Guild Wars 2

This is actually kind of a cool idea. I think I’ll go ahead and contact you.

I am finding it rather difficult to wake up pirates at Moriarty’s Hold. Doesn’t matter whether or not I’m holding a bucket of water or if I even dump the water on the drunk pirate. It seems like the only way to clear this is to keep dumping rum, which is okay… but is this bugged, or am I missing something?

They should change the TP/Crafting System so that my ill-advised playstyle can be profitable. They are idiots because they have not done so.

;)

I also do this and do read this subforum, from time to time. Why? Because the difference between what I would get from a vendor and what I get from the TP is not worth the time I would waste calculating that difference for every single item I sell. I’d just as soon hit “destroy”, but at least this way I get a few copper.

Just realizing that it was more about crowd control than d/d is (d/d is more about mobility) helped. Sinking/bubbling them to keep them immobile was helpful.

But the most helpful thing was actually upgrading my trident for the first time in maybe 30 levels. Heh. ^.^’

I HATE fighting underwater… but now I’m at a point on my storyline where I’m not only fighting underwater, but in cramped, twisty tunnels (under Lion’s Arch). I’ve got a system down for my dual daggers, but I feel hopelessly lost when I have to fight underwater.

I’m around level 60, water 20 earth 10 arcana 10. Any advice?

I’m building a massive spreadsheet. I’m filling in prices for everything I can craft. I flip whatever I stumble across that has a minimum spread of 115%. It’s actually working out pretty well, just grazing along like that.

Exactly, ChairGraveyard. If they’ve got the money, all you have to do is supply the goods. Though you can make money just buying and selling (you have to know what you’re doing), it’s those who bring in the stuff from the field who will have the most reliable income.

So I’m not really hurting anything by hitting them with conditions, just resetting them to their normal setting.

Bombastinator, you are incorrect. “Kicking away the ladder” only works if wealth enables one to gain control over the apparatus of violence, which is to say over the State, and over the right to exclude others from the land (which is granted by the State). In Guild Wars 2, there are no elections to buy, no land deeds with which to exclude people from farming, not even a PvP option to do so with one’s own sword (by killing anyone farming in your ranges). There aren’t even tools of mass production which, once established, are difficult to compete with. No person can use their wealth to exclude others from the process of becoming wealthy, unlike in the real world.

All items come from somewhere. The wealthy can buy them from the exchange. Those who are not wealthy but acquire the item have two choices: keep it for themselves, or sell it to the wealthy and use the proceeds to bootstrap themselves further up the ladder. If you are neither wealthy in gold nor items, nothing stops you from either leveling to the point where you can farm the areas these extremely rare things drop, or leveling your crafting to the point where you can make them… and thus become wealthy.

Without rent-seeking opportunities, there is no way for the wealthy to harm the newbies. This isn’t Eve Online, where the people with the best ships can exclude people from certain kinds of play (though there are always options when it comes to getting ahead, and the whole point to that game is finding those alternatives). And in SPvP, money is completely and utterly meaningless.

I just had my first really good set of group battles last night; my first dungeon. At first, it was enough for me just to point myself in the right direction, let alone hit the right buttons once I had done so. But over time, my situational awareness got better, and my control scheme improved. I stopped moving with the mouse and attacking with my fingers, and started moving with my fingers and attacking with my mouse, and it made a load of difference!

In fights against multiple targets, I’d generally stay in water, cycling through fire and earth briefly (grabbing armor of earth before cycling back to water) if there was a lull and I just wanted to make the fight end faster. I found that staying in a healing mode kept us all alive longer when enemies could come from any direction.

But the bosses were fun. Often, one of my teammates would have aggro, so I could stop focusing on dodging and just stand there, unloading my best combo (water breath and ice armor, ice field and water heal, switch to fire, fire breath, number 5 (that quick damage dump), ring of fire, followed by one of the earth finishers to grab a bonus, dump all the rest of my earth damage, dump all my air damage, back to water and repeat). When the boss finally would get the idea he’d generally take me down with two or three shots while I frantically attempted to find my movement controls, but by then the damage had been done, and someone else would either pick me back up, or manage to grab aggro so I could recover from my downed state on my own.

