Guild Wars 2

With the latest update, they seem to have kind of removed any incentive to do the Fractals too. Difficulty on the “easier” fractals and bosses has been increased.

So the whole November update was kind of worthless.

Granted, the main reason they introduced the Fractals was to have an endless grind for people wanting a “challenge.”

But now the rewards/profit vs time/risk from the Fractals seems less than normal dungeons. (Which they’re now trying to get people to do, by fixing them…)

I saw people praising the “free updates” and I’ll just say that they’re not really free.

ArenaNet is making money off of the game, for sure. They need to keep people playing the game to keep making money.

It’s the same reason any other MMO releases updates.

Kromica.2831:

They need to just add them to the daily chance like the rings and weapons

Agreed.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This was really the only way to do this. Every other form of currency has been farmed for the last 5 months, any introduction of Ascended gear into an already existing currency system would defeat the purpose of Ascended gear (i.e harder to get then exotics).

Ascended gear is not harder to get than exotics. It just takes longer.

As for that being the purpose of Ascended gear, what exactly is the problem in people being able to acquire new stats the instant they become available ?
The alternative is nerfing people who don’t play GW2 every single day.

Agreed. Although, this seems to be EXACTLY the reason that ArenaNet introduced Ascended gear. They said they wanted something in-between Exotics and Legendaries in terms of grind.

The issue, in my opinion, is that this is very poor game design.

They’ll have a paid-for expansion out later this year. (They’ve made it clear that new races/continents/dragons/professions won’t be introduced in their "Expansion’s worth of content" they release every few months.)

This means they’ll likely raise the level cap, as Mike O’brien has already stated (in the Reddit AMA) that they intend to do so at some point.

We’ll get new level 90 gear... and likely new Legendaries. Just like how every other MMO does.

So we spend a month to grind a SINGLE Ascended amulet for a SINGLE character, when it’ll just become irrelevant in just a few months?

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

marnick.4305:

No. Currently there’s a single Ascended Amulet available for gold. The name is "Triforge Amulet".

How many useful builds exist where it is the best choice of amulet ?

+Vitality makes it a bad choice for higher fractals, as it means you’ll take more damage from agony.
+MF means that some combat stats were reduced to compensate.

Not necessarily... Looking at it from a stat-based perspective (no MF):
50*6 + 6*10 = 360
(as +1% crit damage is equivalent to +10 of any other stat)
The next highest, stat wise would be ones with 9% crit:
126+85+9*10 = 301

The first number isn’t even including the +MF.
You get the equivalent of 6 attribute points more stats. This is true of all mixed-stat gear.

Additionally, having more Vitality doesn’t, at all, reduce your viability in the Fractals. You lose more health per tick because Agony is percentage based... Otherwise people would be stacking up Vitality to get around it. (If it was like any other condition.)

Vitality helps protect against conditions that do a standard amount of health per tick. (Condition damage ignores Durability/Armor)

Calling Vitality worthless because of Agony is like saying that Durability is worthless because it won’t protect you against far more common conditions like bleed, poison, burning, etc.

At the end of the day, all stats are useful to some extent.
Power, Precision, Critical Damage, and Condition Damage increase overall damage output.
Vitality, Durability, and Healing Bower help in keeping you alive. (You can’t dodge constantly...)

Yeah, the costs for server transfers are long overdue. WvW was just a mess.

They just waited to start charging until they implemented guesting.

(they’ve said that transfers would eventually cost gems, since beta)

Dyno.9467:

Really?? Aww crap I thought it was all undead minis, were can I drop a chicken mini from then if anyone knows?

Buy Guild Wars 1 and do HoM stuff?

Orrian Baby Chicken

Walrus.6390:

There is no reason to go past 20 because that is the level at which you get fractal weapons. You could get 30 AR without the amulet, but you only need 20.

Fractal Weapon drop rate increases at higher levels.

I’ve done like 10 dailies at 20-26 and not seen a single Fractal Weapon drop. Though, I tend to be unlucky with the Fractal RNG. Took me 10 dailies before I saw an Ascended ring at level 10.

cesmode.4257:

I agree with this post, 100%. Not too thrilled that I need to wait 2.5 months for my 3 main characters to have amulets.

I have sooo many fractal relics. Not pristine, but fractal relics. What on earth am I to do with them?

No, I am not interested in grinding out a legendary.

Gotten 20 slot bags for all your characters? That’s what I’m currently collecting the Fractal Relics for.

It’d be nice to see Utility infusions (with Agony resist) and Amulets make their way to one of the Fractal vendors. I’ve got plenty of Pristine Fractal Relics.

According to the Wiki, +35 AR will only reduce Agony at Fractals lvl 40 to 30% HP per tick.

In my opinion, this would still be impossible (or result in frequent deaths due to agony)…

Just try doing Fractal lvl 20 without any agony resist. I’m sure you won’t get very far (and probably be kicked from the group.)

In light of this, I think Utility would be better. As for Gilded or Magic? Well, I’m not sure yet.

