Guild Wars 2

I’ll bet that when they change pets, the names stick.

Paid cash for gems.

John Smith.4610:

This is a spinoff of the economy thread to talk about RNG tactics in games in a general form.
Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

We do need to be very careful about ideas that flatten the experience entirely as that quickly becomes not fun at all.

There are two concepts that have been discussed in the other thread that I’ll briefly summarize.

1. Use a specifically non-random NG. The NRNG functions similarly to a RNG, but has characteristics that either squish the distribution so that outliers exist much less or specifically manipulate a player’s experience for loot in a more complicated way that makes it feel rewarding.

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

2.5: “Add secondary reward mechanisms (ie. token based system) alongside the primary RNG system; allow progress to be made even when you don’t get the result you want.”

Obviously these are hyper-simplified descriptions, but I don’t want this to get too long.

edit: added 2.5

Did I just read this? Is someone actually showing that at least one soul at Arenanet understands what it’s like to be on the bottom of the RNG bucket?

I sincerely hope you are not risking your job by posting this, sir. It is about time your superiors allowed you to bring this to discussion.

I believe #2 is acceptable, but the “consolation prize” needs to be substantial. None of this “well, you haven’t had an exotic in 10,000 drops, so here’s a ticket scrap.” (note: I’ve no clue what the average rate of exotic drops is, I made that number up for sake of example".)

The primary reason I have all but left GW2 is because I simply feel the reward for effort is dismal at best. I like to know I’m making progress towards a goal, even if that last drop didn’t give it to me outright. I like to be able to lay down numbers on a spreadsheet and figure out how much I need to do in order to guarantee a result. RNG, as it stands currently, is the polar opposite of that. The caveat to the well defined path is that I don’t like having my patience tried. It’s ok to tell me I have to play casually for a year to get to a certain goal. Telling me I have to play casually for 5 years is too much.
People need to see progress, and RNG doesn’t allow it. Some form of #2 on your list would greatly increase the perception that the game is rewarding. Because no matter what you do, you know you are progressing towards whatever goal you wish to achieve. Just don’t let the monetizers convince you that “progressing” means merely nudging you forward an inch on a 1000mile journey.

Rivermoon.7153:

By now, I’ve spent more than 10 times what I paid for the game at the gem store.

You’ve answered your own questions here.

Talonblaze/SirJack: thank you for the explanation.

So I download and install the patch, log in, and receive a “Regal bag of goods”

What did Anet take away that this is supposed to compensate for?

Grats to Anet for making the list. I also note that Eve Online didn’t make the list at all.

-1. Game is doing just fine without it, and no-one yet has proven that even a barely passable majority have any interest in it.

-1

Thanks Wanze, way to completely kill the last remaining bit of enjoyment I get out of GW2.

I have little karma because I spent the last of it on obsidian shards. I’ve not run an event in weeks, and I haven’t done any “normal game play” for months, because, in my personal opinion, the game is anything but “fun” the way it is currently run. Dynamic events are dull and unrewarding. Dungeons have gimmicky mechanics (stacking, skipping, etc.), world bosses are limited to once a day, etc. For someone who is a loot focused player, GW2 has dried up completely, because Anet’s path to obtaining anything worth having in this game is “grind gold, buy on tp or gemstore”.
The only thing I had left was to flip and make a few gold (max) every day or two on the TP while I sit and hope for a change of direction from Anet. Now you want people like myself to go mindlessly grind dynamic events until our eyes bleed, just so we can flip on the tp?
Your idea comes across more as a PvP finisher. You’ve won the flipping game and are tired of making gold, so now you want to completely eliminate smaller opponents and solidify your position of extreme wealth.

Interesting idea. I’ll bite.

TazzDeMazz.4716:

@OP seems to be a bit to overexpecting. I expect like 2 maps. Anything more would be awesome but I’m not holding my breath for it.

We’ll get one zone, but they’ll market it like it was two entire multi-zone regions.

I’ll buy more gems with cash when Anet decides to make this game something beyond a cash grab. Been waiting since last summer, and I’m not to worried about spending any cash in the next few years.

