Guild Wars 2

mulch.2586:

They have access to all gold transfers in the mail database.

If they wanted to stop it, they’d at least threaten to ban buyers.

It’s really really crummy game design to put in things that hamper legit play in attempt to slow the rule-breakers.

Gold sellers in your model would just invite you to their guild, put your order of gold in the guild bank, then kick you when you have it. Maybe you slow them down a little, but now there’s not as easy ways to track it.

I’m sure (or at least hope) that there are guild bank logs being kept. Those logs should be easy to track.

As of now, legitimate players are being hindered by gold sellers every time they access the economy. And talking to people in /m I have not really ran into a lot players that have a reason to transfer money via mail except to purchase items directly from other players.

In other games the inability to freely transfer money via mail has greatly slowed down gold sellers.

The following is a way to greatly hinder gold sellers and buyers while not hindering guilds. Though this idea does hinder gold sellers by slowing their ability to transfer money, it will not stop ability to sell or transfer gold, but does allow ANet to track their sales with more ease.

- Convert money account wide. No more separate coin counts per character. All money is account wide and each character can spend that gold and all money earned is put to this total.

There really is no reason to have money restricted to each character. I do not see any player buying Bank Access Express items from the BLTC just to transfer gold between their characters when they can just recall to town and do it at one of the bank NPCs. This “feature” really serves no purpose in a modern MMOs where every character is tied to a single account name accessible to any player.

- Money can not be sent through the mail. No more mailing money to players. You are still able to put money into the guild bank and others can withdraw that money, but players can no longer mail money to each other.

Note: Players can join more than one guild at a time and can switch between guilds anytime they wish.

By only allowing money to be transferred between characters through a guild bank, ANet gains more control over the ability to transfer gold and can more readily track and ban accounts that purchase gold from gold sellers.

This slows gold sellers down because now there are multiple steps to transfer money.

First a guild has to be created (costs money). Then a guild has to wait through the progression period so guild banks can be accessed (costs money and takes time). Then the gold sellers have to wait for the gold purchaser to get online, invite them to a guild, transfer the money to the guild bank and make sure only that person can access the gold so no other player can take it. This is a huge inconvenience to both the gold sellers and players that purchase gold.

Restricting gold transfers to only guild banks also allows ANet to track these guilds and bank transfers and ban any accounts which have access and retrieved gold from those accounts.

Arguments against the restriction of mailing money:

• I like mailing money to friends for crafting or so they can purchase items off the venders. You can send them the items directly or have them join your guild and using the guild bank allow them to withdraw as much gold as needed.

• I want to purchase an item from a player without going through the Trade Post. You can still do this, have them temporarily join your guild and using the guild bank allow them to withdraw a specified amount of gold. They can still mail the item directly to you.

• I do not have a guild or access to a guild bank. I would suggest creating one, and if you can not afford to create one then you can not afford to send your friend money to begin with.

Why do I care so much about gold sellers and gold buyers? Because they hinder the economy for legitimate players.

Do I want to purchase gold and convert that gold to gems and gain four times my value versus going through ANet? Yes, but I will not because it does not support ANet.

Do I want to convert the gold I have now to gems? Sometimes, but due to the low value I won’t. Why is the value so low? Because there are so many people purchasing gold from illegal sites and converting those to gems that again, legitimate players are being put at a disadvantage.

I dislike gold sellers, they have a negative impact on every part of our economy, and if giving up the ability to freely mail money to other players will help stop them, I am willing to sacrifice a small freedom which can easily be bypassed by using a guild bank.

I have money to spend but nothing on the BLTC is really worth it to me right now. I am dying to spend my money on armor skins and weapon skins.

Sadly I’m even looking through games I quit a long time ago because I know their cash shops have been updated with lots of fluff (DCUO, SWTOR, etc).

I know exact dates are not possible but maybe soon, soom, or by the end of the year?

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

I would be happy to spend money on gems if I got frequent flygater mileage points

I certainly would. Even if I didn’t spend them yet I would buy enough gems to reach my goal because eventually I know I would use them.

