Guild Wars 2

Sykper.6583:

I get that you can make this claim hence is why I brought it up. It is just that I cannot recall a single other instance of where an expansion caused less interest in the game, the opposite often happens where for a time numbers grow, and then they would fall off.

Find me another MMO where an expansion release caused less subscribers or active players.

There is no good raiding games on market except WoW.

Sykper.6583:

Did the numbers dip due to Cataclysm’s explosive release of new content, and millions of players judged Cataclysm in the first months? Even when the previous two expansions saw an increase of subs in the opening months?

Yes. It was exactly that bad.

Sykper.6583:

Rednik doesn’t know what the heck he is talking about, and ironically can’t really read the chart he listed. He simply thinks that because WotLK peaked during its end in “active” subs that it must have been an overwhelming success when in reality, the very first quarter after Cataclysm you see the beginning of the end with subs finally ending from all the players who would let them run out after WotLK.

How about you will finally stop trying pushing fantasies as explanations instead of most logical answers? Numbers are tied to players interest to content, that’s it. Good content – players pay to play it, bad content – they cancel subs. That’s how real world works.

Sykper.6583:

You can’t even look at your own data, this is the exact data that proves my point.

Cataclysm released Quarter 4 of 2010, so why did a brand new expansion for WoW have Less Subs coming in the immediate quarters after, contrary to that steady rise you see before?

Because it was bad and disappointing. Simple, right?

Sykper.6583:

ICC was the last raid for WoW and that released Q4 2009, as I said before millions of players would stick around until the end of WotLK due to their investment already, but their raid days and subs ended when Cataclysm released.

You see this directly with the drop-off of subs within the first two quarters that matched the effective growth of subs during all of WotLK’s timeline. And it kept dropping after that.

Yes. Because WotLK was so good that subs were growing even near the end of expansion, and then “awesome” Cataclysm happened. I was so “good” that my hardcore raid guild that was here since vanilla lost almost half of raid roster. Also it not making your lies about WotLK subscription numbers more trustworthy anyway.

Sykper.6583:

They did not. What part of ‘WotLK was the last expansion for millions of WoW players’ did you not understand? It had the peak of players, but it was such an utter letdown that millions left before Cataclysm. Players wanted to ride out that Expansion Box price and pray that the content would get better, that raids would get better.

The only redeeming raid in WotLK was Ulduar, which could be compared to its predecessor raids in Vanilla and BC. Icecrown Citadel would have been bland if it didn’t have Arthas in it. WotLK rode off the hype from Vanilla and BC and it tore it all down.

How about you to stop lying to prove your point? WoW Cataclysm was released Dec 10 2010, and population was steady rising before that. WotLK and all WotLK raids was an ultimate success, whatever you like it or not.

NikeEU.7690:

Stop making posts where you disguise your subjective opinions in declaratory tones as if they were obvious facts.

This is exactly what your post is.

Sarrs.4831:

You’re missing the point. WOTLK did well because it did things other than raiding well.

WotLK had a lot of stuff done well, but WoW is a raiding game, and you cannot get successful addon without making successful raids. And yet for some reason he trying to insist that numbers doesn’t matter/numbers are high not because of raids/doomsday is close because heretics made easier raid modes.

Miellyn.6847:

5 man raid dungeons? oO
If you mean HC dungeons, the only reason they were a ‘success’ was the fact you could grind the previous raid tier equipment through dungeons. They were even easier than our dungeons and after some harder dungeons were added with ICC patch, almost nobody played the Halls of Reflection because it was ‘too hard’ aka you couldn’t chain pull and face roll it.

Except that they was farmed for battered hilt pretty actively. I guess you played on some very dead and underpopulated server and never used auto-lfg for some reason.

Miellyn.6847:

The only class that had something unique left was shaman with bloodlust/heroism. The rest could be replaced with other classes.

That’s why druids/shamans, disc priests and paladins had guaranteed raid spots back then, because no uniqueness? Seems like you haven’t played WotLK raids seriously at all.

Miellyn.6847:

Wintergrasp was more PvE than PvP and gated a miniraid. The only reason PvE-Players played it. So do we gate forsaken thicket and make it only accessible if your server controls Stonemist Castle? It would increase the WvW participation and create a kittenstorm beyond compare.

That would be fun, honestly, but anet hates wvw too much for that.

