Guild Wars 2

Tigaseye.2047:

I’ve also said, previously, that most people simply don’t enjoy playing the TP, so won’t want to do that.

You don’t want to play a part of the game that allows you to make a lot of money, so you want Anet to give it to you for no effort? That’s Entitlement. Not sure why you don’t understand this. Let me quote myself so you can see a real life example:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Example: I told you that you could make $10,000 by rubbing 2 sticks together for 8 hours, or you could make $100 by just telling me the capital of Texas. What you’re doing is taking the $100, and then complaining that it’s not fair for the next guy to get the $10,000.

Edit – You may not understand my analogy, so I’ll break it down. GW2 has mechanics in place that let’s you buy something or sell something at whatever price you want. If you don’t want to sell an item that another player is willing to pay for, that’s your choice. No one is forcing you to sell the item. But that also means you don’t get to complain about an “issue” that you created for yourself. No one forced you to take the $100 when you could have had $10,000.

Ohoni.6057:

since the price would be more likely to rise until it hit a true “max reasonable price.”

This last part made me smile. Your “reasonable price” is not my “reasonable price”. All it takes is for one single player out of hundreds of thousands to agree that my price is reasonable, and that’s all that matters.

Hylgeriak.8250:

Please check my posting history – there was never a bad word about the GW franchise since I love GW for many, many years. I love the HoT content so much, it’s great, fun and I have so many goals yet to reach. The meta events are awesome and I love doing them!

Or wait: I WOULD love doing them. There are plenty of communities out there gathering people for the meta events where you need organization on voice comm. Those are:

• Tripple Trouble Threat
• Verdant Brink T4
• Tangled Depth meta

This is incredibly frustrating. Ofc there are hundreds of players in teamspeak hoping to get in. Today alone I wasted almost 2 hours getting on a organized TTT and VB map. Waiting time includes:

• waiting on TS for the orga to start
• the orga itself (waiting for commanders, looking for map, jump to correct ip, setting up taxis)
• the worst part: “Join on map” spam. Usually I give up after 100 failed attempts to join on the squad

This whole process is annoying, not fun at all and super frustrating. Instead of enjoying the game’s awesome content, I’m totally kittened not to be able to do what I want. Even worse, losing so much time doing nothing but waiting and failing to join.

I don’t know how to solve this with the event structure we have in GW2, but this seriously drags me away from this game. Imo this really needs to be addressed, cuz I can’t stand it anymore not getting on a proper map again. Heck, I tried joining a proper TD map around 20 times by now, never I got in and thus I never succeeded the meta. Taxi Wars is the one thing (almost the only one thing) I really, really hate about this game.

Each map can only hold a finite amount of players. If you couldn’t get in, that means the map is full. When you have 200 people waiting on TS to get into a map that can hold 120, you know already that they’re gonna be a lot of players left out. When I was in TTS, we had this same problem, so our Commanders spread out and did multiple maps. If your guild or friends won’t do this, then the only other option is to taxi in faster and win the lotto on character map slots.

Tigaseye.2047:

It’s a (justifiable) feeling of injustice and unfairness, that makes people feel undervalued, depressed and/or hopeless.

There is no injustice or unfairness, but rather laziness. Asking Anet to give you something because you don’t want to use existing mechanics to get for yourself is pretty much Entitlement.

Ohoni.6057:

Nope.

Yup

Ohoni.6057:

Because it keeps the rewards received by each player more in balance and results in a healthier game population with less inequality?

Nope. Entitlement leads to ruin. Just look at Greece.

Ohoni.6057:

all I’d be doing is reducing the role of the middleman taking his cut in the middle for providing no actual value to the scenario.

No value? Tell that to the thousands of players who can shave hours off of their game play by purchasing what they want from another player who does have what they need.

Ohoni.6057:

What would be removed is the people who buy those 5,000 mithril ores at one price, and relist it at a higher price (either immediately or at a later date), forcing the people who actually want to use those mithril ores to spend more for them or do without, while the people who did mine those ores would not be seeing any of that profit. If someone gets a better deal in a transaction, it should at the very least either be the end-user of that item, OR the original creator of that item, not someone who’s only contribution was in making the deal worse for both of them.

Nope. The problem is not only buyers who have a problem with instant gratification, but also the farmers. If they sell their stock of inventory for too low a price, what’s wrong with me coming in and relisting them for the current market value? They want the money faster, so they sell low to get rid of their Mithril. I’m more than happy to pay 50c for an item worth 75c.

Edit – And no, that’s not an exploit. That’s called business. Feel free to undercut me by selling the same item for 74c.

Edit 2 – I’m gonna go sleep, but I’d like to leave one last thing for you to think about. What you guys want isn’t a game. You guys want a handout. That makes for bad business. I remember when Game Genie came out over 20 years ago. It allowed me to bypass levels, get unlimited money, and have god-mode. I fell into the trap of instant gratification. Once I did all I could with my cheat codes, I stopped playing those games. I had to go out and buy more games, simply because I did all could already, and there was nothing left for me to do.

