Guild Wars 2

Jiro.6589:

oops you are right

I expect this is the single biggest problem with the TP. When you have a million people all competing to be l33t trad0r d00dz, there’s a high probability a few of them will “oops” and then you end up with items being listed below crafting cost; and you just can’t compete with that :p

From now on my new response to anything is “But portals!”

Cirroq.2531:

Anet would reduce the gem supply and inflate the gold exchange rate back to their target rate.

Pedra.4381:

People vastly overestimate the free market nature of your economy and underestimate your ability to control it.

If only we could craft and sell tinfoil hats, I’d make a killing on the trading post

Karizee.8076:

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

The code the mini-golem boss gives in the final room of the Crucible translates
to P-A-L-E-T-R-E-E

Do you mean the skill point golem? – the code it spits out is far too short for that. There is a better explanation:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/IQ_1800_LX

City of Heroes despite being a success as a game was showing flagging profits in the last couple of years and this year NCSoft pulled all funding and shut them down, so market performance is no doubt a big factor and the buck must stop with NCSoft for them to have that kind’ve power

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Astraea.6075:

Rylek.4501:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties, In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing certain. This is one hell of a gamble, especially when you consider that the vast majority of people involved in this complex in game economy are not students of economics nor do they understand the consequences of monopolization and their closest interpretation of Sherman would be a tank. You sir may gamble the future of this economy based on your machinations but at the end of the day many ordinary people could well be your undoing.
Some, no most are here to play the game not to play the market. To continue down this path will most assuredly cost your company many of their real life resources at which time an economist will be the last person they need. Consider that while you’re playing economic dungeon master.

I love this post and agree 100%. The out of control ego from most of the Devs who post on these forums is truly mind boggling.

What I find mind boggling is the amount of people who believe that ArenaNet is manipulating the economy to “force” people to spend real money on gems in order to buy gold…

Why is that mind boggling?

In the real world there are people conning folks into buying gold because of supposed hyperinflation that is bound to hit the US any second… and they been doing it for 4 years…

Because if it emerged anet was scamming people the damage would be immense. While putting serious effort into a game economy can pay off literally; take a look at EVE, that game’s success is almost entirely down to it’s economy and the developers transparency

The value of ecto has a semi-rigid upper limit – the value at which you can craft the cheapest or obtain T5 rares and salvage them into ecto. The cost of that process is a natural limit to how high ecto can realisticlly rise; once price rises above this, more people will begin to craft ecto.

So, you can’t do a Dr Evil and hold the world to ransom for 1 million dollars, because someone will craft a new one for half that

penatbater.4710:

I’d estimate you’d probably spend ~$10,000 USD to pull this off. Kinda reminds me of the guy who paid MTV or some channel to play a song over and over again

Sounds like it might be the time they (4chan, ebaum etc) rickrolled MTV

Still, Anet would be well advised to use the monthly achievements as a way to encourage players to go do stuff people ARN’T doing…

*Orr looking a bit empty? – New monthly: Help liberate X shrines of the gods
*Everyone doing fractals but not explorables? – New monthly: Explore X dungeon paths
*Nobody doing the lesser world bosses? – New monthly: Help slay X world bosses.

You get the picture. It’d help spread the players around and encourage people to explore new ground instead of keeping on grinding. This might on the surface violate the “monthly’s available to all” premise, but, fractals already violate that; good luck getting a party for fractals at level 20

Aberrant.6749:

…Only that phantoms aren’t attacks… they are summons…

They’re an exotic ranged attack that doubles as our class resource.

• You have to launch them at a single target, when the target dies the illusion ends. Summons patter off to find a new target.

• Summons are typically fairly robust allowing them to help attack multiple foes, illusions are made of glass and are there to be broken they serve as a close analogue to walking, stabbing adrenaline bars – you can either break them, or you can gamble that they’ll live long enough to make a second strike or use them as a decoy, but they’re an expendable resource foremost.

• Summons are created in advance and stand by their master until they are needed. Illusions are created on the fly and launched at the foe and are removed from play when the target dies.

