Guild Wars 2

Mind you, I’m more excited for the map population fix. The maps are often too sparsely populated and you end up waiting around a lot for some of the group content like the Creeping Crevasse hero point.

Sylent.3165:

Leamas.5803:

But when is it going to take effect is a bigger question and how does it affect those who have not spent 250 points yet?

When? That’s a great question lol.

If you spent over 250 they will refund the difference

Yes, but under 250, do they do anything? Do they reward the traits up to what you’ve spent or are those HP gone?

Keikami.6247:

It took me 2 years to build my Bifrost, which built from scratch because it just didn’t feel right to buy the precursor or the mats. To say the least, I’m pretty proud of it and the way I went about getting it. That said, I don’t know if I really want to spend another year or so farming a new one at the moment.

I would rather farm the gold and buy the PC than to waste my time on mindlessly grinding stuff through the MF. At least farming gold, the grinding is more tolerable and the results more predictable.

Personally, I didn’t mind the 400, but I’m also using a 3 year old toon that had over 200 spare HP, even so, I’ve been using the reaper without ideal specs (Mainly Dire gear) and still enjoying it. I still keep my staff and minions handy if I get in a pinch and need to back off. Once I get it unlocked, I’m going to at switching my gear to either Celestial or Sinister to more fully take advantage of the Reaper build and the GS. Either way, other than the 60HP to start, you don’t need the entire trait line unlocked right away to start playing and enjoying the spec. The is ANet and I’ve played this game long enough to know that nothing new comes without considerable in-game requirements.

But when is it going to take effect is a bigger question and how does it affect those who have not spent 250 points yet?

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

As someone with 4 accounts and 22 alts, 250hp per alt still gated behind masteries is barely a compromise. I’ll reserve my “thank you” for when it goes account-bound like access to PvP, WvW and dailies.

Masteries are account wide, so at least you don’t have to redo the masteries for each alt. You still need to do them for each account I would think though. Of course, though, you can’t expect elite specs to unlock for all alts just for doing it once. Perhaps a better solution would be to have elite specs profession bound, so if you unlock them for a guardian, it’s unlocked for all your guardians.

When is it happening? I’ve already spent 225, so should, in theory, be almost there.

The reality is that ANet wants you buying gems and anyone that argues the gems come from people converting gold to gems is deluded because that would imply a limited amount of gems and I guarantee that if someone came along and wanted to spend an obscene amount of money on gems, they would be available. The conversion rate will only drop so far before people will start refusing to buy gems, so of course ANet will control this threshold to keep the sales flowing. There is an infinite amount of gems hence an infinite amount of potential gold in the economy. I know people who buy gems monthly, like a subscription fee. Conversely, I know very people people who willing convert gold to gems to buy something in the gem store. Certainly some people do it, but in no way as many people who buy gems.

In game vendors, coin loot drops such as dungeons and gold farms compound the problem because the gold comes out of thin air adding more gold to the economy and there simply aren’t enough sinks to control the amount of gold. So, in that vein, I think a contraction of the gold available in game will generally be good from most players, with the exception of those who have piles of gold tied up in the TP.

The reality is that people have been complaining about the state of GW2 since 4 months in. Ever since the winter of 2013 I remember people saying GW2 is dead and won’t last, and yet here it is still going strong. There have been many legit gripes over the years and many less so legit gripes, but as a constant, ANet rarely acknowledges the problems and is notorious for merging and shutting down threads to bury problems.

People complain about the state of loot, but most playing these days weren’t around in those early days after Lost Shores was released. This seems to be the turning point where most people started to notice serious problems with the loot tables. Loot was a VERY BLEAK thing for many months and the mere mention of going after a champion or doing a world boss was enough to bring out barrage of bitter flaming on chat, because the rewards were THAT bad and typically not high enough to even cover the WP fees and cost of repairs.

People have been complaining about the horrible condition damage vs. direct damage imbalance for as long as I’ve been playing, over 3 years. They only JUST made an attempt to fix that in what, July? August? Of course, now many world bosses just melt and need better balancing, but at least a group of condi users can actually be effective now…in theory.

Many people complain about the RNG, which typically falls on deaf ears. People did complain much worse about the RNG back in the days before champ chests and daily rewards from world bosses and temples. Again, in those days, blues/greens, 99% of the time, with no daily “rare” chest.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I can’t speak for others but whenever I criticise a game, I do so because I care.
If I don’t care I will simply leave and play something else.

