Guild Wars 2

You’re thinking of Reaper’s Rumble.

There’s no mention of it, but as I can’t see any obvious reason for it not to return, it’s anyone’s guess what’s going on with it.

Part of me was hoping for an updated version of the Mad Memoires, since the old version, while cool, isn’t ideal for combat. (Masterwork stats, can only use low-level upgrades.) Guess it’s time I transmuted its skin onto something nicer.

We might still see a back item before the month is out, since there’s still a lot we don’t know. You know what they say: Death, taxes, and commemorative back items.

Previous Halloween was Oct. 22-Nov. 2. We’ve got a whole extra week this year, with another release Tuesday (Oct. 28) right before Halloween.

Even with what we don’t know about the Bloody Prince storyline, I think it’s safe to say that there will be more to Halloween than what we know right now.

At the least, wait for the release to drop before judging it based on the preview.

It’s not in the press release, but I doubt it would be, since that would probably give some spoilers to the new storyline. It seems unlikely that we’ll get it back exactly the same, but I wouldn’t rule out something similar, either with the Mad King or the Bloody Prince.

…Seriously, how cool was Ascent to Madness? The visuals of that place were great.

…Although, since the whole dungeon was based on jumping downward, wasn’t it more of a Descent to Madness? No matter!

…I may have used costume brawl fear to “accidentally” drive people into fish head mines on the Splintered Coast…

I wouldn’t take the lack of images of him too seriously. We only have one (likely two) images of the Prince, and there’s still a lot of month left until Halloween. While they’ll probably introduce the good king crazypants sooner than they did last year, last year didn’t even kick off Halloween until Oct. 22nd.

The omens are starting to show, but the monster of the movie is can afford to take his time if it means a bigger payoff when he does appear.

Oh, huh, I totally forgot about Reaper’s Rumble. Hopefully it’ll make a return; I can’t really imagine a reason for it not to, since there aren’t any obvious changes to the game since then to make it impractical.

As far as “stuff to do goes,” I’m looking forward to playing Lunatic Inquisition and revisiting Mad King’s Labyrinth. There’s also the Clocktower, if you’re a psychopath. (Kidding! Put down those pitchforks, Clocktower fans.) They’re returning, but should still be fun.

As for new content, I think “The Bloody Prince Emerges” will have significantly more content than you might think if you’re just skimming over it. As the new Halloween storyline, I’d expect it to be more or less on par with last year’s, but with more time to do it in, rather than the more rigorous four-acts-in-nine-days of last year’s Halloween.

And, of course, there’s still the possibility of other things we don’t know about. Oct. 29 is going to be a new release Tuesday, after all.

azurrei.5691:

One thing is still an unknown for this event…

WHERE IS OUR MINI GHOST QUAGGAN??

“Coo! No, quaggan means “WooooOOOOoooooo!”

I had no idea my life was missing this until now.

Now everything else is a gaping void. ;o;

They haven’t said one way or the other yet. I don’t mind if they include the old ones again, because the Mad King outfit and the Witch outfit are both fantastically fun, especially the witch, since it enables costume brawl for everyone in an area. I’ve had a lot of fun with both of them, and I don’t mind if I see a lot more of them right after Halloween. It’ll slack off over time, just like last year, just like any other popular skin.

I do hope there are more, however, (and I expect there to be, whether or not the old ones return,) because Halloween has such enormous potential for cool and interesting outfits.

Considering they nailed so much of the things on that list, I wouldn’t be too harsh on them if precursor and legendary updates slip to next year. I’d rather they tell us what they’re working on / plan to be working on in half-year intervals and miss a couple (but hit most of it) than to tell us nothing because people are going to take that roadmap as a series of promises.

Frankly, I have a lot more confidence in a roadmap with a “subject to change” clause than one that just says “We’re doing this” without a schedule, but then fails to meet that schedule. They don’t know, at the time of writing, when things will be ready, and that understanding that it’s a guideline for what to expect is what keeps us and the developers on roughly the same page.

Zaxares.5419:

Risen children get “slurried” up and molded into the Risen Abominations. Hence their name.

Well now, that was a buzzkill.

I’m excited to get another gathering node added to my home instance. Uncharged quartz is cheaper if you have the node (and charged quartz is faster,) but it’s not outrageous if you just buy it off the trading post, either, so if a player misses out on it, it’s not exactly a huge disadvantage, and at least it’s something other than a back skin or a mini. Bam, variety in rewards!

This should be a good time. The decorations are good, Mad King’s Realm was awesome, and there’s a new storyline involving the Mad Prince, so it’s not all returning content. Really all I’m asking for. =D

Although, I’m a little underwhelmed by the Halloween mask, which looks fine, but not all that memorable, compared to the Witch’s_Hat from last year. But, between the Candy Corn node, mini elemental, mini Bloody Prince, 20-slot pail, and the return of Halloween weapons, there seems to be plenty of other things to be excited for.

