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If the “leverlers are leaving” argument holds true, perhaps crafting can actually be profitable for those who enjoy crafting for its own sake?
True, but I’ve found that just hitting “okay” and then “sell” over and over again doesn’t actually work. You have to wait a little bit, and the amount of time you have to wait is irregular. I’ve tried it, counting three seconds sometimes works. Counting five seconds sometimes works. What works best, in my experience, is to just plain stop for a few minutes and start up again. So it feels like the program is tracking how many transactions you do and, at a certain point, starts throwing that error at you. If you wait a bit, the counter drops until it’s cleared, and then you can proceed normally again.
You can get started even if your wealth is in the silver range. There is a veritable gold mine in low level crafted materials (other than jewelry)… not the crafting itself, but financing the crafting (by posting buy orders just above the highest buy order) and facilitating the consumers (by selling them just below the lowest sell order). There are products that are people are “selling now” for as little as a quarter of what people are “buying now” for. There is a reason this works.
Most people want to max out their crafting in as little time as possible. That means that all the leveling crafters are constantly driving down the “sell it now” price. I tried, for a time, leveling my crafting at a profit, by selling my products at the “smart” price. But it wasn’t that smart, because I was waiting around to get my money back to invest in more materials to grind into more skill points… and I got tired of waiting. It would have taken forever doing it that way. So instead, even I dump my crafted stuff at “sell it now” prices, when I’m quick-leveling a craft skill.
Same with upgrading your gear. Who wants to wait around for a buy order to fill, when they want to play with it now, not five levels later (at which point it’s already obsolete)? Even I, when I buy something for a leveling character, “buy it now”. This exerts a constant upward pressure on “buy it now” prices.
Enter the trader. We can do the waiting for them… for a price. The trader pushes back against the dividing trend, and makes money doing so. If the highest buy order is 50s, and the lowest sell order is 3g… that’s a truly massive profit margin. And we’re not even doing anything wrong. Without us, the 50 becomes 49 becomes 48 while the 3 becomes 3.1 becomes 3.2… crafters get less money, levelers have to spend more for what little supply is available. When we “exploit” this market, instead the highest buy goes up to 51, to 52, to 53, while the lowest sell drops to 2.9, 2.8… As we compete with each other for this profit margin, the gap closes. Everybody wins.
It doesn’t close fast. Why? Because it’s time consuming. If you’ve only got 5 gold, this is a GREAT way to quickly grow your money. If you’re dealing in larger numbers, it gets a bit tedious… so this area is perfect for the lower level trader.
I am aware of the presence of WvWvW rankings, but what about other things?
One thing that is missing from this game that I am accustomed to seeing in other online games (not necessarily MMOs) is leaderboards, lists of players ordered by their degree of success in various areas. Bragging rights are all well and good… but it’s just bragging without some kind of hard evidence.
There should be lists like:
- list of characters who’ve completed 100% of the map.
- Most Gold in the Bank
- lifetime total of XPs/karma/whatever
- Fastest completion of a particular dungeon
- Some kind of ranking for players who participated in turning around a server’s performance in WvWvW.
- Similar rankings by guild
- Largest percentage of achievements
And so on.
I think the important feature was not the wager, but the fact that it occurs in one of their guild halls, the fact that it acts as a GvG “siege” of sorts.
It’s funny. When I first encountered Jeremy Soule’s music, I didn’t care for it. This was due less to the quality of his music than due to a host of design decisions with regard to the game it was in, Morrowind, that I felt made for a poorer music environment than its predecessor, Daggerfall.
Daggerfall had tons and tons and tons of little midi tunes, for different environments, different locations, even different weather. I played it through countless times, even from beginning to end once or twice, and I honestly suspect I never heard it all. Further, there was no “battle music” meaning enemies could actually sneak up on you. Combined with the creepy dungeon music, the creepy artistry (even if it was at an incredibly low resolution), the creepy moans and screams that emanated at random, and the ridiculously labyrinthine nature of pretty much every place in the game, it made for this extraordinary atmosphere of danger, which contrasted well with the atmosphere on the surface. Also, I still, to this day, prefer the crisp, hard sounds of music composed for the Soundblaster series to what we use today… though that’s probably just nostalgia.
