Guild Wars 2

I had The Colossus (champ bag) and Chaos Gun (mystic forge) drop over a 2 day period a few weeks back.

Ohoni, I’d like to pose a query to you:

Do you believe that rewards should be a function of time spent or a function of how time is spent?

If someone over or under bids you by 1c, then your offer was too low/high by at least 1c.

Relist your bid at a more appropriate price.

Bernie.8674:

ArenaNet’s definition of grind is killing the same monsters over and over repeatedly.

ArenaNet’s definition of grind is having to do one specific task over and over again in order to get something.

Because the game is designed to allow you to do just about any task whatsoever and get the same items as a reward, there is no “grind”.

You can PvP for silk. You can PvE for silk. You can dungeon for silk. You can WvW for silk. You can TP for silk. You get silk for playing the game the way you want to play it, therefore you are not grinding.

Ohoni.6057:

No.

Yes. Yes it would. Your nonsense protestations to the contrary.

The only way that supply can be controlled is if PLAYERS are unable to impact the rate at which they generate it.

That is a fundamental fact which your nonsense cannot escape.

Dime Baggins.1058:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

We know that some of you are anticipating a new build for Guild Wars 2 on March 10th. We wanted to give you a heads up that the game update is coming, but it will not be going out on March 10th. At the present time, contents of the build is undergoing additional QA Testing. If we get more information about an anticipated timeframe for the build’s release we’ll try to provide that info in advance. But of course as always, we will update in the forums with detailed update notes when the build goes live.

Thanks for your patience.

Heya,

Is there any sort of time frame for when? Like, this week, next week, next month?

Thx Gaile =D

As an IT professional, I always get a kick out of this question.
The answer is always “It’ll be ready when it is ready”.
It’s not baking where you put it in the over for exactly 30 minutes and it comes out golden :P

Structuring raw materials into a tiered pricing model would require that player interaction with supply be removed.

i.e. all gathering nodes for ore and logs would have to be removed so that individual players are unable to sate their own demand and are required to obtain their ore and logs from other players who all share in the same drop rate (just like cloth and leather).

Pro Tip: Don’t worry about your character’s looks until you get to max level.

You level so fast that any effort put into a sub-80 wardrobe is time and transmute charges wasted.

The guaranteed rares are nice if you need the ecto, otherwise farm Silverwastes.

I typically skip the World Bosses that have long time requirements (Jormag, Fire Elemental, Taidha Covington, Tequatl, Mark II). I’ll always do Ulgoth, because while it does have a wait, that wait is full of Linen-containing bags which make up for it.

You can only salvage Insignias/Inscriptions for NON-craftable stat sets. So you won’t be able to get a Berserker’s Insignia/Inscription, but can get a Dire.

I’m not sure, but I think all Dungeon stat sets are craftable, so no Insignias/Inscriptions would drop.

Ohoni.6057:

Is that really efficient? I salvage cloth and just vendor metal/leather. The odds of getting more silk than the vendor value of 4+greens seems risky to me.

It is less profitable than selling on the TP and more profitable than selling to a vendor.

In terms of efficiency, it is less efficient than vendoring but more efficient than selling on the TP.

It finds a nice middle ground in terms of efficiency versus profitability, with the added bonus of a 20% chance at promotion into rare for the Ectoplasm.

Your computer’s firewall could be blocking the TP application. If you previously had AVG and now have something else (including the default Windows firewall), then it could be that your new firewall settings are the culprit.

pdavis.8031:

mtpelion:
Not a terrible idea…
I tried doing that, but it took up so much space and was too much effort for my taste. So I salavage everything at the very least to get the luck. But that might be a better way to go if you are looking for cloth. I’ll have to revisit that.

As long as you wait until you are at the forge to open the bags it isn’t too bad. Open a few, forge the leather/metal, salvage the cloth, repeat. It takes me 5-10 minutes at the end of the day to clear it all out.

I don’t have access to the kind of data that ArenaNet does, so my post here is speculative, but I believe that the rate of new cloth and leather entering the game outpaces the rate of new ore/logs by a rate of 2-3 times. However, because the rate is ambient (i.e., not targeted but resulting from normal gameplay), it makes it difficult for a single person to acquire as much as they want without interacting with the TP. Because Cloth has more valuable uses than Leather, the market competition forces up the price.

