Guild Wars 2

The wiki is rather… non-+explicit on the subject. What exactly do you need to be able to get zealot gear?

-Just insignia, and then use discovery?

-Need to get insignia AND get every single recipe for each part, like Celestial?

Is it then better to buy a satchel recipe, which seems to be a matter of convenience?

No one seems to be looking at the actual implication of the arguments:

“Defensive stats don’t matter. The real defense comes from skills and dodges.” Most see this. But hardly anyone sees the next step in the logic: the defensive stats actually have nothing to do with the actual effective defense.

So, instead, why not actually go solve the situation there:

Tie active, skill defense effectiveness to a stat. For example, let toughness assume the effect of both armor and HP amount, and make Vitality instead affect an initially low endurance regeneration rate.

Make the offensive characters ACTUALLY lose some of their defenses…

The LFG tool is perfect for what it’s supposed to be: a way to quickly find people interested in a specific activity.

The implementation favours:
-simplicity
-forming a party quickly
-low system demands
-an “inclusive” system encouraging people to play together with whoever is there

The system the unhappy people are calling for, a system with all the “X AP, Y Zerker build, done dungeon Y times, and has the right colour” would not be perfect. It would:
-consume more resources due to more data needed to transfer to contain the LFG criteria
-would dishearten people who saw that there are no parties available they can actually join, resulting in the system’s popularity dropping
-long wait times

Anet shot themselves in the foot as far as I’m concerned: I’m not interested in non-permanent services, but am interested in permanent ones, and the one time they sold a permanent Royal pass, they managed to mention it practically as a footnote, and sold them for one day only (never mind that their “whole day sale” is, due to time zones, “just a few hours when not sleeping or at work” to me).

So, to the advertising team: next time you offer permanent services like that, make sure the “permanent” bit is a bit more visible, and perhaps not have two almost-same-except-for-one-crucial-bit sales in sequence.

Just a hint. The royal passes, IF they let you return to where you were, are of interest to me…

Well, let’s look at the prices:

1350 relics basic backpiece and then another 500 relics per upgrade stage, that’s 2 stages (first to ascended, second to infused, third to glowing). So, at one lvl 10 fractal per day yielding 6+6+6+20+25=63 relics, about 45 daily lvl 10 fractals. +/- if you do higher/lower levels. I think these will be the limiting factor.

Vials/Globs/Shards are Random drops, so rather unpredictable, but I got about enough of them at about the same time as the relics.

Of course, don’t forget the two stacks of ectoplasm for the last two upgrades.

Not everyone is as rich as we are, kind dungeon runners… 12g is still a lot. Also, people have alts.

Please remember another significant factor, apart from pure power and player skill issues: Runes of the Scholar are also FAR more expensive. Not everyone has hundreds of gold to spend on sets of gear.

If the progression is 3000 points per piece, we could get both sets to full, in the distant future. But the “select one of the gauntlets” is worrying me…

I’ve done both the achievements just yesterday. You do have to do them in one single sitting – no map travel, dieing or so.

Is your graphics card overheating, perhaps?

No, I’ve never seen this kind of effect on either of them, and half my guild has them (rich #$%&s they are…)

But box gambling IS the only way to get the special skins (Halloween, Molten alliance, Sclerite), and since by concept GW2 is all about looking good, box gambling IS pay to win (the beauty pageant)…

I do have an issue with the BLTC gambling – I have nothing to spend money on. I KNOW better than go box gambling, and thus am left with very few attractive purchases in the cash shop…

I would argue that CoF P1 is an economy unbalancing factor, oversupplying the economy with gold, berserker gear and ecto-qualifying rare items. Fixing it would enhance the players’ experiance, balance it back to there the economy should be and make other parts of the game comparatively more attractive.

It’s simply too fast. A dungeon path is supposed to take around 45 minutes, according to the devs. The fact that P1 takes only 5-10 minutes makes it vastly outstrip all other mains of acquiring wealth, forcing players to either A) play CoF, being forced into a specific playstyle which might not suit them or might simply havle long lost its charm due to repetition or lose the economic game, lagging behind in wealth, limiting their access to the economy.

Just say you haven’t seen a dozen posts “X is too expensive!” “Shut up, go farm CoF P1, and you’ll get the money!”. In the real world, you could argue that more work resulting in more wealth is a good thing. In a game… not necessarily. In a game, we’re essentially on a vacation. Some adrenaline challenges might be OK, but we don’t really expect to have to work hard here…

If I may, I don’t think the discussion pointless. It’s just a matter of seeing “how much work should a precursor mean” if it’s not RNG or extremely difficult content.