This. I have hundreds of games between steam and 5 or 6 consoles, but keep coming back to GW2, but I feel it’s worth it. I participate in the forums because I want to see the game improve. ANet’s communication skills over the years has been somewhat frustrating, to say the least, but I wonder how much of that is being controlled by the top levels. As it evolves it does get further and further away from their “play your own way” mission statement which, again, I believe to be more a top-level executive decision. They need to keep people playing and they need that carrot for the hardcore to keep them interested. My fear, for myself and many others who have been around since launch, is that as the game becomes more and more “Just another MMO”, the more people who will leave, leaving only the hardcore. I chose GW2, for many reasons, not least of which the fact that it has a low grinding requirement that I was seeing many complain about with WoW and all the Korean grinders. With ascended crafting and now RAIDs which will apparently require ascended gear, RAIDS are now gated behind a massive grind and gold requirement. Even the new maps are time gated behind masteries and grinding out XP to fill mastery requirements. This is dictating how I must play.

What is T4 Itzal exactly required for?

I’m personally hoping for a crash. I need a dusk and I don’t want to pay 1000+g for it.

If you’ve been around for 3+ years, you’ll remember there has only been one major event that had affected the entire TP in one foul swoop, and not in a good way from a player perspective. The death of the bots, for the most part, around this time 3 years ago, marked a time of massive price inflation across the board as much of the stock in the TP was kept high by the bots. When the bots when away, the supply was not keeping up with the demand and could only cause prices to rise. After that, the market has been fairly stable, save for a few times when specific things get affected, mostly affecting high-end items, like when the wardrobe drove up the price of PCs by making legendary skins account bound.

Someone in LA, said the XP gained crafting does not count toward masteries. Can anyone confirm?

They’re also still 5 laurels from the laurel vendor, which makes me think ANet still plans to keep them fairly rare. GW2Spidy shows the volumes listed have gone up slightly since HoT (Likely due to all the insta-80s), but not substantially, again pointing to speculation being the driving factor in the cost here more than anything.

I think it’s all the insta-80s flooding the market and the shock of dropped prices are causing others to unload stashes. I don’t think the prices will remain that low for that long, so I think it’s a good time to buy a bunch and sit on them for a few months whiles the prices recover.

Is this a joke? Either way…if it’s not…Crafting stations are located in all major towns and various others throughout Tyria. Check this site.
http://gw2crafts.net/

With the new mastery system, does crafting grant XP towards mastery? If so, how many levels are gained? I need to to do tailoring because I want sinister gear for my necro reaper build. But if the XP doesn’t count toward mastery, perhaps I’ll use the crafting to level a new toon instead.

Also, is Sinister gear account or soul bound on acquire…can’t seem to find this information on google. If it’s soul bound, makes the first question moot.

I play the new zone like I play any new zone. I run the perimeter as best I can to unlock as many WPs as I can get to, then run down the middle, again as best as one can. Mastery gating plays a major role in this map, but that’s OK. Now that I have 5 of the 6 WPs unlocked, I can teleport around doing events and picking off the other map elements to gain XP at a more leisurely rate. The goal for me for any map is to complete it and the order is of less importance, after getting the WPs.

What a waste.

Is it a bug or by design that the Labyrinth is not granting any XP?

Sol.6213:

Client crashes every few hours. GTX 770 Driver 358.50 (latest), i7-4770K, 8GB RAM, Windows 10 Pro. Crash report has been different every time. Usually some kind of projectile effect mentioned. The last time I wasn’t anywhere near a fight so I’m not sure what projectile means. It’s getting VERY frustrating as it has happened almost every time I’ve been getting close to a new waypoint in the new content and then have to backtrack. I can’t believe I paid money for this kitten.

Sending a crash report every time. Does Anet even look at these things?

GW2 has had random crashing issues since day 1. I think it’s some compatability issue with nVidia as everyone I’ve seen report this has been running nVidia. I have a 670 on Windows 10, but the issue was there on Windows 7 as well. I was actually hoping Windows 10 might stablize it. Newest driver. PC crashed to freeze once today and twice the video driver reset…within an hour. Try setting the frame limiter to 60fps, I still crash, but not as often.

Leamas.5803:

My HoT personal story reset after logging out to get a shower. I was at the point after rescuing the captured pact agents and back to the camp to defend for the night. After logging in, I was back to the start of the personal story in SW.

I do, however, still have the rewards for completing the prolog, namely the crowbar, silky sand and I’ve already opened the bag…can’t remember what I got…nothing good, just blue and green salvage fodder I believe

Looks like I have to run back and restart Torn From the Sky. So, Better than redoing the prolog, but still not ideal.

My HoT personal story reset after logging out to get a shower. I was at the point after rescuing the captured pact agents and back to the camp to defend for the night. After logging in, I was back to the start of the personal story in SW.

Now that I think I understand what’s going on, they’re just looking for ways to “lengthen” the character progression. Once was a time, and probably still (I haven’t leveled a character in a long time though), you could have your base level 80 in a few hours, another couple hours to unlock all the WPs for all the dragons, dungeons, temples, and world bosses. If one rushed it, with 398 points as leveling rewards and 213 points via hero challenges, you could have a fully speced 80, with full availability to all the dragons, dungeons, temples, and world bosses in not much more than a couple days. Previously leveling a character was a joke if you chose to use shortcuts. Elite specializations and masteries extend that progression by forcing you to work on your character. No boring shortcuts, like leveling via crafting.

