Guild Wars 2

Fadeway.3592:

Master tools don’t tell you what their effective level is, or what their bonus chance is. There is no indicator if you can harvest a node with your currently equipped tool or not.

This much at least I agree with. As the OP points out this is especially bad with the reward tools you get from story missions and chests. The tooltip sounds great — extra chance to get crystals from ore, etc. etc. — but it gives no indication whatsoever as to which tiers can be harvested.

It would be nice to have some indication as to whether the currently equipped tool will harvest or ruin the node you have highlighted.

quote: “Some rare items, to purchase the materials cost, as an example, 2g to make, whereas they are sold for 1g. That is a 1g loss. The reason? The ones selling for 1g probably went and mined the material themselves.”

The problem is people, exemplified by the quote above.

If the materials would sell for more than the price at which you list the item, then you are losing money, not making money. It doesn’t matter if you mined the materials yourself. It doesn’t matter if they fell from the sky with a love note from Zommoros. If you sell the assembled item for less than the sale price of the materials, you are losing money. Even worse, you’re taking us all down with you. You’re forcing everyone else to lose money by crafting.

Another responsible party is the guy who decides that his sword/ring/whatever just has to sell first, and lowers the price without giving any thought as to whether he’s making or losing money at that point. Not to mention everyone who piles on after he wrecks the value of that item. If you move a lot of big ticket items you’ll see this happen all the time.

Then you have the people who think that buy prices always reflect fair value. Wrong. If you’re selling ore and bone chips then yeah, typically the difference between the listed buy & sell price is accurately described as honest negotiation. But take a look at big ticket items. The margin there is often best described as the math literate taking advantage of the math challenged. You can wish, hope and even pray that I’ll sell you something that’s made of 1g worth of materials for 75s, but I won’t. Ever.

Unfortunately, others will. Do these people not understand that materials have value? Maybe they look in their inventory and see things, assemble those things into an item, and believe that they “made money” when they exchange that item for coin. Maybe they just don’t care about losing money. Either way the end result is the same; bad times for all of us.

Now, compounding the problem are those people who will come along, think shallowly about all this, and declare it to be “S&D in action”. As if S&D were a mystical force of nature beyond our own control. To those people I say: think more like OPEC and less like a crystal-clutching, new wave hippie. Suppliers control the supply. And if suppliers would exercise a little of that control, not to mention their brains, we wouldn’t have items selling for less than the value of their materials.

So given the system as-is — meaning not entertaining ideas about fundamental changes to how crafting works — the problem, the reason crafting isn’t as profitable as it should be is that people are dumb and/or lazy. It’s difficult to fix that.

@legendde, Those are the patch notes/official word but not the reality. In reality I’m seeing some regular Mithril nodes come back in as little as an hour or so and some that don’t return for several hours — just as others are reporting.

We’re not guessing here; we’re stating what we’re seeing live in the game.

What I’m seeing is inconsistent respawn times for regular Mithril nodes. After my run through Malchor’s late last night, I checked just now to find that some nodes have returned and some have not. I agree there seems to be a random element to it now, whether it’s intended or not.

Antiriad.7160:

Well, exotic jewelry is now super expensive to craft and harder to sell because of this. :-p
QQ

No, it’s pointless to sell because people are listing the finished pieces for less than the value of the materials.

Supply & Demand is not entirely a force of nature, beyond any measure of our own control. Stupid however is a natural force with no known counter. If Timmy insists on dropping the price below the value of the materials just so that his will sell first, there’s little Anet or anyone can do. Corky will come along and list his for even less because his has to sell first, and thus begins the downward spiral. Timmy and Corky will throw up their hands and say, “Oh well, S&D in action!” without realizing that it is in fact manifest destiny instead. All they really had to do was not drop the price below that threshold, and wait an extra 10 minutes or an hour for their item to sell. Because the reality is that if it’s an item people want, it will sell.

It’s a pointless debate anyway given that this is the same community that started selling greens at a loss (i.e. below vendor value after TP fees) on day 1. Math is apparently not this crowd’s strong suit.

In any case, the now-higher price of Ori is a rare example of something that works correctly in this market. It’s supposed to be rare, thus it should be valuable.

Account.9832:

or even see the gear before deciding which order they want to join.

