Guild Wars 2

Whhhhhhat? Omg.

Why do they continue to fail in so much with these updates. People are being rewarded (greatly) for procrastinating. Brilliant.

Jordo. The amount of logical fallacies in that post is overwhelming.

The problem is for people that want to be able to obtain new content that the company provides. There is no other way to obtain it other than RNG. Therefore, if players want the experience they must gamble. They can’t even trade to get it.

People love to use the lottery or casino comparison as justification. But that’s a device that’s sole purpose is to gamble and to gamble for money.

GW2’s sole purpose isn’t to gamble. And the gambling we are talking about isn’t for money, it’s for virtual goods.

So a better comparison would be: Imagine going into a shop at the mall and wanting to buy the cool clothes in there, except that there are no price tags. You must pay money just to be able to roll three 20 sided dies. If they all land on 20 you get to the shirt or jeans or whatever. If not, you don’t anything at all.

I wonder how long that shop would stay in business. I wouldn’t shop there. I’d rather go to the store where there is a price for a good. If I like the good enough to justify the price, I buy it.

Bloodstealer.5978:

lets just have 1 map with a start point and an end point that is moved each month…

…Then ANET can save on development and other associated costs…

And we can call it “Map Laurel”.

The first step is admitting you have a problem. That’s good that you are already there. Now you are on the road to recovery. Today is the first day of the rest of your life!

MikeRocks.9243:

TheAngryLuddite.1834:

I think one of the more interesting bits (arguably) about this, is how it actually does increase demand.

There’s a part of our lizard brains that want these skins even more, because they are so rare.

I mean, I gotta admit, if this was a skin I could work toward (like the similar destroyer skins, or the conjure axe skin), I’d probably say – meh – I’ll go for something else, from an aesthetic perspective.

And yet, I have found myself compelled to want one – because – well…

When I really think about it. Why was that again?

Seriously fascinating stuff, here.

Or maybe I’m just finally getting drunk.

= |

That’s a very good point, actually.

I remember during the similar Halloween chest fiasco, I desperately wanted the Greatsaw and the Ghastly Grinning Shield. I got them both, Greatsaw from an unholy amount of chests and the Shield I bought on the TP, but then couldn’t decide who I wanted to use them on, since it didn’t fit any of my characters. I also suffered from not wanting to chose just one character to use it on, especially since it was rare and hard to obtain, so I ended up not even choosing any of them.

Five months later I was looking at them in my bank going, “Why did I want these again?” I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the look of them, but at the time I think I only wanted them ‘cause they were new and ’rare.’ After I got over that, I was kind of meh about the whole thing. So I sold them both.

Same deal here. They’re cool weapon skins and the daggers would fit my Elementalist pretty well, but I really only have the urge to get them ‘cause they’re rare and otherwise unobtainable.

If you only knew how often companies use compulsive human nature to make you give them your money, your mind would explode.

Kurow.6973:

68 chests later, not a single kittening ticket.

850+ lvl80 rares later, not a single precursor/profit of any kind.

150+ lvl 30+ fractal runs later, not a single kittening fractal weapon.

What the kitten is the kittening point in trying when half the kitten in this game is all RNG and luck based?

If you’re lucky, you get it in first few tries. If you’re unlucky, well good luck spending a year and possibly never getting what you’re trying to get.

I’M GETTING SICK WITH ALL THIS RNG BULLKITTEN IN THIS GAME!!! THIS IS GETTING TIRING AND IS REALLY STARTING TO KITTEN ME OFF.

Not sick enough, apparently.

Darkmind.7516:

Yea i opened over 250 now, and not a single one, im personally not very happy -.-

Im done opening the boxs.

That’s up to $400 worth of keys if you bought each one.

I have some sweet land in the arctic that you might be interested in buying.

To get 100 keys it’s somewhere between 9,000-12,500 gems (according to if you buy in bulk). To buy that many gems is costs between about $112-$157.

And you wonder why they keep adding RNG systems like this?!

lol.

You know why they keep putting in RNG items like this into the game? Because people keep spending money/gold on them. It’s profitable/effective, so they keep doing it.

So if you don’t like these types of systems, you have to show them as a company by being a good consumer and not buying them. They will keep selling things you don’t want if you keep buying them.

Ok, wow. That is very impressive.

