Guild Wars 2

Mmm, I’m not sure about that. It seems to be linked more to the fact that somebody could just buy it outright with gems. As an example, you could just buy Legendaries by converting gems to gold too, but that same sense of outrage isn’t there. I’ll be the first to point out to these players that disguising the purchase behind one extra step really doesn’t make a difference, but curiously it seems that that distinction makes a huge deal to a lot of players.

And no, not necessarily. For example, on my Human Female Mesmer, my favourite armor sets are the Feathered (T5 Crafted), Stately (karma set from level 50 – 60 maps) and the Embroidered (T1 Crafted) sets. I do not really like the Exalted (T6 Crafted), T3 Light Cultural (decent, but I think the T3 Medium and Heavy Culturals look better), or the Ascended set (the style is too baroque for my tastes).

Or JP deaths. Or deaths during a character’s early life when you would replace your armor while levelling instead of repairing. Or armor that you fixed with Repair Canisters.

Potential hint that LA will return one day?

The bandits and centaurs DID fight any Toxic Alliance members they happened to encounter though, so they certainly weren’t friends. They probably just realised they were outmatched and laid low while the Orders/PCs took them on.

So with the imminent rollout of Account WXP, what’s your suggestions on how to allocate points? After the reset I put 10 points into Supply Master (most of my characters are around level 12-14 Rank) but I’m undecided on what should be the next thing to upgrade.

Yes. PvE and PvP will share the same wardrobe.

Yeah, but with the new system, will that method no longer be possible? (Or being able to use the Necromancer’s Wraith mask on different professions, as another example.) Since Stones/Crystals are disappearing completely and all appearances are assigned via the Wardrobe, the old “transmute to a white item” loophole may now be closed.

Hmm… What about Order armors? Are those still restricted to Order members? I’d understand if that was the case, but at the same time, I’d love to be able to use Order weapons on a different character just because I think they’d look more awesome in it.

Repeat after me! “Quaggans are friends, not food!”

Definitely not the hylek. They reproduce like CRAZY. Older lore texts stated that some of the other races even considered it a boon to society to cull hylek numbers when they started getting out of control. Some hylek tribes may be in dire straits, but the race as a whole is fine. It just needs one tribe getting a foothold in a resource-rich area and their population will explode in no time at all.

That actually happened to me once. Someone sent me a mail with about 25 T6 mats of various types attached. I contacted the person via whisper asking if they’d made a mistake, and it was; they’d meant to send it to a friend. I was nice and mailed it back.

@Stone: I’ve actually heard people warning against using that tactic, since if all aggro is lost, like all other enemies, Mai will regen her health back to full. If you use the stealth tactic, make sure there’s still one player unstealthed to catch the aggro.

Borderlands.

/15 Charrs

I concur that something needed to be done to encourage players not to just farm Champ trains all day, but I still think that slapping diminishing returns on the Champ bags would have been a better solution. Removing or reducing the gold from events is just going to make them less appealing, especially if the event in question does not involve fighting foes and so players have no opportunity to earn extra money from them.

Alternatively, perhaps ANet would consider giving a major buff to the karma from events, making them a prime source for karma since I know many newer players are hurting for karma.

Dear Zommoros,

Please make those darn dungeon runes non-account bound. Or even just non-soulbound.

Sincerely,

A frustrated Rune gambler.

DarkSpirit.7046:

“widely regarded by their player base”? I call that the vocal minority.

I really don’t think it is the majority of players that think that way. Most players don’t even bother to post on the forums.

Heh. Alright, I’ll award you that point. Most GW2 players do indeed don’t post on the forums. But of those that did, the overwhelming majority were against the Flamekissed armor. I don’t use reddit or other GW2 fansites, but I’ve been told the reception there was negative as well.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Then you are a lot less picky than I am.

It may just be down to tastes. I generally appreciate armor and weapons for the fine details on them, not so much particle effects. (I haven’t gotten a Legendary because I think all of them are over the top, for example.) While the Ascended armors don’t suit my tastes either, I could appreciate the intricate details that went into each of them. It must have taken a lot of effort and time to put together. It doesn’t suit the aesthetic themes I have in mind for my characters, but I think it would be amazing to the people who like that sort of style.