Everything from bonus remote bank uses to armor repairs all the way to weapon and armor skins for the big items.

check out Reddit and see what they are posting on their forums. They love to speculate over there even if it is completely false info

Bri.8354:

Thinking about this some more, 5% is probably too high of a minimum change.

Even something like 2% would be enough of a change at a time. For 1 silver this would be a minimum 2 copper price increase/decrease, 10 silver is 20 copper, and 1 gold is 2 silver.

why do we need a minimum other than 1 copper? Do you think less people will undercut you? No, what will happen is the same amount of people will continue to undercut you, the only difference now is the final sale price that it settles will be lower than it currently is.

If you think people are smarter NOT to do that, look at the current state of the TP. People undercutting by 1 copper is easy to understand. People that undercut by 20% of the current sale price and sell 30 of that item dropping the market faster than it needs.

People will undercut you no matter what constraints you place. Raising the minimum amount you are allowed to undercut will only expedite and drop the current sale value even more.

Rafkin.8923:

Star Wars the Old Republic beat gold sellers by making sure their wasn’t anything useful to buy with game money. Most people have millions of credits and nothing to do with them.

When a game allows you to purchase the best items in the game their is always going to be a demand for the games currency. No Trade, Bind on Pickup, Be Present for the Fight, boss drops is the only way to go to put a dent in gold sellers.

The only way ANet can beat gold sellers is to offer more value than the gold sellers.

Offer a loyalty program for anyone buying gems from them directly which offers unique and desired rewards. Just make what ever program they develop something desirable.

mulch.2586:

What I’d like is if we could take regular items and use them for town clothes.

I’d also like if we could take the cute pirate town clothes from the gem store and put them as skins on regular armor, at least medium wearers.

I think wvw and pvp need the silhouettes to be consistent. Of course there’s no transmutation in pvp anyway. But wvw…

in WvW it’s all zerg vs zerg. Class icons (if they do not already show up) should show up next to the person you target anyway.

GregT.4702:

John Smith.4610:

I really want a new Koenigsegg. At the moment I cannot get one. I am an upstanding citizen and will not steal a Koenigsegg. I will hire someone to steal one from someone else and give it to me. If they weren’t so hard to get I wouldn’t NEED to have someone steal one. Oh, but would I want one if they were easy to get?

I keep seeing John making the assumption that “gold sellers = thieves”, and it’s offending my intelligence every time. It’s no more valid than “person who sells things = thieves”.

Clearly some gold sellers are selling gold stolen from player accounts. Clearly some are not, and are selling gold from combinations of botting and efficient farming. The first class are engaging in criminal activity. The second are merely doing something Anet wishes they wouldn’t.

You can make the argument that it’s hard to buy from a gold seller without accidentally dealing with one of the thieves. You can make the argument that buying from gold sellers creates a market that encourages the thieves (but I don’t think that’s a particularly valid argument).

But please stop saying that all gold sellers are inherently thieves. You’re smarter than that, John, and I’d appreciate if you’d assume that we are too.

They really are thieves though. No more legitimate than a person selling illegal copies of DVDs or CDs for 5 dollars each versus the 15 or 20 dollars the publishers are selling them at.

It would be nice if there was only a server distinction in WvW.

1 copper undercutting won’t destroy you unless the person undercutting you put up about 100 of that item or 2000 of that resource.

Nautika.5376:

I just love how all the Thieves come to the forums to defend their ability to kill someone in under 6 seconds and in such a fashion that the other person can’t do a darn thing.

Yes the rendering issue when fixed will be a HUGE nerf to alot of Thieves (bad ones) as it will no longer allow them immunity.

Yet to say you are not the most OP class in pvp is an understatement.

says a glass cannon to a glass cannon.

I would pay 10-20 dollars for 6-8 special transmute stones which allowed me to use ANY armor from any class once in each slot.

My Engineer would wear a cloth looking top while the rest of her outfit would be standard leather pants, boots, gloves, and mask (actual pirate look).

My Warrior would wear heavy arms, legs, boots, gloves, and shoulders, with a cloth shirt looking top and no helm.

