John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
1,000 gems is the price for an unlimited gathering tool; it replaces consumable multi-use items that might need to be repurchased for a few silver perhaps 3x/day (representing mining 100 nodes every day), i.e. 1000 gems to replace something that is worth 15s/day (I ignore the convenience aspects). That’s less than 2 gems per day.
Suppose after the novelty wears off, that people reskin on average once per day. That represents at least 150 gems per day (just for 6 pieces of armor). Increasing the costs linearly, I would expect an infinite reskin tool to be valued at no less than 75,000 gems.
Admittedly, I’ve drastically oversimplified the calculus involved in pricing such an item, but I think it’s a reasonable ballpark figure of what we might expect. I doubt if many would be willing to pay even half that much.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I was stuck at 37/38, even though I had a check list. I went over it and re-dived at all the locations I considered iffy. Still didn’t get it.
I then went systematically through every single one, making sure I had the goggles on, dived into the right spot, and waited a bit before porting somewhere else.
Turned out I got 100% on one of the dives that I had already redone twice; for some reason, I was getting credit for it and just never noticed the counter failing to increment.
I have no idea if this will resolve the issue for anyone, but it’s better than any alternative I can think of.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
- the edge of the red zone is hard to see. Several times, thought I was out of it, but when downed, it was clear that I wasn’t.
- The cosmic rifts are just one more thing you need to be ready for. If they are really griefing you, party up with someone and ask them to target the rifts ASAP.
The guildwars2 subreddit has a ton of posts about beating Liadri, none of which address either issue named here. That suggests to me that it’s possible by skill alone to manage both.
For myself, I have tried to adapt to both situations. As noted above, I now assume the edge of the AOE is a bit farther than it looks to me and I tried to make sure I can swap targets to the rift as soon as it appears.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I think the theory is plausible and it would be fun if (a) the devs were already thinking this way (and the OP figured it out) or (b) the OP has gotten the devs to consider retrofitting it into the game.
That said, there are 100s of possible explanations for just about everything we’ve seen, not the least of which is that ANet isn’t always careful when writing dialogue or keeping dates in synch. We can’t read too much into a single line of dialogue and certainly not taking 10-15 lines of dialogue potentially written by 15 different people at 15 different times with 15 different goals.
Instead, what I’d say is that there’s nothing anyone has found to date that prevents the OP’s theory from being true. And that’s interesting enough, without trying to elevate minor lines of dialogue into major foreshadowing.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Thanks for posting this. There are actually several other examples:
- Sellers can see their lowest existing listing for an item; buyers can’t see if they are already buying an item or at what price.
- Buyers can see around a dozen existing instant-sell offers and a similar number of custom offers; sellers can only see the lowest instant-sell offer.
- When searching for an item, the TP lists the instant sell offer; it provides no information about custom buy orders until you visit the panel to make one.
- Similarly, when sell items, the TP lists the instant buy offers; it provides no information about custom sell prices.
This isn’t about laziness; this is about providing buyers & sellers with equal access to the same data, something required for a truly free market. Whenever there is “asymmetric data,” one party has the advantage of the other.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I just picked up “The Legend” for a price that was about what it would have cost me before the announcement of the Wardrobe. Put in a buy order for a price that is comfortable for you and wait out the current market, in which people are willing to pay 20-100% more to have their precursor now.
A lot more precursors change hands than we can see from looking at Spidy or GW2TP — they only show a moment in time — the prices vary considerably from what it looks like on the historical graphs.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
There’s something to be said for offering souvenirs to players that say, “yeah, I was able to be present at a unique time in the game’s history.” I would like there to be more of these skins, minis, and titles.
At the same time, this should be limited to a few events — not every event needs to have an exclusive item.
But regardless of my preferences, ANet has made it clear repeatedly that they don’t believe in the idea of exclusive rewards or items: the so-called exclusive dyes are limited-time availability; they’ve brought back skins and items to the gem shop; and in GW1, they made it possible for anyone to get nearly any mini (even those awarded for special contests/game boxes) and any festival hat. They have decided to err on the side of inclusiveness.
Despite my preferences, I find it hard to argue that such an attitude is bad for Massively Multiplay games, especially as they release to new markets (e.g. China).
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
- Watchknight Tonic lasts 5 minutes and then has a 30 minute cooldown; I use it only for my charr and then only for JPs that take less than 5 minutes, but are easier if I can her feet.
