2 has such a wide range of useful builds to use, right? 5 Skills that you can’t change, a WHOPPING, what, 16? utility skills, and a few useless elites. Take out the ones that “don’t make any sense” and you’re left with ~4 utility skills to choose from, and 1 elite.

There were hundreds of builds in GW1 that worked just fine. I probably couldn’t make a build that doesn’t make sense in GW2, because there aren’t enough skills.

If anyone tries to say that GW2 has more skills/builds/gear choices than GW1 then they are just… I can’t, I don’t even…

I generally don’t use turrets on my engineer, but if I put them in, they work just fine; I don’t have energy management problems, nor do I have issues with my stat allocation. Tehy jsut work. Similarly, I can swap to stability skills, or consecrations, or spirit weapons, or anythignelse on my guardian and it still works just fine. It might not be the most optimal build, but it works.

These builds are all viable because the skills lack the dependencies that GW1 skills had. You say you “can’t change” 5 skills, but what you really mean is you choose a set of 5 skills from (in the case of a warrior) 19 different sets. This is like choosing your elite, except you have 19 choices in GW2 instead of 16 (warrior in prophecies) or 30-31 (warrior + secondary, but lets face it, a lot of those weren’t viable as a secondary profession). Those “skills you cannot change” are really “a group of skills that you can change for a different group”

You’ve really gotta take off those rose-tinted glasses and look at what the GW1 system really was. I was being generous with those numbers; removing the ability to create downright bad and useless builds (how many assassin builds only had dual attacks but no lead attacks?) is a service to the community.

mercury ranique.2170:

Fildydarie.1496:

When you enter a personal story mission, every group memebr in the same zone will be asked if they want to join.

Just to further elaborate on this. If the group member needs to do exact the same part of the personal story, then at the end he she will get a question if they want to progress. If you took certain choiches for future storylines during that storyline step that person will hvae made the same choiches.

If your friend/friends are from the same race but you answered your questions on character creation different you have to wait till level 20 to do this (you can help eachother, but every step has to be done double cause the steps are different). If your friend is from a different raceyou to wait till level 30 (and pick the same order at level 28).

This information is correct, but not what I meant.

When you go to the point on your map and click “Enter Instance” your group members are asked if they want to go into the instance. They have to accept this and they can be anywhere in the same zone (if your mission is in Caledon Forest, they can be anywhere in Caledon Forest). If they say no, they will not be moved to the instance.

In addition to this, when two players have the same story quest, when it is completed by one, the other participants are asked if htey want to have the same progress recorded to theirs as well.

Volcane Crucio.4723:

maddoctor.2738:

tom.7468:

Aevic.9675:

Except most of GW1’s skills came from future expansions. There wasn’t so many options when GW1 was released. We had about the same amount of options.

Look here http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_Prophecies_skills
So you’re wrong but i hope they add more skills when they release a new expansion.

Aevic is correct then. Do the math

Warrior in GW1: 35+41 = 76 skills (Common + Prophecies – at release)
Warrior in GW2: 75 + 9 Burst skills + 15 skills in skill chains + 9 Banner + 5 Rampage + 8 downed/drowned = 121 skills, Even if you get only the 75 skills they are equal in number

In conclusion, the “Guild Wars 1 had more skills” argument, is invalid

Sir, I’m afraid your calculation is invalid.

What you forgot to add is the second profession. In total there were 10 professions. So add to that list another (rough estimate) 1200 skills or so. This includes PvE only skills, which you failed to add too.

All in all to skill bar options (and the whole system of it) in GW is far superior than what they are in GW2. Making it a valid argument.

Now go through all those “builds” you assert exist in GW1 and remvoe from that list all the oens that don’t make any sense. Remove all the builds that are 8 skills from different attributes, skills that require a secodnary profession’s primary attribute to be non-0 to work right, all the builds where your attributes are spread too thin to be meaningful, builds where energy management is impractical, builds that lack survivability skills, etc.

You’ll find that GW2 offers about the same level of customization—better than GW1 did at launch.

Don’t believe me? Let’s do the math again, but right this time.

