Guild Wars 2

tolunart.2095:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I know I can wait and all that. I have 2 legendaries as it is and over the course of my playtime have had 6 precursors drop. I know. The issue is that in the same amount of playtime, I’m just not getting anything… My enjoyment of the game is somewhat contingent on whether I get some loot or not. If i don’t think I’m going to get anything I might as well stay in DR RPing. Which I do.

Congrats on the drops. Random distribution via computer is as close as anything gets to being fair, the computer doesn’t have friends or enemies to reward or punish. The way our minds work, however, looks for patterns even when there is no pattern to find. So many of those arguing against random precursor drops and such do so from the assumptions that it’s not “fair,” that they are “cursed” and will never see a precursor drop, etc.

Good to see you understand this is not the case.

There is enough anecdotal evidence to show there are issues with the RNG. Over time true RNG will ALWAYS balance in to a nice Gaussian bell curve. Now if you take Lilith here, with 6 precursor drops. WOW, that is truly extreme odds breaking and I’ve heard of those with even more, 12, 15, etc. Others who claim to consistently make 40g/hour in Cursed Shore or the FS train while some have problems make 1g for the same effort. Some people with 4 and 5 legendaries, though I somehow think they probably got those from TP flipping. Those getting consistently good drops vs those getting consistently bad drops. I think most people sit somewhere in the middle, but now we’re talking groups of people where the RNG is weighted for good or bad and it’s not unheard of.

Sure everyone might have lucky/unlucky streaks, but because of the nature of RNG, over time drop quality should be fairly even across everyone. That is not what we’ve seen from this game.

laokoko.7403:

The change to mystic forge might also contribute some to the precursor price. Since I think people get named weapon less often. That being said I think named weapon price went up??(Because of the wardrobe?)

Yes, and I think you’re now no longer guaranteed an 80 rare returned if you put 4×80 rares in, but I haven’t confirmed this myself. I’ve heard it’s making people more gun-shy of using the forge.

tolunart.2095:

Leamas.5803:

tolunart.2095:

The market is player driven and the value of an item is set by the players, not Anet. They set a minimum value (vendor price) to most items, but the maximum value is whatever any player is willing to pay.

Yes, the market is player driven, but the supply is manipulated by ANet through various means. Saying a 10g item is worth 1000g because people will pay that for doesn’t make it worth 1000g. It points to a supply problem and this IS controlled by ANet.

Players want them because they are rare. They are rare because they rarely drop. If they commonly drop they are not rare. Because they are not rare people don’t want them.

There are dozens of greatsword models, pick another one if you can’t afford Dusk.

I did, the Sclerite GS, which is a great GS and far more rare in game than any legendary, GS or otherwise, but I don’t have to like how ANet is manipulating the market or making market changing game design decisions without fully thinking out how things will be affected.

tolunart.2095:

The market is player driven and the value of an item is set by the players, not Anet. They set a minimum value (vendor price) to most items, but the maximum value is whatever any player is willing to pay.

Yes, the market is player driven, but the supply is manipulated by ANet through various means. Saying a 10g item is worth 1000g because people will pay that for doesn’t make it worth 1000g. It points to a supply problem and this IS controlled by ANet.

tolunart.2095:

Leamas.5803:

tolunart.2095:

The only solution is to keep getting more money until you’re the one throwing the biggest pile of money at it.

The problem is that prices are rising faster than most people can make money. Unless you buy gems (ANet’s preferred method, of course), which is bad for the economy, grind your life away, which ANet says they don’t want you to do, or play the TP, which is also bad for the economy and just another form of grind…just more boring.

Where do you get that idea?

An item won’t sell if no one has the gold to buy it. I can list a white level 0 dagger for 2 million gold if I can afford the listing fee. But who’s going to buy it?

58 Dusk sold recently to 58 different people. If no one can afford to buy them, they wouldn’t have been sold.

I said most…unless you employ unsavory methods of attaining gold…gem store, grinding, or flipping. Very few people, unless they’re lucky (Not me for sure), can make enough with just straight gameplay to keep up with these prices. When I started getting close (Being withing a couple hundred gold) to The Legend, this was when it was at 500g, it jumped to 700g, when I started getting close, it jumped to 800-900, then I abandoned it and now it’s well over 1200.

tolunart.2095:

The only solution is to keep getting more money until you’re the one throwing the biggest pile of money at it.

The problem is that prices are rising faster than most people can make money. Unless you buy gems (ANet’s preferred method, of course), which is bad for the economy, grind your life away, which ANet says they don’t want you to do, or play the TP, which is also bad for the economy and just another form of grind…just more boring.

Vol.7601:

Leamas.5803:

KOPPER.1458:

Just out of curiosity: Are you saying that you think a median transaction price of 1157g for dusk is acceptable?

Yes. That is the short answer. It isn’t about being acceptable or not sadly. It’s about what players will pay. According to his charts shown here players are buying them just fine. While I don’t agree with it many apparently think it’s acceptable.

A better question is do they think it’s acceptable or are they buying out of fear (Or banking on the fact) that it will keep rising out of control? These are entirely different things. If they think it’s acceptable then the market is working, if they’re buying out of fear, or more likely, looking to flip for profit, then the market is broken. My personally opinion is that a majority of these are slatted for flipping. Of those 58 dusks that sold, how many of them were the same item? How many distinct items? Makes a huge difference if there were 58 distinct items or if there were 8 that moved hands multiple times.

Just because people are buying, doesn’t mean the market is working properly.

Even if it was the same item being flipped multiple times, that’s good for the economy, especially for an item that expensive.

Not if the sole purpose is to artificially inflate the price.

KOPPER.1458:

Just out of curiosity: Are you saying that you think a median transaction price of 1157g for dusk is acceptable?