I’ll grant that not having a system where you spend points, and then are asked to confirm (which would avoid misclicks,) can be problematic. I think the trait lines are spread enough apart, graphically, that this should rarely be a problem, but, hey, people are going to occasionally misread things at a glance, and I’m sure I’ve done dumber things now and then, so I think some better menu work could be done here.

Giving up one inventory slot of the item is pretty negligible burden, at least if you’ve bought/crafted reasonably large containers. I know this as someone who is constantly hauling around tons of crap (town clothes, alternate armor for looks, LS items like the Flames of Kryta, etc.) I haven’t bought any extra bag slots, but I rarely run out of room unless I A) haven’t been salvaging/selling stuff, or B ) I try to open a bunch of bonus chests (Tequatl) and containers (Champion Loot Bags) at the same time.

I think the idea is to not use multiples of these things every day, or even to play every day. If we imagine a gamer who has enough time to do more than two significantly-different game types in a day (enough to use more than one retrait item,) and then repeat that on a daily basis, they probably aren’t feeling the time pinch enough to want to pay for that little convenience. The target demographic probably doesn’t have that much time, which is why they’d rather shell out $0.75 instead of warp to Lion’s Arch and back in the first place. Even if they did land in some middle ground where they want to retrait a lot, but are also pinched for time, the cost of the retrait item might discourage them from using it a lot…which keeps their way of playing the game not that different from how everyone else plays the game, with their traits changing at a very limited frequency.

Am I saying it’s a good deal? For the vast majority of people, I should think, and this includes myself, it’s just not worth it. That’s okay, I think; convenience items like these aren’t meant to appeal to everyone. If they did, and non-cosmetic for-cash items were powerful enough or cheap enough, they’d run the risk of becoming explicitly or implicitly necessary, and the game model would suffer for it. If you think a real money purchase is useless, and so you don’t buy them, but someone else does for the sake of that very minor convenience, the system is working correctly. I know people are frequently scornful of freemium features, but there’s a difference between Plants vs. Zombies 2 does microtransactions and how Candy Crush Saga does them.

I disagree, however, and this might be what really rankles people about the retrait item, with the idea that retraiting should be much more freely accessible than it is. While I like the idea of saving build templates, for use in different content “modes,” (PvE, WvW, dungeons, fractals, etc.,) I also like the idea of giving trait decisions weight by requiring a generally minor amount of hassle to change them. It favors those who come prepared, while encouraging players to deal with unfavorable surprises in a way other than changing yet another dial on their character, on top of equipment, skills, and major traits. That inconvenience, at its effect on how people play, is not an inherently bad thing or bad game design.

I’m not sure people’s problem with the retrait item is what it does (which is comparable to convenience items we’ve had since launch,) but rather that it doubles down on an existing system some players dislike, and apparently precludes the replacement of that system with one more similar to GW1. How many people thought replacing the current trait system was on the the table before? I won’t say it was never going to happen, but it was clearly a conscious decision on the part of the design team to make it less flexible, and the introduction of a the retrait item, a full year after launch, just seems to establish their commitment to the system, bringing it in line with half a dozen other systems with convenience items tied to them. The difference between them and it, however, is that the retrait item wasn’t available at launch (unlike armor repair cans,) which suggests it wasn’t factored into the design decision in the first place.

I think Tengu are by far the most popular choice for a new race, or at least that’s the impression I get from reading this forum. They’re cool, they have their own civilization (with ties to Cantha, no less!) and they just have a lot going for them all around.

Adding Tengu would be a pretty tremendous undertaking, since it would require substantial new Personal Story content, player appearances (lots of faces, patterns, body types, and sliders to adjust,) and so on. I definitely wouldn’t write it off, but I expect it would be expansion content rather than Living Story content.

The ability to custom-set particular chat colors, or at least enable a colorblind mode, would be a good accessibility feature. Speaking as a non-colorblind person, I know how (embarrassingly) easy it is to forget about it. >__<

Setting aside issues of “fairness,” how about listing some suggested areas of lore you’d like to see brought back?

There are more ties to Prophecies and Eye of the North than the other campaigns, since they’re set on Tyria (the continent, not to be confused with the planet of the same name,) and I see quite a few references in places all over the world. Gwen’s grave, for instance, Ogden Stonehealer living with the Durmand Priory, even Maw’s Rise.

It could be more integral to the plot, with the Ascalonian Catacombs probably the place where it’s most prominent, but I’m really not sure how much more lore from GW1 can support an extensive new story and isn’t being used somewhere. (The Dragonbrand, for instance, is the path Kralkatorrik took on its way to kill Glint in the Crystal Desert, for example. “Edge of Destiny” involves Glint and Kralkatorrik, but hopefully we’ll learn more whenever Kralkatorrik takes center stage.)

