Guild Wars 2

Heta.8629:

Do people choose the language they are speaking in beforehand? Does the server check every character to see if it isn’t English? If just one character isn’t English does it still block the message? If not where is the cutoff? Expect massive lag if the server has to check every message (maybe every character) to check if it is in English, who has the filter on who has what language filter and do this for everyone receiving the message in say or map chat. Arena net would also need to invest in the technology to make this happen

The ANet folks are fairly brilliant when coming up with clever solutions (Yay for no regular server maintenance days!). What’s the problem with the OP expressing a desire to be able to do something and just letting ANet decide if there is some way to accommodate that desire?

Maybe the solution isn’t exactly what the OP posted – maybe instead of a filter, it’s language specific channels that you chat in by default when you specify a preferred language. Then folks that don’t want to see English untick the English channel in their main tab, and the folks that are multilingual leave all languages visible.

There were a lot of very specific suggestions for fixing magic find and I think ANet did a great job at figuring out what was bugging people about MF and fixing it in a way that actually fixed a couple of other issues at the same time. Have some faith – ANet has a good track record (in my opinion).

silvermember.8941:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

So the main OP concern is that he doesn’t like the fact that the exchange rate is dynamic. He’d like the prices to be set, so they don’t get expensive for him. To which I’ll say that everything is working as intended. So let’s move the discussion to the topic of how great it is to have the option to convert in game currency to Gems.

To which you actually say to him, “sucks to be you”.

Reality sucks. We can’t have everything we want the moment we want it. If I blow my monthly game budget on something and days later a limited time item is added that I want too, it sucks. I’m not going to demand that the price be lowered to the few gems I have left that month though.

The reality of any economy is that most people will not be able to afford everything they desire, whether they’re spending real money or virtual money.

Ensign.2189:

So you should not think that inequality is not a big deal in the real world just because it is not a big deal in GW2. It is in fact a huge deal in the real world. But in GW2, where there are no critical, finite resources to control (there’s no land to buy up, you can’t own the good farming spots, everything goes into overflow), where you can’t prevent others from playing the game by buying up their livelihood (there’s essentially zero barrier to entry to ‘working’ in GW2 to make money), and where there are no political institutions to corrupt (Zomorros may like wine, but you’re not going to bribe John Smith with gold), there just aren’t any big levers through which big stockpiles of wealth can inflict any real damage on the economy.

This articulates very well why I don’t care if 1% of the population of GW2 holds the majority of the wealth. They can’t do anything with all that gold that prevents me from enjoying the game. They can’t buy up all the precursors in the game, because there isn’t a precursor mine somewhere that I don’t have access to. The market is too large for anyone to manipulate for more than a short period of time. If I don’t like the price of something today, I’ll log in tomorrow or the next day after it’s sorted itself out.

Yamagawa.5941:

There are countless claims these days in the media that the free market doesn’t work. I don’t really know. Where I have seen them, they seemed to work pretty good, but we don’t have anything of the sort in America. You can’t buy large sodas here, you have oppressive taxes there, specific additives are banned in places, actual food dishes are banned elsewhere. Tariffs on imports and exports, and forbid that you should ever try to compete with a union.
//Portable Corpse

And don’t forget that we subsidize the production of goods that would could get much more cheaply from other countries (sugar). We’re growing rice in Texas for pete’s sake. It’s not like we are having problems with droughts that prevent me from watering my lawn whenever I think it needs it :/ That kind of fiscal interference keeps a small percentage of people employed at the expense of all of us and our trading partners.

I could come up with a thousand more examples of how the economic system in the US is not really pure capitalism – it’s a mixed system, and it’s less free market than not at this point. From what I’ve seen the more our government tries to fix things, the worse it gets.

You’re right, it’s not there. What I usually do is go to GW2 DB and use their search tool to find the names of items I’m interested in, then search for those.

There was a really interesting discussion about trading outside of the TP a while back in the Black Lion forum Guilds as a Third Party Trading Channel

A lot of good points were made pro and con about trading outside the TP.

JETWING.2759:

But i agree with you, if this mechanism could be turned On or Off by the player, so that only himself have non English words filtered.

Actually it might be nice if a player could set their preferred language, so that the folks speaking Chinese could filter out English as well as the other way around.

linuxotaku.4731:

Behellagh.1468:

It indicates an increase in disposable income and an increase in desire for something at the Gem Shop. Both need to be present for the exchange rate to spike as much as it does.

While this is a possible scenario (my point), it is also possible that there are just fewer gems available for sale for gold. If the latter scenario is true, then the exchange rate should move like the sell and buy sides balanced.

