Guild Wars 2

Religious arguments aside, I can sympathize with the OP’s sentiment that it’s frustrating that the TP PvP minigame is actually the far and away most (potentially) profitable way to play GW2.

I don’t know how to fix that, or even change it. But it is frustrating.

Couple thoughts: first, economics is definitely more of an art than a science. One of its base assumptions – people will act in their own interest – isn’t even true all the time. And, it’s generally impossible to study in a real-world sense because 1) there are about a billion variables, including a bunch you didn’t realize and weren’t measuring, and 2) it involves huge numbers of people and you can’t really do good experiments to prove results in that sort of setting. So all “real” economics is just theory. And there are many different theories and perspectives and most of them are just as impossible to prove as any other one. Sort of like another area of study…

Second: wow: spirited arguments. I think the sort of discussion that always pops up re: economics in this game just leads more support to my theory that economics is actually a religion and not a science.

As I said before, I am SO HAPPY for all of you who are so amazingly good at the game that something as “trivial” as having a difficult time getting to the top of the bazaar is a cause for scorn. You all win the internet. Congratulations. Please: post more screen shots and tell me more about how I’m wrong and how I should quit the game because I am not as good as you. I’m sure your comments will convince me and win you double the internet in prizes.

Thanks, nekodoken, for being a human being. And thanks for the actual help, hidden amongst the rudeness, that you can get a lightning pull and use it to get across that first air jump part. I’ll use that advice for sure if I ever try to get an alt up there, since I still occasionally miss the jump (again: from someone who got 40 crystals and did the gryphon nest jumping puzzle in one try).

Other than the server glitching during lightning pulls, I think my main complaint would have gone away if you couldn’t die on the air jump tutorial area. Like the sun dash part (and yes, you can fall off that, too), where if you fall you just take damage and can start over, it would have been much less annoying if the punishment for missing a brand new interaction in the game was not death. Given how much ground you lose and the monetary penalty of the waypoint fee, failing this multiple times initially turned me off to the whole content – which was completely unnecessary and could have been a lot less frustrating with a simple change. This was my entire point (which predictably was ignored). Jumping puzzles are fine. Jumping for achievements is fine. Jumping puzzles to access normal content is frustrating.

My personal story choices were “white stag” and “all things have a right to grow.” Given that nearly all I previously knew about Caithe was that she spearheaded the desire to get the “gang” back together, in all the interactions I had she seemed kind-hearted and nurturing. I was pretty shocked in “white stag” when she murdered a defeated prisoner even after having beaten them to coerce their help. My character all but begged her to let them go - especially after having given word that they would - but she just up and murdered them. Later, she stood by while my character fought a duel to the death (one I didn't want to end in death and I was also frustrated there was no choice in this). I’m sure her story gets brighter from there, and her dungeon probably helps develop her much further, but it’s a dark, dark place to start. (I’ve since learned that the dungeon is “set” before the beginning of Act 2, story-wise, so I’m guessing she undergoes some major changes that turn her around. Seeing it in reverse was just shocking because I didn’t know how far she’d gone.)

In “right to grow,” the twins are insufferable not just because of the writing, but because they approach the world like 6 year olds. Maybe it’s actually good writing – maybe they are actually 6 – but this is the strongest example of “youthful” being usurped by “childlike” in a negative connotation. They are the best examples so far of how the more cartoonish traits of the Nightmare Court seem justifiable. Similarly, Caithe’s example (since I sort of know the general outline of her story) is one of pure selfishness.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

…Lore about Kiel and Gnashblade is introduced not in the game but on a website… not very accessible.

Sure, people who invest extra time to gather lore together from various sources (website, books, occasional npc chatter —> youtube,…) will get their full experience. It’s sad that the writers who create this stuff have no ingame-platform to spread the stories to the players playing the game.

People who have played jewels like Baldurs Gate have to wonder how that game had looked like if all the decent ingame-lore would have been on websites.

Chadramar.8156:

Agreement from me as well. Everything we need to know about current and past stories should be available in-game. Having to go outside of the game irritates me because it smacks of laziness and a lack of concern for immersion — there’s just a colossal difference between my character learning something from an in-game source and me having to google the same information….