Miellyn.6847:

Raids had huge balance issues in 10 and 25 man mode and lets not forget the panic 30% health buff for LK, after every other HC boss in ICC was killed in the first 24h after HC release, making it impossible to kill him without the 5% buff before you got weapons from him and finished 1-2 legendary axes.

Which was good thing.

Miellyn.6847:

And the main reason for the popularity was the Arthas story arc and the story telling overall not the PvE systems.

So raiders playing raiding game for storytelling? Cool story bro.

Miellyn.6847:

All MMOs that ‘learned’ from WotLK went f2p pretty fast.

Wildstar? Except that WS copied vanilla WoW model, not LK one. And now GW2 trying to do the same.

Miellyn.6847:

Won’t happen. People demanded it back when the first version of the LFG was implemented and ArenaNet said this kind of system will never be implemented in GW2.
Raids are not inaccessible. Accessible content doesn’t imply that you can clear it with zero effort.

WotLK was the start of the downfall of WoW, not Cataclysm.
People always use the subscriber count and the change to the raid system as an argument. They ignore the fact that WotLK was the continuation of the most popular story arc of the whole Warcraft universe, the release in multiple new regions like Brasil and Korea and China, the biggest region, got everything with about half a year delay, as they had to change everything to remove the death theme.

Right, so numbers doesn’t matter, subjective opinion is?
LK was almost ideal addon, this is a fact. A lots of vanilla mistakes was fixed, but class uniqueness was still there, pvp was made more available than ever (even PvE players was actively participating in Wintergrasp battles), and raiding was in top shape – most hardcore guilds in the world barely was able to kill final bosses to get a world first 25HM, and casuals was able to get same story and epic raiding experience, but in much more easy and friendly version in 10 normal. Don’t forget 5 man raid dungeons, which was another amazing success and acted like bridge between dungeons and raids for beginners. Anet can learn a lot from WotLK.

Miellyn.6847:

WoW had a massive open world content reduction after introduction of LFR as people had ‘more content’ with LFR causing a massive subscriber loss. All other games with easy modes had it from the start.
So there is one negative example and no positive examples for raid easy modes as you don’t know how the other games would turn out if they hadn’t an easy mode.

Maybe you should bring data that an easy mode would benefit the game instead demanding data that it wouldn’t.

Raid participation rates in gear threadmill games without the same gear available in other places are not positiv examples.

Lolwhat, one negative and no positive? Do you know about Blizzard practice of nerfing raid bosses to ensure that wider audience can kill them after first weeks? Have you forgot about WotLK, where they finally split raids to multiple modes, and that made WotLK most popular addon in WoW history? Or maybe you forgot about Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn in Icecrown CItadel? It was failure in balance design in Cataclysm and after it, which caused the downfall of WoW, not LFR.

Astralporing.1957:

Sure, because generally the players that have issues with raids are not doing them.

Such arguments always reminds me “you dont have a pile of money because you are too passive to find a 100k$ job”. Outcome of problem is not a source of problem.

Absurdo.8309:

Sarrs.4831:

difficulty ‘levels’ for raids are better provided via breadth of content rather than multiple modes

This is the best argument against easy mode raids, and I will repeat it in every one of these blasted threads.

There’s no real strong argument on why this particular content must be easy.

I’ve heard the arguments for “lore” and “story,” but, well, those arguments are easily countered. Almost all the lore is in a completed instance. Anyone can experience the boss fights. And story is not the focus of raids. Where are the calls for an arah explorable easy mode? Aether path easy mode?

Breadth of content seems objectively superior. Sometimes raiders want to do something easier. Our maybe they beat raids for the week. Now they can do other content. And when new/less experienced players get better, they’ll have new content to enjoy.

And, even within raids, there’s a variety of difficulties. Wing 3 escort may be the easiest encounter. I was in the most non-meta pug last night and we beat it. Others can start here too.

Don’t like hard content? That’s ok! Play what you like. But easy mode very every single thing in this game would get boring, fast.

And I’d like to see new LS every 3 months, new dungeon+fractal every two and new raid with all wings every 6. Oh, and add more races, pve maps, emotions, activities, quests…
Too bad that in real world adding new mode to existing content costs less development time than making a full alternative from scratch. And because of that new mode is much more likely to happen instead.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Legendary armor is a reward for completing the most difficult content in the game. They may be able to do something with PvP and make a PvP legendary armor but outside of that there is no other content currently hard enough to give legendary armor.

