Guild Wars 2

Aurisai.3416:

So in an attempt to bring this conversation back on track, the crux of my argument is that while the in-game ability to to earn gold in gw2 has remained flat, or slightly increased, the total gold supply in the game has drastically increased thanks mostly to gem->gold conversions. As a result, price is pressured upwards and scarce items become more difficult to attain by people not willing to make gem->gold conversions or spend their game time flipping items on the TP.

What evidence do you have that there’s been a big increase due to gem->gold conversions? I’m not seeing a huge influx of gold from gem conversions, otherwise the gold->gem conversion cost would be lower, wouldn’t it? I’m also not seeing an overall increase in prices. If it was inflation, everything would cost more, and that’s just not the case. (Well everything that people actually want to buy… I don’t think a cup of potato fries will ever rise in price).

I think it’s a big assumption also that the ability to earn gold has remained flat. You aren’t accounting for the fact that my earnings go up when the price of items I can sell on the TP goes up. I make far more gold by selling what I find than what actually drops as gold.

ExTribble.7108:

The whole idea that pets run around and aggro everything is completely false. Hate to go “elitist” on everyone, but that’s a L2Play issue. If the pet is in the agressive/combat mode, it will go after your target. If it gets within aggro range of another target, it will hit that one next. I dare you to set it to the non-agressive status and use F1 to attack specific enemies (or use the recall F3 after each kill). It won’t aggro a single extra thing. And yes, melee pets are more susceptible to overaggro because, you know, they get within melee range and are therefore closer to the surrounding non-aggro’d enemies.

I agree with this part. I understand not liking the class mechanic, but it works well if you actually use it instead of ignoring it. One nice thing about putting your pet on passive is that it won’t switch targets when you do, so I can attack two targets of my choosing at the same time. My necro is petless simply because I can’t stand pets I can’t control.

There are some issues with pets hitting moving targets that make me not take my ranger into WvW, but between recall and being able to swap pets I rarely have problems keeping them alive. It’s also awesome how much flexibility rangers get in choices for our extra skills; Pets have combo fields and finishers, and there are a lot of choices for the F2 skills.

As far as making pets optional, put them on passive and ignore them if you want. You’ll be hurting your effectiveness, but if it’s more fun for you that way, go for it.

Rouven.7409:

TooBz.3065:

Assuming there was no shift in the demand for precursors, price went up because either 1. the price hasn’t reached equilibrium yet or 2. the supply dropped.

Pandemoniac.4739:

I think the assumption that there was no shift in demand might be a big one. I have no evidence, but it seems like demand would climb over time as players start to complete other goals and accumulate materials to craft a legendary.

TooBz.3065:

Sure. The third option is that more people want them and the supply stays the same, therefore the price rises.

Supply should have gone up since about two months ago according to Colin.

(big snip)

http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/212/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-III.aspx

Well that just means demand is climbing faster than the supply. I also think that we’re talking about precursors in general on one hand and a couple of specific very popular precursors on the other and it muddies the waters.

If there were known mobs that not only had a chance to drop a precursor but also had a higher chance of dropping greatswords or hammers, folks would farm them more and we’d get more supply out of smaller RNG adjustments.

TooBz.3065:

Assuming there was no shift in the demand for precursors, price went up because either 1. the price hasn’t reached equilibrium yet or 2. the supply dropped.

I think the assumption that there was no shift in demand might be a big one. I have no evidence, but it seems like demand would climb over time as players start to complete other goals and accumulate materials to craft a legendary.

munkiman.3068:

I took a new toon and just played him, keeping a decent track of what it cost to play versus what i wanted for him as i progressed and i have to say, it’s actually much worse than when i leveled my first toon. If i wasn’t supplementing his income with my level 80 earnings, he’d be geared poorly and struggling through content.

I can understand that a player doesn’t “need” to do x, and that’s always nice. But when the goals are x to get y, if it feels like a chore, then many people will simply not embark on the journey after so many play hours. That’s what i’m seeing with gw2.