Essentially, Magic will result in better drops… but if everyone uses this, then everyone gets better drops. Rare/Exotic vendor prices aren’t really that great. Rares are mostly just useful for salvaging into Ecto. Exotics vary depending on how desirable the particular stats/upgrade/look is.

Keeping in mind that we’ll eventually get a full set of Ascended gear (rendering the stats of exotics sub-par) then standard Exotic prices will likely drop. (Unless they have desirable sigils/runes and you can still apply those to the Ascended versions.)

Thus I might say that Gilded would work out better in the long run.

Though, I do wonder how these both work in WvW… Do invaders drop substantial gold (and would that be counted as a “monster drop” even though it appears in a bag)?

I’m hoping Flame & Frost might introduce new Karma vendors or something…

Hopefully they’ll eventually just realize that Agony was a bad design choice in the first place.

Aside from laurel rewards (where they cost 30 laurels), the only other Ascended amulet is the Triforge Pendant… Which is cost-prohibitive for most players.

Where are the “multiple ways” to obtain Ascended gear that we were promised?

You can argue that amulets will “only” take a month of dailies to get…
But what if you want to play on multiple characters?

I thought ArenaNet had admitted (via Chris Whiteside’s Reddit AMA) that it was a poor decision to only put Ascended gear in one place (i.e., the Fractals).

ArenaNet: Can we get official word on if there’s any Mystic Forge recipes that we’re currently oblivious to? Or if they’re hidden in the Fractals some where (and just haven’t been found yet)?

I decided I’d get 2 sets of 25 boxes…

Set 1:
Karma stuffs
Unidentified objects
2 Minis

So, yeah, I didn’t push my luck with a second set of 25. I mean, the only other “exclusive” items would have been the potions. Which I don’t really care to have.

I half expect them to put more material stuff in the laurel rewards and continue to nerf drop rates everywhere.

Surely that would solve everything, right? I mean, if you could trade 1 laurel for 1 T6 mat… That’d just take you 2000 days to get all the materials required to craft a single gift of fortune.

I just got one while killing pirates in the DE south of Lion’s Arch…

But I primarily play one character and I’ve already unlocked it on him. I can’t decide if I want to sell it or use it on an alt. >.>

marnick.4305:

Missing ascended gear? There’s too much ascended gear. Every piece of ascended gear shouldn’t have been in the game to begin with.

I’d agree with you there. However, we have the Fractals to grind currently.

Though, it seems like the Fractals and Agony (as a whole) were de-emphasized with the latest update.

None of the Laurel rewards offer any sort of infusion. You have to play the Fractals for that.

From what we know about the Triforge Pendant, any of the amulets (including utility versions) can take a versatile infusion… but can’t currently be infused via the Mystic Forge.

Now it seems like Ascended gear is purely just BiS, and infusions are going to trend towards more of the “GET MORE GOLD/MF!” There’s no need for agony resist if you ignore the fractals (which, the more I play them, the more tired of them I become.)

I had expected the “30 Ascended Amulets” to be repeats…

But, I did expect at least 15 different kinds. (As I wasn’t expecting “utility infusions” to get their own slot)

I knew 30 different stat combinations was just too good to be true.

Any idea if there’s an Infused version to upgrade to also?

Dante.1508:

It’s not all cosmetic grind, to get any gear you must grind, Dungeons Crafting or Money for Trading post all requires Grind..

In Guildwars i got all my drops just playing the game, i never had to farm mats or currency to get max level gear, i could get it at any merchant and be viable and look good..i do here and its a grind..

Agreed.

You could get max stat armor for like 2 platinum (probably on par with 2 gold in GW2) at a vendor. (In Factions, they introduced vendors that accepted collectible drops in exchange for max-level armor pieces.)

After that, it was a purely cosmetic grind. ~75 platinum (plus 250 of a few crafting materials) for the “prestige” armor.

No need to grind crafting professions to get the gear you needed.

Heck, having the “Game of the Year edition” bonus (which was also sold for $5 in the in-game store) allowed you to create max-stat bonus items for every profession by simply typing “/bonus” at any time.

(The pre-order keys for Factions and Nightfall gave bonus items specific to the professions introduced in those campaigns.)

So they gave away max-stat weapons for free, essentially.

The “deluxe” $25 thing in GW2 just gives you a mini, some consumables, and an elite skill on-par with other elites.

Imagine if it allowed you to create level 80 Ascended weapons for each character… That’s how the original game was.

Sky.9347:

Wreckdum.8367:

Sky.9347:

maddoctor.2738:

Sky.9347:

Actually, he’s basing his argument on the current game.
You’re basing yours on the possible game tomorrow.

So if Anet has already identified the issue of having Ascended only in Fractals, and repeatedly said (and announced) that it will be fixed, not in the future, but tomorrow, yet we still get complains? How about just waiting for less than 24h (it’s not much) and then taking out the tomahawk of war.

The thing is, ANet destroyed most player’s trust through bad decisions followed by blatant mistakes.