Disposable income can increase either by increasing your income or decreasing your expenses. In my opinion, the high rate is due to a lack of desirable but not super rare items that can only be bought for gold. This causes more disposable income on the gold side, and less demand for gold on the gem side.

If I wanted to throw money at the game to buy a legendary, it would be between $500 and $1000 at the current exchange rate, which is way beyond what I’ll spend for a single virtual item. But I will drop $15 for something fun in the gem store. There’s just no reason for me to buy gold for the most part.

The exchange rate has flattened out over the past month, so maybe we’re at the point where it’s going to stay for a while.

tolunart.2095:

It’s like eating a pizza. If two people share a pizza, each can have half of it to himself. If six people share the same pizza, each gets a decent-sized slice. But if twelve people share the pizza, then the slices are a lot smaller. If twenty people try to share the pizza, each person gets a tiny taste of it.

I like this analogy a lot. When I’m arguing with folks that are concerned about “inequality” in economic matters I use a variation with a slightly different focus. Most folks debate who should get how much of that pizza based on some subjective measure of worthiness instead of realizing that it’s better to have 1% of the world record largest pizza than 90% of a personal pan pizza. Growing the economy benefits far more folks than creative slicing schemes.

Traders are good for the economy, which is good for the every player’s virtual standard of living. The idea that everything can be affordable to everyone is just like an Escher print – really cool in theory but impossible to actually implement in the real world without hiding the tricky bits.

I know it’s not a real solution, but if you’re pugging, you might consider taking a screenshot of the group when you zone into the instance. Makes it easier to report folks, and also lets you take note of players and guilds that you’d rather not team up with again.

I really miss City of Heroes rating system – you could add a number of stars to a player’s global name that showed up on their nameplate and add a few lines of notes to remind you why you rated them that way. Only you could see the rating you gave, so you couldn’t really grief anyone with it, and it made it so simple to avoid teaming up with folks you didn’t enjoy playing with the first time around and notice when someone you did enjoy teaming with was nearby.

I think several folks in this thread have misconceptions about how much expertise and effort it takes to extract information from data. Anyone can make a chart. Most of those charts have very low information content even if they were generated from terabytes of data.

I can’t blame ANet for being careful when releasing this sort of information. Just scan through this forum and look at all of the posts that draw really wrong conclusions from the charts on Spidy if you need convincing that the general public has trouble understanding data that is too raw.

There are reasons that financial experts use tools like indexes and other values calculated using proprietary methodologies rather than looking at raw quotes (and they pay a fortune for access to them in many instances) . Of course they’re looking for information and not data they can use to confirm what they already believe.

There are two types or people, those that can extrapolate from incomplete data…

I’ll chip in my two cents as an “old” person – well actually if you think anyone over 30 is old, I’m bordering on ancient. Let’s just say I’ve been gaming longer than some of your “old people” have been alive

Gaming is my hobby, I play lots of games of many varieties, and shortly before GW2 came out was completely burnt out on MMOs. I’ve tried all of the major ones and the only one that kept me around for any significant length of time was City of Heroes (RIP). Tons of aesthetics, easy to hop on, do a couple of missions and hop off, and really fun community on the RP server. I think the game design choices ANet made appeals to older folks without necessarily alienating all younger folks.

You don’t have to have dark or mature content to attract adults – look at Candy Crush Saga. It isn’t children spending tons of money on that game every week. You do however have to have a game that we ancients can enjoy after work without having to be hyper focused or commit huge blocks of time to do raids.

GW2 has fewer time sinks than any other MMO I’ve played. There is no waiting for the zeppelin, or having to have a mount to get around the world, or having to go back to a quest giver to complete your dailies. It was the first game that I hit the level cap before my man, because all of my wandering and crafting and side tracking to investigate something that looked interesting was actually a much more effective way to level than grinding. I was level 80 for a long time before I ever set foot in Orr, which I think is incredibly awesome.

I think that the difference in pace might be a reason that the community could be trending older. The younger folks with more time and energy might (in general) get bored sooner with a game that doesn’t have much of a gear treadmill pushing them forward to the next great thing. You hit the level cap pretty quickly, and from there on out the obvious goals tend to get longer term. The stereotypical old person likes to putter around where the stereotypical young person prefers to charge forward at full speed. Exceptions to every rule of course…

Calae.1738:

If gold is too easy to get via farming and or grinding then it reduces the demand for gems. Gem sales is how they make money.

8000 gems for 100$ wasn’t available for awhile; at least not until they made changes toward farming and grinding. It’s more time consuming to farm for the materials you need now than it ever was when the game launched. I think that created a market for people with disposable income and they saw an increase in people buying gems to convert to gold.

