Guild Wars 2

Nox Aeterna.2965:

fathamburger.8453:

Allow tokens to be exchanged for karma. Going by 60 tokens for one run as a fraction of a chest piece cost of 390 and applying the same ratio to the karma cost each token should be worth 6462 karma (rounded) or similar.

First let me say that your post deserve more time than i got to give.

But let me point out 1 problem with it. Which is this karma ratio you got here.

Farming orr , which is one of the best ways to get karma , gives you 375 karma / event , most of us got buffs , but lets keep it at that.

You can farm 180 tokens , in 1:30/2 hrs doing dungs , now 180 × 6462 = 1,163,160 karma , that is 1:30/2 hrs. You just finished karma grind in the game.

Im not saying that is bad , hey i would be glad to end all karma grind , but i dont think Anet would aprove that.

Then the question appears , how much karma is worth one token, and the opposite? Afterall , the trade must be fair both ways.

Thanks for pointing that out, I meant that 60 tokens should be worth 6462 karma. I actually started writing this a few weeks ago but only got around to finishing it today, surprising that is the only error I made. I’m not much of a karma farmer actually.. have done a grand total of about 3 hours lol and while the first two were bearable while catching up on skype with a friend, the third hour was not. I was like.. if I wanted this kitten I’d play WoW… but I was basing this on each dungeon run taking about an hour being a conservative PUG estimate. Of course you have runs where people are inexperienced, someone drop outs and you have to zone out to find someone else etc. Full disclosure, it seems the way my chars are developing I will have one with dungeon gear, another karma farmed and hopefully one with crafted and one with transmuted cultural. Given the last two are kinda pipe dreamy unless ANet makes at least some of these changes, there’s still gonna be a lot more dungeon farming than I would like involved. At least dungeons give tokens AND gold.

Anyway.. rate isn’t set in stone, Arenanet would have better data than I do but while one character isn’t so bad.. I’m not exactly willing to karma farm for all of them and my buffs after the first one would run out but the key points of exchanging and having a variety of ways to get to the goals are the main points I really want to get across.

Dungeon Tokens (problems)

• The #1 problem, being forced to run a dungeon repetitively over and over again with the worst case in going for the full set. Being “penalized” from spending time to help friends and seeing no reward, splitting friend and guild groups up instead of being the activity to bring people together.
• Dungeon rewards do not scale or adjust to effort i.e. some paths such as CoE path 3 or Arah are far more costly in time and risk, yet the costs for rewards and tokens received are the same.
• Tokens are not exchangeable or usable for anyone who actually just runs them for the challenge/content. ArenaNet would really score a coup if they manged to redefine the raiding game as well as they did for 1-80 into one people actually played because they enjoyed the dungeons, not for the rewards
• Story mode groups are already very hard to put together since they don’t reward tokens or anything else useful for the endgame.

Dungeon Tokens (Solutions)

• Universal token. Harder paths and dungeon difficulties with higher payouts adjusted for average time/difficulty. A compromise from the universal token solution to maintain “bragging rights” could also be a dungeon token trader akin to the dye and rune traders from GW1 as described here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Dungeon-Token-Trader-i-e-Dye-Trader/first#post489479
• Allow tokens to be exchanged for karma. Going by 60 tokens for one run as a fraction of a chest piece cost of 390 and applying the same ratio to the karma cost 60 tokens should be worth 6462 karma (rounded) or similar.
• Reward tokens in story mode, the same 60 token amount without diminishing returns. Again this would help “progress” players into explorable earlier while keeping an incentive for completed players to return and help out others if they have hit DR in other paths for the day

Badges of Honour (problems)

• Costs currently are far too high.
• Badges are not consistently rewarded and there are issues with not being able to loot them while being away from the front line
• MANY more hours required to earn rewards compared to karma or dungeons.

Badges of Honour (solutions)

• Being able to exchange tokens or karma for badges again would be the best solution but this could be spurious as there IS an intent for these sets to be rewards for high numbers of kills. However in practice so far the player community cares very little about where/what any exotic came from, only other than it’s exotic and preferences are mainly aesthetic and stat based in that order, not status related to the way it is earned. Being able to exchange them for tokens or karma but not the other way around should be the way to go for now.

Gold (problems)

• Crafted armor suffers from a lack of desirability/options as an alternative to dungeon gear while exotic weapons and jewelcrafted accessories are viable and in demand.
• Crafted armor lacks the power, toughness, vitality combination which is the most popular stat combination in the game
• Cultural armor costs are too high especially for their stat value

Gold (solutions)

• Give crafted armor more variations by adding some kind of “insignia” for different sets when they are added to the game.
• Same as above for power, toughness, vitality.
• Allow master armormakers to craft the respective cultural armors for less cost than the vendor price which can still be an option if you can’t find someone to do it.

