Guild Wars 2

My recommendation is to buy the Damask you need now, then proceed to craft one per day and sell it to recoup your expenses over time.

Rauderi.8706:

Or you could have multiple cloth/leather/armor crafters at 450+

It’s an account gate, so you’d need multiple accounts with cloth/leather/armor crafters at 450+.

Furesy.6935:

Okay, since I am in the same guild as the OP and was online every time our guildie began his mystic forge quest I’ll post some screenies. I only have access to the ones he shared on FB, so I do not have all of them. But the ones I have are attached.

So does he always change his utility skill layout between forges?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

can anyone explain to me what this common expression “hurting the economy” means? What would be the problem if certain items get more expensive/less expensive than they are today?

In a virtual economy, high end luxury items are the main force that keeps crafting alive. If you make it too easy to get high end items, crafting quickly become obsolete. With crafting being obsolete, the vast majority of items in the game lose demand and soon you will simply sell everything to a vendor because no one wants to buy it.

It is for that reason that highly demanded items are kept rare, in order to keep the economy chugging so that crafting and item drops retain value.

Essence Snow.3194:

If you’re trying to get green pieces and happen to be playing chess while doing so then yes you can.

There are multiple possible objectives<—————very easy concept

Yes, and there is a difference between personal objectives and THE objective when playing a game.

phys.7689:

you have identitifed your own winning conditions.
GW2 has not identified winning conditions.
by your definition any game without pvp cannot be pay to win.

However, having such an open definition of win, does lead to communication problems, and a nebulous meaning of the word. However, winning is basically a nebulous term.

The expression “pay to win” originated in and exclusively applied to PvP games. I would argue that applying it to PvE would be incorrect unless redefined to be nebulous enough to be irrelevant.

I think an appropriate term for PvE would be “P4A” or pay for advantage.

Gandrogh.1530:

mtpelion.4562:

So you want a weapon that is so rare that it currently trades for 1,300g to be able to be crafted for 56g?

Do you really need anyone to explain why that recipe is not even remotely realistic?

Anet said many times that even 100g were too expensive for precu and they will do something in order too lower the price of precu. 2 years laters precu cost 1500g and Anet is’nt working on it

And there is your answer. The guy who said that was wrong. That’s why they didn’t make precursors cheap. Instead they hired an economist who explained why cheap precursors would cause the entire economy to be damaged.

Playing with your staff shames your family.

Essence Snow.3194:

Yeah nvm the whole edit……just carry on………(sarcasm btw)

All of that completely depends on what the objective is. If the two players are trying to get green pieces and one can pay to get green pieces faster…..then yes they can p2w. There are multitudes possibilities in terms of objectives. Even in chess…..least amount of clock time, most losses while using the most logical moves (losses can be a win if that’s the objective), most games played consecutively, etc etc….

It all depends on the objective and means to that objective.

The objective of chess is to checkmate the other King piece.
That is how you win.
The people playing chess may have objectives that are unrelated to checkmating the other King piece (such as having green pieces). My ability to buy green pieces helps me accomplish my personal objective, but it does not impact the objective of the game. Thus I cannot pay to win at chess by getting green pieces.

So you want a weapon that is so rare that it currently trades for 1,300g to be able to be crafted for 56g?

Do you really need anyone to explain why that recipe is not even remotely realistic?

Essence Snow.3194:

You see your second sentence is where the issue is. You are imposing a specific defined criteria to something where it is not necessary. To win something does not require improving ability.

Paying to win requires that you can pay to improve your ability to win.
If paying does not improve your ability to win, then it isn’t pay to win.

Take chess, for example. If I have the option to buy an extra Queen that will replace one of my Pawns, then that is P2W because it bestows an increased ability to win in exchange for cash. I didn’t get better at chess, I simply paid for the ability to win more easily. By a similar token, if I have the option to pay for green pieces instead of white, it is not P2W even if my goal is to have green pieces since having green pieces is not a condition of winning a chess match and in fact has no bearing on my ability to win the match. It allows me to have more green pieces than you, but I didn’t win anything.

Getting Ascended weapons is more important than getting Ascended armor. Just keep that in mind.

Essence Snow.3194:

Distilled? How? I fail to understand how:

“anything I don’t like in the cash store”
can be a distilled result of
“where rl cash is used to obtain a goal in an advantageous fashion over not using rl cash”

Unless a)reading comprehension fail b) Strawman c) didn’t read

P2W meant “pay to win”. You can only win when there are objective win/loss criteria. You can only pay to win when you can improve your character’s ability to win by paying real life money.

If we now state that P2W means “real life cash is used to obtain a goal faster”, then everything is P2W because literally anything can be a goal.

Since P2W applies to literally everything, I can honestly state that everything I don’t like is P2W while leaving out the part about everything being P2W.

That’s the net result. Everything is P2W, but I only call it P2W when I don’t like it.

Essence Snow.3194:

Is that what I said? I don’t believe so.

It is the distilled result of what you said. It may not be how you personally would use the term, but it is how many people already are using the term.