Too easy to get for whom? Just because the folks that enjoy (or just have a tolerance for) farming can amass a lot of gold doesn’t mean there is a problem. There’s only a problem if those folks have nothing to spend all that gold on. I don’t see folks not feeling pressured to buy gold with cash as a bad thing, especially when we’ve all bought the game client.

I’ve bought lots of gems, and I haven’t bought any gold. I think pushing folks to buy gold could easily backfire. If I had to either work or shell out cash to get gold in game to be able to afford the necessities like skill books or to be able to take a waypoint whenever I wanted to, well I’d probably go find something else to play that was more fun for me, which would decrease their gem sales.

Wanze.8410:

Essence Snow.3194:

I might be wrong here, but shouldn’t this type of thing already be happening as part of someone’s job over there as is? I really don’t think a simple “Good” is sufficient to the question “How is the in game economy going?” from the higher ups who make the decisions. They want information much like we do and I’m sure it’s within someone’s job to give them such.

Imo they just don’t want to share this info with us now that has evolved.

They surely have the data and also have to be really careful about what they release to the player base.

Yep the reports created for management have a different focus than those for public consumption. There are regulatory considerations also when you start working with data that is related to a company’s profitability. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re trying to hide bad news; they may just want to take some care to reduce the risk that someone will take information out of context and start a PR nightmare. Not that that has ever happened before on the internet.

Vol.5241:

They don’t have to make it complex, because complex economic data just isn’t appropriate for the average player. Maybe for other economists, but the average joe it’s not really all that enlightening.

Well the data IS complex – abstracting it to something a non-expert can find useful without drawing bad conclusions is what makes the task time consuming. I’m not an economist, but most of my career has been turning data into information (signal processing) . I could present Fourier Transform graphs to other Engineers but it wouldn’t be helpful in communicating with the business folks. It takes some thought and creativity to extract information from data for a general audience, and usually requires doing some significant analysis before you can figure out how to present what’s interesting.

Even in the financial world where I’m working now, interpreting a chart for a particular security requires expertise. There are a lot of folks with that expertise because there are generally agreed upon ways of presenting certain bits of information. That doesn’t exist yet for virtual economies.

Don’t get me wrong- I’d love to see another state of the economy. It’s just not as easy to throw together as some folks think it is, unless it’s going to be so simple that it’s impossible to extrapolate anything interesting from it. It would just be fodder for forum arguments.

Vol.5241:

John Smith mentioned this awhile back, and he said that constructing an infographic like that takes a lot of time and translation (not sure why that is so tough though)

Taking a snapshot of complex economy data and translating it into a visualization that will enlighten rather than mislead is actually way more work than it sounds like. There is a lot of expertise and thought required even for things that seem simple like whether to use a bar chart or a pie graph.

And then there’s the part where John probably has other work responsibilities that take up his time. If he really loved us though, he stop wasting all that time sleeping and interacting with his friends and family and give us some brightly colored charts to pick apart

Calae.1738:

I’m not insinuating that their purpose is nefarious. I look at Jon Smith the same way I look at a central bank chairman. He has to create the conditions that promote economic activity. It would make sense to steer the consumer towards the gem store to purchase gems and convert them to gold.

Why would that make more sense than encouraging folks to buy gems with gold to get gem store items? By having really desirable items in the gem store, ANet both encourages folks to spend real cash and encourages folks to flush gold out of the economy by buying gems.

I know some folks who convert a portion of their extra gold into gems in anticipation of new items being added to the store instead of just letting it pile up in their bank. In my opinion, it’s more efficient economically to be continuously adding new things to the gem store than to try to continuously create demand for in-game items that can be purchased with gold.

The hard core farmers will always generate more gold than can be consumed with TP fees, especially when you add in the effect of the folks playing the market. If there wasn’t a lot of folks flush with gold, the exchange rate would be more favorable for the folks buying gems with gold. Why would it make sense to put downward pressure on the gold->gems exchange rate and pull less gold out of the in-game economy? It seems more effective to put items on sale in the gem store to encourage folks to spend both cash and gold at the same time.

Gems are the ultimate consumable – no matter what class your character is, or how high end their gear is, there’s an incentive to “invest” you extra gold in gems because it is very likely that there will be something in the gem store at some point that you will want.

Calae.1738:

What if converting gems to gold didn’t swing the exchange rate as far as converting gold to gems? Wouldn’t it make more sense to make the conversion of gems to gold more lucrative from an economists stand point?

It is plausible that the algorithm could favor the gems -> gold conversion, but in my experience the stuff in the gem store is much more desirable than anything I would be able to buy for about the same amount on the TP if I converted those gems to gold. Gold just isn’t as desirable as gems until you’ve bought everything you want from the gem store. So yes, ANet is influencing the exchange rate because they keep adding new cool items to the shop which are a better value than the items that I want but can’t afford on the TP, which causes me to spend my gems directly instead of converting them to gold.