The Morrowind developers, on the other hand, contracted Jeremy Soule to do a very limited loop of travel music, and a very limited loop of battle music. Combined with the fact that every place you went was brightly lit and underground areas were small and easily navigated, this made for a much less “creepy” environment. And Soule’s battle music was really nothing to write home about: slow, pondering, muddled attempts at grand and sweeping. His environmental music was quite good, and I continue to enjoy it to this day, but that battle music? Ick.
As an Elder Scrolls fan, I’ve watched Soule develop his craft. The music in Oblivion was acceptable. The music in Skyrim was quite good. And the music in Guild Wars 2 is utterly fantastic.
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And whether or not someone says “IMO” or not, a statement is either, by definition, a factual statement or an opinion. Only factual statements can be true or false.
“Risen zombie mechanics drop two gold” is a factual statement. It is also false; I just made it up.
“PvE is easier than PvP” is an opinion. It is likely a very widely held opinion, but it is still not a matter of truth or falsehood. One cannot correctly say “that is false”; rather, the correct words are “I disagree”.
I’m working on 100% map completion on one character… and I’m taking my time at it. Maybe I’m easily amused, but I love finding all the little nooks and crannies of the world, talking to the named characters to learn about the places I visit, stumbling across the special achievements (I got the jackalope one and that “kings chamber” one at that dwarven archaeological dig site), and overhearing snippets of conversation.
Those conversational snippets are really a fine touch IMO. I doubt most people even pay attention to them. Some might even find it annoying. I like it, and it shows a level of attention to detail that pleases me.
I grabbed a random snippet of this (a part that didn’t have the world-replacement “Black Lion Trading Company”), and I couldn’t find the original this was based on. I did, however, find countless other examples of this in other fan communities.
Good show introducing me to a meme I did not yet know. Do you know the original?
Also, from a lore perspective, you’re not paying to sell your stuff. You’re paying to have someone else (the employees of the Black Lion Trading Company) sell your stuff for you.
Yeah, I get that. But there’s really no point of dropping healing rain unless someone needs the healing, so I keep an eye out to see if a healing rain would be appropriate. Given I’m specced to water (for RP reasons, not because I seek out the healer role), this is my most buffed ability, so it just makes sense to make use of it when necessary. If I want to focus purely on myself, I switch to d/d.
You do have a point in your first paragraph. I’m sitting here trying to figure out what kinds of filters could reduce the workload, but the only way I could see it working is if the software had some means of tracking not only trades, but also character interacts generally: if and how often they’ve partied (I would have it be measured in time spent in parties, as opposed to number of times in parties), if and how long they’ve been members of the same guild (I would make this a weak component, since people who wanted to participate in a gold-selling market could just make a front guild), and so on. From this data, an invisible “friend score” would be generated. IF this could be accomplished, quite a few “friend-to-friend” transfers could be weeded out. I just don’t know if that could be accomplished, or if other players would even consider that desirable, even if it were totally invisible.
The point in your third paragraph is a very, very good point. I don’t have a lot of experience with MMOs (other than Ultima Online WAY back in the day, GW2 is the only MMO I’ve played to any great extent), and had failed to consider how easy it is to aggregate this kind of information via a third-party website. I still think direct trade would be less efficient… but not so much less efficient than I previously did.
