Guild Wars 2

where did you read that taunts are coming?

Though that would be so useful in dungeons. Especially when someone goes down and you wish them to get back up, but the boss isn’t done until they’re dead.

But that would also make most current organized content super easy. As people could just get bosses to run around in circles instead of attacking by taunting them from various different places.

dietzero.3514:

So if you enjoy manual labour then it is considered free?

if it’s your hobby then yes. Believe me, as a guild leader I also wish I was being payed to play sometimes, however this is my hobby, it doesn’t produce anything of value in the real world and I do it for enjoyment meaning that what we do is free.

Asking to be payed to play a game is the same as asking to be payed to read a book or watch a movie. Not going to happen. So yes, your time here is worthless and free. If you believe that your time is worth more than that, ignore your hobbies and get another job.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Other materials are fine. .

T5 leather that’s bellow the vendor price is fine?
Silk at 1 silver per piece seems fine. For T6 gossamer is far too cheap (Orri and Trees are going for 4 silver each).

Shiyo.3578:

Damask is ~14g each
Every other ascended mat is ~2.5-4g.

Damask is nearly 4x the amount of every other ascended mat. That’s awful design.

hence other materials are too cheap.

also log in servers are not working.

For the second time this month I completely can’t log into CoE or Mount Maelstrom.

Underworld was at rock bottom 8 months ago. Now it’s semi competitive I believe. Either take up initiative yourself, or convince higher tier guilds to transfer to your server for easy bronze wins.

Doggie.3184:

I also really like the Golden Lion dye but RNG boxes frighten me.

Gold Lion dye is already sold on the trade post normally for around 90 gold. Redemption, a 1 gold dye, looks pretty identical though.

Shiyo.3578:

It made sense at first, now it no longer does that the supply of silk isn’t so insanely high with no use.

They need to fix it.

I rather they fixed leather by increasing its consumption. And gossamer, as gossamer is hitting the floor now. I think that silk price isn’t that bad right now.

dietzero.3514:

Money from selling space is most likely a very, very minor part of their overall income.

information source?

Caeledh.5437:

There’s also no guarantee anyone will join. Just to repeat what I said earlier, my playtime is often during quiet times of the day and zerker speed runs seem to be far more popular.

don’t say it until you’ve tried it. Regarding dungeons like CoF normal groups seem to fill up faster than zerker groups, because of the amount of zerker groups versus the amount of normal groups. AC and TA seem like popular choices in general. Catching SE and Arah might be harder though for example, but those receive zerker LFGs less as well. Another advice would be to take 1 friend with you if you’re able to. LFGs with 2 people tend to fill up faster than LFGs with 1.

The only place that I found brutal as far as LFGs are considered is fractals levels 40 to 50 on less desirable classes, such as necro. Now for those be prepared to wait for an hour.

Crossaber.8934:

Still there is no suggestion how to make up the income lose for Anet.

Balance means there are 4 groups to consider:
Players with free time
Players willing to purchase gem
Players don’t farm don’t purchase gem
Anet income

I do agree with you and you’re right. Temporary does make a lot of money. Still one could dream about items being less temporary. For example I have all the cute minis like mini hippo. When people ask where could they get that, I have to tell them that they can’t because it’s no longer for sale. I suppose making items come back yearly would be a good compromise. Or allowing you to buy them and send them off to other people later. Kind of like you can buy dye boxes and sell dyes on the trade post. The supply will still theoretically eventually run out, but it will take longer as some people will stock up on them.

Crossaber.8934:

Hard for causal players that don’t farm gold and don’t purchase gem

I suppose, even then, the only real punishing items are the temporary ones. Which could be fixed by either making all items unlimited, or making sure that they come back every so often.

