Guild Wars 2

Nachtz.4930:

Clipping ? The background seems fine to me, look at the right on the screen. People fading in is my daily life on GW2 ^^’

Well it may be extreme luck, but I don’t think this vid was edited. As for your first remark, recording 400 full vids, from buying the weapons to throwing into the forge is just so crazy that I can’t believe it ^^.

No, anyone with eyes can see the players edited in on the left side of the screen. Rule of thumb, if something seems too good to be true, it is.

If there really was a recipe for precursors, it wouldn’t be posted on youtube. The folks that know would be churning out precursors and raking in the cash.

Nachtz.4930:

So this guy shows us everything, from buying weapons to throwing em into the forge, did not cut any part of the process, and he got a precursor ?

But maybe he just didn’t include the other 400 tries. You’re assuming that’s the only video he made – it’s just the only one he posted.

Actually, look at the background right before the Dusk screen comes up. A number of players fade in during the screen coming up with Dusk. The video is obviously edited. It seems like a scam, although to what end I don’t know.

laokoko.7403:

Charismatic Harm.9683:

Maybe you should shed some light on exactly what’s going on because I can’t follow your logic at all.

What I’m trying to say is very simple. Anet can change the price of precursor to anything they want. But they choose to not do it.

Actually that’s not entirely correct (and I’m not disagreeing with your underlying argument – just clarifying). ANet can change the cost of items, they don’t have any direct control over the price.

What if all the sudden ANet decided to make Cup of Potato Fries really rare and sweep the over supply off of the market. It’s not a desirable food, so the price probably wouldn’t change all that much.

marnick.4305:

Aridia.3042:

marnick.4305:

Morrigan.2809:

Logitech G600
it is awesome
all others will bow before it eventually

Considering the G600 is basically Logitech stealing Razer’s design, I’d much rather use the original than the clone. By using a G600 you actually bowed before Razer, not Logitech.

Except the clone is so much superior than the original.

1. The mouse allows for other grip style instead of a claw grip.

2. The buttons are shaped differently so the learning cycle is so much faster. There’s zero need to put learning stickers on the buttons because the feel of it tells you what button is.

3. The mouse wheel has left and right tilt

4. There’s a ring finger button that can be used as a modifier key. If you map it as ctrl and push the face 1 button, it becomes ctrl + 1. There’s also a separate mode button that’ll change the mouse to 3 different new set of macros. That’s easily 5 to 6 times the number of mapping you can do vs the naga.

5. Multi color profile on the mouse is standard

6. It’s better built the thumb button paint does not rub off after 6 months. There’s no double click issue like the naga.

7. Doesn’t require a logon razer profile to use it.

All your points are invalid for following reasons:…

That list is pretty much a complete list of why I have switched over to the Logitech G600. The only change I would make the the list is I don’t have problems with the grip on the Naga. Just because your opinion and experience is different doesn’t make someone else’s opinion invalid.

Both my husband and I had Nagas, and he ended up with the wireless version after his got bounce in the left click button. We’ve had issues with all three mice, and the Razer software is crap. It insists that it must connect to the Internet and track what games you have installed/are playing so their marketing department can figure out which gaming company to hit up next for a custom mouse. Getting that junk off of my computer has made a significant improvement in my overall system performance. I’m not exactly a fan of the Logitech software either, but at least it is less intrusive.

I only ever used the first 4 button on the side of my Naga because it was too difficult to accurately press any of the others – the buttons are too small and aren’t shaped like the Logitech’s so that you know where your thumb is without having to look. I’m sure other folks can handle the naga just fine, but it’s still a really bad design from a human factors perspective.

The colored lights aren’t just pretty, they tell you at a glance what profile is active.

Not only is the Logitech less expensive and higher quality, it has more features. It’s a no-brainer. The only thing the Razer has going for it in my opinion is slicker marketing.

Syeria.4812:

it’s worth pointing out that the spike coincided with the release of Super Adventure Box. It’s possible that many of the suppliers of scales simply have been engaged in other activities.

This is the most likely explanation. Wasn’t someone just complaining about Elder logs going up too? I think the assumption that it’s only one thing out of the entire TP is flawed.

munkiman.3068:

Precursor isn’t a legendary, it’s one of many ingredients it takes to make it. The simple fact it’s based on RNG, is an artificial way to make it take longer and cost more.

Of course it’s artificial. RNG is how every game with a player economy simulates the cost of creating something. In the real world, bad guys don’t walk around with their pockets full of items and money that you can beat out of them. Value doesn’t appear out of thin air like it does in a game.

Drop tables simulate that a rare sword would be very expensive to make in the real world – it would require rare materials, an exceptionally skilled blacksmith, etc. Precursors are rare because they are intended to be rare. Legendaries are hard to get because they are intended to be hard to get.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Why do legendaries have to be the account bound reward when there are other items that already fulfill that role? What if we flip it around and ask if you got a lucky drop of a precursor for a legendary you didn’t want, why shouldn’t you be able to turn your game playing effort into a huge pile of gold?

When I get home from work and off my phone, I think I’m going to price out the legendary recipes to see how much value the account bound components add just out of curiousity (assuming the precursor is free)

You may have misunderstood my point. I didn’t say that precursors should be Account Bound….I said that Legendaries should be.