These changes would all (for their respective categories) spread out the endgame effort rather than concentrating and reducing it to a grind, whichever path you take and would maintain the happiness that comes with having a variety of means much like the 1-80 game did.

There is a fundamental root cause to nearly all of the endgame issues today. Issues such as the necessity of DR code to address karma/gold farming/botters, WvW population and turnout, difficulty of finding dungeon groups for less popular dungeons and the sharp fall off in interest post end-game. This is all because Arenanet broke their #1 rule, the game at the end IS different to the one that people have been playing and they’re not necessarily happy about it.

“Guild Wars 2 is a game about freedom. We want you to be able to explore the world and engage in a huge variety of activities, focusing on whatever best suits your tastes” – Jon Peters, ArenaNet Game Designer

The one thing everyone agrees on is how fantastic the 1-80 game is. You are able to level through that and your personal story in any way you see fit, xp is rewarded for everything from WvW to crafting and you can do any combination of hearts, DE’s, dynamic events, exploration etc. Bugs aside, no one complains about the content before the endgame and Anet’s success and glowing praise mainly comes from this portion. It’s only when you hit the endgame that things change, despite trying to avoid otherwise. When endgame arrives, players compartmentalize and despite promises to the contrary, the grind begins. In having essentially four different forms of currency i.e. karma, duneon tokens, gold and badges of honor with karma additionally being tied to character, players are forced into a narrowly focused efficient grind, and not necessarily playing what’s enjoyable or with any degree of variety just to get what they want. Compounding this problem are the rewards NOT being equal i.e. karma armor is inferior in stat choice and also often in looks. I’ll get further into problems and solutions below. No one ever says “I just want to get this kitten over and done with and never see it again” from 1-80, but they do when being forced to run the same dungeon over and over again. The solution then is to make all of these “currencies” as fluid and interchangeable as possible, with as much respect to the player’s time as the 1-80 game and always ensuring that regardless of activity – the player is always making some level of progress and can always exchange their “reward” for one they will actually use, something which the 1-80 game perfected.

The goal should be to encourage the players to spread out and enjoy as much of the content as possible instead of compartmentalizing them into a narrow portion which is the opposite of the game leading to that point, and also to not penalize anyone for helping a friend or trying something they wouldn’t normally be doing i.e. PVP or running a dungeon that doesn’t contribute any tokens towards their particular set.

I’ll address each problem categorized by currency below:

Karma (problems)

• Either useless to a character and just sitting in their “inventory” or it is the only endgame alternative if a player does not enjoy or have time for dungeon running. Forced to use the character you need karma on
• Gain by farming can be small compared to WvW, if a player does not do or enjoy PVP they can be disadvantaged
• All armour pieces cost 42k universally which is too high of a cost especially for smaller pieces.
• Players are fighting to tag every mob just to make sure they get gold rewards, and just wanting to get through this has created a need for DR/anti botting code.

Karma (solutions)

• Account bound karma, allow players to make use of karma between characters. This also frees up the player to more freely choose the character they want to play with, not the one they need the karma on.
• Karma exchange for dungeon tokens which can help players short on time/unable to do dungeons and provide relief on not having to do things all over again for alts
• 42k and 38k for chest and pants sounds right, the smaller pieces should follow the dungeon pricing scheme. 12k for helm, boots, shoes, and 16k for shoulders
• Allow dungeon tokens, not gold to be exchanged for karma also which will free up some of the farming pressure thus keeping karma as an “earned”, not bought currency.

Can we get an update on whether we can expect guesting anytime soon?

Recently made a hard choice to leave some friends behind and transfer to a server with better population, more dungeon groups at primetime and WvW activity but since this server is mostly full.. there are many friends and even guilds I’ve left behind that can’t follow. Would still like to level pve alts with these guys, and would not have made the transfer if there was a cross server dungeon finder :P

Anyhow.. just because it’s transfer-rama these days doesn’t mean that guesting isn’t important. I know at least a number of people who have been waiting on this for awhile

You actually already have a personal “home” in your city usually. It gets updated with some npcs from story mode as you progress through it but at the moment it’s just an undercooked feature without much reason to go back into. At the moment it seems like something that is low priority but they’ve got the foundation in there to expand it later.

I am seeing that they have room for custom vendors, upgrades, cosmetics etc and maybe even unique quests that you can invite friends to do. It will probably come in time.

+1 bump like etc etc. I’m sure they’ll do this down the line. It’s probably low priority and they know it would be easy to implement

I apologize if this has come up a hundred times before, but why not a dungeon token trader akin to the dye and rune traders in GW1 of old. This would be a compromise to the universal token idea. They already have code they can tweak from that codebase.

