Guild Wars 2

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m surprised that no one brought up the word “manipulator” yet. As in “People who complete the level and get a good chest drop are cornering the market on super rare items on the TP.”

Wow, it is the Wizard of Tyria. You just made a strawman without an argument.

I’m having a lot of fun zerging my characters through this single file. And I hate jumping puzzles.

I saw this more as Super Mario Brothers Galaxy or whatever it is with Minecraft graphics all to appeal to the younger kinds.

It doesn’t take that long. Running around the open world generates them pretty quickly – some of the mobs drop 5 and 10 baubles at a time. Combined with 2 Bubbles per boss per character. You can pick up a skin in an evening. Three hours, maybe less.

I called it after about 50 chests with no ticket including bonus keys. Stopped being fun.

skullmount.1758:

How much are the skins going for right now? (Not at home right now, so I can’t check.)

Sell price on the Greatsword is 30, offer is at 24

Sell price on the Long bow is 8 offer is 5.

Everything else is somewhere in between. Other than the 5, the other offers on the bow are all 3.5 or lower, so I expect more of a drop.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

speed run 3 zones = 6 baubel baubels. takes about 15 minutes once you have it down. repeat on 9 characters. 3 hours is about right. you just need to have a lot of alts.

Also it was open before daily reset, so you could theoretically have done it on 5 characters.

That’s also not counting exchanging normal baubels.

I can’t power run since I’m working on a paper, but my 15 alts are preparing to descend on Rata Sur.

Vol.5241:

MisterEction.9382:

They’re working pretty hard at keeping the greatsword price up. 40 gold vs. 50 Bauble Bubbles? Hopefully it catches up to them and they get a nice financial burn for trying to gate off content from other users to enrich themselves.

It’s pretty easy to get 40 gold. 50 Bauble bubbles take time.

I’m picking up bauble bubbles a lot faster than I earn gold. I’m sure TP flippers and such can get gold faster, but playing open world, not so much.

BroScientist.9875:

Seems like it’s gonna take the full month to get even one skin. Think I’ll just farm some fractals/dungeons and buy them with gold on the TP.

Run the open world chests. I’ll pick up about one skin per day without killing myself. Unlike the Wintersday rewards, the baubles are instanced, so everyone around can get them.

Because I want the holographic skins and anything attached to serious content gets stuck in some RNG box in the Gem Store.

Drop from the boss or boss chest or something. If you aren’t using it, or you are planning to keep running anyway, that one is salable (unlike the ones you can buy). So feel free to undercut by 1c the people trying to artificially inflate the price on the TP to make a little cash for yourself and increase the chances they’ll be out more gold when the price crashes.

They’re working pretty hard at keeping the greatsword price up. 40 gold vs. 50 Bauble Bubbles? Hopefully it catches up to them and they get a nice financial burn for trying to gate off content from other users to enrich themselves.

The joke part comes May 1st when all the super weapon skins and 8-bit minis disappear until next April.

At this point, I’d be happy if they introduced Paris Hilton, Vanilla Ice, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T if it came with interesting skins that I can actually obtain. So I’m OK with this (until they nerf bauble drop rates or something).

If you don’t like the sound, use a different weapon just like you would if you didn’t like what the weapon looks like.

I just found a chest in the open world similar to the toy boxes from Wintersday. Pop it and kill the 8-bit creatures and get baubles. If there are a decent number of them it could be a pretty fast way to collect. It was a quick 5 baubles.

I still wouldn’t be able to get a fused weapon skin.

If you do your skins for armor and weapons, you use 10 if you use something like Greatsword/Short Bow, 12 if using Sword/Shield and Scepter/Focus. You’re gonna end up with something off either way.

I’m sure someone in monetization is feverishly working on a way to remove the ability to get 10.

Leave it as is. Sweet Revenge is one of the most enjoyable traits in the game.

A little longer, a little longer, a little longer. Yes! I’m up! Die! Die! Die! Die! Yes! I’m alive!

I hope I can convert bank access, trading post access and mystery tonics into something April 1 – I’ve got way more of those than I’ll ever use. I like my karma and crafting boosters.

Not a fan of the karka-like chest as the main reward. End it with a choice of payment – a ticket for a fused skin, F&F exclusive dye and something else in the same way you pick from 3 options in the personal story and get whatever else automatically.

It would be nice if all these people we help would offer us, in advance, a specific reward or payment. We have an economy dominated by people that play Trading Post but people out in the world adventuring don’t even know what they’re going to be paid for a job.