Nope I got that – I was posting from my phone, so I probably didn’t communicate that well.

My back of the napkin calculations indicate that if you got a lucky drop of the precursor The Colossus, you could take your skill points/laurels/dungeon tokens/karma and turn it into 760G by crafting the legendary the Juggernaut. Edit – Actually I forgot to take out the 15% of the sale for the precursor, materials and legendary, so only about 646G instead of the 760G

If you sold the lucky drop, it would be worth about 700G. If you sold all of the materials that can be sold instead of using them to make the legendary, it would be about 840G. If you made the legendary, it’s going for about 2300G right now. It’s just a ballpark estimate – markets change and I don’t have the data to make a super accurate guess.

I don’t play any character that uses a hammer. Why shouldn’t I be able to craft The Juggernaut and sell it (and get the money to buy the one I actually want and have some left over)? There are plenty of other items in the game that can only be purchased with currency you can only earn through playing the game. As you said before, the legendaries are just skins. Really rare skins, but still just skins.

I don’t know why the folks who like making gold in the game, but don’t really enjoy crafting or world completion or whatever shouldn’t have something to strive for… Legendaries are the only items in the game that have enough cost associated with them to make them extravagantly expensive. If they weren’t crafted with account bound materials, they wouldn’t be priced much higher than the precursors.

The folks that play all the different aspects of the PVE game have leader boards now, and the WvWers have ranks and abilities. There’s unique looking karma/dungeon armor. The folks that can come up with 2300G are either playing the game a lot or supporting the game with their real world dollars. Why take away the one goal they can strive for playing the game the way they like to play it?

There’s not a lot of satisfaction in accumulating a bunch of gold if there’s nothing fancy to spend it on. Look at the number of commanders running around – 100G is not really a stretch goal for a certain group of folks.

Charismatic Harm.9683:

In a way, you kind of prove MY point, lol.
(snip)

What if you thought about Legendaries as the HoM reward for GW2? All it really is is a skin anyway….

Well if it seems like I agree with you it’s because I do… mostly

Why do legendaries have to be the account bound reward when there are other items that already fulfill that role? What if we flip it around and ask if you got a lucky drop of a precursor for a legendary you didn’t want, why shouldn’t you be able to turn your game playing effort into a huge pile of gold?

When I get home from work and off my phone, I think I’m going to price out the legendary recipes to see how much value the account bound components add just out of curiousity (assuming the precursor is free)

Charismatic Harm.9683:

Shortened or skipped journey aside….Legendaries should be Account Bound in my opinion. You should not be able to buy them with gold at all. They should be reserved for those players that gathered the Account Bound materials necessary to craft one via the content in the game that provided them.
.

I have mixed feelings about this… I agree with the sentiment and in some ways I think that there should be rewards like the GW1 HOM rewards that you can’t get unless you play the game. I think the high end karma and dungeon gear fills this role.

On the other hand, I don’t know why there shouldn’t be extremely expensive items that reward the TP players and the farmers that can generate that kind of gold. Heck even the folks that spend real money to get gold (legitimately) help the game by supporting development.

munkiman.3068:

I also mentioned the TP will adjust, but the margin of player earnings versus the set cost to play the game would be higher, increasing overall wealth and bringing a better balance to the TP.

No, it wouldn’t. It would just make things more expensive. If everyone has more money, but the supply and demand remain the same, prices go up.

If every player received 100G for completing their daily, what would happen? No-one in their right mind would sell an item that required a lot more effort than completing a daily for 100G. I know that’s an extreme example, but I don’t think the message would come across in a more realistic example.

The market in GW2 is much more efficient than the market in any other game I’ve played. Things settle out to their real value really quickly for the most part. You can see it in the complaints in the crafting forum that it makes more financial sense to sell the materials than the crafted item.

Making it easier for everyone to make more gold will not get you what you want. The only thing that will bring down precursor prices is to make more supply available, either by increasing the drop rate, or adding a recipe that guarantees a precursor.

munkiman.3068:

Pandemoniac.4739:

- and one more thought… you can’t change the cost of a precursor or legendary through taxes. You only change the cost of selling it. The cost of creating it remains the same.

I think the thought here was to hamper market manipulation further on high priced high demand items, not in actually changing the cost of the precursor immediately.

Cost =/= price the way I was using it. You’re assuming that the market price of the precursor has nothing to do with the cost of creating one and that it is entirely set by these mysterious manipulators.

Even if these “manipulators” had the power to arbitrarily set the price of something, taxes don’t target them specifically. They target everyone equally and folks will change their behavior to account for the taxes.

The thing that sets active traders apart from the typical market participant is the number of trades they make, not the price of the trades. If you really wanted to stick it to the traders (which I think would be a mistake), you’d put a flat fee on a trade, and you would have a progressive fee based on how many listings and buy orders someone had out.

There is market manipulation, i’ve seen it done on low cost fast moving items. You can fairly easily artificially increase the value on high moving items for a short period of time simply by buying enough stock and reselling it off at a higher margin. You have to be quick though since high moving items settle just as fast.

Basically you buy enough stock, post some of it at a fair, but higher market value and sell off the lower end, undercutting yourself. This can be seen with the ecto market almost daily, by many. Most of the time it’s not even intentional, people just know it’ll sell eventually since the market moves so fast.