The trader would adjust for market supply and demand much like those traders did so Arah tokens would be similar to black dye. The only issue with this is that over time it would pretty much be impossible to get a decent trade value given the spread in time/difficulty that Arah has vs other dungeons. Kinda like hoping forever that you would get a 1 to 1 or even a 1 to 3 conversion with the Mexican peso, it just wouldn’t happen but at the very least the other dungeons would have a somewhat similar conversion rate I would think.

This isn’t some genius revelation, at this point I’m sure the devs are doing more social observation/engineering to see “what the market will bear” and it’s not like we need to tell them these things.

+1 bump

Support this strongly

also the socialization happens during and after you’ve gone to war with someone, not during the LFG phase. 95% of the people I’ve PUG’d with I’ve never seen again or have not added to friends list after we were in and out, the other 5% only became friends or acquaintances because of the run and had nothing to do with finding each other to begin with. That’s entirely a strawman argument

bump Dungeon finder is definitely needed. I didn’t think this was a problem when I was on ET which was a fairly PVE type of server outside of the PVP alliances when we were there but since transferring to Fort Aspenwood, I was shocked at how little advertising was going on and how dead the population was by comparison. It wasn’t just a lack of Arah groups, it was a lack of dungeon groups period. There would be many times in the day when I would log on with literally nothing to do because of this which is kinda important especially since dungeons ARE the PvE endgame for now.

Anyway a CROSS SERVER dungeon finder is needed, especially for Arah, prioritized for locals on the server who have indicated an interest. They did one for GW1 so I’m sure they can do it for GW2, I think they haven’t just to observe us socially without one for awhile and consider the effects and need. If more dungeon groups start falling off across servers I’m sure it will be done soon.

The sad thing is I had to transfer to a different server just to find groups, i didn’t really want to take up a slot for someone who is looking to be more than a tourist.. but the last week has especially shown that the endgame is REALLY screwed up between server transfers, burnout and more and things are going to hell suddenly and very quickly. There is definitely a segregation into haves and have-nots that is happening extremely quickly before most people can really notice

With all due respect to the designers, you guys are wrong on this. The whole endgame is fatally flawed but could be fixed with relatively easy to implement changes but that’s a different post so I’ll just mention what’s relevant here.

Everyone that’s mentioned the “spreading out and doing other dungeons with friends” or just to keep all dungeon groups viable vs the ones that are either easier to farm or more popular are right. HoTW for example is just tedious, CoE is even more so and frequently quoted as “not worth effort” especially for path 3 and the number of times Subject Alpha comes back., Arah the rewards are out of whack for the time expense and already we see a sharp falloff/disappearance in people wanting to do them. SE is 50/50 etc. You see AC and CoF a lot because they are quick and predictable but also realistic, with Arah disconnects / newb grps / random bad pulls you can go from 2 hour run 4-5 run easily. while the worst case for AC and CoF you might be in for about 1.. to 1 and a half hours which is sttill palatable.

Basically the answer is this. One universal token but give them out according to difficulty/average run time. For example.. smaller amounts for the faster ones and larger amounts for the longer ones. You should be rewarded at least 120 tokens if not 150 imo for the time it takes. This will put a risk/reward element to it and people can actually choose to enjoy the dungeons for the content and challenge and BE REWARDED APPROPRIATELY which is really the key thing here. The universal token also avoids the whole exchange rate thing and having to make them not bound at all for exchange purposes.

Designers, you guys are VERY wrong on this and the design contradicts the philosophy of the entire game up to that point as many people are telling you here, but again.. more on this later in another post

Fort Aspenwood isn’t there yet, but I was told about this site tonight. Helping to spread the word and also make it a bit easier for any other guilds considering the server.

http://www.fortaspenwoodwvw.com
http://www.fortaspenwoodwvw.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=12&p=18#p18 – Guild List that I’m aware of so far.

(repost from Guru)

Well.. obviously it seems people are just gonna sit out against Blackgate which is a shame because FA has the following guilds on it who just haven’t coordinated yet. In theory FA is the last underdog potential T1/T2 server that isn’t completely full yet.

Well.. obviously it seems people are just gonna sit out against Blackgate which is a shame because FA has the following guilds on it who just haven’t coordinated yet. In theory FA is the last underdog potential T1/T2 server that isn’t completely full yet.Paintrain [Ptx] – former Ascencion Alliance and founding member (good group of guys who know what they’re doing when I ran with them)
The Roman Empire [Tre] (over 300 WvW members from what I’ve heard)
SoA – former Titan Alliance
Unlimited – former Titan Alliance
Legion in Flames – WvW from Darkhaven
Underworld Knights – WvW from Darkhaven
Saga – apparently not as active as they used to be

However.. no one’s really turning up to fight or maybe they are just waiting till Blackgate moves out of the tier. The active WvW servers are definitely well known now and things are even more stacked towards them than “Season 1” of HoD/JQ/SBI/ET ever was. IMO Blackgate is definitely the new T1 along with JQQ now.