JustTrogdor.7892:

It seems to have what you want.

No. He won’t be happy until he can force his viewpoints and all the trash that comes with them onto GW2 and the people who don’t want to deal with it. Rest assured he’ll be gloating proudly on the forums the very day it is announced should Anet ever make that decision.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Not this topic again..

They aren’t winning on the “we want dueling” front, so they are trying a different tactic.

This is strictly my own opinion of course, but, that being said…

There’s a lot of complaints, insults, and all around toxicity about players “just spamming 11111” for a fight, but, it seems to me, Anet made it that way.

Not because people are unskilled. Not because they are stupid. Not because they are lazy. While these issues may apply in some cases, when it gets right down to it, the real reason is there’s nothing else you can do.

Each weapon, in each class, is given 5 skills. Each skill generally does certain damage types. Yet when you go up against a boss, or often times the mobs of the sacred living story, what do you get? “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable”

As soon as you see “Invulnerable” that skill on your skill bar is of no use. Take the centaur herds in Queen’s Pavilion this time around. Perfect opportunity for skills like #5 on the Guardian Staff, where you can strategically place a wall that they can’t cross, allowing you and your allies to take advantage of the situ.. oh wait. “Invulnerable”

In the long run, it all comes back to skill #1. Because in so many cases, it’s just about the only effective skill, or, in many cases, it’s the most effective by a large amount. Sure, you might be able to use poison on a mob that is “Invulnerable” to cripple, but if your weapon is weak in that area, #1 is your best option. In fact, #1 is the best option in many cases when it comes to doing max DPS, simply because it’s the one that is off cooldown the most.

I work at it, and try to use my weapons such that the attacks I use are ones that are effective against a given mob, but often times it is just as easy, and sometimes faster, to let auto-attack do it’s job.

I don’t think that 111111 would be nearly as common if we had more skills to choose from, and that those skills were more effective.

To me, the “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” “Invulnerable” issue is just another gimmick, just like basic boss mobs that have the great lakes for a health pool.

I’m more fed up than bored. I log in when I have nothing else to do. Every time I consider actually buying gems, they do something like what they pulled with the Pavilion. I’m a loot person, yes, but what really ticked me off was the removal of the XP from the vets and other mobs.

Haven’t dropped a dime into the gemstore since last summer, and I don’t intend to any time soon. They have stated they have not even considered an expansion, they’ve admitted that China is driving the changes being made on our version of the game (see: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/fotfw/Zephyr-Sanctum-has-no-energy-now/first ), and they are consistently removing loot and gold sources from the game.

It’s almost as if they are intentionally trying to kill the game.

Evidence that I see:
-There have been many complaints over the past year about loot getting nerfed, and gold getting nerfed etc.
-A short while ago, a dev video about Wildstar comes out regarding their raid content, highlighting at least once that loot is a major draw for doing their content.
-Not long after that, GW2 says on their facebook page “hey, Wildstar is in beta, check it out” (translation: go see our competitors game)
-And then finally we have tuesdays “patch”, where in GW2’s supposed open world raid content is pushed out with next to no loot, and dismal XP gain.

Give me a tin foil hat if you want, but I think they are trying to push people away.

Tspatula.9086:

I bet not. This was just tossed our as a quicky for the new players. I can’t imagine ANET spending an additional minute of dev time on this. They are working on China!! Spoon

Fixed it for you.

Vol.7601:

phys.7689:

Vol.7601:

I find it odd that the NA/EU servers couldn’t have stayed at 80 while China stayed at 15.

And I also find it disappointing that China is now driving the development of the game instead of NA/EU.

China will continue to effect our development, ANET is still developing for both, so they will want to keep content as similar as possible. Also, whereas before this wasnt as big an issue, now, you must remember, an upleveled 80 tends to have a lot less traits/trait points than they used to. The difference between a level 80 and a level 50 is now super drastic.

but i agree its a disturbing trend

I would very much prefer that Anet designs content with both NA/EU & China as a consideration, and where possible tailor changes to NA/EU & China specifically rather than lump both together because China GW2 is ‘more important’

Vol, we’re just beta for China now, most likely. It explains why the living story threw so many oddities at us last year. They were testing a ton of different ideas to see what worked and what didn’t, all the while getting people to pay cash to fund their beta experiments.