This is a really interesting point, but I believe this just isn’t the way the world works anymore, and it’s not how this game works, either. Keep in mind that both the devs and the target market for this game are pretty much all people under 30 (Did you see the dev Halloween picture? Babies! And who has the time to really play MMOs? People without as many responsibilities.). They don’t even publicize information about their game on their own website for the most part: it’s distributed between reddit, facebook, twitter, their forums, other forums, and interviews given out to a huge random bunch of sites (and probably other places). That’s because the walls between different ways to distribute and gather information don’t exist for them, partially because the walls that separate “official” or verified information from speculation and gossip are being torn down (especially online) all in the name of speed of access. For people under 30 (and especially under 22) I don’t think there is much difference between getting information online and offline, because it all flows together constantly. Take the rude retort to the original comment about “why can’t you just alt tab” – this person is probably serious about why you can’t just alt-tab. They probably honestly have no idea why that is immersion breaking because for them: it isn’t. And they can’t even imagine a perspective where it would be. Their game world exists both inside and outside the game in the same way that “being connected” happens both when you’re online and when you’re not.

I think modern games have come to accept the idea that their game does not exist solely within the game itself. Some have really played with this idea further, but even simple games still have FAQs and videos and fan sites and a huge plethora of out-of-game information which is all still a part of the whole experience of playing the game. I mean take these forums: some people come to the forums while they’re at work because they can’t play the game any other way while they’re at work. Using the forums is just another way of participating in the game. And in the end, isn’t the game actually richer because of all this? Isn’t it actually a bonus that there are so many ways to feel and participate in the game even when you’re not playing, and so many layers to what is available for you? And GW2 is one of the most modern, forward-thinking games I’ve ever participated in when it comes to having a more “distributed” view of how the world works, or how their game works, and as I said before I have to think it’s due in no small part to the fact that their team and talent are so young. That’s the new generation. The information is more spread out and harder to access but also more rich. It’s less “deeply immersive” but at the same time “more shallow immersive.” Less deep, more rich. Think about how google works: there is only one layer of information. But it has everything.

I’m sure I’ve waxed far too philosophical for most people on these boards but it’s ok: they won’t read a post this long anyway. This is really directed toward those who actually know what Baldur’s Gate is and how alt-tabbing could possibly break someone’s immersion.

This feature is really awesome. The only thing that makes it less awesome is that it should have been implemented at launch. But whatever, at least we’re getting it now!

How long are most games? (I’ve never played it.) If they are typically 10 minutes and you can score ~100 points a game, that’s still over 4 hours of constant game time. If you get closer to 50 points a game, like apparently anyone who hasn’t gone online and read the tip that you actually want to NOT try to win in order to do well (which is completely counter-intuitive), that’s over 8 hours. Even 4 hours is actually somewhat high compared to other minigame-based achievements. Even the forever-taking sprinting minigame from the last release took about 3.5 hours.

I don’t think the developers have “huge egos” or something, or they are begging people to do their content. I think they just picked a big number and didn’t stop to think about how long that could actually take someone to achieve. Or they did stop to think about it, but they figured 3-4 hours of grinding a minigame is ok for an achievement, and didn’t figure that most people would take much longer. Or they also think ~8 hours of grinding is also ok. To be fair: none of these options are that much better.

Like others have said, you can probably knock out nearly every other achievement for the meta in the time it would take you to get this one. I’d avoid it, same as all other “grind this minigame over and over way past the point where you hate it” achievements.

I hadn’t tried a sylvari personal story before, so I recently began one. Before this, my impression of the sylvari was that they were typically wide-eyed and excitable, good by nature (thanks to their guiding principles set down on a tablet by centaur Moses and delivered on high to their birthing tree), but otherwise reserved and above all, curious. This seemed completely in line for a race that was so young and new to the world. Most of my impressions were formed by being in their city, the one tortured soul in Destiny’s Edge, seeing a few around the world, and that was about it. (Trahearne doesn’t count to me because he is written far more like a human than a sylvari. His race is an afterthought, as opposed to part of his identity.) Because of all this, the Nightmare Court, with their completely cartoonish levels of over-the-top “bad guy” acting and emoting seemed even more ridiculous than any other of the “evil twin” race enemies.