The fact you treat your illusions are summons says a lot about how much experience you have playing the class. Mechanically they behave more like ranged attacks, and if you treat them as such your play-style will benefit greatly from it instead of trying to herd phantys around like a minion master.

John Smith.4610:

Arbitrage is transferring value between two markets, flipping is attempting to create opportunity between buy and sell price in a single market.

Oh, I stand corrected then :o – flipping is an actual term? It sounded so… colloquial I assumed it was just slang.

The moar you know xD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipping

majorkong.9073:

Ryuujin.8236:

Flipping BTW is a colloquial term that seems to have arisen in GW2 hence you wouldn’t have heard of it. The technical name is arbitrage

And it doesn’t cause inflation.

Correct.

In fact it could cause deflation, whenever you make a transaction the trading post takes a small amount of gold out the system in taxes. If the entire player base were to rely on arbitrage for their income, the taxes would very quickly deplete the amount of gold in circulation, forcing up the effective value of gold

Flipping BTW is a colloquial term that seems to have arisen in GW2 hence you wouldn’t have heard of it. The technical name is arbitrage

Shaddian.2903:

I don’t play a mesmer, so correct me if I’m wrong here. What I understand of this is blind isn’t breaking on illusion/clone/phantasm creation abilities. While I agree that it should break on said abilities, the suggestion to transfer blind to an illusion sounds incredibly overpowered. Blind would become a nonfactor on mesmers, not even worth being used.

Not exactly.

Remember that phantasms are basically a mesmer’s “attack” skills. Their spam attacks are pitifully weak, most of the damage is from phantasms, and from their class mechanic.

If you throw blind on a warrior and he pops hundred blades, his first attack misses, but subsequent swings all land and he gains adrenaline to convert into a special attack or to power his relevant traits. If you blind an engineer as he throws his grenade cluster, I’m not sure any of the grenades would actually miss due to it being an AoE effect, and he’s still free to use his toolbelt skills.

Contrast this to a mesmer, if a mesmer is blinded and uses iZerker, or iWarden (multi- hit attacks) not only does the first attack not land; the illusion isn’t even spawned. Blind negates the next dozen hits in the case of iZerker, AND, to add insult to injury since no illusion was spawned, we can’t follow up with a class ability because we lost our resource point.

So yes, transferring the blind to the illusion and causing it’s first hit to fail is the correct analogue.

CharlieWaffles.1509:

You sir are complaining about Mesmers being blind ? and your complaining about a lack of DPS ???? check your build…. learn your class…. That is all….

His complaint about blind is legitimate. The mechanic is not working as intended on mesmers right now

The writer is constantly comparing chalk and cheese. GW2 is superficially similar at first glance to ME3 but that’s where it ends. For example ME3’s roll mechanic is typically for getting back behind cover quickly; where you’ll then adopt a chest-high-wall hugging combat strategy similar to gears of war.

GW2 has no chest high walls, and dodging serves as an attack evasion skill – dodge rolls seem slow, because during the entire roll you are invincible, and therefore slow is good it makes it easier to dodge the attack.

ME3’s combo system is superficially similar to GW2’s, the effect is just less dramatic (ie. leaping into someone’s fire field to yields a flame aura, Vs throwing a warp bolt into a biotic pull yields a screen shaking explosion of blue energy).

Standing still chugging numbers like a standard MMO will get you killed every time so I don’t see what he’s getting at shrug – not much resonance with me I’m afraid.

Leablo.2651:

Ryuujin.8236:

What happens if you transfer from EU to NA or vice versa in the witching hours between rollovers

Nothing? Because that’s the whole point of UTC? Not sure I understood that question.

It was in response to archmortal’s proposal that there be a system of rolling resets based on the server’s local timezone. I was pointing out that his proposal causes more headaches than is really necessary. The UTC system is logical and practical.

A wise person once said “WoW is a science, GW2 is an art”. Meditate on that for a bit and I think you’ll see where you’re going wrong

Technically it’s probably UTC, not GMT that it resets at

Which makes sense since UTC is the benchmark for the entire planet’s timekeeping. Though it could be argued that it’s biased towards Europe since it runs through central Europe and thus rolls over around midnight there, it has to be centred somewhere

Archmortal.1027:

It’s still a more elegant and sensible approach to do rolling restarts by region rather than have them reset all together based on a single time zone.

