Guild Wars 2

Zaxares.5419:

…The Wiki claims that the Crystallized Nougat recipe does drop.

I’ve seen the nougat recipe drop personally, for what it’s worth.

Some people have said they prefer the current set up, since “nearest” always means “closer.” Some of us intentionally point the camera to hone in on foes in that direction and prefer that “nearest” mean “closest within my field of view.” There’s really no good way to reconcile those preferences without a specific option.

In addition to the changes mentioned above, I also seem to autotarget “furniture” much more often than after previous patches. In the Modniir chain (in the Harathi Hinterlands), I find myself firing at centaur weapon racks instead of the 10-15 centaurs that are actually trying to kill me. I suspect that’s related to it being easy to autotarget a world boss (who are, in some ways, also furniture), but I figure I can manage to manually target a world boss eventually…whereas while fighting 10-15 foes near me, I can’t afford to waste any damage.

To be a “monopoly,” you have to participate in the economy, something that ANet doesn’t do. OPEC (technically a “cartel”, but same idea) affects prices by controlling supply, but they make money by doing so. In contrast, ANet makes money by having a game that people enjoy playing, which requires them to have a fully-functioning, “reasonably fair” free-market economy.

Put another way, ANet meets only one of the conditions of a monopolist: they control supply (via the drop rate). They don’t meet any of the other conditions and therefore, Mr Smith’s terse answer of “no” is correct.

On a related note, what difference does it make to call ANet a monopoly? How does it help players to manage their in-game budgets? How does it help in understanding the in-game economy? How does it help those who are not TP-mavens to earn or save?

A model is only valuable if it helps us understand the relevant dynamics and apply that understanding to making things better (for ourselves or others). Labeling ANet (with a word that holds negative connotations for most of us) doesn’t succeed in either of those goals.

In short, I don’t think ANet meets the meaningful definition of the word, but even if it did, how would using that term help us (or them) make the game better?

Mystic.5934:

I already had 46/51 trash. I didn’t get any I didn’t already have. I haven’t gone out of my way to collect junk yet, but I’ll probably need to for the last couple that are only from weird places.
If it matters, I opened those gifts on a lvl 80 mesmer.

Thanks.

And, I’m not sure if level/class matters for junk results from those bags. It affects the level of gear you get from standard champ bags, but not the tier of mats/miscellany. Still, useful to have all the data

PS sorry that didn’t finish out your junk collection; be nice to have gotten it out of the way.

Generally, it’s more efficient to have one party pay any associated fees. Putting the burden on the seller discourages people from asking “too much” on high-value items.

Changing the structure so that buyer and seller each pay half would change a lot of the market’s current dynamics, probably in some good ways but also in some not-so-good ones. I’m not sure it would be worth the investment in development time (plus testing) and educating the community. I’d also expect that the fee would rise to maybe 3% each (instead of 5% total), to account for the reduction in the amount of gold sunk on each transaction.

And as Behellagh notes, the buyer already pays the 10% sales tax; the seller needs to know that amount so they understand why they won’t be receiving 100% of the listed price, not because they (the seller) is paying it.

Zaxares.5419:

…the giveaway is whether or not the gears exploding out of the tower at the start do so in a single smooth animation or whether it stutters/suddenly appears out of thin air.

Thanks for that; it’s helpful to have an independent “tool” for measuring the latency.

Zaxares.5419:

As far as I know, Hero of the People (as well as Fine Wining and Brewmaster) still cannot be unlocked at this time.

It’s entirely possible that we need a special item to unlock these. Whatever the case, ANet hasn’t, as far as I know, commented directly or indirectly about these.

Zaxares.5419:

I actually have a feeling that Fine Wining and Brewmaster might have been pulled completely because it could have been construed as “promoting alcohol consumption”, which might affect GW2’s rating.

I suspect something else is going on: the game still has an achievement for drinking, a drinking game, and inebriation effects. Presumably, it would also be easier to hide the UI for those two achievements than to disable them — and that would be less frustrating for the community. And finally, wouldn’t they have mentioned that they were updating those achievements soon™?