Essence Snow.3194:

I’m not sure why some insist that p2w is so specific. It has become an eponym for anything where rl cash is used to obtain a goal in an advantageous fashion over not using rl cash. It is very much like a brand name becoming the standard for something. Examples of this are Kleenex for tissues, in the UK Hoover for vacuum/ing, or aspirin for acetylsalicylic acid.

Ofc if we must insist on it being so specific we can always just categorize things not encompassed by it as simply cheating.

If the term “P2W” has morphed into a synonym for “anything I don’t like in the cash store”, then it has lost its ability to be used in intelligent debate as it no longer objectively classifies something.

eithinan.9841:

No one has ever complained in gw2 PVP that someone was able to beat them because of those OP toxic shoulder skins.

The only thing that comes close to a P2W item is the watchwork pick because it gives additional items compared to the vendor items. But since there is the ability of each player to trade gold for gems and buy one it doesn’t really count. If fact I fall into the school of thought that since you can convert gold to gems there is no real possibility for gw2 to be P2W unless they try really hard.

I wouldn’t even say that the Watchwork pick is on the P2W track. It did set an unpleasant precedent of a Gem Store item having an economy impact (and it is also the main reason I’m holding out on buying any other tools, just in case they release another perked version), but it certainly wasn’t pay to win.

I do wish that they would unlock the achievements on all characters after your first one finishes the chapter. I’d still keep the first playthrough in order for each character though (as well as the first time rewards).

Manifestos work when you are proposing a direction for a game in development.

Once the game is released though, there is only one “manifesto”, and that is “do what the publisher tells you to do, or be fired”.

Do the daily world boss circuit for the guaranteed rares.

Salvage the armor for Ecto (and silk for the light armor) until you have enough for your legendary (250), then start selling them.

Forge the weapons. Specifically, forge your longbows together and forge everything else separately. Check the price on Greatswords, Daggers, Staves, and Swords before you forge them. If they are selling for 60s or more, sell them instead.

If you get an exotic promotion, check the price on the TP.
If the price is over 4g, sell it, otherwise hang onto it until you have enough to forge those.

You should also run dungeons for gold generation and tokens (you’ll need Twilight Arbor tokens for one of your gifts). The tokens can be spent on additional rares/exotics for forging.

Also note that those masterwork (green) items have a 20% chance to be promoted into a rare (yellow) item in the Mystic Forge, so every 16 masterworks is basically 1 free rare, if you are willing to put in the effort to forge them.

Ohoni.6057:

Oh one other thing, someone wrote that buying a precursor with real money is pay to win. No it isn’t. The precursor is not better than any other BiS item.

Again, it totally depends on what your victory condition is. This is a largely non-competitive game in which the difference between full Exotic and full Ascended is negligible. Cosmetics are the major reward, not superior stats, so being able to buy those cosmetics with cash money, while other players have to grind for them, is pay to win. The only thing players should be spending cash money on is stuff in the gem store, which is explicitly tagged as cash stuff.

Having the term “pay 2 win” apply to personal victory conditions makes it a meaningless term.

As it is meaningless, it would be irrational for you to care if the game is pay 2 win or not.

I’ve only spent about 4-5 hours in Silverwastes so far and have accumulated about 1500 crests (not counting the ones I’ve spent on keys).

As the crests and events are permanent content, the current cost of 1,000 crests is very well balanced.

phys.7689:

mtpelion.4562:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

mtpelion.4562:

If, however, the purpose is to be a long term goal that carries the prestige of being both time consuming and rare, then, yes, there must be a cost intensive aspect.

That is literally what the icy runestones are for.

That is a fixed, insignificant cost. They exist exclusively as a minor gold sink.

legendaries would not need precursors to be legitimate long term goal, ignoring the precursor completely, a substantial amount of time is spend on the other components. They have people who got a lucky precursor a year ago, and are still working their way towards the non precursor requirements.

I got my lucky precursor early this summer. I’ve only got the Gift of Magic and Gift of Might left to go.

I’ve been casually farming the materials (saving my precious gold) and as of right now, of the 2,250 T6 Materials and Glob of Ecto required for the Gift of Fortune, I’ve got only 768 left to go (that number is actually less, as I haven’t updated my tracking log in 2 weeks).

I am coming from a nearly empty bank of T6 as I was leveling up to 500 in several crafting professions when my lucky precursor showed up.

It really does not take that long to accumulate the non-precursor parts if you are working towards that goal.

Abraxas.3286:

As these tools cost 1000 Gems each. For someone who has multiple characters its annoying switching them between my various characters (8 of them).

My suggestion is that once the tool is bought, they behave something like the “Zenith skins” under the achievement tab. Where once the skin is unlock you can withdraw one and apply it to any of your characters.

So in essence you will be withdrawing your gem store tool to any character.

thoughts?

For that feature, expect the price to rise to at least 8,000 gems.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

mtpelion.4562:

If, however, the purpose is to be a long term goal that carries the prestige of being both time consuming and rare, then, yes, there must be a cost intensive aspect.

That is literally what the icy runestones are for.