What happens if you transfer from EU to NA or vice versa in the witching hours between rollovers

Genesis.5169:

I want to make gold.
In a reasonable fast way.
Without legendary precursors being 400g.

I want to farm in a area with mobs that drop a specific mat or item that i know will net me money.

I want to farm in an area so i can get t6 mats to make exotics to salvage, or sell.

I want to make gold. To be the best.

Except that if they lowered the bar as far as you’re asking, “the best” would become the new average

And this is the problem

There’s hundreds, thousands of people all in that boat, and it’s a bit low in the water trying to support you all.

The simple fix is to up drop rate, the question is whether it’s a real problem, or a first world problem that needs intervention. (I’d argue yes, since this situation just makes traders like me filthy rich, and kicks the adventurers in the kittens, adventurers do need to get cut some slack now and then to keep things fun)

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

You did not really rebut anything I said. The money sink in this game still does not offset the growth in the money supply from hour 0 to current times. It is an aggregate issue and not micro issue. You seem to get hung up on micro subjects like money sinks.

On the contrary, you made a blanket statement that there IS a growth in the money supply on the basis gold is coming into the system.

But as I pointed out, the system has both an input and output, and unless we have data for both in and out, we can’t know for a fact whether the value of gold is rising or falling.

I disproved your statement mathematically

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

How can the economy not have sustained natural amounts of ‘substantial inflation’?

Hour 0 ; Money Supply = 0
Month 4; Money Supply = A lot bigger than 0

Not true. The economy is not a closed system with only gold coming into it, it also has gold leaving it through a variety of sources (repairs, travel, vendor bought goods such as T3 armour), that is the purpose of a gold sink

If gold leaving the system is greater than the gold entering the system*, then it could in theory experience deflation – this isn’t an unreasonable possibility if you have a large number of traders who make the majority of their gold through trading, and then buying expensive vendor goods like T3 clothing, which would take hundreds of gold out of the system per person

This is actually far far greater than it sounds, when you consider gold from selling stuff is simply gold transferred. Gold is only created when people sell to vendors or complete events, and most events don’t give more than a few silver at a time. So a person buying a full set of T3 gear represents thousands of event’s worth of gold leaving the system… now I think on that I can see now why T3 gear is so expensive, it serves as a self regulation system, if gold becomes abundant the chances of people buying the gear increases and thus sucks gold out the system; very clever

*I’m sure economists have a fancy name for all this, chemisty is my field not money, but there’s surprising overlaps in the economy of nature, the economy of man.

Joote.4081:

Thanks guys.
Maybe the higher levels will improve by the time I get to them.

I wouldn’t worry about the doomsayers.

The high levels carry the same feeling as the low level zones. The point of contention is the ascended and legendary tiers of gear, which basically exist for the super-hardcore crowd, having a few % more stats.

But, as you said yourself you’re quite casual so hopefully you won’t fall into the same trap of thinking you absolutely must have these items when you get to 80; I consider myself pretty hardcore and even I think they’re not worth wasting your time chasing (And I’m a lot happier for it it would seem xD)

Mimizu.7340:

people who are “playing the market” aren’t.

they are ripping off other players to line their pockets.

And in WvW people murder you for gold, life in GW2 isn’t fair. Kind’ve like the real world

xerca.6135:

Yep. Said on his Twitter a while ago that the music he had done now for GW2 was the last he would do for Guild Wars.

Oh thank goodness :p

What? :p – They guy’s does some really epic tracks when epic is desired, but his ambient tracks are frequently “bleh” and lack atmosphere in my humble opinion…

Mutiny.4180:

I love people who tell others they make exuberant amounts of gold by “playing the market.” Good to know, but too bad for the rest of us who’d rather play the game and still be able to afford cool things.

Ask yourself this:
How does an adventurer make gold?

Answer:
He sells the loot he finds in his adventures.