Additionally they canceled all legendary projects in order to focus on the LS. It will be at least a year before we see any additional legendary items, and the ones people already paid for will be first if we get any more.

Have you ever tried to make a successful wvw guild and do their common tasks? I guess not. And to add more to that, level of dedication and time spent for regular veteran wvw player is a lot higher than any of pve raiders can even reach. I know lots of examples about wvwers being in wvw 24h+ in row, commanding or fighting just because your server needs it, but I never heard about anyone spending 24h+ in raid.

Azoqu.8917:

Except everything raid related is down voted like no tomorrow on reddit. And I do mean everything. So of course the anti-raider option has more upvotes.

It’s pretty much expected when 80% of community feels alienated by content being made only for 20% of community, no? Especially when those 20% actively attacking any suggestions to change this situation, even ones about make their part of content bigger and expand it as modes.
But that’s offtopic ofc.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Based on the discussions in this thread and on the GW2 subreddit.

Hm, most upvoted post is about keeping cooldown 30m and multiple supporters of his position, well, now that seems like real community opinion.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Sorry to disappoint! I have no intention of arguing, I just enjoy being sassy.

I am going to present the issue to ANet via my communication channels with a recommendation based on general community feedback and then let them decide. I, personally, feel that it wouldn’t harm anyone and would only serve to benefit players to synchronize the cooldowns for a prestigious raid reward.

Based on what community feedback? Like, general player community who basically getting big “hahaha kitten you, we feel ourselves elite because we have raid currency, and we want to get signature class abilities just because?”

Erzian.5218:

A long list of incorrect or irrelevant arguments and claims, doesn’t prove anything. Perhaps you are the troll? If you really want me to repeat all the non-sense I can make a list of the “arguments” on your long list and repeat why they are incorrect :^)
So far you have literally brought up a total of ZERO reasons why 30minute is appropriate, if you consider the items (and their prices) that are currently in the game as well as the current state of balance of the different classes and their roles.
Most of the things don’t even have anything to do with personal opinion but are simply facts/maths.
edit: “the quality of this “discussion/arugement”is pretty low .” Yes, it is because you ignore blatant evidence and basic math.

You have a pretty interesting position, “you arguments are not arguments, now here is my opinion and prove it wrong”. We all can play this game. How about this device being sold for 50g to everyone then? Right in LA. I heard so much arguments why it will not affect balance and will not make anyone less happy, so this should be even better, right?
50g for pocket portal for everyone!
Or maybe you will bring “a dedication” argument? Then lets give it to everyone for free with world completion!

perry.9645:

im pretty sure if you could sell it people would pay that price for it so yes.

Sure, then make another, tradable version and add it to drop with same 0.000001% chance as permanent contracts. And ofc don’t add it to vendor.

Erzian.5218:

It is 450 gold that is 100 (~9gold per crafting process, output of 2 portals each) watch work portals and in line with most other permanent items and twice as much as an other popular toy (executioner’s axe). Even your argument about the price is wrong.

In line, you said?

Chris McSwag.4683:

its still a toy at 5 min cd, just that you consistently fail to realise it.

With 5 min cd its no longer a toy but a VERY cheap alternative to Watchwork Portal. So no. And I’m glad that general Anet policy about such things is same as mine.

Chris McSwag.4683:

I can’t tell if rednik is trolling or simply has very poor reading comprehension.
Portals are, as mentioned multiple times now, not unique to mesmer as they are craftable and Mesmer brings a lot more which makes it completely unreasonable to think that a lower cd would mean not taking a mesmer. How is this so hard to understand?

Moreover, the portal cannot be used in wvw or pvp and has limited use in pve as well. 30 min cd is absurd for what it does. 5 min and its useable while not even getting close to a mesmer.

I’m ok with portals. I’m not ok with cheap portals. Is that hard to understand? Toy must be a toy.

Aegael.6938:

Is there something wrong with that?

You seem to be complaining about people complaining because you’re salty and you just want to feel special, that’s just a guess.

Salty? It’s not me making begging threads about buffing a cheap toy into real alternative to unique class ability just because he can buy it. Also this topic sounds extremely funny when being defended by same people who valorously attacking any thread with alternative ways to acquire raid loot.

perry.9645:

im pretty sure most of the people complaining just complain because they cant get the infinite portal and are salty about it but thats just a guess

im pretty sure most of the people complaining about too high cooldown just complain because they can get the infinite portal and now want to feel themselves special, and are salty about it but thats just a guess

Erzian.5218:

10g/use does NOT promote using it, it promotes the exact opposite. It is an absurd price for giving someone else some convenience. We already have that and nobody uses it. There is a reason for that. I could craft a stack or two of them and there are people who could craft more stacks than they could ever use but nobody does that because it doesn’t make sense. What you get for your money is not worth it.