What I’ve learned since doing most of “Act 1” of a sylvari personal story is that sylvari are actually rash, unforgiving, and cruel – and those are the ones still connected to the dream! What I took for youthful idealism is actually much darker: more of an infantile selfishness. In this light, the Nightmare Court – even with their hilarious and wild overacting – seem much more like actual counterparts to the already drama-stricken sylvari. It’s honestly a good thing centaur Moses came along and delivered his less-than-ten commandments, because otherwise I have to assume the entire race would be borderline evil.

Listening to sylvari in the world, however, you still don’t really get any of this. And so the disconnect is still there. I can’t tell if this is just really bad writing on the part of the personal story, or if there was just a complete disconnect between the personal story writing team and the “world” writing team (acknowledged by Anet to be different teams).

Do some of the more experienced sylvari lore masters have a better view? (For what it’s worth, I’ve not completed the story mode of the main sylvari dungeon, so I don’t know how the callous Caithe’s story turns out.)

This will never, ever be fixed – why bother now that most players are done with it? – but having just gone back and started a few new characters and playing the personal story again, it reminds me of what was probably the biggest letdown for me in GW2: the personal story. Partially this is because I was looking forward to it the most: I was so ready for another Dragon Age: Origins, and I feel like we really didn’t get anything like that. I honestly don’t even mind the individual story sections that much – although many are bland and >95% are just some variation on “kill everything here” – but the thing that I am reminded disappointed me the most was the complete lack of continuity between sections of the story. Not only does this result in silly immersion-breakers like having a character say “nice to meet you” after completing multiple missions together (lazy programming), but the core problem is having lots of NPCs get introduced, developed, and then disappear off the face of Tyria. Humans get a best buddy… who they never see again. The charr are the worst: first, you go out of your way to build a warband, and then you meet your father, and then: none of them are ever seen or heard from again. I mean, come on! With the billions of data points that get tracked in this game, you couldn’t just have a couple of extra NPCs show up in the “home” area and say hello? Not even that? (It’s not like you can’t STILL do that: it’s just a few variable checks and some text! You don’t even need new art or VO!) Not being able to customize the home instance has always been another issue and this would help with that, too.

Not to mention that once the story shifts after Act 1 into “Trahearne’s personal story,” which is another issue in and of itself, it would have really dampened the blow of finding out “it’s not actually about you” if you could still have some of your friends or relatives from earlier around to throw a few odd comments around. How cool would it have been to see your buddy or your warband at Fort Trinity? How much more of an impact would it be to have someone there with you from the beginning see it through to the end (and not just everyone from Act 3 only)? They wouldn’t even have to go on missions with you (for whatever reason). Just having them stand around and occasionally comment in text would have been awesome. Just having them not disappear off the face of the planet would have been enough.

The story itself isn’t that bad, and I don’t even hate the voice acting – certainly good enough for a video game (not everyone can be Bioware). But I feel like it could have been a lot better with minimal effort. And so, going back and playing from the beginning again, I still feel disappointed.

It does take about 3.5 hrs to get the achievement.

Catharsis.8571:

I’d imagine thakittens a video file. Replaying the cutscene in 3d won’t be practical… as it would require having the map saved in game files for the sole purpose of interacting with the object… which is inefficient use of hard disc space.
The crappy resolution could be an effort to reduce the video’s size on your hard drive… but yes it does look pretty bad.

I believe this is correct. (Although to be fair, the map is already on our hard drives; I doubt they delete those files when the content is gone. I think it’s a matter of keeping it on their servers.)

This is pretty much my point. I’m glad you’re so good at the game that you don’t even think of getting to the top of the bazaar as a jumping puzzle. I’m not talking about people like you. I’m also not interested in debating the semantics of “jumping puzzle.” The way I am using it, if you have to jump around and the penalty for failing a jump is death, that’s pretty much a jumping puzzle. If it offends you to hear something so “simple” called a jumping puzzle, then please find/replace “jumping puzzle” with “tricky jumps that cause death when you miss them” in my post. The message is the same.

Gold sink. Also, because that way you can buy the election. (Just like real life!)

I have really enjoyed the Bazaar and the subsequent “campaigns,” and the area itself is very fun and interesting. I hope it sticks around. My only real complaint is that I do not like it when general content is locked behind a jumping puzzle.

