Guild Wars 2

Tarang.7562:

Nike.2631:

goldi.3129:

I will never understand such threads in which people seem to insist that they have the right to certain endgame items for almost nothing.

I can’t say that I’ve EVER seens someone claim they have the right to certain endgame items for almost nothing… except for poorly disguised attempts at strawman arguments by defenders of the status quo.

So, what it boils down to is this: People are whining because they think something is expensive. Tough luck.

No that isn’t what people are complaining about. Precursor prices continue to increase about as fast as some people make money. 200g then 300g then 500g then 700g then… ? Meanwhile, all the cash they are saving is suffering from inflation across the board. So they are just spinning wheels. You show a notable lack of empathy for what is really happening.

Iures.2894:

Increasing the droprate is completely unnecessary in this case. Crystalline Dust and Ancient Bones have roughly the same supply rate: ridiculously high. Seriously, go farm events in Cursed Shore; you’ll have so many Dust-dropping mobs running at you it isn’t even funny.

This changed with the new patch. Risen now drop various T6 mats and more bags, apparently at the expense of bone and dust. Which means the supply of bone and dust has dramatically decreased.

The problem is that crystalline dust has a special status among T6 mats because of its prevalent use in the Mystic Forge. So now the Mystic Forge recipes are becoming broken.

Iures.2894:

With all due respect, ectoplasms are pushing 40s, unidentified dyes 20s, T5 mats 2s, and it is unknown where T6 dust will end (double? triple?). Ectoplasm is not a luxury good… it is used in just about every single thing a level 80 could want. It affects T5 prices. Likewise, dust is a key item in Mystic Forge recipes. The current price makes these recipes cost prohibitive. There is definitely inflation – I’m not sure why you don’t recognize it here – flaws in the original argument notwithstanding.

I would argue that there’s also been a decrease in supply for all three of those items.

Unidentified dye is the easiest, since after they fixed the bug where dyes were dropping left and right the price shot up to 15s.

For Crystalline Dust, I’ll point out that Cursed Shore (a major supply point) seems much, much less populated now than it was before ~November (Karka event and Plinx nerf). Every person who would normally farm in Orr who’s instead doing a seasonal event in a low-level area is one who isn’t contributing to the supply. Same with anyone farming for lodestones, or almost any other T6 mat. . .

Ectoplasm is the most difficult to argue, I think. Aside from the aforementioned low-level events, I can think of a few contributing factors. Again, there seem to be fewer people farming events in high-level areas, which is going to affect the rare item supply, which affects the ectoplasm supply. People speed-running CoF path 1 over and over contribute fewer salvages of rares than they would running multiple paths. And of course, people playing the TP for money provide very few Ectos at all, unless that happens to be the market they’re playing.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s certainly been some inflation, but I’m not willing to lay the entirety of the price increases at the feet of inflation alone.

Inflation is the rise in prices for goods. It doesn’t matter why the price rose – the price rose and that is inflation.

I played GW1 Random Arenas for hours and hours and got NOTHING but Gladiator “achievement” points. So it’s possible. That said, GW2 needs work to make it inherently rewarding in the long haul.

John Smith.4610:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Noerknhar.3826:

I think it’s fair to judge inflation on the items that are worth to think about in end game. Maybe the precursor example is a bit limiting, but it’s the best example for what i meant to say

You would be entirely incorrect in an economic standpoint.

Inflation is measured by the price levels of goods people buy regularly, not the price tags on private jets or other “endgame” goods people buy when they’re extremely wealthy.

This is correct, you cannot measure inflation by luxury goods, or by a single good, or by the several other assumptions you’re making (sell orders represent sales?).

With all due respect, ectoplasms are pushing 40s, unidentified dyes 20s, T5 mats 2s, and it is unknown where T6 dust will end (double? triple?). Ectoplasm is not a luxury good… it is used in just about every single thing a level 80 could want. It affects T5 prices. Likewise, dust is a key item in Mystic Forge recipes. The current price makes these recipes cost prohibitive. There is definitely inflation – I’m not sure why you don’t recognize it here – flaws in the original argument notwithstanding.