Yeah, that’s a problem. It’s difficult to make an informed choice if your decision takes the look of the gear into account. Yes you can look at that order’s troops and get an idea of the theme. But when you’re coming up, the first time you play through, it’s not like you’re going to have occasion to wander around all three HQs beforehand. More likely you’re just playing through the story and make your choice based on the order’s philosophy, as presented via the story.

I understand that switching orders mid-story would cause a weird jump in the mission thread, and that after doing so your very next mission would basically be a non sequitur. But that is something the player would have to willfully accept and choose, so I don’t see the problem.

Maybe it would be enough to allow a switch only after you’re completed the storyline. The gear you want is lvl 80 anyway.

Hyperbole from both camps aside, I think we can all agree that rolling a hard six does not make you an epic craps player. It does not demonstrate your commitment to the game, your understanding of it, or your skill at playing it. It just means the dice you threw came up with an unlikely combination — which could happen to anyone the first time they play, or never.

That would seem to be at odds (pardon the pun) with the videos in which the design staff describes obtaining a legendary weapon as being a demonstration of a player’s commitment and mastery of the game.

Surely it’s obvious that I can’t make myself a better thrower of dice. I cannot practice and learn more about the act. I cannot get better at it. In short, dice is dice. Random is random. It’s entirely possible for a person to throw four looted yellows into the Forge and score one of these items on the very first try. How does that demonstrate skill or commitment to the game?

It does not, and any truly objective examination of the process must agree, simply because it is true.

My advice is, don’t go broke buying things to toss into the Mystic Slot Machine. I will only throw in what I make from materials that I gather myself. But if you do it the other way, recognize that you are in fact gambling, and realize that the vast majority of people don’t come home from Vegas a winner.

The shortbow convinced me that I don’t care about legendaries. When I rolled Ranger, no part of my plan included unicorns and rainbows.

I do agree that legendaries should be “over the top”, and certainly beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But whoever came up with the Dreamer needs to tune in to Sanity FM. I cannot even envision a conversation which ended with, “Yeah, most people will dig that” where the topic was this item. I think it more likely that the conversation ended with, “Teehee!”

We’re drifting off topic here so let’s refocus: it’s a simple yes or no question. No one is asking for the detailed mechanics of magic find, and certainly no one is asking for anyone’s pet virtual economic theory. We only wish to know if MF has an effect on the other MF, which as I said is a yes or no question.

I would also like to see a definitive yes or no on this. I don’t mind giving them money (gems→boosters) but I do want to know if I’m throwing it away or not.

Vorpal.4683:

Your NPC help literally stands around doing nothing in many of the storyline quests.

Yeah, you can’t rule out the effect of this and other technical problems. If the mission was designed to include your NPC allies and they end up spending a lot of time not fighting, rather like Ranger pets, then obviously the intended difficulty and the actual difficulty will differ.

What are you talking about? You can reset your traits any time you like for just a couple/few silver. Talk to the trainer, you’ll see the option.

Nurvus.2891:

I hope this never gets implemented.

I can’t believe anyone likes splitting PvP and PvE skills or mechanics…
It’s an easy way out that simply shows poor design philosophy.

Stop asking for things that make no sense, please…

Instead of splitting PvP and PvE skills, ANet needs to make PvP and PvE more similar so that it can be balanced under the same mechanics.

I think some people have misunderstood what is being discussed here. It’s not like that ever happens on the internet, right? ;-)

We’re talking about the numbers here, not the mechanics. Amounts, durations — that sort of thing. Same skills, but two sets of associated numbers; one for PVE, one for PVP.

The reason this is brilliant and the reason other games do it is pretty straightforward. Let’s say you have a skill called Signet of Reading Comprehension. When you activate the skill it lasts for 4 seconds. Well in PVE, 4 seconds of Signet of Reading Comprehension might be perfect. But in PVP, 4 seconds of Signet of Reading Comprehension might be too much. It might not be fair and balanced, because after all PVE and PVP are inherently different by their very nature and can never be the same nor have the same balancing requirements when it comes to abilities and skills.

So to solve the problem, Signet of Reading Comprehension has not one but two durations; one that is used in PVE, and the other in PVP. This allows the developers to tune one without breaking the other.