Yes. That is the short answer. It isn’t about being acceptable or not sadly. It’s about what players will pay. According to his charts shown here players are buying them just fine. While I don’t agree with it many apparently think it’s acceptable.

A better question is do they think it’s acceptable or are they buying out of fear (Or banking on the fact) that it will keep rising out of control? These are entirely different things. If they think it’s acceptable then the market is working, if they’re buying out of fear, or more likely, looking to flip for profit, then the market is broken. My personally opinion is that a majority of these are slatted for flipping. Of those 58 dusks that sold, how many of them were the same item? How many distinct items? Makes a huge difference if there were 58 distinct items or if there were 8 that moved hands multiple times.

Just because people are buying, doesn’t mean the market is working properly.

Trice.4598:

I know you guys monitor the market and can’t control how much people are selling/buying them for, but you have to admit something must be done.

Correct, they can’t control what people are selling/buying for, but what they do is much worse. The gem to gold conversion causes inflation and what’s worse is they tamper with the supply, every time they nerf drops the supply goes down and the prices go up. This is among the worst forms of market tampering, causing the value of items to increase far beyond their worth and those with the money to panic with knee-jerk-reaction buys. The only way to fix the problems with precursors is to greatly increase the supply or supply an alternative means to get them. Of course, this will cause prices to rise for other items such as T6 mats. Level 80 rares would drop in price.

There are no easy way to fix a broken economy.

Hmmm, still over 1200g for The Legend. I don’t have the time, patience or money to farm, flip or buy that kind of gold or the mats to make rares to feed to the forge. At this point, I think I’ll be abandoning my pursuit of a legendary weapon as I’ll be playing much less over the summer anyway. Perhaps it’s time for another extended break.

Remember this from the manifesto?
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/

GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill.

Well, I guess it’s not entirely inaccurate, but if you want anything worthwhile in this game, it’s a terrible grind of farming. They should remove that from the manifesto as it’s completely misleading.

tigirius.9014:

So even now to carry on the tradition of the grind without the store one must achieve 1600 of the newest currency, which I’m sure there will be people on here to tell us all how “easy” that is and how it can be done in 5 minutes. It’s like once they’re hooked on the grind we can’t get the developers off of that hook to even consider any other design for rewards. (and I mean that about any game because this isn’t the first rodeo it’s happened to.)

1600 what? Festival tokens? for what?

Mortifer.2946:

Riss.1536:

If you can up this thread everyday Anet won’t be feigning ignorance. It should be seen by Anet everydays so that they’ll never forget the precursor issues.

Good idea

Typically they will close the thread to get rid of it, or ignore it until it dies. Typically with little or no resolution. We saw this last year after they introduced some pretty drastic loot nerfs across pretty much all aspects of the game. There was a huge outcry of complaints which resulted in threads with thousands of posts over several months. Their response was merged/closed threads, delay tactics and simply to ignore. In some cases, the merged threads weren’t even really related causing issues with readability. It seemed they were just trying to sweep it under the carpet, while waiting out those who could still remember the days when loot was actually good. It was a terrible PR fiasco for them and angered a great many players.

MesmeForever.3612:

This thread is why I’m proud to have EARNED (not purchased with real-world money) my GW1 Champion of the Gods title. I actually had to WORK for it and there was no way to buy it with real money through a trading post. People compliment me on it in-game sometimes (I will never display anything else), and I expect it’s because they know just how hard it actually was to obtain. Ultimately, through stepping out of my comfort zone and challenging myself by meeting players who were far better than I was, and learning from them both tactically and interpersonally, I started earning a lot more, feeling more accomplished, and having more fun. I used the in-game currency I’d earned through play – not a credit card, hacks, or ridiculously game-breaking exploits – to buy the rest of the stuff for my Hall of Monuments. My record guild runs against Dhuum, DoA, and FoW as a Mesmer, Rit or E/Mo were not the result of a cash infusion.

Because they were introduced from the beginning along with bugs, exploits, hacks and trading post stock-brokerage tactics that have nothing to do with player skill along with the near-total reliance on RNG, ‘Legendary’ weapons have become nothing more than outrageously overpriced baubles rather than a symbol of achievement – both for the player, and for Anet’s art team. When looked at that way, it makes sense why Anet relegated them to simple skins to apply to any weapon. It’s why I’m not bothered that I don’t have one.

Exactly, they are a great achievement if you can do it without real world money. That said, if you don’t buy gems to convert to gold, can one do it without a stupid amount of grind? Nope. Can one do it without getting in to some sort of crippling RNG? Unlikely. If you have deep pockets, can you just buy what you want with a credit card and avoid all the hassle? Yup, you bet, and what’s legendary about that? Legendary stupidity maybe. Ascended weapons are more legendary than legendary weapons in that you HAVE to collect the materials yourself and you HAVE to craft it yourself. Every person you see with an ascended weapon or armor, you know they put some serious time in to get it. Again, this requires a great deal of grind to achieve, but at least it’s something you can proudly don…even if most of the ascended stuff is ugly as sin. I’m seriously considering abandoning my quest for a legendary and doing ascended with an exotic skin, which I have the money for the crafting and probably mats to do now. There are many exotic skins which are far more rare to see in game, and just as nice in many cases, than any of the legendary skins…they just don’t have the foot-fall effects…and the dynamic stats, which really is the biggest advantage of having a legendary.

To be clear, is this a driver crash where the screen goes blank and recovers, or a system crash where the computer reboots itself or needs to be reset, or is the game crashing to desktop?

BTW, in your original post you said about the techs testing it, “They even run around in GW2 to test it and it works no problem.” While I have had it crash just doing nothing, for me, certain things seem to be much more likely to trigger the crash and it seems related to high frame rates. If I stand around or stay in Rata Sum the game will run all day without ever crashing, due to the high population, framerate is typically under 40fps. For me crashing is far more likely when I start participating in events with lots of mobs and large swings in framerate between waiting for mobs (120fps+) and after they spawn (Can get below 30 at times). While not perfect, Setting the frame limiter to 60fps seems to help this.