Mirta.5029:

Iyeru.5240:

I’ve already been in “Family” Guilds too, and sometimes, that’s not for me. Please see this blog post I made about the types of guilds and whatnot:

http://iancarlson666.tumblr.com/post/74523377989/a-review-of-mmorpg-communities-and-guild-types

… What’s the point in even dropping that? We’re just trying to have some nice fun, no need to be the overanalyst. Don’t know if I would even want an analyst like that in my guild.

actually, counter rant:
http://draksaite.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/do-not-categorize-guild-rant.html

And back on topic: there’s nothing wrong with speedruns. It’s just not a community I would advise new players to mix with. Getting a guild, or writing up “accepting everyone”, “newbie run”, “casual run” on your LFGs helps. And don’t be afraid to host. Nobody will bite you for it

Iyeru.5240:

I’ve already been in “Family” Guilds too, and sometimes, that’s not for me. Please see this blog post I made about the types of guilds and whatnot:

http://iancarlson666.tumblr.com/post/74523377989/a-review-of-mmorpg-communities-and-guild-types

… What’s the point in even dropping that? We’re just trying to have some nice fun, no need to be the overanalyst. Don’t know if I would even want an analyst like that in my guild.

the only way to counter that is not to hang out with the wrong crowd. Join a casual guild. If you’re on EU I would (guild recruitment incoming!) offer you ours

And what Aberrant said.

Aomine.5012:

Chinese get easy Legendary, exclusive minis and such.
What do we get then? Nothing?

less grind and no need to pay a subscription? I really wouldn’t want to be playing the Chinese version. Seems nothing like GW2.

GiraffeRampage.6420:

Yes but in the grander scheme of things it makes more sense for specific weapons to drop in specific dungeons as the rng isnt as completely random as world boss drops, its more of an incentive to keep coming back to a particular dungeon to get something you need.

I agree, however if the ticket system would be taken out, it would really ruin the game for me. Meaning that the drops should only have the same % chance as those in that collection. Also another similar system is fractal skins.

Linken.6345:

( 4½ gold an hour)

you can make at least 10G/h by mining platinum, iron and cutting down trees in the appropriate regions :P

GiraffeRampage.6420:

It would be cool if you know that X boss drops X exotic sword for X dungeon that has X stats that fits your build, that would be a really fun way of playing the rng game.

that’s what the exotic collection about. Specific champions drop specific loot. You should look into it

Stephapanda.5804:

I have to say it really rubs me the wrong way that the exact same mask that was a free event reward in GW1 is purchased with gems here. That’s the major issue I have with the gem store – it monetizes things that could (should?) be event rewards. Most of the armor/weapon skins, mini pets, instruments, etc. I have no problem with and think they’re great there, but I feel like there’s potential for better “special event” or prestige rewards that’s missed out on sometimes due to the gem store – the lion mask being one of them.

at least it’s account wide. So more than one character can wear it when you buy one.

golden lion dye is identical to redemption. Go for redemption instead

phys.7689:

and yes if gw2 was doing well during that time period, people interested in gw2 would be giving people gw2 related gifts, like they did in 2013 and 2012, which both showed an upswing in profits from q3 to q4 (lets ignore 2012 since it was release time) That gift spending wasnt spent on GW2

after the war has started in Russia the ecconomical situation in the countries close to it all hit the bucket. Russians can’t afford anything, so companies don’t even sell to them anymore, Ukranians are in the exact same situation, Lithuanians just got the Euro (happened in December) which caused a complete ecconomic shift, I was busy trying to get a UK bank account so that I could stop fearing war shutting me down economically, Switzerland (I think it was?) did something about untying their currency from the Euro and producing more of it, which meant that Euro in general has plummeted.

It wasn’t a happy Christmas. But I’m glad that USA is stable.

phys.7689:

because they either lack interest in the product, or they are dissatisfied with the product.

or because the expansion has been announced and they’re saving up for that? They’re taking a break before the expansion? Because Season 2 of living story is over for now and the only thing in between is filler? Because we all spent quite a lot on gifts on Christmas and now we can’t be going around buying things? Because indeed the economy is plummeting again (even though it never fully recovered), especially with what’s happening with Ukraine and Russia?

Novuake.2691:

Spend a little time on Reddit GW2. You will see even AFTER the sale there are still A LOT of people joining.

that would just mean that their sale numbers are strong trough the other quarters too.

phys.7689:

im not comparing it to release, i am comparing it to the months before npe.

but more telling than anything is the holiday season, it should have made more money during the holiday quarter than the quarter just before it, to actually make less is a sign that the users are either decreasing or less willing to spend money, even during the holiday season (which is the buying season in US) keep in mind profits include gem sales, and you see less interest.
Both are signs that users are not as satisfied with the product as they once were.

