Guild Wars 2

As someone who does have the Gas Mask, I honestly would not be upset if other avenues were introduced for players to obtain the skin for themselves if they missed Tower of Nightmares. I’m a big believer in everybody being able to obtain the “look” they want. Maybe not through the gem store (that does smack a bit of “money grabbing”), but if ANet ever introduced a “flashback” guild mission where you could run through the Tower of Nightmares again, I think having the Gas Mask drop as a rare skin from the end chest would be fair.

Hmm… That’s a fair point. You’d think they would have introduced it by now as it’s the last chapter in the Living Story though. Maybe I’ll hang onto them till March 18. Possibly longer if Blade Shards get a collectible tab (that’s usually a dead giveaway).

Not surprising data so far. Account expansions are usually good sellers, and we know there are lots of people who do like to gamble on the BLC’s. Armor skins, on the other hand, have a much smaller market since people typically will buy just one set and nothing more.

I fully expect gem prices to sink more today as it’s a Crafting Booster sale; boosters have never been big sellers for ANet (as evidenced by the fact that they actually removed most of them from sale a while ago).

I’m glad that the Tormented weapons are now available in GW2. I always support there being more variety in choice for players.

That said, I can understand the complaints of the GW1 players though. (I played GW1 for 7 years too. Eventually got a free Tormented Weapon through the Wayfarer’s Reverie quest chain.) It would have been nice if perhaps ANet had given us a free Tormented Weapon as a nod to our HoM achievements, although I think that would just create more complaints about how there are now hundreds of players with Tormented Weapons.

Wanze.8410:

Well, Blade Shards will permanently drop from aetherblades.

Yep. That tells me I can safely junk the excess stacks I’m getting too. If it’s permanently obtainable, it won’t ever be tradable, and it’s highly unlikely it will be “sold back/donated” for bonus coin or items after LS Season 1 is over.

Yeeep. I had to laugh at the tons of Grapes being unloaded back onto the TP when I checked gw2tp this morning. XD

On the downside, that means no r500 Cooking/Jeweler yet.

If you upgrade the Exotic version to Ascended, does it become account bound again?

Err, Smooth, did you forget the part where ANet basically gave Tormented Weapons away for free to GW1 players by doing a quest? I never managed to farm DoA enough to get an Armbrace, but I eventually got my Tormented Shield thanks to that last minute quest. (After GW1 was officially “finished”, but still.)

Anyway, I have no problem with Tormented Weapons being a new gem store weapon skin. I always support there being more variety and choice for players.

Bonus points to people who finish Scarlet with the Cow, Quaggan or Snowglobe finishers.

Thanks for the heads up, SOULFLY! Will go use up my last few cyphers tonight. (And maybe pay a visit to the Marionette too. Haven’t been back there since Origins of Madness.)

To be fair to ANet, the recent Living Story achievements (except for Origins of Madness, where several achievements were completely out of your hands with attaining them) have all been very quick to complete. Escape from LA had just one where you had to rely on the map (Triple Threat); the others could largely be completed by yourself or with a few people provided the event wasn’t overscaled. You could easily complete all the achievements in a day or two.

I have a Cleric’s staff (non-Ascended atm) on my Ele for when I feel like running a “healer” build. A Guardian could probably do the same.

Ahh, kitten . I sold mine for 3g just a few days ago, and that was already posting it above the current market value.

The other side to that problem is that the meta in GW2 favours high DPS over all else. You can experiment with other quirky builds, sure, but if you try to use it anywhere other than open world PvE, you’ll be kicked pretty darn quickly.

Ohoni.6057:

From what I understand, if other activities in the game offered rewards even half of what the TP does, it would result in uncontrollable inflation and it would cost 200g for a loaf of Taragon Bread.

That’s why increasing rewards from other game modes should be in the form of mode-specific goods that are sold to other players, not so much as raw cash. The TP in and of itself doesn’t generate gold; all it’s doing is shifting gold from one player to another (with a chunk of it being removed in the form of TP taxes).

Ohoni.6057:

Fractals get enough rewards for a PvE activity. While I wouldn’t mind being able to buy fractal swords and backpacks without having to run fractals, that alone wouldn’t do much, and it would just end up making the TP flippers richer because they would flip them.