Ursan.7846:

MisterEction.9382:

In a casino, you don’t have any investment. You don’t lose anything that you built up if you are unhappy when you switch to another casino.

Wait, money spent isn’t an investment? It isn’t something you earned with time you spend?

When you switch to a casino, the money you’ve spent on that previous casino isn’t just going to come back, you know. You do lose things.

No, you don’t have any investment in a casino. That time you spent and money you lost is gone. You don’t have stuff that you give up by moving to another casino.

In an MMO, you build up characters and accumulate items. When you leave one MMO for another, that investment of time and money is wasted.

They added some new areas for the Flame and Frost event and a couple waypoints in Orr that are always uncontested to help people get around.

I don’t know that the odds matter that much. In the end, gambling is the method of getting money from customers that is most likely to engender hard feelings. In a MMO it is worse than a casino and you’re going to have more long-term animosity.

In a casino, you don’t have any investment. You don’t lose anything that you built up if you are unhappy when you switch to another casino. If you switch MMOs, you lose the time and or money you put into your existing characters/items.

So, you can quit and give up what you have, or you can stick around, less happy than you were. It makes for a great community…

1. Halloween

UPs:
Great decorations in LA
Labyrinth accessible to everyone without grouping
Great skins that weren’t account bound.
Flaming backpack (backbook)

DOWNs:

Not a fan of candy corn everywhere.
Gambling for skins.
I didn’t do the quest for the flaming backbook
No Zojia!

2. Lost Shores

UPs:

Playing the event chains was fun. Open world, so no need for grouping.
20 slot box – only one I have

DOWNs:

Fractals/Ascended gear – Horrible to stick AG only in Fractals.
Ascended Gear – Horrible addition to the game that is still a pox on people with alts or don’t run fractals.
LF1MFractal10FullExoticsBerzerkerBuildBassBoatPleaseSendPictureofBoat nonsense that seemed to start here and expand to all the other dungeons.
Disparity in drops from karka box.
No Zojia!

3. Wintersday

UPs

Lions arch looked cool.
Mini toy golem and endless toy golem tonic.
Skins purchasable from Gem Store
Toy skins were easily acquired and slingshot and wand were great, popgun OK
Snowball fights

DOWNs
Skins sold in store aside from bows were kind of useless outside of Christmas.
Candy cane, wooden dagger, wooden sword skins of limited use after event.
Had to gamble for my toy golem tonic.
Dungeons needed grouping or mad luck and skill (I facerolled the first one solo, then got bored trudging through the second after a few tries).
No Zojia!

4. Frost and Flame

UPs

I don’t mind the story.
Fused weapons are great.
Still hope that final reward will be a ticket for a fused weapon.

DOWNs

Rewards are “meh” so far.
Fused weapons are only attainable by gambling.
Unless the event gives out a ticket, I’ve invested as much as I can gambling and I’m pretty much certainly not going to get a fused weapon.
No Zojia!

Does transmuting keep the “Legendary” status. I thought there was something about it beoming exotic when transmuted?

Here’s a video of the account bound transmutation, but it is before some of the changes.

Check out how fast he clicks through the transmute window. That’s a brave guy.

Vayne.8563:

Right, everyone should do less work and get the same reward. Brilliant!

If I understand this whole thing correctly, the recommended solution is for the OP to get people to join in to help. Those people would be doing the same work for less reward. Why is that OK?

T3 Cultural is the best IMO. The Draconic helm is at least not bad.

Best animations
Best voice acting
Best script
Best art
Best culture

Also, because the point of view is set where it is, people playing asura run around in their own world seeing and interacting with each other fully while the rest of you are nothing but easily ignored big feet.

I never thought I’d play one and went through the opening sequence with one just to see it and was hooked. Now I have eight.

As an aside, during my drops, I got guild influence stuff as well. I kind of hate those since the only thing I’d want to invest money into is to get the new guild weapons, but no matter how many points I put into my personal guild, I can’t buy those.

It would be nice if chests came in varieties, where all the premium stuff was part of the same table, but the filler stuff like boosts and bric-a-brac were grouped so stuff wasn’t totally useless. There could be solo/guild and PvE/PvP options.

danbuter.2314:

I think a lot less people would be irritated if we could sell these on the auction house.

Yeah. if somebody is one of the people for whom this is the perfect item for their character, it is always going to bother them when this ends and they couldn’t get it, especially after dumping as much money as they could into it and getting shafted by RNG.