I should note that I haven’t played much of Nightfall, which probably has lore I’m not thinking of that could be tapped.

I couldn’t find where a dev actually talked about capes, but I think it was something to the effect of “We know people want it, and we think it’s cool, but it’s not high priority.” Just going off my very foggy memory, though, so don’t take that as an actual quote.

Capes are somewhat problematic, since they have a lot going on with them, between waving animation, clipping issues, and the wide range of body types in the game. (Especially where Charr, Norn, and Asura are concerned.)

Newman.6847:

Apart from the fact it’s way too expensive to be useful […]

Not if you’re a well-payed professional who makes $45+ an hour, or even $22.5/hour under certain circumstances. Then the time saved might be worth it to you. If you’re evaluating convenience items based on their cost in gold, it’s a safe bet that you’re not their target demographic in the first place.

Newman.6847:

Good design = option to have several preset builds we can swap out when ooc, perhaps for a small fee if they insist.

Bad design = 1 use consumable item that we have to buy, and then manually reset traits that we have to remember every time, while our dungeon party patiently waits.

I hope not many people buy these, maybe that’ll force them to implement a proper way of resetting traits on the fly.

They have never seemed to want to allow people to reset traits on the fly, or at least that sure didn’t sound like the plan back in February 2012:

Re-Specializing

After a character has spent their trait points, they can visit a trainer to reset their traits and refund their previously spent points for a small fee.

We realized that an important part of building a character is some sense of permanence. With this new system, you are flexible enough to change if you really want to, but you should still feel like the choices you made matter while you are out adventuring or slogging your way through a dungeon. In competitive PvP, you have a separately saved trait build and can respec free of charge.

I think it’s pretty clear that retrait items weren’t part of the plan back when the trait system was designed; whether or not it’s a good idea to allow people to bypass this design decision with an item, that’s a very small concession, while “swapping preset builds out of combat” would require a pretty dramatic shift in design direction. It’s not a clean cut “quality of life” change, it’s a specific decision about how the feel of the game and how much weight build choices have.

Which, in light of that, how terrible would the reaction be if they actually did introduce the ability to retrait anywhere for a one-time gem purchase? Then it would go from occasionally-used shortcut by the convenience item market (who, I cannot repeat this enough, buy this for cash, not gold,) to an expected, possibly even required (by elite dungeon runners, for example,) purchase, either through gold or cash. The limited usefulness of this item is what makes it an acceptable cash purchase, since it appeals to a relatively narrow portion of the playerbase, without the rest feeling like they need it or that it would be a good value for them.

Teraphas.6210:

Especially if there are regional variations. Like for example the real life game egyptian ratscrew, that had a lot of rule variants and a core game play. And yes that is the real name of the game and no I don’t know why it’s called that but I have met people from various States and they all know it by that name.

I’ve heard it called that, though at my high school people called something much, much more impolite. (Or an abbreviation of the more impolite version. ;P )

The important thing, I think, with a card game inside an RPG, is to keep it simple. The OP mentioned Magic: The Gathering, which is absolutely love, but it’s too complex for a mini-game. I remember wasting an enormous amount of time with Tetra Master in Final Fantasy IX, back on the ol’ Playstation, however, which was simple, but also highly collectible and engaging.

Something worth noting about overflows: If you’re in a party with someone on an overflow and you’re both in the same zone, you (or they) can click on a character portrait in the party lineup and choose to join them to be warped to their overflow. If their overflow is full and you can’t get in, you can just reverse the process and have them pile into your overflow.

That’s how guilds can stack all their members in the same overflow: They just have volunteers take party members temporarily to form a sort of shuttle service.

I agree that it’s a lot clunkier than the GW1 district system, although it’s a bit of a hazy comparison, since GW1 didn’t have Worlds like GW2 does. Since GW1 instanced all zones for parties, there wasn’t a need for a traditional Server/World system, which GW2 definitely does need, both for WvW and for persistent, player-independent zones.

Mikuchan.7261:

70 gems for skipping a few load screens (4?) and a max of like 8-10 s wp cost and the 3-ish s it costs to retrait?
70 gems are worthlike what? 3-4 gold?

If using a retrait item saves you one minute of hassle, and you buy them in the 5-pack ($0.75 for each item,) that’s on par with working a single minute at a job that pays $45/hour. That’s a very high wage if a player is a student or just starting out, but if that’s the case, convenience items aren’t targeted at that player in the first place, who likely has more time to spare than money. Convenience items are targeted at busy professionals don’t have a lot of time to spare, and are happy to spend some change if it’ll help them make the most of their limited gaming time. That’s why convenience items are a terrible deal if you’re trading gold for them; if you have time to farm enough gold for that, you can probably spare a couple minutes to make a run to the bank/skill trainer/trading post/armor repair/etc.