Raine Akrune.8416:

TravisTrout.6803:

… one nice example that does not in any way address what I said. You’re right that it’s nice, but that’s not what I asked.

You asked for direction right at the top, you’ve been given lesson one in playing a PvE thief. If you don’t like people giving you play tips don’t ask to be shown things.

Aha, now see this is why it’s important to read threads before chiming in. I’ll break it down for ya’.

See, someone said basically that all classes are equally capable of functioning in all the classic roles. I disagreed, and by way of a very specific example I asked him to explain how a Thief “tanks” equally as well as a Guardian. A point which that person conceded, as should anyone who understands the game or frankly has even played it.

Then you came in, skimmed a couple of posts, and misunderstood what the conversation was about. I assume that’s why you wrote in with something not relevant to what was actually being discussed, which as I said was some very specific example. It’s as if I said, “I can’t find any apple recipes” and you said, “Dude, there are plenty of orange recipes. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Anyway, don’t worry yourself about it. This is just me giving you a lesson in reading comprehension.

… one nice example that does not in any way address what I said. You’re right that it’s nice, but that’s not what I asked.

While you’re at it, add a trait that makes all enemies lay down and die when I press any key. Range 2,500 sounds about right.

I always play Ranger in any game that offers one, and I always hope it’s a non-pet implementation like EQ2, DDO, Vanguard, etc.

But here we are a pet class so you’ll have to deal with it. The best we can do is hope they fix all the pet problems — the very reason I always hope a game will have petless Rangers!

Specifically, I find that

— My pet couldn’t hold aggro if I glued the mob to its bloody paws

— This forces me to kite, which would be OK except that my pet goes into stupid mode when the mobs are moving. It does not attack for long stretches of time, and you can practically hear the wheels grinding in its head as it sits there and thinks, “durrrrrrrrrr”

It would be lovely if they could find some time to fix these problems in between nerfing things that worked perfectly fine.

Arguing that two slots are worth 8 gold makes no sense in any context at all. Especially when I can instead spend maybe 2 gold and get 12 slots by way of gems, a new inventory tab, and a cheaper bag.

I am sorry if that sounded rude because I didn’t mean it that way at all. I just mean that Anet’s plan for this game is a brilliant one that is not yet fully realized, and so things are not quite yet how they’re written up in the brochure.

“…significant factors that you cannot simply throw out the window.”

I can when the supply has changed by only 1 unit, which is the only scenario I commented on. In that case I can throw them right out the window, I can feel good about it as they hurtle toward the ground, and I can find satisfaction in the sound of their impact.

Leeain.2431:

GW2 is not like wow or others mmorpg.
All class can do everything… and this is good.

Please direct me to my Thief’s group healing & buffing abilities that are equal to my Guardian’s. I seem to have misplaced them. For that matter, point me to the part of my character that makes up for the armor difference with something else, like say agility/avoidance. Where are those things again? Oh right, they don’t exist ;-)

The game’s stated goal of destroying and replacing the trinity is a noble one, but it’s only half done; the first half. The replacement system is only partially there. It’s a good start, and it will be great when things actually work the way you seem to believe they do, but we’re not quite there yet.

Still, to be clear, what I want to see is for Anet to finish creating that new system; not returning to an old one like the OP suggests.

" disagree with the OP’s suggestion. The main issue with pricing on the Trading Post is an issue of supply and demand. "

LOL! That didn’t take long.

To be clear, increasing the supply of a big ticket item by one unit is not a legitimate S&D based reason to drive the value down by leaps and bounds. The price should not go from 30 to 20 just because you added one to the supply pile.

^^ Now you see why we have this problem.

First, there is no location in the game that is so far from a vendor that selling items at a loss (below vendor price) should ever be necessary. Every karma heart will buy your junk as will every repair person. So unless you’re running around with 4-slot leather bags or are simply too lazy to manage the contents of your pockets, I cannot understand why you so desperately need to clear up your bags.

We must also consider that this behavior causes masterworks to become essentially worthless junk — the absolute lowest level of gear anyone should have in any slot. If that was the intention, what is the point of having two lower rarity levels?