It is due to this naturally higher amount of cloth being generated that the crafting recipe for silk uses more scraps than other types of raw materials use in their refinement process. This higher scrap requirement brings the ratio of created to used into alignment with other materials, which prevents a glut of supply from building.

Now, the question that should be debated is this: What are the benefits of having farmable and non-farmable materials, and would the game be better or worse if we shifted all 4 raw materials to be either farmable or non-farmable?

pdavis.8031:

Chista.4750:

John Smith.4610:

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

I think it would certainly be a step towards making this a more bearable resource, depending on how you have in mind. It’d be nice if you could wake up one morning and say: OK! getting 300 silk scraps.

I generally farm Flame Legion not too far from CoF to get their bags and salvages (both good for Silk, and the salvages give some linen) but it still takes -hours- as it is mostly dependent on RNG. The most displeasing about this to me, is that I’m on the same sub-region of a map for hours on end, I have more fun farming mithril because I’m running around, killing a variety of foes (or outrunning them), it’s a less static activity in that sense. I see more of the map, need to stay on my toes a bit more as opposed to tab-1 farming of evil kitty upon evil kitty….

Farming specifically for silk -is- possible, the currently available methods are just not very engaging, and not something most people look into for that same reason.

Try running SW instead. If you can get into a map (use the LFG) that is doing Breach, then VW and Hidden Depths, you can easily get 30+ Heirloom Seed pouches, Bandit coin purses, and bags of gear. Salavage everything. Use excess tokens for Sandy Bags of gear. (Those also contain Exotics from time to time. I’ve gotten more exotics from those bags, then the champ bags…). On average I can get ~100+ scraps of silk from doing 2 runs back to back using the LFG. (1.5 hours or so) Far more than I ever could farming the Flame Legion.

I only salvage Cloth armor from my SW bags. Metal and Leather armors get forged until they are Cloth armor.

Gaviston Hawkington.9647:

mtpelion.4562:

Gaviston Hawkington.9647:

Key problem with MF in my opinion is that the influence of increased MF doesn’t seem powerful enough to counter the general affects of the RNG. I’ve gone rampaging with high MF with the desire to see increased rare (and/or exotic) drops to only be really disappointed. Then when just doing general game play without boosting up MF I’ll get two exotic items in an hour. RNG is RNG and while MF probably works exactly as designed it is clear that the impact from RNG > MF.

As with any type of random system, you need a LOT of samples to be able to detect an effect. While increasing your odds is still an improvement, going from 0.0001% to 0.0006% isn’t going to cause exotics to rain down upon you at every turn. You’re still better off than the guy at 0.0001% though.

that’s my point exactly. The affects of MF are truly imperceptible because the sample time necessary to see the impact (largely due to RNG) is meaningless. No one is going to play with maxed MF long enough to make it matter. Which begs the question as to why we have this mechanism called MF that leads us to believe it will produce some meaningful short term gain in loot drops. Could it? Yes. However, when players have better drops in spans when they have lower MF it shows the irrelevance of the loot boosting mechanic.

Well, it obviously has a larger impact on the lower tier items, moving you up from white to blue or blue to green, for example, so there is some value in it, but yes, overall the top tier items will be largely unimpacted for the majority of players.

tfcgeneralkmk.9508:

Ok I Did It.2854:

I would say that your loot is based on pure RnG and MF is just a made up stat that anet uses as a gold sink,

I used to farm a lot in this game, and when MF was changed I pushed it to 300% base fairly fast, ( I do not regret this ) but a friend of mine who refuses to use MF seems to get way better general loot that me when out in the open world, even though his MF is over 200% lower than mine,

Given all that and now that Anet seem to be pushing rewards into boxes instead of drops ( IE silverwastes ) MF is nearly no use at all here, and Anet stay mute on this topic because as the stands people are still sinking gold into MF.

how are you using gold to get MF buying random items to salvage? i don’t think it was intended as a gold sink since there is no direct way to get if for gold

If you buy Globs of Ectoplasm you can salvage them for a large amount of Luck Essence. You can then sell the resulting T6 dust to buy more Ecto, however you will take a gold loss on the transaction.

Gaviston Hawkington.9647:

Key problem with MF in my opinion is that the influence of increased MF doesn’t seem powerful enough to counter the general affects of the RNG. I’ve gone rampaging with high MF with the desire to see increased rare (and/or exotic) drops to only be really disappointed. Then when just doing general game play without boosting up MF I’ll get two exotic items in an hour. RNG is RNG and while MF probably works exactly as designed it is clear that the impact from RNG > MF.