Ohoni.6057:

But it is a business, and it is in their interests to make as much profit off each player as they possibly can. Given that this involves happy players buying things that they do not need, but might want, it is to their benefit to generate as many happy players as possible.

Businesses don’t survive on good will and happiness. There’s a balance that needs to be maintained. In MMOs, not only do you need to earn revenue, but you need to retain players. Not all players generate microtransaction revenue. And making a player happy by giving away the house doesn’t automatically lead to increased microtransactions. If the world existed how you wanted it to exist, every person who goes to Vegas would walk away with a lot of money. Vegas would then go bankrupt, and there’s be no more Vegas. Take my analogy, replace “Vegas” with “GW2”, and you have the outcome of what your suggestions would do.

Ohoni.6057:

ANet does not currently view this as an exploit, but they could choose to at any time, and I argue that they should do so.

Comrade, a Free Market can not be described as an exploit. The laws of Supply and Demand work. Some players understand how this works, and that’s how they choose to play the game. Why should Anet say “Ok Wanze, you’ve hit your daily limit on how many players you can satisfy today. Please try again tomorrow.”

Ohoni.6057:

Which is why if they introduce new faucets, they will also have to introduce more sinks, but more importantly they need to include methods of reducing the profit potential of working the TP, so that this money does not flow up to the fatcats.

Your suggestion is akin to asking for the removal of the Trading Post entirely, and replacing it with a glorified merchant. Your idea hurts way more players than it helps, because a vast majority of the players who purchase goods from the TP want instant gratification. Remove the players who provide that instant gratification, and you have angry players who will complain that they have to farm 5,000 Mithril ores themselves. Oh wait…

I think Black Friday was a missed opportunity for Anet to make some extra revenue on Gem sales. As Jak mentions, all my money was spent on Friday. Had there been some type of Gem sale or big across-the-board discounts (50% off everything for 24 hours or something), I would have spent some money on getting more Gems.

Mill.9758:

~~~ snip ~~~

Welcome to Guild Wars 2. The Great Wurm event is Elite level content that was purposely designed to be for only highly organized groups. It’s not meant to be easily beaten with random pugs like the Shatterer or the Shadow Behemoth. Even highly organized groups can fail Triple Trouble.

Ohoni.6057:

You may be right, but your argument here does not support your position. Plugging an exploit is preventing people from cheating the rules, cheating is inherently unfair.

Part of the point I was making is that you feel the making money on the in-game market is some type of “exploit”. I simply showed you that not only is it not an exploit, but your previous suggestions to fix the game would be the same as allowing all players to openly exploit the game so they all can be rich.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m just saying that the average player should have no less access to the things they want than those who are particularly good at the TP. If gold is relatively easy to come by for some, then it should be equally easy to come by for all, regardless of their skills at economics. If you argue that the average player should not have more than he already does, then fair enough, but then TP fatcats should have no more than those other players have either.

Here’s your problem Ohoni. The game already allows all players to be as rich as they want to. Wanze does not exploit the game. He simply sells stuff, and other players simply pay his prices. It’s not rocket science. A vast majority of players choose not to play to make money, even though the mechanics are all there. Example: I told you that you could make $10,000 by rubbing 2 sticks together for 8 hours, or you could make $100 by just telling me the capital of Texas. What you’re doing is taking the $100, and then complaining that it’s not fair for the next guy to get the $10,000. Another real life example of your position would be a McDonald’s burger cook complaining that a doctor at UCLA Medical Center makes a higher salary than him.

Be it real life of your in-game virtual life, we all have choices to make. You can choose not go to college and be a fast-food cook, or you can work hard, get a degree and open more opportunities for yourself. You can choose to do Silver Wastes chest runs or Dragon Stand metas, or you can sit in LA for hours and buy and sell items. Telling Anet to evenly distribute wealth because your chosen activity isn’t efficient at making money isn’t a real solution. This is one of the reasons why so many countries of the same mindset have fallen.

Tigaseye.2047:

~~~ snip ~~~

Jealousy is never a good reason why Anet should cater to the Entitled. Plus, one of the mistakes you and others make here is the assumption that TP trading and game farming are the same thing. These two activities are fundamentally different. One is a Gold Sink that moves existing currency between players, while destroying 15% of it via a tax. The other generates new items and currencies that never existed before.

When you allow players to make more money from farming events or quests, you increase the rate of inflation by a rate equal to the new wealth generation. And because TP playerss’ revenue is based on other player’s wealth, you basically increase their earning potential by the same rate as the new wealth generation. In laymen’s terms, the more money you make, the way more money Wanze will make. So increasing new wealth for everyone achieves absolutely nothing positive. An example of an in-game economy going wrong can be seen in D3. I don’t know if there’s a term to properly describe the insane inflation in that game because everyone was making so much money.