- The mini panda has all the issues associated with minis: it doesn’t persist when you zone (or sometimes when you die) or when you relog. This one is a swimmer, which is nice (and fun). It is one of the best minis in the game imo.
- The Dolak Tonic doesn’t allow jumping or work in combat, so it’s a momentary bit of silliness.
I chose the panda, but I had all the skins I wanted from earlier events.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Thanks , inculpatus. I meant to verify the directions, but couldn’t reach the site (and it was late). I’ll update my post.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Well, at least with the Wardrobe, you can make one and then apply the skin to any other back item you are using.
Of course, it should be account bound and ANet should fix that. But it’s nice that there’s a work-around.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Well congratulations to you, not everyone is fortunate to get into the right overflow of players. Was in there the first two days for a few hours each time, never had more than 2 commanders on, and a bunch of afkers in the middle, never enough to spread for more than two bosses.
It’s not going to be great in the first two days for obvious reasons. It takes time to get into peoples heads on how to do it
Right. It took time for the high-pop servers to do this reliably and then more time for overflows to manage it. The first week went from people claiming it was impossible (another ANet fail to developer open-world raids) to claiming only the big servers could do it to people hoping to get on an overflow, because those were less likely to have AFKers.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
You can try clearing out your GW2 cache (directions in the technical support forums). If that doesn’t do it, I recommend working with the support team by creating a request: click on the link at the top of the page for Support and then “Submit a Request.” They are very good about working with players on this.
Edit: as pointed out by Inculpatus cedo, the correct wording of the second link is to submit a request, not to ask a question (as I had originally written).
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
(edited by Illconceived Was Na.9781)
I just promoted a bunch. Can you maybe link the items in chat and then copy/paste that to this post? Alternatively, you could add a screenshot.
I worked with someone having a similar problem following a Mystic Forge recipe from the wiki: when they linked the items, we realized they were using a Rune instead of a Sigil (the names were similar). In your case, perhaps you have the wrong kind of dust or the wrong type of stones.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
There are a number of inconsistencies, oddities, and frustrations with the current method of determining whether a waypoint is contested; it would be good for ANet to review the mechanics behind it.
- As exemplified above, a waypoint is not always contested when it should be.
- In other cases, waypoints are contested even when the event causing them to contest was part of past Living Story and not part of any event chains.
- For some maps, there are only 2-3 WPs that are always available from outside the instance, meaning you have to pay for two waypoints and wait through two loading screens to get to where you want to go.
There are a number of ways to address each of the above, but my hope is that ANet will take a holistic approach and re-normalize the system based on using Mega Servers, rather than try to make the old set of WPs fit the new model.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Since launch the server time option for the in game clock would coincide with the pst/pdt time in the west coast of the USA (which is where there servers were located).
Right now it is 10:35pm pacific time yet the ingame clock is showing 5:35am. So the servers have been moved to the middle of the Atlantic?Is this a bug?
Regardless of the reason, it’s an awful change.
- You can set the clock to show your local time.
- The NA servers are located in Texas, not Seattle, so “server time” never represented their actual time.
- The clock now shows the actual time for the servers, rather than the time on your computer (offset to show “server” or local time).
The last is important for a couple of reasons: resets have always happened at midnight for the server’s internal clock and that will remain true, through whatever Daylight Savings might be observed in your area. Second, the time will always be consistent with what the game thinks the time is, preventing certain types of errors (e.g. when you think you have 3 minutes to complete dailies, but the game doesn’t).
Like any change, it takes some getting used to.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The only use I’ve found for the tonic is when I take my charr into a JP (and only when it’s easy enough to complete in 5 min).
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
yea they should do something,, not that its a big deal for me to buy sigils for my weapons. But when just running around in a pve zone and you run into a water to take a 5 sec swim. It is kinda silly
Yeah, it’s definitely annoying.
The same thing happens to Mesmer mantras and Necro minions: if you don’t have the same skill equipped for land and water, you lose them when you change combat modes, too.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I’ve re-read the original post and it occurs to me that the title is misleading: the proposal is to change the mechanics of the TP; it’s not a social solution (that would involve people choosing on their own to do something differently).
