Guild Wars 2

Sariel V.7024:

The more I read, the more this seems relevant.

http://kevinbolk.deviantart.com/art/Hey-Mr-Straw-Man-445823549

I think I get it. The guy calls out the straw-man and then the straw-man switches to ad-hominem. At which point, the guy just gives up and tells the straw-man what he wants to hear cause it’s not worth the effort.

ozmaniandevil.6805:

Labjax.2465:

snip – Talk about disparity between effort and reward.

Yes, exactly why I would personally never bother with this stuff. I mean really, look at collecting BL skins. Were you to even do one full collection, if you actually had to buy every skin – oh let’s pick something not crazy expensive, I don’t know, Dream Thistle weapons – it would cost thousands of gold, or, alternatively hundreds of RL dollars to buy chests to maybe get enough tix for skins, or, again alternatively, months of grinding keys. For 7 tix and 1 AP. 7 tix gets you 1/3 of yet another collection, and the grind goes on. For literally NOTHING. If you’re not having fun, it’s no longer a GAME.

Well said.

That’s why I object to achievements like these, really. Not because I think they’re supposed to all be easy or that long-term goals are a bad thing.

But rather that the collections system was portrayed like an interesting system of its own. And instead, many of the collections are simply ludicrous gold/timesinks that you’re best off not doing unless – as you said concerning the dungeons – you already hardcore do the content that would get you the collection complete (in which case you can sort of let the achievement happen naturally – making it a largely irrelevant system in the process).

Basically, a lot of the collections are stuff that you have to be swimming in currency, time, and/or boredom to ever bother to complete. Which is just silly imo. They should be appealing in their own right, not something that you do as a last resort to stay interested in the game.

I think a couple of them are appealing, too. Like the spoon and jar collections are both fairly interesting, in terms of going around Tyria to acquire various components. But there’s nothing particularly interesting on its own about (for example) unlocking every dungeon skin. I mean, it’s already something you could do – an achievement telling you that you did is icing I guess, but it’s not gameplay. There’s nothing particularly compelling about it.

I guess the comparison would be if the spoon achievement required you to gather every single spoon there is and there was one on every single karma merchant in Tyria. I think most people would be talking about how absurd that is, yet the game has similar achievements for dungeon gear and BL weapons, and people are like “oh it’s fine, it’s just long-term goals.”

TL;DR: If Collections were meant to be icing on the cake that you completely ignore 90% of the time, then great. The system is fine as is. If they were meant to be anything else, then a lot of the collections need another pass.

Yeah, something about the setup of achievements like these just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Seems they favor people who already would have been close to finishing them before they were released and leave the rest with an absurd number of staggeringly dull goals to complete.

I liked the collections system when I first heard about it. But after seeing stuff like: “Use Ascalonian Tears from Ascalonian Catacombs to unlock all 37 weapon and armor skins in your wardrobe.” I’m just like… wow, doesn’t look nearly as appealing as it sounded.

At a certain point, it just feels like, “Why would anyone in their right mind bother to unlock all of those skins for any reason other than completing the achievement?” I’m a bit obsessed with unlocking skins myself and I would probably stop at about 3-5 weapons that are really appealing to me.

When a fun concept turns into daunting tedium, you know there’s a problem. I don’t understand why collections like that don’t just ask for you to collect one set of armor and something like 5 different weapons. It’s not like the achievement is giving out super amazing rewards anyway – I mean, a box and 1 achievement point? Talk about disparity between effort and reward.

You know, I’ve never taken the time to talk about it, but I scratch my head every time someone insinuates that Anet is seeing mistakes due to Kongzhong’s choices. Unless there’s some “all-English” standard for programming that I’m not aware of, I don’t see at all why Anet would use the same code as Kongzhong. Wouldn’t their variable names and so on use Chinese characters? :S

For someone who knows a thing or two about programming, it sounds like such a nightmarishly impractical notion from the get-go.

In fact, I distinctly remember someone (Colin I think?) mentioning that concerning the NPE, both they (Anet) and Kongzhong noticed problems with retention and came to similar conclusions with testing. So although they undoubtedly talk to each other some to keep the game going in a similar direction in both countries, I’m pretty sure it’s absurd to think that they’re just copying each other straight up.

I find it way easier to believe that some of the code is simply poorly structured (sorry programmers) and prone to having one thing cause a problem with another.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Labjax.2465:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Also, unpopular Precursors have the same drop rates as popular Precursors. How could they not? They’re all Precursors. The main difference here is Supply and Demand.

2nd paragraph: Um, duh? Exactly no one is contesting that point.

This basically goes back to the whole point of this thread. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Precursors in this game. Nothing wrong with the RNG to get them, and nothing wrong with the prices they demand. So if it ain’t broke, no need to fix it.

What? How did you extrapolate that from what I said? No one is contesting that “unpopular Precursors have the same drop rates as popular Precursors.” Or that “the main difference here is Supply and Demand.”

That doesn’t mean there’s nothing wrong with the system.

Hamfast.8719:

Hell’s Angel awaits the Dev who took away the human female idle animations. (It’s not too late! You can still redeem your soul!)