As for undercutting, let’s all make sure we’re on the same page here. It irks me when people say “supply and demand!” as if that in any way applied to this scenario. To be clear, increasing the supply of a big-ticket item by one unit does not require dropping a substantial amount off the going price. I see it all the time; 33.50, 33.37, 33.35 — this is fine. But then some yahoo comes along and lists one for 20. Why? Are you stupid?

If the margin is great enough to make up for the TP fees then I’ll buy it up and re-list it at a sane price. But often the margin is not great enough, and all you can do is wonder what they were thinking.

It would be terribly interesting to see a cross-section of the people who engage in these behaviors and the people who complain that waypoint fees are too high, or that their level 80 is always broke.

“Let us have a shared dye preview window where we can see all the dyes in game.”

I believe it would be more beneficial to simply add a preview function to the TP. That would solve multiple, similar problems.

Ir’s difficult to have this discussion when there are people who don’t agree or realize that attrition via graveyard zerg is not synonymous with either “skill” or “challenge level”.

That aside, I don’t want to see classes dedicated to roles. What I want is for them to develop and realize more fully the idea that all classes can symbiotically provide those roles.

The basic framework for such a game is in place but of course one has only to play it to see that it doesn’t quite work that way yet. For example, it’s difficult to take someone seriously when they suggest that a Thief “tanking” is indistinguishable from say a Guardian tanking. That person is not thinking deeply enough to realize that there is no agility-based “avoidance” tanking in the game, or that the group benefits of certain class abilities lend themselves to such a role while others clearly provide no similar benefit.

The framework is there, like I said, and I want to see it fleshed out. They’ve certainly broken the trinity; they just haven’t finished building its replacement yet. But a return to that kind of system, where a class is dedicated to a role, would be a step in the wrong direction.

You can also double-tap the key which does effectively the same thing; the ability will go off wherever the mouse cursor is. Of course, the original problem is that sometimes I can’t see where the mouse cursor is :-) I find myself “shaking” the mouse so that the movement will draw my eye to it.

“Dyes drop so often that it isn’t even necessary to make them account bound.”

Right. Not to mention that the vast majority of dyes — a veritable rainbow of colors — cost next to nothing on the TP. The only really expensive ones are a very few specific rare shades that the community has decided are most valuable. And even then “really expensive” is relative.

So this is strictly a want rather than a need. You’re not starving; you just want the restaurant to give you foie grois twice even though you only paid for it once.

I disagree with this suggestion. Much of this game’s long-term life revolves around appearances and dyes are no exception. Keep it per character or you devalue the item too much.

Hire gamemasters for next to nothing who will respond to reports and ban the obvious bots. I realize that’s an uphill battle but it’s better than doing nothing. Go look at the penitent path area in Orr; it’s bot city on both ends on my server. And it’s not just a bunch of characters named ijwduy anymore; you see “regular” players with recognized guild tags doing it. I guess they figure “why not?” since so far there doesn’t seem to be any penalty.

I’ve taken Ranger, Warrior, Thief and Elementalist to 80 and Guardian to 65.

Since you haven’t tried one yet I’d say give Warrior a shot. Good melee, good ranged, and it can take a hit without vaporizing. Mine is set up to be very tanky at the moment and it’s quite satisfying to run through Orr without caring how many adds you pick up.

It’s about as far from your ele experience as you can get which is why I recommend it.

“Cmn guys ranger is “4 the lolz” class here. First clue was short/long bow legendary appearance. "

As much as I hate to nod my head in response to this sentiment I find it hard not to. Allowing someone on the team to indulge their fetish for a particular internet joke by turning our legendary weapon into that joke is an amateurish move. That’s the only word I have for it. I know that’s not really the topic here but it had to be said.

I find it easy to lose the mouse cursor and/or ground target marker in situations where many players are unleashing a storm of effects.

Note to would-be responders that this is not a performance issue. My framerate doesn’t suffer. In fact it doesn’t budge, which is testament to a very well-written renderer. My problem is that I sometimes just can’t see the darn cursor/marker through the cloud of particles.

What I would like to see is an option that causes my cursor/target to always be on top, or some other option that simply makes it more plainly visible.

Note that even the “l2play” crowd encounters and states the problem without realizing the significance of what he just said. To wit, this is not a case of dying over and over until you smarten up and learn the mechanics of an architected fight. Rather, this is a case of winning via attrition; resurrecting and whittling down the mobs enough to eventually prevail.