As with any type of random system, you need a LOT of samples to be able to detect an effect. While increasing your odds is still an improvement, going from 0.0001% to 0.0006% isn’t going to cause exotics to rain down upon you at every turn. You’re still better off than the guy at 0.0001% though.

I craft and sell when the price is up because there is more profit to be made. I buy when the price is down and use that cheap stuff to make my ascended.

thefantasticg.3984:

See, you say that… but I beg to differ because last I checked precursors were lvl 80 exotics and not lvl 75-79… So if they forge is spitting out a lot more lvl 75-79s for the lvl 80s than it was before the change, I’m throwing in that means I have less chance of actually getting said precursor because the pool of potential items to come out has increased drastically. I’ll have to ask my guildmate that forges way more than I do to start recording what he throws in and what he gets out… because he sees the same trend I do.

Basically, your chance of getting Pearl weapons is now lower and instead your chance of a lower level weapon (with a different skin) is higher. The rate of named level 80 exotics has remained the same. They didn’t touch the non-Pearl item forge rates.

thefantasticg.3984:

I get a whole lot more sub-lvl 80s from throwing in four lvl 80s than I did before the mystic forge change. It sucks. I forge for precursors and after the many thousands I have thrown in I have definitely noticed how throwing in a sub lvl 80 has a much higher return rate of a sub lvl 80 than four lvl 80s… Good luck trying to get a precursor throwing in sub lvl 80s LOLOL I’m also willing to bet anyone who plays the forge as much or more than I do will agree.

The sub 80 items have no negative impact on your ability to forge a precursor. As long as the average of the 4 items is at least 75, you are forging for a precursor. Since the sub 80 items range between 75-79, they will always average at least 75.

I dislike Kasmeer. Marjory can stay.

Kasmeer’s lines are poorly written, her character lacks depth, the voice actor does not correctly elicit emotion with voice tone, and she’s just so annoying.

I was really hoping that Kasmeer would get killed, rather than the “invented just to be killed” Belinda.

Guhracie.3419:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Stuck? I don’t feel “stuck” at all.

However, I agree with you that I feel that the incremental changes to the forge, over the past year or so, have resulted in … incremental changes overall. There are a handful of new items, new transmutations (e.g. promotions or demotions), and some things generate a few more skins than they used to. But it basically feels like the same forge as before.

Mind you, I like the forge as it exists. It’s quite useful to me personally and a lot of fun at times.

Huh. Could you explain why you like the change that made it so the forge would start returning items of lower levels than it did previously? I’m not being sarcastic, here.

Because the lower level does not in any way negatively impact your ability to reforge them, but it does open up a whole new list of potential new skins you could get.

John Smith.4610:

First off, ground turkey is amazing. Ground turkey makes you strong.
Secondly, a wild rant != good feedback in any situation.

Let me ask a question, if you could farm silk specifically, but slowly, so the price remained what it currently is or higher, would that be better or worse?

I’d rather just be able to use Leather to craft Insignias so that cloth comes down and leather goes up until they hit parity (which won’t necessarily be an identical price point). I’m fine with the indirect acquisition of cloth and leather as it forces players to interact with the TP if they want to hurry up production, unlike with ore and logs where a player can hurry up production by simply touring maps and hitting nodes.

EDIT: and wild rants are great for diffusing hostile-leaning conversations, assuming they don’t carry on, so I’d argue that they can be used to acquire good feedback!

Radio Isotope.3045:

That BS time availability. Some of us have to budget our money and didn’t have enough to get them immediately. The 24 hour availability on them was Bullcrup. Bring them back for longer Anet. This Flash sale crup is stupid as hell.

From a sales perspective (i.e. the one ArenaNet cares about), flash sales are smart as heck.

They will back, and in greater numbers.

Keira Wildflower.7304:

They said you cant get them from world boss train

World chests, not world bosses.

Many maps have chests in them that aren’t Jumping Puzzle related.

Keira Wildflower.7304:

And no falling to your death..

Back when I needed it, I parked several alts at some easy chests that paid out the higher tier of fragments (each chest has it’s own range of fragments, I found Morgan’s Spiral to be a great one for this) and just went through each of the alts each day, opening and depositing the fragments.