That’s not market manipulation – that’s just trading. And the techniques that work on high volume items don’t translate well to low volume items.

Even though DeBeers did do some market manipulation by buying up diamond stocks, the only reason it worked is because they controlled the mines that produced 80% of the supply. When the economy is as large as it is in GW2, and when there’s no way to gain control over the means of producing items, it is extremely difficult to manipulate the market for any length of time.

Ra the Eternal.1635:

It would be great if we had the option to merge the chats for all of our guilds, so we don’t have to keep switching representation just to keep up on current events.

I would like to see the ability to formalize an alliance across guilds, and a separate “Alliance” chat channel. That would let guilds organize events together, but keep their private guild stuff private.

I’m in multiple guilds because one of my guilds is too large to fit in a single guild (alliance chat would solve a big problem there), a smaller guild of friends that I sometimes group up with and like to represent when we’re grouped so they get the bonus influence, and I’ve got a personal guild with my husband so we can stash overflow crafting mats and runes and such.

It makes life so much easier to be able to change my representation on the fly so I don’t have to swap characters just to get something out of the guild stash I share with my husband.

Essence Snow.3194:

Pandemoniac.4739:

How would it be different from the listing fee being a percentage of the sale price?

The 15% we have now is a proportional tax…ie…it’s fixed. A progressive tax increases as value of whatever is being taxed increases.

Ah, luxury tax. The oak trees are pollinating around here and it makes me a little slow.

I’m not sure if it will have the effect you want though… If you raise the tax rate too high, more folks become interested in avoiding the tax. You might just end up pushing folks off of the TP and into dark alleys of LA, which will drop the supply, which will raise the price.

Economics is a tricky business. There’s no straight cause and effect, just a bunch of systematic interactions. You poke the market in in one spot and things in six other places change. And then three days later, that one thing you didn’t anticipate sneaks up behind you and bites you in the tookus.

Edit – and one more thought… you can’t change the cost of a precursor or legendary through taxes. You only change the cost of selling it. The cost of creating it remains the same.

munkiman.3068:

Once they played to the game to the point they are satisfied the “end game” content the shiny stuff, is just so far out of reach, that it completely discourages continuing. I think that is the crux of what I see.

Well the folks that see the end game as getting a shiny will leave as soon as they get that shiny or realize it’s unobtainable. Making it easier to get won’t keep them in the game. This is true of any goal that someone perceives as being the win condition for the game. Once you’ve won the game, why continue to play it?

Charismatic Harm.9683:

Essence Snow.3194:

That’s something that I’ve been struggling with. I’ve tinkered with the idea of progressive taxes associated with using the tp, but it’s only a glimpse of a thought atm.

Are you suggesting a system with an ever increasing, permanent diminishing return?

How would it be different from the listing fee being a percentage of the sale price?

Essence Snow.3194:

By no means am I saying the entire system is broken. The luxury system (lots of variables) however is another matter.

There’s a big gap between the most expensive exotic and the least expensive legendary, but given what it takes to make one, I don’t see that as broken.

I guess I’m just completely missing the point. People have obtained legendaries without exploiting (I know of several personally), so they aren’t impossible to get. What would “fix” the luxury system? Some item between Legendary and and the most expensive exotic?

There are plenty of cool things to spend money on that are luxuries and not as expensive as legendaries. Frankly I think some of the less expensive items look better than legendaries. Why is it such a big deal to have one class of weapons that is really difficult to obtain?

munkiman.3068:

I’ll restate what i’m saying to both the above. What’s broken is the margin between what it cost to play versus what the average player earns.

I’ve given a ton of examples that it’s not broken. I can afford everything I need to play and I probably put less work into earning money than the average player.

munkiman.3068:

It’s not rocket surgery. There are a few things i mentioned that could be changed to help bring this more in-line

But you have yet to convince me that it’s broken. I earn plenty of gold to play the game without doing anything special. I actually waste a lot of money because I don’t want to be bothered to think about the most cost-effective way to get what I want.

Are you annoyed because you don’t have a big pile of gold, or are you really saying that you can’t afford the cost of way points and repairs just by playing the game?

Essence Snow.3194:

I think it is a qualitative assumption in that most activities in the game simply do not have high enough profit potential to support such prices. The observable impact certain activities have on them is apparent via the ability those activities have to support certain prices.

ex) the activity of farming meta events does not have the ability to sustain the high prices
the activity of cof p1 grinding has the ability to sustain the high prices

OK, but when you say “high prices”, you mean “the high prices of precursors and legendaries”. So, if you want a legendary and you want it soonish, you either have to get extremely lucky, or you have to grind out gold doing (insert current most popular method). What is the problem with that?

Saying the entire system is broken because luxury items are expensive and hard to get doesn’t make any sense.

munkiman.3068:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I’m not poor, and I do neither X nor Y, so I disagree with your underlying assumption that game mechanics are keeping players poor.

I’m not poor either really, I’m also not arguing for or against the rarity of items and their inherent values in the global economy, I’m saying the balance is off, and i’m pretty sure anet knows it.

munkiman.3068:

(big snip)
In no way am i talking about the speed of earning, or even with arguing over the cost of pre’s, my beef is with the flaws in the system that keep players poor unless they do x or y.