I also haven’t see anyone make the argument as to why this change is more important than any of the many other suggestions involving the TP’s interface. How is this more beneficial to more people than making the custom sell and buy panels more like each other? (e.g. showing a list of buy/sell offers in the first and including your other orders in the second)
…i dont like price undercutting, …when its one copper …
…for buyers like me who look at an offer of 99[g] 99[s] 99© under an offer of 100g and go “thats despicable”
Correct if I’m wrong, but isn’t this is an expression of a personal preference? I don’t think it represents evidence of a fundamental issue with the TP or the economy. (That doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant; it does, however, affect how much energy ANet should spend addressing it.)
…i wana …make it so … the buyer … [has] the power to decide which offer … to purchase,
…. [so that] we are no longer FORCED to buy from the undercutter
This might be of value to the purchaser, but it does nothing for the economy as a whole. As noted by other posters, it also has the unintended consequence of ultimately increasing costs for the other buyers not involved in the transaction: purchasing above the lowest sell offer puts pressure on the market to rise and reduces the rate at which the item can find its equilibrium price (theoretically, within a 15% difference between highest buy and lowest sell offers).
I don’t mean to discount the importance of people having a choice or feeling that they are contributing to a better gaming environment. My point is that this proposal only benefits the buyer in this way; it has a minor benefit to a single seller and a negative impact on the rest of the market.
tl;dr there are others changes to the TP that would benefit more people; this one is even likely to harm more people than it helps.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
So? I was talking about crafting mats – blood, claws, scales, etc.
I see very few people complaining about the crafting mats.
That’s the point. Crafting mats have gone up substantially, too. But people mostly complain about precursor prices, because those are a single purchase with very low supply — when it changes by 25%, it’s very, very noticeable, but when that happens with Powerful Bloods, it doesn’t get much attention (also possibly because mats will go up and down very quickly within the same day).
It’s similar to people’s perception of the risk of mortality: people are (generally) more scared of flying than driving, even though 34,000 Americans die from auto accidents each year while less than 500 die from aviation accidents world wide. As humans, we notice the big numbers: 270 people from Malaysia Flt 370, but not the small ones: a few people in your city each weekend. (I don’t mean to start a political debate about which is “safer” — the point is: big numbers capture our attention; little ones don’t.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Why is there a buy order for 1 5 0 0 ? ? ?
Someone has more dollars than sense?
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
In effect, when you enter the water, you are unequipping your weapon sets.
It’s possible this was an oversight by ANet or they never intended stacks build on land to be available in the water (and vice versa).
Is this good for the game? I have mixed feelings. The idea is that you shouldn’t be able to use a stacking sigil and then also use a guaranteed bonus on top of that; that’s what they tried to change with the last update.
But this presents a problem in WvW, where there is hardly any water combat, but a ton of times when you drop into the water for 20 seconds (or less). So I’d like to see your character separate your land-built stacks from water-built ones — when you switch back/forth, you return to the status you had before changing combat modes.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
It doesn’t happen to everyone and it doesn’t happen all the time. It’s not clear if it’s a single cause with a single symptom or if there’s a variety of unrelated issues with unrelated symptoms.
If you can reproduce it, please let ANet know so that they can find the root cause(s) and work on a fix.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
It’s a mechanic that happens to make the fight a lot easier. That doesn’t mean it’s an exploit necessarily, unless someone uses it 100s of times to increase their rate of rewards.
In other words, there are things that are outright exploits and others that depend on how they are used.
Regardless, if you suspect an exploit, always email exploits@arena.net and let ANet decide how important it is. If they think it’s a bug, they’ll plug it and if not, they’ll leave it alone.
edit: grammar
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
There are plenty of games out there with traditional raiding. This one is relatively unusual in having open world events that require substantial coordination — that’s a new type of challenge and I really enjoy it.
Some people will always see this as being “forced to cooperate” or not being able to “just kick back and disengage their minds”. The game already has plenty that type of content in the way of most World Bosses and all champ/event-chain farms.
I’m glad ANet is continuing to introduce this type of content (and get better at it) and I’m looking forward to what else they have to offer in the future.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I’m not seeing this (not was anyone else in DR recently), so I recommend you create a support ticket and worth with the tech team to trouble shoot what’s going on. You can also check out the stickies in the tech forum, including the one about clearing your GW2 cache file.
Good luck.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The friend’s list isn’t updated in real time. When you attempt to whisper, the system will refresh your list first, which is why you sometimes see someone appear to suddenly go offline.