Yes. I enjoyed farming Cursed Shore from time to time but then one day was smacked with the big DR stick. My last few attempts had such obviously poor results I quit in less than 30 minutes (didn’t even finish the omnom) and played other games. After a week of that experience I’m only interested in dungeons these days, but of course the lfg experience limits the fun in that…

Combos are good. However people ignore them just as they ignore other support because to be effective it takes some coordination. Doing a combo all by yourself is possible, but generally not worth much. 5 people pouncing on a combo field, however, is quite nice.

The sad truth is many people don’t progress past spamming ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ with their favorite weapon.

ref.8196:

Zeldain.5710:

They want people to buy gold. Of course they’re going to allow the sale of legendaries.

Yeh, because people are going to spend thousands of dollars to buy a legendary.

People already have.

leprekan.7248:

I understand how you are trying to link them … the problem is you are wrong. The price of Mithril and Elder wood logs has actually taken a massive nose dive … the ingredients that go with the tier 5 mats to produce a rare greatsword. Same is true of Ancient wood and Orichalcum … Ori is down about 1.5 silver per. It’s actually cheaper to make rare swords than it was before. Yet precursors and ecto rise.

Fractals stuff requires tier 6 and ecto to make. That coupled with a massive bot ban and you have a short fall on your base tier 5 materials used to create the ecto. Nerfing Plinx probably caused a bigger market shift than any other thing that was done.

I am not sure why you are dwelling on this theory crafting. There is a problem that needs to be addressed and I tried to provide a short term easy solution. My proposal is actually GOOD for the long term economy. By putting in an NPC and keeping the drop rate as is it becomes a massive gold sink that removes gold completely from the game and not just transferring it to another player.

Actually, you are wrong. Elder wood may have taken a nose dive, but mithril is now actually up. And T5 mats are way up. A while ago large bones were going for 28c and now over 1s. What is a great sword made of? Much more mithril and T5 than elder wood. Elder wood is a surplus good an naturally it will drop as the others suffer from shortage and their price climbs.

Rare prices increased with ecto, as did precursors. Precursors cost ecto. Before you go proposing solutions to the precursor problem, you need to understand the market forces at work.

Schrödinger’s cat.

Since it makes no real difference, I would expect it to be rolled when you open the chest as that is simpler to program. Chests and node determinations are not like loot determinations, because not every body has loot.

The requirement to do level 1, then level 2, then level 3, etc should be removed entirely. This is terrible design for an MMO as it fragments communities and creates a painful barrier to entry. The 80 level system is already proving bad enough because although they tried to counter it with scaling/sidekicking, they didn’t tune it enough. Now they are just throwing fuel on the fire without seeming to even care.

PearlGore.7419:

Fortuna.7259:

PearlGore.7419:

Nope, I enjoy selling mats I Don’t have a craft for and making a pretty penny.

How do you spend your pretty pennies?

On other crafts, dyes, upgrades, many things.

So you earn more gold to buy things that are similarly inflated. I fail to see this as any real benefit to you.

PearlGore.7419:

Nope, I enjoy selling mats I Don’t have a craft for and making a pretty penny.

How do you spend your pretty pennies?

leprekan.7248:

Fortuna.7259:

The inflation of precursors isn’t manipulation. The price is directly tied to ectos. So they made precursors slightly easier to get but since that patch, ecto prices have nearly tripled. The end result is that precursors are as expensive as ever and legendaries are far more expensive.

Everything else that goes into a legendary can be farmed if people will put the time in. The precursor cannot.

Ecto is actually easy to come by … farm tier 5 mats … make armor … break down armor. No idea why you link the two together. One item is Mystic forge lottery and the other is something you have control over if you put the effort in.

Those not wanting something done are either casual players with no real grasp of how much these weapons can cost or trolling. Even Anet has responded and is working on a solution. I merely tried suggesting an easier way to do it that requires months less coding.

No idea why I link precursors with ectoplasm, huh? Well, since you have no idea, allow me to explain:

The precursor can be “farmed” by obtaining huge amounts of T5 mats, crafting appropriate level 80 rares, and throwing them into the mystic forge. Sound familiar? That starts EXACTLY the same as the method you described for getting ectoplasm! Ectoplasm and precursors are competing for the exact same resource (actually, only those popular enough to warrant using the mystic forge to meet demand, which are the expensive ones). In other words, the cost to forge a precursor is the opportunity cost of so many hundred ectos. That is why precursor prices are directly tied to ecto prices.