To be clear: I have no problem with jumping achievements and even jumping rewards. I’m also no slouch at jumping puzzles, so it isn’t that I can’t do any of the simpler ones. (I even got 40 sky crystals, which I have no issue with either.)

What I mean is that you cannot reach the top of the bazaar or cast any votes without first completing a jumping puzzle. When the content first started, I died multiple times on the first “air” jump (something I still do occasionally) and gave up. It was days before I bothered to go back (after reading more about it online) and I found the content to be MUCH more enjoyable once I’d finally gotten the second waypoint.

I took some time off GW2 and missed a few events, so I don’t know how often this happens. But it reminds me of the Mad King’s dungeon way back in October, and how the boss fight itself was a huge jumping puzzle, and how frustrating that was. The dev response at the time was basically: oh, we didn’t realize it was a jumping puzzle. I have to think this attitude hasn’t changed. My impression is that the content designers – who are probably so good at jumping puzzles they can do them in their sleep – don’t even think about minor jumping challenges as jumping puzzles. But they are. (I’d suggest anything that requires jumping and punishes you with death is a jumping puzzle.) And while clearly “jumping puzzle” is one of the core philosophies of GW2 game design, like PvP and dungeon running, it’s frustrating when content that is supposed to be for everyone is locked behind one, as “simple” as it may seem. Just like some people don’t PvP or play dungeons, not everyone wants to do jumping puzzles.

Otherwise I’m loving it and I’m interested in seeing more of the Living World design!

It pretty much just comes down to whether or not you think competition-based achievements are a good idea or not.

Fortunately, I’ve yet to see Anet create a meta achievement or reward where it was impossible to complete without participating in a competition-based achievement. Sometimes you have to do nasty jumping puzzles (its own problem), but technically nothing requires you to PvP (and this race is ultimately just another form of PvP) to get a reward. I hope they continue this trend.

Gems will get there. As John’s comment cryptically said, over the life cycle of an MMO the total amount of in-game currency simply rises. Whether it’s because more people are playing and generating gold, or the game becomes easier for those playing, or they introduce more / better / easier ways to make gold: it doesn’t matter. More people have more gold now than when the game came out. Therefore, gem prices are higher (or worse – however you want to look at it).

The one constant is that if you look at the graph of gold for gems over time, it pretty much just goes up. Slowly, but up. Eventually, 100 gems will get you 5 gold. It may be two years, but it will get there (barring a massive change in how the game is run).

Pixelpumpkin.4608:

That’s good to know.

Why the only official response is posted on reddit and not here is anyone’s guess.

Completely agreed.

skullmount.1758:

Why the kitten would we want to support the kitten RNG money boxes anymore?

This pretty much sums it up for me. If you hate having more RNG in your RNG, and you’d rather do something than has a 100% chance to save money instead of a .0000000000001% chance of making you money, supporting the BL chests is a horrible idea.

Down with those awful chests! Oh, and whatever, something about politics.

Re: time-gated content, I really like this idea. This it the first step toward a crafting system that actually involves crafting things that you can use, instead of just being an XP-gaining system that costs gold. The idea is that if you can only make 1/day, that will artificially keep the rarity of an item high – thus not making it instantly useless and cheap on the trading post. In other words, instead of something immediately selling for 90%-102% of the cost of the mats, you might actually be able to sell it for a profit. (Well, until the system has been around long enough, and the “price” of “one day” gets determined to be about 5 silver or whatever.)

Or, they can keep all the best stuff account-bound, which is fine by me, too – it just drives up the cost of the mats. But I doubt they’ll force anyone to craft – I’m betting there will be other ways to get the gear – but it’d be nice to have crafting rewarded for those who enjoy it.

WoW did the same thing with its crafting, for what that’s worth.

Wonderful news. Enough to get me to take another look at the game after months of inactivity. In particular I’m very happy to hear about magic find on gear going away and new crafting that actually means something (and isn’t only a money sink). The legendary/precursor news is welcome too, if only because it will reduce the total amount of complaints overall.

If they could somehow keep the trading post / economy of the game from continuing the “rich get richer” theme, I’d be even more happy.

Edit: Oh, and champions dropping things that are worthwhile also sounds awesome!