I understand the feeling… that’s why I’m a game hopper. I think think the first time through, you’re rewarded more with novelty than more concrete rewards. With the alt, you’re more focused on the gear, and you move more quickly through the content because you’re familiar with it. You’re also more aware of everything that is available, which changes how you value things. I think the reason that your new character required money is because you’re a more sophisticated player than you were the first time through, and not because the economy is worse.

I was so completely done with D3 a few months ago. I’m intrigued by some of the changes, so I decided to roll a fresh hard core character that is living off what they can find (Iron man), and I’m enjoying it again. The economy is worse than it was, and most of the things I didn’t like about it are still there, but time away and a fresh start have made it interesting again. I’m sure when I hit inferno, it will become work and I’ll move back to GW.

My point I guess is that this isn’t a game design problem. There are folks that enjoy the things that aren’t working for you. If the game has gotten to be a chore, the easiest thing to do is take a break until something is added that looks like fun. GW is great that way; I feel confident that I can put it down for a month and not fall so far behind the curve that I can’t come back.

munkiman.3068:

John Smith.4610:

Preferably you use a bundle of goods all tied together, that haven’t been modified by design and found equilibrium pricing quickly.

Pandemoniac.4739:

That makes sense – it seems obvious to use a bundle now that I know. Thanks for explaining.

I’d be curious to know if that real value of gold is something that seems on par with the real time it takes to acquire?

Well I think that’s a separate question from measuring inflation. The “work” to create a good should be part of the price if the price is at equilibrium. If you bundle goods together it should smooth out small variances and give a good measure of gold value to “work”. The exact value doesn’t matter I think, just how it changes over time.

I ask, since it seems to me a good number of folks are what i would consider at poverty level. I’m basing this on what i’ve heard as complaints about the game overall, obviously no data to back it up. There just seems to be a funneling of folks more interested in luxury goods complaining on rate of acquisition, in as much as people mentioning it took them weeks of play time to gather/earn enough for exotics @ 80.

Well, I think if you look at my bank balance, I’m at poverty level in gold, but I haven’t had much pain outfitting my alts. When I switch up my builds, I buy exotic weapons and masterwork armor and trinkets and upgrade a bit at a time with gold/karma/crafting. My alt only suffers from me learning the build, not from a lack of exotic gear.

It may take folks a long time to earn enough gold to buy a full set of the most popular exotics, but you don’t have to have a full set the second you hit 80, you don’t have to have level 80 exotics (level 75-78s are a good value I find) and you don’t have to buy it all with gold. I don’t see not being able to buy a full set of exotics with a couple of days worth of earnings as a problem that needs fixing.

There was some good information in the Husband/Wife Duo- Warrior/? Spec Suggestions? thread that might give you some ideas also.

Up-voting lets me indicate that I would have said exactly the same thing without making a “me too” post. If I disagree with a post but don’t say why, it has less value as feedback.

I did report it and a moderator cleaned it up right away.

John Smith.4610:

Preferably you use a bundle of goods all tied together, that haven’t been modified by design and found equilibrium pricing quickly.

That makes sense – it seems obvious to use a bundle now that I know. Thanks for explaining.

John Smith.4610:

1. The best way to think about prices in senses like this over time is in terms we economists call Real. There is an exchange value between gems and Real value of gold. The real value essentially means some base purchasing power of gold, irrelevant of how much gold it actually requires. We might say 1 Real gold is what it takes to buy a stack of copper ore, then we look over time and see, how much has that changed, and adjust how we look at it relative to the change.

Are there certain characteristics that you would look for when deciding what you would use as the measure of purchasing power? For example, would 10 globs of ecto be better or worse than using a stack of copper? I’m guessing it would be worse because of how we get ectos, but I don’t know.

miniL.7361:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Even if some ubernode is added that I can’t mine with it, I won’t be sad because it will still work on all the other nodes.

In that case it should be upgraded for the ubernode just like legendaries should stay the best item obtainable in game

In fact it should be a legendary molten mining pick!

