Guild Wars 2

Wanze.8410:

My only question is…why do you have such severe Flood Control? ; )
Good luck.

The simple answer is that I post too much. As you know, I am a very vocal veteran on the forums. While I try to give constructive feedback most of the time, I sometimes slip and post something that shouldnt have been posted and is against the CoC. I usually accept the ban of posting on the forums but i generally disagree on the flood control coming with it.
Many people reading this will know me from open discussions about the game exonomy as I have been active in econimical discussions for several years. I usually get alot of flak for my opinion and thats ok for me. Many people see me as a rich guy that tries to make their game experience as horrible as possible. While I am certainly not scraping for riches, I am just the vocal part of the rich comunity, I just talk more than other rich players.

I just checked and I have accumulated over 130 pages of forum posts. Many of those include quotes and arent my own doing but overall I would say that I contributed quite alot to these forums.
Bottom line is that i post alot and sometimes cross a line. Thats ok and I appreciate some kind of reminder where the line is but i dont know, if posting restrictions are the right way to go. Because i post so much, I have a hard time losing infractions points and will only lose some over a period of several weeks or months. While I know that those infraction penalties serve a great way for newer players, I am not sure, if its still suitable for feteran forum users like me. I accept every ban of a couple of days using the forums, if I post something inappropriate but the posting limit afterwards is in my opinion unleasonable. Because in general, it doesnt stop me from posting unconstructive feed back, troll posts or anything else that might considered unessential feedback by Anet, It stops me from posting informative posts in general, and i dont know if that should be the bottom line.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I think if ArenaNet wanted a Closed Beta Event using only ‘Veteran’ players, they have the metrics to choose exactly the subset of players they would want to invite, and, considering your proposal included an NDA, they may have already done so. Who knows? The only difference would be that the forum (or whatever platform they chose) was not public.

My only question is…why do you have such severe Flood Control? ; )

Good luck.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Using myself as an example, I easily qualify as a vet. Since beta. Loads of hours. Gobs of achieve points. I’m highly verbal, but I’m not particularly analytical and when I give feedback it’s going to be more about how I feel. I feel the Revenant was better this time. I feel like the Shiro set of skills was useful and I would use them. I feel like there were too many hard mobs in the new maps. Is this useful for ANet? More useful than a new, but analytical person who can give concise point by point feedback that I never could?

I can’t imagine that separating the player base by hours played is meaningful in terms of quality of feedback unless you are talking about people who are really new to the game, with no level 80s and playing a level 80 area for the first time.

I agree, you are a good example of a vet. I cant remember ever talking to you in game and I just know you from the forums but I have known you for a long time. Just because of your posting history I respect you as a veteran player and value your opinion more than someone else´s whose name I just read for the first time on the forums.

So how do I rate veteran players?

Like I said, veteran players excell in many different kinds content, pve, pvp, wvw etc., or the forums.

Relating veteran status to hours played would be the most obvious solution because you know that you will have feedback from players that have extensive knowledge of the game. Of course there will be some black sheep, who get entrance to a closed beta but would it be as much as during a beta that is open for the general public?

Rauderi.8706:

Okay, teasing aside:

All feedback is valuable. It will take some people experienced in assessment on the back end (ANet’s side) to really get good metrics out of it, but it’s all valuable. Because gaming isn’t just about numbers and digital bits. It’s about how players feel during the experience. Even a six-year-old can say he doesn’t like something, even if he doesn’t understand why. But losing that six-year-old is still a lost sale. (No, I’m not comparing some of the forum feedback to six-year-olds, even though I should. :P)

When it comes to assessment, you want good raters. That means people experienced in assessment. Yes, you want people who are also experienced in the specific thing being measured (in this case, GW2), but opening the doors to “all vets” just means you get a slimmer subsection, and that actually puts a bias on feedback. New players still matter, and those new players turn into veterans, eventually.

I’ve been in betas for other games that basically required an application (almost an interview) just to get in. They wanted to know your experience with other games and general playing habits, so they could gather suitable feedback. Not a bad strategy when it comes to limited resources, but again, it puts a bias toward experienced players.

What experienced players are good at is having words and terms that can describe their judgments and motivations. So you’re not entirely wrong on that, but it’s like comparing Achievement Points to International Baccalaureate: Composition scores. The correlation may exist, but it’s not a good one.

What we can hope for are those who expressed the most interest by buying into the game early are also able to relay their feedback competently. I think your idea of having a sort of CDI-type space exclusively for beta feedback is a good one. It puts the feedback in a solid place, and with strong monitoring, hedges out whiners, trolls, and baseless complaints in favor of keeping the conversation going.

Thanks for great feedback, especially from a point of view of someone who has beta axperience.
I really liked the bit about assessment you talked about because it was kinda my ignition to write this post.

The bias of veteran feedback is a valid concern. But thats why i would schedule it at the early stages of beta testing and rely on more basic feedback of the general player base during later stress tests.