I just proposed the laurels since they are A) something everyone can do are strictly account bound, with a limited acquisition and C) have many alternative uses, so spending any means not spending them on something good (you do realize that 200 laurels are a full set of ascended amulet+ring+infusions, and change).

Thinking here – suppose we got precursors in the laurel shop. How many laurels would you consider an appropriate amount for a precursor of choice?

40? (a month of work?)
100? (who and a half months?)
200? (as long as the game was out already?)

(for the sake of discussion, please disregard the isssue of whether laurels are appropriate and the low odds of the current ways to get a precursor, this would be meant as a fix to that issue)

Several possible explanations.

A) your loot may be in an “invisible bag”. Those bags hide the content from all mrchant interfaces, that’s intentional so you don’t sell off your alternatie weapons and so on.

B) the items may be soulbound. These items can only be used by the character that got/used them first. You cannot pick them out of the bank with another character on yoru account, even.

C) karma bought items are never sellable. Annoying, but there to prevent, or rather, limit, karma vs. money flow.

My Ancient Karka shell has an emerald jewel in it and still says account bound.

These were ALWAYS meant as a means to promote diversity in players’ playing style. The small reward that always tried to drag you out of any little boxes you were trying to shut yourself in. That they try to get you to play the parts of the game you otherwise wouldn’t play is the whole point.

(I’m just glad the pure PvP and PvE distinction was maintained)

Excellent. Just remove the extreme random element, making it actually possible to “go and get them yourself” a real possibility, and market starts working.

Seems things ARE turning the way I’d hoped them to

At the Seraph observers waypoint in Brisban wildlands, I always observe the same: endless waves of bandits charging in on the little outpost, with all the NPCs dead there.

It looks like a “defend the otupost from bandits” event type – but there’s no active event. Just waves upon waves upon waves of bandits. Even if all the NPCs are resurrected, as soon as players leave, the bandits slaughter them instantly (the bandits could use an adjustment in difficulty. No other foe, bar Orrians, is quite as difficult to deal with, with all the ranged weaponry, fire fields and Knockbacks and knockdowns).

Is this possibly a bugged event? Event concludes, but server forgets to stop spawning the bandit waves?

My mesmer is at lvl 70, and while I’ve been wearing greens for a long time, soon the day will come when I will need to decide what exotics to get for this guy. To decide on the final build and all.

So, reading the forums, guides and so on… almost every build shown is a berserker type. Must this be so? The mesmer is my first scholar type, so I’m not quite sure what survivability he can get by using, say, a full knight set instead, losing some damage, but getting about the equivalent of a base heavy armor set.

Now, I can’t say I really like the mesmer, I prefer my engie, guardian or warrior quite a bit, but I want to have a proper character of all professions, so I’m not giving up.

So, are the berserker types really the only way to go?

P.S. We’re talking PvE here, forgot to mention.

In my own guild, to my memory, no one actually liked DoA. Some of us did it, but it was only either once or twice for the 100% completion feeling or for the rewards. And, within the circle of players I moved in, nobody claimed to actually like it for what it was.

I find the example offered completely unconvincing. Ignoring the issues of supply and demand elasticity which the OP also ignored, I’d counter with the following:

In Market A the power trader is buying 10,000 Gizmos for 47 copper, the trader then re lists them at 75 copper. The end result is that the ceiling price of Gizmos are 75 copper, and there are 10,000 of these for sale to hold that upper limit, which really means that due to undercutting the price of Gizmos will fluctuate between about 65 copper and 75 copper for quite a while.

What happened was that the power trader exhausted the supply of production cost priced gizmos (if he can safely relist them at 75 without immdiately being undercut). Everyone who needs gizmos is now forced to buy at a price higher than the one demanded by the player who actually procured the gizmos. If the supply hadn’t been bought up, the undercutting would start at 47c, not at 75c, so you’d have fluctuations of 37c to 47c. A much lower price to the people who actually use the gizmos.

In Market B there is no power trader active, so 10,000 Widgets are purchased by 200 players for 47 copper. These widgets are destroyed due to consumption, crafting or whatever. Later that night players start buying form Sell orders, but with no trader active those 10,000 Widgets were destroyed, so that price of 75 copper continuously climbs as widgets are sold, where it stops nobody knows

The trader forgets that for everyone except the trader, the whole point of the TP is that the items sold get used up. The whole purpose of the whole economy is for those 200 people who want widgets to use them to actually get them.