everything was on sale (including the game itself), in order to make the same amount of profit they should have sold twice as much. Do you really think that there’s that many MMO gamers that never got GW2 in these 2 years and would still love to buy it?

phys.7689:

1 month after release, cost of 100 gems, 43 silver
at that time i believe you got 28 silver for beating a dungeon path
1 dungeon run = 65% of 100 gems
now, you get 1.5 gold for beating a dungeon, but it costs 13 gold for 100 gems
1 dungeon run =11% of 100 gems

you literally got no money for beating the dungeon. Just greens and blues in the chest. Green/ blue buying power had to do with how much money regular people had, which was close to nothing.

phys.7689:

before, each time a monster in orr dropped gold, it got you 1 gem roughly, now each monster dropping gold gets you .06 gems

how? They never dropped flat currency just items that could float in the exchange which was at that point very much gold free. Heck at Karka event people that got 30 gold for selling their precursors were happy because it was really serious money.

dietzero.3514:

Ok? That has absolutely no relevance to what I said. But nice one!

how was what he said not relevant?

When the game came out, you didn’t get a guaranteed yellow for doing world bosses, you didn’t get guaranteed gold for running dungeons, there were no champion loot bags, Spvp didn’t give you anything that you could use in PVE. Your income was less. So much indeed that getting Tier 3 Cultural was considered a huge achievement. Now if you so wished you could get that in a day.

Hence back then compared to now the gold to gem exchange was cheaper. Now it has adjusted itself to what would be equivalent difficulty for earning that gold to gems. If the price was fixed, however a year from now it was normal to count gold in thousands and not hundreds, people would make the money in 5 minutes. Why should that happen?

Chrispy.5641:

Your definition of Pay-To-Win is a little bit, narrow minded.

Time advantage. This has been discussed, and now we’re at the point where posters are repeating themselves instead of offering any reason why a time advantage isn’t pay-to-win (which I described in this game as pay-to-equality with veteran players, and pay-to-advantage over new players). I have yet to say that’s a bad thing, (slightly unfair maybe, bad…not really). Question is, why is everyone so wound up over me calling it a form of pay-to-win?

Because at most it’s pay to equal. There’s nothing to win. You have no power advantage. And even then what do you equal? When do you win on a level playing ground?

phys.7689:

karma is basically gold

how do you buy karma?

phys.7689:

i hate buying stuff with gold in a game, the only thing i dislike more is probably buying stuff with real money in a game.

point is, new armors in other games can be goals, in FFXIV i want to craft a certain armor set, i want to get a different set from a raid. Which gives me goals, and things to do in game. Now if these gears are only available in the store, they really do nothing for making the game more engaging.

But i may be a special case

do you have all the dungeon skins unlocked? Because F me after a month I’m only getting close to finishing the crucible of eternity collection. Then there’s all the karma vendor skins. Then there’s all cultural armour skins. Then there’s the special champion weapon skins. Then there’s all the crafting profession backpacks and all the ascended skins that I didn’t unlock yet (every different stat is a different skin), then I don’t have all the legendaries either, not to mention the exclusive tequatl skins. You’re telling me that you have all of it?

Test.8734:

Amazing how people can compare revamping one non-combat and questless instance to revamping massive parts of the world. I guess fairy tales are the only argument to defend GW2 now.

my point was the part you didn’t quote. In both the players had no choice. It doesn’t matter how much you loved the old zones, they’re not the same now. People that didn’t buy the expansion would have arguably liked their zones as they were, because it wasn’t new zones that they were given, they got content replaced. Similarly how some old raids have been closed and in Guild Wars 2 we no longer have up-forward TA path. I wouldn’t call it new content, because you lost old content to get it.

And even then, when was the last time you visited Gendarran Fields, Iron Marches, Kessex Hills, etc? There’s so many new events, there’s a new jumping puzzle, new achievements. First starting zones quests got revamped too. As well as there are new cutscenes in your personal story. We got a lot of changes to old content too. And if we had 10 years, we would see more overhauls too.