Ehh, I’d actually argue against you on that. Dungeons are much more profitable than Fractals in terms of time spent/difficulty vs rewards. The one benefit that Fractals has going for it is that it’s by far the cheapest way of acquiring Ascended Rings and 20 slot bags.

But anyway, you’d need to strike just the right balance where the skins are not so commonplace that the market is flooded with them, but also not so rare that flippers could control (or at least influence) the market.

Ohoni.6057

I never do sPvP, WvW, or Fractals, and hate when the game tries to push me towards them.Besides, Fractal offer a great cash return for a PvE activity, and apparently sPvP will as well now.

Which is actually a move on ANet’s part that I applaud. Yes, I do think that the TP offers a disproportionate amount of financial return (but one that requires a lot of work and research, so it’s not the kind of “easy money” that people are making it out to be. If it were, then everybody would be doing it and profit margins would be destroyed in hours), but instead of trying to nerf the TP, why not increase the rewards from other game playstyles?

As an example, Fractal weapon skins only drop from Fractals, but not all players who do Fractals are interested in the skins (or perhaps they get a skin that their profession simply can’t use, like a Greatsword skin on an Ele), and some players who like the skins don’t enjoy Fractals. Why not allow the Fractal skins to be sellable so that those two groups can satisfy each other’s desires? Fractal skins are still pretty rare, so if you get one that you can’t (or don’t want to) use, it’s a nice windfall.

The same could be applied to SAB, dungeons, Activities etc. I’m a great supporter of EVERYTHING being able to be bought and sold on the TP.

The variety of Daily achievements were designed so that people who do specific types of activities in GW2 should be able to hit their Daily without going out of their way to do so. A “normal” player should only be aiming for 5 or so a day. If you make the decision to do more than that, you’re probably doing so for AP farming, in which case it’s kind of expected that you’ll go out of your way to do so.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Zaxares.5419:

I like the Scepter as a clone-generating machine

A weapon that generates clones almost slower than dodge rolling with vigor?

yeah…..

Not all of us go with Deceptive Evasion.

Are we including Fractals bugs as well? If so:

- The Shockwave Skipper achievement is currently bugged and not being awarded even if one avoids all the shockwaves. (One person reported not getting the achievement despite not getting hit at all throughout the entire fight.)

This one is undoubtedly the most difficult of all the diving goggle jumps. There’s not much I can advise apart from knowing where exactly to jump. You need to jump off the right side of the “blue pillars”, and take only a short hop. (A lot of failures I see come from people trying to do a long jump, or dodge rolling back off the platform. Points for style, but that will get you killed.)

Even after hopping off, you’ll still need to make a few corrections in mid air to ensure you land in the pipe safely. If you have a Mesmer buddy who can make the jump and portal you back up if you fail, that will help a lot.

I think there’s room for compromise. The following is a suggestion I posted for an Armor Locker many months ago:

1. Skins which are earned via AP’s or the completion of meta achievements go into one tab. These skins can be withdrawn from the wardrobe as many times as you want for free, similar to the way Zenith skins work now. (For convenience, put the HoM reward skins in here too.)

2. All other PvE skins must be unlocked by putting an existing copy of it into the PvE wardrobe. Both weapons and armors can be unlocked in the wardrobe this way. Once unlocked, you can generate additional one-time use copies of the skin by paying either Transmutation Stones (creates a version that works for any item up to level 79), or Transmutation Crystals (can be used for all levels). These skin copies are account bound, so they can’t be sold.

This allows players to gradually build up a wardrobe of skins they like to use, and don’t have to waste inventory/bank space holding multiple sets of armor or weapons. At the same time, ANet also gets to keep its lucrative transmutation market, since you still need Stones/Crystals to generate additional skin copies.

Back in GW1, when we were led to believe that humans and Norn could interbreed, I actually always thought that Turai Ossa was actually a Norn or of Norn descent, given his immense stature compared to his human troops. As a dark-skinned character himself, it would have lent weight to the theory that dark-skinned Norn had a human ancestor in their bloodline at some point. (The original human settlers in Kryta came from Elona, so if they had spread up north into the Shiverpeaks and met the Norn, any descendents of that union would have introduced dark skin to the Norn.)