Ohoni.6057:

True. I never enter these discussions with the intention of changing the minds of those who decide to challenge me. That never seems likely, they’re as set in their ways as I am in mine. Rather, the goal is to expose the flaws in their positions, and refine any actual flaws in my own, so that an impartial observer can come away with a better understanding of the situation.

Logging on in the middle of the nite to chime in. There are no “flaws” to our positions. We’re basically trying to educate you that nearly everything you suggest just won’t work. This isn’t some argument to protect our vested interest in markets or anything. It’s based on the fact that Wanze is an expert on trade and the in-game economy, and I’m an expert on marketing (which includes psychology, which is what this thread was originally based on) and business.

GW2 is not perfect. No MMO is. There will always be a player unhappy when a game developer makes a decision on the interest of the game itself, rather than the happiness of an individual player. One of the points you bring up constantly is that wealth needs to be evenly distributed, be it preventing smart TP players from making money, to letting all players have access to exclusive content. You know that Anet will never allow that. Proof is in how quickly GM Chris plugs exploits. Things like never ending loot mobs, the snowflake salvaging of the past, or fixing bugs that allow players into areas they don’t belong. By letting vast amounts of players to profit, it destroys the fragile balance of the game economy. This directly corresponds to the longevity of the game.

Let’s get back to the psychology of players. One of the many flaws to your suggestion is that making the majority of the playerbase happy will lead to a better game. False. There are too many individual factors to ever make this true. One of the ways you’d like to achieve this would be to let everyone become rich, or to give everyone what they want. As I’ve already stated in a previous post, this is how you kill a game quicker. If a large group of players got what they wanted, the joy of that instant-gratification would only be temporary. That same large group would then begin to lose interest in the game, simply because they got what they wanted. You can actually chart the downward curve of player retention after a long-term goal has been achieved. The same thing happens in retail business, where customers who got the product they longed for, slowly being to lose interest in that very product now that they have it. The saying “the grass is always greener on the other side” holds true. You want what you can’t have. Then you get it, and you wish you had something else. After you lose it, you then appreciate what you once had.

Game developers know fully well how to use psychology to appeal to players. Decisions like rarity or exclusivity play to the mindset of long-term goals. Even the Black Lion Chest opening animation was designed to entice players to purchase BL Keys.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s lovely, for you, but the fact that people are complaining should tell you all you need to know about whether your experience is universal or not. You can’t make this right without everyone else actually feeling right about it, you aren’t going to convince anyone that you are.

People complain when they don’t even try.

I don’t like that Legendary Armor is locked behind Raids.

• Why not play Raids then?

I don’t like Raids because they’re hard

• Then you don’t get to earn Legendary Armor. Pretty simple.

That’s not fair. Everyone should have an easier way to get Legendary Armor. Happy players = happy game.

• Instant gratification = bad. Delayed gratification = good. Here’s Cookie Monster teaching some self control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-LfQCPJJkY

People need to get out of their comfort zone. The reason why you advocate for the spread of wealth so much is because you’re locked in your set style of game play. Your steadfast refusal to deviate from your style prevents you from really experiencing the game in its full glory.

Now as for your previous dialogue that Capitalism is evil (an “exploit/abuse” in your words), I don’t know how to respond to that.

Ohoni.6057:

but they also need to pay attention to the players, and make sure that everyone is getting the things that they want at a reasonable rate.

I got all of the attached pix in the past few months. That’s pretty reasonable, don’t you think? John has my permission to confirm that I’m not a hardcore Forger. Save up on Exotics, and toss them in. Craft a bunch of GS when my T5 mat hits a stack, save Exotics for future Forging. Having an NPC in WvW drop one was icing on the cake.

Long story short, this game is well balanced in terms of rewards. RNG can bless you. Or you can work hard and earn Account Bound ones.

Guild Halls aren’t meant for small guilds. Sure they made it so a group of 5 can capture it, but the upgrade are costly. This was done so you can only earn them if you’re willing to invest into your guild. It’s not fair for small guilds to get cheaper upgrades over larger guilds.

Here’s what I would recommend. Either you expand your guild and bring in more members who are willing to help upgrade, or join a larger, more established guild.