I have absolutely zero faith that the patch tomorrow will correct much of this, or learn from past mistakes.

Sure, we can wait and see. Maybe they will prove me wrong. Chances are, based on their post-release history, that they will massively bumble it up.

How much of a grind will these new Ascended pieces be? Will the older pieces be spread out? Will grind be reduced? Will all avenues be equally rewarding?

We will find out soon. I’m going to be laughing so hard while browsing the forums from work tomorrow… it should be a blast seeing what kind of trouble these ‘wascilly wabbits’ get themselves into this time.

EDIT: TL;DR: FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS

Time will tell, champ. Be as dismissive as you want, but each mistake costs them months – possibly years – of goodwill.

Funny you use the word “ungrateful” though, as if I wasn’t a paying customer.

I agree with this, but I’m not sure if we (as a community) understand ArenaNet’s overall business model for Guild Wars 2.

For all we know, they could be gearing Guild Wars 2 as a high-profit, short-life type of investment.

In this case, they wouldn’t care what goodwill they lose… Since they’d be solely focused on making as much money as quickly as they can. (Without any focus on the future.)

However, the developers really do seem to be investing a lot of time into the community and trying to ease certain fears (like the Reddit AMA with Chris Whiteside and the recent Twitch-video thing.)

Ultimately, it wouldn’t really be in the developer’s best interest to focus on a churn-and-burn type of monetization… Since if Guild Wars 2 fails because of that, the Guild Wars (and thus ArenaNet) name will be worthless and it’d be difficult for them to ever release anything in the future.

The funny thing is, Ascended gear was introduced to provide an in-between in terms of grind from Exotic to Legendary…

And, yet, they’re making Ascended gear easier to get (no RNG… just daily reward grind) because of all the complaints about RNG grind. And let’s face it, the reason for this is because RNG-grind isn’t “fair”…

Two different people could do a round of Fractals 10x and one could come up with zero Ascended rings, while the other gets 10 Ascended rings.

This isn’t so much an issue with purely cosmetic items, but when you add stats (and the infusion mechanism) to the equation… It creates a disparity between those that have the Ascended gear and those that don’t. You couldn’t easily progress past level 10 without some sort of infusion against Spectral Agony.

Now it’s become clear that stat-grind has come and gone (for the most part)… And we’re back to cosmetic grind (where we should have stayed in the first place).

ArenaNet, at least, noted the public outrage with how Ascended gear was introduced and the grind required. But now we’re back to where they were originally… That the only real grind is cosmetic.

I, honestly, think all the legendaries aren’t worth the grind. They just give some special “footprint” effects and such. And they’ll be replaced by new gear when this year’s expansion comes out.

I also don’t think infusions are currently worth grinding for. They have insane crafting material requirements, when you can get a basic infusion for 75 fractal relics. You can’t recover infusions once they’re placed… And they give minimal stat boosts.

Ascended gear and infusions were initially introduced as a crafting material sink to increase the price of ecto and other T6 mats.

I’m fairly certain I remember devs (or maybe the economist John Smith) stating they wanted to make ecto “more valuable.”

It happened with me using a mithril harvesting sickle.

neoxide.7320:

Vash.1852:

neoxide.7320:

I spent 350g on my precursor last week, would suck if they became freebies next update.

They’re a little rarer than most would like but their price is due to the high demand for legendaries. If they nerf precursors it would really be a slap in the face to anyone who worked to get a precursor the hard way when compared to those who sat and cried until it was made easier.

Well that’s just the way these things work, look at it this way. You bought a new game the day it came out while I waited to buy it when it was on sale. Did I just slap you in the face?

Your analogy doesn’t apply to the situation for a few reasons.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Video games or any item in real life doesn’t decrease in price because of time, they decrease in price because of lessened demand. This is not the case with precursors. Precursors are expensive because of their high demand and remain just as expensive because of their high demand.

A proper application of your analogy would be “Well if you want a precursor for less money, then just wait for the demand to go down”. In other words, wait a while for more people to get legendaries until precursors don’t cost -as much- because less people need them.

Instead what is happening is people are complaining “I want my legendary now. It is too hard to get. Make it easier to get” and ANET is responding to their complaints while totally screwing the people who played by the rules and put in the work, effort, or risk into making a precursor by the current way.

I would be fine with a revamp of making legendaries so long as they remain legendary, but even more importantly, so long as the guys who did it playing by the rules get compensated.

TL;DR – only read the first paragraph to get the point.

Honestly…
I saw someone with at least 3 legendaries lately (he switched from Sunrise to Rodgort and Frostfang)

I asked how he got them and his response was simply “I spend my time wisely.”

I can’t imagine how anyone, by simply playing the game legitimately, could have 3 legendaries at this point.

Legendaries have become a joke. Market manipulators are dangling them in our faces on the TP currently. They have an excess of gold (more than any player would ever need) and thus can get whatever they want. Not by PLAYING THE GAME but by exploiting other players.

It’s only fair for ArenaNet to give us normal players a decent shot at getting a legendary.