My Mesmer would wear the Duelist set because it honestly fits the class as a magical based illusionist (after all what is a ninja but a person that uses illusions to their advantage).

As for confusing people and breaking peoples “immersion” of the game… lol. Really, we have everything from ghosts trying to kill us to giant rats stealing eggs 3 times their size and you are worried about a Warrior appearing in cloth gear?

Do I think this will ever happen? No, because there are too many mesh issues with combining a lot of the armor types. It would take a lot of work and I doubt the ANet team has the time.

Vilkata.4725:

chtiyonki.6284:

On the store you can buy 100 gems for ~1 euro.
So atm ~1 euro = ~100 gems = ~1 gold

Now, I took a random goldseller website and there the prices:
50 euros = ~150 gold = ~15k gems

I think something to keep in mind is that the 50 euro price tag isn’t the only cost involved.

That 150 gold actually costs 50 euros + the risk of having your account banned + the risk of having the goldseller use your credit card info to buy a dozen accounts to run bots on.

When you look at it like that I would have to say that buying gems from arenanet is the better deal.

you can actually use a prepaid credit card for added security.

Though having your account banned is an issue, what you are really doing is not supporting ANet and GW2.

I have never gotten one as a drop.

would be funny if ANet just released a special type of egg that is required. So people will stop speculating.

I think part of the reason people are pissed, a lot of illicit gold is screwing up the market for legit players.

While people purchasing the illicit gold get 4 times their monies value, those that are actually trying to help your company stay afloat are getting the finger.

My thief has a trait that gives a persistent 25% run buff, do warriors get something similar? I thought I read they had a similar buff but can not find it on my warrior (she is only level 17.

I am in complete favor of this feature if it was not cost prohibitive. If ANet could make a large profit for adding this feature I would be more than happy to support it because it would mean more game development for everyone has a whole.

I have no personal reason to restrict such a feature.

I suggest they create a Loyalty Counter. Anyone buying gems from ANet directly gets those gems counted on their Loyalty Counter. As the counter goes up they receive bonus items.

This may get people to buy gems from ANet directly over buying gold from gold sellers, which I think currently is worth 4 times as much when converting the illicit purchased gold.

Do what I did, buy a second account and level up one character.

Extra storage, mail to my mains any time, now if only I could get 2 instances of the game running on one computer.

I think class change maybe too much with too little return for the developers.

If you change your class all your gear is probably going to have to be replaced. That along with losing all your farmed dungeon skins may make this a feature very few purchase which will prohibit the investment in programming such a feature.

It is possible, especially if they can charge a person 30 dollars to change their race.

World of Warcraft has already proven it is a viable micro-charge.

As for the personal story, the developers can chose to either ignore it and allow people to continue based on the step the player is on in their personal story or they can allow players to just restart their personal story.

Human and Norn I still find populated, sylvari and charr I find a bit sparce when I go through their zones.

But I think around level 20-30 all the races converge so even if you do get into a dead zone with very few players it won’t last long.

I think you should use a starter skin.

I would rather them work on a new profession and flesh out the current races more.

Race specific engineer equipment.

More race based clothing and spell effects.

Maybe even race specific character animations for weapon attacks.

once I hit 80 I had to stop playing my Engineer because of the trenchcoat design. I could not STAND that look and my Sylvari did not look good in Duelist.

She also did not look good in any of her cultural gear because it was just a bad fit having all aesthetics being plant based then suddenly wearing an obviously human manufactured backpack and weapons (flame thrower, turrets, etc).

They really need more time to work on the aesthetics of this game.

Tell them the eskimo love whale blubber and it’s going to feed the children in game!

does it really matter if a person changes their race? If a person changes their race (and pays 25 dollars for the option which helps in future development) who are they really effecting outside of themselves?

what… it has no actual effect on your game play and helps support the developers! So why does it bother you so much that people want to change their race?

Suggestion:

Everything but the WvW and Dungeon = 50% of the reward

Complete WvW = +25% of the reward

Complete Dungeon = +25% of the reward

Chests were seen as useless which is why ANet upgraded them with permanent merchants like the TP, venders, and bank NPCs. I’m sure they had a huge boost in key sales then, but I wonder how much sales have dropped now that people realized the drop rate for the chests is very low.