Ohoni.6057:

~~~ snip ~~~

I give you credit for attempting to bring psychology into the debate. I, too, have a background in psychology as well as business. While jealousy can have a negative impact on people who view the fortunate ones with envious eyes, that’s only half the story. Game designers have to look at the impact of player retention. The science to player retention in MMOs is to give players long term goals or goals that have a high replay value. Giving all players what they want achieves the opposite of this. Without goals, players will get bored. The counter to this is to pump out more and more new content. With Anet and their limited resources, they’re not able to bring out new content fast enough, so the only option left is to have longer term goals. The carrot on the long stick, so to speak. And you can also artificially extend the goals by putting in gates (i.e. once per day crafting).

In Guild Wars 2, or any other MMO, you have a wide variety of players. You have players who demand challenges. You have players who thrive in PvP. You have players who roleplay. You have players who want to collect everything in the game. And you have players who want the best items in the game for no effort. The latter is categorized as Entitlement. Among all groups and types of players, the Entitled player is the one that a game company doesn’t want to cater to. As stated above, once these players get what they want, and no longer have anything else to desire, they lose interest in the game. This leads down the road to quitting the game until more new content is released.

There has been debates on players quitting because they don’t get what they want. This is true. Some players who don’t get their way, or if the game doesn’t do/reward what they’re feel they deserve, they’ll leave. However, this group would have far less people quitting than the group of players who are bored. Using some made up numbers, it’s better to have 2 players quit over not having their way, over 100 players quit because there’s nothing left to do.

Dark Balls require a LOT of investments. If you can’t afford to craft a bunch of armors, I would recommend hoping for an Ascended chest drop.

The more valuable the Ascended gear, the higher your chances are for good drops. Next time, try salvaging an Ascended Weapon or Armor, and then come back with your results. I guarantee you you’ll get what you want.

Edit – 18 Gold is a drop in a bucket. You’ll get next to nothing with spending such low amounts. Save your money, craft some boots or gloves, and then salvage.

Ziyall.7823:

~~~ snip ~~~

You know, there is an alternative way to get a Precursor. You’re not limited to just crafting it if you feel it’s too much of a hassle.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Your post strikes me as, fundamentally, a strawman.

No one is saying that Precursors should be easy to get. No one. They should be difficult and time-consuming. Acquiring one should require effort, skill, and dedication. It should be such a pain in the tuchus that no one would go to the trouble of crafting one lightly.

Our complaint isn’t that we didn’t get a free Precursor with the expansion. Our complaint is that the vast majority of Precursor gating isn’t time, effort, skill, or dedication. No, the gating for Precursors is now, and always has been, gold, pretty much the same amount of gold, and that’s exactly what we were hoping the crafting system would shake up. You need an astronomical mountain of raw gold to craft a Precursor, which means you need to either grind like crazy or get really into TP flipping. If you don’t like the idea of blowing 50 hours running Silverwastes chest trains or paging through spreadsheets for weeks on end to make some money off other people’s poor impulse control, you’re SOL.

Give me quests that will take weeks to complete. Give me challenges that will stretch my ability to succeed. Give me puzzles to solve and a journey that will take weeks or months to complete, depending on my dedication. Don’t make me do all that and then charge me almost as much as if I’d just bought the darn thing off the Trading Post!

You’re missing the fundamental point of Precursor crafting. It’s not made to be easier or cheaper alternative. That’s what everyone was hoping for. It’s simply a different method to getting a luxury item. There is no Easy Mode to the old Precursors, or the new ones. Anet Devs purposely balanced the Precursors to be valued at around the same prices that you see on the TP.

One of the counters to that is some cost more in mats than buying one from the TP. But you need to realize that Anet has it’s own metrics to determine internal values that John Smith & Co. determined for each Precursor. Sure someone can sell a Spark for 700 Gold, but the Anet target value might be closer to 900 Gold, so crafting costs may be balanced to roughly around that range. If a Precursor gets too cheap, you can adjust the output of Zommoros’ RNG to re-balance how many drop.

Basing a Precursor Scavenger Hunt solely on “challenges” is too easy. Skilled players can blaze through difficult content much faster than a Casual player who doesn’t like such things. If you purposely gate a challenge so that you need to wait weeks or months, that will makes it too easy. The length of time if takes you to complete a challenge is irrelevant, because all you need to do is repeat a process over and over, and you’re guaranteed a Precursor. Over time, more and more players will be walking around with Precursors, and that hurts the game. This is where RNG comes in. RNG is the ultimate equalizer. With it, skilled and skill-less players are all on the same level. The RNG gate will statistically limit the amount of newly generated Precursors that are born into the game. This keeps the rare item rare, and that’s OK.

Side note – not only RNG gates help to limit players from getting rare items, but also TP players too. They gobble up all the cheap rare goods, and resell them at a higher price. Doing so stabilizes the prices to what it naturally should be. This makes TP players a vital part of Tyria’s economy.

Christonya.3856:

SO we’re left in the following position. A: Do the collection and spend just as much money doing it as buying the item off the TP. Or B: skip the hoops and just buy it off the TP.

Which goes back to my title: I don’t get it. What’s the point of the precursor crafting when the over whelming majority of it is spending time on the TP? I might as well just buy the pre and enjoy it immediately rather then suffer through the collection which is the same cost any ways.

I realize the argument of “Oh well just go run around lower level zones and mine 15k iron and 10 platinum you don’t have to deal with the TP!” Ignoring how egregious those numbers are, why not just … SELL the items on the TP at that point instead of stocking up 15k of any ore which you probably don’t even have the bank space for in the first place? At which point it goes back to the original argument…. Why not do content you want to do IE the maguuma jungle, and sell items from it for gold to buy the precursor?