I’d like one because it is nice having something really cool from an event. And I don’t see the rewards at the end of this chain being anything as cool as one of the skins available only by gambling.

With the way this appears to be going, this is the first time GW2 has felt like a generic F2P game to me. Only worse, because I’ve spent money.

Meglobob.8620:

You can replay the Rox/Bram instances 1 per day per account and get the rewards…so thats 8,000 karma, 20 silver, 2 chances at rare event reward, plus combat drops…each day…

Those 2 instances are only going to be around for a month I believe…

I quite enjoyed this months living story and the rewards make it a nice bonus…

What is this chance at a rare event reward thing?

It is a commercial for the skins and dyes and whatever else is going to be added for people to gamble for in the store, so they’re going to make it accessible to everyone. My level 80, glass-cannon ranger in full exotics didn’t have any problems. If I’d tried to rush maybe I’d have got myself in trouble, but that happens on pretty much anything with a glass cannon.

I’d really prefer not to be in the same position with the Living World that I am with my story completion and waste an hour every once in a while trying to get into a group or start a group that actually fills out and goes into a story mode dungeon.

I’m starting to feel like I’m going to end up a third-class citizen of Tyria after people with an extraordinary amount of free time and people with an extraordinary amount of disposable income. Pretty much everything that is being added is for all intents and purposes out of my reach. I’ve put a good bit of money into the game and I’ve thrown a little money into some RNG things, but it is reaching the point in GW2 where I would need to rely on gambling to get things and that is unhealthy gambling. I’m being priced (in time and money) out of the game.

Waraxx.4286:

D3 failure lied totally in the auction house existence (imo, and the bots ofc). the reason behind this is that the AH offered way better items and items that suited you better thn those that droped for you. i.e i played the game for a good 400h after max level on my barbarian and at max i had 1 item on me that had dropped for me or any of my friends. the rest was bought of of the AH. this made me very detached from my character and thus i lost the immersion of building a character witch always was the strength behind the diablo games.

How much stuff on your GW2 character did you get from drops? Except for one alt with a couple trooper armor pieces from quest rewards, all of my characters are wearing stuff I bought from the TP or gem store. I don’t have a single weapon skin I use from drops or rewards. I’d love to get something really nice for a character from a drop or quest reward.

I’m betting they’ve already made more off these skins being in chests than they did from selling the Christmas skins. Not because of the chests, but because these skins are much better than the Christmas skins.

I can see not putting the weapon tickets in up to this point as a reward. But if a ticket isn’t included in the final reward, it is going to be really unsatisfying.

Though, I’m figuring at best there will be another karka-style event where a few people get precursors or tickets and the rest of us who are unlucky get some green items and a bag. Kind of jolting realizing the whole living Living Story thing is essentially a big commercial for the skins you can only get by gambling with chests.

I was out of karma boosters and needed a couple service things so I figured I’d chance the BLC and see if I got a ticket along the way. Ended up with 29 Keys. 0 tickets. I did get useful stuff, and in all, I came out in the listed value of useful items out of the chests, picking up more than the usual amount of items I can actually use. I’d have bought a lot of the stuff piecemeal over time anyways.

Still a bit sad to know I’ll never have one of these skins.

morrolan.9608:

Svarty.8019:

Happy Easter! Greatsaw skin price triples!

A number (it could be one) of people have bought up the Greatsaw Chainsword skins. There were 20-30 yesterday and now there are 3. The price is now ~300g when it was ~150g not long ago.

I encourage anybody who wants this skin to hold off as long as possible, and especially NOT to buy it over the Easter holidays.

Honestly how can anet think this is desirable.

Sound was somewhat fixed in the last patch. I think that it being reduced to inaudibility in the one before that was holding down the value, otherwise it would have spiked earlier.

The Eternal Grace.3157:

I don’t see skulls fitting thieves or rangers very well at all…maybe, maybe Ranger, but it depends if they can pull it off with the rest of their look. The Deathly Mantle skin is much more valuable, and maybe only valuable, for a necro, in my opinion.

For the people with dual weapons, it does seem like they should count as half a ticket in the same way the faction weapons cost half for the one-handers.