I took a wee liberty with the eyes… the rest is all GW2.

NICE!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

This is why we’ll never see eye to eye. Price is more important than everything else. Price of the Precursor, price of the T6 mats, price of the T5 like Large Bones or Mithril, etc. You can only think about the end result. I’m thinking of the consequences to the different steps of the journey to your end result. In other words, the price of your happiness does not equal the price of a collapsed economy.

That’s quite the alarmist statement, talking about a collapsed economy. See, the difference between you and me is I’m leaving the economic details to the guy who has both the expertise and (most importantly) tons of information that none of us have access to.

You can be concerned all you want, but your detailed analysis will forever be limited by the information that you don’t have and never will have because you’re not an employee at Anet. I’m just taking it one step further and saying, “Not worth the effort, since my information is so limited.”

In other words, I’m perfectly capable of thinking about the consequences of each step and I often do in other aspects of game design. It’s just that this is one area where having access to data on a large scale is rather important to getting detailed about design choices.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

There’s only a cost barrier if you decide to buy every required mat from the TP. Otherwise, you can do some good, old fashioned hard work by farming for all items.

Also, unpopular Precursors have the same drop rates as popular Precursors. How could they not? They’re all Precursors. The main difference here is Supply and Demand.

1st paragraph: See “(In what world does cost mean something that doesn’t involve work/effort expenditure of some kind?)”

2nd paragraph: Um, duh? Exactly no one is contesting that point.

Obtena.7952:

Game design doesn’t dictate it should rain endgame loot on players.

Straw-man.

Obtena.7952:

In iether instance of economy or design, there isn’t a case to push for more accessible precursors, especially considering the long and short term consequences on the economy.

Why not?

Obtena.7952:

Besides, the whole point of this thread is that a legendary weapon is VERY accessible. There isn’t a cost barrier to it; it’s simply a matter of doing the work.

Factually inaccurate, unless you’re going for a very strange definition of cost and accessibility.

The facts are:

A few different types of precursors (most of them rather unpopular) are relatively cheap to acquire in relation to the rest of the precursors. And in fact, it’s easy to see that they are relatively cheap precisely because most people don’t want them.
There is a cost barrier. (In what world does cost mean something that doesn’t involve work/effort expenditure of some kind?)

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’ll go all in with common sense.

Everything in the TP economy is interconnected. Sorta like how the real world works.

• Natural disaster in Asia caused hard drive manufacturing output to stop, thus leading to an increase in price to available hard drives, which lead to increase priced in PCs and/or downgraded specs to maintain price points.

• Large car manufacturer on the verge of closing due to a bad economy, putting panic on smaller suppliers who provide key parts to the vehicles. If the car manufacturer goes out of business, they take all the smaller suppliers with them.

• Dusk availability increased, leading to a mad rush to collect necessary mats from the TP. Dusk gets cheaper, but all T6 mats triple in value. Market panics, and John goes home early with a headache.

If Anet wants to provide an alternate method to get Precursors, that’s fine. But the problem here is also balancing what happens after such a mechanic is released. Some players don’t think beyond the “make it easier to get” argument.

Side note – to truly control the costs of high demanded items, you would need to eliminate them as drops, and just sell them for Gems in the Gem Store. 8k Gems sounds like a good price point.

Common sense. Not bad.

I have why do you think they’re taking so long to design an alternative system in my hand though, so I think that wins. Sorry.

Of course when I talk about an alternative, I am setting aside the effects that it will have on the economy to remove precursors as a rare sink, exotic sink, and so on. Those are important effects and need to be considered. But I’m not the one with monstrous excel spreadsheets of data in front of me either.

There is a difference between “what is and is not favorable game design,” and “how best to go about implementing it smoothly.” I’m not going into detail on the latter because I lack a metric ton of information that would be necessary to calculate it all out. Not to mention the raw economic experience that someone like John has (that might help too).

But it doesn’t change the fact that what I’m referring to is a perfectly strong way to make precursors available, in principle.

As for your thing about a mad rush, I call pure speculation. Would there be something of a mad rush if precursors had a more clear and linear path to acquire them? Well, probably. It’s not that far-fetched a thing to assume. But you are also assuming that the market is incapable of balancing itself out after the fact.

And please, remove the trick straw-man card from your hand. It’s rather appaling. I have already stated numerous times that what myself and many others are asking for is a system that will ultimately mean close-to-equal cost for the acquisition of a precursor. What that price ends up being is markedly less important and quite beside the point.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The Supply vs Demand concept may sound simple to many non-business minded players, but it’s more complicated than just “1,000 players want Item A when there’s only 10 available”. Many factors play a role in determining demand for an item. This is where behavior research comes in to determine how to create more demand. Making an item rare may increase demand on some items, but the same strategy isn’t a “one size fits all” solution.

Anet, as with any company, can help to influence demand. They cannot create it outright. Just as they can influence value, but not determine it. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise doesn’t understand how businesses work.