In recognition of some other posts that popped up and i dont care to quote atm about the determination of veteran status:

This isnt the prime issue of this thread but i will give my personal view on estimated numbers:

If 100k beta testers partipicated in BWE1 last weekend, i would schedule Veteran BWE a couple of weeks or months before that and would aim for 10k participants, mostly containing veterans.
Plenty of parameters for determining veteran status have already been tossed around here in previous posts, game hours, AP, forum posts etc.

And this is basically an open discussion, I would like to learn about plenty of different opinions about the definition of a veteran player, from veterans and new players alike.
I will state my opinion about veteran status in more detail in the coming days.

Thanks first of all for all the feedback, even though most of it is rather controversial to my suggestion.
I will try to respond to most of the posters as fast as i can. Right now, you are responding faster than I am typing so it might take a while.
It seems the thread got reported and moved by someone to HoT discussions. Just like some other poster, I lost my last post. Thats ok, i think its way better suited here, so thanks for that.

Haleydawn.3764:

The problem is what would determine a veteran and not. Time-span? Hours played? When first character was created? People who have played since headstart, yet have taken a two year break?
Also to point out, what is good is subjective. You’ll have elite players that want dps buffs to be more and more for the sake of facerolling more content, casuals to want more “natural” rewards that just happen, people who want a challenge as solo and as group bigger than 5 players.

So what is a Veteran player? I’ve seen people with 20k AP play like they only bought the game 24hrs prior. And I’ve seen people with 1k ap that enjoyed every part of the dynamics of game play, they might not play min/max best, but they understand the content.

Tl;dr- ALL feedback is good feedback, so Anet can replicate it and adjust what’s needed. Just because you’re a “veteran” does not make you any better or more priviledged in game.
Side note- I’ve been playing for nearly 3years, I guess I’m just more realistic. If you want to beta-test, then pre-purchase for the priviledge, like everyone else.

You make some valid points, some I already thought about but didnt want to write about due to my post limitations and message body length.

The parameters of being a veteran have to be determined by Anet, I guess first of all they have to determine, how much beta testers they want to have in the first place during a BWE. Right now, they pretty much know how much possible beta testers will log during the BWE because they know how much PPed HoT.
By now, that number I would assume to be way past 100k. While its great at some parts of the game to have huge numbers during events for simple stress tests and mass balance, maybe half of those 100k players wont give any feedback at all and another 40% dont give high quality feedback. So they have to read through feedback of which 90% will be discarded. Thats alot of wasted time and in my opinion a good reasoning for the fact that a big portion of the forum users feel neglected in terms of forum communication by Anet devs.

As I mentioned, I would incorporate Veteran BWE in the early stage of beta testing, as they are more valuable in giving feedback to basic and severe bugs. A veteran BWE would probably involve far less beta testers (maybe 10k in my example)and focus on early adjustments in terms of bugs and balance. The main BWE´s should still be conducted by the general player base as the closer we get to release, the more important stress tests become and the business point of view cant be disregarded at any stage.

I dont want veteran players to have more influence on the future of gw2 I am more looking for a solution to streamline quality information.

Maybe I wasnt clear enough in one of my OP´s, I dont expect any of this to happen during beta testing of HoT but maybe we all learn something for future releases. I just thought, it might be worth discussing.

niea.7504:

Don’t really need to see the second part of this dissertation to give my answer: Nope.

Thanks for proving my point and a TL/DR in 16 words.

For your info:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/first#post3383470

But it still isnt the best group to receive feedback from, I think Veterans are more suited for that. First of all, many of those have been playing this game for thousands of hours and established themselves as community leaders of some sort, be it as guild leaders, organizers of social events, longtime contributors on the forums and other social media, wvw and pve commanders, wvw community leads or pvp leaders.
I also got the impression that veteran players also tend to be a little older than the average player with many of them past the age of 30. Those are usually people that have an established professional life or their own kids and have more experience in a teaching role, giving more constructive feedback in general.

Thats why I am wondering, if it wouldnt be beneficial to make a Beta WeekEnd just for veteran players to improve the quality of the feedback given. As I said, I am not familiar with beta testing video games and I dont know what the timeline for Hot is and how many more betas we will see. But I would assume that such a Veteran BWE should be fairly early in the beta testing phase, when there are still lots of bugs and imbalances present. I realized while reading the forums that the more severe a bug or imbalance gets, the lower the quality of the feedback gets and its usually veterans that give the most valuable feedback to the solution. So i guess it makes sense to do this quite early.

Another point of discussion would be NDA´s. Right now there are none, which is great as it presents people like me with lots of info through secondary sources.

But if a veteran BWE should happen, I am wondering, if it wouldnt be beneficial to at least restrict access to the (temporary) subforum to veteran beta besters in order to provide a place for high quality feedback for the devs and constructive discussion.
In that case there also shouldnt be a general NDA in place, to allow those veteran players to publish and discuss info on social media and discussion boards with the general player base. So the limited access to the BWE subforum wouldnt be in place to keep a certain kind of players out of info or discussion but to streamline general and high quality feedback back towards Anet.