I don’t think anything will change on this round either. And that’s going to be an issue IMO. These are the best flaming weapons in the game except for Volcanus and the HoM sword. And they’re permanently out of reach of a bunch of people in a couple months and there is no sure way for people to get one before then. If you wanted a flaming whatever for your character and you don’t get lucky, you’re going to be stuck with scrub flaming weapons from COF while you get to occasionally see a weapon much nicer that you can never have.

At least with the legendaries, there is always the chance you’ll get a precursor drop or come into the money to get the one you want.

I could tolerate it if they weren’t account bound and dropped fairly enough. The only way to get the skins shouldn’t be gambling insane amounts of real money or time (in-game money).

I liked the idea someone had about getting a ticket for completing the Living Story story arc.

LFk.1408:

azurrei.5691:

Just think, if Anet wasn’t greedy with gem store lotteries, we could buy skins directly for a flat price and the drop rate would be 100% (and everyone would be happy, woah, can’t have that!)

At least I and many others are saving money while the gambling addicts being targeted are paying for our game improvements…

I would not be happy with this. This game sounds awful.

I don’t understand why anyone is happy with a game where everything has a 100% drop rate. There’s no emotional response to the game at all!

If you acquire a rare piece of loot off a boss that drops it 1% of the time: Pleased, ecstatic reaction.
If you don’t acquire it: Disappointed.

If you acquire a rare piece of loot off a boss that drops it 100% of the time: Eh.
If you don’t acquire it: You don’t. Everyone acquires it.

What in the world is this? Extending the latter principle to everything in the game is a horrible idea. What do you feel about anything you own? “Eh, I can buy this for $20. That for $40. This is $5….” and so on and so forth. Like it or not, showing off a shiny new sword is a big part of this game’s experience. If everything was a 100% drop, you might as well be waving around a $20 bill. It’s silly. (This is also part of why I’d really want legendary items to be Account Bound, and built with more non-gold based items, but that’s not for this thread)

I personally approve of what they’re doing to the BLCs, and hope to see more skins added in an extreme rarity in the game, gem store and otherwise. I really would love to see certain items exist in a limited quantity in the entire game (i.e. only 1,000 across all of GW2). That would be a true legendary to me, though I’m not holding my breath. The trail of tears for people trying to acquire this would fill the Grand Canyon.

Time is a currency just as much as money. RNG for time (1% drop off that boss) is no different than RNG for money (.0001% drop from the BLC). Spending time or money and getting no reward for it isn’t fun. If you don’ t have unlimited time or unlimited money, you get a final result disappointment most of the time and for some people effectively all of the time. That’s why the TP exists. If you don’t find (win) what you want, you can play enough to earn it. Winning (getting lucky) should save you time and effort, not make time and effort meaningless.

I have a Greatsaw skin that isn’t terribly common. I’ve never felt diminished when someone else I encountered had one or when someone I played with liked it and bought one as well. I don’t get the concept of taking pleasure in someone else not being able to have something.

Nike.2631:

Do you want a fusion skin badly? Then forget aboout it. You can’t have one.

This pretty much sums things up. If you really want it, you can’t have it (unless you get lucky – and all the wanting in the world won’t change your luck). You can’t buy it or earn it. And, no matter how much money or time you invest, if you don’t get lucky before the event ends, you never will be able to get one.

Lasting disappointment FTW!

1 key – zero tickets. Unless the drop rate on keys on open world PvE increases drastically, that’s all I can contribute to this worthy venture.

It seems like the necromancer staff sounds got the same initial adjustment that the greatsaw/chain sword got. They seem a lot quieter than other necro attacks (especially staff 1), to the point that they can be hard to hear standing in Lion’s Arch. For comparison, I ran the staff skills in sequence, then ran the dagger/dagger skills. The difference is jolting. Maybe consider adjusting the staff up and some of the dagger skills (especially Dagger 2) down to a midpoint and get everything at the same level (assuming it sounds like this for more people than just me and my sound setup)?

When the skills have varying volumes based upon some people’s personal like/dislike for the sounds, it gets hard to set a volume that allows me to hear all the sounds well enough without some of them being way too loud.

While I’d prefer them to be something that could be purchased outright from the gem store, I would be satisfied if people could sell the ticket or skin on the TP. At least then there is a choice between gambling and paying (even at a a premium) for a sure thing. Having something only available by gambling bothers me a bit.

I just found a key doing Penet/Shelt. Opened the chest and… One Strength Booster, One Unidentified Dye, and a single-use Bank Access Express. Even that was a big disappointment. I can’t imagine how sad I’d be if I bought keys and didn’t get a ticket