I really enjoy playing Elementalist.

You can also do flipping that involves crafting. Get a large enough pool of craft materials when material prices are low. Watch the prices of everything you can make, and see if anything sells for more than you got your materials for. Sell that. Don’t just craft and expect a profit. Watch closely for spikes in demand, and neglect on the part of crafters.

For instance, I often find that while one-ingredient cloth armor usually goes for well below cost, more complicated armor pieces often go at a profitable rate. This, I believe, is because you get the same number of skill points out of it regardless of how much raw materials goes into a particular piece, so people who are just grinding for skill points are dumping small pieces on the market, while neglecting the more complex pieces.

Complaining that someone posted lower than you shows a distinct lack of respect for your customers.

In one breath the problem is rising prices due to inflation. In the next, the problem is falling prices due to “undercutters”.

Personally, I see no economic problems that stop people from playing the game. In the absence of rent-seeking opportunities, wealth gaps don’t actually hurt anyone. Even gem stockpiling doesn’t really hurt anyone, since in order to profit from it the stockpilers will eventually have to take their profit (sell), at which point the price will be driven back down. Meanwhile, we can still get gems the way we were intended to get them: more money for ANet.

You might try asking in the warrior subforum if there is some legitimate method of doing this. It could well be you just encountered a more skilled player.

Group fights are a bit less interesting than other fights. I generally stay in water a lot, tagging enemies and spamming heals since I can’t keep up with the chaos, but hope that my healing is helpful. Sometimes I’ll dip into fire for a while, since Ring of fire is d/d’s only field maker. Generally, fire’s damage is overkill; the other players drop the enemy before I have a chance to cycle through it all.

So my main focus when fighting in groups is to watch not the enemies, but my allies, and make sure everyone stays alive as much as possible.

Elementalists have better survivability than some people realize. Trait well into water and earth, and you don’t do too badly… though it is a pretty complex playstyle. Gotta keep switching elements. Gotta pick your weapon set depending on what role you’re wanting to fill.

We are greedy. We’re just smart greedy, selling at a price that will actually get us money, as opposed to posting at a price that will never sell (or take days to sell).

Or they just like to brag, and the bragging rights are more important than the money. I talk about arbitrage (buying low and selling high when there’s a wide gap between bids and offers) all the time, but that’s just because I doubt arbitrage opportunities will ever go away, and if they did, I’d just find more money in other areas (since arbitrage is a profitable method of “repairing” the market).

I wouldn’t say there need to be more of them. I like the fact that the interior is generally fairly secure, with the outlying areas being more difficult to traverse.

Heh, just fought the fight. Now I wish I’d had the Priory at my side. I wonder if, perhaps, they might have found a solution to the cursed man’s problem?

This is so much fun. I’ve reached the point in my personal story where I get to pick an order to join… but it’s such a tough decision!

Early in this story, I worked with Durmond Priory. I found their magical solution to saving those children appealing, and it went off without a hitch.

Later on, I chose to work with the Order of Whispers, dealing with the pirates. I felt we didn’t have enough information yet, and that the full-on attack recommended by Crusader Hiroki would probably end up burying the necessary information, and I’d done infiltration work against bandits before.

But now we’ve reached the point where we know what’s going on. There’s an undead army on the rampage, and it must be stopped. Scholar Josir wants to focus on protecting the queen with the same device we used to rescue the children. Ihan wants to engage in some sort of subtrefuge, he won’t say what, but at this point, I agree with Hiroki: the time for intelligence gathering is past, and this is a situation that requires a military solution.

But if I choose her plan, that puts me in the Vigil permanently. I was initially thinking I’d join the Priory.

I suppose I’m not really asking for guidance here; I’m joining the Vigil, despite the fact that I, myself, am a clothy (Elementalist). I guess I just wanted to crow over how well done this story is. All the groups have their merits, and the story has lead me down a different path than I’d initially planned.

Crafting cannot be profitable. Take away the 15% fees, and you’ll just end up with more supply driving the price down. The problem isn’t the fee. The problem is that there are simply too many crafters. This is not a problem for those of us who are focusing on the adventuring part of the game; we’re reaping the rewards.