I would like to read some other opinions about this, as due to my lack of experience in beta testing and online gaming my point of view is pretty narrow. I dont expect this to happen before HoT releases and my interest in this is more of personal or professional nature rather than a player.

Oh yeah, vote for Evon

Edit:
As I have written several long posts beside the 2 OPs since opening this discussion, I wrote a summary later on. So if you dont care to read through the whole thread, please check it out, after you read the first 2 OPs (second one is the third post of this thread).
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Would-a-Veteran-BWE-make-sense/page/2#post5387440

Hi.

I am a Veteran GW2 player with over 8k hours since head start.

Even though I didnt purchase HoT yet, I am quite looking forward to it and probably will purchase it before launch. But I didnt participate in any beta events for it yet. In fact, i never participated in any beta testing for software before.

So apart from the official info about HoT that Anet releases over time, i get most of my feedback about it from beta testers on these forums, reddit, twitch, fansites etc.

Just like Anet itself.

For many years I have been professionally involved in vocational, postgraduate, informal, educational and experiental training all around the world, so I wasnt only reading all the feedback from the beta testers and communication from the devs from the point of view of a veteran player, looking for the info on the new content of my favourite game modes but was also closely monitoring the communication between Anet and the player base during the last week.

From an educational point of view its a very interesting community (Anet+players) because the roles of educators and students arent clearly defined or switch constantly.

The players learn when Anet releases new info or they are able to beta test the new content, Anet learns through feedback, written by the player base.

In the last couple of days, plenty of Devs, again, stated how valuable the feedback is.

And I completely agree. But the problem is that the feedback is too much. Many feedback threads get watered down by off topic, uninformative posts or are simply unconstructive feedback in the first place because many players dont know how to give contructive feedback.
Of course I dont have exact numbers but I would assume that a good chunk of the player base is still in primary, secondary or postgraduate training and below the age of 23. Most of those people have primarily assumed a student role their whole life and have little experience in teaching or giving valuable feedback.

2 decades ago, if you wanted to know something, you had to go to the library to read about something specific, watch tv at predetermined schedules, read daily papers or other magazines, talk to people in person or on a land line on a predetermined location.
You had to source your information.
These days, with the internet, information is widely available, on the go and 24/7. The problem shifted from finding information to finding the right information.

Giving good feedback isnt easy, its something you have to learn and its something I observed young people struggling with more and more during the last couple years.

So I was wondering, how you could improve the general feedback from the player base.
If we take the last BWE for an example, i guess the mayority of players have been Pre-Purchasers of HoT. I guess that that group of players is a good average of the player base, veterans, new players and players playing specific game modes.

I am no game developer but i think that they actually need feedback from the general player base because they want to attract new players and retain veterans as well.
So giving pre-purchasers the priority to participate in beta tests makes sense, not only because they represent the average player base but also because they stated their intent of interest in HoT (with an investment), so in general those players and Anet have a common goal, an awesome expac and last but not least for cash flow reasons as an incentive to PP.

Edit: Message cut due to body length. I will post the 2nd part in 300 seconds

notebene.3190:

…near me, and I decided to alt tab out and re-type what they were saying into Google Translate, and it was kinda fun getting to see the conversation. Some of it was broken, as I’m sure they were missing letters here and there and mistyping things as we all do, but it was understandable.

So that got me wondering: Why isn’t there an option to turn that on?

As Google has with everything, I’m sure there’s an API for it, and the burden could ‘totally’ be put on the client side.

Eh, just a thought.

How about an app that also chats for you? And while we are at it, an app to do your dailies, maybe for a couple of gems.

Maybe just learn spanish.

Jerus.4350:

Wanze.8410:

Behellagh.1468:

Jockum.1385:

SkiTz.4590:

Open world is their focus.
Spamming auto attack, and getting rewards so everyone is a winner and they can also show off their sparkly new dresses to everyone in the zerg. Its a win win for casuals, which is the overwhelming majority in this game.

On the other hand the only teamcontent are dungeons. Open World is singleplayer content.

You’re forgetting Fractals.

And guild missions and world bosses.

I’d say only a few world bosses qualify. While there is a massive team at most, they aren’t something you really work together on, just all stand in a pile and pew pew together. I wouldn’t call that a team, more like a mob.

So whatzs the difference to the current dungeon meta of stack and kill?

Behellagh.1468:

Jockum.1385:

SkiTz.4590:

Open world is their focus.
Spamming auto attack, and getting rewards so everyone is a winner and they can also show off their sparkly new dresses to everyone in the zerg. Its a win win for casuals, which is the overwhelming majority in this game.

On the other hand the only teamcontent are dungeons. Open World is singleplayer content.

You’re forgetting Fractals.

And guild missions and world bosses.

Narrrz.7532:

At nothing like the same rate; for startup guilds its actually moderately welcome, and i think the coin value of the scrolls is higher anyway.
But i wouldn’t complain to see those removed either.

Nobody would complain, if drops with little value get removed to increase the rate of valuable drops.

However, this isnt how these kinds of rng boxes work.