Each person sees an item differently. Just because one player feels Dusk is overpriced, doesn’t mean that Anet should alter the entire economy to make that one player happy. Some items were meant to be rare. In the same breath, some items that were meant to be rare get a drop buff. Monocles and Mini Monkey Kings were super rare, and had a value that matched the rarity and demand. Anet comes in and buffs the drop rates with insane amounts, thus making the item less valuable. Yes they have the power to increase Supply, but it’s not something they should do with Precursors.

I like how your pedantic post about supply and demand concludes in straight up opinion.

Also, ascended crafting. Cough. Pricey to acquire and much less subject to supply&demand cost disparity. In fact, the disparity is almost entirely caused by the supply of silk and the disparate amount needed for each armor class (e.g. very little influence from players themselves).

For someone who is talking about how much goes into supply and demand, you seem to be ignoring how simple it is to make a system that isn’t so easily skewed in cost. It’s not about Anet making precursors easy to acquire. It’s about them making the cost to acquire them relatively balanced, instead of letting them be completely subject to the player market.

I see your business economy and raise you game design.

Hope you’re not bluffing.

Liewec.2896:

wrong, i don’t die there at all because i don’t play it, haven’t played it since my first match there and will never play it again.
and say “hot-join hero” all you like, there is no way i’m waiting 30 minutes for a Tpvp pop, and suckhammer is in Spvp (and anet refuse to remove it despite the unanimous call for it) so thats out, all thats left is the exploitable, teamswapping cess pool of hotjoin that Anet refuse to fix.
the pvp community is shrinking fast and for very good reasons,

if you pvped there is no way you’d be such a whiteknight.
but being a pve’er if something is exploitable it is fixed in a week, so happy days for you!
in pvp you shouldn’t hope to have a severe exploit fixed within a year.

i’ve pumped alot of cash into this game, but pvp is still the same handful of maps, single mode, and exploits go ignored, so nope, cash=content. neglect=neglect.

It’s funny that you mention it, cause I tried sPvP for the first time yesterday and I used hot-join.

Here’s the galling part: It took me like 10 minutes, including some forum searching, to even figure out to join a team. Hitting “join” and then being brought into spectator mode is one of the most confusing interface choices I’ve ever seen.

A couple times, I accidentally waited and picked a team after a match started because I clicked off the main screen where you choose without thinking and couldn’t figure out how to bring it back up.

I’m not new to MMOs either. I’ve been at it for at least half a decade now. I can’t imagine how confusing it must be for people who are new to video games. Kinda makes me wonder how many of those spectators aren’t just people who haven’t figured out you can choose a team.

I think the truth of the matter is, a lot of peoples’ complaints can be summed up as, “We haven’t had a big expansion to appease us and distract us from issues with the game.”

I mean, the problem with Living Story as the main selling point of content updates is that it’s just not big enough to capture the attention of players who are bored and burning out.

It’s like this: You ask people to explain why they’re bored, they’ll come up with a laundry list of reasons, some of which they may have thought up on the spot. You give bored people something to hold their attention and they’ll forget 90% of those reasons.

In other words, although the game has some issues and some of them are worth fixing, most people would probably forget the issues exist if they are preoccupied with other things. Don’t get wrong; some issues should be addressed (and already have been, or are being looked at) – COUGH TRAITS COUGH. But at a certain point, Anet needs to understand that “fixing” various design problems is a never-ending list.

There needs to be a balance between addressing existing concerns and providing people with hours of real, actual gameplay. And by hours, I don’t mean “an hour or two.”

The funny thing is, for all I know, they’ve already embraced this and are working on big content patches (maybe even an expansion). But their policy is so so closed off that it’s impossible to know. I mean, some games hint at things they’re working on, at least. We don’t even get that. It’s just, “We’re doing things in our offices that presumably having something to do with GW2.”

I’m a pretty understanding person, but at a certain point, I have to ask, “Why am I even here?” I don’t mean that in some dramatic, revolutionary way. It’s just… the answer to that question is inevitably “because GW2 offers some systems that no MMO on the market offers in quite the same way.” And yet, I’m constantly reminded of how Anet’s staff seems like it’s full of amazing, talented people who are being smashed into the ground instead of being allowed to fly.

Sometimes it feels like they’re operating within a police state. It’s not exactly a comforting impression to have of a game company’s staff.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Southsun makes me sad. It’s a beautiful map that could easily be one of my favorites, but it has failed to become popular even through a significant overhaul.

I, unfortunately, predict that the zone will go ignored until (MAYBE) another rework following living story content involving the deep sea dragon (“Bubbles.”)

FWIW, the main thing I can’t stand about Southsun is that the core set of mobs there is Karkas and they obnoxiously evade nonstop. It’s just irritating combat imo and makes the zone really unappealing on the whole.

I mean, outside of that, I can’t think of a thing that I dislike about the zone. The atmosphere is certainly more upbeat than cursed shore and I am so weary of our cultural obsession with undead anyway.

Well… I would advise, feel free to open your bags, but only if you like playing the lottery and are content with gaining little more than some candy corn for cobs. Cause most of what you’re going to get is worth jack squat and you may never land a drop that is worth a lot.