You’ve basically answered your own thread question. Precursor crafting was an alternative way to obtain Precursors. It wasn’t meant to be easier or cheaper. In fact, the Devs confirmed that they purposely balanced the cost of crafting a Precursors to around what the value is on the TP. If you value your time more than anything, then purchasing a Precursor from one of us is the faster way to go. If you want to save money, and have the time to farm mats, then mining nodes yourself (or simply playing the game) is the way to go.

You can play the game any way you choose. But if you do choose to buy a Precursor from the TP, do note that the player you purchased it from thanks you very much.

/picks up microphone

Scribing isn’t mean to be something you complete in an hour. It’s an expensive and time consuming discipline.

/puts microphone back in stand

GW2 is the best MMO thanks to Colin.

Also thanks for Reddit user XephyrGW2 for the pic

Reposting, since a troll managed to get my other topic shut down. Much thanks to Mark Katzbach and Gaile for correcting the moderator’s actions.

As stated in my previous thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Rare-items-are-rare-and-that-s-OK/first#post5705263), rare items have a place in games. When done properly, as Anet has done with 99% of the items in game, rare items can lead to a very healthy game environment. Let’s take a look at an example: Precursors.

Precursors are meant to be a very rare item. So much so, that even with the new Precursor crafting collections, they’ve balanced it to where the value of a crafted one is on par with one that you can purchase on the TP. There’s an artificial gate (RNG) on Precursors previously, and that kept the item rare. The rarity + the demand for them equals the prices we see today. But what does this mean? Simply put, luxury items such as Precursors are generated as such a low rate, that it prevents a vast majority of the player population to obtain them in a short time span. This is working as intended, because a luxury item is not a luxury unless it’s hard to get. The harder it is to get, and depending on the Precursor type, the more “awe” factor the Legendary it’s associated with gets. And with my explanation in my previous thread, the more complaints there are in obtaining said Precursor, the more you know the rarity is working.

There are those who say “Let all players have easier access to rare items, and the happier the community becomes”. This statement is a misleading one. Yes players will have their instant gratification, but it’s actually harmful to the longevity of the game. When there’s something hard to get, a player who is determined to get it will set goals for themselves. The individual goals players have is what keeps games alive. Some examples can be high replay value (SAB-Tribulation Mode or FotM levels). Some can be lengthy quests (Precursor collections or Nightfury). For myself, it’s now Achievement Point hunting.

Related to this is economic concerns. Rare items that can be sold on the TP will have it’s value determined by the players. And if it’s a Precursor, there’s a whole chain of related items that are connected (T5 mats, Rare weapons, etc). If rare items like Precursors were made easier to get, the in-game economy would be shocked by the sudden influx. Not only with existing Precursor values plummet, but so would T5 mats and all other items that require those mats to craft. So in a sense, rare items help to contribute to a stable economy.

It’s human nature to want things quickly, but this is a negative trait. Even Sesame Street realizes this, and over the recent years, started to adjust their educational offerings to teach things like Delayed Gratification through Cookie Monster. Before, Cookie Monster would see a cookie, and eat it all up fast. Now, he teaches how to resist the temptation in eating all of his cookies right away. The cookie (Precursors) is now a long term goal, and through patience and self control, Cookie Monster can now take his bites slowly and enjoy it longer (Precursor Collections). After he’s finished his cookies, he’s more satisfied and earned a smile (Legendary weapon).

If that’s the case, then this is a great opportunity for small guilds who want a fully upgraded Hall to themselves, or for their small group! As long as we’re within the rules, we could start a Guild Hall selling service.

Christonya.3856:

The problem is, ‘playing the game’ for me involves being in fractals, or the maguuma jungle. Neither of which give me access to iron, mithril or many other materials needed to craft the ascended items needed to make the precursor.

This is your main problem. You have the option of playing the game, but you choose not to, so you feel “forced” to use the TP. All you need to do is level to 80, go to Orr and mine Mithril nodes. If you want Iron, you go to a lower level map, and mine nodes. The TP was designed to allow players to trade with one another, thus allowing for the movement of goods game wide. TP players are doing their part by offering to sell materials that other players need. You, being a player in need or materials, can get them faster buy paying the prices listed on the TP. If the prices are too high, the other option is to mine or gather yourself.

A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding my assumptions. I didn’t know that there’s a limit to how much a player can deposit into a Guild Bank. If a player wanted to deposit 25,000 Gold, that they can only do so 500 Gold at a time. I thought the limit only applies to sending and receiving Gold directly via mail.

As for the withdrawal, if there are 50 members in this hypothetical guild, and each took out the max 500 Gold, the full sale amount can be done within a few minutes. Then all guild members would leave, allowing the purchasing player to retain the Guild Hall and all upgrades for their self. They would just have to live with the Guild name and tag.

Baamoink.4281:

Given that the cost for a fully upgraded Hall is about 19.5k, it’d take 39 consecutive weeks for a buyer to buy that Hall with the 500g a week limit

I thought there was only a limit on withdrawals and not deposits.

Gaviston Hawkington.9647:

So, I’m curious. If this is normal speculative behavior could you show me other items that have a similar curve based upon recent or past speculations?