The proper comparison of market A and B goes: in market A, people who can produce gizmos at 47c equivalent of effort get a total of 470000c, the people who actually use gizmos can’t buy them at production costs, but are forced to buy at 75c, and the trader, for his grand contribution of… having had the starting funds of 470000c to buy the gizmos with now can look forward to having at least 650000c total after all are sold.

In market A), you have all the suppliers happy enough (they were willing to sell at 45c), and 200 unhappy buyers, who have to spend 900c more than they would have had to without the trader’s interference and the trader richer by 180000c.

In market, you have all the suppliers exactly as happy as before, 200 happy gizmo users who got what they wanted at a favorable price.

In other words, 200 unhappy and 1 VERY happy as opposed to 200 happy.

Want an extra kicker? Market A) is long term less stable. Market B is slowly climbing toward the actual equilibrium price while Market A is facing a sharp market crash as soon as the power trader takes his money away and no longer pays 75c for them.

Another possibility is that you may have transmuted the item and forgotten it, since you mentioned that it uses a non-default skin. Just an idea.

P.S. Just noticed that the Inquest helm, Crucible of eternity medium helmet has the wrong icon too – the inventory icon is that of the Sorrow’s embrace armor.

I’ve recently been transmuting items a lot on my low level characters and I’ve noticed something: sometimes, transmuting changes the item’s inventory icon to a generic one instead of a specific one. The 3D ingame look is ok, but the inventory icon is not.

For example, I transmuted a krytan short bow skin to another bow, and it gained a generic inventory icon – while when transmuting the krytan longbow skin onto a longbow did not have this effect and the item retained the krytan inventory icon.

Has anyone else observed this and is Anet aware of this behaviour? (either way there’s got to be a bug in here…)

Or, maybe Anet could change their perspective. Instead of keeping gold so solid that only those bleeding gold out of the BLTC have it, they could perhaps increase the drops of the bottleneck items and decrease the amount needed.

Really, in the real world, a shortage of an item is not a matter of price adjustment, because it’s also possible to start a new production line. It’s not actually a bad thing that people could get stuff they want with less grind and less dependence on the BLTC.

I’ve been wondering, in the first months, were the jumping puzzles in WvWvW also as camped as they are these days? Since I remember comments in those days “It’s easy to get badges, 5 characters and do JPs” in legendary price threads in those days, and it doesn’t really seem to be such an option these days.

I fail to see why the scavenger hunt should be locked down in any way at all, much less this proposed way.

Note the different uses. Essentially, when levelling, new gear can be needed with low required level.

So, the change is here, and it’s going to stay at least for a while. Has a concensus formed up yet about what the proper use for grenadiers is now? Or what build to switch them to?

I tried mine a bit hunting Karka. Switching to shrapnel, he did get some damage back, unfortunately, it does seem we really need to go for condition damage to make use of it. So, is it time to go to Twilight arbor, or is there another way to deal with the new game?

Doesn’t anyone around here consider the possibility that actual buyers are also a limited commodity that the ever increasing number of flippers are competing for?

Why not?

Actually, I’d rather know why such items should exist at all. I didn’t buy this game to have to watch others prance around, so why do such extremely hard to get items have to exist at all? For the effort of making one legendary or special exotic, we could have got a dozen regular skins instead…

I’m not going to gamble, so while I’ll definitely buy much in the gem store, it’ll only for things that I know I’ll actually get, not 1/1000000 chance at something good.

As I have so far, really. I’ve spent quite a lot of money on the gem store… and not bought a single chest

What I mean is that Arena net will expand the game, be it through regular patches or larger expansions. Possibly, new pets will be introduced that way.

Anet have made no announcements regarding the contents of future updates, so we don’t know. But, everything is possible, and GW1 expansions did get us new pets, so we can hope.

With non-max level gear, one should always remember why people would buy them: as temporary gear for a character still being levelled up. So, low level is not necessarily a negative trait.

Actually, GW2 IS Communist in nature – all means of production are state (Anet) owned, Anet determines the remuneration for our work (drop rates, event and dungeon rewards) according to their best estimate of our needs, etc. That’s what communism is really about.

But that’s not what is discussed here: this is a matter of market regulation. Markets are regulated everywhere. If they are not, market anomalies soon grow into much more serious trouble, and even the most hard hearted capitalist eventually discovers that Fortress walls and bodyguards for the kids to go to school cost him more than a working social security system.