Personally I will never buy keys or anything that is a gamble. Already spent a few hundred in another game and never got the item I wanted, not going to repeat that mistake.

Normal players bot as well as gold farmers. I am not shocked, hell, even if these were alt accounts, by the time they bots were banned the owners made more gold than if they actually bought 50 dollars worth of gems legitimately then converted them to gold.

I found it cheaper to just buy a second account and use it to store tradable items.

PLUS, I get the option of mailing items to myself when ever I want.

It would be completely unbelievable that a Mesmer would wear plate while summoning purple copies of themselves all the while twirling around a giant Greatsword between their hands…

Or a warrior with a cloth shirt on swinging around a greatsword heavier than themselves like it’s a 5 pound weight…

I once (ok many times) ran instances in WoW countless times to get a single item I wanted. I constantly had the item either not show up, or someone else won it over me.

I hated that system.

The difficulty of the tower was fun.

Trying to see what was going on through 3-4 giant charr was not.

The only thing that makes GW2 difficult is the camera.

skill based MMOs (like shooters) only mean the aimbots win while the legit players are cannon fodder to geeks spraying purple Mt Dew out of their nose and squeeling over vent.

I don’t really see games like GW2 in the skill based category because anyone can learn to hit keys 1-5 but it is a lot harder to do so while actively aiming and predicting projectile paths.

it looks cool when equipped.

Shanna.4762:

It was the weapons that were increased, but the armor for T3 are far too expensive. I definitely agree with those saying it needs to be significantly reduced in price because there’s NO way any even remotely casual player will be able to afford those skins in any efficient amount of time. Not unless they make an easier/faster way to make gold.

Casuals can afford it, I can buy a whole set, but there is little reason to when you can spend less time in dungeons and get a full set of even better looking armor.

I hope they are thorough. In SWTOR I was banned for buying gold because a gold seller sent me 10k on two occasions. I was later unbanned when they noticed I had a few million in my account and had no reason to purchase such low amounts.

I’m not sure if the gold seller was sending money to the wrong person or randomly sending out low amounts of gold to throw off the devs.

Hyena.7963:

azurrei.5691:

@ Hyena – I see your point, but the problem is that in a game where you can literally buy gold from the developer, NOTHING is really exclusive or prestigious. It takes ZERO work to buy gems—>gold and then buy cultural armor, which is why I personally feel like it should be like the cultural weapons and purchased with an in game currency that can NOT be bought with real $$$ and must be earned.

Okay, so nothing is exclusive or prestigious.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and buy the T3 armor.

What, you can’t? Then that makes it exclusive.

I’m going to disagree with the fact that it takes “zero effort” to buy gems. Do you have any idea how much money, how much real life money it would take to purchase an entire set of Tier 3 armor? Here’s how much:

You can get 800 gems for $10.

800 gems can be converted to…. Well, let’s be generous and assume 1G per 100 gems.

800 gems becomes 8 gold.

You need 120 gold to buy a set of Tier 3 cultural armor.

At 1 G/100 gems that means you need 12,000 gems.

You would need $150 of actual money to buy the full set, and that’s assuming an exchange rate that you will probably never ever see. The reality is that it’s far more expensive than even that, which means you’re spending something like $200+ on pixels. If you don’t consider that a hurdle then you’ve either never had to work for your money or you have a massively disposable income.

Either way, the price makes the armor exclusive, and the fact that it’s exclusive makes it valuable.

For the record however, I haven’t spent a dime on this game since I bought it (because I don’t have a massively disposable income) and I have a full set of T3 armor on one of my characters (minus the helmet, though I could buy it right now if I wanted). All the gold I have I earned through the game itself. I didn’t buy it from anyone and I certainly didn’t hack.

Which, in the end, was why I bought it. It’s something that can’t be earned by a couple of trips through a dungeon or by farming an event for a weekend. It’s the most exclusive thing in the game right after legendary weapons, and I think that’s a good thing.