It seems apparent to me that the general loot problem is the result of errant DR. Whether a bug or intentional, DR seems to be firing quickly and for no reason at all… or just not resetting, or messing with our minds, or… ?

There are times when it seems there is no problem: You get 30 porous bones/trophies while filling a couple bags with blues/greens. During these times, you are very likely to get a rare or two. Then there are the times when you get 60 porous bones, 3 large bones, 2 rags, and 4 white items. That is not luck; it is a different reward schedule. And it can happen seemingly at random… After farming in Orr for 30 minutes, after farming in a small party in Frostgorge for 30 minutes, after farming solo for 30 minutes, after a dungeon run, after sitting afk, after not having played at all for 24 hours… pretty much whenever.

Corvindi.5734:

Superdob.4150:

Why can we not get some feedback !

Is it working as intended ?? is it being looked into ??? has it been ninja fixed ?? do you give a %$£^ ?? i wont be wasting any more of my time (is it fixed/broken/working as normal, you tell me) trying to have fun playing when these are the forums you made, your chance to communicate with us therefore if there is no Anet response within the next few hours on this i will be deleting this game forever from my system, this is absolute pathetic customer service. I dont expect you to reply to every single post on the furums, but i think this one just maybe warrants some feedback… pissed off completely now..

Well as a TP Trading noob, the last thing I want to see is honest feedback from Anet on droprates. My god, think of what would happen!

“Hey guys, we just nerfed the droprate on pretty much everything!”

Hoarding and massive buyout ensues.

“Hey guys, you’re in luck. We just upped the droprate on pretty much everything!”

Massive selloff and Corvindi loses the virtual house she doesn’t actually have because Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have housing, darn it.

You think that doesn’t happen anyway? It is just a matter of when.

The inflation of precursors isn’t manipulation. The price is directly tied to ectos. So they made precursors slightly easier to get but since that patch, ecto prices have nearly tripled. The end result is that precursors are as expensive as ever and legendaries are far more expensive.

IndigoSundown.5419:

cimon.5798:

has any of you whatsoever played a grindfest game at all. from the above statements i dont seem to think any one of you has. to call this game a grindfest where it literly takes a day to gear out a lvl 80 toon full exotics is like calling aa grilled cheese sandwich gourmet cooking. quit complaining about stupid stuff like this and get out there and fight in wvw so you can complain about that insted :P

While everyone is going to have a different threshold with regard to grind, this claim can be examined with hard numbers. Let’s assume that the person looking to “exotic-up” in is buying a set, because they have a build they want to enhance. Let’s also assume they want Carrion, currently one of the cheapest options. At current prices for 6 armor, 5 trinkets, and weapons, that would be ~40 gold. Add in desirable runes and sigils, and the price is over 50. Making 50 gold in a day? How do you do that, exactly? Or is “day” also subjective?

Measuring gold earned per “day” is a telltale sign of grind. This “day” must be VERY long and monotonous.

PearlGore.7419:

Man if this game is grinding to you guys, must have never played Tera or Aion or any other MMO for that matter.

In less then a week my fresh 80 almost has a full set of exotic armor, yes I do still need a Longbow and Trinkets, but in other games that armor would have taken months, if I got it at all…

So, in other words you finished the non-grinding content in one “week”. Now, open the door and step into the wonderful grind that awaits you. Gear that takes months if you get at all is that way —>

In the beginning, all deer were hostile and the killing fields ran red with the blood of alpha testers. Or so I like to imagine.

kendokken.3257:

Fortuna.7259:

kendokken.3257:

Besides Anets concept of ‘fun’ combat is waypoint zerging the bosses continuously until you wear through their stupid amounts of HP 15 minutes later.

I think you are proving the OP’s point. That is just how a party of glass cannon warriors fight bosses. People that know better will be done in 5.

No his point was about warriors face planting constantly. I rarely do. But in PUGs I see a constant stream of Thiefs, mesmers, warlocks, eles, etc.. running back from the waypoints 3-4 times per boss beacuase they can’t take even 1 hit from the ridiculous bosses. 20k+ damage and 2 million+ HP is just a kitten way to design Boss “fights”.