If you ever do get an opening in this guild, Wanze, let me know.

I’d say that the only winners were, as Grimm mentioned, people like me who were online during that first 30 mins after the announcement and who quickly traded in Laurels for Unid’ed Dyes to sell. People who quickly snapped up cheap dyes and flipped them for about 5 – 10 times their value during the initial surge may also have profited. Anybody else likely came too late to the party.

DarkSpirit.7046:

That is why they are not getting much money from me because they are such wimps in their own gem store. So much for P2W.

Now I only convert gems to gold when the exchange rate is favorable and if I need gold, which is seldom nowadays as it is so easy to earn gold in this game. The stuff in their gem store are literally too boring. They are only hurting themselves and the game for being overly sensitive to such issues. They don’t realize that players tend to complain for their own sake, rather than what is best for the game or the game company.

Wait, so you’re saying that ANet SHOULD go ahead with gem store changes that would be widely regarded by their player base as P2W? O.o That would be financial suicide.

The reason why ANet backed down on the Flamekissed armor and possibly future unlimited tools was because the vast majority of the players playing GW2 do NOT want a P2W game (or rather, what they DEFINE as a P2W game). Letting the Flamekissed armor stand would have sent a very clear message to these players and potentially result in a massive exodus of players that the game may never recover from.

I appreciate that you (and possibly a fair number of other players) feel that stuff like the Watchwork Pick or other minor power boosts being sold in the gem store do not constitute as P2W, and you’d be happy to pay more for these, but the feedback thus far shows that it is a red line to many more players. ANet ultimately has to make decisions that keep the majority of their player base happy. Unless you’re spending thousands of dollars every month on the gem store, no single player can compensate for the loss of income from thousands of other players who drop $5 or $10 on purchases here and there. (I myself tend to pick up about $50 worth of gems every 3 or so months to cover various purchases for myself and my girlfriend.)

DarkSpirit.7046:

Not all the T3 armor are nice either. I only like the human versions, the others are just meh.

I generally like all of them except the Charr (although their Heavy Cultural armors are pretty decent).

I think they’re good changes.

Free Armor Repairs: Keep in mind that you still need to return to a repair NPC or use a Canister if your armor is broken. THAT still remains a penalty for death. It’s just that you’re not penalized monetarily for it. (And to be honest, I think most veteran players have enough Repair Canisters from AP chests that they never, ever pay money for repairs anymore anyway. I certainly haven’t spent any money for repairs in well over 6 months.)

Champ Loot Nerfs: I concur that something needed to be done to encourage players not to just farm Champ trains all day, but I still think that slapping diminishing returns on the Champ bags would have been a better solution. Removing or reducing the gold from events is just going to make them less appealing, especially if the event in question does not involve fighting foes and so players have no opportunity to earn extra money from them.

Alternatively, perhaps ANet would consider giving a major buff to the karma from events, making them a prime source for karma since I know many newer players are hurting for karma.

Mystic Forge Changes: I don’t really use the MF much as it is. I’ll wait and see the changes before passing any judgments.

Trait Resets: This is an excellent move, although I think it was already covered by the earlier post on traits. Most players tended to stick with the one same build all the time anyway; having a cost for trait resets was likely not proving much of a gold sink at all.

Eh, I dunno about you, but I for one am stoked by most of these changes. Can’t wait for the Apr 15 patch!

Most I’ve gotten is 2 broken pieces. I always wait until my first armor piece breaks before I use a Repair Canister.

I’d like to see the following:

1. Toxic Seedling nodes continue to randomly sprout all across Tyria, representing how the Tower’s destruction spread spores far and wide that continue to germinate for years to come. (This will provide constant supply of Toxic Spores for the economy.)

2. The Toxic Offshoot events are removed from all maps. As time passes, less and less of the Toxic Alliance remain as their members are killed off (and Scarlet isn’t there to provide them with the alchemical concoctions to make more). A few Toxic Alliance events, such as the Alchemist trying to corrupt the hylek, do remain.

3. Viathan Lake is eventually cleaned up and the last traces of the Tower removed. A memorial is erected at Thunder Hill Camp commemorating the event, along with an NPC who continues to sell the recipes and allows players to view the cinematics of the Tower’s destruction.

