Guild Wars 2

I was just thinking… We all know that the “farm 100 Jorbreakers for a Holographic Wings” is stupid, because you can buy the Wings for much more cheaply on the Trading Post than it would cost to buy 100,000 Zhaitaffies. At the same time, we have a lot of people who are disgruntled that they just can’t seem to get a Jade Weapon ticket no matter how many Coffers/Rich Coffers they open.

So, why not kill two birds with one stone and change/add it so you can trade 100 Jorbreakers for a Jade Weapon ticket? It’s still a tough farming/TP grind to get that many Jorbreakers, but it at least gives players a dedicated path to getting a ticket (and it would help to suck up excess supplies of Zhaitaffies, which will no doubt start to pile up over the next few weeks as people complete their Zhaitasty achievement and there’s no further need for them.

Thoughts?

Penguin.5197:

I could not bring myself to do it. You don’t wanna get the only merchant that sells dragon wings mad

Pfft. Evon Gnashblade has that guy undercut by a ridiculous percentage, and he’s still refusing to lower his prices!

Then again, he IS the only vendor who sells Jorbreakers…

The pinata only contains one measly Zhaitaffy anyway. It’s not worth it, man!

There’s 3 tracks on Soundcloud now, but none of them are the login music that’s currently playing. Hopefully ANet will add that soon too.

It’s just luck. I’ve opened about 70 normal Coffers so far. 1 Risen Knight, no tickets, but a LOT of Taffies and Fireworks.

Haven’t tested them after the patch. Will wait to see what they’re like now before giving my verdict.

It really all boils down to which Moa uses Dash first in the final quarter of the race. Even if the Moa was dead last, using Dash will propel them beyond all the competition because it lasts long enough that they can Dash all the way to the finish line.

One interesting thing to track might be whether this trend is the same across all servers, or whether different moas perform better on different servers. Your results seem to mirror what I was seeing on Tarnished Coast, Danikat, although I only watched about 10 or so races (enough for me to get the achievement).

Vexia.6538:

My friend bought over 10,000 dragon coffers, and got a ticket. 1 Ticket. For more then 160gold worth.

Holy… O.o If that’s true, I’m sure glad that I’m not hunting for a Jade weapon anymore!

I made one character of each race, and I love them all equally. (OK, maybe I have a sliiiight favoritism for my Sylvari. XD)

I only use Prayer to Kormir on days when I have the Condition Remover task for my Daily. XD

kokiman.2364:

Zaxares.5419:

Yep, I’m predicting another ban wave coming for people who exploited this. Be nice if they also got the Moa Race exploiters and the Dragon Ball food exploiters at the same time.

Just a guess.. They won’t ban anyone. Only the guys who exploited the mystic forge thing on a scale.

Oh yes. I only expect the most egregious offenders to be banned, but it will be fairly easy to see who entered Dragon Ball multiple times with a health giving food. Likewise, there’s NO WAY that Moa Race cheaters can claim to be unaware of what they were doing.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

for me, this is a month to farm dragon coffers and sell them quickly on the trading post as fast as much as possible before the prices go down.

I’m not sure prices will go down much more than they already are. People will be buying these all throughout the event to gamble for Jade weapon skins. Almost everyone I know likes these skins, so they’re much more popular than Fused/Sclerite weapons, which should help keep demand high.

If Rich Dragon Coffers gave out a guaranteed skin, then yes, I would have agreed that demand for normal Coffers would have petered out very quickly.

There are some rather promising pipes out in Gendarran Fields…

Save it for future purchases, like the Unlimited Logging Axe.

Heck, I already spent 8000 gems buying 5 Molten Picks and 5 Consortium Sickles. At that kind of rate, 50,000 gems may not last that long!

^ That’s not a nice thing to do to the other 3 players who may be perfectly decent though.

Anyway, if someone’s using abusive language towards me, I just block them, report them, and move on.