Be sure to bring some salvage kits along though, as you’re going to fill up on blues and greens if you don’t.

insanemaniac.2456:

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

This also happens in normal markets, when a product becomes too expensive, usually a replacement is innovated, using some other material.
ground beef shortage? more people eat ground turkey.

I have to challenge this on the grounds that ground turkey is heresy.

you only think that because we have lots of cows to kill

Turkey is far too lean to be ground, hence the heresy!
Sandwich meat? Yes.
Roasted? Yes.
Ground? How dare you!

phys.7689:

This also happens in normal markets, when a product becomes too expensive, usually a replacement is innovated, using some other material.
ground beef shortage? more people eat ground turkey.

I have to challenge this on the grounds that ground turkey is heresy.

In the Silverwastes, pick a fort and defend it.
During the defense, you have an event.
If a wall falls down, you get an event to fix it.
If a wall doesn’t fall down, you can go help the caravan event.

Basically, by sticking around a fort you’ve got a constant stream of events at all times.

Why oh why can’t we just have some nice capes?

tfcgeneralkmk.9508:

thanks i must be unlucky most bags i open seem to contain mats used for insignias with rarely silk but it could just be a dry spell

Heavy Moldy Bags have a really large drop table (straddling T5 and T6). If you want silk, target bags that start with “Large” (like Large Moldy Bags, Large Ritual Bags, etc.).

This means hitting Malchor’s Leap or Straits of Devastation for Moldy bags, rather than Cursed Shores where you are getting Heavy Moldy Bags.

tfcgeneralkmk.9508:

sorry if this is an obvious thing but what is this faucet you talk (only thing i can think of being possible is salvaging, but that requires a specific type of armor drops or rag salvage mats which can produce things other than silk also

Bags. Every type of bag drops cloth and leather at a very high rate. Almost no bag drops ore or logs.

tfcgeneralkmk.9508:

except it is still a central hub for trading on this continent of tyria relatively easily accessible from the different home zones for the different races

No one is trading in Lion’s Arch now, they are simply passing through the Asura Gates which could very easily be moved anywhere else and achieve the same result.

Due to the lack of naval trade, LA lacks a purpose and as a result lacks a logical reason to be rebuilt.

With the war effort consuming so many resources, why would anyone want to expend time and money rebuilding a city that serves no immediate purpose? Better to let it lie in waste and build a new city that has more tactical or economic value.

From a logical perspective, there would be no reason for Lion’s Arch to be rebuilt at this time.

The reason LA was originally rebuilt was due to its value as a trading port, a reason that currently does not exist since trade with the other continents no longer exists and the Risen threat prevents most ships from going anywhere of value.

Furthermore, a large portion of the population was either killed or displaced, making it unnecessary as a civilian center.

Honestly, it would almost make more sense to change it into a PvE map and put Mystic Forges in the other cities.

I’d like to once again reiterate that the reason silk requires more is because there is a cloth/leather faucet that is constantly dumping materials into the economy without anyone intending to create them whereas this same faucet does not exist for ore/logs which are primarily generated by people intentionally gathering them in order to satisfy their own demand.

This ambient generation of materials is evenly distributed, as opposed to the farming generation method found with ore/logs which means that while the overall generation of cloth/leather is very high, individual generation is low requiring an individual to interact with other individuals in order to satisfy demand spikes that exceed their personal generation ability.

Long story short, ore/logs typically have a dynamic generation rate that satisfies demand, which limits the amount of excess product floating around. Cloth/leather have a relatively static generation rate which does not adapt well to changes in demand resulting in higher prices for T5 cloth (which has higher demand) and near useless prices for T5 leather (which has low demand).

1500 range is offset by low DPS under 1200, plus the attacks are ridiculously easy to dodge (they are slow firing, slow traveling, and you have lots of time to see them coming from 1500 away).

Being feared into the water worked for me. Just stand behind him and DON’T dodge.

I think the most expensive skin I ever bought on the TP was around 20g.

lordkrall.7241:

What about the skill points and such that are guarded by rather strong mobs that can be hard to solo? Orr have a couple of those. In many cases people need help in order to get that done. And you either have to kill them or have someone distract them while you get the SP.

Ash Legion Spy Kit

Never worry about soloing hard mobs again.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

mtpelion.4562:

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Wrong and wrong. You’re at bsing statistics because you like to omit data to fit a theorem.