I can understand the OP’s concern, but people already kick players from groups if they’re not running the meta. There still are, and still will be, groups who don’t really care what builds you’re running as long as you’re contributing and stuff is getting done in a reasonable time. (I for one never enforce builds or gearchecks for dungeon/Fractal runs. I’m more concerned if people know what to do, and if not, I can teach them.)

I do hope that ANet had the foresight to allow us to save/load build templates though. Manually changing your traits each and every time you want to play a different role would get annoying really fast. I don’t want to have to spend 5 mins changing my Ele’s build every time I transition from open world to dungeons to WvW.

Sad I missed this too. Ah well.

Yes. Back during Dragon Bash, it was even stated that the hologram technology used to display the holographic Shatterer was leased from an Asura, most likely Ellie. Scarlet likely just appropriated the technology and later improved on it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Considering that we already have a real money to gold conversion system, it is already too late to put your foot down on something is worth less than even a cup of coffee. If you don’t want such a system to be in place then you are in the wrong game buddy! ArenaNet staff need to earn their keep. You said it yourself, the richer player would start out stronger than the poorer player. This would always be the case, with or without the watchwork pick because it is how the gem conversion works from the first day of release!

Well, considering ANet backtracked after the Watchwork Pick and left the Thresher and the Frost Wasp tools as cosmetic only, I’d say that our objections were noted and taken on board. They didn’t revert the Watchwork Pick, which is a small disappointment, but I appreciate that it probably wasn’t worth the extra coding hassle for the minor inconvenience of having all the tools be identical if the Watchwork Pick is never coming back.

And you’re only thinking about existing stuff that can be purchased with gold. I gave some examples in a previous post about gem store items we might see had the Watchwork Pick trend continued:

1. Unlimited tools that have a 20% to give double resources per strike.
2. A Frequent Asura Gater token that gives a 25% discount on all waypoint fees.
3. A riding mount that gives a 33% speed boost (your skills are disabled while using it).
4. A device usable once per hour that lets you teleport to a friend’s location.
5. A device that auto-resses you (similar to the Revive Orbs) when you are dead.
6. An unlimited Repair Canister.

Each of these items might be minor individually, but taken altogether they would place such a player in a different “class” from regular players. This is the sort of situation I want to avoid seeing.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Sure if you want to consider skins, but skins are more subjective. Does everyone consider the most expensive skin the best skin in the game? Can the best skin in the game be something that you buy or are they something which you have to play the game in order to acquire?

At the moment, I’d say that the common perception is that the T3 Cultural armors are the “best” skins, despite the fact that they’re only Rare stats. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these are also the most expensive skins (with the exception of Ascended armor, in some cases. I think a full Ascended leather set is still cheaper than T3 Cultural.) And again, remember the uproar when the Flamekissed armor skin was originally released, and how quickly ANet backed down about it.

If Legendary armor is ever introduced, I’m willing to bet ALL my gold that it will be considered the “best” skin in the game, even if it’s considered to be aesthetically ugly. People will get it simply to show off their wealth, similar to how you saw dozens of characters with Obsidian armor and Chaos Gloves back in GW1. Even players who might not like the look of Legendary armor may get it anyway just to show that they have “made it”.

I think a fair compromise would be that you cannot res a dead person while you’re in combat. Revive downed people, yes, but not dead ones.

That’s not really the impression I get, Reikou. The Nightmare Court basically believe that the darker aspects of emotion (pain, hatred, anger etc.) is the TRUE Dream, and the true ideals that Sylvari should aspire to. They believe that such negative emotions is the true natural state of the Sylvari, and that those who follow the teachings of Ventari are simply deluding themselves. They gain converts both by appealing to Sylvari who have more selfish or violent natures, and by torturing and hurting others until they develop a reverse Stockholm syndrome. Ultimately their wish is to feed enough negative memories and emotions into the Dream to try and turn the Pale Tree herself to their beliefs. (Although some who are aware of the existence of Malyck believe that perhaps they can simply find this other Tree and ignore/destroy the Pale Tree since she is no longer needed.)