In other words, it’s certainly possible that they pulled those chieves; I just think there’s a more prosaic reason why it’s not working, e.g. “oh oops, guys — we forgot to add the item that unlocks three achievements into the game — my bad.”

Soless.1067:

alright I will try that, thank you for the suggestion

Good luck.

PS changing characters doesn’t help with Ogre Wars, though; you have to get into a fresh map — that’s usually easy only right after a patch (and not everyone can play on short notice like that). I don’t have a good suggestion for how to join that chain more often…and it’s one I actually enjoy, independent of the new importance of the loot at the end.

SaintSnow.6593:

Please. Like why not but the pre outright?

Some people prefer to use the forge. Isn’t it up to them to decide how to spend their coin?

I agree that the average results from playing a lottery is bupkus or worse and I agree that people should reset their expectations accordingly. But at the same time, it’s human nature to assume that this time, RNGesus will smile upon them and be disappointed.

I don’t get angry at people when they do that, I just try to explain how the numbers work and let them decide how best to make use of the data.

Enko.6123:

The halloween auras for trinkets may have been an alpha test for some new Jeweler 500 stuff just like Mawdrey was an alpha test for a scavenger hunt type thing

That could be fun.

From the developer point of view, gating is an easy way to restrict content or a flow of goods. So I understand why it appeals to ANet.

From this player’s view, I think it just replaces open-ended content with tedium. It never makes the game more fun.

But, I accept that ANet has been tempted by the darkside of expendiency and that it’s just something we have to deal with in the game. So, instead of anxiously counting the days until I can convert enough quartz, I assume it’s going to be months before I have enough. I make a mental note to e.g. wait until 2015 to check and sure enough, I’ll find on Jan 1 that I can make another set. Not the way I’d prefer to play, but since I can’t beat them…

@Araleg: yes some individuals have gotten refunds (and some have not) for duplicate gem store purchases. Depends on the circumstances and how well you explain the situation. Support recognizes that people make mistakes and, where possible, they try to help.

@Dizztrack: thanks for helping to keep the game in the financial black, so all of us can continue to enjoy what it has to offer. I’m sorry for your bad luck rolling the dice.

For myself, I never spin the wheel for stuff I want, unless most of my enjoyment comes from the anticipation of getting something stellar. In all other situations, I put in buy orders on the TP for the amount I’m willing to spend, without RNG.

Good luck and I hope your future rolls are better than average.

I suspect that Rhendak and Rotbeard are affected by some type of Diminishing Returns issue — if I don’t get the bouncy/bonus chest and/or stationary/ground chest at the end, leaving the zone for 15-30 minutes and doing a few events resets it reliably. That’s consistent with DR being the issue, although of course it could be some sort of bug or DR being misapplied.

Noir: is this a personal guild? or a group guild?

In both cases, there are a couple of things you can try — you just have to be more cautious when you do this with a personal guild (see below).

• Create a new rank within the guild. Perhaps call it “test”
• Give it permission to deposit and withdraw from both stash and trove/cave.
• If you can work with someone else, put them into that new rank (or have them put you in it) and test to see if that resolves the problem. If yes, then start to create new ranks with the same rights as your existing ones and move people from the old ones to the new ones.
• If working alone, you have to be more cautious. In particular, you need to make sure that the new rank has the same permissions as the one you are in now (almost certainly: all permissions). If not, you could find yourself without anyone with the proper permissions to admin the guild. Again, if the results of the test are successful, use the “test” rank as the your new rank and scratch the old one.
• If the tests don’t work, then reply to your original ticket with that information. Ask that they escalate the ticket to the next tier.

Another possibility is that the merge didn’t finish completely because there were too many items in one of the vaults to complete it. There are many ways to test that, the most reliable is annoying tho: get someone to remove everything from the bank (on multiple worlds), give the game 10-30 minutes to do its thing, and then put everything back and try again. Again, if you do that and nothing changes, reply to your original support ticket with the new information.