Omitting something that’s assigned part of the value of the key, and then reassigning it to what you want, is not how that workings. Just because you might not personally use everything in the black lion’s chest does not mean they have value, and also, even if the ticket scraps are the only “relevant” thing(which they’re not as proven by the wiki links below) the values is still, a percent of the original.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

Oh look at that.

Look at all those things with value.

@edgarallanpwn.8739:

Ok, in one set of 35 runs, maybe (maybe) I’ll get one mini and 3 unidentified dyes (I’m making a generous guess here). We’ll say 2 gold.

So, subtract 2 gold from my calculated price of 256.66 gold to get 254.66 gold.

There, is that better?

Laugh all you want, if this were TRULY right, the prices would be much higher regardless of ability to farm.

Ohwait, theres a wiki with everything that drops.

Luck doesn’t matter. Its percentage based.

Laugh more at the fact that you’re an ultracrepidarian.

Hoh man. A lot of the dyes in those kits are also worth 100g+

Black Lion Chest Key.png Black Lion Chest Key
Black Lion Salvage Kit.png Black Lion Salvage Kit
Box of Fun.png Box o’ Fun
Communal Boost Bonfire.png Communal Boost Bonfire
Dye Pack.png Dye Pack²
Metabolic Primer.png Metabolic Primer
Utility Primer.png Utility Primer
Tome of Knowledge.png Tome of Knowledge
Unidentified Dye.png Unidentified Dye (1-2)
Flame Dye Kit.png Flame Dye Kit
Frost Dye Kit.png Frost Dye Kit
Deathly Dye Kit.png Deathly Dye Kit
Toxic Dye Kit.png Toxic Dye Kit
Taimi’s Dye Kit.png Taimi’s Dye Kit
Metallurgic Dye Kit.png Metallurgic Dye Kit
Lion’s Arch Survivors Dye Kit.png Lion’s Arch Survivors Dye Kit
Lion’s Arch Commemorative Dye Kit.png Lion’s Arch Commemorative Dye Kit
Heavy Crafting Bag.png Heavy Crafting Bag
Large Crafting Bag.png Large Crafting Bag
Medium Crafting Bag.png Medium Crafting Bag
Platinum Mining Node.png Platinum Mining Node
Platinum Mining Node.png Mithril Mining Node
Orichalcum Mining Node.png Orichalcum Mining Node
Elder Wood Logging Node.png Elder Wood Logging Node
Ancient Wood Logging Node.png Ancient Wood Logging Node
Lotus Harvesting Node.png Lotus Harvesting Node
Omnomberry Harvesting Node.png Omnomberry Harvesting Node
Snow Truffle Harvesting Node.png Snow Truffle Harvesting Node
Orrian Truffle Harvesting Node.png Orrian Truffle Harvesting Node
Ghost Pepper Harvesting Node.png Ghost Pepper Harvesting Node

Lets also go to the statistics page.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

Just so you know, your list includes items that currently have a 0% chance to drop making it invalid.

Just so you know that link also includes many many items that do have a % chance to drop like the wiki says, which you also stated have “0 value” which do have value.

Do you really want to go there?

You can admit the TRULY 0% chance items, but even if its 1 in 500000000, that’s still a chance, and it still has a value.

However that doesn’t change the fact you spewed the “you can dismiss the value of everything except tickets” statement.

The % chance to get those items multiplied by the value of those items added together adds up to less than 1g, thus you can exclude them from the calculation because they don’t have a meaningful impact. Of all the items you can get, only the Black Lion Claim Tickets and Scraps add up to a meaningful amount of value when their droprate has been multiplied against their sell value.

So yes, to get the most accurate expected gold value for each key you would need to spend the time factoring all of those things, however if we skip them entirely you are off by less than 1g, so it isn’t worth the effort to count them.

MiniEquine.6014:

mtpelion.4562:

MiniEquine.6014:

mtpelion.4562:

Immersion is a concept that works in single player games.

The instant you’re interacting with another player in any manner, any attempts at maintaining immersion are a futile waste of time.

That’s what RP is for though. I personally don’t care for it, but your statement isn’t as absolute as you make it seem. Some people/groups can be quite successful at remaining immersed in a fantasy environment by only role-playing.

Players getting together to craft a way to maintain immersion is different from designers putting in things that break/help immersion.

Of course individuals can use their imagination to immerse themselves.

I mean, that’s the point though, isn’kitten Immersion seems to be, ultimately, a relative and subjective concept. Something that provides an immersive experience to one player may not be immersive to everyone, and that extends to the developers as well.