A savvy adventurer will always get a better deal than one who just sells for asking price; this isn’t unique to GW2. Whether it be selling an item on auction in WoW or Allods, making an appraisal throw in Dungeons and Dragons, or taking ranks in speechcraft in Skyrim.

If you’re not willing to shop about for the best deal and be savvy with your gold in GW2, don’t be surprised when you find yourself having less than the next guy.

Personally I love this aspect of GW2, it isn’t a matter of grinding up and vendoring items, the civvie side of life is a mini-game of it’s own; the greatest PvP arena where the stakes pay out in gold.

Gilosean.3805:

Do you help with mobs when you see that? If you see someone doing that, ask them if they want the mobs or if you can take them. Easy 5-10s for, and they can harvest in peace.

I do actually – I’m like “Thanks for rounding them up for me” and murder them all with mind bullets. I do wonder why someone would risk training so many mobs though if they won’t survive it if something went wrong.

A warrior, engineer or elementalist in full magic find gear farming dynamic events can get tonnes of rares, which broken down for ecto is worth a small fortune in the current economic climate. The gold from the event is dwarfed by the gold from drops if you’re a grinder

Trading on the auction house is by far the most profitable option, but you need to enjoy maths and that sort’ve thing; it is however technically not a grind since you place your bids and go do something else, come back later to collect your gold.

Exploring high level zones can yield quite substantial rewards in terms of gold and gear as well as gold and loot from kills while exploring (Assuming you don’t just run everywhere and kill nothing which probably explains why you’re so poor in the first place!)

Grimshetara.3265:

One recently discovered way of income is running Dungeons of Citadel of Fire and higher, converting the tokens into 30token rares, and salvaging them for Globs of Ectoplasm. .

This is an exploit. Karma/token rewards are usually not salvagable for this very reason, if you do this don’t be too surprised if you get your kitten busted and temp-banned like all the similar exploits before it

Rehashed Jibe Tube.7102:

I make more money when i’m trying not to than when I decide to farm. wander through a zone…any zone… killing and harvesting as you get from point A to point. list as much as you can on the TP andvendor the rest. This seems to be the best way to earn money for me.

This. I personally kill everything in my path (I like killing!), and have never wanted for gold; yet I see people sprinting all over orr desperatly searching for orichalcum with a train of mobs on their kitten that’d probably yield 5-10s if they just turned around and stab-murdered them in the face

Where you see difficulty buying materials, I see a better return on farming. When all the junk you find playing the game only sells for a few copper, it’s no surprise you don’t have 2 gold to rub together.

When a market is being manipulated, any of that item you find will sell for several times it’s previous value. In turn you can use that extra scratch to buy the stuff you do want…

Demons? O,o

In GW1 the Asura are slumming it to some extent in the ruins of an ancient lost city built by unknown creators. According to the lore, the Asura copied the architectural style in their early creations to match the city they’d co-opted.

For practical purposes, the “asura architectural design” had already been designed for the “natives” faction in GW1: Eutopia – as seen in this concept art: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/File:%22Native_Architecture%22_concept_art.jpg

And it seems likely that they simply re-used the art assets instead of starting over. If anything the asura may’ve traded roles with the Eutopia natives and in turn the Skritt, if you look at the earliest Asura concept art and contrast that with the eutopia native’s concept art and Asuran cultural clothing

A warrior’s tankyness isn’t from toughness/armour/hitpoints alone. They have traits that further reduce damage and latent heals to offset the burn; Mesmers simply lack such equivalent traits.

HOWEVER, that’s not to say mesmer can’t be tanky but you need to think of them more like a guardian than a warrior. Guardians tank by rotating aegis/protection/heals/blinds/blocks/dodges to negate incoming damage wholesale, and mesmer have many similar skills and can tank “actively” by countering, dodging and interuppting attacks for quite a considerable amount of time. And it’s no gimmick either, with a shatter build and a sword you can dish out some of the best raw DPS (AoE too!) that mesmer can pull off.

Havn’t you seen the female “cultural” armour you can buy in divinities reach?

It speaks volumes of the culture…
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Divinity-Scout-Tier-3.png
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Divinity-Aristocrat-Tier-3.png

Mif.3471:

Finally got a chance to take a look. Interestingly she’s a new NPC added with the last month.