You keep saying that something is broken, and when someone shows an example of it not being broken, that example doesn’t apply to what you meant.

I’m not really following your argument that well, and I would like to understand it, so would you lay it out more simply for me? Go ahead and talk to me like I’m dense, I promise I won’t be offended

What exactly are “the flaws in the system”?
How are these flaws keeping players poor?
What do you mean by poor?

munkiman.3068:

In no way am i talking about the speed of earning, or even with arguing over the cost of pre’s, my beef is with the flaws in the system that keep players poor unless they do x or y. Honestly, this is the only game (mmo or not), besides simcity (which is all about earnings and keeping a tight budget) that i’ve actually spent time thinking about the financial aspect of a game, not even GW1.

I’m not poor, and I do neither X nor Y, so I disagree with your underlying assumption that game mechanics are keeping players poor. GW2 is different from the other games you listed because it includes a simulation of a real economy in it. You have to have gold sinks to siphon off all the gold that materializes out of thin air when a player kills a mob and gets a drop. What’s the point of having a huge pile of gold if you aren’t going to spend it on something? Am I poor if I only have 10G in the bank, but I’ve got a bunch of characters outfitted with rare gear?

When desirable items are rare, they are expensive. There’s absolutely no way around that. If you make it easier for players to earn gold, the rare desirable things will just get more expensive. If you make them less rare, then the folks that enjoy expending the effort to get the rare things won’t have anything to work toward and the game will get a lot less fun for them.

Ursan.7846:

munkiman.3068:

Pretty sure everything in Vegas has known odds (or at the least calculable), not sure why we can’t get the same treatment.

Do slot machines really have known odds? Or is it just from people reporting their results (Just like this threads)

The only games with odds known to the players are card games and video games that are analogues of real life games. (Edit) I suppose Roulette and the wheel of fortune type games have known odds also. Craps sort of does, but there are folks whose rolls are not entirely random…

This is why I only played the vanilla video poker machines on my trade show breaks – I didn’t make my fortune, but it was pretty sweet to get the free drinks and come away a few bucks ahead.

The vig on slot machines can go anywhere from 0.1% to 10%, so you can’t really infer the probabilities based on the payouts. All that publishing the probabilities would do is make the folks that don’t understand probability complain when they use X keys and don’t get a ticket.

munkiman.3068:

But this topic being about supply and demand, you’re seeing some pretty wealthy people posting precursors, and many that might even get one (this middle class casual), may not even have the listing fee and is forced to play outside there normal zone of play just to get enough to list it.

What’s wrong with some folks not being able to afford some things? (Don’t get me started on the listing fee for buy orders though – that’s a whole other thread.)

munkiman.3068:

But, there are some silly things that are in the game currently that really make trying for them a waste, since you’re just never going to get there unless all you do is grind/farm.

What’s wrong with that? I could argue with you a bit about the only way to get expensive items being grinding, but I don’t think it would add much to the debate. I don’t agree that it’s a bad thing that some items are too expensive for folks to get without a lot of effort or time.

munkiman.3068:

You’re right, you can easily play most content with greens… Not sure how that’s even a point to be made. This game focuses on skin acquisition and for the majority of the player base to miss out on the main focus of the game seems pretty irrational. Do you not think tier 2-3 gear is a bit overpriced? how about the priory/vigil/whisper skins?

I don’t think anything is over-priced. I have some of my order skins, mixed with other skins I liked and I’m not a hard core gold earner. I don’t agree that the main focus of the game is acquiring stuff. I think the main focus of the game is building a character and fighting to see how good of a job you did building and playing your character. I’m sure other folks have a different focus.

munkiman.3068:

While i completely agree with you, there is a pretty big disparity between the wealthy and the poor. The game really doesn’t have solid ways to earn a living, so to speak, which is why there are complaints on the costs (ectos are pretty crazy right now). There are an extreme amount of money sinks in the game (crafting, waypoint costs, repairs, consumables, etc) that the average and in many cases “hard working” players really never break the 100g barrier, many not even the 40g one.

I think your perception of what should be considered “middle class” is flawed. If everyone in the middle class could afford a Ferrari, I guarantee you that next year there would be a model 10x as expensive that only a few people could afford. There’s nothing wrong with having items in a game that only a small percentage of players can afford, as long as you don’t need those items to play all of the content in the game.

I have easily earned more than 40G, and I don’t farm much or play the TP. I don’t have it sitting around in my bank because I bought stuff with it. I blew a lot of gold discovering every single chef recipe just for fun, and I have a bunch of alts I spent money on I didn’t really have to. None of the costs necessary for playing the game are unavoidably exorbitant. For example, I don’t buy a stack of rare veggie pizzas, when super veggie pizzas are 1/4 the cost and almost as effective. I always end up with more gold than I started with at the end of a play session (which is separate in my mind from a crafting or gearing up session).

When my Necro alt hit 80, I kitted her out in level 80 greens with major runes and sprang for exotic weapons and still had money left over. I think I spent some of her karma on trinkets, I don’t recall precisely. She can go anywhere in the game while I earn or find what I need to get her into her final gear. I don’t do dungeon speed runs, so maybe her gear would be a liability there, but she can do normal dungeon runs just fine.