Narcemus.1348:

I have longed for Krait civil war ever since the Tower was revealed

Krait for playable race!

But thank you for that little write-up, Angel. It’s definitely helped fill in some of the blanks. Can we presume that there would also have been Toxic Krait who, after seeing the Hybrid, went “This isn’t our Prophet!” and went back home again? (There is, for example, a single solitary Veteran Toxic Krait sitting at the top of the Timberline Falls Krait fortress.)

It’s because the events grab the number of players in a much bigger radius than the event circle, on the assumption that those players will converge and do the event as well. Of course, this usually isn’t the case as those players are usually off rescuing civilians or Heirloom hunting, but the mobs in the event are still scaled up regardless.

It does feel rather odd that the 5 key price is different to the other two options. Unsure if this was deliberate or a data entry error on ANet’s part.

In any case, still not buying. Black Lion Keys have been nothing but a source of disappointment for me. :P

Ah, dang. Good to know though.

As a rule of thumb, you can expect to gain 1 level for every hour of play in GW2. (This will be faster at earlier levels as doing events and the Personal Story give a lot of XP.) Your playstyle is very similar to mine, so it’s as “right” as any other playstyle is.

You are a bit poor for your level, but that’s not surprising if this is your very first character. At your level, I’d just focus on using whatever gear drops for you (or from the Personal Story) rather than buying anything from the Trading Post. Take this time to experiment with all the different weapons for your profession too.

Some players like crafting, while others hate it. In the end-game, crafting is the only way of obtaining the very top level of gear (Ascended), other than being very, very lucky with drops, so if having BiS gear is something you like to do, then yes, consider saving your materials for crafting as you level.

Otherwise, selling all those materials is a great way of getting you money. Make sure to buy harvesting tools and harvest everything you come across too; Copper Ore currently sells for about 80+ copper coins. That means you can earn 2 silver just from harvesting one single Copper Ore node. You mentioned you’re an Asura too; harvesting Herb Seedlings in Metrica Province (your starting zone) can get you Vanilla Beans, which sell for 3 silver each.

I support this idea. The TA Aetherblade path could easily be an Elite Dungeon, for instance. Revert TA back to the old design, then change the dialogue of the NPC outside so that saying something like “We are here in response to Lionguard Turma’s call for help.” sends your party into a special instance where you can play the Aetherblade path.

It would be grand if we could also get the Molten Facility and the Aetherblade Retreat back in their full glory in this way too.

The rewards from individual Fractals also don’t seem to be equal. I always get a piddly amount of loot from the non-boss Molten fractal chest, for example, as compared to the Harpy or Ascalon fractal.

It’s a track from GW1, called “Kathandrax” (which was a dungeon, in case you were curious).

I’m holding onto my collection in anticipation of the merging of the PvE/PvP locker skins, which may allow us to have a collection where we can permanently store our skins.

YES. I would LOVE the ability to retain names for our pets. I would name each and every pet in my Ranger’s menagerie if I could.

Agreed on the Master’s Bond trait too; I keep it just out of personal preference, but it’s really annoying to have all the stacks disappear if you swap pets/go underwater. IMO, the stacks should only disappear if the pet dies.

Not opposed to this idea, but I want a Griffin or Basilisk pet before a Dolyak.

I like the Scepter as a clone-generating machine, so I can’t support any changes to that aspect of the weapon. At the same time, I would like to see the attack speed upped juuust a bit, or the 3rd chain changed so it doesn’t have the wind-up time.

I once asked John Smith if he could provide us with similar info (on how much gems were purchased with cash in a month, and what were the numbers on how much gold→gems and vice versa within that same period), but he said that it was too sensitive for release to the public. (Which I completely understand. There are a lot of shady parties who could use that data to the detriment of the player base.)

I’m inclined to agree. It reminds me of Halloween 2012 when people invested into Sugar Pumpkins, only to discover that hardly any were needed for the new food recipes.