That’s just the RNG of it.

Sarcasm aside, where some of you see difficult, I just see “obnoxiously designed.” With an ability like stability that can neutralize 90% of CC, it doesn’t exactly require great skill to handle these sort of mobs. It just requires having and using stability…

I guess I don’t understand how “make sure you have and use one type of ability as often as possible” equates to “challenging/difficult gameplay.”

I mean, how starved for challenge do we have to be to just shrug and welcome something so basic? I have to wonder if some of you have been playing GW2 for so long that you’ve forgotten what complex MMO combat looks like.

And I don’t mean that as a slight to the people who do crazy stuff like solo dungeon bosses or whatever it is. It’s just in principle, GW2 combat is incredibly straightforward. The combo system certainly has potential, but it’s not remotely integral to most short battle scenarios and its usefulness is mostly found in one or two combos (I’m looking at you might stacking).

Mystic.5934:

ty
someone kill me now.
I’m at 462 stacks of candy corn and 167 stacks of the other halloween materials and not even half way done. I’ve had to take several breaks out of monotony and many others to clear the bag (about twice per stack of ToT bags). I stopped trying to store those four like 8,000 bags ago. I should probably of done this in smaller sample sizes.

Lol, you can do it man! For science.

Mareth.8659:

Probably because you as villagers are not supposed to hide, also you get credit for that activityonly if you interact with the opposed party. So villagers have not to just hid but they have to do the gathering events on the corners if they want to survive the night.

Who says you aren’t supposed to hide? Certainly you’re better off working with other villagers, but hiding in some capacity (whether standing still or actively avoiding ghosts) helps you survive. And unless you’ve got another villager to help you out, it’s actually pretty easy for one ghost to chase you down once they’ve got you in their sights.

That said, I would be curious to see how the game would play without the “mad king says” abilities. I find that they are easy-mode for catching up to villagers.

Somoe.3621:

This might have been useful if killing Courtiers actually had any effect, but they respawn almost instantly at the very spot they died…

Yeah, I gotta admit, I don’t get the choice for this part. I get why ghosts have infinite respawn, but I don’t get why their respawn is exactly where they died when they already have a spawn point. Seems almost contradictory. Like “here are tools for damaging the ghosts – just don’t bother because they’ll come right back exactly where you took them down” ???

Hannelore.8153:

I will say this quite clearly in a way that is easy to understand…
They are trying to kill you.

If you don’t want to be annoyed, don’t play games. Because the goal of enemies in every game is to make sure that you die and cannot continue, at least not without some amount of rage and frustration if you can’t stay level-headed.

Oh man! Revelation! I think I’m having a moment here… all this time I thought they were trying to invite me over for tea. It all makes sense now.

Today I learned #2: Games are supposed to annoy you.

Wow, I’m learning so much today.

Summary of thread so far:

OP makes a sarcastic post about the number of stuns and knockbacks that mobs do and how annoying it is.

Posters come to the rescue pointing out that it’s a L2P issue and OP needs to get good.

Today I learned: Being annoyed is a skill issue. I have heard of anger management classes. Is there such a thing as annoyance classes? I guess I better go take some, so that I can get more skilled at not being annoyed.

Lomopop.7028:

Most women don’t stretch the way the female human toons did in this game. The animation used in this game is a totally cheesy boobs thrust out stretch created purely as fan service to tween boys. Since I’m not a tween boy, yeah, it’s immersion breaking. Especially in an LS scene where something serious is happening.

You’ve never seen someone do a chest-thrusting stretch before? :S

Go try it right now. It’s just a natural way of stretching parts of your body.

Honestly, I have to wonder whether you aren’t a bit boob-focused yourself if you’ve noticed it enough to care.

Lomopop.7028:

I’m so glad those animations are gone. I really hope they never fix this bug. That tacky female stretch was completely immersion breaking every time I saw it, and I hope I never have to see it again.

I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. Immersion breaking? I guess I forgot that humans never stretch.

Nilgoow.1037:

Now I have an ad for the PvP tournament in place of the personal story indicator. At this rate I’ll have by gold stolen by Monday.

Not sure if trolling or serious…

Cayena.9647:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Arikyali.5804:

Oh, that is so awesome! Thank you for sharing this!

Yes, thanks a bunch!

Gaile Gray you are the biggest tease ever. What does this mean? Thanks? “Thanks for sharing this information so other people may collect the backpack” or “Thanks for pointing out this bug so we can REMOVE IT AND CRUSH YOUR PITY LITTLE DREAMS”

._. I nearly got a heartattack seeing this post. I want it soo bad. it’s my number one regret in gw2.

Chances are she knows as little about it as we do.

Still, she is in a position to ask that we don’t have. So there’s that.

Maybe Commander Talon’s ghost is overseeing the building plans and he doesn’t think it’s worth rebuilding, as there’s really no need at all. “We’re fine as we are! You think we need to rebuild? Hah! We’ve withstood months without any progress. Why expend the effort because a few people want a pretty little city?”