Nah she’s been there since at least BWE3, I ran into her back then

Chaos.3579:

Really the class has gotten the MOST wins because MOST people are not used to fighting it, and those that wonder why they lose will look up at the Internet. But see only stuff saying that Mesmers are OP. this of course will result in the player believing that nothing is wrong with how he was fighting the mesmer, and instead that the mesmer is simply OP. because of this. Nearly 50 percent of the gamers will not change the way they fight Mesmers, and because of that Mesmers get free wins xD

Very much this.

My thief and warrior friends does extremely well against mesmers because they know not only how to handle them, but thanks to my advice, their weak spots.

90% of people I kill can be dropped neatly into two piles:
1) People I got the jump on, who failed to recognise the threat before I had a 6-clone shatter combo set up, (And down they go)

2) People who wasted valuable cooldowns and time attacking me in ways that are ineffectual. (ie. hundred blades while I still have a stun breaker. Burning cooldowns while I’m distorted. Buying my decoy while I prepare a killing blow etc)

A little bit of knowledge goes a LONG way

I think you’re misunderstanding how dodge works OP.

For the duration of a dodge you’re more-or-less invincible. Any conventional attacks or spells direct at you are “evaded” instead of land. This means while it’s logical to leap backwards from say, an ettin’s club. It’s actually viable to dodge behind the ettin (dodge forward) or past his attack (dodge sideways), this will put you in a much more favourable position to continue attacking after the dodge, as long as you dodged at all, you’ll evade the attack if timed correctly.

Keiran.1896:

he karka loot was not enough I think, smart traders don’t want to give up on their 150-300 gold price…

I fixed it for you

You have to account for the fact the economy has undergone quite significant inflation since the bots were banned. This has meant people can afford to pay more and thus prices have stayed relatively static despite the influx of supply.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Does that mean, you ‘the’ person I’m quoting cheated? Who’s to say, but one thing is for sure ~ I can’t prove it, you can’t even prove you didn’t do it .

You need to look up burden of proof.

Anyway, just checking my (extremely long) list of items bought and sold would show where my profits comes from

Funnily enough, a couple times this week I’ve helped portal someone up to a jump puzzle (Simply because I was there and could), and they’ve either tipped me, or asked if there was a charge, :o

Of course I’m just happy to help, was a little surprised how widespread the view was

Skyro.3108:

I assume it is a projectile due to it blinding/dazing in a line, but it would be a lot more useful as an instant single target skill.

I can confirm that both attacks launch a projectile that is visually identical to the sceptre projectile, sluggish speed and all.

Whether he’s right or wrong about this being a bad thing, he is right about the change in market value. See for yourself on spidey; November 18th (Day the hive is opened) the price dives and carries on going down.

porter.9483:

Almost two full weeks since anet caused this problem. We have had no fix and zero communication. At this point its getting to be a character issue.

Be careful what you wish for; historically we get nerfed every patch. Any fix to iZerker will come at a price elsewhere

Shadowlancer.7102:

Since there are a few parts in the lore that shows that we should be having cell phones, Kindles, and TV advertisements in cities, with the Technology we are allowed to be capable of lore wise, why are we still stuck in using simple guns, basic weapon dry, and basic magic versus high tech technology where we could be making Laser Swords, Laser Guns, combined with magic?

I HATE loop holes like this in PvE lore.

Why the humans don’t use the tech the mind boggles. Charr approach the situation from a different direction to the asura and have a different solution, it’s difficult to quantify whether a power based bullet is inferior to an energy beam in this context though the asura tech definitly covers utility functions better (teleports, shields, radios etc)

Which just leaves the question of why the Humans havn’t adapt that kind’ve large scale industrialisation, and how they manage to stand up to their better equipped opponents (Like how did ebonhawk not get levelled by years of artillery bombardment from a modern mechanised army, Vs their quaint little trebuchets and sword)

Get rid of moa morph and I’ll glady take panic as it’s replacement

It’d still work in GW2. The beauty of panic was that each time an enemy used a skill, all of them were interuppted; imagine throwing it down on a WvW group and even if it only affects 5 people, the next time each of those 5 people use a skill, all their allies get interrupted. This actually results in a large area shutdown for several seconds.