Hmm… Maybe for future such events, ANet could do away with the Citizen Counter and just have a general “score”. For example, if we were to rework the current invasion:

- Finding Heirlooms: 1 point each
- Saving citizens: 3 points each
- Successfully completing the Ogre/Lighthouse/Dolyak/Children events: 10 points each
- Successfully completing a Defend event: 15 points each. Bonus 50 points for each location that is 100% successful for the entire evac cycle.
- Successfully completing a Miasma event: 25 points each. Bonus 50 points if all 3 events are successfully completed at the same time.
- Successfully complete the Lawson/Moas escort event: 30 points each
- Successfully complete the boss events: 30 points each. Bonus 50 points if all 3 bosses are slain before the evac cycle is over.

All points are tallied up and added to a total at the end of the cycle, with rewards scaling based on the final score.

Eh, I’m not a big fan of either. My Mesmer uses Kasmeer’s Staff, and my Sylvari Necro uses Bramblethorne.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not worried about the wealthy controlling portions of the market. I’m worried about the wealthy controlling portions of the wealth. There are so many things in this game that cost hundreds or even thousands of gold in total, including legendaries, anything ascended, Commander tags, and of course anything that can be purchased using gems. These are nothing to people that bring in 1000 gold in a single day, but are out of range for the average player who is just trying to enjoy the game as it was designed. If money is to be the value by which many of the games features are accessed, then it needs to be distributed fairly. If they’re going to accept that gold is just going to flow to the top, then they have to stop making gold a condition for players to earn things, and just have them be pure content rewards. Instead of needing 250 heirlooms and 10g for a halo, it would just be 250 heirlooms even. Instead of a handful of account bound mats and a ton of market value mats to make Ascended armor, make them take ALL account bound, content-provided mats.

I understand where you’re coming from, although I still have to disagree with you on that it’s a problem. Yes, I dislike the trend of requiring “gold + event tokens” that’s been the case for all recent Living Story rewards, but it’s likely that this is because there is a vast amount of player wealth now floating in the economy, and this is part of ANet’s attempt to ensure that adequate gold sinks exist so it doesn’t cause inflation.

The prices for some of the end-game luxury goods are indeed very steep, but in terms of real inflation, I don’t think it’s actually increased by much since launch in terms of actual player purchasing power. 10g for the Selfless/Selfish potion may seem like a lot, but you could run a couple of dungeon paths (earning about 3g), go farm some iron ore nodes in Brisban Wildlands (earn another 1 – 2g or so, depending on how many nodes you hit), and then do the LA invasion and potentially get another 1g depending on your luck with drops. The average player is likely to be capable of earning that 10g within the 2 weeks of the Living Story. (Acquiring the Heirlooms is likely a more painful grind.)

Prices have gone up, yes, but the ability for players to earn money has also gone up a fair bit.

As for the ultra-wealthy traders who have thousands of gold and simply buy whatever they want when new stuff comes out, well, that’s their prerogative. To be honest though, I think they probably will not value that purchase as much as a player who set out to deliberately grind/earn/farm the item. You feel much more attached to an item that you sweated and bled for than if you just dumped gold on it.

As an example, back in GW1, when the Icy Dragon Sword was first released, I farmed Ice Imps in Mineral Springs for hours before one dropped for me. (Looking back on it now, I was actually extremely lucky.) To this day, I still have that Icy Dragon Sword on my Warrior, because of the special sentimental value I have for it. If I’d simply bought it from some trader, I probably would have dumped it long before now.

videoboy.4162:

Zaxares.5419:

No. The Zodiac weapons were inspired by the weapon set of the same name from GW1:

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Gallery_of_Zodiac_weapons

In GW1, the Zodiac weapons only dropped from 2 Elite dungeons (The Deep, and Urgoz’s Warren).

It looks like the armor artists decided to run with the theme and create armor matching the GW2 Zodiac style as well.

I knew about the Zodiac weapons from GW1. I was just wondering if all of that came from the Celestial stuff in GW1. I just wasn’t sure which one came first. =)

Both the Celestial and Zodiac weapons came with the Canthan GW1 expansion, so they were released at the same time.

Minos.5168:

Then a final cut-scene as we “defeat” Scarlet in which one NPC has the option to kill her or save another NPC. Guess which they’ll choose.