{crumbling house collapses on Talon’s ghost}

“Not again…”

Yargesh.4965:

Open it?

Well…. right, I have to. Cause it’s soulbound. And then if I want to centralize things to one character so that I know where it all is (which I do) then I now have several items to transfer, rather than one.

Could you make Personalized Trick-or-Treat bags account-bound rather than soulbound? I have several different toons and am trying to keep my ToT drops somewhat organized. Every time I get a Personalized bag, it’s just forcing me to transfer things around in a more disorganized fashion because I can’t simply transfer the unopened bag to another character.

I concur with the OP. Also with Zaoda. This game has a wealth of sets that cover everything, especially below the chest (which is fine!) but the other demographics could use more representation.

Ayrilana.1396:

No. You can continue to run the belief that players do not set demand and supply onbth TP but you’ll continue to be wrong. You’ve got your own opinion on how a game’s economy should run in your view which is along the lines of socialism. You then ignored peer reviewed topics and twisted them around to fit your beliefs. You didn’t like that player set supply and demand on the TP so you constructed a way to rationalize your opinion.

You’re also completely ignoring the type of economy that Anet is going for with this game. What you’re trying to do is similar to someone trying to force North Korea’s way of running their economy onto anyone that uses capitalism. They’re conflicting ideologies and do not go together.

I’ve said it before, you’d be happiest with a vendor based economy where players had no impact. That’s essentially what yoy’re asking for when you’re demanding Anet to dictate what supply and price levels should be.

The point was not that Anet controls supply and demand with an iron-fist (they have some control, but it is distanced overall).

The point is that Anet chose to design precursors in such a way that their demand is subject to a hugely skewed difference from item to item. Acquisition is based in layers of RNG – looting a precursor or RNG forging precursors from other RNG-dropped items (rares and exotics).

On top of that, supply stays consistently tiny overall because of % chances to acquire the items. It’s a lovely mixture of factors to cause absurdly differing sale prices and it’s not something they directly control, but it’s absolutely something that they chose to design such that it could very easily occur.

Whether they were completely aware of how it would play out is for them to know (I can’t read their minds). But you can’t deny that the current system of precursor acquisition practically begs for sale prices to have massive differences from weapon to weapon.

If you think it’s somehow strange to not design precursors that way, just look at ascended items. Much less skewed from set to set and concerning the difference in pricing that does occur, Anet admits in a sideways sort of way about why; the cloth set requires way more damask, which is related to silk and (if I recall) John saying once that what they did with silk was very intentional.

In short, no, of course, the economy isn’t ruled over by the devs with an iron-fist. We drive a ton of it with our own demand choices. But the converse is just naive; of course they have some control over it – it’s in how they set things like item acquisition, drop rates, etc. And there’s no particular reason why precursors can’t use a more specific system of acquisition – it’s just a matter of them choosing what it is.

Cuddy.6247:

Deleting characters with items that people were unaware were on them is quite the same issue. It’s haste and everyone who legitimately views that there are any isolated instances of player-fault that shouldn’t fall within the norm of customer service are too far up their own kitten to be dealt with.

Since we’re going there…

You are conflating two different concepts: One is essentially picking favorites for no other reason than sympathy (the concept you are decrying). The other is evaluating situations based on the circumstances and potentially acting differently based on what the circumstances are.

One is emotion-driven and biased. The other is rationally-driven and analytical. There is nothing particular to decry in the latter on principle. The only major flaw is potential human fallibility in the process and that’s where policies come in to keep people from falling into the former.

I hate to be “that guy,” but unless you have worked closely with decision-making policies and handling outlier situations that don’t quite neatly fit in standardized boxes, you probably don’t know what you’re talking about.

Region based currency… that is a cool thought. You may be on to something there.

fellyn.5083:

It’s more like, anet refused to refund items in the past from people who had their accounts hacked before anet had all their security measures in place.

So if they can’t/won’t refund items for people who lost them for reasons beyond their control they shouldn’t refund them for people who lost items where it was their own fault. That is what you call fair. The value of the items lost is irrelevant.

And yet… there is no such thing as easy, blanket fairness when you’re dealing with people-driven, nuanced circumstances. I’m willing to bet that if you had the job of support for a few days, you would begin to realize that every situation is different and although you have to follow policy, sometimes it’s just a matter of using your judgment.

There’s a reason support teams for games use real people and not automated systems.

Once upon a time, I co-ran a guild in another game. Often we had to distribute loot to our peeps and we had very particular policies about how it worked. We tried our best to be fair with those policies, but sometimes there just was no completely fair option. Or the “fair” option wasn’t actually justified. So we had to improvise.

And though some people became jaded or left due to loot, as people inevitably due with any loot distribution system, many others loved our setup for doing its best to be fair in every decision and they trusted our ability to discern. The moral of the story is, if you think Anet’s support team is good, consider that maybe they do their best to be fair on every decision and that’s what makes you like them.

fellyn.5083:

I’m curious how it’s selfish. That implies there is something for me to gain by this random guy I don’t know not getting a precursor reimbursed to him.