Sorry to hear that. Perhaps try a clean install of the driver. It’s a checkbox you can select during install. Did you try the 306.97 driver? I know using such an old driver is far from ideal, but just to see how it reacts.

Crossaber.8934:

Well, average player is able to obtain a legendary, no matter how RNG rewards precursor, every acc is possible to loot one soon or later. What GW2 focused is contents that all players, no matter hardcore or causal players still able to access. Most game out there, some weapons are very rare and got very slim chance to drop, some player may not able to own them during their whole play time. The worst thing for those game is, the item can not be traded. GW2 is more or less more forgiving than those GAMES, you can get a slim chance to loot, you can MF gambling or you can buy it from TP. Legendary is by no mean for everybody’s weapon skin, and it is already more common than most of the weapon.

The nature of RNG also says there are those who will never get one drop, especially this RNG. That said, I disagree that trading them is better than those where they cannot be traded. Precursors, should be a reward for some sort of epic questline. Legendary weapons should never have been in the TP. Someone who buys a legendary weapon should never be allowed to equip it without first fulfilling some sort of requirements showing one is “worthy” of the weapon. Then we would see far less. But that’s not how it is and we’re stuck with a broken system, so we can only hope ANet does something to reign in prices.

There’s A LOT of money to made flipping precursors if you have the time, patience and money to do it. I strongly suspect a lot of the precursors are being upsold by organized groups of people, perhaps gold sellers, who have a hoard of them, in order to artificially inflate the price. When prices start rising, people will often then buy quickly as a knee-jerk reaction. This goes well beyond your average player flipping bags or rings to make a few silver. Technically, this is price fixing and/or market tampering and I wish ANet would reign it in. I remember when The Legend hit 300g and thinking it couldn’t possibly go much higher than that.

illo.5106:

Why? Because (drop) luck is always unfair – even more, if someone has more luck than others and like 3 – 4 pre’s or very rare items (he often won’t even want or need because they don’t fit in his build) that are accountbound. I often ran dungeons, then someone said something like: “OMG, it’s my first time in here, I don’t even know how to play and I’m not geared at all because I just reached max level – look what I found: XYZ!” – “Great, I do this dungeon like the [look into stats] 476th time for this **** and still haven’t got it! ****…”

I’m fine with that, that’s just how luck is. The ones that anger me are the ones who consistently get super rare drops. I’ve heard of people who’ve gotten 4-5, or even more precursors drop from just random mobs. I know one guy who had one drop from a risen chicken. In over 1000 hours of play and ~5300ap (Not a huge amount, but respectable) achieved almost exclusively through PvE, and other than the pre I received from Lost Shore, the best drop, by far, I ever remember receiving was a black dye, which I sold at the time for 19g. Now those who weren’t around in those days might think that Lost Shore precursor was very lucky, but I’d guess at least 80%, or more, of those who got to the final chest with a level 80 character got a pre. I’ve heard of some who received 4 precursors from that chest. The chest was also character bound, not account bound, so if you had multiple level 80 characters, there was a way you could get the chest multiple times for even more precursors. It was a big scandal which angered A LOT of players.

A big part of the problem with legendary weapons, and precursors, is that you can buy them, and most of the materials to make them with real money (Through the gem to gold conversion), making it possible for someone with deep pockets IRL to whip out a credit card and buy it or most of the materials to make it without ever having done any of the work. If you couldn’t buy them, you would see far fewer of them in game.

I think a good solution to the “too many legendaries” problem is to tie them to karma and map completion and it would have little affect on ANets precious gem store. Currently, you need approximately 900000-1.2M karma (Depending on your luck with attaining clovers) in order to make a legendary. I’d argue that a player should not be even allowed to equip a legendary weapon skin, even if they had one, until say, they had map completion on the character they want to equip the weapon on and had collected a total 1M karma on the account…2M karma if you want to equip a second, 3M for 3, etc. ANet would have to track this as a separate statistic to allow people to still spend their karma. Some of the other things like gift of battle and gift of fortune could be relaxed since the player is spending a crapload of gold, but forcing map completion and a minimum karma level would certainly help to ensure people at least put some time in to “earn” said weapon and make legendaries an actual achievement, even if you buy it.

This way, even the super wealthy and career TP flippers still have to actually earn the right to to use the legendaries they buy.

Precursors and legendary weapon skins should be a reward for in game achievements, not how much money you have.

illo.5106:

Taygus.4571:

I love when people say things like
“5-10g a day”
Is that a 5 hour day? 1 hour?
Is that doing dungeons or exploration or personal story?

your day of play is very different to “my” day of play. Please think about game modes/and ways of playing before spouting off how much you can “easily” get per day..

And I love when people respond to answers like mine with: “5 – 10 G/day? You must be crazy and an insane farmer!”

And yeah, I suggested 1.5 – 2 hours playing the game (what I think is casual) and doing different things like a dungeon run, maybe level a lil’ bit, do pvp/wvw, whatever! If you sell EVERYTHING you get during that time (even salvaging tokens, if you are running dungeons), you usually end up having ~ 7.5 G/2 hours (sometimes less, sometimes more) – especially after prices for yellows and T6 and other crafting stuff have risen.

How do you salvage tokens and what do you get from that? Aren’t tokens just another currency that goes straight in to the wallet?

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

Goal-setting and achievements are what keeps players like myself in the game. If I didn’t have anything to shoot for I wouldn’t bother with it, and would have given up a long time ago because of the over-zealous DR and the broken RNG.

As usual, Anet are the only ones who can do anything about it, until then it’s just persist as much as you can.