Especially considering there’s going to be an expansion this year… And new legendaries to strive for.

John Smith.4610:

Nike.2631:

One way of presenting a wealth chart that would be fascinating to me is gold (or other broader account value assessment) vs. hours played.

Not so much an “average gold per hour” thing, but looking at wealth vs. account age to see if there are any distinct bends in the curve. For example, I just finished my master crafter title this week and expect my ability to make gold to go up noticably now that I’m not hording materials for conversion to crafting XP.

I could probably spend a month coming up with meaningful combinations of wealth and income. Your suggestion would be at the top of the list, and the immediate question that comes up is: Do players who spend more time in game have more wealth because they play more, or are they more efficient because they’re really good at the game or both.

Or, perhaps, wealth versus amount of goods bought and sold on the trading post?

Contrasted with this…

Wealth versus time spent attacking monsters, farming nodes, doing events, etc?
(which should be the best way to approximate wealth actually produced… as that’s how money and materials are generated.)

I’m sure that, by a simple analysis, John Smith already knows that the wealth lies with those that manipulate the trading post.

In the original Guild Wars, you never had to worry about infusing pets or heroes from Spectral Agony.

As it was stated that Rangers are intended to always have their pets with them… (from some designer’s perspective on classes)

Why don’t pets at least inherit their owner’s agony resistance?

And moreover, why are pets (and other classes’ summons) targetable by the Jade Maw?
I’d be more understanding if it were just a OHKO skill…

But you need to absorb and use that attack to kill the boss.

Dee Jay.2460:

You could always buy A LOT of gems. That might encourage them to hire more staff, thus speeding up the dungeon revision process.

But I’d much rather they get a clear vision of what exactly they want to do with Dungeons instead of reviving them just for the hell of it.

But then they’d be like “Oh, we’re raking in the cash. Clearly nothing is wrong.”

They wouldn’t have any reason to “fix” anything.

I feel like (from the developers’ recent statements and their new promise of clarity on their upcoming plans) they’ve probably realized they need to focus on improving the game before adding vast amounts of new content.

Erasculio.2914:

They need, of course, to avoid this mistake in Guild Wars 2. They have to add few skills per expansion, and preferably add no new profession, or at most a single one, in order to avoid having more skills than they can balance. Considering how the currently available skills are not bug-fixed or balanced…

I would like to see if ArenaNet is now smart enough to not listen to the players screaming “We want more!” when they announce how many skills they will add per expansion. Players are not game designers, and there is a reason for that – most are pathologically unable to think on the long term and realize how something that they think is “cool” (such as “more and more skills, OMG!!!1111!!”) is actually detrimental to the game on the long term.

I played GW1, and I definitely understood why ArenaNet made the skill changes they did with GW2.

The weapon skills are all based upon your weapon type and profession.

Thus you get a standard set of 5 skills for a two-hand weapon (or 3 and 2 for two one-hand weapons)

I could definitely see them possibly introducing a new weapon type (or possibly weapon sub-classes like elemental weapons… See: Elementalist-created weapons)

This makes it vastly easier for balance, as all attack skills are standardized. You can’t pick-and-choose to have Barrage along with short bow skills.

Thus, the possible skill combinations for each class is vastly lower than in GW1.

Then you get one healing skill, three utility skills, and one elite skill. Really the only skills that are open to choice.

I could likewise see a few of these get added. It’s probable that most people tend towards the more versatile skills.

Pretty much all rangers in the Fractals use healing spring.

There’s not much in the way of skill variation, which is kind of disappointing as a former GW1 player. I’d love to see a litte more… And I don’t think it would be too insanely hard to balance them.

Besides, the main issue with “balancing” is in terms of PvP (especially if they want that whole eSports thing). They’ve already split PvP and PvE in this game. Something they tried to avoid in GW1 (which led to many skills being worthless in PvE).

The classes still aren’t balanced. Some classes are better than others. (and thus favored in PvE groups)

ArenaNet should definitely fix that.

We could use a bit more diversity. I’d like to see more bows. Like maybe a recurve bow or have the ice bow actually become an equipable weapon type.

Spears as a short-ranged one-handed weapon might be nice for Warriors/Guardians as well. Oh, and scythes… I’d like to see those return.

Due to the way ArenaNet’s set it up, a little more diversity shouldn’t make a balancing nightmare.

You only really have 3 skill choices and then your weapon choice.

The choice for healing skills are very limited and some are vastly better than others (depending on the situation).

Same for Elite skills. I hate the summon elites, because of the downtime. I don’t think the summons really do all that much.

Similarly, a new class wouldn’t be any worse to balance than anything else. The biggest thing is coming up with an idea that would be enjoyable and different.

Aproposs Of Fire.4056:

Now as to the quote from GuildCast, it was accurate but it was a bit weaker than I imagined; so I offer this instead.