I expect it will be, but even if it isn’t, I’ve gotten my enjoyment out of it.

munkiman.3068:

John Smith.4610:

I see no current issues with the exchange, it’s functioning very well. Remember for every opinion on which way should be “favored” there is at least one opinion for the opposite.

PS please stop calling everything inflation, it’s driving me mad.

I mentioned this the other day in another thread, it bugs me too. The cost to play the game hasn’t changed one copper since release. The only thing that has increased is the desire to acquire those big screen tvs you guys are selling on the TP Too bad the parts to make them are scarce.

Inflation is awesome – it lets you live in a more expensive neighborhood without moving!

I pre-ordered so I’ve been playing since the head start and I’ve been pretty happy with how well my gold has retained its value. I’ve been entertaining myself by clicking the “all” button on Spidy, and it’s impressive really how quickly most items found their value and how little prices are rising in the long term. There are some exceptions, but we’re talking about inflation, so they aren’t relevant.

RebelYell.7132:

Cameirus.8407:

I never understood why they cost gold, surely karma does make more sense for cultural armour, after all you are gaining rep as it were and good will from your race, which ties in with cultural armour more than, just spending money on it.

Pandemoniac.4739:

It’s a gold sink in there for purely economic reasons. There is lots of fancy armor you can get with dungeon tokens, karma, or gems. Cultural armor is the one set that you can get just by buying it outright for a fixed price in gold.

Items become less rare when you’ve got millions of players all using the same TP, so even rare things can get inexpensive. If you see someone wearing T3 cultural armor, you know they spent quite a bit of gold to get it, so it has added desirability as sort of a status symbol.

Did you read the post that person quoted? They used to be cheap. They were made expensive to stop an exploit as a stopgap measure and it was never fixed. this is not a carefully planned economic system.

Fixed your caps lock problem for you. The exploit was with the cultural weapons bought with karma, not cultural armor bought with gold. I thought we were talking about armor.

Cultural armor has always cost gold, and it has always been expensive:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/ya154/cultural_armor_price_changes_in_aug_15_stress_test/

Edited to sort out the quotes. For some reason the forum didn’t like the three deep quoting

Synda Raines.1836:

My main concern though, and that’s why i asked, is not for me possibly loosing my gold but, if i find that kind enough person, is that they do not get into trouble if the gold transfers are getting big and it gets on Anets radar.

I think that’s a valid concern and my suggestion would be to put enough information in the e-mail transferring the gold to explain what’s going on so when someone at ANet does look at it, they don’t have to do any detective work to figure it out.

Ask your in-game advisor for statements detailing the performance of your investments

Cameirus.8407:

I never understood why they cost gold, surely karma does make more sense for cultural armour, after all you are gaining rep as it were and good will from your race, which ties in with cultural armour more than, just spending money on it.

It’s a gold sink in there for purely economic reasons. There is lots of fancy armor you can get with dungeon tokens, karma, or gems. Cultural armor is the one set that you can get just by buying it outright for a fixed price in gold.

Items become less rare when you’ve got millions of players all using the same TP, so even rare things can get inexpensive. If you see someone wearing T3 cultural armor, you know they spent quite a bit of gold to get it, so it has added desirability as sort of a status symbol.

Morrigan.2809:

Chuo.4238:

You’ve got a “home” instance if you feel like hanging out somewhere all by yourself…

I don’t think people who want player housing particularly “want a place where they can hang out all by themselves.”

I think you misunderstand what player housing is for and why it appeals to people.

Essentially the way I see it is something that is yours that you can customize to your liking, showing the spoils of your adventures etc.
It is a way for the player to invest in the game on an emotional level and gives something to do that provides a break from fighting much like the missing mini games, jumping puzzles etc.

It is also a great opportunity to make use of various crafting professions and provides opportunities for gem store content that is purely fluff.

I would also dearly love it if I didn’t have to sit in my house by myself but could invite friends

This is the point that folks that aren’t interested in player housing don’t get. I’m not particularly pining for housing, although it would be nice. I loved the housing in Star Wars Galaxies although I don’t expect to ever see anything like it again. Best. Crafting. Ever.