I think Queen’s Pavilion is an excellent example of what we can expect from now on if they are looking to develop one game for two vastly different cultures. China is their new big source of money. We will get table scraps, nothing more.

lordkrall.7241:

Calae.1738:

I don’t think you are wrong.

I have a feeling that what we are seeing is a combination of milking the current playerbase and targeting a different market on another continent that has literally hundreds of millions of people.

The China market is HUGE. Even if this is just a cashgrab strategy, they can make bank and not care if the game itself died a quick death.

Ah yes. I am sure they would be willing to put 300+ people (and friends) out of a job for some swift dollars….

You are a fool if you believe that investors wouldn’t do exactly this.

Mada.5319:

It seems evident that you do not even do Teq or Wurm. Teq/Wurm and Karka get completed within 15 minutes by a coordinated group and you’ll be swimming in rares and loot chests if you made the effort to get organized.

Funny thing that. I did Karka queen and Teq just tonight. got a grand total of 4 yellows. Your “swimming” statement is laughably exagerated.

chronometria.3708:

Anet made decent loot appear so rarely that players became akin to starving people, desperately gorging on champion boxes in the faint hope that something appeared in them. The champ train was a symptom of player “reward starvation” and a large amount of learned helplessness. Why do complex events like tequatl and 3 headed wurm when those give next to nothing in return. Far better to simply run round in a boring circle while watching tv and to collect a hundred champ boxes in the hope of something by raw force of numbers.

GW2 is built around giving nothing and taking all our time and the culmination of this is events like the new queens gauntlet, which are the perfection of this punishing philosophy.

We learned that the mystic forge hates us. We learned that RNG hates us, but now we don’t event get drops in our events for the rng to happen in.

The game hates us – that’s how I feel at the moment and I don’t understand how it can have come to this. I want to play, but its as if I am being told to go play something else – why is this?

Very well said, and dead on accurate.

I believe this is how Anet wants the entire game to be. Where the only method of obtaining things is through real cash purchase. Get used to this, more is probably coming soon.

No reason to play it at all. Did the much hyped “boss blitz” and out of all of it got a total of 3 greens.

These are great, though I’d double check on a couple of the numbers. I know for a fact that when I built The Dreamer I needed 77 Mystic Clovers.

TooBz.3065:

I think that ANet isn’t really willing to increase the amount of meaningful rewards that people get and therefore people will not do difficult content. It’s just not worth it.

This is pretty accurate. Anet’s constant attempts to drive people to buy gems with real cash has resulted in a player base that, for what appears to be a majority, is only concerned with the most efficient way to get what tiny scraps of reward they can get together. Thus we have zergs, stacking, speed runs, etc.

They’ll keep nerfing loot as they start to see sales drop, and that will force more players to take the easy route, but eventually they’ll simply leave, not ever opening their wallets again. Other games have picked up on this. NCSoft knows it. Why else would WildStar be making a point of talking about the loot you get from their raids? They know it’s a sore point for this game, and are trying to entice people to switch.

Sure, mob AI and some mechanics need to be looked at, but the primary issue is ease-of-grind driven by a lack of reward.

Next, they’ll want to just be able to swap professions with the same character.

Then they’ll want to just skip all that and have their characters be level 80 upon creation.

Why not just ask for a pack of all the legendary weapons to go with it as well?

KarlaGrey.5903:

Why make an expansion when there’s enough kittens feeding the gem store.

Pretty much /thread right here.

Until the cash flow starts to die off, we’ll see nothing new.

Besides guys, they did just release a huge expansion, with over a dozen zones. China.

It’s broken good.

Started with slowness in the buy/sell listings, then went down hill from there.

The performance of the trading post is so erratic and unpredictable, it’s closing in on being of no use at all.