The actual pool of skills you can select from is not the set of skills that exist in the primary and secondary profession combined. Most skills are not viable without enough attribute points. You can spread yourself thin over 4 different attributes. 3 was usually my limit, and i tended to strive for 2. Some skills don’t really need a lot to be useful; we’ll add all those back in—these are the skills that tend to have a chance to fail when you have less than X in the attribute.

We also get to eliminate skills that require more energy than you have.

We also have to eliminate a slot for a rez, and another for a heal. We’re talking about builds that are just as team friednly, and everyone in GW2 has a self heal and a rez. As a result, we’ll eliminate the heal and rez skills from the pool, while striking out those slots.

You also need to have a defined build. Generally, this manifests as an elite skill and 2-3 supporting skills. Searing Flames makes a great cornerstone, but is an energy management nightmare—Glowing Gaze and Fire Attunement do wonders for sustainability. Similarly Hundred Blades is a gret skill, but you need the extra oomph of Whirlwind Attack, and that often comes hand-in-hand with For Great Justice. You have some room to play with these supporting skills, but not a lot.

So you start off with 8 skill slots, and 2 are removed for rez and heal. 3 of the remaining 6 are given to your eltie and supporting skills, and the remaining 3 are a grab-bag across up to 4 attributes. This means there are (# of elites) * (4 * # of skills in an attribute)! / (4 * # of skills in an attribute – 3)!

Since we’re tlaking vanilla content, this becomes (for a given primary profession) approximately:
30 * 12! / 9! = 39,600 builds.

Now, these are just builds composed of slapping together random skills. Many will have no internal synergies; how many minion manster builds are represented with no means to heal the minion. How many hex- or condition-removal skills are present? The actual number drops considerably. But we have an upper bound; for each primary profession in Prophecies, there are fewer than 200,000 viable builds. PVE skills factor in, but you’re limited to 3, and there really aren’t that many. The number is within the noise of useless skills. If you want to realyl go nuts, you can remvoe the heal/rez restriction and arrive at 14m builds per primary profession, but, again, the real number is much lower because a lot of these builds are vastly sub-optimal and mix things that just don’t make sense.

So lets stick with 200k.

Weapon Combinations * (# Utiltiies)! / # Utilities – 3) * (# Elites)

For a warrior, this is 19 * 20 * 19 * 18 * 3 = 6,627,960, and I haven’t even considered racial skills or weapon swaps.

Is this not enough build definition? You have 14 traits as well.

Gear options dwarf what was available in GW1.

GW2 has many more possibilities, especially when you look past your skill bar.

You want an added bonus? It is harder for a GW2 player to make a bad build than it was in GW1.

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

John Smith.4610:

I post because I enjoy interacting with the community.

Wow, and you still didn’t address the inquiry, that comes off rather spiteful :/. I don’t even know if I should assume that it wasn’t intentional at this point.

I read this as “look, I’m here on my lunch break. I can’t promise or release information to the community without authorization, so I can’t tell you one way or another without a huge hassle. I’m here posting because we have a great community and I want to be a part of it, but there is a line between community member and ANet employee that I can’t cross.”

I’m far more interested in the insights into the process of ANet than the actual implementation or results—and already we’ve gotten a lot of those.

Hickeroar.9734:

And how long it takes to level? I leveled to 80 in a week and a half. Most MMOs will take you up to months to hit their max level, especially with your first toon. GW1 allowed you to get to its abysmally tiny max level in a matter of HOURS…which is just flat-out stupid.

My personal record for leveling in GW1 (which isn’t all that good of a record, actually—I could have done much better) is Legendary Survivor with just under 20 hours played.

Agreed, this was fast, but my first character hit 20 in just a couple weeks. In GW2, I hit 80 in about the same time on my first character. You can level very fast if you want to; leveling is a side effect of doing things, not an objective unto itself.

On the original topic, I was a reasonably hardcore GW1 player (GWAMM, 50/50 HoM) and I absolutely love GW2. It is everything I expected it would be. It is not necessarily 100% perfect, but it is close and heading in the right direction.