Donari.5237:

Leamas.5803:

So, from scratch, is the number 250 HP or is the number 400 HP?

I’m not too worried on my two mains, whom each have nearly 400HP extra after my skills and specialization have been fleshed out to where I want them. I figured the points would become more useful at some point so have sat on them a long time.

Unfortunately, HP seems to be character bound, as they should be, I suppose. So, for a new alt, I have enough scrolls to start a new 80 with 26HP, so I’m more concerned in this case, what the cost is from scratch. Is it more time effective to level to 80, then use my 76 scrolls for HP. I’m thinking probably. Opinions?

The number is 400 after you unlock all your current traits and skills. So, get to level 80 and fully unlock, then get 400 more points. Scrolls won’t get you HP either, they’ll get you spirit shards. Your mains will have to buy everything with their points, not just 3 trait lines and 2 skill types (eg), before they can open the elite.

You will have to do in-map hero challenges, or rank up in WvW.

My mistake. The scrolls used to give you skill points, which were converted to HP, but the scrolls were converted to give spirit shards (Not skillpoints/HP) past level 80. I missed the subtlety when looking at my characters. So, I’m looking at 400…ouch.

So, from scratch, is the number 250 HP or is the number 400 HP?

I’m not too worried on my two mains, whom each have nearly 400HP extra after my skills and specialization have been fleshed out to where I want them. I figured the points would become more useful at some point so have sat on them a long time.

Unfortunately, HP seems to be character bound, as they should be, I suppose. So, for a new alt, I have enough scrolls to start a new 80 with 26HP, so I’m more concerned in this case, what the cost is from scratch. Is it more time effective to level to 80, then use my 76 scrolls for HP. I’m thinking probably. Opinions?

PopeUrban.2578:

Leamas.5803:

All I can say is the RNG in GW2 has always been a little flakey. It gets “stuck” on certain things, or at least it used to, at least on my account.
snipped for brevity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

The RNG is in fact random, and we’ve been told multiple times that the seed values it uses don’t use any character or account relevant data.

Basically, because the human brain is wired to look for patterns, you chose to see a pattern when a series of random events produced something like a pattern.

Yes, of course there are streaks, good and bad. It’s easy for someone who believes it’s there to see clustering in bad behavior, but when it presents itself in supposedly very rare good behavior it becomes much more obvious. If a point is reached that a streak or behavior becomes predictable, it’s no longer random. I never said they used player information to seed the RNG, only that this is what was observed on my account over the course of many months.

PopeUrban.2578:

The RNG didn’t get stuck. it just happenned to roll a bunch of staves randomly, you saw those staves and mistakenly interpreted them as a pattern since you, unlike the RNG system, recognize that they have a relationship to one another.

Perhaps, but I’d be willing to bet if I were to do the same thing tomorrow, I’d get similar results. Like I said, I typically play the forge only about once a year with items I’ve looted or crafted and all 3 times the result had the same type of grouping. I don’t like slot machines, which the forge essentially is, because it promotes gambling.

All I can say is the RNG in GW2 has always been a little flakey. It gets “stuck” on certain things, or at least it used to, at least on my account. Back in the days after they nerfed the world bosses/temples and dungeons in to the ground, after they nerfed open world and event drops in to the ground (R.I.P. Orr), but before they implemented champion chests and world boss/temple rewards, loot was truly a bleak thing. Rare drops were exceedingly rare and exotics, well, exotics dropped so infrequently as to not even be mentioned…perhaps one every month or two. But I noticed a pattern with the rare drops. When I received a rare, most of the time, probably 7 times out of 10, I would receive a second rare drop usually within minutes and it always had something in common with the first. Say you first received a “Carrion Flame Greatsword of Corruption”. The second may be carrion, or corruption, or a flame GS, but there was ALWAYS something common between the two. The frequency was high enough that I was always surprised when it didn’t happen.

The forge also exhibits a similar behavior of getting stuck. Every time I’ve played the forge, which admittedly is only 3 times, it exhibited the same behavior. I don’t play the forge much, it’s essentially a slot machine and I hate gambling.

I recorded the forge results the second time it happened. At the time, there was a large thread analyzing the loot/rewards system and I did it as a test, but the last time I played the forge, last winter I believe, the results for exotic rewards were similar (7 items two groups of 3 identical or similar items, but there was one outlier in that case, a named piece). For a system that is supposed to be random, it just seems to get stuck, at least for my account.

Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Dire Orrian Staff of Rage
Shaman’s Etched Batch of Rage
Rampager’s Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Carrion Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)
Valkyrie Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)

So, 3 identical dire orrian staves of rage, 3 pearl quarterstaffs with no upgrades, 4 staves with superior sigil of rage. This from ~20 tries using 4 rare staffs. Granted, my account has always been notoriously unlucky, often seeing 100+ porous bones per hour, when Orr used to be a good place to farm. (Penitent/Shelter/Plinx/Jofast) Admittedly I haven’t really played since last winter (Summer is a no gaming time for me), but I do tend to keep up on the release notes and have never seen anything to indicate anything with the RNG is different.

Back when the wardrobe was released (April 2014), the massive influx of dyes caused by the refunds when dyes went account bound caused a crash in prices. Unidentified dyes dropped to well under 20s. However, at the same time unidentified dyes were removed as a world drop and not available outside the laurel vendor, I speculated the low prices would not last forever and I bought 500 unidentified dyes, at an overall average of probably 30s. I spend about 150g, and should have bought a lot more. They’re still sitting in my bank and with an asking price of about 90s the last time I looked, I’m looking at about a 200% profit, but it took the better part of 5 months for the prices to recover to the point were I could even break even on selling them. It did take A LOT longer for the prices to recover than I expected as I underestimated the sheer number of refunded dyes out there.

Some people would consider this manipulation of the TP. The question is, why? To my mind, this is just smart market analysis and prediction. Really not that smart TBH. With the change in how they’re acquired, the prices simply could not stay that low…it was just a matter of time and patience.

Trinnitty.8256:

We are talking about a video game with kids that aren’t even teenagers yet playing this game and have no real world of understanding. Flippers are literally taking candy from babies(young people and new players with no clue).

Considering the game itself is rate T for teen, this should not be a consideration in the game design. By the time a kid hits teenage years they should have some basic understanding of how to save and spend their money.

Trinnitty.8256:

Are we talking about inflation as in an abundance of gold that people have with nothing to spend it on. So people have to flip/speculate and create demand artificially? Its like pickers and a pawn shop mentality here. You come in my shop I buy items from you for less money and sell it to a buyer who wants it. Most people I see in game aren’t complaining they have so much gold with nothing to spend it on. Yet I see this we are fighting inflation talk of dungeons ring and people like this are creating too much gold.

There is always something to spend it on, some people have self control and save their money for when it’s needed or for something they truly want. If you want to talk about people creating too much gold in the economy, dungeon runners, champ trains of old, chest trains in SW, world boss trains, etc. Dungeon reward is free money and most people vendor the low end items they get from these events rather than putting them on the TP simply because it’s more convenient and often more profitable. Then there is vendor trash. It’s all free money, all “new” money in to the economy. Is causes inflation because it’s essentially a license to print your own money. In a real, working economy, the amount of money is somewhat limited, so as to control inflation. Due to extreme capitalism and trickle-down-effect, many economies these days are as broken as the one in GW2, or even worse. The mystic forge and TP flipping (due to the sheer volume of transactions) are probably the two largest gold sinks in the game. Remove either and you’ll have a time of runaway inflation, much like we saw way back when the bots were removed…prices will skyrocket as the amount of gold in the economy increases.

Trinnitty.8256:

Item prices only go higher if anet wants it to. If there is abundance of supply the price remains low. Even speculators can’t help it. If some item is being rare and there is demand for it then that’s where gold is going to be taken out of the economy from all by itself. The game doesn’t need flippers at all. It needs anet to have better control of supply and demand. This game needs more merchants that sells things that are account bound as a gold sink. Theres already too much stuff that needs to be traded between players in order to get because its to cumbersome to farm in this game actual items. Money is just changing hands mostly with a small tax from TP. GW1 didn’t have a TP. It had merchants that sold materials and runes/ dyes and prices would go up and down depending on sales.

ANet controls the supply, yes, but players essentially decide on what something is worth and basically control the TP. Other than guaranteed rewards like dungeons, the TP is the most effective way, using the least amount of RNG, to make money in the game. You will have speculators who might try to high-ball or low-ball prices based on some rumor or announcement, but it always settles out. We saw this happen a few months ago with precursors, when The Legend dropped to about 800g then quickly recovered. Someone made a lot of money on this. It’s been as high as ~1600g, but it simply couldn’t sustain that value. The biggest problem with account bound on acquire is that it simply isn’t worth as much and I don’t think it would get the uptake you think. Be careful what you wish for. Such items are typically priced well beyond their worth in effort to attain them. We’ve always seen this with dungeon and temple armors. While some people do pursue them, most people simply cannot be bothered due to the massive effort required to attain a full set.

The new gold sink will be ascended crafting, of course, as more and more people start working toward raid-worthy gear. This will largely be driven by the TP.