Dusty Moon.4382:

sorudo.9054:

so we have:
-WvW
-sPvP
-HotM

PvE players have:
-open world

uhmm, i think PvE players have a say about this far more then the pro-duelers, there are plenty of places to fit duels so there is no need to add PvP in the only single place for PvE players.

For Dueling – go to Obsidian Sanctum or make your own PvP arena and invite who ever you want to duel. Then duel to your heart’s content.

No to dueling in the PvE world – it is a slippery slope to Open World PvP.

+1 It doesn’t belong in open world PvE

Conaywea.5062:

What if anet adds a new update where Every mob and even your toons can feel real pain?

This would certainly cut down on zerker gear. A portion of the playerbase would spend no time swapping to setups that would draw out the pain and death as long as possible.

Maybe this will help.

Per the wiki @ http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Kill_the_Hydra_Queen

"
Anomaly:
You will only receive credit for the achievement Kill the Hydra Queen if Jenny is alive when the Admiral dies.
"

Some of my favorites:

GS: Lovestruck
Longbow: Zodiac (by far my favorite of all the longbows)
shortbow: The Dreamer
Staff: Monsoon, though I’ve no character it fits with
Sword: Bonetti’s Rapier
Dagger: Lovestruck
Focus: Lovestruck
Shield: Lovestruck (in fact I’d say this is the most beautiful item in the game right now)
Scepter: Ascended and Meteorlogicus
Speargun: Stingray (not sure what the actual skin name is)
Pistol: Not to fond of many of them, but I use Hand Held Disaster

Yes, I am one of those rare few that finds most of the Lovestruck skins to be beautiful, sue me.

So for a period of time earlier, the TP was giving error 503 when trying to do various things.

Not to long ago it started working again, and if I dare say, it is now extremely quick with all aspects.

I don’t know what the devs did, but please do NOT undo it, it’s working wonderfully!

Palador.2170:

I wouldn’t count on it happening.

ANet seems to have a very strong (and growing) disconnect from what a lot of players want in the game to make the experience more enjoyable. They keep focusing and refocusing on a few aspects that they consider important, without grasping that the “unimportant” parts are important to us.

It’s like a sports car. Imagine having one made just for you by some auto company. It’s fairly good, though the paint job’s a bit questionable. You drive it for a bit, and tell them that it’s fast, though it’s not the fastest, and the seat could be better. They take it in, and improve the speed. You try it for a while, and tell them that it’s even better now, though you’d like the seat looked at. And the hot pink trim kind of detracts from the metallic red paint job.

Thus begins a pattern of you taking it in for improvements, and they improve the speed, the handling, and the braking. Meanwhile, you can’t enjoy the (technically superior) car due to the discomfort of driving it. You ask and beg about the seat being improved, and maybe that paint job, but they don’t seem to hear you. And then, one day, you pick it up to discover that they’ve removed the seat entirely to make the car lighter for more speed, and fixed the uneven paint job by painting the whole thing puke green.

This is ANet, so focused on building a technically superior game that they can’t grasp the other issues. Things like proper adjustment of town clothes or guild halls? Those are “other issues”.

Not sure, but I think you have mistaken cash-cow for technically superior.

Rym.1469:

Don’t you worry!

If they bring back the original Queen’s Jubilee champtrain, everyone will move put from EotM.

Even a shade of last year’s Queen’s Arena train will be the most profitable source of income with endlessly respawning champs next to each other

I seriously doubt that they will bring back the Pavilion without making massive nerfs to the loot.

Civilis.2547:

The Temple of Lyssa event, which requires the defense to fail, frequently is griefed, and annoys me to no end. It is not fun to be blocked by other players.

Anet really cannot seem to get it through their heads that this sort of mechanic invites greifing to no end.

Any time you lock content behind gates that other players can willingly open or close, griefers will do exactly that.

Maybe someday Anet will learn this.

Why? He lost to Ellen. He was ignored regarding Lion’s Arch. He got conscripted by Lionguard.

Evon sure seems to be in a good mood lately all things considered.

He’s up to something.