Don’t get me wrong though, as I don’t completely disagree with your first statement; I do feel like if immersion is your thing then you ought to avoid players.

Yes, each person has their own point at which immersion breaks. I guess my original point should be clarified to state that immersion is something you can develop for with single player games, and that attempts to develop for immersion in multiplayer games is mostly futile. I really was speaking from the development perspective on immersion. There is only so much you can do to limit how one player’s actions impact the immersion of another player, which is the main gist I was trying to get across.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Wrong and wrong. You’re at bsing statistics because you like to omit data to fit a theorem.

Omitting something that’s assigned part of the value of the key, and then reassigning it to what you want, is not how that workings. Just because you might not personally use everything in the black lion’s chest does not mean they have value, and also, even if the ticket scraps are the only “relevant” thing(which they’re not as proven by the wiki links below) the values is still, a percent of the original.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

Oh look at that.

Look at all those things with value.

@edgarallanpwn.8739:

Ok, in one set of 35 runs, maybe (maybe) I’ll get one mini and 3 unidentified dyes (I’m making a generous guess here). We’ll say 2 gold.

So, subtract 2 gold from my calculated price of 256.66 gold to get 254.66 gold.

There, is that better?

Laugh all you want, if this were TRULY right, the prices would be much higher regardless of ability to farm.

Ohwait, theres a wiki with everything that drops.

Luck doesn’t matter. Its percentage based.

Laugh more at the fact that you’re an ultracrepidarian.

Hoh man. A lot of the dyes in those kits are also worth 100g+

Black Lion Chest Key.png Black Lion Chest Key
Black Lion Salvage Kit.png Black Lion Salvage Kit
Box of Fun.png Box o’ Fun
Communal Boost Bonfire.png Communal Boost Bonfire
Dye Pack.png Dye Pack²
Metabolic Primer.png Metabolic Primer
Utility Primer.png Utility Primer
Tome of Knowledge.png Tome of Knowledge
Unidentified Dye.png Unidentified Dye (1-2)
Flame Dye Kit.png Flame Dye Kit
Frost Dye Kit.png Frost Dye Kit
Deathly Dye Kit.png Deathly Dye Kit
Toxic Dye Kit.png Toxic Dye Kit
Taimi’s Dye Kit.png Taimi’s Dye Kit
Metallurgic Dye Kit.png Metallurgic Dye Kit
Lion’s Arch Survivors Dye Kit.png Lion’s Arch Survivors Dye Kit
Lion’s Arch Commemorative Dye Kit.png Lion’s Arch Commemorative Dye Kit
Heavy Crafting Bag.png Heavy Crafting Bag
Large Crafting Bag.png Large Crafting Bag
Medium Crafting Bag.png Medium Crafting Bag
Platinum Mining Node.png Platinum Mining Node
Platinum Mining Node.png Mithril Mining Node
Orichalcum Mining Node.png Orichalcum Mining Node
Elder Wood Logging Node.png Elder Wood Logging Node
Ancient Wood Logging Node.png Ancient Wood Logging Node
Lotus Harvesting Node.png Lotus Harvesting Node
Omnomberry Harvesting Node.png Omnomberry Harvesting Node
Snow Truffle Harvesting Node.png Snow Truffle Harvesting Node
Orrian Truffle Harvesting Node.png Orrian Truffle Harvesting Node
Ghost Pepper Harvesting Node.png Ghost Pepper Harvesting Node

Lets also go to the statistics page.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate

Just so you know, your list includes items that currently have a 0% chance to drop making it invalid.

MiniEquine.6014:

mtpelion.4562:

Immersion is a concept that works in single player games.

The instant you’re interacting with another player in any manner, any attempts at maintaining immersion are a futile waste of time.

That’s what RP is for though. I personally don’t care for it, but your statement isn’t as absolute as you make it seem. Some people/groups can be quite successful at remaining immersed in a fantasy environment by only role-playing.

Players getting together to craft a way to maintain immersion is different from designers putting in things that break/help immersion.

Of course individuals can use their imagination to immerse themselves.

Immersion is a concept that works in single player games.

The instant you’re interacting with another player in any manner, any attempts at maintaining immersion are a futile waste of time.

Astral Projections.7320:

azizul.8469:

i still do not understand how owning a skin is considered a “win” …. win what ? beauty contest ? there is no such competition in the game….