The critical thinker will not confuse “skill” with victory by way of attrition, and the non critical thinker can safely be ignored, as always.

The problem people are encountering is one or more poorly tuned encounters compounded by technical flaws, such as when the mobs follow you to the resurrection point. Period.

I’ve been gaming for as long as computer games have existed and I consider myself “good” at it. I was able to do the Eye in one go. I mention this only to provide background and “street cred” for stating unequivocally that there are some very poorly tuned encounters scattered throughout the story. If I find myself saying “Geez, this is kind of silly” I can only imagine how the average player is faring in that encounter.

If you’re really struggling you might try holding off on the story until you’ve leveled past it. Even though you’ll be downleveled you’ll still have access to more skills and trait points/bonuses, so a downleveled 60 pretending to be 30 is more powerful than a natural 30.

“Nice stuff costs lots of money in real life too, because demand far outpaces supply.”

We’re drifting off topic here. The point is the obvious and enormous imbalance between the size increase granted by each successive rune and its cost.

The game is trying to convince me that a 20-slot bag is worth 8 gold more than an 18-slot bag. 8 gold for 2 more slots does not add up when I could spend less gold and unlock a whole new inventory tab with gems, thus gaining another 12-18 slots for less than the cost of adding 2 slots to an existing unlocked tab.

I’d say this is a problem that extends beyond the bounds of Trahearne’s personal story, and that it applies to the game as a whole. Honestly I just find Orr boring. I want desperately for there to be something other than endless piles of Risen this and Risen that.

" After years of EQ2 and faction grinding, I expected…..a bit more. "

I’d say the two games represent the extremes; one is a horrendous grind, the other is a meaningless gift. But yeah, I definitely felt a far greater sense of accomplishment when I earned my Knight-Captain and Wanderer titles. For this game I would have been happy with something in between grind and gift.

@Katz, your analogy works as long as all flowers are lovely. But then the first part of your post seems to suggest that I should allow myself to believe all flowers are lovely, even if I don’t find a particular flower to be so. You make no allowance for a flower that I find unimpressive.

I don’t believe for a minute that I must “allow myself to be entertained” by things I don’t find entertaining. Why would I convince myself that a given thing is entertaining when there are other things that I genuinely find entertaining already? Or in your own terms, I don’t have to convince myself that the putrid stinkweed — or more to the point, the mediocre bloom — is lovely, because there are also roses in the world.

“The Threat of Zhaitan is a much more interesting character”

I find this to be an insightful critique.

Ask yourself this: If HAL 9000 had only been a voice and a series of actions performed by the various parts of the ship, would he have been nearly as creepy? No. It was the eye – that glaring, unblinking eye. HAL’s eye gave him presence, and that presence made him real.

For the vast majority of the story, Zhaitan is just a word. He’s not made real until the very end, and by then it’s too late to impress the majesty and power of his presence upon me. There was nothing to connect this being to the idea; the word you keep hearing throughout the story.

Unless there’s a twist involved in revealing/showing a major character for the first time, there’s no good reason to hide it from us until then. Connect me to that character along the way with an actual presence. Let that presence destroy a character I’m supposed to care about. Let that be the heroic sacrifice rather than the nameless, pointless mob of undead. (By the way, why did that even happen? As depicted in the scene, we could just have easily closed the gate with your mentor on THIS side of it)

I also think that the boss fight would have been better served up as a PQ. The dragon fight PQs in this game are pretty awesome, scaling in complexity as you go up to Jormag (although I would have enjoyed more unique stages rather than repeating the corrupted wall/fly/shoot down/corrupted wall stage). The PQs to retake the temples in Orr could have culminated in another step – the Mother of All Steps – wherein the assembled army of players takes on Zhaitan in a series of epic fight stages. Jormag on steroids. I would have found that far more “believable” and rewarding than five dudes taking him down.

I can’t speak for you, but for myself I find that what you’re describing is an inevitable fact of getting older. But the problem is not that you’re too old. Rather, it’s that you’re too experienced to be excited by something when you can already foresee the middle and ending of it. You’ve seen it before, and it holds nothing new or unexpected for you.

I just turned 39 and I love games. Always have. I loved games so much as a kid that when I grew up I made them my job. I became a programmer in the industry, and I did that for years until the overtime and the endless movie license games sucked the joy out of it for me.