I think you mean 500k items, not pages. Cause that would be 5 million items. Which, while possible, seems mighty high.

Ursan.7846:

Vol.5241:

It’s an economy problem. Those mats drop too frequently and the demand is insufficient.

I’d argue that it’s a game design problem and not an economy problem. The market is working as intended in terms of these items being incredibly common and very undesirable, and thus being priced appropriately. Whereas the game design is “flawed” in the sense that these junk items exist.

Put it on the books, folks. This is the first time I have ever agreed with a post you’ve made. Miracles do happen.

You know that you can organize guild events to do this kind of stuff as much as you want, right? It’s kind of the whole reason to be in a guild.

Vinny.6924:

The patch comes out right when dailies reset. Every. Single. Time.

Yet people still ask this question.

Not true. It has also released at Noon and closer to midnight (PST) before.

It will likely either be at Noon, 5 P.M., or Midnight (PST). That’s their typical times.

Ema.4953:

Mini pets drop? Seriously?

Only those and only from karka… but yes.

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

The Lost Shores minis have the potential to be the rarest traded items, as they are the only non-account bound ones that are no longer available. Hold onto them!

That’s not true though. They still drop from karka.

Possibly. Possibly not.

Sometime around the time of the first expansion. Which will likely be right before Christmas.

A hand-to-hand combatant would be amazing. I’ve been hoping that they eventually release something of the sort too.

Goloith.6349:

Geikamir.6329:

It’s 2000-4000 hours to max out the abilities. Per character.

lolwut.

Your kidding right? Do you have a link? If that is the case then we can definitely expect people to migrate to the Meta – Warr/Guard/Mesmer.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/25/guild-wars-2-world-vs-world-update-the-designers-talk-world-ranks-server-balance-cheating-and-more/

AllieMurdock.1785:

Hey all! Just wanted to clarify something for you: racial armors will not be available through WvW. We’ve contacted MMORPG.com so they can correct that information.

Thanks, and sorry for the confusion!

I’m so surprised…

….

No I’m not.

It’s 2000-4000 hours to max out the abilities. Per character.

lolwut.

Yeah. I’ve been waiting patiently for this too. They are taking their sweet time as usual.

That was a beta closing event. You’ll never see it again.

Mini games that offering unique skins for excelling at them would be amazing. I wish so bad they would add them in soon. Though I doubt we will see them before an expansion.

They are saving new armor skins for an expansion pack I would assume. Which extremely saddening.

Rebort.6295:

Geikamir.6329:

Rebort.6295:

Currently items are removed from circulation (lowering supply) when they are equipped. With the bind on purchase system supply is lowered on purchase. Ostensibly each purchase that lowered supply would also lower demand (you bought the one you want.) Wouldn’t this have a net zero affect on the price? What would it do to the amount of gold removed from the economy?

Binding precursors on purchase would only affect 1 group of people adversely, people that flip them for profit. If would have no effect for everyone else except to keep prices stabilized or possibly bring them lower.

Though the true benefits of such a system would occur most when introducing new items. It keeps the price lower for longer, only rising due to legitimate inflation and not via spikes caused by market speculation. As John has stated, the in-game market has experienced very little true inflation. This system would let such high-ticket items better mirror that.

I think it’s a little short sighted to say it would “only affect 1 group of people adversely” or otherwise. Also, what about the lack of all the gold leaving the economy from the “flippers.” If it happens as often as some people propose, wouldn’t it be a significant amount of gold not leaving the economy?

What do you mean leaving the economy? The money is transferred between players not destroyed.

And if you are talking about the tax, then this would have such a microscopic effect on the total amount of gold taken out of the game via tax that’s it’s not even worth mentioning. Millions of transactions are made every day on the TP.

Vayne.8563:

Geikamir.6329:

“And if you don’t like MMOs you should really check out GW2”

Just because other games of this genre commonly use this form of pseudo content, doesn’t make it good design.

So what’s the alternative? There’s plenty of stuff I hate from other MMOs that aren’t in this one. That doesn’t mean this game doesn’t have swords. Pulling out one quote and saying that that’s what anyone meant by it is disingenuous.

Everyone can rez, everyone has their own nodes, everyone gets their own loot, no trinity, these are things I love about Guild Wars 2, and things that other MMOs have that I hate. So yes, I hate other MMOs and I enjoy Guild Wars 2. No problem there.