The refresh delay varies considerably in my experience, sometimes it’s negligible. I think that’s more common when I’m in WvW or in a world boss event (massive zergs nearby in both cases), but I haven’t done any rigorous testing.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
it’s actually a very simple reason. expecting hundreds of random people who don’t know each other very well to work together is probably one of the most unrealistic expectations ever.
That’s what people said about Tequatl, the Marionette fights, and, back when the game was in Beta/Launch, the fire elemental in Metrica. Stuff seems hard until people learn how it works. And then some will complain it’s too easy.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Laidari is too much overpowered. I wasted ~70 tickets, 10g and all festival tokens to get absolutely NOTHING from her. She needs to cripple less, have 2 at max inv buffs and spam less red fields. HP nerf would be welcomed as well.I am trying to kill her for 2 days already and Im seriously out of patience for this game.. aNET please do something about this.
Thanks in advance.
You only wasted the tickets etc if you didn’t learn anything about how to defeat her. Obviously, a lot of people have taken her down, so it’s a matter of skill, not of effort.
(I say this as someone who has yet to emerge victorious from her fight, i.e. I’m not good enough…yet.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Thanks for the details, Mystic. Combining this with information from Skribulous on Reddit:
5,688 attempts with these approximate drop rates:
- 5.58 quartz/box
- 1.77 tokens/box
And each box has approximately:
- 10% chance of celestial item recipe (includes insignia, etc) (mostly worth under 10s, a few 15-30s)
- 2% chance of celestial armor set recipe (satchel, box, etc) (worth a lot, but dropping a fast)
- 9% chance of queen’s gauntlet ticket (i.e. 1 per 11 boxes)
- 0.06% Mini Reef Rider (worth ~30s)
- 0.14% Air-Filtration skin (worth ~40s)
Based on past festivals, I’m sure the price of everything here will go up substantially, but that also means you are betting off speculating on specific items rather than spending a minimum of 8s/box (based on current mat prices, gossamer scraps being generally the most affordable option).
The wiki also lists the sun/wind/lightning catcher skins, but since none were found in 5,688 attempts, I’m guessing that might be based on hopeful speculation rather than SCIENCE.
Once again, thanks to the OP for taking the time to record the results and posting them.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Largely, this conversation isn’t doing much to change anyone’s mind. People who think the market is just fine keep displaying evidence that supports that view. People who feel there’s something wrong keep talking about how dispirited they are by attempting a goal that seems to stay out of reach forever.
Both can be true: the market can be working perfectly with near-perfect RNG set by ANet for “legendary” items and people can feel that such a system sucks the wind out of their fun.
Accordingly, ANet is never going to be able to resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction. Or at least not without making fundamental and comprehensive changes to core mechanics in the game. They might get close by creating a type of crafting process to build precursors, but given what they’ve done with Ascended items, it’s not going to be any less crazy in terms of effort.
——-
Meantime, if you really, really, want a precursor, start putting in custom buy orders with whatever you can afford now. If that’s 200g, great. That will keep your coin from being accidentally spent on other things, like other skins, silly (but fun) tonics, or dyes. Each time you earn another 25 or 50g, remove the buy order and set up a new one for that much more.
This won’t save you any time, but it gives you a couple of psychological edges in your efforts: it reduces the distraction of watching the market (and its inherent frustrations), it keeps the coin from being accidentally spent, and you should get a nice burst of endorphins each time you set up the new buy order and realize how well your nest egg is growing.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Wiki is updated: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hall_of_Monuments_Portal_Stone
Sarettokk (Hooligan’s Route in Lion’s Arch) sells them for free to all characters, regardless of account status.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Sure I have the choice between flying to California and riding my bike to California…no one is FORCING me to spend my money on airfare afterall, but I’m pretty sure I know which option I’d choose.
You have three choices (not two):
- Paying $1 for a lotto ticket, grand prize: plane ticket to California. You can also buy 200 lotto tickets, if you like.
- Paying nothing and taking 3 months to ride your bike to California.
- Paying $15-$30 on Travelocity/etc for a discount plane ticket. (Price varies depending on when you want to go and whether you care about the exact timing of the flight.)
Now which choice would you make?
The first choice is akin to how the BL Keys work: it’s a lottery, not a guarantee. The second is like farming keys: guaranteed to be slow. The third is equivalent to converting cash to gems to gold (and then considering whether to make a custom offer on the skin).