I apologize that I can’t offer any suggestions that require less effort than above.

Good luck and, if you have time, please let us know what happens.

How about if we rephrase the original post in a more neutral fashion:

Is it intended behavior that Rangers are the only class that can use their profession skills (aka F1-F4 skills) while downed?

I could see a case for ANet replying “yes,” “no,” or even, “sort of.” I can’t see that the answer is obvious.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

@OP: open a support ticket and work with ANet, so you get individualized attention. I’m confident they will be able to help you.

Reincarnated.1754:

Do Not ArenaNet read these post??

Different department. The forums are the place to go to report a general issue or offer suggestions or get help from players. If you want a personal reply, you need to open a support ticket.

Reincarnated.1754:

I thought this was the place to tell them thy have got it wrong.

This is the place to tell them something is wrong; it’s not the place to get them to help you specifically.

Reincarnated.1754:

I Can’t be just me this happens to.

It could be just you or just a handful of people and that there’s something that can be done on your computer to assist (perhaps a problem with the game, the way it’s installed, or something interfering with either of those).

In short, if you want quick and personalized attention, open a ticket:
https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

Good luck and, if you have time, please let us know how it turns out.

Trading Post is a decent place to post this IMO.

To clarify your question, I believe you want to know when you should spend gold on these items, not when to spend the tickets (obviously the ticket price is as cheap as it will ever be right now).

That’s a difficult question to answer. I can guarantee that six months from now, the prices will be higher. But it’s harder to predict the the prices six days from now. It depends on factors that we can’t predict.

In the past, sometimes people have converted tons of stockpiled tickets into the 1-ticket (or 2-ticket) items and held them away from the TP until later, at which point they realize that tons of other did the same thing and gold prices actually drop after the ticket-price increase. Often times, people panic the weekend before a known ticket-price increase, so gold-prices spike for that weekend and then drop back down to pre-increase values for a week or so, before starting to rise again. And of course, the expected behavior is always that, when there’s a change in the supply costs, that the value will increase, i.e. that gold prices would spike right after the patch.

You can try to kitten this by comparing the TP supply before Halloween 2014 and supply after, but that doesn’t tell you about people hoarding.

Another approach is to put in buy orders for how much you are willing to spend and hope that prices drop down that much. If they do, great, you get your items. If not, you get your money back. (And if it’s a mixed result, you can decide whether to hold & sell or try to spend a premium to finish the set.)

In short, you’ll have to use your gut to figure this out.

Best of luck, Zaoda; I hope you guess correctly.

edit: “predict” works better than a similar word for the kitten filter.

Thanks, kindly, Mystic. Great data.

By the way, did you end up getting your Trash Collection via Mawdrey? (Or had you already done that on your own?) I made a good deal of progress the first week I had the converter, but nothing since. (Perhaps because I open the gifts on a mid-tier character.)

@OP: open a support ticket and work with ANet, so you get individualized attention. I’m confident they will be able to help you.

When you transfer worlds, you lose the Power of the Mists for a period of time. I’m not sure about the details, other than the rules governing the world to which you are associated have changed several times. I believe you can reduce the time by playing WvW with your new world, but it could just be automatic after the current or next match up is over. For example, if you transferred on Friday (Halloween) morning, you would (in this scenario) have to wait until the evening of the 7th of November.

If you still aren’t receiving anything after, say, 10 days, I’d file a support ticket and work with ANet to resolve the issue.

Diminished Returns applies to every zone and every instance. It triggers when you spend a lot of time in the same area, where the exact definitions of “a lot of time” and “area” depend on circumstances.

The easiest way to check if you are suffering DR in the Labyrinthe is to compare your per event karma and/or experience gains, i.e. what shows up next to the medallion (which probably all of us automatically click away too quickly now). If you have DR in the Lab, you will be gaining significantly smaller amounts of karma/xp than those around you (and then you were originally) and seeing a ton of porous bones and fewer ToTs etc.