If using a retrait stone saves you two minutes (which it might, if you’re in, say, a jumping puzzle, instanced area, a crowded server before a big event, etc.) then the wage at which which an equivalent amount of time spent working (two minutes) pays enough to cover the item ($0.75) drops by half, down to $22.5 . That’s not minimum wage, but that’s not outlandish, either, if you’re a young professional.

If anyone would like to see my more thorough write-up, with the math shown and more analysis, let me know. I was going to post it, but it’s, well, a little exhausting if you’re not interested in this kind of thing.

How dare they trick players into playing their game a lot! The idea that players are staying for the rewards, which they have been conditioned into enjoying, makes it mind-bogglingly sinister.

-facepalm-

Polymock has some card-game like elements, although it’s not nearly as complex as some card games. I think developers have expressed interest bringing it back before, though I’m sure it’s on the low-priority wishlist.

I think that’s part of the reason they announced precursor crafting so far in advance, so the market would have time to adjust and plan for it. If they just added it out of the blue, it could cost people significantly, but we’ve known it was coming for months and months now.

I highly recommend trying out a couple of different professions to see what you like. I have a ranger, and I like it, but most of the utility skills don’t excite me much, and I definitely enjoyed leveling my mesmer and my elementalist more. They’re also a lot more vulnerable to damage than the ranger, however, so I have to play more cautiously. That fits my playstyle, however, so it works out fine.

Warrior or Guardian might be good ones to investigate if you want a group-friendly profession that can take a few hits without going down as easily as something lighter.

On the character select screen, click “World Selection” button in the lower-left corner. It’ll have a list of worlds with labels for “High” to “Very High” population. I’m not sure how big a difference that is, since those aren’t exactly fine measures of comparison, but if you’re having trouble finding people on Devona’s Rest, you might try one of the “Very High” options. You can use guesting to try out a server without having to commit to moving permanently. You might try Jade Quarry, Blackgate, and Sanctum of Rall first, since those seem to be pretty heavily populated.

As Dankiat pointed out, what time of day you play can have a major influence as well.

Skan.5301:

Answer to “how to get people to buy the expansion”: Another Manifesto filled with sweet, sweet lies that people will eat up and then be severely disappointed with.

Sometimes I wonder if people get what a manifesto is. It’s a statement of intention, of goals, not a specific promise of execution. If I declare that “I’m going to write the best-selling fantasy novel of all time, full of realistic world-building, fully-developed characters, and themes that resonate with every human soul,” and I fail at that, I’m not a liar: I’m overly optimistic at best, or sorely mistaken at worst.

It’s like product creators aren’t allowed to get excited and rhetorical about anything anymore or have ambitious goals, because people will throw it back in their faces if they ever have to compromise, or if things don’t turn out as expected. I’m baffled by the people who treat shortcomings in the game as acts of malicious neglect, rather than practical shortcomings.

Crafting precusors will definitely have an effect on certain markets, which is one reason I could imagine for why it’s taken so long to implement, so as to figure out a way to reduce instability. Considering the disequilibrium caused by ascended crafting and the magic find revamp, I wouldn’t be surprised if they wait to see how the market handles ascended weapons.

For anyone worried that everyone will have a legendary once precursors are made more accessible, don’t forget that getting a precursor is only half the battle in converting it to a legendary, and since it was RNG or piles of gold, it’s generally the less-interesting half.

“Use all” would be a very welcome addition. I know you can merge luck with an artificer, but I usually salvage stuff while I’m out in the field, so I can deposit crafting materials, use luck items (thereby immediately increasing my rewards while I’m out and about,) and freeing up room in my inventory.

Letting artificers combine them is a neat way to deal with the clicking problem, but it’s too impractical to be very useful, I think.

1. Would you prefer to go the Megadestroyer route? He’s not a super hard boss, and he doesn’t spawn regularly because of his pre-events, but he’s also one of the less-frequently done world bosses, for exactly those reasons. See also: Karka Queen.

I’d comment on 2 and 3, but I’m exhausted on discussing those particular topics, so I’ll just stick to 1.

His location is a little goofy, but if you walk along the outer East side of the wall leading up to him, it’s easy to slip in pretty far up, and you can easily skip all of the Flame Legion on the way in. At a rough estimate, it probably takes me about a minute to get from the nearest waypoint to the shaman, maybe a little more. Not substantially worse than, say, the Temple of Dwayna or the Fire Elemental, if you know about the side entrance.