Narrrz.7532:

not when they cost 10s a piece.

they should have been gone the moment they appeared in a vendor inventory for ingame currency.

Guild influence is also purchaseable with gold form a vendor and drops from BLCs.

paradox.3528:

I would like a confirmation from a dev

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/3rd-Anniversary-is-Soon/first#post5325578

mtpelion.4562:

Considering how much time they are spending on HoT, I expect all holidays from now until the release of HoT to be exact duplicates of last year.

I dont expect any festivals at all until HoT.

nekretaal.6485:

I hope that they do this.

The move of tying the shield and other items (bring back the pauldrons this year too) to trick or track bags, is what kept the Halloween content alive last year. Otherwise poor rewards and rerun of the previous year could have made it very frustrating to o without other players around.

While I doubt that people opened t&t bags primarily for candy wrappers (otherwise their value would have tanked after the event), reintroduced limited rewards are a great way for Anet to add value to rewards for new content.

However, I doubt that simply reintroducing the same lottery will change anything about the status quo for the mayority of the people that would like to get one of those skins.

If you check out the price evolution for these skins now, you will have a hard time to tell at what time they announced the lottery and at what time they actually send out those skins to the winners, just by looking at the price or supply graph.

They simply didnt get any cheaper.

Considering that Anet has always changed the reward structures, when they reintroduced a festival or event, i doubt that we will see the same lottery again but I wouldnt be surprised, if they find another way to put them on the loot table, this year maybe even the shoulder skins.

Blaquepauldron.6259:

Malediktus.3740:

JediYoda.1275:

Malediktus.3740

Yes, the star gives random junk in exchange for some empyreal fragments. Hardly a big deal if you miss this item.

May not be a big deal for yourself but for others it helps get rid of empyreal fragments by having another use of them instead of trashing them getting nothing in return.

Random junk in return? not everything you can get is junk there are some useful things you can get.
Crafting materials, Upgrade components, Salvage items, Containers ,Trinkets and Other
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Generosity%27s_Reward

Oh yes, 1% chance to get something remotely useful. Nothing special you couldnt get in other ways.

The point is this is an item attached to a trilogy of items that enhance the player experience by providing an objective to work towards a life time use reward. ANYONE who is dismissing the issue of this item’s availability is not contributing anything to the community. I can see not getting the tree. Fine! but there is no excuse for this item to be exclusive. I own the Eater myself and I feel terrible for anyone who cant obtain it. To everyone else who simply came here to dismiss this simple and reasonable request you must understand your attitude in this mater is irrational. The simple fact that this item completes a trilogy of items Anet created to HElP players overwhelmed with ascended crafting mats is enough reason to make sure everyone can acquire it.

The point is that some players (us) volunteered their time during last wintersday to help get some orphans their toys back and some people didnt care enough about it to pitch in (OP).

Now, as he is aware of the reward that came with it, he wants Anet to reintroduce a problem that has already been solved.

He is literally asking them to take away toys from orphans again just so he can gain a personal reward to help him cope with the abundance of goods he gets.

Please Anet, dont listen to these selfish people.

I got my dungeon master title 2.5 years ago and since then hardly set a foot in them.

Only when i needed some tokens to craft a legendary but i wouldnt do one for the “fun” of it.

All champ bags have a different loot table to begin with, some might only have a handful of crafting mats on it, some more than 20.

But all give 1 gear item of masterwork rarity or higher, the chance of that being an exotic or precursor should be the same for any champ bag.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/DeLana%27s_Coinpurse

You might want to revise your shiny graphic.

You wont find anything where mobs respawn on you without any downtime after killing the last ones, outside of events.

Would be too easy for botters, too.

Afak they are only available on some leveling equipment, like cherubs claw but not on lvl 80 gear.

Nemesis.6938:

sure but still – it is a stupid mechanic – in what way does it make the game or the experience for the players better? I dont see any reason behind it

For one, it caps daily consumption of quartz, which makes it easier to balance supply and demand.

I guess they were never designed to be worn with weapons.

Rangers: Weetabix

Nobody likes you.

I wish, i could get Bunny Ears in the gem store.

Edit: Sorry, wrong thread

azizul.8469:

Wanze.8410:

I highly doubt that the old gifts will be used in crafting the new legendaries.
They already mentioned that you will need dark energy, salvaged from ascended gear in order to craft new legendary gear in HoT.
Only a handful of new legendaries will be introduced with HoT anyways and I doubt it will be a staff as the Bifrost is pretty popular.

People also seem to forget that pursuing your new or old precursor to craft will lock your current mastery progression, which means you wont be able to progress within maguuma jungle for example.

dark energy is for legendary back piece. you’re worrying too much.