Plus, there’s the fourth choice of using gold earned in the game to buy the stuff you want.
actually it costs more to ride to California then to fly there, gas isn’t free you know.
We are talking about riding a bicycle (no gas). Regardless, since time is money, that option is more expensive for those that don’t have the time. And even for those who do have time, there are better ways to earn wealth towards getting a skin.
I was responding to a post that suggested there were only two options; my point is that there are at least three.
Ignoring the analogy, the real point is that the cheapest and least-time method is always going to be putting a buy offer on the TP at a price that makes sense for you.
Accepting someone else’s sale offer is a decent, but substantially more costly alternative.
But by far the most expensive choices (in time or money) are doing key runs or spending dollars to buy keys with gems.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Is this ninja fixed yet?
Edit: No, It’s not.
I don’t think it was broken in the first place. I think the devs intended “wider range” to include alternative skins with sigils we didn’t see before.
(I don’t happen to like this change, but I don’t think it’s a bug either.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
If you want an individualized response, you’ll need to create a support ticket. I doubt Customer Support will be able to help, but it only costs you a few minutes to make a politely-worded request.
I’m sorry you didn’t get the achievement. It’s possible that the server time expired sooner than you thought, but your client didn’t realize it — that would explain why you saw 5/5 and heard a gong, but didn’t get the laurel + stuff.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The demand for legendaries (and therefore precursors) skyrocketed due to the introduction (and announcement) of the wardrobe — one legendary can be used cheaply by all toons now. Because of that demand, these items don’t stay on the TP very long and all of the post April increases can be explained by this alone. (Supply might also have changed, but I suspect it actually increased with the new patch.)
In contrast, the supply of Eternity increased and its price went down, not up. (People crafting it to keep the unlocks for Twilight/Sunrise, but still get a good chunk of change in return.)
Any time a ton of new people start coveting an item that was already low in supply we’re going to see price jumps. So someone asking 2,000g for Dusk doesn’t surprise me. I’m not willing to pay that much and I would guess not many others are, so I expect that to drop soon.
Sure, it would be helpful to some people if there was a set price (in time, gold, or materials) to get a precursor, but that’s a personal preference, not a market issue. (Mind you: enough people have that personal preference that maybe ANet should address it, but I don’t think that requires intervening in the economy.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
It’s relatively easy to test if there are more BLCs being opened: the price of the Pink Quaggan, Killer Whale, and other back item skins tracks pretty well with the price of BL Keys (whenever there’s a discount on the keys, prices drop substantially).
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I am surprised that any speculators were surprised by this. ANet has shown great reluctance to release truly exclusive items, even for souvenirs in the “I was there” sense. They have instead gone for limited-availability items, including the special dyes and things like the Monocle.
But even so, it hardly is going to matter much in the long run: the prices might tank for a week or three, but shortly afterward, they go up again, sometimes exceeding their previous values.
(Incidentally, I picked up my monocle when it was dropping during the defense of LA, i.e. this week isn’t the first time that item was re-released.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The introduction of the Wardrobe has increased the demand for legendaries (since you can easily share the skin across all characters on an account). It’s hardly a surprise that prices skyrocketed.
On the other hand, prices on other skins dropped after the patch was announced: e.g. I got things like Charzooka, a Monocle, and Final Rest 20-40% of the pre-wardrobe announcement prices.
The new event in the Pavilion, done well (split into six groups instead of one zerg) has generated a ton of named exotics and a less amount of precursors. Probably not enough to satisfy the current demand entirely, but possibly enough to reduce prices somewhat.
Eventually, the demand will start to die down as people willing to pay more for precursors finish their legendaries.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I’m not experiencing any issues with any of the skills.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The sprocket drops make this everlasting pick less costly than the other options, but doesn’t in any way turn it into a money maker. Once you’ve sunk your gems into buying one, it sure seems like you’re earning a lot, but it still will take years to pay for itself.
That said, I’ll repeat what I said earlier: I think it was a bad move on the marketing department to offer an item in the gem shop with a feature that is not available in the game in any other way: you cannot farm sprockets (outside the home instance) reliably without it. No other gathering tool offers a bonus item that doesn’t drop naturally from the relevant node.
And I’ll put my money where my post is: I’m willing to give up the feature on the two picks I bought, if ANet wants to make this item like all the other everlasting tools. (Naturally, I’d prefer compensation, but I’m ok if none is offered.)