The quickest way to remove DR is to take your character to another zone for 15-60 minutes (with the amount of time also varying with circumstances), doing at least an event or two. You can also swap toons; your alts won’t suffer the same DR in the Lab. It’s also possible for DR to wear off Character A while you are playing Character B, C, or D, but that’s less reliable and I think generally takes 24-48 hours.

The code is clean, the coherentUI_host.exe isn’t a virus, and there’s nothing to worry about. You just need to tell your antivirus program to chill.

Most anti-malware programs are overprotective, as they should be. When they find software that is only triggered by particular use of certain other programs, stored in the user’s profile or appdata directories, and/or not directly installed by the user, the anti-malware programs correctly identify the situation as a potential issue. The problem is that their whitelist (software that should be exempted from suspicion) isn’t kept as up-to-date as their blacklist (software that gets immediately quarantined).

And frankly, I prefer that sort of aggressive behavior in anti-malware: better that they are too cautious than the other way around. I just have to remember to do a google search on the specific alleged software to check whether it’s ok or not and then grant an exemption, via the antimalware’s control or settings panel.

I’ve done that event several times this year (and last) and there have always been times when he hasn’t said “Mad King Says.”

The current script is fairly accurate imo. If you recall from your childhood, a clever strategy for the designated “Simon” was to offer 90% “simon says” or 90% without “simon says,” trying to trip everyone up by making them complacent, i.e. what the French call, “Le Fake Out.”

The symptoms sound exactly like diminishing returns.

An easy way to check is to compare the karma and/or experience you gain from the events: after taking into account buffs, a character suffering DR will be seeing less XP and less karma than everyone around them (and less than before). (Keep in mind that the individual Labyrinthe events give out different karma/xp rewards.)

The quickest way to deal with DR is to take that character to another zone for 15-30 minutes (and do an event or two, killing some stuff along the way). You can also swap characters and the DR will eventually wear off on its own, but I’m not sure how long that takes.

The official release notes for the Oct 21 update included the line:

Fixed a bug in which the inventory window size preference would sometimes reset to default when moved before closing.

Unfortunately, since that time, my inventory window resizes more often than prior to the patch.

Zaxares.5419:

Candy Corn resets once a day, I believe, but I think that pumpkins actually do not. What’s happening instead is that the pumpkins are unique per instance, and since places like LA and the Labyrinth spawn new copies so frequently, you’re likely to not enter the exact same instance twice.

Yes, you can verify this using the /IP command (although, mostly I think of this only after I wonder if I’m in a new instance or not, i.e. when it’s too late to compare to the original instance).

I don’t have two accounts for GW2, but I did for GW1 and there were a number of settings and various temporary files used by the game that could sometimes interfere with each other. I dealt with this by having two copies of the game in two different folders (somewhat harder to do with GW2, because the file sizes are much, much larger).

Among the advantages of using two installations:

• Could setup automatic login for both.
• No cross-account settings/temp file contamination.
• Multiboxing option using same computer (and virtualization).

PS Instead of downloading updates twice, I set up a batch file to copy the .exe and .dat files from the main account’s folder to the secondary folder, although this can be done using copy & paste, too. Feel free to PM me if you want help setting something like this up.

Grannysaff makes a good point tho: maybe the game should warn people when the character using a recipe doesn’t meet the crafting requirements.

The rewards for me include the satisfaction of knowing that I can do the existing JPs a gazillion times faster now than I used to, that I can handle any new JPs (as they show up) with similar mechanics (something that wasn’t true at launch), and that I can help others do so as well.

If they upped the tangible rewards, then they’d have to find ways to limit the total amount of loot each account could acquire from them. Good bye to JP parking (probably).

tl;dr I’m happy with the existing loot in general.

That said, I do think the relative amount/rarity of loot should be rebalanced, so the longest, most challenging puzzles are more rewarding (especially the ones that can’t easily be bypassed by portals).