They don’t have to nefariously manipulate the exchange rate. The current situation seems like a pretty clear representation of supply and demand. GW2 is the one game I’ve found where I, as a player that has more cash than time, don’t need to buy gold to enjoy all the content. I spend my money on cosmetic and convenience stuff (and toys!) in the gem store for the most part, and just buy what I can afford off the TP.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Hey all, this should be fixed now. Please have a look and let us know if you are still experiencing issues.

It’s working perfectly for me now. Thanks!

JakHammer.7094:

Here’s a little alternate thinking.

Spikes like this are great opportunities for lazy/rich people to get gold via conversion at a somewhat more favorable rate. I think that surly happens, but that body of players is probably such a small % that their effect on reducing spikes is slight. Just guessing of course.

I am neither lazy nor rich and buy gems with cash. I don’t think I’ve ever converted gems to gold simply because there’s nothing I can buy with gold that I want as much as the things I can buy with gems. That in my opinion, is the primary reason why the exchange rate favors the gem to gold conversion. The gem store stuff is just way more attractive than the things that have to be bought with gold. The only thing I can think of in the game that I want enough to pay the going price in gold for is some of the cultural or order gear.

ilr.9675:

Farming Flats.5370:

Thursdays and Fridays .. pay day

That doesn’t make sense... Gems would be driven DOWN if ppl were using parts of their IRL Paychecks every friday.

Only if folks were using those gems to buy gold. Gem store purchases like character slots etc. don’t affect the gold <-> gem exchange rate.

penatbater.4710:

If a block feature with /inspect would be in place, what’s the difference then between that and pinging?

The difference is that folks that have inspection blocked can be harassed by random strangers for wanting to keep their build/gear private. Just ask the folks that get pulled over for having a tail light out and refuse to let the police take a look in their car for no reason. You are assumed to be guilty of something if you don’t allow folks to invade your privacy to satisfy their curiosity.

I think a one click ping for gear/builds would be awesome. I think it is a solution that would satisfy the dungeon runners and support friendly voluntary discussion of builds and gear setups.

I think the hurdle of having to actually ask someone to provide the information is a good thing. In my opinion, the ping should generate a clickable link that you could put into chat, on the forums, or into a mail message. That way, you could share it offline instead of having to interrupt what you’re doing.

Laurelinde.4395:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Here’s the four looks I like best from among my characters. No skimpy outfits here (you’ll notice my human Mesmer is nowhere to be found… She’s not high enough level yet for me to invest in a nice wardrobe for her)

I love your norn’s armour on the left! Looks fab.

Thanks! Other than the order of whispers boots clipping, around the knees I really like it. I found that midnight blue very early on and haven’t been able to find a different color scheme I like better.

Jemmi.6058:

Vayne.8563:

The reason it shouldn’t be in the game is the same reason countries have gun laws.

You don’t give people the tools to commit crimes, unless you want them to commit crimes.

Vayne, I quite often agree with you, but this I cannot. It is a very poor analogy.

I agree that it’s a terrible analogy, but because it’s wrong, not because it’s emotionally charged. Guns are not tools to commit crimes, they are tools to put holes in things from far away. Crimes can be committed with knives, bats, bricks, cans of spray paint, etc. That doesn’t make them “tools to commit a crime”.

Defining inspect as a tool to be a jerk is wrong too. By that logic we shouldn’t have zone wide chat in the game – that’s a much more pervasive jerk enabling tool than inspect.

I think inspecting stats/builds would be bad for the game also. There are many stronger arguments in support of that than this one.

Simply looking at information is not an evil thing, it’s what you do with it. There is not much good that can come out of folks having access to inspect information without the player’s consent. Even if players can disable inspection, you run into the “well what are you hiding?” mentality that so many of the folks bent on eroding our privacy seem to have. It’s better that sharing your build or gear is a bit tedious than we have an environment where players are expected to expose all that information. Communities where privacy is respected and diversity is encouraged are nicer than ones where it is not.

I also have an entirely different argument about how dumb it is to select folks for your dungeon run based off of gear anyone could buy off the TP, but there’s no use going over that one again. See my signature:)

CETheLucid.3964:

I don’t know, maybe they’re working on it? Just tried it again and now the front page is loading all broken as it used to do, even with AdBlock off.

-shrug-

I think whatever is going on doesn’t have much to do with AdBlock – I have it in Chrome and not in IE and the HOM was broken in both browsers.