One nice thing about the Fire Shaman is that I can generally do his event at my leisure, while I’m doing the boss circuit. He takes long enough and is done by relatively few people, which means his event practically never finishes while I’m on my way in. And since the NPCs do decent work, you don’t need more than 2-3 people to reasonably take him down.

Sorta. It’s doubtful we’ll see Hunger Royale return because its inspiration seems to have gone into Southsun Survival, a similar activity that’s available as part of the daily activity rotation.

So if you liked Hunger Royale, you should give Southsun Survivor a try! It won’t be identical, but you might even like it better.

Relevant: See “Legendary Gear and Precusors.”

A this-year release for new legendary gear and a way to build a precusor were definitely on the roadmap back in July. There’s a chance plans have changed (particularly if they’re taking a “We want to make sure it’s done right” approach, or it wasn’t high on priorities; things do slip,) but we’ve still got 2 1/2 months (~5 releases) left in the year, so it seems just as possible it’s going as planned.

A lot of other things mentioned in that post (ascended materials/crafting, champion rewards, dungeon bonus rewards, the return of Super Adventure Box, world boss revisions, and account magic find) have been executed, so that does give some credibility to the road map.

The other major thing on the list seems to be “new skills and traits.” No idea if that’s going to make the cut or not before the end of the year, or to what extent.

Storyline quests, commonly referred to as your Personal Story, are those that carry you through the game. They’re mostly instanced areas and cut scenes that progress you through a story that reflects your choices (to some extent) and push you from zone to zone all the way to the endgame.

If you don’t want to play the story, there’s nothing to stop you from roaming around freely in the world and ignore it completely. The rewards for it are passable, but not that much more valuable than what you’re going to come across on your own just playing the game. The story itself is its main reward.

Each story step has a recommended level, and if you only play the story steps, you’re going to fall behind that level pretty quickly, since the personal story assumes you’ll be exploring zones, completing renown hearts, and doing dynamic events in between story steps as you reach new places. The story follows you all the way to level 80 (the max) and beyond, but there’s no practical way to do only the story without spending time freely exploring the world.

I hope that helps. Welcome to the game!

Where do people learn all this inside information about the relationship between ArenaNet and NCSoft, and what influence the development of WildStar has on ArenaNet?

I can’t comment one way or the other on it, but I see it mentioned often enough that I wonder if there are any interviews, investor reports, or anything else that people are referring to, or if it’s just speculation.

So…sources?

It’s hard to say, but I’m skeptical that Orr will change dramatically. To make that work sensibly would require rewriting a large part of the story to reflect the Cleansing of Orr, and would require stripping three zones of content to replace with “new Orr,” and if the recent replacing of one Twilight Arbor path with the new Aetherblade path is any indication, that would be poorly-received.

It’s one thing to do that with a single dungeon path (noting, again, that it hasn’t been a very popular decision with some people,) but doing that to Orr would be a huge undertaking, and I think they’d sooner just introduce new zones than dramatically reskin and repopulate existing ones to that degree.

If it’s messing with your head canon that Orr is still a blighted waste after defeating Zhaitan, think of it as being in a period of reconstruction after the war. Orr was dead and underwater for 150 years before Zhaitan dredged it up, and under Zhaitan’s corruptive influence for another 200 years. That kind of damage to the land takes a long time to recover from, even if the source of the corruption is gone.

…Am I the only one who read the OP and thought, “Awesome, those 4-5 newbies all got into a party with each other, so they’re all on the same footing!” ?

But, in seriousness, I do think asking for join confirmation, like in a normal party-joining scenario, would be good. Just seems practical.

Donari.5237:

I recommend you play an elementalist or engineer if you want to have to push a lot of different buttons and combinations.

Seconded. I only played an engineer during beta, so I can’t remember exactly how they work, but with an elementalist, you have access to four sets of weapon-based skills (one for each attunement,) and if you want more options, you have a ton in the conjured weapons skills, which each make their own skill bar.

Elementalists can’t swap weapons in combat, but that’s because they’re just bananas with options already, if you want them.

While it might be fun to have a little more personal investment in pets, I’m afraid it probably wouldn’t be very practical, since they’re just one class out of six, and a lot of people seem to have mixed feelings about them. I think an improvement to their AI and combat abilities would definitely have to come first.

As for being able to level them up separate from player leveling, that sounds like a great idea, but having played GW1, where I did have to level different pets separately, it’s a huge relief for me to be able to switch them on a whim.

It’s a matter of taste; GW2 has somewhat painterly, stylized art direction rather than a photo-realistic one, and post-processing is a large part of creating that look, which includes blurring and sometimes heavy bloom lighting.

So it’s working more or less as-intended, whether or not any given individual would prefer it that way.

Nothing wrong with providing another knob for people to fine-tune the graphics to their tastes, however.