Warlocks? …

And yes claiming that the way to fight bosses is to WP zerg them underscores the mentality of just what the OP is talking about. A constant stream of players coming from the WP is just bad, and a 5 sig berserker warrior is contributing to that even if he manages to kite such that the others end up paying the repair costs.

DigitalKirin.9714:

This is not to say that 5 signets is valueless. I think it has its right place and time, I just think that in a group setting, the power of your group buffing abilities is more powerful (even with the cooldowns) than signets which are more powerful when in a solo situation.

This. 5 sig is simply a way to make your character stronger on an individual basis. People look to optimize their personal performance because it is easier to notice and makes them feel so awesome. But as a team they are weak because people don’t notice little things like “Shake it Off” is helping five characters – not just one.

laokoko.7403:

I only did 2 dungeon. I fail to see how it’s the problem with the signet build and gear.

I’m using knight gear, shout healing with soldier rune for condition removal. I still faceplant.

The only time I dont’ faceplant is I switch to range weapon and have it easy like other range class.

Support requires a bit of a team effort. If everyone else is just doing DPS and they leave you to “tank” then yeah you’ll be running or lying face down in the dirt.

kendokken.3257:

Besides Anets concept of ‘fun’ combat is waypoint zerging the bosses continuously until you wear through their stupid amounts of HP 15 minutes later.

I think you are proving the OP’s point. That is just how a party of glass cannon warriors fight bosses. People that know better will be done in 5.

Yes, and 5 sig greatsword warriors (without weapon swap) will go with it all the way to end game and then complain about lack of content and boring combat. But then give them super grindy gear with 8% more stats to work towards and they are then happy to spam ‘1’ and ‘2’ for a few hundred more hours… No wonder the MMO industry is in the state that it is in.

tigirius.9014:

So why not stop harming the public and actually let mf work on everything?

/soapbox

MF on chests is terrible because it introduces the tedium of switching to MF gear just for opening chests.

Zombie.2310:

How do you know when you hit DR?

You can’t really know until you waste your time collecting a bunch of porous bones. Then you realize the game is asking you not to play any more.

So we have a game that makes you thirsty and then makes you sip through the smallest of soda straws. The experience is not pleasant. Most people won’t endure this long.

Mirta.5029:

I don’t think that you know what pay to win means or have ever even seen a single pay to win game. I have 2 level 80s with full exotics, not a single cent was spent on gems and no I did not grind. All I did was collect everything on my way trough the zones and increase my magic find. Both money and tier 6 items are not a problem to me. On top of that I never actually needed the best gear tier to be able to do dungeons and level 80 zones on my level 80. Where exactly did I need to pay to win?
Also Tera Online is doing quite well as an MMO.

Did you miss the memo about vertical progression going forward?

1 Weapon? Yeah, nothing more to worry about then.

Dogblaster.6713:

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Dogblaster.6713:

Really?! Hmm .. So how come that I can farm 10-20 g per day just simpy by doing dungeons and farming cursed shore.

Detail exactly what you’re doing there to get 20g per day (how long is this “day” anyway? 23 hours? Some people have lives).

Anyway, I think you’re full of it. I seriously doubt you can come up with any legitimate way to earn 20g “a day” with the current rare drop rates.

Dungeons, cursed shore .. thats all I do. Somethng about 3-8 dungeons paths and few hours of doing events. So believe me, there are legitimate ways

Yes I play 10+ hours a day … and because someone has ’’life’’ doesnt give him rights to make an excuse from it.

Someone having real life things to do, aka work, wife, kids is not excuse. You dont have 10 hours a day to farm gold, tokens, material? So be prepared to be patient because It will take you 2x longer than for someone like me who plays 10+ hours a day.

I am also not complaining in real life about someone here having more money than do I? Just because I play too much Guild Wars I dont have time to work as much as you do I have no rights to complain about it, its my own fault.

EVERYONE IS HIS OWN MASTER. Person just cant complain about not having time for something, because its only his own fault he didnt make that time.