Tell that to 3k+ for hair contract or personal banker.

Erzian.5218:

Since you still dont understand it: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Watchwork_Portal_Device
A similar device is already in the game. The white mantle one does not affect your beloved class uniqueness at all.

No problem, make White Mantle one eat 10g per use like watchwork and everybody will be ok with it. But you don’t want to pay, you want mesmer portal for cheap. And you not going to get it, judging by Anet history of toy changes.

TexZero.7910:

So all these counterpoints that mesmer players want to keep themselves unique is where the greed and inability to keep gameplay health in mind is getting lost. After all a game is meant to be fun, and you’re trying to take that away for the sake of you instead of actual balanced use of consumables.

“Give me your unique class mechanic for cheap or I will call you a greedy and fun-hating person” is not a really good argument. I think Cyninja is actually right and best decision is completely delete this item from the game and refund full cost back to owners.

apharma.3741:

Simple make it a collection requiring the following:
Ad Infinatum
All fractal weapons
All golden fractal weapons
Old Tom
Completed all fractal achievements

If that doesn’t prove your fractal prowess I guess adding some more challenge motes or requiring you to beat level 100 mai trin several times. Sure she’s not that hard, just annoying.

Umm, everything is fine except for these two. It’s not a really good idea to replace RNG tonic with collection that have RNG items.

Zui.9245:

Yes, it’s all consumables. Yet every single one on that list save for the Experimental Rifle can be used in instanced content. You not knowing this suggests to me that you’re not actually part of what I’d consider to be the Dungeon & Fractal community, since nearly all of what I listed are very widely known consumables.

20 shards for a single use device that’s identical to WW portals would be better than the current device. Although, obviously, the value would still be very low because it’d simply be equivalent to watchwork portal devices, which have abysmally low value and hence why no one ever uses them under any circumstances.

Wait, I was supposed to refuse your alternative suggestion since I, as a Mesmer main, clearly just want a “pocket permanent Mesmer portal for cheap”, even though Mesmer is a lot more than just portals, can put out vastly more portals than my suggested WM Portal Device, and the cost of either my or your suggested devices are quite expensive in terms of gold equivalence, and even more expensive when looking at time to gold equivalence (where you could just farm Ectovine, and make vastly more WW portals than you could get WM portals for the same time spent… and of course there’d be no weekly cap on how many WW portals you could make, whereas WM portals would cap out at 5 under your suggestion).

I don’t plan to respond to your future posts, Rednik, unless you can come up with some actual solid reasoning or argumentation. As-is, you’re saying the same stuff repeatedly without backing it up, while mostly ignoring the issues others have pointed out with your claims.

tl;dr: I’m out of arguments and I want my shiny because I want it. Have fun, then. I’ll just make sure that any dev that will read this topic will see all counterarguments, enough to dismiss your ridiculous suggestion.

TexZero.7910:

And yet again i had no clue mesmer’s only skill was portal.

The hyberbole can stop anytime now.

And you have no idea what you are asking for, when you want to permanently get one of most unique class skills in the game for a gold equivalent of few hours of AB farm.

Zui.9245:

Experimental Teleportation Gun – 30s Cooldown.

Watchwork Portal Device – 90s Cooldown.

The portal mechanic has already been duplicated by other consumables which are better value than the White Mantle Portal Device. Suggesting that a very high cost raid reward should at least have value on-par with those items is far from “unacceptable”. On the contrary, it makes sense.

Other classes have had unique mechanics duplicated, replicated, or improved by consumables or even certain entire skill categories outclassed by consumable items.

Experiemental Rifles are much better than Jump Shot (Engineer Skill).

Executioner’s Axe Toy #2 is the best movement skill in the game, bar none.

Harpy Feathers, Ash Legion Spy Kits, and Order of Whispers spy kits duplicate the Stealth mechanic.

Medical Packs and Medical Kits duplicate Engineer Medical Packs.

Fire Elemental Powder replicates Lesser Fire Elemental (elementalist skill).

Ogre Pet Whistle replicates a ranger pet.