Gold is the most important currency, thanks to how flexible it is to use, and I think it should be, since it’s the most flexible to obtain.

“DLC should be free” is a strange attitude to me. Free DLC is a great bonus, but I don’t think we should forget the days when there was no DLC; a game shipped as-is, and if something wasn’t ready by the time the game went into manufacturing, it would have to wait for the sequel, if the game got one.

If I pay $50 for the game without a barber, and it’s still a good game for the money (which is a personal judgement call for every individual,) the fact that the game would be an even better value with a barber, for the same money doesn’t make the $50-no-barber game a poor value.

That’s like ordering a pizza and demanding extra cheese be free, just because it would be a friendly gesture on the part of the company. Yeah, that would be nice, but there’s nothing wrong with charging for extras, as long as the base product is worth the base price.

An expansion is, ultimately, a $40 DLC pack. Instead of having the option to get any of it for free (as with Living World,) players either have it or they don’t, dividing the player base into those with access and those without, whereas the gem store offers lots of DLC in small chunks to those who want it, while the Living World offers new content as a bonus. The included DLC can be more ambitious and coherent in an expansion than Living World releases usually are, but they’re not as flexible in release or capable of offering as much free new content.

GW2 is trying out a different release model than GW2, one that has its pros and cons. I don’t think enough people appreciate the nuances and advantages of the new model. It’s not a F2P model (because there is a base purchase,) but it’s not a traditional “Buy it once, by the sequel or expansion a few years later if it gets one” model, either.

That’s one frustration I have with ascended crafting. I’ve dabbled a little with it, getting my artificer up to 450 so I could start refining all the Bloodstone Dust and Dragonite Ore I’ve been picking up, but at the moment, it’s not worth it to me to keep refining materials, since ascended weapons aren’t yet worth the cost (for other materials) to me. I’m about ready to start destroying whole stacks of materials simply so I won’t have to store them.

I just don’t get why the numbers are so high. They’re not tradeable, so I don’t see why the numbers (both for drops and for costs) have to be so high compared to the stack limit. (250/stack)

I’ll probably hold onto it until we learn more about ascended armor, but when I’ve got more than enough Dragonite Ore and Bloodstone Dust to equip my main and more than one alt, I’m ready to just start dumping that junk.

Devata.6589:

Why is the game so gold-driven? Thats not fun but then people are more likely to buy gems to convert to gold.

It’s worth noting that gold is the single most widely-rewarded currency. Pretty much anything you do (other than sPvP) rewards coin, unlike most other forms of currency (badges of honor, fractal relics, guild commendations, dungeon tokens,) that can only be earned through more narrow kinds of content. Laurels and karma are pretty flexible, too, but still not as flexible as coin. (And laurels are time-gated, to boot, which a lot of players don’t seem to like for content.)

A lot of things charge coin, which you can get for real money through gems, but there’s a huge amount of content that rewards coin, too, so it only makes sense that a lot of items should cost gold. It’s the basic, content-neutral currency. Is the fact that gold can be bought with gems considered? Likely. But it’s not the only factor.

That’s like asking why the game is so XP-driven, and then pointing fingers at the sale of XP boosters. Yeah, I guess that can be a factor, but it’s a core system of the game, and just because real money can be involved doesn’t mean it’s the only practical way to play the game.

Devata.6589:

Why isn’t there a barber in the game where you can change your hair for 15 silver? Because then they will sell less make-over kids.

That’s like asking why all DLC packs in games aren’t free. Just because a company could include something in the base game doesn’t mean they have a responsibility to, or that the game is necessarily a bad product without the DLC. I know that galls people who can’t stand DLC (“Extra fighting game costumes should be free!”) but that’s the business.

Devata.6589:

Why are so many mini’s in the gem-store and not in the world so it it fun to collect them? Because then they can’t sell them in the gem-store.

I think it’s worth noting that few of the GW1 minis were readily available in-game. I guess you count birthday presents, which were the primary source for them, but given that birthdays are some of the most extremely time-gated content, I think it’s safe to say collectors were generally buying them off other players who didn’t want their birthday presents…Which isn’t that different from the minis market now, except now minis are linked to a mix of the gem store (and trading post aftermarket sales, most of which are surprisingly cheap,) and living story releases, which are in-game, as well as adding temporary ones to the gem store.

So, yeah, minis weren’t exactly a coin-free collecting hobby in GW1, either, and it didn’t sell them in a gem store.

Devata.6589:

Why do they work so much with temporary content. So they have an excuse to put items in the gem-store and take them back out.. this to create a feel of urgency.