In a logical world, content takes time to make. Some people need content to continue playing. Anet needs people playing for the game to continue to thrive. It’s all really very simple.

You excused their actions with the “every MMO has these” line. I used that quote because this game sold it self as a game that does things because it’s fun, not because it feels like it’s supposed to according to it’s genre. It’s really not a good argument for anything anyway. Just because it’s been done before does not mean it’s the right option for a product. In fact, it’s usually the exact opposite if you want to be innovative.

Time-gated content is not good for the players. If forces them to play for a certain amount of time until better content comes out. A better system makes players want to stay around. That’s where me and you seem to never be getting to a point of understanding at.

Arale.4207:

Geikamir.6329:

That’s not how their business plan is set up. Keeping us in the game with artificial time gates is not good for the player no matter how you try to spin it. They keep more people playing in hopes that they will buy stuff from the cash shop and buy an expansion pack when it comes out.

A properly designed game offers enough intrinsic rewards to make me want to stay in the game, not feel forced to if I want to stay competative. There are plenty of games out there that already have those carrots.

Actually, time gated material is more for keeping completion at a pace that ANet can manage. If nothing was on a time gate, this game would be pretty dead. Why? Because people would piledrive through all the content over and over until everyone has all the items they wanted from said content. Time gating also helps them keep people playing while they work on new patches/content. It’s the lesser evil of the choices they had as a company in my opinion.

It has 0 to do with competitive stats, since ascended accessories do not increase your ability to do things by that much. Honestly, people are running around in rares still, doing just fine. The only thing you need ascended items for is fractals. If you don’t do those, but still want them, then tough. They are only required if, the above reason notwithstanding, you want them or feel you need the. Otherwise they are optional.

It makes me sad to see people want time gating gone. They’d be playing mostly alone once everyone has all the ‘things’.

Making the people that ‘pile drive through content’ and then leave the most happy is bad for the game especially when everyone thought this game would have progression that was horizontal. Those players came into this game knowing what type of game it was. It goes back to the “you can’t please everyone all the time” saying. This is a perfect example. They are trying to please everyone, and heavily favoring those that want vertical progression. They are turning this game into a game just like any other MMO out there. It’s stagnating innovation and taking away the ONLY haven of a game we have for a different playstyle.

Content that is held back based off of time hurts players. The main selling point of not having a sub fee is that you can come back anytime you want. And previously you could tack on ‘and still be competitive’, but that’s no longer true. Trying to take a break for a few months and come back, it actually becomes impossible to catch up at the current rate of acquisition of top-tier gear no matter how much time and energy you devote to it. Players will always be ahead of you, especially if they add more levels and another gear tier.

This type of design is good for the company only. No one else actually benefits.

“And if you don’t like MMOs you should really check out GW2”

Just because other games of this genre commonly use this form of pseudo content, doesn’t make it good design.

Trajan.4953:

OMG how long do you GW1 Fanbois have to beat this dead horse? IT IS DEAD.

WoW fanboi alert.

Vayne.8563:

Geikamir.6329:

You know what accomplishes that exact same goal but doesn’t punish players with alts? Making progression account bound. If the numbers are balanced right it doesn’t matter if you are playing 1 profession or all 8, it will still take X amount of hours to reach the end.

This system actually rewards rigidly sticking to a main. That’s it.

This system rewards rigidly sticking to a main for people with a certain mindset. It doesn’t do that to me. I’ll get at least three or four professions in WvW that I want to play there and I’ll level them all.

Because I don’t believe that the effectiveness of a single individual in WvW is so important that it trumps me having fun.

Just because you don’t care about the reward doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It also doesn’t mean that it’s a good design for the players.

So yes, it punishes players that like variety and don’t like being arbitrarily disadvantaged. How dare players want such a thing from a multiplayer video game. For shame.

That’s not how their business plan is set up. Keeping us in the game with artificial time gates is not good for the player no matter how you try to spin it. They keep more people playing in hopes that they will buy stuff from the cash shop and buy an expansion pack when it comes out.

A properly designed game offers enough intrinsic rewards to make me want to stay in the game, not feel forced to if I want to stay competative. There are plenty of games out there that already have those carrots.

You know what accomplishes that exact same goal but doesn’t punish players with alts? Making progression account bound. If the numbers are balanced right it doesn’t matter if you are playing 1 profession or all 8, it will still take X amount of hours to reach the end.