By comparison my little hobbit hole in LOTRO was really boring. The instanced community thing that LOTRO has is a really nice idea, although my neighborhood was always empty.

So the things I liked about the various incarnations of player housing I’ve experienced in no particular order:

• Weapon/Armor displays
• Usable furniture. My friends could sit on my couch in my party ship in SWG, they didn’t have to sit on the floor.
• Personal workshops for crafters
• Decorations related to your achievements/story (GW2 has a little of this already in your home instance).
• Access controls – let in everyone or let in just your friends and guildies. SWG did this really well.

Thinking about that, if you’re in a group and you go into your home instance, doesn’t your party get the option to join you in your instance? I don’t know I never had any reason to drag anyone in there.

Everyone should feel free to express their opinion. The moderators are here to make sure folks are civil to one another, not to encourage or discourage a point of view. If you don’t agree with someone’s opinion, or you think they’ve said something false, post your opinion in response. Why get the moderators involved?

I was surprised when I went to view https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Entitled-Hardores-GW2-Edition/1857265 that I had up-voted the post having never viewed it before (the +1 button was gray). Judging by how fast it got a big thumbs up, I believe this is happening for everyone that looks at it. I unclicked the button, then went back to view the post again, and again it was marked that I had up-voted it.

I thought other errant posts I had up-voted where accidental when I was scrolling the page on my phone, but now I wonder if there wasn’t a bug lurking.

So I inspected the page elements and it looks like there’s some javascript inserted in there that isn’t in other posts in the same forum. Seems like the form submit needs some hardening.

I bought one with cash. Gaming is my hobby and I spend less on it than my neighbor whose hobby is restoring old cars. I think the pick is fun – I’ve already got my $10 worth of enjoyment out of it, so I’m not particularly worried about it not being able to farm ubernodes in the far future, or how many nodes I have to mine to get 18G (which is the amount of gold I could have bought with $10 at the time I purchased the pick) worth of use out of it.

Not only is it good for ANet for folks to spend cash on gems, it’s good for the game that folks are converting their gold into gems. It takes gold out of the economy, which keeps prices down so the more casual folks can afford nice gear, and it makes the gem->gold conversion rate more attractive, which may encourage folks to spend cash on gems to convert them to gold.

Regardless of which way you do it, buying items from the gem store helps the game, so I don’t feel like somehow I did more than the next person by spending cash. I enjoy earning $10 more than I enjoy trying to get 26G together in game (and I can do it a lot faster!). I’d rather spend cash on what I want from the gem store and do whatever I feel like doing in the game instead of worrying about accumulating gold.

Maybe the changes to WvW have attracted some folks that are realizing that you have to be able to deal with conditions to survive? High toughness protects against direct damage, and condition duration helps against damage that bypasses your armor. Hoelbrak’s give you -20% duration, but no stun reduction or toughness, so Melandru’s is the more attractive option.

My husband’s Necromancer is a menace. You would not believe how many conditions he can drop on you in a couple seconds, and how long the bleeds last. Then he uses epidemic to spread them to all your nearby friends. He’s fun at parties

whiran.1473:

Anyway, the whole idea of trying to tie the value of the gems to gold and then claiming it takes 4000 or 5000 uses to have it “pay for itself” doesn’t work. What if gems cost more tomorrow? Or less?

I think the pick is great value for what it is. Plus it has awesome cool factor!!

Also, since I payed cash for my gems, the folks doing the calculation would have to use the gems->gold conversion rate, not the gold->gems rate.

Regardless, it’s tough to make the case that the pickaxe is worth it just as a replacement for regular tools. I agree with you whiran, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to calculate how many times you have to use it. How long does it take to get your return on investment from a permanent bank access contract at 200 or so gold?

I don’t think that’s how most folks decide the value of a thing. They look at the thing, they look at how much it costs, they look at their budget, they think about other things they could get with that money, and they decide if whatever appeals to them about it is worth it. For a lot of folks, the picks don’t merit the cost simply because they would rather have that 25G or $10 to spend on something else.