However, there is an inefficiency you may have not considered. The TP links all players on all servers all around the world. Direct trade (I am operating under the assumption that traders would have to be physically adjacent to conduct a trade) could only be conducted with others on the same server or, in lucky cases, others on the same overflow. (This doesn’t even take into consideration potential linguistic difficulties between regions.)Trade between servers would be limited by overflow encounters and the week cooldown between transfers. I could see traders making money roaming between servers… but the fact is, I rather enjoy the idea of merchant characters, roaming from world to world, selling their wares…
Now, understand, I have no problem with the trading post. I like it, and use it extensively. I do, however, have sympathy for those who do not, and believe allowing the two competing systems is just plain the right thing to do. My question to those who would prefer to operate under a direct trade system: would you be okay with it if trades had the same transaction fee as the Trading Post? I still believe it ought to be lower (no higher than 10%, due to the absence of the TP’s “listing fee”) since the players themselves would be doing things that the trading post automates, but would you still be okay with it if the price were 15%?
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Another possibility would be if, for SPvP, players had the opportunity to block other players from their match-ups (I seem to recall XBox Live having a similar function). Players who were consistently abusive might have difficulty finding matches, though that risk would also exist for habitual banners.
The conclusion I’m reaching is that one should be careful if either a recipe seems numerically off (such as a recipe requiring one ecto instead of five) or if a given transaction relies on buying from or selling to (“vendoring”) an NPC merchant (which I believe are implemented as places where wealth goes to die, not places where wealth can be acquired). I can’t help but think, however, that the former is less obvious than the latter, and should be treated as such.
And I still think there should be a “no ex post facto” rule where banning is concerned, particularly in a case where no NPC merchants are involved. There should be a clear, regular, in-game channel to report potential exploits to the developers. When an exploit is identified, there should be NO PENALTY for those activities that occurred between the time the player reported it and the time the devs communicated their judgment. For players that failed to report. the only penalty should be a removal of gold and/or items from their account, perhaps even assigning a debt in the event the player already spent it all. For those players that persist between the time the exploit was publicly identified and the time the devs patch it closed, bannings could be considered.
I wonder if ANet would end up opposing this practice on the grounds that the various currencies are not meant to be convertible, and that this, in essence, is a workaround the game’s barriers to such conversions?
Not that I would agree with that, I’m just saying.
It shouldn’t be based on volume. A crime is a crime, regardless of the number of times it’s committed. The volume only influences the likelyhood of getting caught. Volume can be a clue that people are exploiting a bug… but it shouldn’t be the standard by which people are judged.
Probably they’ll have enough once they get the top achievement for having gold in their account. :p
Honestly, is anybody really just banking massive amounts of gold, or were they before the addition of the achievement? Personally, I feel like I’m wasting my gold if it’s on my character or in my bank account, rather than tied up in buy orders and inventory.
Norn are definitely more physically attractive than Asura (though I have to admit, Asura kids are hilariously adorable). Their lands are more attractive, also… though I just discovered something interesting about Rata Sum. I teleported from the merchant’s area to the gate, and… no load screen! Apparently, Rata Sum is compact enough that a lot of around town travel is literally instantaneous.
Heh, if you have to google Carlton Dance, you’ll never get it. It’s a real treat for those of us who grew up watching the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which likely includes a majority of the devs.
Oglaf’s suggestion, however, is well taken. The only possible issue I can see with that is animation issues between races, so maybe Charr and possibly Asura would end up with a smaller, more limited dance set that didn’t cross over with humans, norn, and sylvari (who are shaped similarly enough it shouldn’t be an issue for them).
When you go to the grocery store and buy food, do you believe the store is somehow taking advantage of you?
You haven’t been gaming online long, have you. :p
I don’t really see any way of doing this that wouldn’t be a prohibitive drain on resources for ArenaNet. It would requiring monitoring chat… which would require many, many human beings to keep track of. It would also introduce a somewhat Orwellian feel to the chat channels. Bad enough you don’t know what you can get banned for in crafting and trading; now we have to watch our mouths or be banned by the PC Police?