From the blog post:

salvaging each type of item, like gloves or weapons, will yield different results, but all will provide a chance at the new ball of dark energy salvage item that will be used for crafting new legendary items in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns and beyond.

darkaheart.4265:

Wanze.8410:

darkaheart.4265:

1. I’m not the only one who hates to gamble.
2. I would rather pay 800 gems for the whole dye pack, account bound or give us the option.
3. COME ON! its just color, this should be free in the first place.
4. There is someone out there buying all the low quantity rare dyes and just over pricing it, +800g.
5. I used to play the flipping game back when I was playing RS but GW2 has to much actions and I have limited time to just play another flipping market game. So no, Im not going to do that again.
6. We all love a free market but somethings just give an advantage, especially things coming out the Gem Store.

Some rich dude who doesnt even bother much about dyes and the way he looks, just bought that dye for 800g, just to make you jealous.

Thats crazy! I wouldnt mind buying the whole pack if they sold it for 800 gems($10) instead of gambles because thats already like +$90 by the time it gets to flippers

I am sorry but my guild was having its weekly manipulation-workshop the other day and in honor of Exclusivity Month, which Tin Foil [Hats] holds every year in August in anticipation of Anniversary Week, we discussed several concepts and action plans to express our exclusivity while making a gold coin or two.

While we have always been a bunch of super-wealthy know-it-alls, whose primary goals were to get super wealthy and manipulate markets in order to make the overall gaming experience for casuals and veterans alike as dislikeful as possible, we have also started to rp.

To distinguish ourselves from casuals and non hardcore veterans, we invented new looks for our mains that on one hand use skins and dyes that are limited, so they are easily manipulated with the unlimited gold supply we have, and on the other hand, show how awesome and amazing we are.
Once we established. which skins and dyes we want to use, we bought up all remaining supply, not to resell them with a profit but to make the mayority of the supply unavailable to all the casuals and noncore veterans, which we deem unworthy to even apply to join our exclusive, amazing and awesomely super wealthy club of gentlemen.

darkaheart.4265:

1. I’m not the only one who hates to gamble.
2. I would rather pay 800 gems for the whole dye pack, account bound or give us the option.
3. COME ON! its just color, this should be free in the first place.
4. There is someone out there buying all the low quantity rare dyes and just over pricing it, +800g.
5. I used to play the flipping game back when I was playing RS but GW2 has to much actions and I have limited time to just play another flipping market game. So no, Im not going to do that again.
6. We all love a free market but somethings just give an advantage, especially things coming out the Gem Store.

Some rich dude who doesnt even bother much about dyes and the way he looks, just bought that dye for 800g, just to make you jealous.

Behellagh.1468:

Last was the 24 hour wings and new Lion’s Arch dye pack.

Come on sales.

On the bright side the lack of promotions have caused the exchange rate to drop like 10%.

Apart from no new additions and promotions in the gem store for 5 weeks now, we havent seen discounted sales for account upgrades in a couple of months either.

mtpelion.4562:

I’m OK with it being available from the laurel merchant for 150-200 laurels after you’ve cleared the maps the first time.

I gift of completion is still a requirement for the new legendaries, I would also vote for additional sources, for example a new map completion, as I already mentioned, including, MJ, SW,DT, SSC, EoTm and the new wvw Borderlands, 150-200 laurels would be fine too, i guess. A reward track in PvP should also be possible, at least once or twice, maybe some high amount of fractal currencies or the AP chests you get for every 5k AP bt those would have to retroactively rewarded.

Khisanth.2948:

Wanze.8410:

Khisanth.2948:

Wanze.8410:

Khisanth.2948:

Wanze.8410:

For the old legendaries I think its fine as you only need 10 map completions if you want to craft all legendaries. In order ot use them all, you need a couple of different classes anyways to cover all weapon types.

For the new legendaries however, i see your problem. I wouldnt want to grind out another Gift of Exploration either in the old maps in order to craft one of the new legendaries.

Thats why i think, the old gift of exploration will not be needed in order to craft one of the new legendaries. I think its much more likely that you will need a new GoE, which is awarded for completing all the new zones, Maguuma Jungle and propably DT and SW as well.
In general, i guess there will be very little mats and currencies used in crafting the new ones that are currently available to make sure that newcomers and veterans need more or less the same effort and time to craft them.

Another GoE seems minor compared to the grind required to acquire enough ascended items so you can salvage them hoping to get the balls of dark energy and stabilizing matrices.

Really? How much ascended gear do we have to salvage in order to get enough of those for 1 legendary?

I know a GoE can be acquired in less than 60 hours. There is no upper bound for how long it can take to get things through RNG.

So how much ascended gear we have to salvage in order to get enough balls of dark energy for 1 new legendary?

Uh I thought that should have been obvious. One to infinity.

So 50g for an ascended item should be faster to come by than 60 hours.
2 hours of guild missions would yield me enough to buy one as well.
Or a fractal run.

I still dont know how the fact that you can do old world completion in 60 hours is a good argument against implementing map completion for the new maps as a requirement for the new legendaries.

Even for old legendaries, the gift of exploration was usually one of the first gifts people obtained.

Khisanth.2948:

Wanze.8410:

Khisanth.2948:

Wanze.8410:

For the old legendaries I think its fine as you only need 10 map completions if you want to craft all legendaries. In order ot use them all, you need a couple of different classes anyways to cover all weapon types.