Wow. Talk about distorted. People aren’t complaining they don’t have the time. People are complaining that the design of Guild Wars 2 asks for too much of their time. That is, they want a game that is fun in a reasonable amount of time and doesn’t have extended, pointless time sinks built in. You know, the game they THOUGHT Guild Wars was supposed to be…

Crapgame.6519:

Ironically some of the mystic forge items cost more than a legendary…

Think about it for a second. Let us say you are picking a shield which requires 250 Orichalcum Shield Boss things. Each shield boss is made from 2 orichalcum ingots which are made up of 2 ores each. You can do the math but you want to guess how much that alone is?

I didn’t mention the giant eyes if you are building the wall.

Lets not guess….

The math is 250 boss * 2 ingot/boss * 2 ore/ingot * ~2.5s/ingot * 1g/100s = 25 gold.

25 gold. 25 gold won’t go anywhere when crafting legendary weapons.

Truthfully there are mystic forge weapons that cost a lot, because they use insane amounts of lodestones.

Sir Wai.4052:

I must say I lucked out here also since I bought all my mats 3 days before the sudden inflation.

There is no problem now because someone got a legendary before there was a problem?

The design of legendary was nobody needed one and many people wouldn’t try for one. Lots of excess materials would be available for purchase by those who wanted one. So getting a legendary did not require an absolute stupid grind for the materials. You could play how you wanted for Karma and that was the most grind if you wanted one fast. Enter Ascended gear… all those excess materials are consumed meaning that a legendary now requires stupid amounts of grinding in very specific zones. The original design is completely broken by a poorly conceived gear tier thrown at us for reasons we can only speculate.

Bluestone.7106:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Price of Ectos is killing the game

How so? Will your game stop running if you don’t feed it ectos daily? Don’t be silly, you can play perfectly fine and never see/get/use a single ectoplasm.

If someone chooses to pursue gear that requires ectoplasms then that is their own choice.

What? As in if they choose to pursue any worthwhile gear in the game? Everything beyond masterwork is made of ectoplasm…

fellyn.5083:

Then don’t do it? You guys realize the monthly achievement is entirely optional right? You’re not forced to do it?

Yeah it’s 45000~ karma and 50s, so what. I can’t think of a single reason why you’d need to rely on the karma and silver earned through the monthly. It’s just supposed to be a nice little bonus once a month and that’s all. Key word there being bonus.

Yeah. They should just make everything outside of Queensdale have Agony too. It is all optional anyway.

Kromica.2831:

JumblyJebus.5903:

Kromica.2831:

Dr is stupid. Oh you need bloods for crafting well you have spent to much time killing the mobs that drop them why don’t you go and grind for something you don’t want for an hour or so then you can cone back and try foe the bloods again.

They created a system to artificially extend a grind in a game with “no grinding” (lol) worst idea ever.

If you are killing skelks or whatever for bloods, you will never hit that DR. People hit DR when they farm the waves and waves of mobs from events in cursed shore.

Yea people keep saying that but when my drops stop completely while farming normal drops I don’t think I can believe it.

When you get a pile of porous bones, rags, and whites for an hour I’m pretty sure something is going on…

Will they become obsolete? Of course. Welcome to “vertical progression.” Enjoy your stay!

Peetee.9406:

2) The bots have been banned and they probably accounted for 95% of the items on the trading post.

I seriously doubt that. A few thousand bots running 24/7 under DR would not be that much more productive than a million actual players.

ThePainTrain.8190:

kiranslee.4829:

How they are not related to gem store , if you can obtain like 80% of required materials over gem store, placing almost no effort into gameplay?

Do you actually realise how much money that would cost?

Do you realize how much money some people spend?

Where does one guy put 1 million chocolate bars? Besides which, market prediction is not market manipulation. Given the amount of chocolate bars I’ve looted recently (zero) and their usefulness in high-level food, a hundred thousand players could buy up a million chocolate bars pretty quickly.

GW2 markets are crazy because drop rates and uses are changed so much.

Actually with the current lack of gold sinks, the economy has plenty of gold. What we don’t have are rare crafting mats.

Stiv.1820:

To Anet adding Ascended gear was a bugfix in a way. They though the “time gap” (not power) between exotics and legendary needed to be filled. It should have been there from day 1. They admitted they messed up with how they implemented it making it unavailable to many play types and that they will fix it.

In that regard it was a complete and utter failure. Not only did the time gap not become any less obnoxious, it actually became far, far greater. I initially thought they were giving us a gear track completely independent of legendary that would be done simultaneously. Any way you look at this disaster, it spells very bad things for the future.