Because of the intermittent nature of the problem, I think there may be some bad caching going on somewhere outside of the browser. I messed around with my browser settings quite a bit and couldn’t get it to display properly, went to bed, and looked at it again in the morning and it was fine.

I had it working in IE, I just checked it again, and not only doesn’t it work, UAC popped up asking if I wanted to let IE make changes… huh? That seems like a strange thing for something like a reward calculator to want to do. Oh duh. nevermind, I just did an Adobe purge and the site wants to re-install the flash player.

BTW, it’s working fine in Chrome still…

Go to “more posting & formatting options”, click the “Choose File” button under “Attachments”, add your picture as an attachment, then click preview. It should upload it and stick it at the bottom of your post.

Jemmi.6058:

I feel it is possible you two may have missed the majority of my points.

My reasoning for wanting inspect are not related to PUGing

If you don’t want to type them all again you can link back to the post. I’ll quote it:

Jemmi.6058:

I want it for:
1. Finding out the names of aesthetically pleasing gear when I pass strangers, sometimes when I whisper and ask what they are wearing they do not respond
2. Assisting friends and guildmates fine tune their gear and identify areas for improvement
3. To inspect better players, so that I can identify my own areas of weakness and/or come up with new ideas for builds
(snip)

I would also like Inspect to show more than just gear, but the side panel as well – where you can see all the stats of the hero panel. If you could even see traits, that would be awesome, but I understand that this may be undesirable for many.

There is a much better way to explore builds:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/
I also like this one for strictly skills and no gear: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

The builders let you swap gear and traits and see the effect that it has on your character in many different ways, and is much more useful than any inspect type function would be.

You aren’t going to sit in Lion’s Arch and waste your time rummaging through random players’ builds. You’re either going to look on the forums/fan sites or talk to someone you know to be an effective player to get some advice. In my opinion, you could take exactly the same gear and skills as a “good” player and still not be more effective if you don’t understand what the build is about. What if you can’t get one of the bits of gear they have on? What are you going to substitute for it if you don’t understand why they chose what they chose? What if it’s just a placeholder for a piece of gear they’re working on getting?

If you’re helping someone with their gear/build, it’s really easy for them to fill out what they have, give you the link, you make the tweaks you would recommend, and send them a link back for them to play around with. My husband, the Build Master, and I did this with my guardian even though we were sitting in the same room. I took his build, understood it, and adapted it to how I like to play.

As far as finding out what skins/dyes folks are wearing, I would like to be able to see that too, especially since so much of GW2 is about cosmetics. Contrary to inspecting gear for stats, I think a cosmetic inspection would actually be a good thing. It would inspire folks to look for skins or dyes that they might not have even known they wanted until they saw it on someone else’s character.

Here’s the four looks I like best from among my characters. No skimpy outfits here (you’ll notice my human Mesmer is nowhere to be found… She’s not high enough level yet for me to invest in a nice wardrobe for her)

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Is there some overwhelming fear of constructive criticism about your build/runes/sigils/stat choices…. from your peers?

Are you afraid of the fact that there might be a more efficient way of doing something, and you are xenophobic to the point where you don’t want to change it to be better? …or maybe you just really like doing things inefficiently simply because it is more entertaining for you.

Constructive criticism only helps players.

It is only when players intentionally avoid the consensus on what is viable, do they begin to fear said criticism.

I don’t fear constructive criticism from my peers. However, the vast majority of the players in this game are A) not my peers, and B) not offering constructive criticism.

I choose not to be judged by random strangers who want to offer me unsolicited advice about a build they don’t understand. I put quite a bit of thought into my builds and my goal is almost never maximum DPS, which is what the the consensus has apparently decided is the only viable build.

The consensus not that long ago was that the world was flat. Just because there’s a consensus, doesn’t mean it’s correct in all situations. Unless you were trying to get from the far Western part of the world to the far Eastern part, assuming the world was flat was a fine approximation of the truth. If all you’re interested in is dungeon speed runs, maximum DPS may be the only viable build for that purpose, but it doesn’t make it the only viable build.

I respect the way you want to play, and you will never have to concern yourself with me and my unconventional builds trying to sneak onto your team. I don’t want to be on your team. You don’t want to be on mine. That’s perfectly fine.

However, gear inspection is not going to prevent the folks that want you to carry them to the end rewards from getting on your team. It actually makes it easier for them to get on the team. Get in a guild of like minded players where you can kick out the folks that are wasting your time regardless of the gear they’re wearing. There are lots and lots of players that want to play exactly the same way you do. How come y’all haven’t banded together yet?