For the new legendaries however, i see your problem. I wouldnt want to grind out another Gift of Exploration either in the old maps in order to craft one of the new legendaries.

Thats why i think, the old gift of exploration will not be needed in order to craft one of the new legendaries. I think its much more likely that you will need a new GoE, which is awarded for completing all the new zones, Maguuma Jungle and propably DT and SW as well.
In general, i guess there will be very little mats and currencies used in crafting the new ones that are currently available to make sure that newcomers and veterans need more or less the same effort and time to craft them.

Another GoE seems minor compared to the grind required to acquire enough ascended items so you can salvage them hoping to get the balls of dark energy and stabilizing matrices.

Really? How much ascended gear do we have to salvage in order to get enough of those for 1 legendary?

I know a GoE can be acquired in less than 60 hours. There is no upper bound for how long it can take to get things through RNG.

So how much ascended gear we have to salvage in order to get enough balls of dark energy for 1 new legendary?

People complained about half baked and short content updates during Living Story and demanded an expac. Now they work on an expac and dont release any other content.
People started complaining that all we get now is some gem store updates on tuesdays and no real content, so they stopped updating the gem store.

Khisanth.2948:

Wanze.8410:

For the old legendaries I think its fine as you only need 10 map completions if you want to craft all legendaries. In order ot use them all, you need a couple of different classes anyways to cover all weapon types.

For the new legendaries however, i see your problem. I wouldnt want to grind out another Gift of Exploration either in the old maps in order to craft one of the new legendaries.

Thats why i think, the old gift of exploration will not be needed in order to craft one of the new legendaries. I think its much more likely that you will need a new GoE, which is awarded for completing all the new zones, Maguuma Jungle and propably DT and SW as well.
In general, i guess there will be very little mats and currencies used in crafting the new ones that are currently available to make sure that newcomers and veterans need more or less the same effort and time to craft them.

Another GoE seems minor compared to the grind required to acquire enough ascended items so you can salvage them hoping to get the balls of dark energy and stabilizing matrices.

Really? How much ascended gear do we have to salvage in order to get enough of those for 1 legendary?

Most items get rotated in and out of the gem store a couple of times a year.
GW2 has its 3 year annivrsary at the end of the month and there will propably be lots of sales for a couple of weeks.

Here is a link of what was on sale during the last anniversaries:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gem_Store#Special_event

For the old legendaries I think its fine as you only need 10 map completions if you want to craft all legendaries. In order ot use them all, you need a couple of different classes anyways to cover all weapon types.

For the new legendaries however, i see your problem. I wouldnt want to grind out another Gift of Exploration either in the old maps in order to craft one of the new legendaries.

Thats why i think, the old gift of exploration will not be needed in order to craft one of the new legendaries. I think its much more likely that you will need a new GoE, which is awarded for completing all the new zones, Maguuma Jungle and propably DT and SW as well.
In general, i guess there will be very little mats and currencies used in crafting the new ones that are currently available to make sure that newcomers and veterans need more or less the same effort and time to craft them.

John Smith.4610:

Zaxares.5419:

So, John, you mentioned before in the past that during Halloween 2013, you guys “made the sinks too difficult to interact with”. Now that Halloween 2014 is drawing to a close, are you more satisfied with how the sinks have worked for this year?

My personal feeling as a player is “Yes”. Supply has been massively increased, while the sink costs have been lowered, leading to the impression that “grind” has been reduced to a much more manageable level. At the same time, due to the wide variety of stuff that can be bought from the vendors, there’s a much higher chance for any individual player to have something that interests them, resulting in greater participation and thus more overall use of the Halloween mats and the Trading Post (of people buying and selling said mats and goodies).

I’m just curious to know if your internal metrics are bearing my impression out.

I’m very pleased with this year’s Halloween, and I get the general impression that the players agree as well.

Hi John,

I wanted to ask you the same question again about the long term impact of Halloween 9 months after the event was ended. During and shortly after the Event, I would have agreed, it was rather well implemented, considering no new content was added and only reward structures have been adjusted. But now, I am not so sure anymore due to many festival specific mats and consumables being oversupplied and at vendor value.

Lets start with the good things:
Candy Corn is incredibly stable ever since Halloween and i dont expect it to raise another 100% or so in value, like between other Halloween events. I think thats due to the new big sinks that have been introduced, the Gobbler, which was a great addition (but probably completely erased boosters as gem sinks) and 20 slot bags for cobs.

Adding very rare drops to the loot table of T&T bags, like the minis, Poly-Trinkets, charged quartz, t6 fine mats, some recipes and maize balm was a good move as well because it keeps opening them interesting throughout the year and making them available through the home instance node and maize balm farming made sure that their availability is secured throughout the year. After all, less limited time rewards were something the player base asked for before LS season 2.