Indeed, getting rid of that fee would only benefit us demand siders. So yeah, get rid of the fee. :p

So long as people continue to value crafting skill points more than they value gold, there will be no profits in crafting in general. You have to carefully pick what you craft, meet gaps in production. That is to say, there is no profit in crafting, but there are profits in entrepreneurship.

I just noticed this, as well. I bought a bunch of adorned jewels, hoping to apply them to my weapons (seeing how they were listed under “weapon upgrades”) and found they could only be applied to my accessories. No big deal, since I’m satisfied with the bonuses they’ll give, either way (and it reminded me to update my accessories, as well), but it is inaccurate, and should probably be fixed.

Would this be something to post on the bugs forum?

Articluna has the right of it. If there’s a bunch on offer for 2s, and you place yours at 2s, get in back of the line. It might sell… eventually. But why wait?

Okay, so price it at 1.99. Still no guarantee its going to move, since someone else is likely to come along and underbid you, as well.

Put it at 1.5, however, and someone like Articluna (or me) is guaranteed to come along and pick it up. You can then use that 1.5 for whatever you need it for now, while Articluna, who has apparently decided (s)he can afford to wait, collects a profit, as well. Everybody wins! Except, of course, for the greedy bloke (named AsheN) trying to sell overpriced goods.

We shouldn’t necessarily be able to do everything with every class. Just because we’re not rolling the “holy trinity” in which some classes are clear dps, others clear tank, others dedicated healers, doesn’t mean every class needs every possible configuration. I rather like the way the Elementalist currently plays.

The Black Lion Trading Company: Where the REAL PvP happens.

I also like that, sometimes, I have to actually walk through the more remote areas. It just makes sense to me for the game to work that way, and A.Net made some pretty landscape. Might as well enjoy it while passing through contested territory. It also makes death just a little more painful… which is never bad game design, in my opinion.

You are correct about historical dragoons, CassieGold (or at least dragoons as represented in the Civilization series). But then you’ve got the JRPG (or at least Final Fantasy) class by that name, which is something different.

I think the only heavy armored class that would make sense at this point would be some sort of battlemage. Not spellsword; in TES, they were separate classes, and the battlemage was heavily armored. Basically the offensive magic equivalent of the Guardian—not that I have any interest in playing it. But it’s the only thing I can think of.

Better yet, we should have a single guild called “Idontwannabeinyourguild”. It’d probably be the most powerful guild on the server. :p

On land, I handle ranged mobs pretty easily by closing and slaughtering… but that’s just because I’ve become most comfortable with d/d. Tried to do some staff play earlier today. Have yet to surmount the learning curve. That would be why water is difficult for me, because the trident plays very similar to the staff, which I find difficult to use to the same effect as the daggers. (I thought I was decent with it until I figured out how to make the daggers sing.)

Why is it that, sight unseen, I am always drawn to the most controversial thing? I chose the Elementalist because I’ve always enjoyed elementalism in various fictions, and I’m enjoying how my character plays. But what do I get when I try to learn to play this class better?

Having a look at the list of posts in this forum, maybe 1/10 of the threads are actually useful on their face. The other 90% are “wah wah wah this class sucks this game sucks the developer sucks.”

Then I get into the threads, and maybe half the posts in the potentially useful threads actually have something to do with the topic. The other half are “wah wah wah this class sucks this game sucks the developer sucks YOU suck”.

I briefly perused the boards for a few of the other professions. Nowhere near so much butthurt.

Okay, I get it. On the one hand, the Elementalist could use some work. On the other hand, the elementalist is difficult to play by design (requires more thought and more finger dexterity than most classes). Ideally, in the hands of the top 10%, the elementalist should be the most powerful class, while in the hands of a permanoob, it should suck.

But is it too much to ask for less butthurt spam, more discussion of the class AS IT IS? Some of us would like to actually learn how to play this class. Save the whining for the suggestions forum and the bugs forum.