This!! It’s the only way I can bring myself to still enjoy the game. I don’t have my precursor (The Legend) and I typically have very bad luck with drops so I set intermediary goals for the legendary. So far this is the order I’ve done things, the two required crafts, Gift of Battle, Gift of Exploration, Opal Orbs, mystic clovers, Gift of Mastery, Unid dyes…now I’m on to T6 mats and the remaining ecto after that it’ll be dungeon tokens, then the icy runestones, to finish the required mats. I don’t see any point in spending money on T6 mats until I have my PC, though I wish I had have bought a pile back when they were only 2-3s each…and that seemed very expensive. If I don’t have the pre by then, I suppose it’ll be time to do some serious TP flipping.

Another strategy I use is to try and do as many of the daily and monthly achievements in Cursed Shore as possible in order to minimize the feeling of farming and to maximize the chances for level 80 rare/exo drops and T6 drops. Kind of killing 2 birds with one stone so to speak. Dailies alone, on average, are worth ~1 gold if you spend the laurel on T6 bags.

Don’t get me wrong, I think the current method for obtaining precursors is broken and I think the luck system (RNG) also favors certain accounts, while other accounts tend to be terminally unlucky. When one person can get consistently get precursors out the the forge (We’ve all seen the videos or heard the stories of such guild-mates) while another gets nothing in thousands of tries, this goes beyond being just lucky, it’s just broken and nothing legendary about it. All it does is encourage gambling, and is ultimately very disheartening. Might as well play slots at a casino, the odds are better.

For me, I think I’ll probably get sick of the bad loot and quit the game (again) long before attaining the precursor, but only time will tell. A precursor would certainly give me a renewed focus, but I’m really not holding me breath on getting one any time soon.

Crazy Chipmunk.6874:

thank you so much. i will be trying your suggestions.

Let us know ow you make out.

Crazy Chipmunk.6874:

I’ve been fighting this battle since about February. It never really occurred to me to check this forum. I bought this computer brand new the weekend after Thanksgiving, running Windows 8. GW2 would crash it every time, usually within seconds. I would get a message about NVIDIA crashing and Kernal Error 335.xx (can’t remember the exact number). I had Best Buy try to fix it. They failed. Then I brought it to a local computer repair shop, which I have been bringing it back and forth to since late February. I had a new graphics card and power supply point in. They test it at the repair shop and everything works fine. They even run around in GW2 to test it and it works no problem. I bring it home… crash a few seconds after starting GW2. I managed to play for about 20 minutes yesterday, the longest time ever on this computer. I tried it earlier…. crashed within 30 seconds. I am not good with computers. Most of the posts above I can barely understand. Can someone be kind enough to tell me in words I’ll understand what I have to do?

The problem is that no one has been able to identify what the problem is. There are two things you can do. If GW2 is the only thing you’re playing, you can try the 306.97 nVidia driver and set the frame limiter in GW2, it’s under the video option, to 6ofps.

If you want to keep 335.23 (Assuming it’s the newest) then you can try this and it helped me a lot, though not perfect. The graphics driver still resets occasionally on me, but I’ve had no total computer crashes since doing this.

1. In the nVidia Control Panel click on Manage 3D Settings and change the Power Management Mode from Adaptive to Performance
2. In Windows, go to Control Panel and Power Options and change the plan to High Performance, or whatever the equivalent is on Windows 8.
3. VERY IMPORTANT…In Gw2, under video options, change the frame limiter from Unlimited to 60fps.

Personally, I still think it’s a motherboard issue and GW2 is somehow triggering it when nothing else does.

ExiledDiclonius.1653:

Worst thing is. That ArenaNet is not giving us any other chances than being lucky or spending insane ammounts of gold in TP. However they dont like when we got 2 much gold so they are taking our farming spots 1 by 1

They don’t like people farming because they consider a bad habit, hence DR (I don’t care what they say, it was never about bots and always about controlling player wealth). Why did they do the megaservers? My guess is that many of the individual servers were dying and people were getting frustrated. Most events were left unattended. Most maps were empty most of the time. Most good farming areas were either nerfed in to the ground or made too difficult to farm by small groups with the addition of multiple champions. Most temple/world boss events returned nothing useful most of the time. In this game, if you can’t farm, you can’t make money in a timely fashion.

Something had to be done to engage players more, so enters the daily token chest for each world boss/temple, with a guaranteed rare. Enters the champion trains, which, yes I’m sure they created like that to appease the farmers. Enters cash pay-outs for dungeon runs. It’s not nearly as bad to make money as it was a year ago, but unfortunately it’s the hardcore farmers who run the champ trains for hours and hours on end, and career TP flippers that drive the economy in this game. Me, as a casual semi-serious player typically can’t make money fast enough to keep up with inflation, so I’m so I’m left with venting on threads like this.

mtpelion.4562:

Leamas.5803:

It happens, for sure, but I will never spend gold on the forge. I put in dropped rares when I get them and an will occasionally craft rares to throw in since most of those materials are worthless anyway. It would probably be more cost effective to actually sell those crafted rares these days.

It’s typically more cost effective to salvage them for Ectoplasm.

I’m not convinced. The last stats I read said the average rate of return of ecto for level 80 rares was about 0.9/salvage. Currently, those same rares (Staffs anyway) sell for about 60s each (minus the cost of making them, of course).This is up quite a bit since the patch, when they averaged closer to the same cost as ecto, where ecto is only about 37s. It would seem more cost effective to sell the rares and buy ecto than simply salvaging them.

Either way, with only cost being my time to collect the mats, putting the crafted stuff in the forge is as good a use for them as any. I don’t have a lot of patience, so I only do 5-10 combines at a time anyway.

mtpelion.4562:

You guys are going to hate me, but Leaf of Kudzu popped out of the forge for me yesterday.