I went ahead and opened 1000 T&T bags just now, here is what i got and what i did with it, including my evaluation of it being a good drop or not:

• 10.6k candy corn, traded for 10 cobs, listed on the tp for 14.7g after taxes, 35% of the overall value of the 1000 bags – desired drop
• About 1.1k each skulls, fangs and nougat, sold to vendor for about 13.5G, 33% of the overall value, heavily oversupplied – Due to the high vendor value and volume a desired drop but heavily oversupplied with over 8 million each on the tp and no viable sinks except vendor
• about 90 each crystalized nougats, sharpening skulls and pumpkin oil, sold for 1.75g to vendor, less than 2% of the overall value, heavily oversupplied and an undesired drop
• a combined 350 of the 6 different food items, 4 of them destroyed because traded for 2c on tp and no vendor value, Spicy pumpkin cookies and glazed peach tart listed for a profit of 30s – undesired drops
• 30 maize balm, listed for 2g after taxes, 5% of overall value – desired drop
• 10 each spider, halloween, candy corn and slaying potions/tonics, 25 bottles of batwing brew, all destroyed, oversupplied on no demand on tp – undesired drops
• I got 2 recipes which sold for a few silver, but some recipes can be sold for a couple of gold – desired drops
• 1 old pillowcase, a couple of copper, undesired drop

Account bound mats: Toilet paper and egg bundles or ok, either use them or delete them, essence of luck is a nice drop but becomes undesired once you reach 300% account mf. Shards, dust and dragonite is a nice drop if you need it but undesired if you already have too much of it. In general, I wouldnt have put them into t&t bags and wintersday gifts anyways because it defeats their initial purpose of making sure that people complete some content in order to craft ascended gear, now you can indirectly buy them on the tp.

Granted, i didnt get any highly desireable drops, like the minis, expensive recipes, trinkets, t6 mats or endless tonics but the amount of items i simply vendor or delete is too high in my opinion.

Especially the food items, nourishments, maize balm, tonics and potions shouldnt be on the loot table at their current rates because not only are most of them oversupplied and have no demand, it also completely renders crafting them useless because they are available on the tp aplenty way below crafting value, which again completely destroys crafting sinks for materials like candy corn, nougat, plastic fangs and skulls.

Risingashes.8694:

Once we hit the next round of events, the oversupply is going to be an issue.

Its only gonna be a problem, if they release the same rewards and droprates as last year, which they have never done.

Just the reintroduction of the gobbler will be a massive sink from players who dont have it yet. Honestly, I a not concerned about candy corn, I am more concerned about all the other halloween items that drop from t&t bags, like nougat centers, plactic fangs and skulls, whose main sink, converting it into the rare mats, gets disabled between festivals, or all the food that drops in such quantities that nobody would ever have to craft them.
The same goes for the nourishments and tonics.

Wintersday is a bit harder to balance because snowflakes come in 6 tiers and will influence the crafting market on all levels as a substitute for other fine mats. T5 mats, which are used to craft rares for the forge, dropped 33% in value, the same value decrease was seen for precursors. That might have been seen as a good change because pres got pretty expensive last year but all the other t5 fine mats represent a good chunk of the average end game loot, which has been devalued throughout the year. The new salvageable fancy wintersday clothes acted as a huge faucet for cloth, silk also lost 33% in value, so it had a huge impact on ascended crafting costs.

azizul.8469:

i’m still holding on to my Gift of Mastery and Gift of Fortune. My next legendary project is a staff but i’m not fond of The Bifrost, so i’m keeping my option open to see what the new legendary staff will look like.

I highly doubt that the old gifts will be used in crafting the new legendaries.
They already mentioned that you will need dark energy, salvaged from ascended gear in order to craft new legendary gear in HoT.
Only a handful of new legendaries will be introduced with HoT anyways and I doubt it will be a staff as the Bifrost is pretty popular.

People also seem to forget that pursuing your new or old precursor to craft will lock your current mastery progression, which means you wont be able to progress within maguuma jungle for example.

Behellagh.1468:

The conversion to cobs and recipes that use candy corn mitigates that material. We still have 19 million of them for sale but a lot of it is supply priced at or above twice the going rate (around 13.5 million priced above 34 c).

Snowflakes on the other hand have only a few popular uses and dropped in vast quantities as players did those side winter dailies this year. On top of that the shear number of gathering tools that also drop flakes simply compounded the problem. Tiny Snowflakes went from 8.5s with 28K for sale to 5c with 72K for sale in 3 days. And there’s been 11.5 million for sale now. Demand simply wasn’t there. There are over 11 million priced above that 5c price today for sale.

They need to have some kind of bulk snowflake eater. One flake for ice cream or rune or sigil isn’t going to help.

Imagine crafting snowman finisher charges, or a temp mini pet, or a temp snowball mail delivery (thwack! you’ve got mail). I’m spitballing here but you see what I’m getting at, they need to increase demand by some means.

All “Festival Materials”, like candy corn, snowflakes, quartz, sprockets, etc. have seen significant changes to their supply and demand during and between festivals. Some stuff, like candy corn and sprockets have been incredibly stable over months and basically are healthy markets and some, like t1 snowflakes or quartz, which are quite unbalanced atm.