I am almost certain Sentinel gear (along with Azurite) will return at some point in the future. If you intend to use them as investments, it’s just a matter of deciding when to collect your profits before they get re-introduced and their prices tumble.

It doesn’t affect me as I bought up enough Sentinel insignia + Azurite only for my own personal crafting needs. I don’t intend to resell them, so what price they become in the future is of no concern to me.

Of the 3 guilds I’m in, one has a population of 80% females to 20% males. The second has a roughly 50:50 ratio, and the third I’m still learning names, but I believe there’s a sizeable female presence there as well (the GL is female).

Female gamers really aren’t that rare anymore. I’m male, by the way.

That would require cluttering up my inventory/bank space with 6+ suits of armor whose skins I like, but I don’t necessarily want to wear for all occasions. The armor wardrobe would allow me to wear what currently suits my mood (say, my CoF set), and if 3 months down the line, I decide I want to switch back to my AC set, I can just pay the Stones cost, instead of either re-crafting the armor from scratch, or lugging it around with me everywhere and taking up 6 valuable inventory slots.

I once proposed a similar system. Basically, you have an armor wardrobe similar to the PvP lockers that you unlock skins in by “displaying” a complete set of armor to it. Once the skin is unlocked, you can re-apply the unlocked skin to your current set of armor at any time by paying Transmutation Stones/Crystals.

This means that the new system works in exactly the same way as the current system, except that the player no longer needs to carry around extra sets of armor with the skins he/she likes. ANet doesn’t lose out on Stone/Crystal sales, armor collectors get to save inventory space, and crafters would probably have a bigger market to sell their wares from people who are trying to complete their wardrobes.

A similar wardrobe for weapons could also be introduced under this system.

Tengu, Krait/Naga and Skritt would be my picks, although I wouldn’t mind Centaurs either. I like playing unusual and novel races and trying to get into their mindset.

Hammerguard could have phrased it more tactfully, but he’s basically right. ANet did this as a thank you to the people who have contributed to their revenue above and beyond what they paid to purchase the game in the first place. I understand how it might seem unfair to someone who’s sunk enormous amounts of time into the game, but one type of player is more valuable to ANet than the other, and this is reflected in their action.

And this is why I am a staunch supporter of weapon tickets becoming tradable.

Wow, it’s only 20 silver on the TP right now. O.o Maybe I SHOULD pick one up and make the Colossus when it’s fixed, just because I can.

Nice work, Dejara! Now we just need to start players singing this song in LA.

They acted for Crystalline Dust because it was needed in so many high level recipes. Having Dust be so prohibitively expensive was hurting a lot of players from being able to do what they wanted to do. In contrast, Silver Doubloons are pretty much only in such demand for crafting the Juggernaut. I imagine they will also change it eventually, but it may be a while yet.

Yep, I’m predicting another ban wave coming for people who exploited this. Be nice if they also got the Moa Race exploiters and the Dragon Ball food exploiters at the same time.

I like the way ANet structured the reward for the wings, although I do think 100,000 Zhaitaffies is still excessive. I’d have put it at 10 Jorbreakers for the Wings, not 100. It’s still a grind, but it’s a grind that’s totally achievable if you farmed taffies for the month and purchased them for cheap.

Liavain Axon.1972:

Yes, but they are still wing skins

What I am trying to imply is that there are multiple ways to get things, even if they are not exactly the item you wish. Many people say the Candy wings look inferior to the Achievement wings. The point is, they are wings.

You sound like you are taking my post as being anti-player. Far from it. I am poking fun at both sides of the argument by showing how both sides are wrong.

I still think Anet is acting horribly like a money-grubbing company taking advantage of those who desire the skins they have advertised. While the wings have alternative ways of obtaining them, the weapon skins are still a lotto.

Your example falls kinda flat though. I can see the point you’re trying to make, but that would be like telling players who want to get a Jade Greatsword that they should just get a Priory Greatsword instead. “Hey, they’re both swords, they’re both green, and they both have crystals! They’re practically the same!”