So the world feels like it is constantly changing, compelling people to continue to log in to experience new things? That sounds bad, but if people are going to complain that mid-level zones are abandoned, constantly providing a new carrot to drive players into different zones is a way to solve that problem and keep the game active. It’s going to burn some players out if they try to do everything, but for those who don’t need to do everything (I skipped Super Adventure Box and basically all of Wintersday, for example,) it’s a way to keep providing new content for people with different interests.

If they just wanted to toss in limited time gem store products, they could, easily, without half the non-gem-related content included in the living story releases. They don’t need an excuse for it, and lots of F2P games work on that model, for better or worse.

Devata.6589:

If the question is “how do we get people to buy gems” you get this sort of stuff in the game.

You must understand Anet is a commercial company that needs to make money. The way they do it effects the game. The living story fits to there gem-store focus for income so if you don’t like many of those negative side-effects that is also a reason to prefer expansion so Anet can and should focus on that to generate income.. Of course then they should also stop with the gem-store focus and change all the bad effects of it that are now in the game.

I’m tired of hearing the “money poisons everything” argument. Does it poison some games? Yeah, and that’s why F2P games (which GW2 is not, since there is a ~$50 base game,) have such a bad reputation. That doesn’t mean every game with a cash shop is inherently tainted, or that the cash shop is the sole factor in every single design decision. It’s more complicated than that.

luckyguse.2674:

I’m ready to buy gems for that unlimited wood axe or plant harvester. I see you have a version of the mining pick up but I already have that. I was either away, or lacked the money the last time you had those items available, but today I’m ready. Tomorrow, I’m not so sure. Sorry, I don’t trust anyone enough to prepay for something that may, or may not exsist in the near future. Please don’t take it personally.

I don’t think they were going to take it personally if you didn’t pre-pay for an item they’re not selling right now. That would be silly, and they’d have no idea what item you were pre-paying for anyway. I don’t think they expect people to buy gems without any intent to spend those gems (or most of them, anyway,) right away.

So is this just a passive-aggressive way of protesting limited-time items?

Ashabhi.1365:

maddoctor.2738:

/snip.

A lot of people still have the idea that RNG means that if you run an instance (dungeon, boss, event, whatever) a certain number of times, then you will eventually receive said item.

That’s not the way RNG works. RNG works similar to rolling a die. You have the same chance of rolling a 6 on the first roll as you do on the 300th roll. It doesn’t get more “certain” the more often you roll the die.

This is slightly misleading. You have the same chance of rolling a six on the first roll as you do on the 300th, which means that any particular roll has exactly the same chance of rolling a six as any other roll. So, if the odds of rolling a six are 1/100 (on a d100,) then I only have a 1% chance that my next roll is going to be a six; that’s very low, and I can pretty much write off my chances of rolling a six.

I’m not just rolling once, however, and I don’t care which die gets it, so if I roll 100 times, my odds of rolling a six somewhere in those hundred rolls are substantially better than 1%. It’s certainly not guaranteed, but that’s the nature of RNG and probability. Put another way, if I flip four coins, I’m not going to get 2-2, but the odds of getting at least one heads are substantially better than 50%, even if those are the odds for any given flip. (Say, the third one.)

Of course, if your odds of getting a drop are .000001%, even if you roll the die a thousand times, your odds are still negligible. More runs can improve your odds, but whether or not they improve your odds significantly is another matter. Someone is going to win the lottery, but whether you buy one ticket or ten, it’s probably not going to be you.

Then again, probability is freaky math, unlike good ol’ calculus, and I avoid its witchcraft when I can, so I’m sure plenty of people know more about it than I do.

At the moment, no. It’s possible they’ll bring the Crown Pavilion back eventually (it is a rather large part of DR to leave unused, after having built it,) but there’s nothing particular we know, like when that’ll be or if the Sovereign weapons will return.

So, for all practical purposes, no, they’re unobtainable now.

…If we’re going to discount GW2’s massive sales on account of it having a pre-built playerbase, then the whole idea of comparing them numerically is out. As long as mjharrison was listing numbers, however, I thought it only correct to put them in context.

Of course, one could also say that Prophecies fueled sales of Factions, which fueled sales of Nightfall. I think the idea of comparing games with such different release models, one of which is broken into multiple standalone releases (that get bundled for numbers purposes,) while the other is a sequel to that mult-faceted release, is ridiculous. Apples to oranges.

While I’d be up for an expansion, I think it’s worth noting that selling a large, bundled product like an expansion does have some negatives as well as positives. When you do an expansion, you split the playerbase between those who have it and those that don’t, which means that the expansion can only have a very limited effect on the existing world. If the Clockwork Invasion, for example, were heavily extended and developed further into a full expansion back, for example, none of the invasions could take place in existing zones, because people in those zones might not have the expansion pack. Or else they’d have to cook up some off-the-wall solution, like forking zones between “with expansion” and “without expansion” versions, which still splits the players without pushing people to repopulate older, emptier zones. (Which a lot of the Living World releases encourage.)