Wanze.8410:

One market, which might seem unethical to “exploit” to some, illustrates the centralisation of a service pretty well, which is selling items that you buy for gold from a vendor and sell it on the tp for a profit.

Not really an exploit, more providing a service people are willing to pay for. Overall, as you say, many buyers, knowingly or not, may ultimately save money when it comes down to what they need vs. the cost of the WP fees.

wolfpaq.7354:

Agemnon.4608:

Eddie Mo.7169:

What exactly are flippers

Instead of buying something for honest purposes they buy stuff with the purpose of reselling it later.

There is absolutely nothing dishonest about selling something that you bought.

It is outrageous that you would suggest that there is.

Agreed. It’s smart to do so if you can afford to sit on items for a while. It’s certainly better than grinding out new gold and adding MORE money to the economy. But, what Agemnon is describing is not flipping par se, this is investing. I’ve done both and flipping typically involves buying items low then relisting them essentially immediately for what is usually a low-marginal, but quick, profit. You typically need to buy and move a lot to make any real coin and it is typically time consuming at the keyboard. Investing typically is less effort for the player, but requires much more wait time and money to turn any real profit, months or longer before you can resell, but there is the potential for much higher returns, sometimes in the 400-500% range, or more. For long term items, I choose items I expect to see at least 100% return on within 3-6 months. Sometimes I take a loss on a bad investment as prices on certain things tank (Certain enameled dyes), sometimes one has to wait longer than expected for prices to recover after tanking, such as unidentified dyes after the wardrobe was released, other times, if things go as expected, I can make some good coin. That said, this ties up a lot of coin, typically for many months.

Mostly what I see when people complain about those who play the TP are people who don’t understand how the economy works and/or don’t understand how to flip items or invest their money. To me it seems to be mostly jealousy. It’s kind of like zerkers whining, ever since day one, that condi builds are OP when they refuse to spec anything to cleanse conditions.

People complaining about problems that don’t exist because they really don’t understand what they’re talking about.

Labjax.2465:

Firelysm.4967:

But i wonder, why are Trading Post flippers still allowed to flip without punishment? Those people control the economy, and those people don’t even play the game for real. I’m not saying how people should play the game, but this type of playing is killing the game economy and gaming experience is suffering because ArenaNet is allowing this!

Flippers don’t control the economy. They influence the economy, sure, as do the players who go out and loot thousands of items. They don’t control it.

TP flippers are more or less like the guys who play the stock market in RL. They are playing a game of analysis and prediction more than anything, and sometimes they lose. The way they profit is by winning more often than they lose.

Exactly, since I started playing this game over 3 years ago, the single largest influence on the economy, other than ANet manipulating messing with it, was the bots. Flipping was there before the bots, it was there after the bots, but when the bots were removed from the picture, that’s when we really started to see prices skyrocket. The first time I bought T6 they were all under 5s. Within a week or two of the mass bot killing (Over 35000 accounts according to ANet at the time), T6 prices were over 20s and precursors increased more than that. Bots are bad for a whole host of reasons, but if one likens them to robotic miners, they’re good for consumers because they keep stock high and prices low, well, they’re not good for ANet or the poor fellows whose accounts got hacked.

Unlike bots, which keep prices down by keeping stock high, flipping, on the other hand, works on the opposite principle. It helps keep prices down by reducing the amount of available money in the economy, hence reducing the buying/selling power of the individual. Because of the taxes, you can’t just pick any item and expect to make money. Remember, in order to break even on an item purchased for flipping, it has to be sold for approximately 17.5% higher than what you paid for it it for due to the way the taxes work, that 17.5% is permanently removed from the economy. There is money to be made of course: high end dyes, vanity items like skins and some high end recipes can sometimes turn as much as 50% profit, if you’re lucky and patient and wait for the right time to list. Sometimes you lose and take a huge loss, that’s just how it is. If one were to speculate, and had the money to gamble and sit on things, items required for ascended crafting will likely increase somewhat after HoT comes out due to the ascended requirement for raids.

You can’t nerf those who flip without nerfing everyone. The simple reason is that it’s a core element of how this economy works. The listing tax of 5%, is a heavy enough penalty that one has to pay up front, then another 10% of the list price is removed from the economy at the point of sale. So, on a 100g item, the seller pays a 5g listing fee up front out of their existing wallet. The buyer pays 100g and only 90 is delivered to the seller with a 10% sales tax, effectively removing 15g+ from the economy.

So…for that 100g item, if one where to buy it from the TP with the intent to flip, you would have to sell it for 117g64s71c just to break even….123g52s94c to make only 5% profit….so 105g. There’s a lot of risk that, yes, a few people can make good money on, but it is very time consuming and takes a crapload of gold out of the economy, which is ultimately a good thing to help keep inflation under control, more or less.