I’m fortunate that $10 is a sweet spot for me – I don’t really think that hard about purchases around $10 if I haven’t already blown my entertainment budget (i.e., Steam isn’t having one of their big sales). If it was $20, eh maybe I would have thought about it a bit more but bought it anyway. Everyone’s sweet spot is different. I’m sure Warren Buffet doesn’t blink at ordering a $100 kittentail um, drink before dinner.

Risingashes.8694:

Seems strange discovering all recipes for professions isn’t tracked in the achievements system.

New recipes are added to the game with holiday events and things like South Shore. It would be much harder for new folks to get that achievement depending on when they joined. It would be better to get credit for a fixed number of discoveries.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

It would be fine for Cooking but everything else it’s not a good idea. But then, who’s going to be able to get all of the Cooking recipes without a guide anyway?

My chef knows all of them I only cheated on the ice cream recipes because I didn’t want to buy more snowflakes than I needed, and one of the level 400 meal recipes because it was expensive to guess what could possibly go together (and I had unfortunately eaten on of the components).

It was expensive (I found most of the ingredients, but you still have to buy flour, salt, etc.) and took a long time but I enjoyed it.

Fuschia.6573:

How can demand not be related to margin in this game? I’m confused as to why you think they’re separate.

Demand is a separate concept.

Yes demand is a separate concept, but it’s not unrelated, which probably would have been a better choice of words. Without trade data, we’re basically taking a stick and poking it through holes in a crate to trying to figure out what’s in it.

Fuschia.6573:

(snip)
Demand for short-term speculation purposes does have an impact on the margin. Since you are buying above the highest bid and selling below the lowest offer, you are constantly decreasing the margin by profiting off of it.

Which is something that folks forget when they bash traders – the folks flipping stuff bring the bids and asks closer together. There are a lot of opportunities in dyes because of the huge variation in how folks value them, the tendency of individuals to highly value different specific colors at different times (breast cancer awareness month, changing a character’s color scheme, collecting all the dyes), and the large number of dyes in the pool that make it difficult to get exactly what you want dropped.

The reason why I think some of those margins stick around longer than on other margins is simply because there are 300+ different products to track and the demand is predictable for only a few of the most popular dyes (Abyss, Celestial etc.) It’s a lot of work to find the opportunity and there’s always the risk that it’s more lightly traded than you think it is…

Nike.2631:

munkiman.3068:

There is one specific thing i’d like to see changed with the TP, that is selling to a buy order.

Is what you said, but what I read was…

yet another player:

There is one specific thing i’d like to see changed, that is for a gold sink that actually works and affects me to be closed.

I think you’ve misread his post. Let’s look at the full quote

munkiman.3068:

There is one specific thing i’d like to see changed with the TP, that is selling to a buy order. I’d like to see all the fees come directly out of the sale instead of putting up the %5 first. It seems like a minor thing, but i think it would help a small amount for players that simply can’t list a bigger ticket item to a buy order since they just don’t have the G.

It doesn’t change the amount of the gold sink/listing fee at all. It just means you don’t have to have a big pile of gold to sell expensive items, it’s just taken out of the sale. I’d like to see that change also so that if I do get a lucky drop I don’t have to scrape up 30G to sell it.

The listing fee makes perfect sense when the seller is setting the price – it puts downward pressure on the sale prices because if you list it too high and it doesn’t sell, you lose the listing fee when you go to re-list.

I can’t think of any reason why the fee when you’re filling a buy order shouldn’t be taken out of the proceeds of the sale. It should be charged, but I don’t understand what purpose charging the fee up front serves other than to preclude poor folks from selling expensive items.

Fuschia.6573:

Again, more talking about demand than margin. It does, however, help to explain why people would be buying large numbers of dyes without any desire to flip them – I always seem to forget use of the Mystic Forge when it comes to theorizing and whatnot.

How can demand not be related to margin in this game? I’m confused as to why you think they’re separate.