I was just crafting Cleric Exotics so I could unlock the skins. I had 4 left, dropped them in the forge, and out popped my first Precursor.

It happens, for sure, but I will never spend gold on the forge. I put in dropped rares when I get them and an will occasionally craft rares to throw in since most of those materials are worthless anyway. It would probably be more cost effective to actually sell those crafted rares these days.

Foefaller.1082:

Anyway, you said you started having problems on any drivers over 306.97, right? and you “fixed” it for now by setting your driver/power management to high performance?

I thought I look through the release notes of the next Win7 driver release after 306.97 – 310.70- and saw this:

Power Efficiency Optimizations
Release 310 drivers introduce power-optimizing enhancements. As a result of these
enhancements, you may notice that GPU core clock speeds are different with this driver.
For example, the GPU core clock might be faster when the GPU is in idle mode than in
previous drivers. Or you may notice higher GPU core clock speeds after closing or
opening certain games than in previous drivers.
This is because the reported GPU core clock frequency is no longer correlated to GPU
power-saving states. Instead of lowering the GPU core clock frequency, the hardware
and software use other methods to put the GPU into a low power state when the GPU is idle or in response to changing application requirements.
This ensures optimum power use while continuing to provide high graphics performance.

Sounds like Nvidia’s new power saving method either exacerbated, or brought to light some issue that for some reason only affects GW2. You might be right in it being a motherboard/PSU issue.

It’s not perfect, and the driver does occasionally reset, usually a couple times a session, but at least hasn’t completely crashed the computer. At least not since setting the frame limiter to 60fps…which is too bad since it looked pretty sweet running at 120fps.

JVJD.4912:

i beat rng and brought dusk for 922 g it took me 3 weeks >.>

Averaging nearly 44g a day. You’re doing much better than I my friend. I might get that on a good weekend if I play the TP a bit.

Chuck.8196:

Leamas.5803:

…could be never and just be them blowing a bunch of smoke to calm the masses.

For sure a possibility . I’m against it. I hope it never happens. If it does it should require a ridiculous amount of mats. Enough to completely dissuade average players from making one.

I seem to remember them saying that if they did that, it would be new precursors with new legendaries. Either way, I agree that they shouldn’t be crafted. I’d like to see them fix the current method of attaining things like precursors and find some way to discourage player to player price gouging. Personally, I think this would be a better game if there were no player to player trading.

There have been several threads about it. And it’s never been responded to. I think filed a bug once and they said it had to be driver issue since the game was stable on 306.97 and not on other versions. nVidia says it has to be a problem with the game, eVGA seems to agrees with me and thinks it’s a motherboard issue. Megabyte want me to do a bunch of testing and unplug a bunch of drives. It’s always a vicious circle with each manufacturer blaming the next.

I’ve managed to somewhat stabilize it on the 335.32 driver, but I had to turn the Marvell SATA controller off, set the frame limiter to 60fps and set both the nVidia driver and Windows power management to high performance, which burns more power. I may ultimately try a fresh install of Windows at some point, but that takes me like a week to get things back to normal.

For various reasons, I still think my motherboard is going. It’s not just GW2 though, if you search some of the errors you’ll find in the event log you’ll find others complaining about other games, quite often MMOs. When you have problems there seem to be no solution for, especially weird crashing problems, it’s always a good bet there’s a hardware issue…very often the power supply. I have two other machines running the same driver and have never had problems with GW2 on those machines.

Chuck.8196:

Static.9841:

Chuck.8196:

In the update review they added ascended weaponsmith they said during this next year they’ll be adding the option to craft precursors.

That was during the ‘looking ahead’ statement they made last year and it was supposed to be scheduled for end 2013. Since then they had stated that the rewards systems had changed after making that comment and that they won’t be adding precursor crafting any time soon.

Mark Katzbach only said it wouldn’t be in the Feature Pack and they would share details on this system once it’s far enough along in production and are ready to discuss it. Could be in two months or could be in November.

…could be never and just be them blowing a bunch of smoke to calm the masses.

LunaticSerenade.7615:

Silvercyclone.1462:

It would be nice if they added a precurser of your choice to the 10k AP chest. That way its not too easy and not too difficult to get one.

Maybe the 15k or 20k chests. 10k is fairly easy with the LS achievements.

Not if you don’t like PvP and don’t have massive amounts of time to grind through WvW for hours on end. 10k is hard enough and I doubt I’ll ever see that, it took a year and a half for me to reach 5k, and there isn’t nearly as much for me to do now with all the JPs completed and most of the explorer achievements done. Even someone who reaches 5k has proven their commitment to the game.

Valento.9852:

You mean investing more time? But then we got a deadlock because not everyone can spare more time, I bet many people complaining about this system can’t play that much, EVEN if someone who plays just a little has dropped a precursor, we talk average not isolated cases.

This!! I have a full time job, a wife, two kids, and an acreage to take of. My “serious” game play is typically relegated to late in the evening when I actually have an hour or two of free time for myself. When I have time to play I’d rather “PLAY” not grind the same mobs or same 4 champions incessantly for hours on end chasing the illusion of some carrot on an invisible string. Unfortunately, it’s the grinders and career farmers this game rewards, not those who actually play it like ANet claims they want people to play. Perhaps I just have more of a life outside of gaming than is required for an MMO. :P

Taygus.4571:

15k Maybe.

The highest ap I’ve seen ingame is 13k , so it might be “easy for you”, but ls ap’s would’ve taken almost a year long anyway,

Isn’t the 10k ap chest enough? casuals don’t build up ap’s so quick. and at least it doesn’t seem like its so far away. 20k ap, I imagine that would take me 2-3 years. It’s ridiculously far away and would actually be far easier to save gold >.>

I’ve seen people with 20k, but that’s so far out of my reach that GW3 will be out before I ever come close to getting there. I can’t even conceive of having that much free time or sitting in front of the game for as long as that would require even if I did have that much free time.