Gizmo.9178:

After 12 pages I think the question has been answered in every possible way…

Actually it was answered every possible way about 2 months and 9 pages ago

But the topic never dies:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Inspect-1/first#post1357523
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/GW2-Armory-or-inspect
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Inspect-Characters
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Inspect
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Please-Add-An-Option-To-Inspect-Other-Players/381589
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Inspect-Gear-Option-REQUIRED/1294689
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Armor-Inspecting/49067

et cetera et cetera and so on

laokoko.7403:

Pandemoniac.4739:

laokoko.7403:

Because there is no such thing you suggested so people pick the next best option. There is no dungeon ratting and there is no experience ratting.

There’s no such thing as /inspect in GW2, that’s not stopping folks from asking for it. My point is that there are more effective ways to get to the end goal of quickly selecting folks for a dungeon speed run.

Many other game does have “gear check option”. But I can’t think of any game that have “dungeon ratting check”. So people just think gear check is a common thing in mmorpg.

Why limit yourself to what you’ve seen before? If the solution is always what has been done before, we’d probably be playing Pong with really fancy graphics.

Badges for accomplishing certain feats in game is not some bizarre unheard of mechanic. You get titles awarded for different in-game achievements. It’s not that far a stretch to make them apply to things the dungeon runners care about, and it would be a much better measure of skill than a gear check.

The only folks that would have to worry about it are the folks that aren’t accurately representing their experience with a particular dungeon to the team.

laokoko.7403:

Because there is no such thing you suggested so people pick the next best option. There is no dungeon ratting and there is no experience ratting.

There’s no such thing as /inspect in GW2, that’s not stopping folks from asking for it. My point is that there are more effective ways to get to the end goal of quickly selecting folks for a dungeon speed run.

I have to ask the folks that want /inspect as a tool for putting together groups, which player would you prefer? The one in all level 80 berserker exotic with the so-called optimal build that has never run the dungeon before , or the one with less (in your opinion) optimal gear that has run this particular dungeon hundreds of times?

I think the folks that want /inspect for PUG selection are asking for the wrong feature. You should be asking for some sort of “dungeoneer” rating not gear inspection. Maybe you should be asking for badges that indicate how many times a player has successfully completed a particular path of a particular dungeon, with some supplemental badges for doing it quickly, and doing it without dying etc.

Instead of asking players to ping gear, you should be asking them to prove they have some number tokens from that dungeon. Other than having an inspect to find out what skins someone used (you should just ask them though), the whole point of wanting inspect is to select players for fast dungeon runs, right? Wouldn’t experience matter more than gear? You can buy gear, you can’t buy a badge awarded for some in-game achievement.

Syntax.3704:

Actually, there are two issues here, one is the fact that no one needs to, or does group, however the larger issue resides in the UI and Gameplay mechanics.(snip)

TLDR: The fast paced nature of the game, combined with the lack of a need to actually look at the UI leads to decreased person to person interaction.

This is the same conclusion I came to… The problem isn’t that there is no incentive to party. The problem is that it’s too difficult to play and communicate at the same time. Being in a party together doesn’t mean you’re socializing or playing as a group.

I think that more guild functionality, some sort of hot-keyable emotes/canned sentences, and voice chat would go much further toward making folks more sociable than forced/incentivized grouping.

I like this tool for figuring out dye names: http://pendiongaming.com/gw2/dyesearch.php?h=f81e34

You can put in a color, or upload an image and it will try to pick out the colors dyes that match the predominant colors in the image (it’s a little finicky, but still fun). Don’t limit yourself to screenshots for the images – pick an image that has a color palette you like, regardless of the content. There are links to GW2Spidy so you can check the price history and make an informed buy offer on the rarer ones.

rodadams.5963:

Ya know, these cross word kittenings make various benign posts really hard to figure out what the kitty they are talking about.

I think maybe the filter should be loosened up a bit (stop scanning across whitespace), and the penalties for purposefully trying to bypass it with whitespace and periods should be harsh. Something like a warning and then a really long or permanent suspension of your forum posting privileges.

OZEL.4872:

It seems like this thread is rather dead, but . . .

I seem to be having the opposite problem from a lot of people when it comes to the level scaling; that is, certain content is actually harder at a higher-level-scaled-down than at the proper level. In Kessex Hills, for instance, my level 55 Norn warrior has trouble facing more than one or two level 20-25 bandits or Krait (but, for some reason, I can kill centaurs all day long and survive — how is it that a puny human is more powerful speedy than a giant horse-person?). Earlier in the game, between levels 1 and 15, my warrior was able to use its “crowd-pleaser” combat moves to take out a lot of enemies, no sweat.