There are a large number of possible colors of dye that I could get from a drop (or even making dyes using the chef recipes). I want a specific color of dye, and even though I’ve found a bunch of dye, it wasn’t what I wanted. I’m going to dump the dye colors I don’t like/want, and I’m going to pay a premium to get the specific colors I do want. Bam! margin.

Some colors are more popular than others, they have higher prices and lower margins because folks recognize their value. Most colors don’t appeal to everyone, so the value that different folks place on particular colors varies widely.

Fuschia.6573:

For the past few weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time flipping dyes and I’ve realized something interesting that, as far as I know, isn’t true for any other large market – nearly every dye with a price between 20 silver and 1 gold has a margin that can be used to create money.

I have some of my own ideas as to why, but I’m sure there’s something I’m missing here that’s driving the large difference…

So, what does everyone else think is the reason?

P.S. ~ Flipping dyes is actually not a terribly great method of making money because of low turnover, outside of a handful of specific ones. Just as a warning to anyone who reads this and decides that it’s time to get into the dye market.

You don’t think that the new dye packs are gong to have any effect on the market? I find your timing for a thread about making money on the dye market interesting, even with the post script.

Dyes are different because they are permanent unlocks for a character, they can have a large aesthetic impact for not a lot of money, there’s a huge number of colors, there’s lots of variation of how the look on different parts of different armor, multiple colors can be applied to one outfit, and there’s a lot of variation in what different folks think looks cool.

Demand for dyes is not the same as say demand for a stack of ore or a weapon. You can collect all the different colors without needing more inventory space, and you can apply them without out any additional cost (like a transmutation stone). And you can toss the cheap ones in the forge and gamble on getting something better.

Fishbait.6723:

True there are lots of reposts, but have you tried the search function for this forum?
it is bloody awful.

Yes it has got to be the worst search utility I’ve ever encountered. The good news is that Google indexes the forums, so you don’t have to use it. Just use the parameter “site:forum-en.guildwars2.com”.

tolunart.2095:

Except that I’m not upset. This is a game, not my job. It doesn’t feed me and my wife or keep a roof over our heads. Ultimately I don’t care, I just don’t like seeing people being jerks and acting superior about it.
.

Well maybe “upset” was a poor choice of words on my part, but me valuing my time differently from how you value yours doesn’t make me lazy or a jerk.

tolunart.2095:

IMO there’s no excuse for being too lazy to set a real price on an item, and it brings the overall price down because 100s of players simply list at the current lowest sell price making it impossible for someone who actually wants to make money to sell the items to other players because you get more money from a vendor.

I do set a real price on every item I put on the TP. I never sell anything for less than I think it’s worth, all things (including my time) considered. I think if you stopped the name calling folks might be more open to your point of view.

Mystic.5934:

If you buy stuff from a grocery store but there isn’t enough room in a bag for all your stuff, they don’t force you to drop that stuff off in your car then come back for the rest – they give you a second bag and offer to carry it out to your car for you.

And if your car isn’t big enough to hold everything you bought? There are limitations due to hardware and database performance when you’re dealing with millions of players. It may not be technically feasible to make them limitless.

Gem store mail is not the same thing as say mail from hearts, because if it gets misdirected or lost it could have some serious consequences. I’m sure that it is thoroughly tracked in case there is a problem.

That’s not to say that maybe the number is set a little low if many folks are having the same problem.

tolunart.2095:

I honestly don’t understand this attitude. The majority of people selling on the TP click on the lowest sell/highest buy offer for quick sales. When these amounts are the same as vendor + 1c or so, everyone doing so loses money. So what you are saying is that in order to save a few seconds you’d rather bring down EVERYONE selling on the TP because this practice makes it harder to sell items for a profit.

Honestly, I don’t understand why folks insist that items are worth more than they are just because there is an NPC vendor out there that will buy it for a particular price. I calculated it out once with my average gold per minute, and a minute of my time is worth way more than a few coppers. If your time is worth the few coppers, then go vendor stuff instead of worrying about what it’s listed for on the TP and sleep well knowing that you didn’t lose any money.