Golem in a Box is the longest range skill in game, beating Engineer Mortar Kit by 100 range.

I could keep going.

And yet, none of these seem to create a problem that replaces classes, or creates a “[insert class here] in a box”. They barely even get used, despite a cost that’s almost invariably less than a few silver each (aside from the Executioner’s Axe Toy). Watchwork Portal Devices don’t create a “Mesmer in a box”, and they’re better than the WM Portal Device.

The White Mantle Portal Device is vastly more expensive, and vastly more exclusive than any of those. Why would you expect it to be a problem, when none of this other stuff, including Experimental Teleportation Guns and Watchwork Portal Devices, are a problem?

It’s all consumables, and majority of them cant even be used anywhere outside of open world. Do you want to go that way? Fine, watchwork portal device costs ~9g to make right now. So you saying your raid toy is 453g for 1000 shards? 453/9=50.3(3). Lets make it consumable then. 1000/50=20. So, how about making it consumable bought for 20 shards each, with all other characteristics copypasted from watchwork device?
But ofc you will refuse, because you want pocket permanent mesmer portal for cheap.

Zui.9245:

It’s a raid reward that costs 1000 Magnetite Shards (10 weeks of shard-capped raiding), and with an equivalent value to 453 gold. If it were to cost a mere 100 shards, I’d agree with you.

Then ask for refund. Nobody forcing you to buy it, and nobody promised you that it will be anywhere close to real mesmer portal.
And “muh 10 weeks of raiding” is not argument at all. Back in 2013 you could get ONE laurel per day, and 10 more as monthly reward. And what could you get for that awesome 100 days of doing stuff daily? A cat tonic. And now you are asking for a mesmer portal because you got some shards? Lolno.

TexZero.7910:

It has no effect on mesmers if it has a cooldown greater than most elite skills in the game.

5 minutes accomplishes this.

It’s still too close to mesmer, especially for unique class mechanic. Basically, he is asking for pocket mesmer, which is unacceptable. Though, I guess it’s possible to buff one aspect of this toy while nerfing other. Want 1/6 of original CD? Make max portal radius 1/6 too.

All my mesmers says no. A toy is just a toy, and never should be more than that.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

This is the absolute wrong approach, and a ridiculous statement to make during an interview. What it translates to for most is that we will likely see 3 to 4 chapters of the LS which based on this is another year of thumb twiddling, and that is somehow supposed to keep us here? Stop with the kitten ed raid / fractal content that a very small minority plays and concentrate on real out world content. Push out world content and do it immediately, stop tweaking builds to satisfy one section of players and put all your resources into content before it’s too bloody late!

Fractal content have actually impressively wide coverage, ~90% of players did at least one fractal. Raid auditory is a lot smaller tho.

I have no idea how ability to play “sit in 3 circles” minigame and copypasting cheese builds have anything to do with wvw. WvW should have own badge system, for anything else there is title system in place.

Erzian.5218:

My current class is already 2nd lowest dps and other players can already get pets via consumables Mesmer wouldn’t lose anything for raids if they lowered the cd. They would actually profit from it in other content as it means they can keep wells/reflects instead of wasting a slot on portal.
30minute cd is simply crap, id rather waste shards on asc trinkets just because they have different icons than spending them on a 30minute cd item. Or you know, get 400 gold instead.

Because it’s toy and never intended to be something else.

Malediktus.9250:

PvP is not a stable difficulty since it is player generated content. The players play differently all the time, get carried or bribe people to let them win. It would very hard for Anet to predict the difficulty for it.
So unless you require ESL/Pro League matches I do not see how it can be equal difficulty.

Ofc it’s not equal, because it’s harder. Fighting scripts cannot be harder than fighting alive players by definition.

Purchased item should never be competitive against player abilities. So no.

Malediktus.9250:

Dont make me laugh. There is nothing comparable in difficulty to raids inm GW2, so this is not possible. Farm gold and buy raid runs if you really have to have this armor.
If you think it is possible to make it equally difficult with other content currently available in the game, I am waiting to hear your suggestions to rip them apart.

PvP. Oh, sorry, I forgot that you bought boost to legendary from you emerald pit and never seen anything competitive.

Yes, upon equipping a full legendary armor set you will be transformed into a ball of flashing light, with fireworks and loud sounds for maximum annoyance. Also you getting a special title “Legendary Super Important VIP Snowflake”, flashing with colored letters above your head.