My feeling is that specific dyes will go down in price by anywhere from 20% – 50%, since players only need to unlock it once for their entire account. Certain popular dyes like Celestial or Abyss may increase in price, but not by too much. Price for dyes won’t collapse entirely due to the ability to randomly combine 4 dyes in the Mystic Forge for another random dye of the same tier or higher.

Unid’ed dyes will reach a new equilibrium between 50s – 1g, and will really only be sought after by players looking to craft the Gift of Colour. In most cases it’ll be cheaper to simply craft a random dye shade via Cooking than gambling to get the specific one you need via Unid’ed dyes.

A Mesmer wielding Scepter can do the same with Illusionary Counter. It’s especially funny when you’re on the other side of the arena ressing someone, you see Mai aiming at you, and you block the shot on cue. Mai gets 5 Torment stacks for her trouble and you go back to ressing.

Taimi is so tiny she could fit completely inside my max-size Charr’s mouth. XD

You’re looking in the wrong JP. XD That one with the skales/pirates/moas is the Swashbuckler’s Cove JP. The Not So Secret JP with the Aetherblades is to the west, accessed by jumping up some steam platforms near the ettin cave.

Rella is the name of that unknown progeny whose mother carried him from Lion’s Arch, but upon reaching the Vigil refugee camp discovered that he was already dead. It seems that Rella is probably Raisin-Face.

And I guess the Toxic Krait didn’t take kindly to Doc Halvern having made his oil from their kind. XD

DarkSpirit.7046:

Their main goal is that you can’t just get ascended items without actually playing the game, no matter how much real money you have to trade for gold. Yes legendary weapons are the exception, but you can never get the best trinkets and armor with just gold, without playing the game.

The point I’m trying to make is that past history shows that ANet obviously don’t have a problem with having BiS gear being purchasable (whether it’s via gold or gems). It’s just that it turns out that a large segment of the player base were content locusts that “reached end-game” faster than ANet had anticipated, and they had to implement a solution to keep them playing. If there was a way for them to make Ascended gear tradable AND still keep these content locusts playing, I’m sure they would do it.

DarkSpirit.7046:

That is why I said, you guys don’t know what P2W really is. What are you “winning” from this that I can’t win over you with my real world money? Sprockets? Really? Big deal! With the price of just 1000 gems ($12.50), I can already buy more sprockets than your pick can produce for you in a whole year!

The only things you can win over someone with real money are the things that can’t be traded. Things like ascended items and vision crystals. These are the things that require you to play the game in order to acquire them. And guess what? These are the things that actually form the most powerful weapons, armor, and trinkets in the game. So how is this game P2W again?

This is why ANet can never allow you to win the game with just gold because anything that can be bought with gold, can be won over without ever playing the game in the first place. Gold has to be the most overrated currency in the game because the best items in the game can’t be bought using only gold. Therefore it is ridiculous that people are throwing the term “P2W” over just some small amount of gold, yes they are a small amount of gold compared to what an average american would earn in the real world. You are making so much noise over chump change that costs less than a cup of coffee.

Are we back to this again? -sigh- I’ve told you before, it’s not about the sprockets, or the price of sprockets. It’s about the precedent of selling something in the gem store that gives a bonus, however slight, over anything a normal player that doesn’t use the gem store can obtain. If players don’t put their foot down, ANet can only conclude that the player base doesn’t mind, or likes, having more powerful stuff on the gem store, and thus start putting ever more powerful items up for sale. (It’s like the non-stop parade of Apple products. Each one has to be “better” than the last model, or consumers just won’t upgrade to it.) Eventually this will take us to a point where a new player who’s willing to shell out upfront for gem store goodies will be leagues above a new player who can’t afford the same. (Yes, the wealthy player is out of pocket more, but he’s undeniably “superior” to the poorer player, with all the posturing and social clout that brings.)

You’re also pretty adamant that P2W can only be considered to be true for items that provide strict numerical advantage over another player. Does that mean that if ANet started selling Legendary/Ascended skins (just the skins, not the Ascended stats) on the gem store, you wouldn’t consider that P2W? Do you think that everybody who’s crafted/bought an Ascended item or Legendary for themselves would think that’s it’s not P2W?