As for the OP’s suggestion, I’d prefer the drop rates remain static, but that alternative ways of material procurement were made available. You might get a drop you want at random, but you also KNOW that you can always go do something specific to get a specific reward. Say… we have butter as the current random drops. Then, you put up a “Dairy” themed dungeon, where you KNOW you can go and get 10 sticks of butter in an hour of work, protecting cows from rustlers, churning milk and so on. By default, this would mean a lot more work than the existing TP prices, but in case of anomalies, you could go get the items “the hard way”. Thus, the economy would still work – except in the extreme cases, where intervention would be needed anyway.

I’m afraid that the game is not quite as casual friendly as GW1 was. To gear yourself up, you will need to spend some coin or time.

I would suggest considering the following:
-dungeon exotic gear. Try Ascalonian catacombs, groups might take you with them. While difficult, it is probably a reasonably fast way to gear up – two days should get you enough tokens for an item (6 paths with the first time bonus), and money enough to buy another on the TP
-crafting is generally a money sink, so while a good source of items for later characters, you’ll spend a lot getting it up to 400 where exotics lie

Not really encouraging, but really, there’s no way to get really cheap exotics…

Attended/Got the sound bug just before the last event/Couldn’t re-log/No chest/No loot

UPDATE The second script got me my reward! Thanks for your work, Anet, glad you were willing to look once more.

Does anyone else see it as a problem that the economic system stimulates playing in only the endgame areas and fractals?

All the loot that really matters, the crafting materials for the maxed out gear and so on, only drop in the late game areas.This of course tells evenyone who wants to play “efficiently” to go there. A while ago, every map was empty – except Orr. Right now, everything is empty except Fractals.

From what I gathered, the whole idea of level adjustment and so on was to let earlier areas keep their interest. Gameplay wise, they do. Economically, unfortunately, they don’t.

Does anyone else agree that it would be wise to adjust the economy to stimulate diversity in areas players visit?

Possibly give an economic advantage to earlier areas by adding more attractive drops (new suitably impressive area specific skins might be an idea), or make the stuff that already drops there have an actual use late game. Low and mid level crafting materials could be used to create new consumables that wouldn’t be obsolete.

Things like wood, iron and leather crating say a consumable that created a 60 second “improvised arrow cart” and similar?

OK, the terms are mixed here.

First: item rarity affects item stats – the damage they cause, how many attributes they grant and how much of an attribute boost they provide.

White (regular)→Blue (Fine)→Green (Masterwork)→Yellow (Rare)→Orange(Exotic)→Pink (Ascended)→Purple (Legendary)

Ascended gear is only available for rings and accessories, and legendaries are shared at maximum power – so, they are exotic in power at this time (no ascended power level weapons exist – yet).

Mystic weapon are simply a set of weapons that can be crafted in the Mystic forge with a fixed recipe and fixed stats. They are Exotic in power, and look blue with a lightning element.

I’ve been quite lucky in getting many BLTC salvage kits as rewards and with 50% probability of getting rare material while salvaging, odds play less of a role. My observations:

-using a BLTC salvage on a 70+ rare will have a 50% chance to yield any ecto at all. If ecto is yielded, you get 1-3 with even odds of 1, 2 or 3.
-you never get a fine material out of a salvage, and that’s with 1000 items salvaged
-salvaging will always yield regular materials too. with items of high level, that can be mithril/orichalcum and elder/ancient wood.
-type of salvage kit doesn’t seem to affect whether you get T5 or T6.

I definitely got 50% of ectos using BLTC kit – and definitely have NOT got 50% ori/ancient materials. The rate of Ori vs. Mithril seems to be equal fot BLTC and regular salvage kits.

A) I have, myself, got an exotic drop from an LA puzzle chest, and it was one of the unique axes thought to only come from the mystic forge. If those drop, why not precursors?

B) there are types of chest. You can easily observe normal chests (1-2 drops in my experience) vs. resplendent chests (always 3 drops) at the end of a jumping puzzle. I have not found a list of types yet.

If you use the non-randomized one, you’re pretty safe. You can play around with looks forever – until you actually confirm you want to make the changes permanent, you c an always stow the kit away and it won’t get used up.

The only bug I’ve heard of is that the kit preview doesn’t show Sylvari night glow, but I’m sure Anet will fix that soon.

Well, we lack the actual data to be sure. How much money can be actually be removed from the game’s economy with gems? How much gold is the game making available for gem purchases? How much money would you need to get the algorithm?
Tens of thousands of euros? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? Following Smith’s statement, the gem market is big, but how big? 10% of all the gold? 50%? 100%? 200%?