I still love games but I don’t buy and play most of what gets released. In many cases I can try a demo or watch someone play a game for a while and feel like I’ve experienced all that I would get out of that particular game. The problem is not that the game is bad, really. It’s that the game is just not unique or surprising enough to show me anything new. I’ve accumulated so much experience that if you show me the essence of the thing, I can extrapolate the rest. And when that happens I don’t feel the desire to play through the minutes and seconds of it.

That also applies to particular parts of a game, for instance a story told through cut scenes. I pick games now based strictly on whether the premise and mechanics are fun for me. I love everything about MMOs – the long term character development, the always-on environment, the combat, etc. — so mostly I play them. But at this point it takes a lot for a story to excite me, because I’ve seen so many good, bad, and mediocre stories that it takes something really striking to make me care about that aspect of the game.

That’s the gist of it. If it’s not new to me, I just don’t feel like I care enough to sit through your cut scenes. I would rather just get to the clicky part because a story that’s only serviceable or adequate just doesn’t cut it anymore. If I know what’s coming then I don’t need to sit through it and watch.

And that’s not limited to games. I don’t know about you but I feel the same way about movies and TV shows now, and for the same reasons. I feel like I’m wasting time watching something that’s “just OK” or too predictable. Show me something new and interesting or I just don’t have the care to spare.

TLDR: We are a portion of the audience that is inherently difficult to please because we’ve experienced so many stories that it takes a really good one to turn us on now. Some people will simply read that as “jaded” but that’s not how I would characterize it. Jaded comes with negative connotations that I would not apply here.

I agree it’s a little odd that the last act of Trahearne’s personal story is a group mission, when every other act of Trahearne’s personal story was solo content.

Well, at least your own story — the ten or so missions that have anything to do with the choices you made at character creation — is a personal, solo effort.

Directions:

Take 1 chicken. Kill. Raise chicken from the dead. Praise Zhaitan’s name. Season chicken with 2 piles of tangy seasoning and 1 pile of salt & pepper. Note: chicken may resist being seasoned. Place chicken in large casserole dish along with black beans, sliced yams, and one bottle of simple dressing. Bake at 350 degrees until chicken explodes in a puff of toxic green smoke. Serve with simple salad & Ascalonian dressing.

Suggested level: 400. Suggested effect: Sick for 72 hours. All stats reduced by 50%.

In PVE I’m sword & shield / greatsword. I find it to be an excellent combo. Between them you have two gap closers, a movement attack, a ranged attack, a cripple, a stun/interrupt, and an “oh ****” button for shrugging off that red circle you didn’t notice because you were consumed by bloodlust.

Zetsubou.8431:

Not really sure I understand the people who always ask “Are you building glass cannon” and some how thing building toughness and bringing utility skills makes a difference. It doesn’t. I have my Guardian Spec’d fully into defense and utility. Stacking toughness, vitality and +healing with all defensive traits and skills, damage reduction signet, just about everything… I agree 100% with the OP. Mobs insta-gibbing people is a problem and encourages graveyard zerging and it also discourages people from not building glass cannon, as you still get decimated even if you sacrifice damage to build stats like toughness and vitality. If you’re gonna go down fast you might as well do decent damage.

I’m also in agreement. As a Guardian who put every point into defense and vitality, with tough/heal gear, shield and mace, I can be one-shotted as easily as if I had gone in naked. I don’t want to hear from anyone that this doesn’t happen. It has happened, therefore it does happen. One does not argue with a fact, so let’s just dispense with that notion.

Hard is OK. Difficult is OK. Challenging is OK. But the dungeons are just silly as-is. There’s a reason so many people aren’t going in there twice, and that’s because they simply aren’t fun.

If you’re going to have mobs with InstaGib Technology™ then they darn well better telegraph properly. Properly means 1) It has to happen, 2) The indicator needs to be consistent, 3) The chargeup needs to be longer than 25 nanoseconds, and 4) The indicator needs to be plainly visible through the wall of particles and camera shaking you guys went with.

If you fix all that then it might not be so bad. Again, hard is fine but what you have going right now is just not fun. I see no reason to go in your dungeons as they are today, which has some hefty implications for long-term playability.