Ah the Queen’s Pavilion. Can’t wait to see how much megaserver exacerbates the constant bickering and flaming that goes on in map chat over how to best attack a given champion. :roll eyes:

I was considering starting a thread on this one myself. As someone relatively new to the mesmer profession, it’s nice to see I’m not the only one who thinks this skill needs some help.

My vote would be to keep the timing and such as is, but please, please make it do something that is useful in most situations. I feel like the boon removal is essentially useless. I can probably count on one hand the number of mobs it’s effective against (given, I do not do PvP, and it probably has advantages there).

I’d like to see the boon removal take away and shifted to a utility, then make Mind Stab do something useful like stun+interrupt. The cast time and various aspects of it, in my opinion, would make it a great interrupt skill.

Seems the main issue right now is that the Trading Post in question is not the Chinese one.

Sometimes I wonder if we’re ever going to see work done on our version of Tyria ever again.

Yoroiookami.3485:

WolfiKurisu.6894:

Can the bonus damage to certain enemy sigils stack?

That’s a good question. Anyone knows if you can have 2 of the same sigils on 2 handed weapon and have them working? Like bonus 20%?

Also thank you for your input, guys. I rarely do dungeons, but I’m glad to hear that they do have some use.

No, they do not stack. If you look at the details by mousing over it in game, it states the following in red text: “Sigils do not stack with any tier of the same sigil type”

My wife and I both play, and starting a couple days ago, these issues are coming up as well, but not for both of us at one time. We’ll be running a story line, or just in open world and one of us will get an error like 58:11:5:523:101 and get dc’d.
Both our systems are brand new (come to think of it this did not start happening until we got everything on the new computers patched and updated, including drivers, windows updates, etc.).

edit: Posting here because the support page “cannot be found”. Lovely service.

The means of accurately reporting such user actions is convoluted, burdensome, and time consuming. It’s almost as if Anet doesn’t want to hear it.

I find the lack of performance and options quite surprising for something that is supposedly a web platform.

There are plenty of websites out there that deal with thousands of products in a very efficient, timely, and easily filtered manner. Why this does not also apply to GW2 is beyond me, but it’s embarrassing to bring outsiders to this game and then show them the TP :/

It would be nice, at the very least, if Anet would comment on it to enlighten us as to why we don’t have it yet.

For all the attention the gem store gets, it appears like they don’t care, but that is likely not the case.

These threads never get old.

There are two things at play here.

1. Griefers are apoplectic that Guild Wars 2 is so well designed that they can’t get their jollies from harassing any person they come across.

2. Another group, just as belligerent, is upset because Anet doesn’t provide a way for them to get attention from a captive audience.

I have yet to meet someone who is pro-dueling that doesn’t exude a completely toxic attitude while spending an exorbitant amount of time justifying why other people should be forced to watch them prove their manhood against someone else.

It’s hard to nail down just two.

Today’s choices would be:

#1: Removal of Farming Punishment (diminishing returns)
#2: increase of T6 mat drops so the price evens out at around 20silver each.

I’d like to know what site got hacked that all these accounts had their passwords lifted from (yes, I realize it’s the users problem for using same passwords).
The flood of hacked accounts being used to sell gold is concerning.

Rouven.7409:

Neural.1824:

I do silversmithing in RL. Believe me, either we are using tiny little ingots, or we are absolutely horrid jewelers if it takes multiple ingots to make a single ring.

Ok, but can you smelt an ingot or forge (would that be the correct term?) a ring in … what … 3 seconds?

I can’t, personally, because I use older hand crafting methods, but if you buy a pre-made mold for casting, it only takes a couple seconds to pour liquid metal into the mold.

Now.. if you want it cooled, stamped, polished, etc. yeah, it gets messy from there. Especially when you start setting stones.

I’m a little OCD with jewelry making (partially due to the dangers involved with using torches and other fun stuff in RL), so I tend to cringe when blowing through a whole bunch of gold ingots to make an amulet.

Khisanth.2948:

So how many gold ingots does it take to make one gold coin?

I do silversmithing in RL. Believe me, either we are using tiny little ingots, or we are absolutely horrid jewelers if it takes multiple ingots to make a single ring.