This system actually rewards rigidly sticking to a main. That’s it.

Exactly. Their decisions made have our wallets as bullseyes. They are more business than game studio. Which is fine, but don’t defend their decisions like it’s good game design. It’s good profit design. Which, as usual, is horrible game design.

@Vayne.

Yeah, but you could also be trolling me.

No they aren’t like traits for the exact same reason I already said. They are general use buffs that are not even remotely profession specific.

But that’s neither here-nor-there. They are calling the shots in this vitual world. They can make us all wear tiaras if they wanted to. And they are choosing character bound tine gates which is punishing players that like variety.

And to your argument with Goloith. What does it matter why players play wiyh alts? It doesn’t.

@Vayne.

I’m on my phone so quoting that was turning into a nightmare.

Horizontal progression is progression too. It’s what GW1 had and that’s what prelaunch fans wanted from this game as well.

No one likes to be disadvantaged. Period. You are arguing for certain players to be disadvantaged just so the players that want uneven playing fields can be happy. Sorry, but I’m never going to agree with such nonsense

Vayne.8563:

Zenith.6403:

Olba.5376:

Well let me ask you this: Why do you want with that max gear? What will you do once you have it? What will it help you achieve, that you cannot do right now?

- People want max level gear because it increases their success at everything they do. You might as well ask why get a high-speed internet connection if slower connection can retrieve all the same info. Effectiveness is the reason.

People want max level gear because they are addicted to progression. The max level gear out now doesn’t appreciably help most people. In fact, people who aren’t running top level fractals don’t need ascended gear at all. Maybe some dungeons are a HAIR easier but not enough to care.

I’ve now done the same dungeons with and without ascended gear and there isn’t much difference. I surely haven’t noticed any.

Yeah maybe something dies like 2 seconds sooner, but considering that 2 seconds is out of a couple of minutes, it’s not noticable without a stop watch. And if you’re in a dungeon and other people have ascended gear, your extra contribution having it or not is 20% of the total extra time you save.

Only a very small percentage of the game population does high level fractals. Another percentage of people do WvW. A huge percentage hang around in the open world, which is easy enough no matter what you’re wearing.

People want this stuff because they’re looking at numbers. Why does it exist? For the people who insist on looking at numbers. They’re not the biggest percentage of players in the game, but they’re sure the loudest.

Storm in a teacup. This stuff isn’t necessary and if people didn’t moan and complain and leave because they felt they had nothing to do, we wouldn’t have it. But that’s what happened. So Anet compromised. They gave us gear that gave a tiny upgrade. Enough for most grinders to want, and enough for most other players to not care about.

Except for the people who think they need it and want it yesterday. And for those people, there isn’t much help anyway.

So are you implying that Arena Net are our drug dealers?

Vayne.8563:

Geikamir.6329:

Vayne.8563:

Because these ranks offer skills, they pretty much have to be character bound. I mean think about it.

Do you level your necro to get skills for your warrior? Do you level your guardian to get skills for your thief? Of course not.

Once skills were part of the package, it’s not unlike any other type of character progression.

You are completely right. Gold should also be character bound. How dare MY warrior be able to spend the money that MY elementalist made. That’s basically like fraud.

Skills are not gold. No matter how much money you have on your tenth level ele, he can’t wear 15th level gear. Bad analogy and misleading on your part.

But what if you had all your traits available to you as a level 5 guy. That would change the game significantly, which is more what we’re talking about.

Minor traits are passive. These are passive. Minor traits are character bound. You don’t get trait points for all your characters. These are WvW traits.

It would make no sense for a character to get a bonus on the traits you earned on another character.

People are simply greedy for power. They want more. It’s human nature. But that doesn’t make it right for the game.

Professions skills =/= WvW passive buffs.

An elementalist will never have a clone shatter trait. And elementalist will have +5 supply.

These buffs are designed to work with any profession. Just like gold.

Also your last sentence literally makes no sense and makes it seems like you are trolling me. Are you trolling me? Cause it seems like you are trolling me. People want more power? What in the world are you talking about? No one asked for these buffs and mostly importantly no one is asking for them for free. What people are asking for is when you earn something that it shouldn’t be artificially held back from you just because you have an alt. I can use gold that I earned on one character on another. That is literally the exact same concept. Same as dungeon tokens.