I had a long discussion with one guy who insisted that Guild Wars 2 was p2w because you could buy cosmetic items from the gem store. His argument, as I understood it, was that this game was based on cosmetics. Being able to buy the look you want from the gem store meant you won over people who also wanted that look but couldn’t afford to buy it. (I’m repeating his argument here, not trying to make sense of it). He’s not the only one I’ve seen come up with this argument though.

This was actually a pretty common argument in the old Black Lion Trading Post forum. It was always good for a laugh.

Astral Projections.7320:

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Astral Projections.7320:

Ok, my calculations on what weapon skins are worth if they are bought with real world money then sold on the trading post.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Black_Lion_Chest/Drop_rate
The current scrap drop rate is 0.289% which means on average it takes 34.6 keys to get 10 scraps. (We will say 35, I’m waving off the more rare chance to get a full ticket).

25 keys sell for $26.35€/2100 gems so 35 keys is 36.89$ or 2940 gems

Currently 100 gems sell for 8.73 gold which means 2940 gems is worth 256.66 gold.

Now a rational consumer would check the value of the gems he had to use to get one weapon skin and conclude that the starting price for a weapon right now should be 256.66 gold, which is what he would have gotten if he sold the gems he bought directly instead of converting them to keys first.

Starting prices for one ticket weapons are 60 to 90 gold, which means either that there are a lot of people not checking the value of the gems they converted to keys (a distinct possibility) or key farmers are pulling down prices.

You also forgot to factor in the gem value of all the account bound stuff, chance of contracts, dyes and their worths, etc.

The prices of keys is not directly related to black lion tickets so that price is false too. You would need to to take the % of black lion ticket drops, factor that into how many keys on average it would take to get that many tickets, then choose the cost based on that percentage, because that’s its net worth.

It doesn’t matter if that’s the only way to get them, and that statement would only be true if the only item that came out of them would be ticket scraps, or whole tickets.

You missed the most important factor there.

Redo the math again

Since the regular argument I’ve seen is that the “what you get from the chests is worthless” that means that people assign zero value to these items and don’t calculate their worth when deciding how much a weapon skin should sell for.

As to percent of black lion ticket drops, I used the listed percent on that site, 0.289% chance of getting a scrap from one key use.

You did the math correctly. You should assign a 0 value to everything other than the things you can actually sell. The fact that you got a bunch of gem store items that you cannot trade and probably never would have bought in the first place is irrelevant to the calculation.

Key farming is the equivalent of working a job that pays around $1.50/hour.

It is not a very rewarding process for the amount of time it takes to achieve. You’d be better off spending that time working at McDonald’s and turning your paycheck into gems, then converting those gems into gold, then buying the valuable items you wanted from the Black Lion Chest.

If people want to key farm, leave them alone. They aren’t causing any harm to you or anyone else, they’re really just wasting their own time.

Paying for extra convenience (which is what bank space is) is how this game generates the revenue that keeps the servers running.

You could either pay a monthly fee and get tons of stuff you never wanted or needed, or you could pay for only the things you actually do want or need. I personally prefer to only buy the stuff I want, which is why I’m perfectly happy with $10 bank slots.

Cloth isn’t necessarily more difficult to come buy, it is just that its generation method prevents the targeted production of it by an individual.

For example:

10 People who WANT Ore are generating 1,000,000 per day.
10 People who WANT Ore need 1,000,000 per day (able to supply their own demand)
100 People who do NOT want Ore are generating 100,000 per day (ambient generation from salvage)
Total generation is 1,100,000 per day, of which 100,000 was not specifically asked for. This excess supply is in low demand, so the price falls.

10 People who WANT Cloth are generating 100,000 per day.
10 People who WANT Cloth need 1,000,000 per day (900,000 supply deficit)
100 People who do NOT want cloth are generating 1,000,000 per day (ambient generation from salvage and bags)
Total generation is 1,100,000 per day, of which 100,000 wasn’t specifically asked for. However, since the 10 people who WANT Cloth are only able to generate 1/10 of the amount they need, they must compete with each other to purchase the remaining 9/10s from the ambient generators who are trying to sell their Cloth. It is this competition among buyers that drives up the Cloth price, not necessarily the available supply to demand ratio.

It is because Cloth and Leather are ambiently generated that their individual acquisition rates are so low as to require people to trade for any meaningful amount.

I do think that we should be able to craft Insignias with Leather AND Cloth, which would normalize the prices of the two.