This is a video interview with Colin Johanson (ArenaNet GW2 Game Director – think movie director, I think) made after the Halloween event but before the Karka event. It is located: http://www.twitch.tv/mmorpgcom/b/337726366 I might have missed some things earlier in the video but here are some pretty relevant quotes from later in the video:

Time: 20:35
“The most important thing.. We want people to play wherever they want.. do the things they are excited about and feel like they get rewarded for it and that they can play with their friends wherever they are playing and that they can be rewarded for it. "

“Those will always be our goals as we build anything in GuildWars2.”

Time: 20:48
“So certainly we are evaluating PvP, WvW and PvE right now so that it is rewarding enough in each part of the game, it feels like there is enough stuff to do in each part of the game. And where we see that there isn’t, we’re currently adding a whole lot of more stuff for each of those parts and phases right now. We’re really.. focused on expanding those in every part of the the game right now.”

Time: 21:32
“Right now we’re focused on those ideas of what is rewarding in our game.. what additional things you want to go do at level 80.. what additional game types do you want to do.. what are the things that you and your friends can do everyday when you log in.”

Time: 23:23
“.. evaluating every part of the game.. trying to add.. new places to play with friends.. new challenges.. new places for rewards.. fans want a lot more to do in the game. What is stuff that we can add.. allows more stuff in game.”

Time: 26:00
“.. actively working on.. dungeon rewards.. looking at making them more fun to play.. make them something people will want to do even more in the future.”

Time: 26:20 (Interviewer asking about dungeons being over-nerfed..more time spent for less reward.)
“.. still working on rewards a little bit.. want to make sure everyone is happy with them.. [make sure] they are a good challenge.. [make sure] you get rewarded for the time you spend in them.”

Disclaimer: Please see the video and correct any transcription mistakes I might have made.

So this interview seems to be about the time that people are beginning to see the problems with rewards – drops & loot – I wonder if this was ANet’s response to that and it was largely missed?

If azurrei’s interpretation of that quote above from a couple days ago is accurate then it seems that they are still focused on fixing the game.

Comments?

Edit – The most important quote for me is:

Johanson.2394:

ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built

Because it has been my understanding the past couple weeks that people are limiting a lot of their time to dungeons and fractals because of the loot issue. I thought that this was ANet’s goal. Well, if I can read that quote this way, I’d say it’s not ANet’s purpose and they are working on making it viable to go everywhere again.

I recently saw one player with at least 3 different legendaries.

When I asked how he got them, he said “I spend my time wisely.”

I can’t even fathom possibly having that many legendaries at this point.

Granted, as he wasn’t so forthcoming about his methods… I would imagine he’s one of the people that manipulate the trading post. (As has been speculated that those players are the main ones posting all the legendaries currently.)

Why is it that people should be rewarded much more greatly by taking advantage of other players than by playing the game?

I mean, if people are supposed to be rewarded by “doing what they want to do” as Colin Johanson has stated, then why is ArenaNet letting people get far greater rewards than those of us actually playing the game (that can’t be bothered to keep constant track over what materials are going to increase in price from day-to-day)?

kingslayer.1342:

Minos.5168:

From Final Fantasy IV:
http://nintendookie.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/cecil-harvey.png

Does this mean ArenaNet copied Square Enix?

I don’t think you get the point.

The point being that “light” and “dark” greatswords are extremely common throughout fantasy games?

Yeah, I got that.

I was providing a counter-point. I’m glad you got my point.

Expectations:

• Cantha (who cares about a Deep Sea Dragon if you have airships)
• Rebuilding of Canthan District in Divinity’s Reach
• Opening of Dominion of Winds
• Tengu as a playable race
• New class (possibly bringing back Ritualist, as it was very popular)
• Increase of level cap to at least 90
• New Ascended/Legendary gear for level 90
• Releasing 2nd half of the year

From Final Fantasy IV:
http://nintendookie.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/cecil-harvey.png

Does this mean ArenaNet copied Square Enix?

Microsoft likely didn’t directly copy ArenaNet. They just wanted to sell people digital stuff for their avatars.

It’s a brilliant strategy. Create a weapon model. Skin it a few ways. Sell for $5 each.

It just so happens that everyone loves huge greatswords (perhaps Freud could explain this) and, naturally, white/silver+gold is a popular combination.

They couldn’t very well give the white/silver blade a blue hilt. Then they’d be accused of stealing the Master Sword from Nintendo.

And black blades are very common in fantasy.

Heck, in Legend of Zelda games, Shadow Link uses a black sword (as he’s just Link with a black/shadow texture).

I think most of the aggravation on the part of the players is that we see it as “just one number.”

Surely it can’t be too insanely difficult to go in and adjust one particular stat value for pet skins.

Certainly if a pet was “overpowered” then they’d probably have already gone in and done something.

John Smith.4610:

I don’t mean that the wealth of the country grows. I mean that individuals with wealth will create more wealth an a significantly higher rate than those without wealth. It takes money to make money essentially.

Can’t the same be said of GW2’s economy, where people are buying out crafting materials and relisting them at much higher rates?

See: Buy Armored Scales

I’d bet that those on the high end of the logarithmic curve are most likely market manipulators. They have thousands of gold, which they use to cause the cost of everything to go up (to further their own profit).