Well I applaud you for searching before posting, even if the thread is months old

One thing that I’ve found causes level scaling issues is if your gear is low relative to your real level. For example, if you are level 70 and you’ve forgotten to upgrade your water weapons for 20 levels, you will have a lot of trouble underwater in Metrica, where you might not have too much trouble in higher level areas. It seems like a small difference between your real level and the level of your gear can result in a big difference when you get down-levelled by a lot.

I levelled my main up to 80 without ever stepping foot in a zone higher than Sparkfly, and my experience was that the lower level zones got easier as I levelled up and got more tools, as long as I kept most of my gear within 5 or so levels of my real level.

Centaurs are all around not very dangerous, where Krait and Bandits have some skills that make them a bit harder. The Krait kidnapping the villagers event is one of the more difficult ones I’ve run across – I don’t think your issues there had much to with with level scaling.

So I’ve got this working in both Chrome and IE now. The trick for IE was to turn OFF compatibility mode. I’m not sure anything I did fixed it in Chrome, it just started working after I stopped messing with it.

Vayne.8563:

Because builds don’t equal skill. And in PVe, even if my build isn’t a “standard” build, it works quite well for me.

In Guild Wars 1, people used to ask me to ping my build, after which they wouldn’t accept me in their groups. So I’d go solo the content with heroes, come back and wave at them, trying to build their group.

A lot more people out there think they have a clue than actually have one.

Folks don’t understand creative builds. My husband had the same experience with his mesmer’s build in GW1. That build was perfect – every point was where it was for a reason, and it only worked with a particular weapon from the collector’s edition. He was a menace in PvP. There were very few builds that could counter him, mostly because they couldn’t figure out why they were dying before they were dead

TheDeparted.8013:

If this is more than one person, then it makes absolutely no sense given the nature and timing of these transactions. To say that a market will behave normally 90% of the time, and then 10% of the time when it appears to be very heavily influenced by manipulation to say “Oh it’s just millions of people.” What kind of kittened up stat is that? A million people give a kitten about level 75 masterwork trinkets? Get out of here. Stop irrationally nay saying. There are maybe 100 people that work in this niche market, not 1mn. The pattern occurs for a few days once every 1-2 weeks. It lasts for a day or two and then doesn’t reappear again for another 1-2 weeks. That is NOT the random acts of 1,000,000 people. Get real.

I asked a very innocuous question and instead of just saying “I’m certain because…” you get hostile. Why? Nevermind, I don’t particularly care, but I will leave with a few parting thoughts:

I meant that there were a million people in the market as a whole, and I phrased it badly which lead you to think I was saying there was a million people in your niche. I also didn’t say a million people were behaving randomly. There’s nothing random about the way folks participate in the market, it’s just impossible to know what is motivating each of them to choose the prices they choose at a particular instant.

You are very certain about things that you can’t possibly know, which will probably lead you to incorrect conclusions because you’re unwilling to entertain alternate explanations.

It’s possible there are two groups of flippers involved and one is filling the buy orders at one threshold and the other is placing the sell orders at a their threshold, each acting according to their own strategy and it just looks like one person being really dumb. Once the pattern starts, it probably goes on for a while while different folks execute their strategy. Or maybe the buy orders aren’t getting filled at all, maybe someone is cancelling them and setting them lower. Maybe the sell orders aren’t getting filled, and are just going away when someone cancels them.

You can’t tell from the information that’s available.

TheDeparted.8013:

These events are never separate (i.e. when they occur, they do so simultaneously and are being created by the same person (of this I’m 100% positive)).

How can you be 100% positive? You don’t have the information to determine if this is one person or many. You can’t tell the difference between 1 person posting a lot of 1000 for sale and 1000 people posting a lot of 1 for sale at a given price point.

TheDeparted.8013:

Can someone please explain what the hell this means or where his/her profit is in this model? It’s just such a weird way to try to manipulate an irrelevant market no one much cares about besides flippers.

It’s weird because it’s not one person manipulating the market. It’s thousands of people acting on what is happening to the buy and sell order prices in a high volume market. Timing doesn’t tell you much at all when there are a million people participating in a market.

If it truly is a market that only flippers care about, then it’s likely that someone has told folks that they can make tons of money flipping whatever it is, and you’re going to see a huge number of folks taking irrational positions because they don’t understand what they’re doing.

marnick.4305:

Right click > page properties > accept pop-ups.

Nowadays standard disabled in chrome.

Thanks – I allowed them the hard way (Settings->Privacy->Content->Manage exception). I don’t know why I never looked at “view page info”.

It’s working in Chrome now. I had purged my cache and restarted the browser but it seems like I had to leave it overnight and try again. IE 9 is still busted although I disabled the pop-up blocker there too so I’ll have to figure it out. What’s odd is that there is normally an indicator that a pop-up was blocked but it didn’t show for the HOM site.