But t1 snowflakes for example dont really pose an economic problem for the moment, so they dont have to push a solution before next wintersday.

Sure, it would be nice, if something you get is usable for something rather then selling it to a vendor or deleting it.

I dont think they would lack ideas for implementing new sinks for that (or adjusting the faucets) but they simply dont have the time to implement them.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Wanze.8410:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I agree that’s it’s obviously shoddy materials. Who was in charge of the Trading Post during that time period and for the materials delivered? I bet they had their nasty paw held out for bribes and kickbacks.

The Consortium delivered the mats.

That Person is in charge of buying and then reselling mats. I found this picture of him in a “Men’s Magazine.” (The articles are very interesting, which is the only reason I buy it). Full. Frontal. Nudity. Disgusting. Maybe if he hadn’t been busy posing for disgusting pictures of this sort then he could be watching out for low quality materials. He may have “taking care of business” but it wasn’t any Trading Post quality control.

I cant remember any tradeable mats being used during the rebuilding of lions arch.
But the new Consortium HQ looks quite shiny, while the Trading Post HQ is situated in an old Karka Shell and the Vaults arent even fully opened yet.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I agree that’s it’s obviously shoddy materials. Who was in charge of the Trading Post during that time period and for the materials delivered? I bet they had their nasty paw held out for bribes and kickbacks.

The Consortium delivered the mats.

Monk Tank.5897:

Why would i sell it for less than cost? Unless i was leaving the game and wanted to cash out? Just saying, like i have $500 usd in EvE Dominix ship skins right now because i can sell them to other players for a profit..because i bought low. Im saying open the GW2 marketplace to the players.

IF you wanted to leave the game, there is no point in cashing out, as you wont need any gold anyways.

Risingashes.8694:

Wanze.8410:

As you said, since then its has been incredible stable in price and i dont see how this is a bad thing because its not at vendor value.

And what happens when the event is rereleased?

We’ve already got a ridiculous glut with technically 0 supply being spawned, only with the ToT cycle.

God knows how much is sitting on alts.

But even if alts are empty, what’ll happen to the price? What value will the candy corn be to people doing the event?

I’m unsure why you think holiday items keeping a constant value is a good thing. They’re supposed to be time limited.

As long as candy corn still has enough sinks during halloween, I dont think its price has to neccessarily go further down, which isnt even a problem as long as it doesnt go down to vendor value.

Even during past halloweens, the price crashed to a couple of copper every time.
I dont know why you expect to get a silver or so for every candy corn that will drop during halloween.

Risingashes.8694:

Why have all holiday events switched from what was a fairly conservative droprate of items to a massive oversupply?

What is going to be done about the insane glut of items that exist 9 months after the time limited events? Candy corn has remained at 12c all year, and due to the self sustaining vial -> ToT -> candy cycle it’ll never run out of supply. When halloween is reintroduced the major drop will be worthless if nothing is done. And is this intended? If recipies return items that can be used in a cycle, shouldn’t they be ensured to always return significantly less each time (they certainly don’t need dust added in to destroy any kind of cycling, but they certainly shouldn’t be returning 0.6-1.2 which candy corn is).

22 million tiny snowflakes are sitting on the TP, is this supposed to be healthy? What happens next Wintersday, when people’s inventories were already being spammed with worthless junk when the junk starts off worthless due to the existing glut?

Shouldn’t there be a mechanism to alleviate saturated holiday markets?

I think candy corn was handled rather well, regardless of the massive supply on the tp.
With the introduction of a new big sink with the gobbler they also added year round supply via maize balm during last year. As you said, since then its has been incredible stable in price and i dont see how this is a bad thing because its not at vendor value.
The cheap price makes sure that the gobbler is a great investment for those that bought it and also offers cheap 20 slot bags. The glut of other worthless stuff from t&t bags is another thing though. Most foods and potions are being deleted or sold to vendor, if they have value there.

Snowflakes are abit more screwed up, though, while t4 and t5 flakes have decent sinks , the other 4 dont and especially t1 snowflakes are massing up supply from the gathering tools.

Nike.2631:

Again with the total nonsense. If you are aiming for Celestial stats,every single piece is a step forward, and you put them on as you get them. Unless you are arbitrarily stomping on your own foot so you can come to the boards and complain about it…. oh.

Well, at least for an exotic armor set, it would be cheaper to buy the recipe for the satchel/box compared to buying the 6 individual recipes for each piece.
And if you craft the satchel/box of celestial armor, you need the 30 charged quartz all at once before starting to craft.

Tirien.1326:

I just want someone to try to explain it for me, why removing tht is a good idea? Since when you pick a class, like tank or healer or dps, you have already made up your mind about what you want to play, right? If i pick a tank i can’t expect it to heal that much, can i?

Anet didnt remove healing, you just chose not to build a healer.

starlinvf.1358:

Its like paying for a car, and getting one piece of it every day for a month before you can use it.

Or like paying for an expansion without knowing when you will get it but you will be able to play some broken parts for a short period before release.