If you’re alone in the Labyrinth, sure, you can get knocked around a bit. Solution: follow the design of the instance and group (the LFG tool works well for this). If you don’t want to do that, then bring stability, try to avoid tackling more than a few foes (of certain types) at once, and learn the tells; it’s possible to be nearly entirely CC-free.

Iason Evan.3806:

That won’t happen because the change was meant as a way to farm gold and money off of the community at a greater rate than normal. Call it “exploiting” the community if you will. I won’t call it that, but to each their own.

The change doesn’t affect money in the least. Gems can only be bought for real-currency in increments of 800, 1,200, 1,600, and similar amounts; this has been the case since launch. The new interface only changed how you convert in-game gold to in-game gems.

And while it’s true that the current UI forces players to convert more than the minimum amount of gold they need to buy a specific item, it can never be more than 400 gems too many — that’s just not a lot in the grand scheme of things.

If ANet wanted to suck out the last dollar or Euro from players, there are hundreds of other, more efficient ways to do so. The current UI was nothing more than ANet over-simplifying the needs of consumers and implementing a misguided UI.

Plus, it’s getting adjusted; if they thought it was making them good money, they wouldn’t bother.

Last year, people complained about how expensive these things were. Now, some who acquired them last year are complaining they are too cheap.

As a player, I far prefer that ANet adapt from mistakes, instead of rigidly holding to the old way.

I do like the idea of rewards that are exclusive to being present at a certain time & place — it’s a way of being able to say, “hey, I was here at the beginning” — but even so, I think there shouldn’t be more than a few such items in the game in total. ANet, however, has been moving in the direction of fewer and fewer truly exclusive items. I expect, therefore, that every previously limited-supply item in the game will see a comeback of some sort.

As pointed out (by ANet and by players) in other threads, every store that offers gem cards runs out sometimes. Most of the time, the retailer’s staff doesn’t why this happens, so they try their best to offer an explanation. However, they are just about the last people who would find out if ANet is going to change their system of selling currency.

tl;dr it’s just your local store that has run out. Call around or buy online. (If buying from Amazon, make sure it’s not some Amazon-partner who is selling them for a higher price.)

Finally, sure, Costco and the like will offer items at bulk discounts, but currencies generally don’t get treated the same at the retail level.

You have an official answer: they made nearly everything except the puppy sellable. This year, they deliberately offered a mix of items with a mix of acquisition methods.

You might not like ANet’s choice (I don’t; I prefer that account-binding only apply to things that require some sort of skill to acquire). Nevertheless, it’s their choice to make and with a decent set of reasons for doing so.

@Brutal Augus: what did Support say in response to your ticket? They are usually very good at helping people troubleshoot issues with the TP. Nearly all the time, it turns out to be a problem on the client side (sometimes over-ambitious anti-malware, sometimes something about how Windows or the Mac is setup, sometimes something odd).

There aren’t any foods in the game that can be vendored, so these are consistent with the non-festive ones.

They mostly go up in price eventually, so you can offer them on the TP for more and just wait. Or destroy them, if you don’t want the bother.

Devata.6589:

Gaile Gray.6029:

To round out this discussion:

I believe that Djinn hit the nail on the head: Disabling the animations globally took far less time than re-implementing them individually will require.

To answer Kolompi’s question (if I’m understanding it properly), designing, testing, and implementing new animations takes a long time. It was judged more prudent to disable the existing animations (and work on having them function selectively) than to reposition team members into the process of redesigning them.

And again, the animations will be back in the future.

“It was judged more prudent to disable the existing animations” because in some dialogs it was strange. Looks like a bad judgment to me.

Maybe rephrase that as strongly disagreeing with that judgment. Some people get really annoyed by such things; some people don’t. Whatever decision ANet made was going to be unsatisfying for a ton of folks and merely the lesser of evils for others. Better that there hadn’t been any bug, of course, but once there was one, ANet was left with choosing between really annoying and terribly annoying; I don’t see that they could have done much better than what they have done: compromise.