Also, could you imagine how overflow would work without zones?

Currently, each zone goes into overflow on an individual basis (whether or not it is packed).

If it was a “seamless” map, I think my world (Tarnished Coast) would be in constant overflow.

I still feel like there’s probably going to be a level cap increase this year along with the Canthan expansion.

So… Crafting current legendaries will give a level 80 legendary.

They’ll likely introduce new level 90 legendaries. So it all depends on if you really like the skin.

I, personally, don’t really care all that much for any of them.

While there’s all these contradictions, unfortunately, conditions don’t work on “structures.” One of which being the Ice Storm in the snowy fractal.

I think they should change that… Even if it’s silly. As it is, condition stats seem such a waste, compared to going with pure power and critical hits.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Bnning players for trying to make pixel money in a virtual economy is just NO!

Who do you determine to be at fault in a traders market.. the trader for trying to make a living through supply or the customer willing to pay the prices, thus driving the demand.????

Just NO!

Now that is funny.

You point out that it’s virtual money, and then equate these manipulators to someone “trying to make a living.”

These people have made THOUSANDS of gold doing this.

Why do they need that much gold? What are they doing with it? The most expensive vendor items are the T3 cultural armor (that many would consider to be overpriced). That’s 120g for a full set.

What, exactly, can you even do with thousands of gold (aside from buying legendaries and rare item skins)? It amuses me, since that seems like a pipe dream to me.

Syntax.3704:

Armored scales are back above 6s finally…. it will only be temporary though unless the bots get banned =\ Prices are probably rising due to people playing again after the holiday

Yes, let’s ban the bots and not all of the people purposefully manipulating the market.

teviko.6049:

When you realize that the game revolves around the mystic forge, the trading post, and the gem shop (GW2’s version of the holy trinity) you will then see why they will not ban market manipulators.

It either deters people, or they flock to the gem shop to buy gems to convert to da monieyz and then use it on the trading post. And when they are poor again, they buy more gems, and buy more stuff, and sometimes, they will numerically dump stuff into the mystic forge to only get bad results and then feel the need to dump more money into the gem shop.

See a trend?

The higher the prices…the more people will be pigeon holed into the gem shop, which is money in A.Net’s pocket. They will never ban these people.

The issue with that mindset is that they’ll have to increase the amount of gold you get from selling gems.

I’m not going to spend 100 gems to get less than 2 gold at this point. That’s just pitiful, in my opinion.

However, if you could get over 2 gold (maybe even over 3 gold) for 100 gems… Then the market may end up being flooded by people spending money on gems. I’m sure ArenaNet would enjoy this for a while…

But then inflation would occur and stuff would end up being even more expensive. (Only further requiring a higher gem-to-gold ratio.)

Inflation is bad for this game. It discourages new players, who I’d imagine are probably the best source of income…

Keeping money in the hands of a few people was something that ArenaNet stated they wanted to avoid in blog posts.

Windwalker.2047:

They had to do it now to keep the gem prices high so people would buy gems for real moneyz.
My guess is the meeting went something like this:‘The price for 100 gems dropped below 2gold,and we have reports of some players actually wanting to trade some gold for gems’-‘OMG :O quickly!We must think of another gem sink fast!’

Seeing as they’ve admitted that gem/gold conversion rates aren’t purely supply and demand… I doubt they’re trying to do that.

It’s probably like someone said about Christmas gem card stuff.

critickitten.1498:

Minos.5168:

Price-fixing is a very serious offense in the real-world. Sony and Samsung are still facing charges in several countries for price-fixing on displays.

The price-fixing on displays caused all products using them (like TVs, monitors, tablets, and laptops) to be more expensive because of it… Thus hurting the consumer.

But the described behavior isn’t price-fixing, so your example is rather useless.

Price-fixing is when all vendors of particular products agree to sell that product for a particular price. What the OP is complaining about is the notion that a person can buy all of the stock of a certain item and then sell it for a much higher price. That’s not price-fixing. It’d be more correct to call it market manipulation….I believe the technical term is “ramping”, but I’m not exactly a business major. :P

And I’m not actually sure whether this should be punishable or not. A lot of games permit it, it might be pushing into the realm of too much direct interference if ANet disallows it.

And for the last time, the snowflake thing was an obvious exploit. A very, very obvious exploit. Like, I could describe it to a child and they’d understand that something’s amiss. I’m rather tired of people complaining about the darn thing. “I don’t know what I did wrong! I just crafted this item with 1 ecto and consistently received two or more back every time, that’s all! And then I decided to repeat this process a few hundred times for some easy money. Is that so wrong?” Yes, yes it is, now stop complaining and accept your ban.

I wasn’t banned. I’m merely pointing out that if ArenaNet is going to ban people for affecting the economy, they shouldn’t focus solely on one subset.

Market manipulation will end up killing the game, in my opinion.

Why will new players pick up the game, when by “playing legitly” (as someone stated) doesn’t make them nearly enough gold to afford all the materials they need to craft the gear they need?