Anyhow.. going from ET/Ruin to FA has definitely taught me that this game is GUILD WARS. Literally, the servers are the teams and the guilds are the players. Without guild groups who lead the charge to both take AND hold territory, there will be no investment in siege and only half hearted pushes. Seeing even a single flame ram in a push on FA is rare exception. Guilds definitely need to step up and agree to provide presence and leadership here because FA is mostly a bunch of soloers and small guilds right now. I was with a zerg who outnumbered LoTD almost 2 to 1 and yet they broke and retreated the minute they saw a guild group because FA doesn’t really field them. While we can see Syn, DiE(not sure if I got this one right) and other tags from Blackgate clearly moving about and doing their thing. It’s funny how now a guild group of 5 LotD is suddenly a “force” while in the ET days we would say ohh.. they’re a good bunch of guys but “there’s just not that many of them”.

Anyhow.. FA’s fairweather-ness is gonna be the deal breaker here. Fine use Blackgate as an excuse this week, but if it’s the same next week I can’t see many of the guilds that you do have here sticking around. Right now.. every server who has been a recipient of ex-TA is doing well and it’s been nothing but a boon EXCEPT for FA. The ex-Titan guys might be sitting out until they see more effort.

Anyhow.. FA’s fairweather-ness is gonna be the deal breaker here. Fine use Blackgate as an excuse this week, but if it’s the same next week I can’t see many of the guilds that you do have here sticking around. Right now.. every server who has been a recipient of ex-TA is doing well and it’s been nothing but a boon EXCEPT for FA. The ex-Titan guys might be sitting out until they see more effort.FA is on the fence right now between underdog and never-will-be

Despite the issues with endgame (which I’ll be making a longer separate post), YES. A friend deliberately waited a month to join me here to get my "longer term " impressions and before I ran into endgame issues more directly I told him, yes – the issues are relatively minor and they still are (to fix).

Basically.. I’m another “300 hours in”, and the content is good enough to be exceed or at least be compared to other single player 100 hr+ RPG’s and in this respect GW2 is more than worth the money even if you don’t do the dungeon grind of PVP. Currently on a third character whenever I’m not “endgaming” to do the Order of Whispers track and after I’m done with that one, then I can really say I’ve finished the game.

Basically.. I’m another “300 hours in”, and the content is good enough to be exceed or at least be compared to other single player 100 hr+ RPG’s and in this respect GW2 is more than worth the money even if you don’t do the dungeon grind of PVP. Currently on a third character whenever I’m not “endgaming” to do the Order of Whispers track and after I’m done with that one, then I can really say I’ve finished the game.You are not paying a subscription so even if you feel there is no draw right now you can always keep coming back when there are content expansions, that’s what I ended up doing with GW1 and despite my issues with that game leading to my quitting early cough cough UAX, I ultimately did feel I got my money’s worth for that one too

Definitely agree with that Konrad..

It really makes no sense for prominent north american players to basically abandon each other and go to EU etc which is what is starting to happen now

and yeah 300 ping is standard Aussie cable ping

I think this is the only game ever made where competitively Australians matter. Cheers Arenanet!

They must have some Australian employees? regardless of awful internet infrastructure, their toilet water spinning the wrong way and the even more godawful Vegemite this is the only time I think “Oceanic” will ever be sought after as guildies, compatriots etc and a key factor in moving/playing.

I’m glad I’m not the only one having that reaction either. I just transferred from ET (left Ruin) onto Fort Aspenwood to “retire”/reunite with some friends / find some more strategic and tactical players / see a glimmer of potential there and yeah my initial 15 minute assessment was that skill level was very low. Abysmally low.

Tier 2 just has problem with consistency and turnout but when I showed up in EB where people were getting spawn camped.. there were about 8 people being spawn camped by maybe around 12-15. A ballista and a push would have done the job. Instead i ask around.. does anyone have supply? I have a ballista (actually have at least 2 of everything up to and including a trebuchet at all times), no answer.. hmm maybe the worst case is that these people don’t even know what supply is! I decided to plop down a ballista just to get the measure of how these guys are.. NO one came out to build it, and SoS spent about 3 mins just staring at the build site before someone came out to kill it lol. I’ve never seen 10s go up in smoke so fast.

Anyhow yeah.. there does seem to be a big gap, but apparently the game between Tier 2 and Tier 3 is even wider.