I’d also love to have an option to have the playlist supplement the default tracks. I don’t want to replace the default music, just add to it (very little gets the blood pumping quite like jumping into a boss battle with the Inspector Gadget theme song blaring, but the default soundtrack comes close)

Treeline.3865:

I was thinking this, just the other day – What kind of system requires 2 of 5 votes???
3 of 5 would seem logical, and avoid a lot of things like this. If I were you I would whisper the last player if you could kick the 2 idiots, having him as second, or simply (If you are leader) shut down the entire fractal run. I wouldn’t hold it against you to complete it with them either – You reported as deserved. And I’m sorry you had to run into people like that.

But really. I don’t get how 2 vote kick hasn’t been changed to 3/5 yet.

This is because it isn’t asking for 2/5, it is asking for 2/4 or 2/3 or 2/2.

The person getting kicked doesn’t have a vote. This means that either half the other party members (2/4 in a 5-man) want them out, or a majority of the other players (any smaller group size) want them out.

So requiring 2 players to confirm sets the threshold at 50%, not 40%.

For the rest, yeah, it was handled just fine.

morrigana sedai.2091:

I did experience and hear similar stories. Bit strange this is not fixed yet. Most games don’t have such issues however leaves that in most gives there is a real party leader and not a invisible “party leader”

To be clear the visibility of the party leader and/or ability to kick the party leader are the only issue.

Party leaders were leaving their party (kicking everybody else from the instance in the process) to invite guildies/friens after getting to the last boss. This was instituted as a measure to prevent such kittenhattery.

I am working on my 4th set of armor. I tend to only have an amulet/accessory/ring to swap, rather than a full set of jewelry to save on time and hassle of swapping. All this takes a single 20-slot bag. I only have one such bag, but I have plenty of 15s—two are used for alternate weapons and armor. Having purchased extra bag slots eases the burden this places on my inventory.

Every race starts near a capital city (Hoelbrak, Rata Sum, The Grove, Divinity’s Reach, Black Citadel).

Each of these cities has an asura gate to Lion’s Arch. The gate is free (just walk through) and clearly marked on the map (purple swirly). Once in Lion’s Arch, you can take any of the gates to the other races’ cities.

When you enter a personal story mission, every group memebr in the same zone will be asked if they want to join.

Another way to get to Lion’s Arch is through the PvP lobby. Use the “go to the Mists” command and step through the portal to Lion’s Arch there.

Most rare dyes cost 2-3 times what you would make selling an unid dye. Most uncommons are half the value of an unid dye, and most commons are less than 1/10th of an unid dye.

The drop rate on rares is a lot less than 33%, so selling is clearly the best choice, plus, after selling them, you buy whichever you want; monetary value aside, the chance of getting a dye you want is very low—I don’t use most of the dyes I have.

Of course, this runs afoul of the tragedy of the commons, whereby everybody pursuing this route would just drive up the prices as the market finds a new equilibrium.

The materials price sets the (approximate) price cieling for the finished product. In short, anyone (with 400 cooking) can purchase the materials and sell at that price. There is no incentive to sell above that price because your item will not sell.

I could sell the materials instead of the finished product, but that is more work for me and a less reliable source of income. I would prefer to have my money sooner so I can re-invest it rather than leaving it sitting in the TP waiting to eke out a few extra coppers.

This is a market in which there is no concept of brand value or quality, so as long as people are willing to undercut you, you will never sell your product.

Not everybody wants to spend the time to make as much money from each action as possible; they just want to play the game; the profit margin is sufficient for their purposes, so they accept the reduced income for time and convenience. I see nothing unusual about this.

“I say we just take off… and nuke the profession from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” -Ripley, Aliens

“As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL engineer!” – Emperor Palpatine, Star Wars Episode 6: Return of the Jedi

“The odds of successfully navigating a grenade field are approximately 3720 to 1!” – C3P0, The best Star Wars movie yet

“…and if Anet does not love you, how could you have done the things you have done?” – Nasir, Kingdom of Heaven

Maybe I see something different in the class than others because I just play it instead of trying to theorycraft myopic builds that are overshadowed by equally myopic builds of other professions.