Dr Ishmael.9685:

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

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

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

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

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

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

I prefer “soon” to a specific date.

For certain types of products, specific dates make a lot of sense. We know that when apple says the iPhone 19.5 is coming out on Aug 10, 2105, it’s important to their bottom line to build up hype for that date. Similarly, it makes sense for ANet to announce the dates for major updates: Living Story returns 4 November or a new feature pack on a specific date.

In contrast bug fixes are something entirely different. These aren’t products, they are repairing things that aren’t working and I want them to be done right. When my dentist recently found a pocket of decay, she didn’t promise it could be resolved in a single visit, since the “proper” approach would depend on what sort of decay she found and how bad it was. So, she promised it would be fixed “soon.” Similarly, when ANet is changing something about the UI or fixing a mechanics bug, I don’t want them to promise until they know they have the solution nailed down tight.

As a compromise, I like some of the ideas above:

• Let us know the priority: “this is a high priority and urgent fix” would get quicker attention than “this is a medium priority, non-urgent fix affecting only a few people.”
• Let us know the progress: “analysis is still progressing” vs “we have a solution that is being coded” vs “we’re in quality assurance” vs “it’s scheduled for the next build” vs "we have a date.

GOSU.9574:

There is a problem with this, some people actually buy cultural as levelling gear since they plan to eventually unlock the skins anyway.

I wouldn’t be opposed to offering the option: buy the gear or buy a skin.

However, I’m not sure how widespread the practice is (I’m sure ANet has the stats) or if those same people wouldn’t prefer skins anyhow. After all, it’s relatively cheap to get L35 Masterwork and L60 rare armor with the stats you want, instead of being locked into e.g. Carrion armor if you play an asura.

I propose that ANet change the following items from Gear to Skins:

• Cultural Armor
• Cultural Weapons (sold by NPCs)
• Pact Weapons
• Underwater Helmet

Anyone who can afford T3 Cultural Armor can easily afford to outfit themselves in Exotics (if not Ascended), so almost the entire value from the purchase comes from unlocking the skins. That leaves one with some horribly expensive rare item that has little use, except to resell to vendor. To actually use the skins, a player must spend again, using up transmutation charges. Instead, take advantage of the Wardrobe and turn these into skins that can be used once for free (perhaps discounting them by the modest resell value).

Similarly, most people buy T3 Cultural Weapons or who end up with more than 1 Pact weapon are interested in the skin, not the actual weapon. And again, you have to pay twice: karma to get the weapon and a transmutation charge for applying the skin. This is another opportunity to simplify the process.

Finally, there’s no value to the player in underwater breathers except for the skin:

• Characters can breathe underwater without one equipped.
• The current system forces players to have a 7th armor piece, which has substandard stats.
• It also requires purchasing a 7th rune, which cannot be recovered, since karma armor cannot be salvaged.
• The selection of breather skins and stats is extremely limited to fine and masterwork with one choice every 5-10 levels.

Making this a skin-only choice would simplify the requirements for gearing up for underwater combat, remove an extremely annoying mechanic, and (I suspect) open up options for the Devs in terms of future changes to underwater combat.

laokoko.7403:

I hope they can change the TP system. Allow buy offers to put a min and max price.

For example the minimum buy offer for a certain item is 10 silver. I can put a buy offer of 11 silver min and 15 silver max. So I dont’ need to check the trading post every single minutes to 1 copper up people. If other people over bid me, it’ll automatically up my bid offer.

I think that’s the system most online trade system works. If you want to buy an item, you put a max bid, and the trader will automatically up the bidding price until you reach the maximum bids.

That’s how eBay works, but the TP isn’t an auction house; it’s a clearing house: you put in your offer and it fulfills or it doesn’t.

If you don’t want to check the TP often, put in a higher bid to start with. It’s very rare when buying that adding 5-15% to the highest buy offer (or subtracting the same from the lowest sale price) won’t ensure a speedy transaction. It’s only when I am greedy to eek out that extra 5-15% that I find a high risk of getting over/undercut.

tl;dr there’s hardly any 1-copper issue for people who aim for a favorable middle ground.