Test.8734:

You do realize, I hope, that WoW has completely revamped its world for everyone, regardless if they have bought an expansion or not, right? Which is far more than 3 small zones with bad mechanics and the same events repeating all over the map.

you mean cataclysm? Do you realize that GW2 revamped Lions Arch for everyone, regardless they bought the expansion pack or not right? Without even asking said people if they want their favorite zone destroyed…. That’s exactly how Cataclysm felt.

phys.7689:

fractals were cool, but we got most of those 4 months after release, and the rest like a year ago.
Quality of life improvements were like 50/50 for me.
5 hours of story is not a lot, thats 3 months in ffxiv

they had some cool stuff, like marionette, and i think it was worth 60 bucks, but most of their interesting content was like a year ago, and the far majority was on release.

and i amended my last post with ffxiv.
look at what they have added in a year, like 12 dungeons 12 raids 2 24 mans, massive amounts of quests, like 10 boss events in game obtainable armors, a new class new crafting recipes etc.

and thats only one year of updates

well I left 9 months ago. In Season 2, 2 out of 3 zones came in, together with all that story. So if FFXIV is offering dungeons every month even, that’s more than any other MMO on the market.

phys.7689:

2 week schedule is a lie, Its a 2 week schedule for 6 -8 weeks than a break. and the amount of content per those two weeks doesnt add up.

and we havent actually got a new dungeon/dungeon like content probably since fractured.

but it is true that they have to make money some how. And it is also true that you get a decent value for your initial purchase.

but i would probably pay more for more actual game of substance. The expansion may provide that, we shall see. I honestly dont know though, havent seen them deliver much on par with what the game delivered in the first 4 months in a long time.

14 fractals,
3 new zones,
QA improvements,
5 hours worth of story
and lots of temporary events

That’s what we got in 2 years for free. Even WoW just locks it up in expansions. And once again, which game provides you with new dungeons on a regular basis?

Jerus.4350:

I like GW2, but I sure as hell wouldn’t pay a Sub for it. Not unless they started coming out with new sets of dungeons every couple of months like subscription based games do.

what subscription based game does it? Concerning free, WoW does one every 6 months at most, everything else is in payed expansions.
Concerning Wildstar they’re doing quarterly updates, instead of updates every 2 weeks like here.
Concerning Elder Scrolls Online I don’t remember them doing any meaty content updates either.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Anet wouldn’t want a sub model. They’d make less money that way. Short term profit from whales on a cycle earn them more money than longer term investment through subscriptions.

they earned like what? The equivalent of 250K subs this quarter? They could most definitely hold a bigger population than that if they forced a sub on us. But for a B2P model this game is very fair.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Welcome to Anet’s gemstore. The fact that these things are tied to gems and not gold is no coincidence. I agree with you, but at the end of the day its not going to change.

It’s either this or pay a sub.

8 people on teamspeak on even not teamspeak Friday. We’re more active than ever! Perfect time to join our family

phys.7689:

thats because the truth is using karma is not really actually a good way to get mats, most of the time. Because even though some people feel karma is in infinite, it has other uses, other values, and is a resource you have to earn.

lets say you spend 1000 karma to get 2 scraps of linen, lets say thats 3 dynamic events, + the time to go to the guy, mystic forge it, and then break it down.

lets say you need 40 linen scraps for your daily craft, thats 50 dynamic events, at 4 minutes per dynamic events thats 200 minutes.

dont forget though you need 25000-63000 in karma for obsidian shards per ascended piece, so maybe you dont want to burn up 20000 karma a day just for linen.

point is, karma aint free, when you actually break down the costs, you are probably not winning time there

9000 karma = between 20 and 30 scraps of linen.
Tequatl gives 20 000 karma daily alone.

Also I get majority of my shards from fractal relics as those are raining out of my ears.

KGS.9842:

inb4 dungeon tokens – 60 tokens per path + some bags makes it so you need to run all paths for the cheapest exotic of the dungeon set, with the price of more than half of the items higher than that… talk about running content again and again to get an item

you think repeating content 10, 20, 30 times is a lot? Try 100+ times for BIS pants on Wildstar. Try killing dragons for 2 years for BIS gear in runescape. Try farming a dungeon for months for a specific drop in WoW.

Guaranteed gear makes a big difference.

phys.7689:

just look at another thread where some player was like he just hit 80, went back to lower level areas, and still got owned

that’s a learn to play issue. You can auto-attack mobs in starting areas in whites. Starting areas are designed to be as braindead as it can be. Sure, he could be slightly “better” in pinks, but he would still need to learn to play. No gear in the world would save him unless he does. And then gear progression ends as well.