Smart TP players can foresee certain things. If you’d like a sample of a previous speculation that came true, look at the history of Silk before and after the Ascended crafting hit.

Hypothetically speaking. Say my guild maxed out of hall, and offered it for sale to someone for in-game Gold. That someone would deposit a large lump sum of Gold into the Guild Bank, and each member takes their max share of 500 Gold each. Upon receipt of said Gold, the person is then made Guild Leader, and all members left. From my understanding of the User Agreement, this should be acceptable. Am I correct?

I love the sound. If they added coconut clapping sound hoof stomps while I ran, I would be so happy.

Kaleban.9834:

I can’t count the number of ToT stacks I’ve left clicked so far, and still no Endless Batwing Tonic. Is it working towards something rare when there is a very real likelihood that it will NEVER happen, or is it simply an exercise in futility?

You can get it without ever opening a ToT bag. Just go to the TP.

Kaleban.9834:

And should games (yes, even MMOs) have this type of artificially imposed rarity? I suppose there are valid arguments on both sides, from economics to simple opinion.

Economic facts trump simple opinions. So only one side has a valid argument.

Mallis.4295:

Yeah except most “rare” items in GW2 are just gold gated. It doesn’t really have prestige. You look at someone with a legendary and think “oh hey they farmed dungeons for 3000g and wasted it on a skin”. Not to mention the fact that you can just buy it with real money. The “goal” you talk about is just getting enough gold to buy whatever stupid expensive crafted item anet adds to the game with no actual effort.

Anet learned from their mistake, and now all future Legendaries are gated. You can buy certain things on the TP to speed things up, but the Mastery and Precursor crafting is so gated, that it prevents people from short-cutting the process. So now, if you see a new Legendary weapon, that person earned it.

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There are many reasons for rarity in games. One of the reasons would be that it gives an item some prestige. Another reason that is related to the previous is that it gives players a purpose or goal to work towards. If you want that prestigious or luxury item, you need to work hard to earn it. You can tell when something is rare when there are a lot of complaints that it’s hard to get. This is working as intended.

Now take the rare item, and plug in artificial gates, and you’ve make the rare item even more rare. This is OK. The increase in rarity correlates to the increased desire of the players to have it. We’ve seen this with Legendary Armor, special Fractal weapon skins, and even Nightfury. It’s human nature to want something that makes you happy. So when you see complaints popping up all over the place that players want something they desire, and want it easier to get, don’t get mad. Smile, because the feeling of getting the item after putting in a lot of hard work will make it all worth it. The stronger the desire to have said item, the stronger the emotional response is to call for a cheaper/easier way to obtain it. Because it’s also human nature to want something right away.

There are some who feel Entitled to having all the luxury items without putting in equal efforts to get them. When I discuss Entitlement, that’s not a negative thing, but rather a description of the mindset of humans. When an Entitled individual wants something, they want it here and now, and don’t care about how they get it. But sometimes, having what you want, when you want it, is unhealthy for a game such as GW2. Giving away too much tends to lead to a lot of negative things, such as a decrease in desire or “cheapening” of luxury items. Things like Anet’s nerf to Elite specializations is similar to this. It’s something that I didn’t agree with, but I understood the fact that mistakes were made, and this was a compromise between Anet’s intended goals, and players’ desires.

People who know me understand that I’m a defender of Capitalism. I firmly agree with business strategies implemented by Anet, because I recognize the role of a company is to make money. Rare items relate to this, because when you have a desire, that turns into a goal. When you have a goal, players strive to achieve it. The more players playing to reach their goals, the healthier the game becomes. This leads to more sales by way of additional players coming into the game for the same goals, or increased microtransactions of existing players. By not having luxury items in the game, you lose one of the driving factors in long term player retention.

Rare items will be rare. The more rare the item, the more loudly players will shout from the rooftops to have it. And the more they shout, the more justified that level of rarity becomes. In other words, the more complaints a rare item receives in relation to its rarity, the more confirmation that the Dev who implemented it did a good job.

I think the main problem here is that your guild is too small. Expand membership, and things will get easier for you. It wouldn’t be fair if Anet allowed smaller guilds to have cheaper upgrades. Then it would be exploitable to have only 5 people in a guild, upgrade like crazy on the cheap end, and then invite the other 500 guildies back in for a cheap hall.

There are angry and jealous people who want this luxury item. In the grand scheme of things, this is working as intended. There’s nothing wrong with an item that everyone is capable of getting, as long as you put effort into it. The fact that people are disheartened that it would take so long just means it’ll feel so much better to get for those who do invest their time.

NightShadow.1429:

…. You obviously don’t understand how TP flipping works lol They’re removing the items and inlating the price to what they want because they are the sole possessors of the items, as soon as someone lists it for lower, they buy it and flip it to make a higher profit, hence the bat tonic now being almost 500g compared to 16g at the start of the event coupled with an increase in demand.

Capitalism, ho!