DarkSpirit.7046

Think about it, if ANet solely wants to maximize profit, they would have made them trade-able since more people would be getting gold through the gem store to buy them. Especially those with full time jobs and with lesser time to farm for gold. Or better yet, just sell Ascended items in their own gem store or at least sell the vision crystals.

And yet they had no problems with Exotics being tradable. Or Legendaries being tradable. ANet even admitted outright that they didn’t expect players to acquire all-Exotic gear so quickly. Everything points to Ascended gear being time-gated/grindy simply to stop players from completing it too quickly.

The main goal is to KEEP players playing. You need a critical mass of players at any one time otherwise an online game implodes because there’s not enough people around for people to do things with. (A secondary goal being that more players being online also means more eyes on the gem store.)

DarkSpirit.7046

That is why you guys who call the gem store P2W have no idea what P2W really is about. If they really want to make the gem store to be P2W, it wouldn’t be just a mining pick that gives some sprockets 20% of the time. You would see things in the gem store that would allow you to fly in the real world, or summoning stones that allow you to summon an army, or consumables that would make you invincible temporarily so that you would have to buy more of it for the effect to last, or mounts with special powers, etc.

You guys really don’t know what P2W really is.

There’s different levels of P2W, and it depends a lot on what an individual player defines it as. With the exception of the Watchwork Pick, the gem store used to have a standard of only selling items for cosmetics and convenience. As far as I’m concerned, neither is P2W, but it is to some people. The current arguments in the General Forum about how Legendaries should be excluded from the Wardrobe show that many players are upset at the idea of new players getting extra Legendary skins “for free”. P2W does not necessarily have to be purely based on stats or competitive mechanics.

Another example might be if ANet started selling Tomes of Knowledge for 50 gems, allowing a player to simply buy their way to level 80. I wouldn’t consider this as P2W (P2Shortcut, maybe), but I guarantee that lots of players would.

I think Nike provided the most elegant solution. If you have two (or more) duplicate Legendaries, the duplicates becomes unbound, allowing you to sell it if you so choose.

Kusa.6438:

I have every weapon now, besides the focus. I have doubles, triples, and even fifths of a lot of them. Not sure what you are doing wrong :/

TBH Leave fractals weapons the way they are. It’s the only skins in the game that are a rare drop RNG. The concept of RNG skins creates uniqueness. Everyone wants everything handed to them… I like the idea of having something, other people can’t get. (I know flame on, “this guy is only saying that because he has them all”)

Yeah. You’ve just been VERY lucky with the Fractal skins. It’s like the guy who throws in four random Rares in the MF, gets Dusk back on his first attempt, and thinks the drop rate is working great. It’s just that your experiences are colouring your opinion of the system.

Maybe a compromise?

The Wardrobe works the same way it does now, but when you use Charges to apply skins to a specific item, you can then freely swap back to this skin (and any other unlocked skin), on that item forever? For example:

1. I craft a Zojja’s Greatsword. It has the Zojja skin unlocked on it by default.
2. I use a Transmutation Charge and apply the AC Greatsword skin to it. It now has both the Zojja and AC skins unlocked on it, and I can freely swap between those two skins whenever I want.
3. If I then craft a new Keeper’s Greatsword, but wanted to use the Zojja’s and AC skins on this new weapon, then I’d need to spend 2 more Charges applying those two skins to my Keeper’s GS. (Alternatively, I could use 1 Charge and apply the Keeper’s skin to my old GS, which would now have 3 skins unlocked on it.)

DarkSpirit.7046:

What are you going to do with your lower tier crafting materials, since not all of them can be used for ascended crafting? I would just promote them through the mystic forge or sell them, rather than hoard them above 250.

As I said, I’m a hoarder by nature. It makes me happy to see big numbers in my bank. Back in GW1, I collected 250 of every single crafting material for no other reason than I liked seeing my Materials tab completely full. When I reach the maximum limit for a material, I refine them into ingots/planks etc., then start collecting again. If the refined material is also full, then I sell my excess raw stacks.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Furthermore, the way gem-gold conversions is currently designed, it is like a see-saw balancing out each other. If you remove the conversion from gold to gem, so the rate stays the same, then there is nothing else deterring the conversion from gem to gold which opens up the possibly of some rich players causing uncontrolled inflation to the economy.