Not to mention that how in the frig will you buy guild commedations, laurels and un-timegate crafting with gold? If you had infinite gold you still would take like 2 months getting your pink gear.

“That player refuses to do dungeons because, “They are just too hard, and it makes the game no fun.””

what? I hope that they don’t nerf it like WoW did. Only hard dungeons that I found is AC P2 (the NPC behavior is frustrating), TA Aetherblade path and Arah. That’s all. CoF P1 for example you don’t even need humans to go with you. Monkeys can do it. We did AC story with completely new players in the guild and their reaction was “that’s it?”. We even took level 20s to fractals (end game content). The only way to make the game even easier is to remove mob and boss mechanics. In which point dungeons would be no fun.

mdhein.6803:

Ok, thank you all for the comments, and not actually flaming me I would like to clarify though.

On the loot, I simply mean that it would be nice to have “level oriented” loot. It may be mostly this way now, but for example: Queensdale mobs only drop loot oriented for THAT level range, etc, all the way up to Or level zones. This would also keep the 80s more focused on the zones that they can actually get 80 stuff from and not just zerging the low level zones.

they kind of fixed it by dropping a lot of low level champions down to veteran level. I don’t normally see level 80s zerging low level areas unless they’re a) in the daily b) are events added with living story updates (for example majority of events in Iron Marches), forming low level mobs is just not efficient (they will never drop T6 materials for example) unless you’re grinding one of the slayer or weapon related achievements.

mdhein.6803:

As far as the bosses are concerned. I just feel that maybe the loot seems a bit insignificant for the amount of time it takes, not work, but time, to kill the bosses themselves. I have done Jormag and KQ tons of times, and I think I MAY have gotten something orange and useful like twice. I agree that most of it is designed to be vendor fodder, or so it would definitely seem. Just seems a waste to do a world boss and get your ordinary blue/green item moreso than not.

world bosses is the only reliable way to get yellows. That’s why yellows sell on the trade post far higher than greens. If yellows were raining as often as greens their price would be down to a green. Same can be said for oranges. They’re only worth something because they’re rare.
Talking about rewards for your efforts, Tequatl and Tripple Worm reward well for all of the extra effort and cooperation needed, while most other world bosses don’t require anything more than numbers.

Tom Gore.4035:

Maddoctor, if Linen and Wool are so easy to get, tell me why they cost way more than Iron, for example?

I’m super surprised that Maddoctor gave up that method so easily. It was my secret way of making money for weeks now.

The thing about any money making method – other people don’t know about it. That’s why supply for linen stays low. But yes, it’s guaranteed linen.

depends. Do you think silk will drop in price considerably?

The only way I can imagine it happening is if expansion brings new ascendeds that need completely different crafting materials.

the reason why oranges are even exciting is because nobody is getting rained on by said oranges. And having in mind that you can get end game gear trough crafting, world drops are meaningless and mostly is just used to make gold. On one hand it is good, because all of us are more or less equal, but on the other hand it brings little excitement. I prefer this over a huge gear grind though.

I agree on the need for more dailies.

dietzero.3514:

That is pay to win.

what did you “win” with extra bank slots? I have 3 bank slots and all of my characters get by with no extra bag space and only 10 to 15 slot bags. I have 10 level 80s, I do have more than one type of gear, but I also carry heck of a lot of salvage kits and I don’t have anything in my bank that I don’t need. What are you stockpiling? And what have you won that I haven’t?

At the same time if I bought character slots is that pay to win? What did I win over you there? How do I now have a great advantage over you? Please tell me.

If you want to not pay for convenience, then please play subscription based games. Because if you haven’t noticed MMOs need income to have their servers up and if you don’t like paying for things you might as well pay to access the content on a monthly basis to begin with.

Astral Projections.7320:

OP didn’t say when he stopped playing. Maybe it was shortly after launch when the maps were so full because everyone was still leveling their first char. If someone left then and came back now, then the current maps would seem empty.

actually from my perspective they’re fuller than ever. I don’t exactly remember like 20 people doing random (and I do mean completely random, no world boss, no daily) events in low level zones.

did you ever seen an unpopulated MMO? In Guild Wars 2 even at offpeak hours there’s players everywhere even when events aren’t on. Did you hit an overflow 4 times in a row?