4. economy: 2. Pure capitalism isn’t fun for most people. The rich get richer and the TP is more profitable than all other gameplay. This isn’t something that can be “fixed,” though: you’d have to throw out the entire model and start over. If the question is, “do they adhere to the pure capitalism model they’ve created,” the answer is more like 7.

5. bugs: 5. This number will never go below 5 because they are always going to be focused more on new content than bug fixing, and all new content introduces new bugs. It’s still a pretty amazing effort, though.

Midnightjade.3520:

I’m working on a Legendary, and so am karma farming and doing world completion. … If I have time after daily completion, I run a dungeon since I need tokens for Legendary as well and it also factors into the monthly. Then I log out.

Total time in the game: 45 minutes (no dungeon) to 1.5 hours with dungeon). It’s efficient and fun. I wish I had more time to just hang out, and I do that at the weekends, but during the week it’s all about setting goals. Otherwise the legendary will never get done.

First, you are pretty amazing at being able to get all that stuff done in 45 minutes. Maybe if I practiced at it like you clearly have I could get close, but just doing the daily alone typically takes me over an hour, and that’s ignoring everything else.

Second, when the game becomes more about checking off boxes on a list and maximizing your efficiency, that’s when it’s no longer fun for me. I’m glad it’s still fun for you, but that’s just not a game to me anymore.

Key were a terrible purchase since the beginning of the game. Sadly, it took the Halloween event for a lot of people to realize just how horrid the odds really are. Fortunately, most people aren’t foolish enough to fall for that again.

Eviator.9746:

I guess the people who log in once every few days don’t care about ascended items, and are happy with their exotics.

I wouldn’t say that.

I would say: people who log in once every few days realize that ascended items were not made for them, and they will probably never get them. Kind of like legendaries: there’s just no point.

Of course it’d be nice and they’d love to have them: but they’re end-game grindy content that takes months of grind to achieve. People who don’t log in as often probably aren’t interested in that aspect of them.

Kraggy.4169:

arabeth.2361:

Who programmed this game? Why in the world would getting a party invite kick you from a dungeon?

It doesn’t, as was made clear in posts above yours, if you cared to read them .. GETTING an invite doesn’t kick you.

And in like 50 other posts it was stated it did. Your point?

I honestly do hope that is correct, though: otherwise, that’s almost as bad as the party leader leaving a dungeon causing every other person to get kicked (as opposed to… maybe making someone else the party leader?).

Vol.5241:

they don’t want to make the sacrifices that the rich make.

LOL!

Mesket: Actually, I think it would be possible to adjust some of that TP PvP stuff downwards… Doing things like limiting TP listings to, say, 50/day, and never introducing items that make TP posting faster/easier (like I think they are doing/have done) would help. Making the maximum TP value 999 instead of 9999 would certainly set an upper limit on profit margins as well (although 9999 is at least something). Basically anything that allows fast, quick, or easy profits on the TP increases the value of TP PvP, but you could tune those down quite a bit without affecting anyone who just uses the TP as an actual trading post.

John Smith.4610:

I have to make the argument that your deals are coming at the expense of another player. You are arguing against market efficiency because you want to exploit other people easier, I don’t agree that’s a positive goal for the game overall (though I make no judgement about personal goals).

I have to make the argument that this is exactly how the TP already works, all the time. You call it “market efficiency” but it’s really just “he who knows what the deals are, wins.” I don’t personally agree with the person you’re responding to, but you’re trying to attack his point by holding up the gold standard model of what his point is already about. He is simply asking that the market be easier for him to play – as opposed to the people who play the market now.

Mesket has a good point. There are two games here: the MMO, and the day-trading mini-game (TP PvP). It’s become abundantly clear that being good at one yields far superior results than being good at the other, and they really don’t have much in common. It’s frustrating when you’re no good at TP PvP. You’ll never get the kind of gear / fun items / whatever that people who are good at it will get, no matter how long you play the rest of the game. Certainly the “play however you want” quote gets abused too much on this forum, but ultimately there is only one effective way to acquire end-game gear, and that’s by playing John Smith’s economic mini-game.

Malediktus: The person having the wet dream is John Smith. Seriously, the guy loves pure capitalism. I, personally, was never a real fan, but this game has taught me that I will not enjoy another pure capitalism-based game again.