I can afford the whole set, but it’s a waste of money. The armor is not worth it in my opinion because it…

A) does not have near the effects or awe as some of the dungeon sets

B) is too costly for a skin, the stats in most of the cultural armor is a joke

C) redistricted to 1/5 of the population and 2/3rds of that armor is restricted due to class

For as much gold as they are asking, that armor has to look great. There are too many other sets which are easy to obtain and actually look better to warrant that price for most of the players.

Because none of my cultural armor is attractive I have a hard time even grasping the idea I would ever spend more than a few silver on any of it.

I wish I could wear some of the human or norn armor, but I’m stuck with Sylvari for now.

Pennry.9215:

I was just up there and I thought there was something off on the loading, didn’t pay any notice until you mentioned it. Yep, them whales be beached. (That brings up something I’ve wondered for a long time: Why are the whales in this game so small?)

maybe everything else is just huge?

Czinger.6314:

I love throwing my money at this game.

So, Yes.

so do I. I’ve spent over 2500 dollars on APB since they opened up their cash shop back in 2011.

But I only purchase permanent items, I never gamble, and anything I buy is account wide if they have the option.

I know gambling is the big seller in a lot of MMOs, but I will never gamble considering the odds are never in my favor (worse than Las Vegas in many respects).

not unless it is a nice weapon or armor skin. I bought 2 holiday outfits and only found the Witch costume amusing because she rode the broom. Nothing else about either costume really made me excited and I completely regretted the Mad King outfit.

The fact that both outfits were character only and I have no where to store the extra costume (except on another character) makes it less desirable.

As for keys, no, I never spend money on keys, they are too much a gamble.

this is where I feel free server transfers (all the time) is a benefit to the game. Just lock the person on a specific server when entering WvW.

I never understood why the developers vision of how we should look is more important than how we want to look.

Because the game was rushed to publish. They are reworking the trade post and one of the features is a preview option.

fellyn.5083:

There was no exploit for cultural armor. I’m pretty certain the cultural armor has always been the same price.

The exploit you’re probably thinking of us the cultural weapons that were being bought for 25 karma.

Fellyn, there was a short period where you could buy cultural armor VERY cheap because they misplaced a decimal.

Not too shabby when you could buy a Tier 3 for less than 24 silver.

do some research.

Farzo.8410:

illgot.1056:

Hyena.7963:

illgot.1056:

Long Term goal, the prices are fine, but why is there a long term goal on standard looking armor that appears no more special than items you can farm much cheaper and faster in a dungeon?

I do not understand the idea of wanting cultural armor to be such a long term goal. If anything, cultural armor should be some of the cheapest, it’s part of your culture.

If it’s standard-looking and there are cheaper, faster alternatives… Why do you care?

The fact that it’s so expensive is part of what makes it so valuable. They make thousand-dollar articles of clothing in real life that’re no better than what you can get at a Goodwill store, but people still buy them. It’s prestige.

in real life, expensive clothing is made better than the clothing you can get at Old Navy.

Like the pixels on tier 3 is cooler than other armours!

My opinion of course

My cultural armor is syvari and I think it all looks like crap. I would never spend more than 50 silver for any of it, and mainly just because I want to see how it glows at night, not really that I want to wear it.

Hyena.7963:

illgot.1056:

Long Term goal, the prices are fine, but why is there a long term goal on standard looking armor that appears no more special than items you can farm much cheaper and faster in a dungeon?

I do not understand the idea of wanting cultural armor to be such a long term goal. If anything, cultural armor should be some of the cheapest, it’s part of your culture.

If it’s standard-looking and there are cheaper, faster alternatives… Why do you care?

The fact that it’s so expensive is part of what makes it so valuable. They make thousand-dollar articles of clothing in real life that’re no better than what you can get at a Goodwill store, but people still buy them. It’s prestige.

in real life, expensive clothing is made better than the clothing you can get at Old Navy.

Also in real life, we are expected to wear certain types of clothing for our jobs. Be that a uniform made one size fits all in China or a suit designed in Italy with expensive fabrics.

In game, the only thing cultural armor servers for is appearance, just not sure why cultural armor is so expensive and why there is no Legendary armor to work on.