You asked, so I will indulge. Your original words:

It’s your own fault, you shouldn’t get it back.

I am simply extrapolating the attitude therein.

“You shouldn’t get it back because…” Then I filled in the blanks. And you happened to confirm them for me:

fellyn.5083:

It is his own fault, therefor he should not be reimbursed.

fellyn.5083:

Nevermind that anet in the past hasn’t refunded people things for reasons beyond their control, but this guy made an oops so he should be treated special.

The last part here is where the selfish part becomes apparent – other stuff has happened to people where they didn’t get refunded, therefore this guy shouldn’t get refunded, i.e. “stuff happened in the past that bothered me concerning Anet’s policies about items, therefore everyone should have to hurt like I do.” You know your own mind better than I do or anyone else here. Maybe I’m completely off – but how you’re coming across is not in a good way.

Again though, like I said, arguing the point is irrelevant (Anet is not going to change their policies for items based on a few vague forum arguments about fairness), so saying he shouldn’t get it back (in this thread) is kind of like going into a poor part of town and saying, “Government welfare programs are unfair to taxpayers.”

fellyn.5083:

I’m not wishing bad things on anyone. Saying he shouldn’t be reimbursed because he screwed up is not the same thing is saying he should die because he screwed up.

I’m merely saying he should be treated the same way everyone else has been for the last 2 years. I’m sorry that you think some people deserve special attention.

Amurond.4590:

How about you take a chill pill instead of frothing at the mouth and flying into a fit of keyboard mashing rage.

A) No kitten. It’s called an opinion, it seems it upsets you when somebody has a different one.
B) Can you even read? Where have I wished bad things upon another person? I said I feel for him but I don’t feel that this is the type of stuff support should have to deal with. It’s a waste of resources imo.
C) This doesn’t even make sense, but I’ll do my best to respond. I think this is really, really stretching what support should be dealing with. When I said Anet has the best support I’ve experienced, I wasn’t joking, but this just seems over the top. Best support, seemingly at the expense of every other aspect of their game…
D) Lol! Obviously it was hyperbole. The point being that how far do you want to stretch the definition of “made a mistake” for item reimbursement.

As for the remarks about me being selfish… do you know even know what the words you’re using actually mean? How on Earth is me disagreeing that this is a legitimate support issue “selfish”.

What a bizarrely emotional response from you.

Lol, I’m not raging. Gotta love how any time someone gets close to use swear words people automatically assume that they’re raging. Learn the difference between emotion and emphasis.

Anyway, if you guys can’t see how pointlessly negative you’re being and the selfish attitudes that you’re putting forth, I can’t force it into your brains. I tried to explain, but I’m not going to repeat myself endlessly on it.

You either get it or you don’t and right now, neither of you are getting it at all. Maybe do yourselves a favor, take a step back, and look at what you’re actually adding to the thread (hint: it’s nothing).

Honestly, I’m normally more patient about this stuff, but you caught me at a bad time. I get real sick of people having anti-mistake attitudes. It’s as if you guys aren’t comprehending that we’re human beings.

P. S. This has nothing to do with special or non-special treatment. You are not comprehending that our opinions on whether he should get the item back have basically nothing to do with the decision support is going to make. They don’t base their decisions on popular opinion. Which leaves three options: Say nothing, be positive, or be negative. And there is no logical excuse here for the third option – that’s what I mean about nonsense rationalizations.

End of story.

Tman.6349:

Go with a generic barbie hairstyle. Is it just me, or are all ‘female’ cyborgs blondes with a ponytail?

Edit:also…#protip: whenever you’re taking a screenie of a toon from the character select menu, make sure to launch the game fresh so you’ll reset the lighting effects. It makes a drastic difference. (Idk why it’s still not fixed after all this time.)

Thanks for the tip. And now that you mention, I may actually try that. It is kind of an archetype, isnt it.

Rhianne.4027:

I wanted a look similar to the male whispers light armour, but on my female elementalist – swirly robes that cover most skin but are figure hugging.

I’m quite happy with the legs and headpiece, less sure about the shoulders-top-gloves combination – the current one sort of balances out, but it’s hard finding something simple and covering enough to go with the rest of the outfit.

Please ignore the dyes – the colour channels in the various parts don’t match up, so I just went for options which didn’t look awful (abyss/blue shade/dust/black cherry). Once I get the pieces I’d like to see if paler colours work, to contrast with her skin-tone.

Parts list:
Glorious Crown
Devout Mantle
Seer Coat/Trickster Coat (has slashes in the fabric along the elbow)
Wrappings of the Lich
Trappings of the Lich
Apprentice Shoes
Krytan staff

I like it. ^^

I would be interested to see what it looks like with the dyes matching up. That’s the only thing that stuck out to me, is that the dyes aren’t quite syncing well. I’m also not sure about the slashes on the arms, but I may just be noticing it because of the dyes.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

Hey, I need opinions on a new set I’m working on. It’s Halloween inspired look that turned out to be something like the Halloween outfits combined. ‘’Demon eyes’’ (Lich outfit), dress-like armor (Count outfit) with bones (Witch outfit).