Katahdin.8714:

I went to Target to day to pick up a couple of gem cards and they are no longer selling them either it seems.

They ran out? Or the company decided to never stock them again? (I find that employees typically can’t accurately say, even after checking the computer — only about 1 in 5 low-wage staffers has the experience or training to be able to read the relevant status flags or notes.)

Noah.4756:

We shouldn’t ignore it just because we can’t back it up with quantitative data.

In fact, we should ignore claims that we cannot back up with quantitative data.

Humans are good at creating patterns, even when there aren’t any in the underlying data. We tend to notice examples that reinforce our perceptions and we our horrible about remembering those that don’t, unless the cognitive dissonance is too great to ignore.

The first thing that I do when I believe that a drop rate has changed is to start counting. After the Mystic Forge changed the results for Exotic Weapon outputs, with average level 75 rare/exotic inputs, I suspected that the rates on forging sigils and dyes had been changed — I had a string of 20 forges on the former with 10 promotions (expected: only 4) and a string of 20 forges on the later with no promotions (expected: ~4). So I kept track for the next 100 of each, over a week or two. Turned out, those were just flukes and there was no point in posting on the forums to see if anyone else was experiencing results other than the expected 20% rate.

Terrin.2685:

It means if you haven’t memorized the dungeon and the fights you are not welcome.

That’s how I interpret it, too.

I go from the viewpoint that people only type stuff into LFG in the hopes that others will appropriately filter themselves in or out. Why would someone type in “exp” or “experience” unless they only wanted people who would know the meta for that particular dungeon, including appropriate profession, build, and where to stack?

In contrast, “No exp required” would mean (to me) that I shouldn’t expect people to have optimized builds or know the route.

Unfortunately, it’s generally not enough to type this into LFG. I recommend that you also verify in /party chat that everyone is on the same page before starting out by repeating the requirements/requests.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in an “experienced only” group to have a newbie join and ask for directions or to be in a “no exp required” group and find someone annoyed that people aren’t stacking in the expected spots. (And since I rarely PUG dungeons, I can imagine it’s maddening sometimes for people who run them daily.)

It’s a combination of data that’s required to show there’s a noticeable change in the actual drop rates. It doesn’t matter whether the community used TP data or not, the point is that it wasn’t sufficient for any single player to claim a rate change. What made it compelling was showing data on 1,000s of salvages.

Accordingly, the OP saying that they happened to see 5-6/day for the last month or so, but one day saw only 1 doesn’t amount to sufficient data. We’d need to know how many whacks total before and after the alleged drop rate change.

Bellizare.5816:

I see that they are selling 2,000 gems for $34.90.

Not a very good deal.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009AYOFI0/ref=s9_simh_gw_p63_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=19ZAMFRDFXFTD55PEAK5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1688200382&pf_rd_i=507846

That’s got to be some sort of mistake. Right?

Frustrating? Sure. Actual problem? No, not enough that I want ANet to invest any dev time into addressing.

Unless the item is at 0 supply, you can always buy it outright. Once you choose to put in a custom offer (as I almost always do), you’re risking your time against other buyers’ willingness to spend more (even a penny more) and against sellers holding out for more.

I have never failed to gain all the units I want because of 1 copper, 1%, or even 10% overbids unless there is a huge gap between my original offer and the lowest sale offer and the supply/demand aren’t close to equilibrium.

Ectos, for example, get overbid by pennies (and more) constantly, and yet I’m consistently able to purchase a stack at 1-2s below the current unit price (if I do the proper research/bidding).

Ah, you’re right. I just tried it. That’s a big change from TP 1.0. (I tried to sell a masterwork dye for 1s; it didn’t let me sell it for under the lowest buy offer. With nothing in the bank, I ended up with 6s+ instead of < 1s net profit.)

Thanks.