Minami Kaori.2548:

EDIT: Kittens are not useless. You know what I wrote up there.

Well kittens are kind of useless…at least they’re kitten cute about it though.

Foefaller.1082:

Leamas.5803:

Foefaller.1082:

I have a GT 520, and I’m still using XP 32-bit (got a copy of Win7 64-bit, just waiting until Google Fiber is installed in my area so I’m not spending days downloading GW2 and all the Steam games I play) with 4G of ram.

FYI, you can just copy your GW2 folder to a new machine and run it. There’s no need to redownload it. Same with Steam installs, there’s a way to copy the games from one install to another even between different PCs, look for it on their forums.

Oh I know that. I’ve all my Steam games + GW2 on a separate hard drive since I built this computer, so I wouldn’t have to download them all whenever I reformatted the drive XP was on. It’s just that drive is long overdue for a cleanup itself, and I figure I’d do that and reformat for Win7 at the same time.

I’ll probably install Win7 first, move as much as I can over and then clean out the other drive, it’s just that the HD Windows runs off is about a third of the size of what I keep my games on, which is full, so not everything is going to make it.

Why not use both drives? I have my Windows disk and my games disk. The 600G of steam games wouldn’t even come close to fitting on the 240G Windows drive I have.

Silvia.9130:

Rage is too little word to express the disappointment. I am literally DISGUSTED , because there is nothing legendary in that, most of people simply buy loads of gems to convert in gold to buy their precursors. And they are not just reaching the sky for how expensive they are currently (1000+g) but they are growing always more rare! Seriously, 6 Dusk’s all over the TP, 6?! -.-

There was only 2 of The Legend an hour ago, only 1 when I last checked a couple days ago. Some have none on there….but fear not…there are 23 Eternity GS…seriously. In nearly all cases, there are more legendaries for sale than their required pc.

Either way, they have to greatly increase the drop rate, it’s the only way to reduce the prices. I don’t see them increasing the drop rate, so we’re all pretty much screwed. 1400g for The Legend as I write this. It’s just obscene!!!

At this point I’m reasonably certain it’s the motherboard has issues and will be taking it back to the store for service since I purchased an in store extended warranty. I tried moving my boot drive from a SATA2 port to a SATA3 port (Both ports on the Intel bus since I disabled the Marvell bus), but changing the port the drive was plugged in to caused all kind of boot issues and caused the Intel controller to throw resets similar to what the Marvell controller was doing.

That’s not to say there are not other issues. If I have 3 out of 8 sticks of memory gone bad, which the store insists were good at the end of March, when I had it in for service for other reasons, it’s conceivable that the video card and/or the PSU are also bad. It will be going back in for service as soon as the store says I can take it in.

Valento.9852:

The “epic questline” should be unlocked when someone reaches 15k-20k AP. It could have RNG, but not as heavy as the one we currently have, we could spice it up with the “maturing weapon” idea someone gave in another thread.

There can be ways to turn legendaries into something they’re meant to be – legendary!

15-20k AP…WOW!!! When someone achieves this level of AP, ANet should just give them a legendary as part of the reward, because the truly deserve it!!! But really, that makes it essentially impossible for anyone who does not want to do a kittenload of WvW or PvP. It can’t be tied to AP, at least not nearly that high. 5000AP I might be able to agree with.

It’s too late for legendaries…unless they create new legendaries or do some sort of reset on them. Allowing them to be traded in the TP, even precursors, really takes away much of the luster when someone with deep pockets can just go and buy one. IMO ascended gear is much more legendary than legendaries…too bad most of the ascended stuff is so kitten ugly.

The only time I use the forge is for staves that I get as drops. Usually takes a while to collect 4.

Now, here’s what I discovered. Fixing the memory did not resolve the problem, cranking all the setting up to performance mode made things a little better, but still did not fix the problem. It crashed on me last night. I’ve seen this error in the event log. It was the last message issued before my computer crashed last night.

Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort1, was issued.

- <Event xmlns=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event”>
- <System>
<Provider Name=“mvs91xx” />
<EventID Qualifiers=“32772”>129</EventID>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>0</Task>
<Keywords>0×80000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime=“2014-05-07T05:23:35.874536200Z” />
<EventRecordID>186377</EventRecordID>
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>RobPaula-PC</Computer>
<Security />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data>\Device\RaidPort1</Data>
<Binary>0F001800010000000000000081000480040000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000810004800000000000000000</Binary>
</EventData>
</Event>

Now, the mvs91xx driver is the Marvell SATA controller driver, which is known to buggy on many machines. During reboot, I typically see this message

The driver \Driver\nvoclk64 failed to load for the device Root\SYSTEM\0001.

- <Event xmlns=“http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event”>
- <System>
<Provider Name=“Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-PnP” Guid=“{9C205A39-1250-487D-ABD7-E831C6290539}” />
<EventID>219</EventID>
<Version>0</Version>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>212</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0×8000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime=“2014-05-07T06:01:58.654019600Z” />
<EventRecordID>186599</EventRecordID>
<Correlation />
<Execution ProcessID=“4” ThreadID=“56” />
<Channel>System</Channel>
<Computer>RobPaula-PC</Computer>
<Security UserID=“S-1-5-18” />
</System>
- <EventData>
<Data Name=“DriverNameLength”>16</Data>
<Data Name=“DriverName”>Root\SYSTEM\0001</Data>
<Data Name=“Status”>3221226092</Data>
<Data Name=“FailureNameLength”>16</Data>
<Data Name=“FailureName”>\Driver\nvoclk64</Data>
<Data Name=“Version”>0</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

nvoclk64 is the nVidia overclock driver, originally part of nTune from what I understand. I’ve never installed nTune. When installing the drivers, all I ever install is the “Graphics Driver” and the “PhysX System Software”. I’ve done a clean install, even so far as to use the DDU utility to ensure it’s completely removed.