Without the ability to flip items, things would cost more than they already do simply because there would be that much more money in the economy. The largest money-making potential in the game, is not actually flipping on the TP, it is in long term investment. If you can predict what will increase in value, buy some and sit on it for a few months. I’ve known people who will buy up stacks Halloween bags at the end of the event for next to nothing and sit on them for a year because they always start quite high at the start of the event. People who could predict the market made TONS on linen when ascended crafting was announced.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

So it’s even easier and completely free to get a character to 80 without understanding any of their skills and traits? No thank you. If you want to play a new character so much, actually play them.

I agreed. That said, I’m also one who does not like leveling either…which is wht I only have 2 characters. What about if it were only within the same profession. Say a guard to guard…and would even make a certain amount of sense. I already have a guard at and 80 and, in theory, know how to play a guard. This way I could have a second guard and play with a different build.

Another thought would be that not allowing the exp transfer par se, but if you level a second character of the same profession you gain XP much faster. Kind of like an experience gain bonus for already having a character with that profession at 80.

I think I requested this about a year and a half ago, but it can’t hurt to ask again. Something that has been lacking is the ability to quickly switch gear/traits/skills between different builds. While we can have two sets of weapons, it’s awkward and time consuming to switch armor/trinkets/traits/skills and even weapons aren’t necessarily compatible between builds. Many people have a WvW set of gear and a PvE set of gear or even more depending on the situation. A WvW build that may be good for roaming is not necessarily ideal when defending.

For myself, I don’t necessarily want to level a bunch of alts to try new builds, nor do I have that kind of time, nor am I willing to give up my primary build in order to experiment, and I also don’t want to waste 12+ slots in my inventory carrying around a set of gear that I have to swap manually for given situations. Traits and skills, one has to kind of keep written down so you don’t forget…multiple tabs would be so much more convenient.

I realize that what I’m asking for here has a manual work around, but it would be a huge quality of life improvement that would almost surely encourage people to experiment with more builds…something ANet has said they want to encourage in the past. I think it would encourage more build diversity and cause less hard feelings than the constant tinkering and tampering with the professions and traits, which still has to be done, but if people had more options they’d be less likely to complain.

Ramon.4860:

It is the first time I see you in a drawing can buy the votes, while those who do not have gems, we have to farmear like crazy hours in maze to get raffles, 250 bags out five raffles … then another without play buys 2000 candy for gems and skins takes, something bad is happening and then from 1000 skins and there are only 4 more in bazaar. sorry for the English

Surely many used the skins, I can tell you, if I received the scythe or the Crossing, I would have used it. Those that have not used them are simply sitting on them a while to make sure the prices remain stable. Remember, it’s all well and good to say it’s worth 900g and people are hoarding them, but what many people fail to remember is that it costs 45g that you have to pay up front just to list an item worth 900g…and you lose another 90g to sales tax after the item sells. So you only see a net gain of 765g in the bank. Either way, I’d wager many people who won cannot afford that initial listing fee on such a valuable item.

You also have to keep in mind, that a lot of people don’t care or even like dungeons and are only doing them as a “necessary evil” on their journey to a legendary…which you need what, about 8 runs? I do enjoy dungeons occasionally with a group that knows what it’s doing, because I generally don’t since I don’t do them often enough. As others have stated, unless the rewards are improved substantially, they’re simply not worth the work without stacking.

Malediktus.9250:

I know from a few people who sniped several skins for cheap and hoarding them now
So the skins never reach the people who really want them only traders profiting for the most part.

What does sniping a few skins cheap have anything to do with the draw? If they bought them before the Halloween event, that’s just good foresight. If you can afford to buy high-end stuff and hoard them until the value rises…then all the power to you. I bought a chaos GS when it first came out and was still one ticket from the weapon specialist. I paid 60-70g on the TP knowing it would be a long term investment, but was a pretty safe bet the value would rise. Currently it’s at 149g and I’ll probably hold on to it until it hits at least 250g…or until I deem it’s peaked out. I have 500 unidentified dyes sitting there waiting for the prices to recover some after the wardrobe caused the prices to crash…again, I can wait.

Long term investment, while not without risk, is one of the more reliable and least invasive ways to make money in this game that is not based on RNG or grinding.

laokoko.7403:

@ Leamas

Why are we talking about single play game?

Only thing the person says is if you want there are other games to play… and give out a example which happen to be a SRPG game.

I don’t know. But someone jumped all over them comparing DA:I to GW2 as an invalid comparison and I thought it an interesting aside. Personally I play both single player and MMO on multiple platforms (PC, Playstation 1-4, various Nintendo, various handhelds and even some classics via RetroN-5) and I’m not biased toward either type of game in any way. I just like games, though some are better than others.