So, starting, you essentially buy out Anet’s gems. Which I’m sure is actually impossible, as Anet is like a central bank in this respect. But say the algorithm gets to the extremes. I’m pretty sure Smith would have to wipe the coffee off his monitor, dazed by the amount of money Anet suddenly possesses, and then call out an emergency meeting. Providing Anet doesn’t decide they like things the way they are and close shop for a year while they move to the Bahamas, they’d probably adjust the algorithm to allow more gems into the system. But Anet’s end is not the issue here.

You exchange all the gems for gold. Everyone upgrades his accounts to the max, and you essentially now possess all the gold that people are willing to spend on gems. This is unlikely to be the majority of the gold that people are willing to spend on the economy, however.

If it’s a minority, you could now buy up say a single commodity. You fill out all the sell offers, and the additional ones that people post after they realize the prices have spiked insanely and the supply dries up. Prices rise to the highest you offer. Flippers keep offering the remaining stock at ever more exorbitant prices, and you HAVE to keep buying at THEIR price, of course. People’s buy offers raise and raise, but remain unfilled. Eventually, you drain the market of all the items that people are willing to sell and aren’t using themselves.

(the forums are, of course, clogged up with complaint posts, and mods don’t get to sleep at all thanking everyone for their feedback)

Now, don’t forget, the BLTC is not a source of items – it is a commodity exchange only. So, now that the BLTC is not an option, people who really want the item simply switch to the actual way that the item is produced. Taking ectos as an example, youtube gets filled with rare item farming spots, guides to the most efficient ways to craft and resalvage rare items, etc. Oh, people are also going to buy up some more gems, to buy BLTC salvage kits, but since gems are available in infinite supply (provided the central bank keeps up the currency printing efforts) from Anet for real money, people can get them without involving you.

Mostly, people learn to farm ectos or they learn to live with greens. Some leave the game in frustration. More feedback is thanked for.

Anet’s customer base is in part happy (all the BLTC parasites just made a TON of money off you and are happy), but the rest are very unhappy. Even actual casuals start coming to the forums. Anet faces ever more pressure to fix the obviously bugged BLTC or to increase drop rates and similar. No one believes Smith when he says this is normal market operation and not a bug. Still, they are not stupid. Smith SEES where the gems went and knows what you’re doing. Possibly, he tells people what he sees, possibly not.

Anet probably does something to ease the situation. Probably, they address the situation by adding alternative ways of procurement. You are, after all, their favourite customer now, and are unlikely to be hit yourself. You have just proven yourself alone worth more than the entire gem market, after all.

This is a single commodity, of course. The effects are limited. The larger the market share you own, the more seriously people are affected.

*In the end, however: people adapt to being unable to use the BLTC, and either farm the items themselves, barter for them with other players (you’d soon see “reliable third party” broker systems set up to allow safe direct trading without BLTC) or leave. Ectos become an unofficial currency, hopefully secondary and not primary, since gold is now useless for item procurement. *

I have geared up my 0-0-0-20-30-20 Warrior already, works fine at what he is – Hammer traited, CC with fast weapon switching to use up as much adrenaline as possible, generally tough and with a bit of healing/support. Full cleric set with soldier runes.

Now, I’m wondering… Suppose I leave trait points where they are… but carried an alternative Berserker’s set of armor, switching to Banner for support and healing… would this work for a more DPS oriented build that can be switched to out of combat? Or would I miss the traits too much?

Just thinking about it. My Altitis might be acting up, but multiple characters just to have different builds? A bit much.

(Berserkers suggested since I already have quite some AC and CoE tokens for it, other armors would cost me much more to get)

Does the sigil work on, for example, frenzy?

According to Anet, some items in the Fractals use skins that are exclusive to items bought for karma. Anet is very careful to make sure that things that are available for karma only remain karma only. Just like dungeon items are limited to dungeons only. Exclusivity, I guess…

Player driven, unfortunately. Players have to buy gems, and then sell them. Anet don’t actually sell gold.

Given the trouble with mass scale events, I’ve been thinking: with culling making sure only about 25 people are actually displayed at a time, does it really make sense to make these events real mass events? Invisible monsters, too many spell effects and similar simply aren’t drawn, leading to… surprise deaths, unexploited options and so on.

As a mater of fact, wouldn’t splitting events into say 25 man instances and then using “stage magic” to imply there are many more people just out of sight actually achieve a more epic feel? (send players on separate attack runs, add a glimpse of large battle at times, use fog of war creatively…)