You are only half right. Yes there are people taking advantage of an item that a lot of people deem desirable. This is how business works. High Demand couple with low Supply = high mark ups. You shouldn’t be mad that the price of the item is so high. Remember, the price wouldn’t be so high of there wasn’t someone willing to actually pay those prices. As long as there’s a market with players willing to pay high prices, we’ll continue to sell it to them. It wouldn’t make sense for me to sell something like Spark for 500 Gold, when there’s someone willing to pay twice that price.

Now as for the other part of the TP, it acts like a Gold Sink. The 15% tax we all get hit with when our items sell is lost. Gone. Vanished. It’s removed from the game. The higher priced the item, the more Gold is removed from circulation.

Speaking on the item itself, now that I know exactly what to farm for, I’m gonna try to make this. It looks good, and I want to be a special snowflake.

With the forums being filled with “I don’t want to play to unlock content”, I think a great compromise would be to offer a Gem Store unlock for characters. Want to become a Dare Devil instantly? Here’s a 1-time use Elite Tome for 2,000 Gems.

Pros

• Monetizes instant gratification. Players who feel they’re Entitled to getting all they want would have a shortcut. Let them pay for the convenience.
• New revenue source. NC Soft shareholders would be happy.
• 2,000 Gems is pricey enough to limit abuse, but not so much to deny sales.
• Speeds up the process for players with a lot of Alts.

Cons

• Gem Store shortcut would “cheapen” the expansion content. Anet wants you to enjoy their hard work, not skip it.
• Some players would expect Anet to offer more shortcuts for everything else.

Play the game, and as you enjoy it, you’ll level up. If you want to level faster, WvW is a good place to get XP. The more you rush it, the less you’ll enjoy the game because then it becomes a chore. Once you hit level 80, then focus on all the optional stuff.

Spurrlock.3219:

The common denominator is not “I don’t want to play to unlock this,” its “I don’t want to grind masteries for 20+ hours and burn through new PvE content to enjoy the rest of the game with new elite specs,” such as dungeons, fractals, wvw, etc.

Example:

• When you create a new character, do you expect to go off and kill Zhaitan at level 1?
• In real life, do you expect to register for college, and walk away with a 4 year degree on your first day of school?

Simply play the game. HoT is an expansion that offers new skills. Logically, your character would need to learn and master the new skills, not just walk around and instantly become Elite. If you really want to get those new skills, you gotta earn them.

Wiat.3806:

In the last 3 Years I have spent quite a bit of money..Happily…In the last few months I have spent a good amount on influence for my personal bank guild.. anticipating guild halls .is there any reason whatsoever that you as a company could not have informed your players before release that have done nothing but promote your game and tell people what is good about this game that personal bank guilds would be worthless and the money we have spent on influence is now in your pockets and we r just KITTENEd

I think it was Colin who said in an interview that Anet sees guilds as having at least 5 players. So if you have at least 5 players in guild, then you can go out together and work on your own hall.

And FYI, we’ve known for a long time that guild Influence and Merits would be useless when HoT released. You need to read the official web page for updates.

leftyboy.9358:

Gaile gray’s post implies people who have a problem with long grind for their basic elite skills and traits are in some way just silly.

But… all the complaints are silly. The common denominator for all of them is “I don’t want to play to unlock this, I want it now.” Anet Devs said previously that they pay attention to legitimate complaint posts, the ones that actually provide constructive feedback. And they take that feedback and make changes to the game.

Edit – Somewhere buried in the forums, Colin or MO actually gave examples of changes they made based on player feedback.

Fitzkin on Reddit said it best with this

Anet wants players to actually play the game? And you’re complaining about that?

I have no words…

600+ AP is a lot just for WvW though. Were there other buffs in other areas?

Rangelost.4857:

Yes, this does mean Guild Wars 2 is now technically Pay-to-Win.

I think you’re confusing L2P for P2W.

If you have a firm grasp of the core skills and builds, you can counter the new Elites. Just remember that this requires you to have mastered said skills.

I’m a bit lost. When HoT hit, my AP exploded, and now I’m on the cusp of 27,000. I think I was around 26,300~ pre-HoT. Where did all the free AP come from?

Suinz.5968:

I thought you implemented these collections so the precursors wouldn’t be stuck being gold and RNG. If this were true, why the HELL are most of the collection items RNG based?!

I have started crafting spark. I have spent the last 2 HOURS going map to map mining iron to get ONE piece of Nickel ore. The other special ores didn’t even take a quarter of that! This is only the first TIER. It doesn’t help that the “hints” you give us are extremely vague. Such as: “Get a sample of material the dredge use to make their buildings.”

Okay..do I get it from a drop? Is it an item on the ground? What DO the dredge use for their buildings?

This started off extremely fun. But it gets tedious, FAST.

Or you could skip the RNG entirely and buy a Spark from one of us.

They better not stealth nerf my chests. They’re full of potiony goodness.

After many long nites, and worn out mice, keyboards, and fingers, I’ve finally grinded my way to the object of my desires: The Thirst Slayer achievement.