Aceofsppades.6873:

The real answer is most likely because we can’t see what the final armor would look like and either forcing people to wait before using the pre or locking people into a choice before they can make an informed decision won’t have anyone be happy with that.

Can I get 2 free ascended pieces per every legendary “because I cant wait for legendary” then? I have a lot of boot boxes to salvage for that case.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think the reasoning behind letting you keep the first set of armor is that armor is not as transferable as weapons and backs are. Sure you only get 1 legendary back and no ascended’s when you make it but you can transfer and use that legendary on all your characters for all time. If I make a set of legendary armor of one weight class I can not transfer it to any other weight class. For me this means of the 4 characters I raid with, 2 will not be able to use the legendary armor I make. It makes sense to let you get a second armor weight of your choosing and craft the 3rd since many people use all 3 armor weight classes in raids on a single account.

Except that you can’t use your shiny Sunrise on revenant, Bolt on elementalist or Predator on thief. “Because different armor classes” is not answer.

AndrewMcLeod.3857:

To clarify, the final precursor set is consumed when you convert it to legendary, similar to how Dusk is consumed when creating Twilight- the main difference from the legendary weapon collections is that you don’t have to salvage the first precursor in order to make the next tier, and there are only 2 tiers for the legendary armor journey as opposed to 3 for weapons.

But there is 2 free ascended sets still. As example, legendary backpack have all 3 tiers of ascended precursor, but you have to destroy them. So why other legendaries are not getting anything in return? They considered as inferior or something?

Ayrilana.1396:

For those who don’t use Reddit:

2: The armors aren’t destroyed- you get 2 complete sets of ascended armor by completing the collections.

kitten? Why the hell I made all my legendaries and got nothing but legendary in the end, but raiders are allowed to be special snowflakes?

Rising Dusk.2408:

Au contraire, Fractal development is a much slower beast than raids by a lot precisely because raid content doesn’t have difficulty scaling. If their new Fractal content release track record weren’t already proof enough of that, I don’t know what is. Having to balance the entire raid twice for two entirely different groups of players along with the other necessary interface and reward changes is a massive undertaking.

We can see how Blizzard doing exactly same thing for balancing various difficulties for raids, and its not something very different from original encounter. More generous enrage timers, less damage overall, less boss health. Encounters are already balanced and tested, reducing their difficulty requires only some numbers tuning.

Sarrs.4831:

splits the community
gives anet less options when it comes to managing mechanics (easy mode mechanics need to be similar to hard mode or they aren’t the same fight)
increases the amount of work required by anet
creates a reward split which is especially dangerous in GW2 with rewards being viable for roughly forever
has no tangible advantage over creating a learning curve spread across multiple instances

easy mode+hard mode makes sense in other games because those raids are expected to ‘time out’ with the release of the next tier or expac or w/e, so people will get frustrated if they can’t get through the content in that time. gw2 is explicitly designed such that content never goes out of date, though, so the core reason to do it doesn’t really exist

For some reason, fractals have exactly same thing and don’t have any of your “problems”.

HipposWild.7185:

I just wanted to know if there’s any information on what percent of players actually do raids. My initial experience was sit LFG for around 2 hours play maybe 15 minutes, and realize 3 people are gone. My current system is wait 20 minutes in LFG, then decide to never play this game again.

This feels a whole lot like designing a whole FPS without adding guns.

Some, but not really a lot.
https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics

Yes, please change breastplate.
or add 2 more rows
Hole for tail would be very appreciated too, it’s legendary armor, not some ordinary “open and forget” skin.

Malediktus.9250:

by your logic humans, drugs, weapons etc in RL are worthless because I am not allowed to do any kind of trade with them and thus only have a subjective value?

They are part of economics and have a real economic value. Punishment for trading them without proper licenses is another topic.

the whole topic is pointless anyway, Anet wont change anything about it because they have a smart economist. So unless people quit in droves because of it, there is no reason for Anet to change it

Fell free to leave then. We will stay and will try to explain our point further, because there is non-zero chance that someone from Anet will actually read that.

Cyninja.2954:

There is no need for economic transactions to take place when looking for psychological effects of scarcity.

Scarcity Effects on Value: A Quantitative Review of the Commodity Theory Literature
- http://scholarship.sha.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1181&context=articles

Only because it’s not part of a transaction or economic exchange does not mean it has no effect on values.

Subjective value is not something worth discussing.