If you want to make money on the TP, pick something that actually isn’t so common that most folks don’t care what they sell it for. You’re upset because you can’t make a profit on something that is essentially worthless. Find something that folks want that they can’t easily get for themselves if you want to turn a profit.

The NPC vendors will buy Ogre pocket lint so that players can recoup some of their adventuring costs. It doesn’t mean that Ogre pocket lint is worth 10c to another player. The other player probably just unloaded a stack of them on the vendor too.

John Smith.4610:

Time Price Quantity
4/14/2013 389g 1
4/14/2013 250g 1
4/15/2013 130g 1
4/15/2013 220g 1
4/15/2013 185g 1
4/15/2013 225g 1
4/15/2013 225g 1
4/16/2013 200g 1
4/16/2013 300g 1
4/16/2013 195g 1
4/17/2013 224g 1

Wow someone got a steal at 130G. Thanks for the information.

It’s a minor thing (and maybe I’m a little obsessive about checking my posts before sending) but the preview when replying to a PM doesn’t show it the way it will actually be rendered in the inbox – it shows up with all the HTML tags.

I’m pretty well versed in HTML, so I can tell whether I’ve flubbed a textile tag or if something is going to get kittened, but I don’t think that’s how it was intended to work.

I got my ROI less than a second after I mined my first node with it. I bought it as a toy, not to save gold. I think for many folks the unlimited part wasn’t about mining nodes, it was about being able to have the effect an unlimited number of times. Even if some ubernode is added that I can’t mine with it, I won’t be sad because it will still work on all the other nodes.

Excursion.9752:

Pandemoniac.4739:

Which circles back to the point that I and others make every time a topic like this comes up. Developers will never be able to generate content fast enough to please dedicated (hard core isn’t really the word I want here) players who don’t have fun designing their own goals.

(snip). My point is that everything they have released takes little to no time to complete. Content is content yes but I would like something that keeps me playing day after day not for just a few hours.

Which is exactly my point. ANet can’t generate new content for you faster than you can consume it. I’m not judging. I think you need to have a rotation of games to keep you engaged. What you should be arguing for are more B2P MMOs that don’t penalize you for game hopping.

Excursion.9752:

After I posted yesterday I took some time to think what would keep me playing if new gear was not introduced.

• New Zones
• New Story
• New Skins
• New Profession
• New Race
• New Utility/Elite/Race Skills
• New Weapons w/new skills to go with it
• New Dungeon(s)

South shore
Flame and Frost
Super Adventure Box
New minis, skins, harvestables, recipes
Leaderboards
WvW experience and unlocks
Costume brawling

And that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head typing on my phone.

Which circles back to the point that I and others make every time a topic like this comes up. Developers will never be able to generate content fast enough to please dedicated (hard core isn’t really the word I want here) players who don’t have fun designing their own goals.

You can always get a good estimate from Spidy or guildwarstrade.com:

http://www.guildwarstrade.com/gems
http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

There’s a lot of volatility lately, so you won’t know for sure unless you log in and look.

Calae.1738:

Suddenly; Arenanet decides to release new items and content that is purchased only with gold. What would you think of their business practices if this happens?

There are lots of things in the game that you can only buy with gold – cultural armor springs to mind. I’m not sure I understand your point.

They changed it so that if you mouse over the region name you should see a pop-up with a summary of your completion. The tool tip was a little wonky – zooming and panning could cause issues, but I think that’s been fixed too.

Actually I have intermittent problems with the game minimizing to the desktop and I only have one screen. It doesn’t happen if I play in full screen windowed.

My suspicion is that it has something to do with Windows 7 “helping” me by turning off some visual elements on my desktop because it thinks there is some program running that can’t support them. I haven’t been able to pin down the exact conditions that make it happen.

Most of the time I’m not even pressing any keys so I’m thinking there’s something going on with my video card driver.

It’s an interesting idea, but almost every activity you can do in the game drops gold, but only some of those activities drop karma. Folks could feel pressured to do activities they didn’t want to so they could use way points. The lower level folks don’t have karma built up.