I can afford everything I need to play the game and I don’t do COF p1 speed runs or play the TP.

There’s plenty of stuff I want, but I’ll get most of it eventually. Or I’ll get a lucky drop and get some of it sooner. Or I’ll sell some of the expensive stuff in my stash that I’m hanging on to just in case I need it for myself. It all comes down to how badly do you want whatever it is you can’t afford. Do you want it badly enough to not pay for another way point until you’ve saved up enough to buy it? Do you want it badly enough to not spend money to level by crafting and sell all of your harvested materials? Do you want it badly enough to not convert your gold to gems to buy the new shinies? The problem isn’t that players can’t earn gold fast enough. The problem is that the majority of players don’t know how to manage the gold they do earn.

Yes, it is indeed the Pirate Crook which sells for 9800 Karma from First Mate Shane.

Essence Snow.3194:

I don’t really mind high prices as long as they are not gated behind unbalanced/broken items/play/mechanics.

This is basically what we have now. If one wants to amass enough gold for said items they really have no choice but to do cof p1 or trade (ofc there are exceptions). Essentially they are gated behind these activities which are noticeably unbalanced. That is the reason I debate it. I feel it is a poor design choice, not necessarily “unfair”.

I don’t agree with your implied definition of “gated”. It may be that running COF P1 is the fastest way to make gold without being a trader, but it isn’t the only way. I suspect that COF runs are more popular than efficient. There is nothing preventing me from amassing a huge pile of gold without doing COF runs, even though it might take me longer. I’m not stuck behind any gate that only COF P1 will unlock.

I know that you’re convinced that no other activity can match what COF speed runs bring in, but while it may feel like fast gold, you don’t really know until you run the numbers and compare it to a different activity. You also have to consider that because everyone is doing it, the types of items dropped in COF are over-supplied. The most efficient farming changes with the market, and I can almost guarantee you that as soon as a particular method becomes overwhelmingly popular, there’s another method that will give you a better return once you factor in selling the drops.

We always test the waters before committing any significant amount of time to a farming activity. Empty out your inventory, deposit all but one gold in your bank, eat a 30 minute MF food, and farm until the food runs out. And yes, waiting around for the group to get their act together for COF counts against your farming time. Sell your junk and price out whatever drops you picked up and figure out what your gold per hour was. It’s best to run the test a few times to even out lucky drops.

In general, we’ve found that moving around pays out more than doing one thing over and over, hopping from way point to way point to chase events is a waste of time and money, and having a farming partner or two gives you a significant advantage over doing the same thing solo. We only run dungeons for the tokens or for fun. Folks won’t kill the trash mobs in them, which seems like shooting yourself in the foot considering some of the exotics I’ve had drop from them. They really don’t take that long to kill if you’re running with a competent team.

Ursan.7846:

Well, the biggest problem you already stated in your OP. That sell/buy listings =/= sell/buy orders.

I think the best we can do with the data we have available is to look at the change over time and add a fudge factor in for relistings and cancels. Looking at the buy/sell listings for items that are low volume tells us something, even though it’s not the whole story. I think we can assume that listings that have been around a while are the bounding range for where the real action is happening.

Ursan.7846:

Though I’d argue that the the main complaint isn’t WHY prices are high but that they SHOULDN’T be high. Many arguments all stem from this basic complaint.

1. Prices are high because manipulators. Prices are hence unnatural, unfair.
2. Prices are high because TP players. TP players not “legit,” prices are hence unfair.
3. Prices are high because item is too rare. Prices impossible to attain, unfair.

Which then spawns the discussion of whether the existence of such “luxury” goods in the game is good or not?

I believe the answer to that is yes. It is good for the game to make select rewards incredibly hard to attain, especially when these rewards have absolutely zero affect on the actual gameplay. But ah, that is an entirely independent topic from this one.

I think that’s a nice summary of why threads about precursors get so long. I think it’s odd that a luxury item in a game can spawn so many cries of “unfair!” but far fewer people seem to mind that they will never be able to afford the real world analogues. My suspicion is that it is tied to the desire to “win” the game, and many folks feel that having the “best” gear is the win condition. If you come at it from that perspective, “winning” GW2 is incredibly tedious, and not much of an accomplishment if someone who has put a lot less effort into the game can “win” just by getting lucky.

I like having extremely rare items in my games as long as they are truly luxuries, i.e. aren’t necessary to see all the content, and if there is a way to gamble for them. I open every single unidentified dye I get, because you never know if it might be something rare or cool. I dump the occasional set of level 80 rares into the forge just for the thrill of spinning the wheel.

I feel for the folks that are trying to gamble their way to a precursor instead of just accumulating the gold to buy one. I understand their motivation for doing it that way, but it turns something that should be fun into misery.

(edited for grammar and punctuation)

Gilosean.3805:

This is neat. Thanks for putting it together!

Thanks from me too – I found it very interesting!

I like this suggestion. I have the “about face” option mapped, but I’ve never used the “look behind” camera option because it never really gave me what I expected to see. I think you’ve put your finger on why.