Exactly, you can’t compare gameplay/rewards of an MMO to a single player game. But fundamentally, GW2 is the same game it was 2 years ago. Sure, there’s the LW content and some balancing, but there hasn’t been a great amount of persistent content added since launch, other than Southsun Cove, Fractals, one or two dungeon paths and a couple world bosses…which is a pittance in over 2 years. Now, finally there are some new maps with the LW and hopefully they will remain persistent…and more importantly, viable now that the amber farm is dead. The new maps are useless if they become abandoned, much like Southsun was for so long. They added the wardrobe which was awesome except that it drove the prices of the most desirable skins through the roof…which was NOT awesome. There was the trait reworking, which, well, was questionable at best. The newer LW has fewer cut scenes and more dialog that you have to read than in the past. Everything added as of late seems to add new currencies, collections or things you need to grind for and waste space in your inventory/bank, with little story, which is fine…but who are they trying to please with all this? They haven’t even added a new JP in a kitten ’s age, which used to be a big deal in GW2. Both holiday releases have very elaborate ones and Southsun has 2. What I’m saying though, is if you got bored of the game and didn’t like it a year ago, you’re probably not going to like it any more now. The changes have not been that earth-shattering. Fundamentally, it’s the same game as it was 2 years ago.

It’s no different than with a single player game. If you didn’t like it now, you’re not likely to like it any more further down the road. So when you compare an MMO to a single player game, all you can do is compare them as games. You can’t compare loot, which will always be worse, but more customizable, in an MMO. You can’t compare content which will almost always be richer in a good single player game, but more condensed. You can’t really compare gameplay which has to account for many concurrent players and typically multiple modes in MMOs, so MMO controls are typically less complex, but require more understanding to use them effectively. What you can compare is whether you like the game. Ask yourself if you really like GW2 or are you more trying to like it simply because you liked GW1?

What an MMO offers me over single player games is the ability to drop in and drop out without having to remember a great deal of anything or commit a great deal of time. It’s hard to just pick up a single player RPG game for instance and just play for 30 minutes or an hour and feel like you achieved something. Provided I set realistic goals for the time I have, I can enjoy GW2 and feel like I got something for my time, be it 15 minutes over lunch at work or several hours in the evening on the occasions I can do that.

The problem with GW2 is that it was advertized as “Play your way”…well many people enjoy farming and that IS how they play. The problem with farming is that it often interferes with players who want to progress through events, be it by intentionally failing events (Steps of Arah, Temple of Lyssa, Quaggan in FS, etc.) or farmers indirectly scaling up events causing tougher mobs to spawn for the few people actually trying the event(s) making events very difficult or impossible. This was a huge problem in Orr when they first introduced the mob scaling system.

So, honestly, which is the abusive behavior and requires intervention from ANet? The farmers interfering with the events or the players who interfere with farmers by trying to actually play the game?

Giving farmers dedicated instances with insane returns, such as the amber farm, also produces a dangerous market situation that could be considered unfair to non-farmers since it greatly favors farmers over non-farmers for arguably much less effort. Farmers killing the same mobs over and over and over again should be rewarded less than those playing the game content. Dedicated farming areas could also cause serious event/area abandonment issues.

Now I have farmed and still hit the FS train occasionally. I do miss the Queens train, which I frequented for monthlies, but the short of it is that serious farming, while it cannot be eradicated, should be discouraged because it’s counter to how the game is intended to be played and interferes with players playing the actual game content.

Lynne.8416:

If you don’t find any enjoyment in the game anymore, then move on. There’s no shame in being disappointed that you feel you have to move on. Anet/NCsoft will continue to get new players into the game. And they will probably continue to evolve the game into something that “sells”. Even if I quit tomorrow, I’d be okay with that because I have gotten my “monies worth” so to speak.

I look a long time off GW2, ~7months, because I was burnt out and needed to refresh. When I came back, I returned with a renewed focus, I switched to a large, more active guild, and decided I needed more realistic goals to keep me interested, rather than b-lining to a legendary, which would almost surely burn me out again. I agree though, perhaps GW2 is just not what the OP wants or needs. It happens and is not unique to MMOs. One gets a certain expectation of a game and when it doesn’t live up to it you either adapt to it or the game gets shelved. This happened to me with Ni No Kuni, generally a highly acclaimed game that I couldn’t wait to play, while the story was very good, I HATED the gameplay. The same could be said of Bioshock 2, it simply missed the mark, while 1 and Infinite were excellent.

Thaddeus.4891:

It would be nice, but the price would probably go up. I prefer to be able to give these item to a specific character in that case.

Yes If the price stay at the same level, I’m all for account wide. But this won’t happen so.

They’re already account wide and should not increase in price…it’s just a manual step to move them from one character to another. It would not be a great deal of work to make them account usable without having to move them from character to character manually. With an account wide wallet, wardrobe, stat bonus’, etc., the framework is already there and could be added in a similar fashion to minis or outfits….which can be shared by multiple characters at once. I suppose what it comes down to is how many people are actually buying multiples for their alts.