What I’d really like is some kind of policy from the moderators, creating a special “butthurt spam” forum and stating that butthurt spam is inappropriate anywhere but that forum. >:(

Well, yeah, and today, while leveling my tailoring, I was finding all kinds of materials that were cheaper to craft than to buy. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to see if it was more than 15% cheaper (there’s more money in arbitrage, anyway), but the opportunities are there. You just have to look for them.

AKA “outbidding”. And both are perfectly legitimate practices. Don’t like undercutting? Consider the position of the buyer. Don’t like outbidding? Consider the position of the seller. But then, I really shouldn’t be trying to convince you guys of this, since I make a lot of my money systematically undercutting and overbidding.

I’m also having trouble figuring out how best to go about underwater combat. I have to be very careful not to aggro more than one mob at a time. But then, I haven’t been underwater since I discovered attunement dancing, so I might be able to figure out some more tricks later.

In other words, BUMP.

Everybody is talking about the supply side. So long as we’re talking supply, here’s an idea: make crafting cost skill points. It should be possible to do a lot of leveling through crafting (and, indeed, it is), and if one had to spend skill points to unlock crafting tiers, one would have to choose between speccing to fight and speccing to craft.

But what about the demand side? What if damaged gear wasn’t a simple, quick NPC fix, but rather had to be replaced? Suppose a crafter and a little materials was required to do repairs, and the common response to damaged gear was to sell the damaged gear at Black Lion, and buy a replacement, while a lot of crafter business was the buying of damaged gear and sale of repaired gear?

Engineers are potentially an enormous source of demand. What if gadgets and gear required bits and pieces from all the professions? Like a device needs a box built by an armorer, a covering made by a leatherworker, some tiny gears and focus gems made by a jeweler, little blades made by a weaponsmith, and finally a fuel box made by a huntsman. All the various crafts disciplines would feed into the engineer’s own unique crafting discipline.

I am annoyed with all the below vendor orders that clutter up the trading screen. They’re not even legal to post; how did they get there? Left over from a time before a patch disallowed below vendor bids, or what?

It doesn’t help that ANet’s payment acceptance system is buggy. Probably a lot of people trying to buy gems with real money, but can’t.

I tend to undercut by significant amounts. I am more interested in getting my money back quickly at a somewhat lower profit so I can plow it back into the next arbitrage opportunity than I am in squeezing out an extra copper or two. Also, I know someone else is going to undercut me while I’m away, so I just pre-empt them. Finally, I don’t want to have to pay that 5% listing fee over and over again. Just price it to move and move on; that’s my strategy.

Haven’t read anything beyond the OP, but just wanted to drop in and say that it is manifestly untrue. I make all kinds of money just playing the market. D00d, ur doing it wrong.

I don’t know about top level crafting, but crafting lower level stuff has NEVER generated a money profit in any MMO I’ve ever seen. My roomate, for whom the action house in WOW pretty much was the game for him (“I adventure just to get materials to sell.”) came up with a statement that, while technically inaccurate, was funny and nevertheless said something true: price equals materials minus labor. Finished products ALWAYS sell for less than the costs of the materials.

Of course, the correct formula does not defy economic law, but rather should be stated thusly:

price = materials + labor – crafting XP

Until you hit the cap, you’re basically in “apprentice” mode, technically losing money for every item you craft, but gaining in skills. Because people haven’t figured this out yet, probably you lose money even at the cap… though I’ll bet there are opportunities for those who are careful to research the market before deciding what to craft.

At any rate, don’t say the market doesn’t work right… since I’ll bet it works GREAT for those people who prefer adventuring to crafting. Personally, I’m leveling my tailoring and jeweling, but I understand perfectly well I’m probably not going to make any money at it. As soon as people who are in it for the money, not the fun, get out of the selling market, profits will rise back to zero. Right now, they’re well below.

Also, gems are more useful than gold. I’ve been spreadsheeting prices, and while I’ve not yet gotten through all the crafting components (paddings, insignias, and stuff), it seems like prices don’t go up much as you go up the ladder of gear quality, and even go down toward the top tier. So with everything so cheap on the market, what do you do with your extra gold? Buy gems.