One thing that would be interesting would be the ability of players to mark other players, over the course of a match (as in WvW) or at the end of an SPvP matchup (never done SPvP, so I’m not sure how it works), as having been particularly fun to play with. If someone manages to make “most popular player” at any point, they could get an achievement for it, maybe with the title “Good game, bro” or something like that,
Is there a way to report potential exploits (not suspicion of others exploiting, but rather a feature cluster that feels too good to be true) directly to ArenaNet? I personally believe that reporting a potential exploit should be considered due diligence enough to exempt a player from any punishment for making use of the feature (which may or may not be an “exploit”) between the time they sent the report and the time ArenaNet informed the community (including any reporters by direct communication) that they do, in fact, consider it an exploit which players should refrain from using, and which they will be closing at the next possible opportunity.
To do otherwise is what we call an “ex post facto law”, and there is a reason this practice is outlawed in the United States Constitution: it is incredibly unfair, and has the very chilling effect that is demonstrated by the OP.
I’ve wondered if maybe it was added to gum up bots. It’s pretty irregular, and would make it more difficult to automate the buying and selling process.
And from a lore standpoint, you’re not paying for you selling your stuff. You’re paying for the army of accountants, couriers, shippers, marketers, and administrators to sell your stuff for you… with a bit left over for the shareholders.
The point that direct trade would give another tool to gold sellers is valid, but insuficcient. They can already use the mail system, and there’s no reason direct trades couldn’t be logged and examined. Indeed, all they’d really need to do is have a program monitoring for either very high volumes of trades or very high value trades, sending a report to a human being who could look at it and figure out if it looks like a reasonable trade or a gift of gold that should be followed up further.
As to advertising gumming up chat, the solution is already present: make it an offense with some sort of disciplinary action (suspensions, bannings or what have you) and let other players report them for spamming.
Finally, the gold sink issue. I understand the necessity of gold sinks. I just don’t see enough volume occurring by way of direct trade instead of the trading post to undermine the gold sink. 15% is a lot… but people already pay as much as 200% more—or more—by clicking “buy now” than they would by posting a buy order. (Accommodating such individuals is how I make my money.) Very few would spend the time hunting for a seller for a 15% price break, and due to the inefficiency of direct trade relative to the trading post, I doubt they’d even find that.
I predict that a direct trade mechanism, were it implemented, would be used in one of three ways: direct marketing of rare, high value items to wealthy clientele; roleplayer “shops” that did very little business but were more for playing around (selling food and drinks at an event, for example); and a small network of independent traders who erroneously hold to their faith that somehow, they’d be able to do more honest business with each other than with the anonymous buyers and sellers on the trading post.
I would place a 5% fee on direct trades using a secure direct trade window. This would represent the cost of the provision of security to such trades, while being enough less than the 15% to stop anyone from blaming the fee for the failure of direct trade to catch on. I predict that the inherent efficiency of the BLTP would result in the vast majority of people continuing to use the trading post, and thus the gold sink would be preserved.
In case you wonder who this guy is that got screwed by this ridiculous 1c undercut:
Just the average player like you and me, maybe playing a little too long. Saving up all his gold, karma and skillpoints to finally create his legendary. Then he thought it would be smart to sell it for good profit and just start a new one. He didn’t want to be too greedy and wanted to sell it fast, so he put it on a reasonable cheap price. The same it sold already 2 days before. Didn’t work out for him, and while writing this, he got undercut again by a slightly less but still pretty ridiculous amount of 20g.And that is one reason (but not the only) this player is considering taking a break right now. Maybe if someone would place an offer of 2.6 or even 2.5k he would take it out and sell it directly, but he can’t even afford the listing fee for that.
Good day.
lol, here’s somebody proving my point. Most people complain that legendaries are selling too high. Here’s someone complaining that legendaries sell too low. Really? You’re sitting there with a legendary… and you’re ready to QQ?
I tend to play humans because I tend to find it difficult to identify with non-humans, and this is particularly pronounced in GW2.