BladeDVD.6234:

How is this good for the industry?
All you did really was take what WoW already put into action and made a lot of changes for the worse( errors, loading time, not working correctly initially) and one change for the better ( sell anywhere in the world).

Isn’t WoW using an auction house? I know that’s what they call it, and I saw you could bid on things, but I’m not sure if it actually works like a real auction where you put up an item (with maybe a min bid and a buy out price) and people can keep trying to outbid each other until the date the seller set. If so, that’s a bit of a different system than the GW2 Trading Post. There’s no real bidding, you decide what the price should be or what price you are willing to pay and you succeed in selling or buying if there is another party that agrees to your terms. So I don’t think it’s fair to say they just copied WoW.

One thing that an auction house (and you’re correct in assuming that WoW uses an auction house and not a market) can’t do is allow you to place a buy order for an item that isn’t available. That creates an additional level of efficiency because I can give someone an incentive to make or find what I want by telling them in advance what I would give them for their effort. There might be someone with exactly what I want stashed away and if the price is high enough they’ll sell it to me.

I don’t think that auctions are as efficient as a market, because it’s many buyers to one seller and once you as a buyer have your capital invested in an auction, it’s risky to pull it out and put it into another auction that might be more attractive. There’s always the chance that someone will swoop in at the last minute and out-bid you so you’re stuck with the “bird in the hand” problem.

The TP is a many buyers to many sellers relationship. If I like your price, I’ll buy it from you outright, and if I don’t, I’ll put my buy order in and wait for a seller that likes my price, and you can wait for a buyer that likes yours. I think it more accurately reflects the real value of the item and it’s a lot less time spent looking for the right item at the right price for me.

Mystic.5934:

vast majority of people don’t take econ 101. might seem juvenile to you and me and others here, but most people don’t understand it (as seen by the huge number of “precursors need to be cheaper” threads)

Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell is an alternative to sitting through a class. It doesn’t have any math or complicated charts; it’s basically an explanation of fundamental economic principles with lots and lots of real world examples. I think if everyone who votes would read and understand this book, the world might be a very different place.

Would it be possible to exclude the URL from the filter when using the " ":URL syntax? Sites with many pages often have numbers and random looking strings in their URLs that are bumping up against the leet speak parts of the filter. An example would be this page:

www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/bookertwa39997kittenml

replace kitten with 5 period ht

The URL if parsed correctly never displays on the forum, and it’s really difficult to reword a URL to be more polite

Levitas.1953:

at the end of the day i learnt a good term. schadenfreude, really nice.

One of my favorites and I love when an opportunity comes up to use it.

We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-Booker T. Washington

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

Be sure to add a link to this thread in your signature please.

Actually this thread should probably be merged with the thread from 5 months ago

It’s easier for the devs to gauge the level of player interest if we keep the discussion of one particular suggestion in one big thread instead of creating a bunch of new ones.

Rising Dusk.2408:

But to go out of your way to try to get responses on the forum for a post that is literally “LOOK AT WHAT I GOT OH MAN”? I think that’s excessive, and definitely rubs up against bragging.

People are strange – everyone loves a little schadenfreude and most folks don’t seem to mind commiseration threads but so few people are willing to celebrate someone else’s good fortune. It’s not like the original poster’s luck makes it less likely that you’ll be lucky.

I’m not sure how you can brag about something that requires zero skill. He had a stroke of luck and he’s excited. I see it as confirmation that that stingy djinn does occasionally pay out, and it makes me smile to think about the feeling that the OP must have had when he saw Dawn pop up on the screen.

I’ve found that in addition to getting map completion, if I always have food + potion active, harvest everything I come across, and kill some of the non-hostile mobs for the bonus XP I always end up way over level for my personal quests.

Many players don’t realize that the longer a creature has been in the world, the more XP it’s worth. The non-hostile creatures (the ones that con yellow) and veterans in out of the way places are worth quite a bit of bonus XP.

Congrats! And I don’t see it as bragging. When something exciting happens, it’s nice to be able to share the news of your good fortune with other folks. I still think when someone gets a precursor, Zommoros should set off some fireworks or something like the slot machines do when someone hits the jackpot.

marnick.4305:

Pandemoniac.4739:

No-one “chose” the price. Friedrich Engels said “what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.”

The price of precursors was set by the players answering these two questions :
How much gold would it take for you to part with a pre-cursor?
How much gold would you be willing to spend on a pre-cursor?

And the result was a price that neither side of the transaction is entirely happy with, but will accept.

I do not agree on that. On the bottom of every contract are 2 signatures. Both are needed to make a transaction happen. If you don’t agree with the transaction … don’t do it. Same goes for buying a house or getting a job. Don’t put your scribble under something you don’t support 100%. Everything has a correct market-driven pricepoint.

The only thing that pulls those two appart, and as such hurts sales, is taxation. The correct price can never be achieved by either party as long as people have to consider taxation. Since Engels was pretty much the first communist, I find that a bit funny.

Regardless of Engels political views, what he said is still true for a lot systems. Buyer and seller have opposing intentions, regardless of the tax. The buyer wants to buy an item as cheaply as possible, and the seller wants to sell the item as expensively as possible. The price where they meet in the middle isn’t the price either of them would set if they could – it’s a compromise that both can live with. That was the point of my two questions above – if you’re honest, the price that you come up with will be different for those two questions.