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I think opportunity costs of hoarding are always present. When they change due a patch/announcement, it’s because people recalculate their needs/risks according to #1 & 2 above.
So, I wouldn’t add #5 to my personal list, but neither would I quibble if you added it to a theoretical wiki article on GW2/MMO market forces. It does emphasize an important idea that many people tend to overlook.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
What is the theory on the demand POST patch of this? I can understand speculation ahead of it but now that it is among the most expensive mats to exchange why are people still buying it in droves? It is the cheapest mat in value but I believe in rationality… what am I not seeing?
most people aren’t rational.
Or at least, their reasons aren’t what we expect. People still sell items in bulk on the TP for vendor + 1c, i.e. a loss after fees. I’m sure they have a reason for this, even though it eludes me.
People also continue to pay premium prices for items with special names, but with skins identical to those available on cheaper items.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
They just finished nerfing the last of the gold generating methods in the game. Pretty much the only way to get gold in a reliable manner is either a- playing the TP or b- with a credit card.
I haven’t changed the methods I’ve used to make gold recently:
- If farming mats, choose ones that are in high demand.
- Dungeons are still a high value per time spent.
- Choosing the right things to craft (and either sell or salvage for ecto).
- Mystic Forging low value items that can be promoted to high value ones (notably fine or masterwork dyes, and sometimes sigils/runes).
In addition, you can earn a lot from Frostgorge, World Boss chasing, EotM, and Orrian event chains, among others.
So, no, they haven’t nerfed anything but the newbie zone champ farms (and that was partly/largely due to non-economic reasons). And no, I’ve never felt the need to buy gems to convert to gold.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The event is working as intended:
- bosses don’t drop loot; you get rewarded for completing the event.
- the additional mobs drop loot, but not as often as last year — and about as often as they drop in more recently living story/events.
I would support a suggestion to increase the gold-level reward for the event, because I think it should be a lot better than silver or bronze and commensurate with killing six champs in the open world.
But I am doing the event for the fun, not the rewards.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
The bosses in the pavilion no longer drop loot; the reward is for completing the event to kill all six. The respawning mobs still drop loot, but not nearly as much as before. You will want to party up.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Some of the effervescent crystals will show up on/near the sky crystals. They look similar.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
What difference does it make if the events are L80 or L16 in the end? The champs didn’t last all that long last year; they last slightly longer now. You might get non-exotic champ bags instead, but then again, T2-5 mats that will drop tend to be more valuable than the T5s.
The end result is a single festival in which EU/NA make a tiny sacrifice so that ANet doesn’t have to roll out two different versions of the same game, and thus can focus better on the next big thing. And, oh yeah, so that the millions of players that just joined in China can enjoy the event just as much.
tl;dr not really a big deal and it’s worth doing on its own merits
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Sure I have the choice between flying to California and riding my bike to California…no one is FORCING me to spend my money on airfare afterall, but I’m pretty sure I know which option I’d choose.
You have three choices (not two):
- Paying $1 for a lotto ticket, grand prize: plane ticket to California. You can also buy 200 lotto tickets, if you like.
- Paying nothing and taking 3 months to ride your bike to California.
- Paying $15-$30 on Travelocity/etc for a discount plane ticket. (Price varies depending on when you want to go and whether you care about the exact timing of the flight.)
Now which choice would you make?
The first choice is akin to how the BL Keys work: it’s a lottery, not a guarantee. The second is like farming keys: guaranteed to be slow. The third is equivalent to converting cash to gems to gold (and then considering whether to make a custom offer on the skin).
Plus, there’s the fourth choice of using gold earned in the game to buy the stuff you want.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
It doesn’t take me much time, since I would never, ever use BL keys to try to obtain a weapon skin.
Instead, I let other people gamble and buy the skins from the TP. In the long (and short) run, it’s much cheaper and more satisfying.
Think of BL Keys as akin to buying a lottery ticket. Expect to get nothing, but the excitement of opening the BL Chest. Often, you’ll get a booster or tonic of minor benefit to you. Less often, you’ll get something of value (e.g. BL Salvage Kit). Rarely, you’ll get a nice bonus (e.g. 1-use Total Makeover). And other people will still be the ones getting lucky by getting multiple tickets or scraps.
Any other expectation from BL Keys is bound to end in disappointment for all but a tiny fraction of players.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”