I’d say I like Norns and Sylvari second best. Norns because they’ve got that proud boastful warrior race thing going that I enjoy, they still look pretty human (making it easier to come up with an ideal appearance) and their snowy lands are beautiful. Sylvari are probably the most alien, but they’re still fantasy tree hugger hippy people, and like the Norn, their lands are also beautiful places, if a bit much compared to human lands. And their body shapes are closer to my preference, though I do wonder what they hide behind the leaf. :p
Asura I put in third place. They’re short, ugly little people, and compared to the human and norn capitals, their capital is a pain to get around. (The Sylvari capital is also a pain to get around, but it looks cooler, IMO.). I haven’t played much with one, so I can’t comment much on their lands. It occurs to me that I probably should, with my main (I’m trying to get 100% completion).
Charr I dislike the most. I find their military-industrial focus highly distasteful, their lands have the feel of barren wastelands, and really, is it too much to ask them to brush their fur?
So yeah, I’d go with human… but I suppose an Asura that is friendly to humans would be a good thing. We’ll likely need the technical assistance once the Charr are off their leash. :p
So it would be less a sentry, and more a tracker.
Its due, to the fact that there is no History of transactions in game like like there is on the AH of other games. Due to the lack of information manipulation becomes so much easier.
This is an interesting point. I haven’t played much WoW, and when I did, it was always a free trial (that ultimately bored me), so I never saw how the interface worked. The exchange on STO had no history that I ever found, but I never really got into trading on STO. But if only for my own curiosity, I’d love to see something like that in GW2. Admittedly, it does raise the personal skill requirements if the game doesn’t have that (you have to track prices yourself), and I’m never allowed to a system that allows the exceptional to shine (so long as it doesn’t allow them to hurt others in doing so… unless, of course, the game is about that) but I’m lazy. I’d rather they did it for me. :p
I don’t play a ranger, and I know very little about how stealth works in this game, but this makes sense, thematically speaking.
I agree with Amaethon, but if I had to choose, I’d go with vitality. It may take longer to heal than otherwise, but you can survive a heavier hit and, if you can escape, it’s quicker to take a breather and come back than it is to have to respawn and/or tie up another player resurrecting you.
I play a water focused elementalist, and when I’m in a dungeon, how much time I spend in water depends on how the rest of the team is doing.
I play staff. I do this thing where I burn it with fire, switch to earth and grab the projectile finisher. Then I look at my party’s hit points. If they’re dropping at all, I hit, the earth blast, swap to water, and drop healing rain. If they’re not, I hit the earth blast, switch to either water or air (it’s kind of a whim) and drop either freezing ground or that air combo field. I do see keeping the rest of the team alive as my responsibility, and so keep an eye on their hit points, but unless someone really needs healing, why would I do anything but damage and crowd control?
It’s a different game. Deal with it. Personally, I prefer it this way, since you don’t get people saying “you didn’t spec your warrior to tank; you can’t play with us”.
This game is about crowd control and boon stacking; that’s where the teamwork comes in. It happens kind of automatically, but I have yet to attempt coordinating fields and finishers to max out combo bonuses.
It sounds to me like most people in this thread understand that it’s the drop rate that is the problem, and I still don’t understand how traders are somehow implicated in that. Would it be easier to get the components of a legendary if there was some kind of ANet enforced price ceiling on those components? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t, since while it would be easier to buy for the first person to come across the deal, the supply wouldn’t be any greater, and there wouldn’t be any on the market at all most of the time, at any price. The only way to truly lower the price would be to increase the drop rate.
People spread lies to make prices shift so that they can buy/sell for profit.
This only hurts other players who imagine themselves traders, not regular players who just sell their loot and buy their gear off the TP. Who would buy up stacks of some overpriced good on a rumor other than another, less skilled trader?
Also, it results in more wealth removed from the game due to fees. There are more than enough gold sinks making us poor, and for the rich to remove 30g from fellow players to keep 15g for themselves is not good.