Market prices aren’t chosen – they emerge from a large number of individual buyers and sellers making decisions based on their particular situation. There is no “correct price” – there is only the price that the market will bear given the current state of everything – taxation, drop rate, supply, et. al. By each buyer and seller making an independent decision about what an item is worth, all of that information that each individual has about the current state of things gets aggregated into a general value, and that value changes as the situation changes and individuals make different decisions.

For this to really work though, you have to have a huge number of people participating in the market and they have to be making their buying and selling decisions based on how they want to allocate their resources, and not based on personal animosity or fear of being targeted as Lucas was proposing.

Geotherma.2395:

3rd party website, no ban possible. Use 3rd party this kind of stuff is what happens. Arenanet doesn’t enforce the rules on there, or even monitor it. It is use at own risk.

Yeah, but you don’t have to use it to get griefed through it. You can put anyone’s account in there you want – there’s no login. It’s basically like a bulletin board that anyone can pin anything they want on. You can flag entries as “inappropriate” but I’m not sure what the response time is for taking them down.

I would contact the guy that runs the site and ask if he can block entries with your guild leader’s account name for a while. Someone else will have to head up your groups unfortunately.

Some people really suck.

The hunter’s hearth POI is actually “Traveler’s Loft”, so you won’t see it on your map as hunter’s hearth.

For the explorer, it’s not POIs, it’s regions of the map. A common region to miss in the Shiverpeaks, is the Tail of the Serpent east of The Coil waypoint in Timberline Falls.

Why not just go to a different set of forums where whatever you want to say would be on topic?

Ooshi.8607:

You say that you want the precursors to be 50/90g. There is a very limited amount of precursors on the market, if they where that price anyone that wanted one would be able to afford it straight away, and the waiting list for precursors would be years if your plans where implemented.

You explained this really well. Another factor to consider is that when things are artificially cheap, folks consume more than they need, which contributes to the shortage.

You can get precursors for under 90G:
Venom is around 32G
Rage is around 43G
The Bard is around 70G

It’s not some mysterious cabal that is driving the prices up. The expensive precursors are expensive because there aren’t enough to go around to all the folks that want one. The precursors that fewer folks want are much less expensive.

Striker.9413:

Pandemoniac.4739:

I understand the appeal of bartering, but what is the up-side for ANet of encouraging bartering? Directing all trade through the TP has many benefits from a support, a code maintenance, and a economy management perspective. What would bartering add other than pleasing the portion of the community that wants it? I see a lot of down-side for ANet, and can’t think of a single up-side.

The upside is pleasing customers and gaining a boost in PR. Whether ANET thinks that benefit outweighs the cost is not my call. Although, as long as people are willing to throw paychecks into the casino, I’m not hopeful in receiving nice features.

Well, to you it’s a nice feature, to me it’s taking volume off of the TP and adding an obnoxious amount of trade spam to general chat, so it is a bad feature. I was just wondering if you had any reasons other than “it would make me happy”.

You do realize that even with player to player trading, most folks will still value items based on their price on the TP less 15% right? You think precursor prices are bad now? Add player to player trading into the game and see what happens. Fewer will be traded on the market, which drives the price up, which makes the players that are trading them among themselves raise their prices. Yeah they’ll knock 15% off of the TP price (maybe) but that price will probably be quite a bit higher.

Everything that is expensive enough to make folks cry over the 15% tax will jump in price.

Striker.9413:

There are always item for item trades. If the 2 items are of the same value, the tax would prevent you from selling and buying. Inflation has occurred and will continue
to occur. The large majority will continue using the TP out of convenience, set it and forget it. The gold sink will be only slightly affected. WoW auction house is still (or was last I played) the primary trading method despite there being a trade feature.

I understand the appeal of bartering, but what is the up-side for ANet of encouraging bartering? Directing all trade through the TP has many benefits from a support, a code maintenance, and a economy management perspective. What would bartering add other than pleasing the portion of the community that wants it? I see a lot of down-side for ANet, and can’t think of a single up-side.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Ursan.7846:

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Everyone can access to the price , a community driven price accordingly to the rarity, meaning ingame for certain reasons, popularity of something from a community driver website, nearly real time price.

I’m confused. But the GW2 TP does all this.

So who exactly chose the actual precursor price, tell me.

No-one “chose” the price. Friedrich Engels said “what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.”

The price of precursors was set by the players answering these two questions :
How much gold would it take for you to part with a pre-cursor?
How much gold would you be willing to spend on a pre-cursor?

And the result was a price that neither side of the transaction is entirely happy with, but will accept.

Ursan.7846:

Striker.9413:

2. TP restricts pricing options. You cannot sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer.

Why is this a flaw? Why reason will you have to sell an item below the highest buy offer or buy an item above the lowest sell offer?

It would be nice to be able to sell at a lower price if you can’t afford the listing fee. I can’t think of a reason to buy something at higher than the best price though. I don’t understand why when when you got to sell, you only get to see top of book, but when you go to buy something you get to see more depth.

And I think it was a sensible choice to limit secure trading to the TP – I play a lot of multiplayer games, and every single one of them has had a scam that involved swapping items out of the player to player trade windows and/or exploiting latency between server and client.