After disabling the Marvell SATA controller in the BIOS, I did not receive the nvoclk64 on reboot, but perhaps this was just an aberration. I will try again tonight to see if I get more crashes.

I don’t think this will fix the problem, but if it does, why would GW2 be triggering resets on the Marvell SATA bus. The Marvell SATA controller does share the PCI-E bus rather than running natively, like the Intel SATA controller. Could there be conflicts on the PCI-E bus between the nVidia overclock driver and the Marvell driver causing random resets? Why would this be so prevalent in GW2 and nothing else?

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

If your problem still persists, try underclocking like abomally said. GW2 never been a trouble free game when it comes to technical problems.

I’m really trying to avoid messing with the clock speeds since this is a factory OC straight from eVGA.

Foefaller.1082:

I have a GT 520, and I’m still using XP 32-bit (got a copy of Win7 64-bit, just waiting until Google Fiber is installed in my area so I’m not spending days downloading GW2 and all the Steam games I play) with 4G of ram.

FYI, you can just copy your GW2 folder to a new machine and run it. There’s no need to redownload it. Same with Steam installs, there’s a way to copy the games from one install to another even between different PCs, look for it on their forums.

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

I had Imryldyeen come out of my welfare ancient karka chest (Anet’s attempt at an apology and recompense for missing the Nov ‘12 karka finale, having participated in all other events), and to me that was a kick in the teeth. Yes it was a named exotic but no I still couldn’t land that pre, even though, as above, the skin is shared with The Legend. The only good thing to come from that chest was the 20-slot bag.

Also, compared to today’s prices, The Legend was ridiculously cheap (~120g). Even back then there was this undeniable voice in me that screamed DON’T DO IT!!

I remember it being 60g, this was in the days of rampant bots that constantly fed the TP…ahhhh, the good ‘ol days. The Ancient Karaka Shell accessory was good too, or did that not come out of the chest? I don’t remember, I know people who received 4 precursors from that chest…unreal!!

abomally.2694:

nVidia 670 GTX (Factory superclocked)

The bold part is most likely the issue. Try lowering the clock speeds on that card to the equivalent of 670 GTX stock speeds.

You should be able to do this with Rivatuner:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=163

If the overclocking were the issue, you’d think I’d have issues with other graphically intensive software such as Skyrim or ESO…even Furmark or the eVGA stress tester which will run the GPU to upwards of 90% of it’s capacity. Again, on the surface, this would point to a problem with GW2, at least partially. I do know this is not an uncommon problem with GW2 and not just this model of card.

In any case, not surprisingly, removing the bad memory did not resolve the issue. In fact, it crashed the computer to a frozen state literally 2 seconds after I logged in and started moving. I couldn’t have taken more than 2 or 3 steps, then a second time, this time the driver reset but recovered within 15 minutes of rebooting, this time part way through Plinx.

I found another site that suggested changing the “Power Management Mode” in the nVidia Control Panel from “Adaptive” to “Prefer Maximum Performance”. After changing this I managed to play for about 90 minutes with no issues and tried a couple different zones that typically give me problems such as the Queens champ train and especially the Cursed Shore Plinx run a couple times.

Now I believe this is the longest I’ve managed to run any driver other than 306.97 without crashing, but it could have just as easily have been just luck since these crashes do tend to be random.

I wonder if it has something to do with the quick spikes and drops in frame-rate associated with events with a lot of players, such as these. Perhaps the power management is having problems keeping up when set to Adaptive and resets the driver, where performance mode will keep the power constant. This might indicate a buggy or failing PSU, if changing this setting actually resolves the issue.

Most likely, it was just a lucky run, but we’ll see over the next couple days.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Myst.5783:

I got my 3rd precursor a day or so ago or a random mob in Cursed Shore

They’re still dropping. .-.

Some people are lucky.

Yes, and there has been a lot of evidence to indicate that it’s more than simply luck, that some accounts are simply more lucky than others in a more fundamental RNG code bug kind of way. Perhaps the account number is used to seed the RNG and it influences the outcome whether it be for good or bad.

I near had a heart attack last night. I had Imryldeen drop, my first named exotic in months, a fairly common one and not worth much, but it shares a skin, and icon, with The Legend. It was a huge let down. :/

OK, I know this is an old topic, but it remain unresolved as does my thread from last year. I’ve discovered some bad memory. Now I hold quiet optimism that this will fix the issues, but am so jaded over it now that it would not surprise me at all if it does not work.

One keeps asking:

**Why GW2 would be having so many issues with the memory (Bad or not) when nothing else does. Furmark, eVGA stress tester, Skyrim on max with HD textures, ESO on max, several FPSs on max.

**Why is GW2 relatively stable on video driver version 306.97 and not at all on anything newer, when other applications want the newer one and work better with the newer driver. The ESO beta HAD to have the newer driver or it was completely unstable.

I only decided to test the memory out of desperation after updating the BIOS on both the motherboard and the video card to no avail. This system has 64G RAM and the issues appear to be right at the end, starting at 59G.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Lankybrit.4598:

Aidenwolf.5964:

mtpelion.4562:

Aidenwolf.5964:

You could type the alphabet and claim it’s poetry as well. Crafting rares to throw into the forge chasing a legendary precursor bankrupts unlucky players. This is the gold sink I’m referring to. In addition to the macro sinks of waypoint costs and TP fees.

Bankruptcy is the appropriate term for what you are describing, not “Gold Sink”.

Gold Sinks are things that delete currency (not asset value) from the game in order to offset the fact that currency is created out of thin air when players do things in the game.