But when they pay the gold sink, they pay only their own gold. It’s not like they’re stealing someone else’s gold to pay it. And the value of the gold is determined (very, very roughly) by the ratio of gold to items. When a gold sink is paid, the total gold in the economy goes down. The spender has less gold, but each piece of gold held by another player is worth just a little bit more. The only way they could reduce everyone else’s wealth is buy making NEW gold from nothing, adding money to the economy (which is one major way we get screwed by financial elites in the real world).
The other case with rich people buy all of a certain item up and reposting them all for a higher price just makes an insanely rich person richer and they leech from the rest of us. If you have that much gold, you could stop using the TP completely and still never spend it all. The game to them is hoarding as much gold as possible, which is sinister considering it doesn’t do them any good but does the rest of the players bad.
The solution to this problem is very, very easy. Instead of buying from him, sell to him. When some idiot attempts this (I honestly don’t see how it can work in this environment) all you have to do is change your gameplay so you get more of this overpriced item, and cash in on it while it lasts. Enough people do this, and the idiot who attempted this will likely find himself selling it back LOWER than he got it for, ultimately.
You know, is there a big trader out there who wants to prove my point? (I’ll do it myself, once I’m a big trader… but I’m not yet.) I would seriously give this guy the money he thinks he needs to corner a particular market, and watch as he fails, just to prove a point.
ArenaNet: Please Implement Direct Trading between players! Stop forcing us to use the Trading Post where prices may be driven by manipulators!
I have absolutely no problem with this, though I think you’ll find that the result would be that the most expensive things disappear from the market entirely, as the high value items are marketed directly to a small but wealthy clientele, rather than on the TP.
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The difference between wealthy Tyrians and wealthy Americans is that wealthy Tyrians can only buy and sell goods and services, whereas wealthy Americans can buy and sell the capacity to do violence to their fellow citizens.
In the real world, “they” have a whole host of mechanisms by which they take our stuff from us: taxation, inflation, corrupted regulation, pollution, dispersal of aboriginal populations, intimidation by plain old hired goons, the occasional violently enforced monopoly or cartel (whether by government violence or otherwise), and so on. If this were Eve Online, these capabilities would exist here… only it isn’t.
In GW2, the worst thing an “evil market manipulator” can do is get a rare item before you do… and that’s only if the finder chooses to sell it. They can’t actually stop you from getting one from the game environment (unlike the real world). They can’t devalue the value of what savings you have accumulated (unlike the real world). They can’t pass arcane regulations designed to keep you from producing whatever you’d like (unlike the real world). They can’t use either gold or gems to saturate the media with their preferred message (unlike the real world). They can’t hire goons or government to keep you out of the good farming areas (unlike the real world). They can’t ruin a good farming area by emitting industrial byproducts into it (unlike the real world). They can’t overuse a farming area before anyone else gets a share (unlike the real world). They can’t keep you out of the city by buying up all the real estate (unlike the real world); as a matter of fact, they can’t keep you in or out of any place. They can’t jail you for dealing in “illicit” goods (unlike the real world). As a matter of fact, outside WvWvW, they can’t harm you in any way (and even there, their wealth can’t really do all that much). They can’t even obstruct your path with their character.
(Hmm… I wonder. Have any of the really wealthy players attempted to hire other players to WvWvW and lead their servers to victory?)
Now, if it’s ArenaNet employees doing the manipulation, that’s a whole different story—that IS like the real world, since they actually do have power. If it’s company policy, most likely, they’re doing it not to advantage any particular group of players, but rather in an attempt to squeeze out as many dollars from the gems market as possible… but that’s similar to the “neutral taxation” holy grail that has never actually been found in the real world. Of course, it isn’t unheard of for employees to go corrupt in favor of friends. It happened in Eve. But that’s a very serious accusation, and I would hope nobody would suggest that without actual evidence (at least name names), since if we just do that willy nilly, who would listen on the one occasion it was actually true?