Player to player trading only has the illusion of being secure. Even if the implementation is bulletproof, there are still ways to manipulate folks into accepting a trade that isn’t what they expect it to be… Yes, those situations could be prevented with a little caution and common sense on the part of the players, but the reality is that folks would get scammed and would expect ANet to sort it out because it is a feature they put in the game.

Leablo.2651:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Blizzard just made a huge mistake (unfortunately one of many) when they decided to allow players to make real money from the game instead of insulating the game economy behind a gem store like GW2 does.

Those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The mistake with D3’s RMAH is that it exists independently of the gold economy. They should have required that all trades be conducted with gold, and the only way to get RM is to sell the gold.

That’s what I was getting at – the conversion of virtual value to real world value needs to go through a single point of conversion. Having two parallel and unconnected markets for game items makes it unnecessarily complicated to manage the game economy.

Joyful Blue.7392:

Frotee.2634:

Don’t get hit

Seeing as I don’t know a thing about warriors, have you tried the warrior profession forum? Those are usually most helpful with profession specific questions.

That’s kind of what I was aiming for, there’s only so many dodges you’re allowed in a certain space of time though!

Well you don’t have to dodge to avoid getting hit. You know how a lot of boxers dance on their toes in the ring, moving even though they really don’t HAVE to? You should do the same thing in GW2 – get in the habit of always moving in fights. You don’t have to kite – just circle the mob.

Also, map the key that makes you turn 180 degrees instantly. I’ve found it really effective to dodge (or step) forward through a mob, then hit a hot key and stab them in the back. You can avoid a lot of damage by stepping behind a mob as they attack. Save your endurance for when you’re stuck smack in the middle of a big red circle. You can also boost your endurance regeneration with food, which can help you dodge more. You can avoid damage by saving your stuns/interrupts for the big attacks that take half your life away.

Also, keep in mind that you can’t DPS when you’re dead. You may find that by sacrificing a little DPS on your stats sheet for a little survivability, you end up with a higher effective DPS.

Calae.1738:

The designers of Diablo 3 were blinded by profits. They built a system without understanding of the most basic laws of economics. Supply and demand.

To be fair, I think their failing was that they treated the auction house as a game mechanic instead of a simulation of an economy. I don’t know that they had any economists involved in the game design. Pair that with an inexperienced lead designer an it’s a recipe for disaster.

I think their motivation was less about making boatloads of money, and more about taking the money out of the pockets of the RMTs and putting it in the coffers of the folks that invested the time, money, and effort into making the game (with a cut going to the players). Blizzard just made a huge mistake (unfortunately one of many) when they decided to allow players to make real money from the game instead of insulating the game economy behind a gem store like GW2 does.

I kind of understand why Blizzard wanted to let folks make real money off of the items they found, but they had too many lawyers involved and not enough economists. It seems like the team working on the auction house was too far removed from the team working on the loot system.

Panzen.4625:

The former game director of Diablo 3 seems to have admitted to their AH being a bad influence on the game. What is your thought on this?

I think that the D3 AH troubles are just a symptom of deeper game design issues and really doesn’t tell us anything about the TP in GW2.

I’m a Diablo fan girl – I’ve spent more hours than I can count playing Diablo, Hellfire, Diablo II, and Lord of Destruction. I pre-ordered D3 and desperately wanted it to succeed. I have to say that I got my $60 worth of enjoyment out of it and there were some awesome moments, but it rapidly became unfun because of design issues.

A huge change was allowed to happen during the later part of the beta – runes were changed from drops to bonuses you get by leveling up, apparently because itemizing that many different things is hard. That kind of fundamental change should not happen that late in development unless you’ve piddled away too much time with no direction.

That indicates to me that there really wasn’t enough thought put into the loot system and how adding an auction house was going impact that aspect of the design. That’s not a problem with the AH, that problem is laid right at the feet of the leader of that design team. Another indicator of not really thinking through the implications of your loot system on the economy: gems have no level requirement on them and it costs far too much to upgrade lower tier gems into higher tier gems given the drop rates. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it makes everything but the highest quality gems worthless. D3 is riddled with those kinds of problems.

By comparison, everywhere you look in GW2, the notion that players will be trading items in the game is designed in. For example, there are Mystic forge recipes that can upgrade low level materials into higher ones and the only way to get ectos is by salvaging high level rare items. It appears to me that a lot of thought went into creating a net of economic forces that would keep the economy fairly constrained. Is it perfect? Nope, systems that complex rarely are, but it is really well done in my opinion.

I have a 400 chef because I found it fun. My husband has multiple 400 chefs because he found it the easiest way to level his alts from 70 to 80. On paper, it’s much more cost effective to just buy your food, but I’ve had good luck getting dyes from food harvesting, and I love opening dyes, so I’ve got most of the materials to cook for myself.

“worth it” can mean vastly different things to different folks. It’s not worth it to me to spend 5G to get to 400 right away, but I found it to be a really easy craft to level with just the stuff I find by playing.

I think if you’ve already got all of they 80s you want, and you don’t get any personal satisfaction from crafting and don’t care about the achievement, you can safely ignore crafting altogether and just sell the materials you harvest. Unless you’re really involved with the market, the cost of materials is very close to the cost of the end product.