Every person is intended to be engaged in a balance of activities during the game. That doesn’t mean there aren’t specialties, it just means that unlike say GW1 where a monk was insulted if he so much as hit something with a wand, specialties don’t govern 100% of your time and effort.

Also, classes are more flexible and mean little next to specialization. Mesmers can “tank” and warriors can “heal”. But you have to use everything at your disposal because you are just contributing to those efforts – you can’t do them all by yourself.

Omega Mayhem.7163:

It’s not because of the money… 100 gold is nothing now.

It’s because the icon is annoying, especially if there are more than one running around.

In other words, it is because people are irritable and snippy. I’m sure they will survive.

tkalamba.2541:

The biggest difference between GW1 and GW2 is a persistent world. With the instanced nature of GW1, it wasn’t a world, but a series of hubs with levels attached to them. The persistence is by far the largest and most prominent difference.

With persistence tends to come some progression. GW1 could have gotten away with no levels whatsoever because of its closed and limited nature. Instead they controlled what skills you had at the onset to make it feel like your character became more powerful until a certain point. Elite skills were then used to further extend this. It’s to give the illusion of growth, even in such a small leveling process.

With persistent worlds, people want to feel powerful generally. They are also required to be somewhat controlled in their flow of the game. The game wouldn’t work very well if I could go straight to Orr from the get go. The levels of 1-80 is indeed as a gating mechanism of sorts to control how quickly you progress, and prevents you from jumping straight to the end of the game. The progression, the increase in stats, are all a product of the need to more or less control the progression. Hence, why an increase in level cap may be necessary for expansion content that contains a new story that is to be told. You control the flow of the story through the levels and the ability to fight tougher creatures.

It’s not simply because WoW did it. Games have done it before WoW. Even standard RPG’s. It’s to control the rate at which you experience the world. It’s the very nature of an MMORPG. This game does plenty that WoW doesn’t.

Your argument is unconvincing. You haven’t tied persistence to a continual need for what you call progression. Your key point, that levels control the flow, is blatantly false in the case of Guild Wars 2. It doesn’t control flow at all. I can, for instance, level from 2 to 80 inside WvW and then walk to Orr. Or I can do AC runs from 30 to 80 and walk to Orr in my full exotic set. All it does is mandate time doing something else before I go there, which is only important because it is a high level area… which is in a sense circular logic and one which can be done away with by proper design.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Are you really going to argue that people transitioning from full Rares to full Exotics did not notice a difference in effectiveness? I sure noticed one.

Of course. The fact that I one shot you with a backstab is purely skill. Ignore the gear.

Raine.1394:

My favorite quote from the AMA was: " we will have vertical progression moving forward with the focus on zero grind and a very low power curve."

So, they are going to be a game with a gear grind but novel in having zero gear grind. I am still playing and truly enjoy the game in the game. But, I’m an altoholic and sadly won’t be able to sustain several level 80 characters with their version of gear grind without a gear grind. Ascended gear, judging from the zero grind for the initial three pieces appears to be the mother of all gear grinds.

“Zero grind” – because thousands of ectos are going to fall in your lap while you just have fun…

Mirta.5029:

Infusions are only good for dungeons. Now tell me do you need exotics to get ascended? Do you need blue to get green? Do you require green to get yellow? THAT is vertical progression. You will NOT need the beginner infusion to get the masterwork infusion. The same way that I can run a dungeon with greens and get ascendeds. Call it a grind if you want, but you can’t call it a vertical progression if there’s no requirement of owning something previously to get the next tier.

Obviously you do not see how FotM is set up. To reach deeper levels, you must have infusions. You need to reach deeper levels to get certain drops. Eventually, getting Ascended gear is going to require other Ascended gear. That sure looks like that is the plan. They are probably just testing the waters and will decide later if they will pull the trigger.

It’s a terrible problem in WvW. Can happen even in small engagements… invisible enemies are rather hard to fight.

The primary cause of the current inflation is the Ascended gear requirements that quite frankly are just over the top.

Well the prices of everything used for gear continue to climb, and a large segment of the population is effectively not playing with you, and some people with similar attitudes as you have quit. So, I wouldn’t say you were unaffected…