Unless, of course, your desired look includes a legendary. Heh,
Greeting, I am Tarvok of the Waves, recently of Kryta, and having seen everything my homeland has to offer, I’ve been traveling in your lands. I rather enjoy it.
I must say, it brings out the daredevil in me. Not long ago I looked down into an icy ravine. Thinking that going there might get me to where I was trying to go (it turned out to be Jorandn’s Sluice, a watery tunnel passing under Hrothgar Pass, in Snowden Drifts), I noticed it was inhabited by ice wurms. I readied Arcane Abatement (a falling trick available to Elementalists, for those who don’t know), and jumped in air attunement, figuring on the lightning burst to be my first attack.
I just barely survived the fall (maybe a tiny sliver of HP left), and then noticed it was a VETEREN ice wurm. But I still slew the beast.
Presently I’m taking my ease at probably the saddest place in Tyria: Torstvedt Homestead.
Hey, I’m curious about something. For those of you who feel the activities of active traders is negatively impacting your game… what exactly is it that you’re doing that is being impacted by this activity? I only ask because I honestly can’t figure out what the TP is for for those of us who’d rather avoid that sort of thing, given there are supplies of very good items that have nothing to do with it (karma, tokens, etc).
So I’m trying to transfer onto the unofficial roleplay server: Tarnished Coast. It’s 3AM PST. And Tarnished Coast (along with three other servers) is sill full.
Wow.
At present, the localization of guild improvements is the only thing that ties players to a particular server. I’m not sure how important that is, but it feels important to me.
Heh, this is funny. In one thread, people complaining about the cost of waypoints at 80, wanting to make them free once the map is 100% completed. In this thread, a guy complaining that waypoints even exist.
While I’d love to play a game in which teleportation was a scarce resource and a strategic asset, that isn’t this game (since there’s no strategy in PvE).
Sadly, GW2 has really nice combat. That’s a sad thing, because it breeds the mentality that used to plague single player RPGs: people skip things. Everyone who’s played games since they were like 12 probably remembers times when their favorite game had a cutscene or dialogue and you didn’t even read any of it, as you just wanted to get out there and kill stuff. And that’s really bad. It’s bad because that dialogue is part of the game. A very important part: it’s what makes it an RPG, rather than an action adventure or an FPS.
I disagree here. It isn’t sad that the combat is fun; it’s awesome. Kingdom Hearts is a perfect example of a game I never finished and didn’t follow into the sequals because, while I enjoyed the story, I reached a point in the gameplay where I just plain quit because there were other games with stories just as good but more enjoyable gameplay. That, or a game with very good gameplay that allows the player to imagine the story, if he so desires (writing alternate history in Civilization, or something).
Guild Wars 2 is perfect for me. The combat is enjoyable (particularly on my Ele), and just challenging enough in PvE to be interesting without being frustrating. But the story is also fun, and the environment is fun. When playing story mode, I sit and enjoy the cutscenes. When map clearing, I stop, look around, talk to named NPCs (loads of interesting little tidbits there). It’s great. ArenaNet did an awesome job. But I wouldn’t even bother were the gameplay not fun.
You said that GW2 lacks “endgame content”, but did you ever wonder why that’s the case? GW2 lacks endgame content because it’s not a game about endgame content. GW2 is much, much more focused on the world and the story than any other MMORPG. And considering how the areas are spread, clearly they intended for you to play through the leveling process on multiple characters of different races to experience it all.
I agree here, and I like it this way. Having finished the story with my human elementalist (vigil), I’m now splitting my time between doing story mode with my new sylvari engineer, farming dungeons for my ele’s armor pieces (mixing pieces from CM, CoE, and one other; can’t remember), messing around on WvWvW (mostly playing solo hitting sentries, doylacks, keeping the Quaggans on our side, and throwing up random battle flags to keep the enemy confused).