The one sad thing about this is that there’s no title. Why??? Such a feat is was my own Legendary journey. As a quality of life suggestion, I’d like to see a title added so all Thirst Slayers in Tyria can show off their dedication to this achievement track.

I’ve been meaning to make a post dedicated to Colin for being such a great human being. If you don’t read GW2 Reddit, our old friend Josh Foreman (creator of the Super Adventure Box) posted a very insightful FB post a couple of days ago. In it, he confirms what all of us already knew, that Colin is the nicest guy in all the game industry.

Here’s the link for reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3omcyk/josh_foreman_giving_us_some_insight_of_his_12/

The post brought tears to my eyes. Next time I see Colin at an event, I’m giving him a great big hug.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

lol. If anyone thinks raids takes a “god like effort” then they have a very small idea of what a God is. (Unless they think killing a raid boss is a miracle on the level of creating the universe in 6 days).

My GW1 ancestor helped create the god Kormir. I’m still waiting for her to grant me access to my stash of Tormented weapons inside my Hall of Monuments.

Your Zerker Revenant will never touch my perma-evade Daredevil.

Ohoni.6057:

A game world, one in which nobody is “worthy” of anything, or “unworthy” of anything, it’s all just activities and rewards, and the developers arbitrarily decide to attach reward A to activity #4, and people that do activity #4 get reward A, but they are no more “worthy” of it than anyone else.

They are indeed worthy if the content for the reward is hard enough to exclude those who don’t beat it.

Ohoni.6057:

And if 14% of the people doing the open world content don’t do their job, then all 100% of them aren’t worthy of reward either?

You seem to have a selective memory. Open World content is not the same as Raids. If your 14% don’t do their jobs, all 100% still benefit if the event is successful. That is what makes Open World unfit for exclusive rewards. Until Anet can figure out how to only reward those who put in god-like efforts, you need to have a instanced map that forces all players to succeed together, or fail together.

Ohoni.6057:

No, they don’t. Every solution I’ve offered or supported would involve doing MORE work than the original method, just work of a different variety.

Nope. Farming tokens for 5 years to get Legendary gear will never be the same as putting in 1 hour of intense group-based battles with a Raid boss. That 1 hour spent planning, executing, and winning will always trump your extra time doing something mindlessly easy.

Ohoni.6057:

Ok, that out of our systems, Sure, someone who puts in minimal effort could eventually, say, earn one piece of Raid armor.

See above

Ohoni.6057:

“Play raids” is not reasonable to all players,

And that’s ok.

Ohoni.6057:

But again, if you don’t play it, you don’t get the reward, and are sad that you don’t have the reward.

And to get over your sadness, you play the content and learn something new. As my own example of being bad at PvP. I didn’t like PvP in GW2. I preferred GW1 HoH. But after 2 years of ho-humming, I became more active. Just in the past couple months, I’ve pushed myself to become better. Now the ranks are coming quickly, and went from Wolf to almost Phoenix. All your arguments instantly fail against mine, because I’m living proof that anyone can play any content. Perhaps you can get to my level and try something you don’t like, and maybe participate in Raids. You never know, you could actually like it.

Ohoni.6057:

The system I’m advocating for is one in which people can retain interest longer.

Actually the opposite. Your system caters to players who feel they deserve everything. And once they have everything, they lose interest fast unless Anet can keep pounding out new content and new rewards to satisfy them. While we appreciate your willingness to offer suggestions, the one you feel so strongly about doesn’t work. Any game developer can tell you that when you give away everything, you hurt the game as a whole.

Ohoni.6057:

Basically, any time it would take X amount of time to earn an item via an existing method, the alternate method would take X+15% or more, it would ALWAYS take you MORE time to do it that way.

ALWAYS.

Again, that extra time spent does not equal the time Raiders spent beating Elite content. Never. A marathon runner who completes the 26 mile run in 3 hours is far superior to the person walked it in 10 hours, or someone who rode a 10 speed bike the same distance. It’s insulting to say “I finished a marathon just like you!” when your effort wasn’t on par with the runner’s.

Ohoni.6057:

Those other players deserve the items no less than you do.

They would deserve the item, only if they completed the requirements for it. Thus beating a Raid makes one worthy of such a reward.

Ensign.2189:

Player one pays 20 gold for 100 gems, player two pays 140 gems for 20 gold; the change in the amount of gold on the exchange is 0, and the 40 gems removed from the game are equal to $0.50 deposited into A.Net’s bank account for the service provided.

Essentially, if you are running a currency exchange with a service fee you can choose to pay yourself in either currency being exchanged. Why would A.Net want to be paid in gold when it could be paid in dollars and euros?

1) Anet doesn’t profit off of the Gold “tax”. The Gem Exchange is simply a convenience for players who don’t want to spend real money on microtransactions. The “tax” is a sink as well, helping to keep inflation in check.

2) Without the “tax”, players like me who have real world investing and currency experience would absolutely dominate the exchange, leading to pure wealth imbalance.