Which is why I said in that same post that if gold → gem conversions were removed, the gem → gold conversion would also likely have to go to ensure things stayed in balance.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Since I have said that there is nothing worth buying in the gem store, guess what I usually do with my gems? That’s right, converting them into gold most of the time.

But why do you buy gems in the first place if there’s nothing in the gem store that catches your fancy? Unless you specifically buy gems to convert into gold (which there’s nothing wrong with. I’d do it myself if the exchange rate was just a bit higher. ).

DarkSpirit.7046:

The most powerful items in the game, exceptions being the legendaries which are still very expensive and do not yet include armor and trinkets, can’t be bought no matter how much gold you have. Why do you think they designed it this way?

Remember that originally Ascended gear didn’t exist. Exotics were the highest tier of gear, and they were completely tradable. Even Legendaries had Exotic stats. ANet introduced Ascended gear and made it account bound because a large segment of the player base (what some call the “content locusts”) basically got Exotic gear in a month (or less), said, “Is that it?” and left the game. Ascended gear was an attempt (some say a knee-jerk reaction) to keep these players playing by giving them a new “best gear” to grind for, but locking it behind time-gates and extremely high costs.

The only reason ANet didn’t make Ascended gear tradable is because it would defeat the purpose of why Ascended gear was introduced in the first place, which is a carrot to keep players playing.

?? This warrants further investigation, because I still got Sprockets from mining my quartz/candy corn/other nodes in my Home Instance about 14 hours ago, and there hasn’t been a new build released since.

In any case, I wouldn’t be upset if Sprockets got removed from the Watchwork Pick. I’d rather that all the unlimited tools be the same.

But you can’t buy stuff with karma in the Real World. We need more karma sinks.

Lishtenbird.2814:

But if ANet makes a Title for it… :P

“Filthy Rich Quaggan-lover”? XD

I thought more about it last night and realised that, in order to complete the Wardrobe, you’d not only need to have been around for every single Living Story, you’d also need to:

1. Bought/made every single Legendary.
2. Crafted every single Ascended weapon.
3. Completed Tribulation Mode in SAB 16 times for EACH world. (19 if they also release underwater weapons in a subsequent release.)
3. Have been lucky enough to get every single Tequatl/Fractal weapon. (This relies on RNG basically treating you like a favoured grandchild…)

And then repeating the process for armor, and all the Town Clothes skins…

I think somebody rich/dedicated enough to actually complete their Wardrobe can be called ANet’s biggest fan, and possibly their single biggest funder! O.o

I think that prices will collapse immediately after the patch, stay low for a period of time (might be weeks), and then slowly start to rise until it reaches a new equilibrium somewhere between 50s – 1 gold. At those prices, more people will start crafting dyes through Cooking, which is where the bulk of new coloured dyes will come from. Unid’ed dyes will be sought after primarily by players trying to craft the Gift of Colour.

FEAR THE COLLECTIVE!

Yes, I’m hoping that ANet had the foresight to include templates for traits as well so we can quickly swap builds instead of having to manually change them each time. Would be a fantastic QoL feature.

This is why I support a token system for Fractals, the way it was done for SAB. (Or maybe you get a Fractal skin chest for completing a Fractals meta-achievement.)

You can still get Blade Shards through the following ways:

1. Occasional drop from the Sprocket node in your Home Instance.

2. Kill Aetherblades in the Not So Secret Jumping Puzzle in Gendarran Fields.

3. Kill Aetherblades in the Aetherpath of the Twilight Arbor dungeon.

4. Kill Aetherblades in the Edge of the Mists map (they hang out in the center, but be careful. These ones are a lot more lethal than the ones found in the open world).

^ Now that suggestion I could get behind. I doubt it will go ahead since it would mean less $$$ for ANet, but it would be nice.

“If any of your characters are wearing or own any piece of an armor set (such as the Profane armor set or the Magitech armor set), all of the remaining pieces will be unlocked in your Wardrobe in addition to any pieces currently on your character or in your inventory.”

That’s from the first part of the same paragraph. I interpret that to mean that as long as you still have a portion of the gemstore skin, the entire set will be unlocked for you.