If you think there are any parts that need improving, feel free to suggest improvements.

Oooh, nice. I’m not sure about the coat – I’m thinking maybe something smaller and more raggedy-looking to go with the bone-heavy look (if there’s anything like that). Other than that, I really like the overall feel of it. It almost makes me think of the risen mobs.

Maybe nightmare court chest? That might be too large and billowy though.. I’m not sure where the chest ends and the pants begin on that set.

fellyn.5083:

Sure. Mean spirited. Nevermind that anet in the past hasn’t refunded people things for reasons beyond their control, but this guy made an oops so he should be treated special.

Amurond.4590:

Because it’s probably what a lot of people are thinking?

Anet easily has the best customer support out of the games I’ve played yet it’s kind of worrying they’d take the time to deal with something like this when there are probably more pressing support issues. This guy made a frustrating mistake and I feel for him but so do a lot of other players who can’t be reimbursed.

I sold a Sam for 175g two weeks ago and now it’s 300 – 400g. Can I be reimbursed? Thanks. Oh and that few 100g worth of rare GS I threw into the MF was a mistake I’d love to have those back…

A) It doesn’t matter one bit whether you think he “deserves” the item back or not. Anet will act as they are going to act, based on their policies.
B) Because it doesn’t matter, all you are doing is taking the opportunity to wish bad things on another person, i.e. mean-spirited.
C) How in the hell is it worrying? What, you think they’re so incompetent that they can’t manage support priorities without you worrying about it?
D) There’s a world of a difference between accidentally deleting an item (in this case, forging it) and selling an item, only to have its sale price go up later.

I don’t even understand how you justify this selfish attitude. Stop trying to hide behind your petty rationalizations.

fellyn.5083:

It’s not mean spirited. It is his own fault, therefor he should not be reimbursed.

Their support cant refund items every time some one “accidentally” loses an item they wished to keep.

Not only that but in the past anet has said they actually have no way to do so, as well. Further there is no proof he actually had what he said he did and given the above, I don’t know if anet even has a way to verify his claim.

Don’t try to defend yourself on this with some “support can/can’t do” nonsense. You said that he shouldn’t get it back. That’s your opinion. And it’s a mean-spirited one.

I’m sure you’ve never made mistakes in your life though… jesus some people.

fellyn.5083:

It’s your own fault, you shouldn’t get it back.

Why would you even take the time to post something so mean-spirited.

John Smith.4610:

minfaer.2796:

John, please write an ending to the story of Lemark… of course, we know he gets it, but it feels so like a cliffhanger… maybe some surprise about why he wanted the reaper so desperately!

Lemark kicked in the door. “A WORM?!” he shouted, “NO… NO! A FREAKING 200 FOOT WORM!”
Zomorros was waiting for him, of course, a smirk on his smug face as he hovered at the end of the room. The whole place was lavishly decorated in a way that screamed wealth at anyone who entered. Zomorros wasn’t a being of subtlety… usually.
“My old friend,” Zomorros said lazily, his head tilted to one side as he examined Lemark’s battered appearance. “How are you? You don’t look so well, I’m sure I have something that can help that around here.”
“Save your gifts” Lemark spat, “I’ve no need for more chains”.
“Well, aren’t we dramatic today?” Zomorros replied with a smile as he continued to rummage through a chest of unorganized bottles.
Lemark began to walk deeper into the room. He rubbed a dirty hand across a tapestry that probably cost more than most Tyrians earned in their lifetime.
“I’ve come for what’s mine,” Lemark growled in what should have been an inaudible tone.
Zomorros turned with a scowl, all pretense of good humor evaporating. “There is a price for that”.
Lemark threw his pack across the room where it fell and slid into a wall beside Zomorros. The Djinn looked intently at the pack as it burst apart , the collected items hovering in air.
“No,” Zomorros almost sobbed, and Lemark was uncertain if it was a denial or disbelief.
“No,” Zomorros said again, more forcefully, “these are unacceptable!”
“They are not! The Contrac-”
“You do not want to hold the contract against me, child! This is mine and you cannot deserve it,” Zomorros said, visibly attempting to restrain his anger. “You don’t even know what it is.”
Lemark pulled a ratty parchment from his pocket and slammed it on the table in front of Zomorros. It glowed slightly in the Djinn’s presence.
Lemark put his hand on the parchment and stared directly into Zomorros’s eyes. “The contract,” he said slowly and precisely. The words echoed unnaturally around them.
A smile slowly transformed Zomorros’s features. The “skin” around his eyes tightened and his lips curled sadistically as looked up at Lemark from under his brow. “I am compelled,” Zomorros said slowly as a dagger bloomed from Lemark’s chest. The thief looked down in stunned disbelief. He legs went weak, but he caught himself with one arm on the table.
Lemark felt blood in his lungs; he held his breath and stood back up. Sheer stubbornness kept him on his feet as Zomorros moved in close.
Zomorros spoke softly, almost like a whisper, but every word was terribly clear and precise, “I never told you what this is”. He leaned in close enough that his face filled Lemark’s vision and wrapped his fingers around the hilt,
“It’s the reaper of souls.” He whispered as the dagger ripped free.