That said, I do agree that WvWvW could use some improvement, but I’m not sure how to do it without messing up PvE, either by screwing with the gameplay or through neglect. Personally, I would love to play a game that was JUST massive world PvP, but instanced like with daily events which are orchestrated by the players using an interface similar to that found in Civilization type games. No backstory, just “here’s the world. Build up your own little corner, or destroy the other guy’s. It’s up to you. have fun!” In this respect, it would be like a fantasy Eve (kind of like Shadowbane, but with a more complex crafting system), but without even the backstory those two games have. The story would what the players make of the actual events that occur in the game.
Actually, my idea has considerably more than that (stuff for non-PvPers to chew on), but I’m not done with the design document. :p
But that wouldn’t be GW2, and I wouldn’t want ANet to try to turn GW2 into that game. I would, however, trust ANet with the development of such a game, since half the reason I started playing GW2 was to see how their dynamic events worked. I’m pleased with what I found, but I’m even more pleased with the entire game, overall.
I think the voice actors are fine… but I think that’s just because I’m jaded when it comes to voice acting. I watch anime. With a few notable exceptoins, I don’t watch the dubs… not unless I want to laugh and cringe. Compared to most anime dubs, these guys are academy award quality performers.
Guild Wars 2 is explicitly designed to AVOID using “progression” as a speed bump. It is meant to be fun for its own sake, and avoid problems present in other games, my least favorite being the problem that you can’t just jump in and play with your friends; you first have to do the “progression”. In GW2, you can be 80 and acceptably geared within days (if not a day) if you’ve got access to some gold, which you do if you’ve got friends to catch up with and do whatever it is you guys like doing together.
In other words, the lack of “progression” is not a bug; it’s a feature. If leveling up and grabbing loot are really the only things fun for you, there are other games for that. In GW2, the only “grind” available is getting cool skins, particularly legendaries… but those don’t make your numbers go up, they just make your character look cool. GW2 is about the gameplay, not watching numbers go up.
People warp to Cursed Shore because the only other way to reach it is a very long run (as detailed above), while the awards are the highest available. Therefore, it is one of the few zones in which the WP costs are “worth it,” and you can offset them in a couple of minutes of play there. On the other hand, traveling from LA to Brisban Wildlands or Mount Maelstrom costs about as much, and yet is less rewarding, which is a discouraging element to players. I’m not arguing that reduced WP costs would automatically flood every zone with high level players, but people would feel much more free to travel around where their whims take them, instead of sticking only to those areas that are “worth the trip.”
Hmm… this suggests an interesting possibility.
It stands to reason that there are three costs associated with running Asuran waypoints: recovery of installation costs, wear and tear, and an energy cost. The recovery of installation cost would be a low base cost to use every gate (I don’t want them totally free, but a small 5 copper fee is not at all unreasonable). Wear and tear would factor in “how frequently is this gate used”; more frequently used gates would be more expensive than less frequently used gates. Finally, the energy cost: a greater cost for traveling a greater distance, with maybe some kind of inverse square law applying to make the kind of short hops newbies regularly take substantially cheaper than the Lion’s Arch to Orr hop.
There could also be a few “subsidized” gates, gates that are free to travel to because the local government or merchant’s association covers the fees, to encourage people to show up at these locations (and hopefully spend money in nearby shops). At the very least, the Trader’s Forum at Lion’s Arch could be free.
I enjoyed the cutscenes… and if it were speech bubbles, I wouldn’t be able to just skip it once I’d already seen it.
Hey, the ’90s called. They want their “Darker and Edgier” back.
Really, spend some time in Orr, and tell me it isn’t dark enough.
It they did add mounts.
The mount ability needs a cool down of 3-5 minuets. So mounts are not used as a exploit for gathering.
… how is this even a problem?
If nobody here knows what it is, you might try the racial forum for whatever she was.
Or you could hunt around gw2armor.com.