Zorby.8236:

It’s not really a secret that it’s set up like this because ANet wants you to buy more from the gemstore…That said they’ve been much cooler about this than they get credit for. What with all/most gemstore items being account wide (gathering tools used to be soulbound), the wallet (freeing up much space in bank and making karma/gold management way easier), wardrobe so you don’t have to hold on to excessive amounts of gemstore skins (again saving space), minis and dyes made account wide so you don’t have to buy duplicates, ascended/legendary gear being account bound rather than soulbound, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see more stuff become account wide (I’m looking at you bag slots), but there’s just so much ANet can cut into their profit. And $ rules, so I doubt it’ll happen until the amount of unsatisfied customers starts to threaten sales too much, or the change is projected to increase profits.

In regards to gathering tools, I’d like to be able to equip them on more than one character at the same time. Since they’re account bound, I can go to a bank and move them from character to character so it’s not like I’m not going to buy multiples of each, especially not at 1000g a shot. I see no reason we should not be able to equip them on multiple characters since we cannot play multiple characters at any given time and it only takes a minute to run to the bank and switch them over. Buying more than one of each is a huge waste of gems.

Bags not so much. Bag expansions should be on a per character basis, IMO.

I’ve often thought of the mystic toilet as a slot machine and wondered if ANet had to get a gambling license for it. :P

mtpelion.4562:

The currency exchange has absolutely nothing to do with inflation in any way, shape or form.

An increase in the gold cost of gems means only one thing: that more players are converting gold into gems than are converting gems into gold.

This actually means that the gold supply available in the game economy is LOWER over time, which is the exact opposite of the point you are attempting to make.

OK let me phrase it differently with a group of questions. So, is there a limited supply of gems, or is the supply unlimited? Say I were to go out and buy 50000 gems from the gem store with my VISA card (~60000 gold) where do those gems come from? Could I get hit with a message saying there are not enough gems? What about the gems you get in achievement chests? Where do they come from? OK, so call me a skeptic, but I don’t believe our illustrious currency exchange is entirely untampered with. Are gems becoming more expensive or is there so much gold that it’s becoming worth less? What happens if the demand for gems to gold conversion exceeds the amount of available gold coming in (XMas maybe?)? Will ANet deny the transaction or will they just generate more gold? NSF?

Apolo.5942:

The problem has never been the ascendant system its the grind to 500, most people out there dont even bother with crafting to begin with.

Yes. I actually have most of the materials to make a full set of armor, but just can’t be bothered and don’t want to spend the money to level armor smith to 500. 0-500 in my case. Same goes for weapon smith, which I think I have around 225. I really need to level something to 450 though so I can refine some stuff to make room in my bank.

Ascended is meant to be a grind and meant to take time to keep more hardcore players busy. It’s meant to be a reward for putting the hours in to the game to actually get everything you need, be it dragonite, empy, dark matter or laurels from dailies, monthlies and ach chests if you just want to buy trinkets (Like me). Laurels are by far the easiest way to get asc trinkets. All you have to do is play. Ascended is a reliable non-RNG-based high-end reward for actually playing…a reward that cannot be bought or sold for any amount of gold. YOU HAVE TO PUT IN THE TIME. As far as I’m concerned a similar system should have been used for legendaries from the get go. Legendary and precursor weapons should not be so heavily reliant on RNG, they should not be tradeable on the TP. Legendary weapons should be based on feats, not luck and how much money you can throw down the mystic toilet.

For me, the stat gain on ascended is simply too small and the skins too ugly to warrant the huge time and money investment so I choose to spend it elseways and use exotics, but I do not feel there is anything wrong with the new system. Top end content HAS to be hard to get in order to keep the hardcore interested, otherwise they’d burn through it in 2 or 3 hours and get bored. For the rest of us, they’re a somewhat unattainable goal. What you need to do is kitten your situation and set more attainable goals, such as achievement chests, and just let the other stuff happen.

How legendary is ascended and legendary gear when every second person has them anyway?

That said, ascended is not alt-friendly, but really, should it be? You still need to put in the time. GW2 is a very casual-friendly game and most or all content can be completed with mediocre gear and good skill. Unless you’re looking for followers, you don’t need to look like Skeltor and run around with a chainsword in order to be effective. A regular Exhalted coat is just as effective as any gem store armor. Volcanus does no more damage than the Pearl Broadsword. Premium gear such as ascended, legendary and ultra-rare skins and minis are more vanity items and in the realm of the hardcore players and if you think they should be easy to get, perhaps you should not be playing an MMO. Again, the stat gain on Ascended/legendary over exotic is so minor that it would have little affect in any real battle.