Obviously, they’re not. They have vastly different aesthetics which may or may not suit what a player is trying to go for on their character.

We are agreed on the distasteful RNG approach for the weapon tickets, at least.

Yeah, I ended up with a 1g net profit by the time I got the achievement. I would have considered myself lucky just to break even, so I decided to quit while I was ahead. XD

Don’t listen to MagiKarp! Motti, Monna and Mork are the true moneymakers! Meep is a sham of a racer who has brought nothing but disappointment to me, and shame to his family. :P

Definitely support tickets (for all previous Living Story content too) becoming tradable on the TP.

Prices are still fairly high right now due to people buying them for the achievement. Give it a week, and I predict they will crash to about 5 copper (or less), because all the savvy players will have realised that it’s much, MUCH cheaper to buy the Holo Wings outright from the TP than it is to buy up Zhaitaffy for Jorbreakers.

I went to a quieter zone (Fields of Ruin) to farm my Holograms. Barely any competition, and the few people I did run into were all nice enough for people to gather before activating the Holograms. To make sure I did tag the mobs, I dropped Lava Font on the Hologram before activating it. (Note that Lava Font by itself isn’t enough to kill the mobs.)

I do agree that 100,000 pieces of Zhaitaffy is excessive, but prices for Zhaitaffy have been falling ever since the event started. Within a week or two, I imagine you’ll find that it’s sunk so much that you could buy them for 5 copper (or less) each.

You can also just buy the Holographic Dragon Wings outright on the TP. It’s currently sitting around 30g, which is actually MUCH cheaper than it would be to buy up Zhaitaffies or Jorbreakers to exchange for the Wings. Again, as the event goes on and more supply gets introduced into the game, you can expect prices to fall further.

Finally, the Moa Races are actually a cleverly disguised gold sink. The odds are weighted in such a manner that over time, for every 50 silver you spend, you’re only winning back 44 silver. It is there to leech money away from wealthy players; the minis are there only to lure people into using it. The smart thing to do is to stay away from the Moa Races altogether, or to only spend what you can afford to lose.

Because the Races are here to stay permanently, if you’re after the achievement, you can get it sometime down the line when you do have the money to drop on it, so don’t sweat trying to get it now.

I just found myself a fairly quiet map (Fields of Ruin), worked out a run path and went between each Hologram killing them as they came up. Sometimes another player would join me, and I’d wait for them to reach the node before activating it. As a Staff Ele, all I really needed to do to tag the group was drop Lava Font on the node before activating it.

Ended up with 79 Hologram Kills, 69 Zhaitaffies and 41 Coffers for about an hour and a half of farming. And I was still taking time out to do my Daily while doing it. At this rate, I’ll have completed the achievement in 4 days, and with some nice loot for my trouble too.

Motti is ma boi! Monna scores pretty well on a frequent basis too, so I swap between her and Motti sometimes.

Meep is a sham. He has brought nothing but disappointment to me and shame to his racing family. >:( Back to the ranch with you, boy!

I also noticed that Mork (the Black Moa) always seems to win whenever he shows up.

It’s the first/second day of Dragon Bash. Everybody will be busy gobbling up the new content. Give it a few days to a week and I imagine people will start filtering back into the old zones.

I sometimes get this bug too. It’s extremely annoying. I suspect it’s somehow linked to time lag between you and the server where the server doesn’t register that you’ve clicked on a new, closer target before activating your skill.

Yeah, it happened a couple times to me last night too. All I can recommend at this point is waiting until the person is done before starting your smashing.

Sousui.1635:

What you SHOULD be asking is why an achievement is tied to something that requires lots of money!

While I agree with the general sentiment that making an achievement linked to spending money is somewhat distasteful, if the achievements for Dragon Bash function similarly to Last Stand at Southsun, I imagine you can still progress the achievement for Moa Racing even after Dragon Bash is over, since the activity is a permanent addition to the game. You can thus just drop 50 silver on it when and where you have the savings to do it, and are not compelled to do it now. (Unless you want the exclusive mini.)