Who programmed this game? Why in the world would getting a party invite kick you from a dungeon?

Red Falcon: It’s my understanding that TP PvP is the only supported method of gaining gold in this game; anything else is falling behind/wasting time. Or at least, TP PvP is thousands of times more profitable, and the top 1-5% richest players made most of their money on the TP. I’m pretty sure “doing it wrong” means “playing the game” instead of PvPing on the Trading Post.

OP: Most days I don’t have time to log in (it’s nice to see others saying the same!). When I do, I usually have time to play one or two personal story missions on alts – that’s the main thing I’m pursuing these days. I’m really enjoying all the “Act 1s” from each race, and I’m trying to decide which I like best enough to double-up races so I can have one character of each class. (Humans have some of the best stories so far!) I’m also impressed by everyone who talked about doing dailies in 20-30 mins; that’s 1 to 1 1/2 hours for me, easily. Most days I get to play that doesn’t happen, since my max play time is typically about an hour. Sometimes on the odd Saturday I can get two or three, but I don’t have time to play much on weekends, either.

In the past, I’ve tried to focus on dailies, but when that takes about an hour or more and that’s 100% of the time you have to play, that becomes a very boring, very painful way to play the game quite quickly. (I’m a little sad that all this new, cool end-game gear requires dailies – but to be fair, I’m obviously not their target player for that gear.) I’ve also focused on other goals like: getting my main to 80 (yay!), completing the personal story (yay!), and getting all professions to 400 (3/8 so far). I’ve also tried making money, but that is equally as painful and boring since that pretty much means grinding Orr (gets old after a couple days) or TP PvP, which I’m spectacularly bad at (and thus, the game). I don’t usually have time for dungeons (also see: 1 hr max), and my fractal level is also 2. I’ve never had more than 30g in my life, and I’ve played since pre-launch.

All told, I’m having a great time with the game, although I’m undoubtedly playing it wrong. Sometimes I get caught up in the fact that I’ll never be able to afford stuff that requires gems or some of the cool end-game gear, and that’s a little depressing, but frankly I don’t even know what stats are particularly useful for pretty much any of my characters anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. And I’m in a great casual guild that is very fun, and I don’t foresee running out of interesting content for quite some time. My future goals include getting 100% map completion on a character, and running every dungeon at least once.

Skyrim is a bad example, since making money in Skyrim doesn’t affect other people’s playing of Skyrim.

Two things:

You can’t res the same NPC (and presumably the same character) more than once for credit. Only the first time counts. I assume this is to stop exactly this sort of trick.

Given Anet’s hyper-random sensitivity to exploits, I wouldn’t do this. This is the sort of thing that they may never care about, or that might get you permabanned. There’s no way to know.

It is just you.

Every time someone comes to the forums and posts this: it’s just them, too.

I think this entire thread sums up one of the two things I like least about this game. In order to do well, you really shouldn’t “play” it – at least, not in the traditional sense (jumping puzzles, WvW, dungeons, PvP, story, grinding, whatever). The people who do the “best” in the game (which is subjective – but certainly the people with the most purchasing power, which is objective) are the ones playing the TP pvp game. It can be frustrating to be particularly bad at TP pvp and know that it makes me worse, relatively, as opposed to just being bad at playing the game, which seems more palatable. The main consolation prize is that most progression is horizontal, but there’s still a false premise generally being sold: that skill or time or effort playing the game is rewarding. TP pvp is far more rewarding with less time or effort by an evidently wide margin. And even horizontal progression is still intended progression: and still purchasing power reigns supreme.

Of course, an end-game that consisted of high-end raiding (as opposed to TP pvp and gambling, the other major form of progression) was something I didn’t care for much, either, so maybe it’s all relative in the end. But it’s just packaged differently enough that it seems disingenuous to my Western tastes.

You can take the tinfoil hat off. Random is just random. Sorry about your streak of bad luck.

Sorry, forgot the other most important thing I expected to receive: a title. The in-game cutscenes even specifically mention giving you a title (and not just “Commander,” but something long and frilly), but you never actually get it. I assumed this was bug.

If I can get a title for carving like 25 pumpkins, surely spending 3 1/2 months is worth something? And unlike the other (needed) changes, this won’t unbalance anything in the economy.