I’m seeing pretty much the same problem in IE9 and changing my pop-up window setting in chrome doesn’t help. I’m going to try updating Java and see if that helps, because it doesn’t seem to be a problem with a particular browser for me.

The HOM page used to work for me, and now it doesn’t. I’ve attached a screenshot and the output of the Javascript console that shows some resources failing to load. If there’s any other digging I can do with the Chrome developer tools that might help, let me know.

I’m using version 20.0.1132.43 m 27.0.1453.93 m (it updated itself when I looked at the About box!) on Windows 7 x64. I have had some weirdness with Google update, so I might be out of step with most folks. I have disabled my ad blocking extension and other tools I use to clean up web pages for all of guildwars2.com, but I universally block third party cookies which might be an issue.

Svarty.8019:

John Smith.4610:

I always recommend to people when getting into investing of any kind to define your outs before you invest. Pick numbers for profit and loss and time early and stick to them.

Funny story. I once bought a bunch of Consortium Clipper skins because they were never going to drop anymore. Then I was happy that the price didn’t deflate and I kept hold of them as a long-term investment/hedge.

Then Arenanet made them drop from new content and my investment was ruined. Great job guys.

My advice is to never invest in anything ever. Someone will change the rules and leave you with nothing.

Any investment is a gamble. There is nothing in the world that is 100% guaranteed to never lose its value. Hedging is what you do to protect yourself if other investments go poorly, and you can lose money on a hedge just as easily as on anything else. The idea is that if you lose money on your hedge, you’re making money somewhere else. It’s tough to do in a market with no derivatives. You have to keep an eye on your positions and get out if them when the market changes.

If you’re averse to risk, just stash your gold in the bank. Nothing ventured nothing gained, but if losing gold on an investment ruins your day, it’s probably the way to go. It’s not ANet’s fault that you chose to gamble that the skins (or something that was a good substitute for them) were never going to drop again. Even if they never dropped again, you had no guarantee that folks would still want them when new content came out.

Do you mean that you up-voted this post and it appeared to up-vote the post that quoted it ?
I tried doing the same thing, and while I didn’t see the other icon greyed out, I am having trouble getting my up-vote to “stick” with that first post. Even though I click the button and it goes grey, it doesn’t show up in the list in my profile.

I’m at work, so I don’t have my tools to poke around the page source… I’ll see if I can find more information when I get home.

Well the posts have been merged into a larger thread, so I can’t replicate the issue. If anyone else notices the problem, post the thread and maybe we can figure out if it happens for everyone or just some folks.

Clever.1302:

December 2013

1 gold = 1 gem flat

So you’re thinking that by this December folks are going to be able to buy about 70 G for $1.25 and still won’t convert more gems into gold than folks converting gold into gems at 1:1? That seems… unlikely.

I would have unloaded my gems way before it went that high.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

@Pandemoniac

I meant, how could you tell if a post shows you have upvoted it, if you have never been to the thread to see the post that is upvoted? I know how many posts I have upvoted, lol, a grand total of three. So, you are saying if a post shows the ‘thumbs up’ greyed out, it has auto upvote just from opening the page? And we are to report all these posts? Because it happens quite often, and they never show up in our profile history.

If it doesn’t show up in your profile on the list of posts you have up-voted, it’s probably just a display bug. I haven’t run into that problem. I ran into a different issue where the creator of the thread thought it would be cute to inject javascript that caused everyone who looked at the thread to up-vote it. That post I reported.

Miss Pink Floyd.9730:

If taxes are ever implemented in the BLT to buy gems, my purchase of gems ends permanently, unless they increase the number of gems received to account for this.

If ANet starts collecting those taxes from you if the law is passed, they were taxes you were supposed to be paying anyhow.This is not a new tax, this is enforcing existing taxes that almost everyone “cheats” on because either they don’t know they owe the tax or they realize that the state isn’t going to enforce it for small purchases.

If the tax makes you angry, you need to get more involved in your local elections and encourage your elected officials to not participate. The law requires the states to provide software to businesses to calculate the tax based on zip code, so any state can opt not to have business collect the taxes by not providing the software. (like that would ever happen).

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I’ve noticed several post marked as liked, when I haven’t given them a ‘thumbs up’, as well. And how can you check a post you have never viewed without viewing it? (To see if the auto-upvote is present.)

Through your forum profile list of things you’ve up-voted. The way they’re extracted from the thread excludes the Javascript. If you open the permanent link in another browser tab and it up-votes itself, I would report it to the moderator so they can scrub the javascript from it. You can see it with “inspect element” in Chrome.