It’s far more dangerous to this game’s economy than anything else.

The original Guild Wars ran off of casual players. I’d say I play quite a bit… but I don’t want to devote my game time to determining what I should be buying and selling.

I can’t believe market manipulators find it “fun.” I mean, it’s not like you can accomplish anything with all this gold. Sure, you can convert it to gems and get everything in the Gem Store for free. (Though, I can’t imagine ArenaNet would appreciate that.)

I guess you can buy up a legendary. Congrats. You did no real work and got something intended to be a reward for a player’s hard work.

But then why keep playing the game once you get what you want? I don’t see market manipulators as being long-term players or even players that contribute to the game. I mean, if they’re taking advantage of other players in the TP then they probably aren’t actively helping out other players in-game.

Certainly market manipulators aren’t contributing to ArenaNet’s profit (aside from potential gem to gold sales by those that can’t afford things on the TP).

If a potential player saw the sorry state of the Trading Post, I’d imagine they’d just play another game instead.

It’s only good business sense for ArenaNet to put a stop to mass market manipulation.

I’m not saying ban anyone that sells something for more than they bought it for…

But people buying out THOUSANDS of a particular crafting material and relisting them all much higher is a type of behavior that is vastly more damaging than what others were banned for.

From what I understand about the recipe:
They would get the snowflake back with whatever % chance the salvage kit had for rare items. They wouldn’t get all the same crafting items back. They would then get 0 to 3 ecto like salvaging any other rare in the game.

Crafting a rare and then salvaging it for ecto was standard practice early in the game. Why should so many people get banned because of it?

ArenaNet’s explanation was that these types of “exploits” are damaging to the economy.

My argument is that market manipulation is far more dangerous. And they’ll eventually realize it. Hopefully before it’s too late.

The only real way to fight against market manipulation (without penalties against those players) would be to make all that gold worthless by making Gem → Gold conversions grant much more gold.
And they’ll have to do that, in order to convince people to pay for gold.

This will just further inflation.

phlemhacker.1372:

No. Just…no. Manipulating the market to make money is completely legitimate and has nothing to do with cartel like behavior. Everyone has the opportunity to do this, if you don’t take advantage of it, that is your own problem. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Price-fixing is a very serious offense in the real-world. Sony and Samsung are still facing charges in several countries for price-fixing on displays.

The price-fixing on displays caused all products using them (like TVs, monitors, tablets, and laptops) to be more expensive because of it… Thus hurting the consumer.

If salvaging ecto from a craftable recipe is a bannable offense for “damaging the economy”, then why not ban players that manipulate the Trading Post for profit?

It’s far more damaging to the in-game economy (by causing the prices of everything to go up) for these people to manipulate the prices of goods.

For those that are unaware, they buy up all of a specific resource/good (with all of the gold that they currently have) and then sell it at a higher price.

This causes everyone else that might need that specific crafting material or whatever to pay higher prices.

The market manipulators then profit off of everyone else.

They have THOUSANDS of gold, NOT by “playing the game” but by “playing the players.”

Yes, you might compare it to the stock market… But I think it’s more like a cartel or monopoly in terms of a real-life comparison. Both of which are illegal in the real world, as they harm the economy.

They’re far more damaging to the game’s economy than the “exploiters” were, in my opinion. (Granted, in many cases the exploiters may have been market manipulators.)

Since Ascended rings don’t salvage into ecto… I think they should probably salvage into Vials/Globs/Shards of Mists Essence instead. I mean, they’re required to make any type of Ascended gear currently. (back piece or ring) So it only makes sense that they’d salvage into that.

I also think rings and Mists Essence should have the account bound restriction removed so that we can buy and sell them on the TP.

This would solve the complaint that Ascended gear is limited to Fractals.

Rustypipes.6238:

How is this any different from other MMOs? You are basically doing the exact same thing, mashing a few keys and moving out of the way of damage.

Except in other games, you have well-timed boss fight mechanics that add interest to the boss fight.

Take the Jade Maw as an example of a boss done right.

There’s a decent amount of time between each of the Maw’s attacks.

The only suggestion I’d have to improve it is: Make the “you’re targeted” notification more visible on the targeted player’s screen to ease confusion. Like maybe some text on screen to state “Quick! Grab a crystal!”

The fractal boss fights are definitely an improvement over the dungeon bosses. (Granted, I still think other games manage to do better at boss fights… but it’s a good improvement.)

Why not simply allow sellers to freely reduce the listing price without facing another listing fee?

If they’ve already paid 5% of 420g to list the item… Why not allow them to change the price to 419g98s to undercut the person that just undercut them?

Yeah, it’ll result in a bidding war… But it’ll eventually even out, right?

Leamas.5803:

wildcode.5403:

Hardest part for ArenaNet in reading some of these numbers is some people are counting white items as junk, when they are not junk only perceived as junk. Makes it harder for the rest of us who counted properly.