Report the players who are exploiting the system so ANet can bring the banhammer down on them.

(And it’s not like they can claim they didn’t know what they were doing either. They were deliberately hindering the other moas from winning so their entry could win!)

Chrispy.5641:

Yeah,…Okay, tell that to the many thousands of people that were running around with Zodiac weapons weapons in Guild Wars Factions and all the Green weapons after that because they were the coolest looking weapons at the time.

And fast forward to Nightfall, and hardly anybody were using Zodiac weapons anymore. Why? Because the novelty of the Zodiac weapons had worn off, more people had them now, and thus the players who originally went with them because they were the most expensive weapon sets had to find a new expensive set to show off with. (Which happened to be Tormented Weapons. Even now, after GW1 has all but shut down, you still see lots of players, who coincidentally tend to be wearing Obsidian armor and Chaos Gloves, using them. Does the price factor of Tormented Weapons have a role in that? I’m sure it does…)

Chrispy.5641:

I think you need to play a few more online games, or games in general, and then maybe you will realize why the most awesome looking weapons are the hardest to find, because almost anyone who finds it will sell it to the person who wants it most, or is going to equip it regardless of how many other people have it.

“Awesome looking” is subjective. For instance, I have zero interest in any of the current Legendaries, because none of them fit the aesthetics I have in mind for my characters. (A grim, gothic, Grenth-worshipping Necromancer using Bifrost? Seriously??) In my opinion, the Legendaries are TOO extravagant, almost flippant. I much prefer weapon sets that are beautiful while looking functional, such as the Ceremonial weapons or Lionguard weapons.

Sounds like it might be linked to the upcoming Dragon Bash events (or a future Living Story release). Wait a week and see what happens.

People have listed lots of good suggestions above. It’s worth noting that, until you start adventuring frequently in level 80 zones, your income will be nowhere near the levels people are quoting. As a (very) slow player myself who’s still getting his characters through the level 25 – 40 zones, expect your income to be in coppers with the occasional silver. Once you reach level 80 zones, however, you’ll start getting loot that, on average, is worth anywhere from 75 coppers to 2 silver. Fine crafting materials dropped from mobs sell for 20+ silver. And chances for Rares/Exotics increase, meaning you’ll get the occasional pleasant surprise that can net you Ectos or a gold or more (if you get a valuable Exotic, or one with an expensive rune/sigil).

Even if you’re going through a level 80 zone casually, I imagine you’ll earn enough in drops to earn a minimum of 50 silver to 1 gold a day. Dedicated farming can earn you much more.

In short, at level 42, don’t worry too much about money. Your expenditures at that level shouldn’t be in the range of gold.

Ah, so it’s not reachable as yet? Good. Saves me time of running all my characters to unlock it. XD

The Holographic Wings can be bought/sold on the TP. The Shattered Holographic Wings are account bound and can only be acquired by completing 10 of the Dragon Bash achievements.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Female charr merchant “Yes?” and “What?”, mainly because the bank NPC in LA is one of them.

“Yes?”
“What?”
“The Legion calls.”
“What?”
“What?”
“Yes?”
“The Legion calls.”

Occasionally interrupted by Mr “How interesting…” Asura when he walks into the mess and I talk to him by accident.

Huh, so it was an exploit after all. And here I thought this was a nice move on ANet’s part to make Exotic minis more affordable. :/ (Not that I’m a mini collector at any rate. I was just going to inform a friend of mine who is one that now would be a good time to finish her collection.)

I’m sitting at 178 Laurels now. I’m reserving 75 of them to buy Karmic Infusions for my characters (but I’m also waiting to see if ANet introduces new ways to craft/forge Ascended items). The rest I’m saving to convert into Heavy Crafting Bags for when I start T6 crafting or to convert into Unid’ed Dyes for sale. (At current prices, that’s about 1.5 gold for 5 Laurels. Not bad at all.)