Maybe just in Orr you could pay karma to get air dropped in by helicopter to certain locations.

The crafting level requirement on an ingredient is the lowest level recipe it is used for, so if it’s red for your craft you won’t be able to use it.

I found GW2DB to be useful for figuring out what my tailor could make. You can put the minimum and maximum recipe level in, or you can put the minimum and maximum item level requirement in and it will show you all the recipes you can make in that range.

You can also search for the name of the insignia, and it will show you all of the recipes that it is an ingredient in.

FourthVariety.5463:

Take a look:
http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

It seems whatever happened, happened two days in a row around the same time of the day. First at 9.00 CET yesterday and then at 6.00 CET today. Everything else seems to have happened in response to those two events. Certainly worth a look.

The pickaxe and dye kits were announced on the 15th on the web site. There was planned server maintenance on the 16th.

• Always make sure you have both a potion and food with +XP per kill on
• Harvest everything you see
• Kill everything in your path, especially non-hostile mobs in out of the way places – the longer they’ve been around the more bonus xp you get for them
• Detour when a dynamic event pops up close by, but don’t run halfway across the map to get to one.

I do all those things while completing a map and find the levels fly by. The best part is you don’t need a zerg. Just keep moving and killing.

Map completion has the nice bonus of giving you a nice bit of XP and a pile of crafting materials appropriate to the map level, which is nice for crafting leveling later on. You’d be surprised at how much XP you get from exploring.

Edit – Oh and find someone to pal around with. My husband and I duo to level and it goes fairly quickly.

OmniPotentes.4817:

Update: still 0 chests opened. Actually I’m quite proud of myself for resisting the temptation

I’m proud of you too – I gave in and bought 5 keys when I bought my pickaxe. No ticket.

A couple of small/medium guild discoveries, three keys (which I used), 2 bank expresses, rejuvenation booster, magic find booster, speed booster, armor booster, kill streak (bah), crafting booster, black lion tool (axe I think, don’t remember), and some cash. I don’t feel ripped off, but 5 purchased keys is my limit.

JakHammer.7094:

Ok, so I saw one in action. I caved. Bought 1 only for my main. Pure vanity, as the economics of the item are rotten, but so cool. Sigh. “I feel so —- weak.”

Don’t feel bad – you are now part of the molten miners clique I had no intention of buying anything for a while, but I couldn’t resist either.

SnowHawk.3615:

Great for all the real money users- I get that they are the ones bascially driving the market up and up at their leisure and Anet is happy about that.

Actually, it’s the folks that are converting gold to gems that are driving the market up. Folks that convert gems to gold bring the price down.

Ratto.1572:

tell me when you collect 55k ores…

And I say that compensated

I collected 3 ores with a really cool lava effect… and I can do that for every ore node I see. I got what I paid for and am quite satisfied.

Some of the dye ingredients for chef recipes are purchased with karma. I’m not sure how profitable they are though. Certain colors have a good array of expensive dyes that could drop from them, but when I priced out selling them unidentified, it didn’t really make enough over the cost of the non-karma materials to be worth it which means that making them and identifying them probably doesn’t have much of a return either. I haven’t priced them in a while though so the market may have changed.

Without arguing the merits of gear progression one way or the other, I want to point out that the folks that want gear progression have lots of choices of games they could play. The folks that don’t find it that appealing have very few choices. That’s why folks get worked up when it is suggested that the game be changed to suit a different play style.

Adding a gear treadmill into the game is not something that the folks that don’t want to do it can just ignore like say jumping puzzles. The folks that don’t keep their gear up to date will get stomped in WvW, precluded from doing content challenging enough to need the new gear, won’t be able to get better than bronze contribution in group events, etc. because no amount of skill will make up for the power added by the gear if the gear is worth working toward.

I think Diablo II actually handled the folks that wanted endless progression really well with the ladder system that reset every so often. It gave folks a reason to start a fresh character and do it all over again. I found that a much better solution than endless raising of the level cap and gear going from ascended, to legendary, to godlike, to better than godlike….