Olba.5376:

Windwalker.2047:

Makes me wish there was a way to get max gear without waiting for weeks and weeks for the raid to res……i mean for the laurels and commendations.

Well let me ask you this: Why do you want with that max gear? What will you do once you have it? What will it help you achieve, that you cannot do right now?

If it serves no purpose, why does it exist?

Lukhas.1962:

Geikamir.6329:

You are completely right. Gold should also be character bound. How dare MY warrior be able to spend the money that MY elementalist made. That’s basically like fraud.

A stupid comparison. Skills = / = gold

Just because they aren’t the same thing, takes no merit away from my point.

You realize the these buffs aren’t profession specific right?

Vayne.8563:

Because these ranks offer skills, they pretty much have to be character bound. I mean think about it.

Do you level your necro to get skills for your warrior? Do you level your guardian to get skills for your thief? Of course not.

Once skills were part of the package, it’s not unlike any other type of character progression.

You are completely right. Gold should also be character bound. How dare MY warrior be able to spend the money that MY elementalist made. That’s basically like fraud.

Rebort.6295:

Currently items are removed from circulation (lowering supply) when they are equipped. With the bind on purchase system supply is lowered on purchase. Ostensibly each purchase that lowered supply would also lower demand (you bought the one you want.) Wouldn’t this have a net zero affect on the price? What would it do to the amount of gold removed from the economy?

Binding precursors on purchase would only affect 1 group of people adversely, people that flip them for profit. If would have no effect for everyone else except to keep prices stabilized or possibly bring them lower.

Though the true benefits of such a system would occur most when introducing new items. It keeps the price lower for longer, only rising due to legitimate inflation and not via spikes caused by market speculation. As John has stated, the in-game market has experienced very little true inflation. This system would let such high-ticket items better mirror that.

Rebort.6295:

If precursors are account bound on aquire, the “poor sap” that gets the wrong one for his characters would truely be a poor sap. Now at least they can sell the wrong one and purchase the one they want. This is true for all items and I think is one of the resons the Trading Post is so necessary. Currently all mobs have an equal chance at dropping items in your level range (if I understand the loot system correctly.) You don’t kill shatterer for a chance at “epic sword of awesome.” This goes back to phys’ posts earlier about intentional drops. I really like that word, intentional. I always felt there was something different about gw2’s loot system but couldn’t put a name to it. In other mmo’s you have specific mobs that drop specific items. They are intentional. Here we have mobs drop everything, so you have to have a method of converting what you get into what you want. I don’t dislike our system, in fact I find it a nice change. I can do what I want and still work towards the fat loot that I want.

The precursor would drop or come out of the forge as Bind on Equip until it’s put on the TP. Then it get’s transformed into Bind on Acquire.

It won’t happen from the looks of it. This game hates alts now.

So it would be a tonic that only works underwater? Or would you just kind of flail around helplessly when on land?

Vayne.8563:

People go for the easiest loot, period. So if you put more loot somewhere that’s better it will not longer be an unpopular event. This is what happened with the big world events. People didn’t camp them that much until they were guaranteed a gold. Suddenly there’s lag, there’s overflow servers, there’s all sorts of stuff.

If you buff the rewards on everything few people are doing, you’ll throw the entire economy out of whack with inflation. If you change where the big rewards are, people will just start doing the new stuff.

I agree with the OP in principle, but unfortunately human nature makes this very hard.

Each time an event is done the bonuses would diminish. So the most profitable way to do events would be to do tons of them all over the place.

Which gives another great idea. What if waypoint costs flucuated based off of use? So waypoints that never get used would be cheap and popular ones would be expensive. This would even work as a great indicator as to which areas DEs are likely to give the best rewards.

Judging by how hard they have been trying to bend over backwards to get money from the ex-WoW crowd, I would assume mounts will be one of the main features of an upcoming expansion pack.

Ursan.7846:

Geikamir.6329:

Prices spike all the time when buyers spot a chance to create a false scarcity and increase price by lowering supply.

Without chance for profit, those large spikes are much less frequent. The price stays lower for longer.

How are we defining “flipping” here. I’m talking about placing buy orders and then placing sell orders.

I mean, buying out and reselling for higher.

Also I should note that this would work directly in conjunction with having alternative ways to get precursors. Combined, these would make them much cheaper and in closer relation to each other price-wise.