I love this activity in theory. In practice, it’s FAR too long. It takes about an hour to complete one game, and as others have said, you’re working with 4 other random strangers who are probably not talking to you. It would be a lot more fun with friends, and the length might not even be as bad (more like a dungeon).

I think it’s balanced for PUGs, which is nice, although the un-changed achievement is nearly impossible – glad to hear it’s being changed to basically just winning. Overall, it’s probably the weakest event in Wintersday, but that’s still high praise since this is the best event so far!

Yet another person coming to the forums to complain about spending all their money on gambling and not winning anything.

If this frustrates you: STOP SPENDING MONEY on that stuff. That’s the only way you can win OR affect Anet’s decisions.

There was some sort of chest?

When I spoke to Tixx (in LA) I just had stuff automatically in my inventory. The total rewards were: a funny-looking (but useless, stat-wise) back piece, a 15-slot bag, and three “unsafe” gifts (which were all weapon skins). If there was anything else I don’t remember it.

It was a pretty major launch promise that hasn’t been mentioned since. I know it’s much more profitable for them to spend time making new content, but I wish they’d actually go back and do the things that were promised when the game was announced, like guesting and having your home instance not be static.

I had a great time with the personal story, even with all its poor Alzheimer-suffering characters (oh, it’s that guy I spent 4 missions and some close moments with, and now he’s… happy to meet me…). But the end rewards are still far too low, even with the update that updated the treasure bags to “probably not blues” and gave one extra unique rare.

Here’s what you get:
- 1000 guild influence (nice! Now that’s what I’m talking about!)
- 1-2 WvW siege plans (Wv… huh? That’s a different part of the game.)
- an account-bound token for a unique weapon skin (not too shabby, although – rare items? Really? Not even one exotic?)
- 3 “treasure bags” that contain 3 random junk greens and probably a .0000001% chance at something better (lol, lol, lol, oh wait you’re serious?)
- lots of XP and maybe some tiny amount of copper I didn’t notice (not really worth anything)

The personal story took me about three and a half months to complete. The main problem is that I also participated in an event that took 3 and a half hours to complete, and it gave two junk rares and two junk exotics (with a tiny, maybe 1% chance to get a precursor worth 400g). That is a bit of a disparity. The personal story takes a long, long time and pretty much requires a max-level character, and it can only be done once per character. Where is the danger in upping the reward to the point where you feel like the reward was even close to the effort you put in?

Personally, I think the level of reward should be more along the lines of: one account-bound token for an account-bound precursor of your choice. It actually makes a lot of sense because then the personal story would be required for a legendary as well (it currently is not, unlike almost all other parts of the game) and people wouldn’t be going nuts over precursors anymore. I know they serve an important function (massive gold sink) but it still seems like that’s the level of reward it deserves. I will be quite surprised if the promised “scavenger hunt” for precursors takes more time and effort than the personal story.

Here is more like what I would have expected:

- 1000 guild influence
- an account-bound token for a precursor
- 3 “treasure bags” that contain 2 random junk rares and 1 random exotic
- lots of XP and maybe some tiny amount of copper I didn’t notice

And honestly what would have made the most sense, even ignoring the precursor stuff:
- an exotic weapon of your choice, with stats of your choice
- two exotic trinkets with stats of your choice
- 3 treasure bags with random rares or exotics
- guild influence and XP/gold

I just don’t see how this would have imbalanced the game. And obviously implementing it now would require a huge one-time shipment of rares/exotics/precursors out to all the people who’ve finished the story, and that would have some short-term ramifications to the economy – but it would recover, just like it did after the karka event.

Seriously, the ending of the story is great, but the loot is really, really terrible. Even post-fix.

You were just really, really, really lucky.

Welcome to planet no-extra-items, where the rest of us live.

(Seriously, the chance of getting one of those extra items is really small. You just happened to get one over and over and over and over. Maybe you should try flipping a coin and see if it comes up heads about 50 times in a row, just to check?)

flow: But before, you could click in the number area, type a number, and just hit craft. Now you have to type the number, hit enter, and craft. And if you forget to hit enter, you craft 1 item. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re constantly crafting a few of this and a few of that… It’s really, really annoying. Why add the extra step? Why ruin a good interface?