Another disadvantage is the lack of flexibility. If you develop an expansion pack for a game, you’re limiting your ability to react to changes in the community, much less things you’ve done before. The Living Story, for example, has substantially fewer “talking heads” cutscenes than the Personal Story does, and that’s because the Living Story team, having decided that particular cut scene system was too distracting, decided to change it up. If we had an expansion already, it would probably be running off the same ideas and assumptions that the base game itself is.

People generally don’t seem to like Trahearne. I think it’s safe to say that, if they did an expansion without waiting to see what the reception to the base game storyline was, we’d probably be seeing a lot more of him. Maybe not, but my point is that the Living Story model is a lot more flexible than an expansion model, because you don’t have to develop tons of content at once and then release it in an expansion pack; if one Living Story release flops or the team learns something from its execution, they can apply those lessons. Maybe not in the next month, because these things take some time to change and test, but certainly a couple releases down the road, which is enormously more flexible than an expansion pack.

Saviourslave.6715:

Or as another example, dungeon/dragon rewards/precursors. People are complaining that there are too few rare rewards in this game that you can go into LA, link into the chat and have a couple hundred players either be immediately instilled with jealousy or grovelling to kiss your feet (Slight use of exaggeration, but you get my point).

Honestly, that’s the last thing I want encouraged. By far the least dignified player I ever saw was a guy decked out in pure Celestial-colored Arah dungeon armor, with expensive weapons, totally full of himself and expecting others to be impressed. Behavior and tasteful aesthetic decisions are much more impressive to me than legendary weapons. Actually, there are quite a few weapons that impress me more than legendary weapons when I see them used, because I see a boatload of legendaries on the world boss circuit. I know it feels good when you’re decked out in Cool Guy Armor with Cool Guy Weapon, but I wonder how many people who complain about rare gear not being rare enough are in love with the rarity, the exclusivity, more than with the weapon/armor art.

Saviourslave.6715:

But what would you want as a method for rare gear to be introduced in the optimal manner to obtain? Nobody likes RNG, rare 0.0000005% drops from stupidly easy or difficult bosses, because people want to know that for each hour or two they put into the game they are making tangible progress in their pursuit for the thing they want. Nobody likes grinding for tokens either however, they just see it as a repetitive waste of time doing the same achievement over and over again, they want a one time thing to have an epic reward, and be tangibly progressive. However, that leaves us with scavenger hunts/super tough boss battles/one time events that the player has to complete only once or twice to obtain their “Epic” piece of equipment… but that defeats the point, since if it’s just one thing that people have to do, no matter how long it is, people are going to find the optimal or easiest and fastest way to finish that objective, and sooner or later you’ll see everyone running around with epic gear, making them lose their epic feel.
So, as a community, what are your thoughts on how Anet could make rare gear and loot acquisition a fun, progressive, non-gambling yet intensely challenging and truly “Legendary” experience that won’t be immediately exploited and achieved by those with 100000000000 gold?

The fact that we have so many options is, in a way, a solution to this problem. If there are one of the methods you don’t like, you have alternatives. You can’t get every skin through every alternative, but that provides some level of exclusivity to those items, preventing you from seeing, say, half of the 1h sword users wielding Jormag’s Breath. (A weapon that, come to think of it, I have never seen anyone use.)

“Stupidly low” RNG is really the most easily implemented, practical way to keep rare weapons rare, if you’re concerned about players figuring out the most optimal way to obtain guaranteed gear like dungeon or crafted gear, because that is always going to happen. You can also make items limited-time, like SAB weapons that become less common once their season is over, but people will also be disappointed that once they’re out of season, they’ll either be super common from leftovers (Toy weapons,) or no longer available (A lot of Living Story reward gear.)

Is the most effective method so far that used for Ascended Weapons, which combine a time-gate (material refinement,) an enormous gold expense (for basic materials,) account binding (to prevent market sales,) and a diverse requirement of hard-to-obtain materials? Apparently. I haven’t seen many ascended weapons out and about yet, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see if effective it is, as the people who need to show off the rarest of rare equipment scramble to put together the new hot, difficult-to-obtain thing.

Personally, I’m glad that there’s a wide variety of methods for earning/locking skins. Frustrating as RNG or enormous cost might be if I want a weapon, at least it’s keeping the number of Twilight users I see in check. (Even so, it’s long past the point where I go “Ooh! Shiny!”) As for myself, none of my armor or weapon skins are very expensive, and it’s all available on the trading post for a pretty meager amount of gold. That doesn’t diminish my enjoyment of them, however, because my characters look darn good in them, whatever anyone else is wearing.