Spending all of your coins chasing a pipe dream is just plain old-fashioned Bankruptcy.

Since I will never purchase a precursor I have two choices, forge one, and since a drop will never happen, don’t craft a legendary. Those are my two choices.

You are correct that a gold sink deletes gold from the economy I’ll use the term golden toilet to address the mystic forge.

Why can’t we convince you? The TP tax is on every transaction. It’s a gold sink. If you have 1000g that you spend trying to get a pre-cursor, you’ve given 850g to other players, and 150g is sunk. What would you do if you didn’t put them in the Mystic Forge? Flip them? Generating another 15% sink? Vendor them? For a pittance? The amount of gold taken out of the economy by forging them is infinitesimal.

I’ve stated exactly what you said.

The tax in the TP has a more important role than simply being a gold sink. It’s there to help give some stability, especially to very expensive items. Every time you post an item for sale, you lose 5% of the asking price. That’s 50G on a 1000G precursor for instance. This is the listing fee and comes out of your bank immediately at the time you post. The listing fee is there to discourage sellers from constantly one-upping each other. You think it’s bad now, things would be much worse without it. The other 10% comes off at the time of sale and is paid by the buyer. So 5% of a the sink is paid by the seller and 10% by the buyer. It’s not all that bad and is much akin to sales tax.

The one thing I like about the TP is that there is NO RNG!!! If you know how to do you can make money, albeit not very quickly unless you take big risks and/or big time commitment, but you are in control, not some stupid buggy RNG. ANet might mess with the supply chain and screw up prices, but the TP just is.

Now, let’s get this topic back on track. We’re supposed to be talking about how stupid precursors are to get now.

Aidenwolf.5964:

DigitalKirin.9714:

Aidenwolf.5964:

DigitalKirin.9714:

Aidenwolf.5964:

When they do that I’ll answer. As to the relevance of the greater economy, it’s rigged, you know that right?

In other words, you don’t have a good answer.

Rigged or not, the topic at hand is what a Gold Sink is. Creating/destroying materials/items doesn’t necessarily destroy or create gold. Actions like posting things on the TP, using Waypoints, buying stuff from vendors, that removes gold from the economy and is a Gold Sink.

In other words you asked a ridiculously hypothetical question that should it ever occur and Anet mailed every player in the game a precursor…. I’d be too busy crafting my legendary to answer.

Ridiculousness is only meant to highlight the fault in your logic of associating the worth of an item to gold creation/destruction.

I could give a much more feasible situation, but you’d probably miss the point.

You could type the alphabet and claim it’s poetry as well. Crafting rares to throw into the forge chasing a legendary precursor bankrupts unlucky players. This is the gold sink I’m referring to. In addition to the macro sinks of waypoint costs and TP fees.

There are ways to minimize waypoint costs and if TP fees are costing you so much that you’re losing money, you’re doing it wrong.

Aidenwolf.5964:

DigitalKirin.9714:

Aidenwolf.5964:

I’m talking about the individual’s gold not the greater economy which is irrelevant.

The greater economy is always relevant. If you only look at the individual’s gold amount, then you could say giving gold to a friend would be a gold sink.

“Hey buddy, here’s 9 gold!” There. You just destroyed 9 gold.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Absolutely. If you create only to sell then you win.

Okay, then. Let’s just say Spark has a current sale value of 1,000 gold (rounding off). ANet, realizing that people have been demanding precursors, graciously mails everyone a “random precursor box”, however, it’s bugged (what isn’t these days?) and everyone pulls out a Spark from their random precursor box. How much gold did ANet introduce into the economy? How much gold did you earn by opening this box?

When they do that I’ll answer. As to the relevance of the greater economy, it’s rigged, you know that right?

Well, the economy itself is not rigged. It’s functioning as well as could be expected given how poorly it’s maintained. The economy is, however, broken because ANet keeps messing with the supply without fully understanding the circumstances. This is more supply chain tampering. The first was when they killed ~35000 bot accounts all in one swoop. At first it seemed like a good idea, but then came the first round of massive price increases because the bots were no longer feeding the TP. Ultimately, all it meant for the average player was emptier zones and higher prices due to less stock going in to the TP. The gem to gold conversion allows for runaway inflation by placing a great deal of unchecked gold in to the economy allow people to whatever outrageous prices they want and some other fool with a big credit card will come along and pay for it..

The wardrobe now, also seemingly a great idea on the surface, but by making ascended and legendary skins account bound, it also greatly increases the demand for among the rarest items in the game as well as anything that can remotely be used to attain those items.

Would I play GW2 now if I were not already set up with two 80s with exo/asc gear and ~500g in the bank? Probably not. It has essentially become everything I’ve been trying to avoid with MMOs and what ANet said it would never become back in the early days. I stay now because I like the people in my guild and probably spend more time chatting than playing. Which will eventually get old too as more and more regulars drop off.

ZilentNight.5089:

Prices are rising because of the change to Mystic Forge and how it can now grant an Exotic lvl 76 – 80 when you throw in lvl 80 rares.

Wait, 4 80s doesn’t mean an 80 exo when it drops like it used to? That’s bad, and plain chinsy considering how rare they drop to begin with. ANet really is horrible at rewarding their players. On the other hand, they have screwing their players down pat!!

Mother always said, pick something you’re good at…

The supply has to be increased to lower the prices. The current prices are not reasonable. Without getting an extremely lucky drop, the only way most people can make that kind of money is to buy it through the gem store, which is largelt responsible for huge inflation, or spend countless hours playing the trading post (Which, I understand, is considered frowned upon). The prices of everything else are also going up because of it. Obviously T6 mats, but the cheapest rare level 80 staff now is over 64s. That’s up over 20s from before the 15th which equates to a hell of a lot of gold, when many people burn through 1000s before ever seeing a precursor…if at all before rage-quitting the game.