15 minutes later, moved back to Wintersday! Wheeeeeeeeeee

For the record, this thread started in General, got moved by a mod to Wintersday, and then about 30 minutes later got moved by another mod to Suggestions. Let’s see where it ends up!

Thanks for that – sorry I didn’t find your thread in my search to bump it.

Staff does the same thing, yes. Only certain burrows, though – like the griphon nests in Tixx’s instance.

I don’t know if this is a general bug or if it only happens because I finished the personal story, but when I revisit my “home” instance the little green star that allows me to leave is gone. I have to either WP out or go to the mists or WvW to get out of there. (I’m playing a human.)

Similarly, the “command center” area in the Char city did the same thing, as well as the tall red-headed Norn’s home. However, I was able to leave the “home” area and the “chief” area of the Norn city – these have always had scripted options for leaving, and they are still there.

Related bug: when you’re in your “home” instance, waypoints inside the city are no longer free as they should be. (This has been since the game started.)

Yeah, but then nothing else will go in there, either. I still don’t know who programmed them to be deposited – what a silly idea. It’s like they don’t want you to be able to use them…

…from Toymaker Tixx is:

The old crafting screen back. You know, the one where you could type in a number and then craft that many items? That was nice.

Also, I’d like mini pets not to be deposited when I hit “deposit all collectables.” Why in the world would I want to dump the one thing I need to have in my inventory all the time for it to work? If I could just keep it with me, I could actually use it. Thank you, Tixx!

And finally, the last thing I’d like, although I don’t think anyone on this planet has been good enough this year to really earn it, is to see these few little words in the patch notes at some point within my lifetime:
“Necromancer: Minion AI substantially improved.”

Ahhhhh… Now that would fill me with some Wintersday joy.

mulch.2586:

I’m actually ok with the loot system and chance. It’s an economy, and it works — a lot of people feel like we make really good money and others moan that they don’t. Just like a real economy…

But I think the O.P. really has it wrong. Most concerns/complaints in the main forum are not about the loot systems, but rather about bugs, about ascended gear, the “trinity,” difficulty finding groups or fun things to do.

Thank you, mulch, for one of the few on-topic and reasonable replies.

I would hazard a guess that one of the reasons you’re ok with a lot of the systems in the game – especially the TP – is because you’re one of the top 1% who have benefited from it the most. I don’t say that as an insult – indeed, I think that means you’re much better at those games than most. Ultimately, though, my point was that “we make good money and others don’t” isn’t really the situation. It’s a tiny fraction – maybe hundreds – of people who make tens of thousands of gold. Millions of people do not. And it makes the millions feel left out / unbalanced / “unfair.”

As for “most of the complaints” on the forums… Well certainly we all have our opinions on what that might be. But my point there was that many, many people are complaining about things when really what they are ultimately complaining about is degressive random chance. People don’t complain about loot drops much, no: that’s not what I meant. They do complain about Halloween boxes, and Wintersday boxes, spending money on keys, and the mystic forge – ye kittens do they complain about the mystic forge. Those are all really one big complaint: degressive random chance. All those things work the same way. And my ultimate point was that the only way you can stop Anet from featuring these systems in their game is to make them less profitable than systems where you know what you are getting… so stop playing them!

As for everyone in this thread talking about DR: what are you talking about? Nothing in my post had anything to do with DR.

In the end, these models are completely integrated into the game and I don’t think they can be changed, so it’s best to understand how they work so that you don’t go rage online when you spend 100 dollars on chests and get nothing, or when a small group or single person corners the market on precursors for a while and drives their prices up. That is how the game works, and if you don’t like those systems, the best thing you can do is not to play them.

I don’t know if Anet will ever change the Trading Post, but I believe the cash shop is something players can affect: if you don’t like the degressive random chance style, then all you have to do is never buy anything related to that. Don’t ever buy keys or chests or minis or dye packs or any of that stuff that is just random. DO buy specific skins and specific items and specific things that you know what you are getting. Only if Anet loses money on random stuff will they stop doing it, but I swear every time someone comes and rants about how they blew 100 bucks, they later post “so now I blew 20 more!” If you don’t like the system, you have to stop participating. If absolutely zero random-style items sold while all the static items went like hot cakes, they would change their model.