Whoa. The end of it there isn’t far from how I imagined the ending.

Zetsuei.8942:

Chris Cleary.8017:

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.

As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

Can’t say I’m surprised at that response. Most players did the dungeon like normal but a very small percentage got lucky and found out about this before they did it. Now they get to reap the rewards while everyone else is out of luck. In Anet’s eyes it must be deemed okay since its not everyone using it but just a few players. Ignore the fact they get to make massive bank on it while everyone else is basically out of luck.

Anet has already shown they don’t really like to give everyone a even playing field, be it this patch or past ones. Either remove the critters the first time you enter or give us a option to re-play it. If you deem this as a non exploit then we all should have the chance to do it.

You say it like it’s some kind of Anet-specific-offense. Sometimes when an exploit is fixed, the offenders are rolled back in some way. Sometimes they are not. That’s just MMOs. Better get used to it cause it’s not going anywhere.

pdavis.8031:

Oh heck no!!
I had alot of fun trying to figure it out!!
It was great to see the forum community also pull together and toss out different ideas. We didn’t have too many haters (just the one) and people building off of each others ideas was awesome! The story/clue idea was amazing and I thought John put it together rather well. There were so many details that were red herrings, it was difficult to try to piece together the truth. I love a good puzzle, and John did an awesome job!

Thanks John!! You rock!!!

Well said. I knew going in that the item might not even impress me. It was the experience that was worth it.

minfaer.2796:

The recipe: waste of blood. The game/thread: Totally worth it.

Agreed.

Shriek sounds like flying creatures of some kind. Harpies, bats?

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Could certainly use a proper pass. I do love the premise though. Lot of potential.

skullmount.1758:

I wonder if the contractually obligated part is only a reference to getting the clue, as in Zammoros had to give him the clue as part of whatever deal started the search.

Maybe so…

My initial thoughts are that it is a component that came from the forge. But a forge component that must be used in some fashion whether in an event/jp/or given to an NPC…

And this is an interesting thought. What if “contractually obligated” is, like you say skullmount, something that he “had to give him,” i.e. a forge component, like pdavis is saying here. Perhaps this means that you create part of the item in the forge and then you get back a component that you do something with?

Kind of like with Mawdrey?

Too bad it isn’t more like a dye that you can change on the fly.

Still, very cool concept. Specially the shadowy one.

Hmm… initial thoughts on hint 8: Scientific maybe a reference to this being an item that requires a highly specific number? Or something pertaining to Asura, as they are very scientific in nature.

The contractually obligated part has gotta mean something, but I’m not clicking on what.

whiteflower.9425:

Like i said before, its not just me thinking this way.
Its not like a conspiracy theory against Anet.

Me (and I assume the other ones) play this game for a long time and, for our experienced and for what we witness among this few years, everytime a build comes up the prices go up. No doubt in that.

When we see that a build comes up we know that the conversion will suffer an increase and that’s fine (well i dont like it but its a player base system right?)
But by this much? I, as a “veteran player” or whatever, never seen the prices go up this high and that got me suspicious.

From what we can have seen in this thread and in blogs of fellow mates of Tyria, we can see that im not alone in this.

You had many other events that had this amount of items in gem store. The previous Halloween you had phantom hood, grenth hood, witch outfit and so on.

I think the raffle stuff would not affect the game so quickly cause people will need to go to the skrit, read all the stuff and understand that it was indeed a raffle.

I will talk for me now. When i enter the game i visit all the merchants to see what was new and i only knew the collector after i got the Shiny and that took me a few hours xD

So i do not think the first thing people would go after the launch would be going to a rat xD But hey, cant talk for all the people.

About the data you are asking for, you can have it.
Go here: https://www.gw2tp.com/gems select All

You cant see the 2012 stuff and most of the 2013 but you can compare this year to last here and whatever you want within a year i guess.

Again, I get how it looks and I know you’re not the only one, but had the chart not been removed, people would probably be looking to it for answers and saying that it’s just a surprising anomaly. The removal of the chart from the interface has biased peoples’ minds from the get-go.

I’m not saying it’s impossible that Anet tweaked it (I don’t know what the actual code for it looks like on their end), but let’s look at this from their perspective for a moment: Just how dumb would they have to think we are to honestly believe that with all the theorycrafting, market-watching minds playing the game, no one would notice a gigantic, unprecedented spike? Is it so hard to believe that maybe they were just as surprised as we are?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

As a preemptive strike, I think it’d be a good idea to buy out as much Karka Shells and Passion Flowers as possible from the TP.

He says as he most likely puts up Shells and Flowers for sale….

And yet, I have never encountered this so-called DR in any capacity. I’m not saying you guys aren’t seeing what you’re seeing, but I don’t doubt for a second that it’s an unintended bug.

You gotta realize bugs often make no sense at all. Trying to make sense out of them without having QA testing tools or having access to / knowledge of programming code can sometimes be a foray into madness.