Scarlet will teleport out saying something like “All this chaos has been fun and all, but I’ll leave you to deal with this mess.”

That is what I fully expect on Tuesday.

If I get something more satisfying, I’ll be greatly impressed.

I’ll let that NPC save the other NPC, then WE can kill Scarlet ourselves.

Yeah, I’ve considered that possibility too. However, it’s possible that some of the LA NPCs may have been taken captive and brought to the Breachmaker (for whatever reason. Maybe Scarlet wants more soup?) We may possibly run into Sareb (and maybe Raisin Face and Squooshed Face) in this week’s update.

Actually, there is no Sylvari member of the Captain’s Council, to my knowledge. This must be addressed. Sareb for Captain’s Council! (And I could see Evon sponsoring her, if he’s currently unpopular with the Council for various reasons.)

While I also have misgivings over the consolidation of such large amounts of wealth in the hands of a few, I don’t think it’s a serious problem. Unlike real life, you can’t really buy political or legal influence with in-game gold (since ANet is the one that calls the shots, not the players), and given that any player in the game can go out and generate new supply of gold/items at any time, it’s downright impossible to control even sections of the market. (Especially now that ANet has given us signs that even previously exclusive skins could come back at any time, so even buying up very limited supplies of rare items is no guarantee that you now have a monopoly.)

Theoretically an extremely wealthy player, or a cartel of players, COULD seize control of a niche portion of the market, but I think that if even if they successfully pulled it off, ANet would step in and intervene. This isn’t EVE Online, where such tactics are an accepted, even celebrated, part of the gameplay. I think if the player base became aware that some players were able to control the economy to such an extent, it would harm player trust in the TP, which would be detrimental to the game as players start to use one-to-one trading or off-site markets.

Better hurry too. I think the Magitech armor will be back to normal price in a few hours.

Oof. Glad I bought my Vicious Claws for my Ascended backpieces for around 29 silvers and I’m all done with them.

But in any case, supply is slowly creeping back up to normal levels. Prices are taking a while to return to normal though.

Yep. I expect gem prices to spike this month due to the month long sales, especially on days when popular items like bank/bag/character slots, or the Marjory/Kasmeer weapons go on sale.

There’s 31 days, so I’m fairly confident bank tabs and bag tabs will be among them.

Crossing my fingers for the Viper skin to go on discount. And Transmutation Crystals. I’m running a little low on them.

Hmm, are patches server-specific? For instance, you harvest all the grapes in Tarnished Coast, then guest to Blackgate. Would the grapes still be harvested?

If not, then you could possibly get grapes each time in EotM from that patch as long as it was a different overflow each time.

Esmee.1067:

- Fiercy Greatsword and the likes (Whilrwind, dodging etc.) vs a wall
- Dungeon buying (if the seller used exploits)
- Solo’ing a Dungeon with exploits without selling
- Using ports and portals for non-profit (such as the Dredge Fractals old Mesmer Blink/Portal ‘skip’ which is fixed I believe (ty devs!))
- Reaching area’s that aren’t usually accessable through normal (spacebar) jumping (such as the portals in Fort Trinity)
- The above but as a way to make a boss not much of a threat

1. Probably not an exploit, but definitely not an intended use of the skill either (makes the skill much more powerful than it’s intended to be). Expect ANet to patch this if they get time.

2. Definitely an exploit. The seller can expect a ban if caught. Buyers may also face action.

3. Definitely an exploit, but you’re unlikely to face action since you can only get the rewards from dungeons/Fractals once per day, unless the exploit is particularly bad (e.g. beat the path in less than 5 mins for 1.5 gold).

4. Not an exploit, although the dev’s fix to the Dredge fractal shows that they do not approve of players using portals or “creative jumps” to get around content in dungeons/Fractals. I don’t expect anyone to get banned over this, but use at your own risk.

5. Same as 4.

6. Bugging out bosses by pushing them into areas where they stop attacking, or where they can’t reach you but can still be damaged is definitely an exploit. However, it’s likely that ANet will simply fix this when they get time and not ban people over it, unless they do this to sell paths.