However, panic is an old skool hex, not a condition and GW2 is trying stay away from having dozens of unique hexes that everyone has to learn to not-die.

Doggie.3184:

Really? Cuz the hundreds of times I birded someone with my Mesmer I lul’d as I effortlessly killed their helpless selves with no inconvenience towards me from the bird skills. ;/

The change was last patch. Now moa form has a bunch’ve skills to aid in their escape such as swiftness; of course, people get moa’d and their gut instinct is to act like angry german kid and resulting in a swift demise

Iarkrad.8415:

I tried that a while ago. This is what happened? Irony? Glitch?

Hah! – So it was deliberate. I did the exact same thing and I too got teleported into the prison cell; I didn’t use a rez orb though I using a sneaky little trick that they since fixed.

I got the impression the devs did it delibratly as if to say “I don’t know how you did that, but we both know you arn’t meant to be down there” :p

Kymaera Stormweaver.1069:

…and so only those who abused the early game would have it or those who buy gold with rl cash… by those who abused early game, I specifically mean the players who used cheats…then again, I suppose there are a few who ground the gold by doing dynamic events pre-nerf after rushing to 80.

I’d tell you to go choke on a kitten but the mods would get upset.

I am however getting extremely tired of being accused of cheating, or rushing, or buying gold by a jealous minority just because I own a T3 set and they refuse believe it’s possible to earn that gold legit.

120g is not unattainable if you’ve savvy with your gold. I in fact don’t grind anything, I make all my gold simply by trading, when i pick up a sword and go out into the world it’s for the express purpose of kicking kitten and chewing gum (While dressed to kill), not the rewards.

Looria.8019:

kKagari.6804:

No its not, I love the grind for the gold. It gives me a sense of character progression.

This statement makes absolutely no sense. Grinding money doesnt give anyone any sense of character progression.

Psst. like sound travels faster through water than it does air, sarcasm doesn’t travel through the internet very well

deborah.2068:

I say if you are going to spend that amount of gold on a item and the amount of farming you would have to put in in game farming the gold it should match the stats of the current top gear Ascended cuz otherwise why buy it there is better out there

Because the skins frequently kick kitten If you’re willing to throw down 120g on some armour then you’re probably not going to mind throwing down another 15g on top of the line exotics to transmute it into.

I’ve never heard anyone say “Man I’d love to buy that T3 armour, if only it’s stats didn’t suck”

Dante.1508:

How is losing 119 gold for a few skins a sense of achievement? Obviously we see things very differently.

Buying != Losing money. If you feel something is worth the money then it’s not been a loss but a trade. If you don’t feel it’s worth it, then don’t buy it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Dear Toymaker Tixx,

We would like to lodge a minor complaint about the last visit.

snip

Rofl, brilliant piece of writing xD

You sir have won yourself an internet

If you’re a casual RP’r than one of the races with simple but strong temperamental predispositions are fun to play upon since it can be done easily and naturally for laughs.

Charr (by a big margin) followed by Asura and Sylvari (About equal) are the rarest races according to the last OFFICIAL set of data (That census site obtained most it’s data before the game even launched!). Human is by far the most common. The Sylvari may have some intresting lore revelations down the line but I hear their starter story arcs suck. Charr’s home story arcs and environs suit them perfectly, as does Asura

As for class distribution… it WAS pretty even at launch, but right now thief and mesmer are flavour of the month as people think rolling either is as good as an auto-win button in PvP

Virtually every class feels the same way to be honest, you need to be able to step back objectively and speak to all the classes to see it though.

Necro has more broken skills than you can shake a sceptre at, while being overall lacklustre. Ranger is so direly underpowered and boring they need to take the whole thing back to the drawing board, no simple buff will change that. Even the much maligned mesmer has got no less than 3 pages of unresolved bugs that have been present since Beta2, and despite that the only attention the class ever gets is nerfs, not fixes.

Against this background, engy is actually one of the least buggy classes