I find it hard to believe that ArenaNet cannot pull the data relevant to loot drops on any player in the game. Only they know what the drops should be. If they can confirm what is claimed, why do we have to justify it? Why do we have to provide granular data? If they cannot confirm what is claimed in this thread then all the data collected here is useless conjecture, unsubstantiated claims and nothing more than stalling.

Perhaps collectively calling whites “junk” is poorly worded by some as junk has a specific meaning in the game, but I feel perfectly fine calling all junk, whites and blues collectively “garbage”, especially when some of the whites sell at the vendors for less than the “junk” and with crafting in the state it’s in, salvaging isn’t a much better option.

I used a full Black Lion harvesting sickle looking for passion flowers today. Got 15 fruit, but no flowers….disappointing.

And consider that they increased the drop rate of flowers in that recent patch…
That’s kind of sad, really, as they’re required for infusions.

I think the real argument is that drop rates have been nerfed.
ArenaNet is stating that “drops are working as expected.”

The two statements aren’t contradictory.

If ArenaNet purposefully nerfed drop rates (like ecto salvage rates, dye drop rates, etc.) in order to make said items more valuable (and likely increase Gem to Gold purchases), then drop rates are, indeed, working exactly as expected.

Yes, I know dye drops were temporarily “too high” but drop rates are now much lower than they were at launch.

Some people may have unlocked all dyes on all their characters, but most haven’t…

Firefly.5982:

My 2 cents.

Dungeons:

Exotic armor/weapons – none
Rare armor/weapons – barely (MAYBE 1 in 30-40 runs).
Rare crafting mats (like molten lodestone/core in CoF) – about 1-2 every 1-5 runs
Blues and greens – equal, about 5 per run
White armor/weapon – about 5 per run

Loot from Champions, bosses and event chests:

Blues and greens only. Never gotten any rare or exotic. Bosses and champions often empty.

Ecto Salvage rate:

You can tell me, what you will, but it is down. I used to get at least 1, mostly 2 and often 3 out of 1 rare. Now I get often 0, mostly 1, sometimes 2 and barely ever 3. I salvage ectos daily, I used to buy rares of the TP and salvage for ectos for profit – I don’t do that anymore, since the salvage rate IS lower and it is not profitable anymore.

Magic Find:

Magic find definitely does NOT increase droprate. I have tested this plenty in my long farming hours. It often happens, that JUST after taking of all my MF gear, I get a rare drop >.> Since droprates on rares/exotics, rare mats etc. are so super low though, this is really a bummer – without MF I still barely EVER get rares as drops.

I have played about 630 hrs now (2 month break since launch) and have mentally given up on getting rares/exotics from actually playing the game aka drops being viable. Which makes me sad

My final thought:

At least bosses, champions and event chests/chests in dungeons should give viable loot, that makes you go “Yai!” for having participated and successfully beaten the content! It takes time, team effort and skill – so where’s the reward??

I am okay with the other droprates – of course everyone wishes for them to be higher But the ones above are the ones that actually anger me. I have gone over to ditching an event before it ends, because I know I won’t get anything anyway. It makes me sad, that I don’t care about the dungeon chests anymore, because I know I’ll only get blues and greens anyway. Might as well skip bosses, that you don’t have to kill, right?
I don’t feel like that’s right. Thanks for reading <3

I’ll agree that the Ecto drop rate feels nerfed… I used to average probably 2 ecto per salvage of a rare.

Now it’s probably an average of 1 or so. Yes, I do occasionally get 2 or 3 ecto still but this is counteracted by a more often salvage of 0. (Which was very rare in the past.)

I feel like the lower drop rate is to blame for the drastic increase in ecto prices.

You could say that the increase in ecto cost is primarily due to infusions/ascended, but keep in mind that people wanting Ascended gear are also farming the Fractals (which are supposed to have higher drop rates of rares).

If you ask me, ecto salvage rates were dropped due to the Fractals increasing the drop rate of rare items.

A drop from an average of 2 ecto per salvage to 1 ecto per rare may seem insignificant… Until you realize that that’s HALF of what it used to be.

So wait, I’m a bit behind here as I didn’t care to craft any holiday stuff…

But salvaging a rare item for ecto (which is something that should be expected… given that rares salvage into ecto) is somehow an exploit?

I get that people did it hundreds/thousands of times… But, let’s be honest:
Ecto prices never dropped below 25 silver.
Demand was still much larger than the supply, obviously. (Most likely due to the obscene ecto requirements for Ascended gear.)

People play with the market all the time (buying out cheap items and marking up the price).

Why don’t they get banned? I consider that just as much “detrimental to the economy and other players” as this.

The economy wouldn’t be hurt by losing this unnecessary gold sink.

Yeah, inflation might happen a bit.

However, the primary issue with the economy currently is in the handling of the economy.

Ecto prices were lower than the devs wanted, and they released Ascended gear that required 250 to craft.

Dye prices were dropping, so they decreased the dye drop rate.

They even had that Mystic Forge Conduit thing to absorb excess ingredients. (and the current “donations for Lion’s Arch” were probably for similar reasons)