I can’t imagine ANet is artificially setting gem prices, as I’m fairly certain the gem store is just players buying and selling gems from each other, with some buying gems with real money… but not enough, apparently. The only way they could “set prices” in this system is if they were buying the gems themselves with gold from outside the game, but I don’t think this is what’s happening.

The impression I’m getting is that the game is just not gear based, and without gear pressure, the pressure to acquire gold with gems is low; thus, people don’t really buy gems (with real money) to get gold with. It is only if people do this that gem prices can drop.

EDIT: Also, there’s this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Gem-Purchases-Keep-Failing

ANet’s buggy payment acceptance system is probably a BIG part of the supply problem. I couldn’t even buy the game from them; I had to go to Amazon.com to get my copy.

I’ve crafted my entire current outfit, which is the strongest crafted armor, weapons, and the best jewelry and upgrades I could make or buy. (I made the armor and jewelry, bought the weapons.) I don’t have any trouble getting materials, and I farm maybe a tenth of what I use.

Probably this is because I collect as much arbitrage off the trading post as I am able to do. Also, I did nothing but collect arbitrage all week, since with my work schedule all I had time to do was log in, collect my purchases and profits, put my new stuff on the market, search around the market for a few more opportunities, post a few buy orders, log out. Crafting is easy if you’re willing to use the market the way it wants to be used, and not the way you expect it should be used.

I don’t think they ever really meant for the story portion to be played multiplayer, but were kind enough to leave the option in for those of us who want to try it. It’d be nice if story mode were a little more multiplayer (SWTOR had a bit of this), but I’d put that FAR down the hierarchy of priorities.

I post replies, but then don’t see them in the thread later on.

99% of the reason I am making this reply is for testing purposes.

EDIT: Okay, I can see, my reply… for now. Will check to see if I can still see it here later.

Anybody want to take these arguments to the field? Maybe agree on some sort of challenge (fastest clearing of an area, PvP victory, or whatever), have the advocates of switching get together and select a champion or three while the advocates of single-element do the same, and see who wins? Maybe throw in another class for those who are convinced Elementalists are too weak?

I honestly don’t know the answer. I’ve never been a powergamer; I just run water because i like water (though I will be experimenting with swapping now that I’ve read this thread). :p But empirical testing trumps pointless argument every time.

Personally, I like the game. For the most part, the game feels like your ordinary go-out-and-kill-stuff type game, but there are a few things that make it fun for me, where WOW was not fun.

First off, though those of us looking to clear a heart on our map are technically all doing our own thing, trying to kill x of whatever or gather y or whatever, because we’re not clicking on some dude with a question mark over his head, because of the lack of “accept quest” functionality, it feels like we’re just there, helping out this dude, and we can work together or separately like we feel like it without hurting each other. It just feels seamless.

And I do like how the events change and evolve over time. No, I’m not hanging around to watch the whole thing; gotta move on to the next map. But I like the idea that events progress over time, that my actions have some kind of impact.

The next step, IMO, is to put the ebb and flow of NPC actions under player control. Picture if you will: the fusion of the MMO and the 4x: Massively Multiplayer Master of Magic Online (MMMOMO, lol) or something like that. Players in control of several sides, which fight or cooperate according to the decisions of the players in control, with some kind of political mechanism in place to allow those players who want to contest control to do so. Some just play it like a theme park, only peripherally aware that all these fetch quests, PVP zones, and such exist because some other players made it that way, and the outcome actually matters. Others contribute at a more strategic level, jockeying for power through periodic elections or, perhaps, sporadic insurrection, with each race using a different mechanism to determine political influence.

Honestly, I got in to GW2 just to see how they’re dynamically generated quests work, to see if it fits with the design listed above. I’ll stay because I’m having more fun with an MMO than I’ve ever had.

Oh, yes, most definitely. And I love that, once I’ve paid my $60, it’s free to play without being naggy. Other MMOs I ultimately end up quitting because I spend a period where I don’t have time to play and feel like I’m wasting my monthly fee. No monthly fee = no play pressure, and I’ll totally be dropping some cash on the gem store in appreciation of this.

Full disclosure: half the reason I’m posting this is just to make sure the forum is working for me. Had a bit of trouble getting the log in to work for several weeks. ^.^’