That is a fixed, insignificant cost. They exist exclusively as a minor gold sink.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

It never seems to go that fast for me, but that’s great if it’s true. I typically defend either amber or blue and have escorted a number of blue and amber dolyaks but never seen any siege at either location except burning oil which doesn’t reach most of the attackers.

Is there some correlation between supply level, number of dolyaks and what seige should be present?

Amber gets cannons, which are almost as useless as the oil. Blue gets hammers that can be used to build fences in front of the walls.

Supply runs are definitely needed to get these, I’m not sure if having broken gates gets in the way (i.e. if you need to get a supply run to repair the gate before you can get a supply run that gives you siege improvements).

Obtena.7952:

No, that would actually damage their reputation. There is a very real effect where people associate quality with value. If Anet were just giving away stuff for almost nothing after the valuation they have put on their items, I would have VERY real concerns about the state of the game.

For example: Everyone wants to show off their Gy….something ghost dog mini pet.
No one runs around with Mini Queen Jennah.

They are both equally useful, but one had people complaining about occupying bank space while the other had people offering to pay thousands of gold for a non-account bound version.

The difference between them is that one was scarce and the other was common.

Humans are incredibly vain creatures. It’s why shiny things are expensive even if they aren’t useful.

Ohoni.6057:

Thanks for agreeing with me that right now forging precursors is cost intensive.

That was never in doubt by anyone, the point is that it doesn’t have to be.

That depends on what the purpose of Legendary weapons is.

If the purpose is to be an item that everyone has multiple of, then you are right, it doesn’t have to be cost intensive to get a precursor.

If, however, the purpose is to be a long term goal that carries the prestige of being both time consuming and rare, then, yes, there must be a cost intensive aspect. Having that aspect be a single item is far less destabilizing to the economy than if you were to spread out the cost across multiple items (especially if they are used for other things).

The real issue was not with toxicity, but with people getting rewarded for doing nothing.

Now that the fix is in, doing nothing gets you nothing, so the do-nothings have left the area.

You may still have some do-littles, but at least they are kind of helping.

New content will have a surge of people at the beginning who are trying it out and getting their achievements done.

After that initial wave, the population will always start to decline as the players go back to doing their regular stuff.

Some people might blame the population shift on the change to the chest spawns. While there may be an overall population drop due to that, those players were not actively participating in the map, therefore losing them does not have any negative impact on the map’s ability to complete events.

AuTomA.2459:

that’s exactly my point,why i can’t farm a zone for 10 hours straight honestly?i would love if someone of anetsupport comes here and discuss this matter ^^"

Because that’s what bots do. Normal players do not.

That makes your activity highly suspicious.

Being reported does not automatically trigger a ban. It creates a ticket that gets investigated.

If you were reported for botting and it looks like you were botting, then a ban will be issued.

If you weren’t botting, then you will need to contest it and a further investigation will be done.

The problem is that you are engaged in activities that are high on the “bot suspicion” list. You may want to simply mix up your activities more in order to look less like a bot.

I’m happy with it… I never salvage a leather item as long as someone is willing to pay me 2 times the value of the salvage result.

Zepher.7803:

My question is, what does “This Tool Replaces your Logging axe on Any Character” mean? do I still have to manually place it on all my toons to use? or is it going to be my logging axe automatically whatever toon I log in?

It’s probably just a terribly-worded way of saying “This tool can be traded between any of your characters”.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

And your argument boils down to hyperbolism. Please enlighten me which activity requires me to do nothing while still getting incredible loot. Traidingpost flipping on the other hand could be described better as “just standing around”.
If you don’t flip, then I don’t really know why you have a problem with the prices falling.
I still stand by my statement: If the player’s fun is opposed to the health of the economy, then the economy isn’t a very good one.

Whatever your opinion may be, it is wrong as proved by the fact the amber chest farm was fixed.

My position is vindicated by developer action.

I was just attempting to explain to you why you were wrong. If you aren’t willing to acknowledge why then… well… Candy Crush is available in the app store.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Oh yeah, how dare they using effective ways of getting stuff while you aren’t able anymore to flip those items.
It should call attention to the current situation of the rewards in normal PvE if the only thing the regular player still enjoys is farming the crap out of something “broken”.

I don’t flip items, so your entire counter argument is null. Even if I did, your argument still boils down to “standing around doing nothing should be more rewarding than playing the game”, which is ridiculous. You can switch over to playing Candy Crush if that’s what you want out of your gaming experience.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Soo, if your precious economy falls into chaos while many people enjoy farming those chests, then it might not be the optimal economy for this game, right?

There is a difference between “farming” (what you can do in SW now) and “being rewarded for standing around doing nothing” (which is what was happening).

If people can stand around doing nothing and generate more loot than people who are actually going around doing things to generate loot, then it is clearly unintended and potentially disastrous for the game’s economy.

Beldin.5498:

wasted.6817:

Yea, i was wondering how long it will take people to figure it out. Yak nerf incoming. Hahah. And i’am just gonna throw it in here. If you have enough ppl on yak it will spawn champs and those champs will drop bags. Hf.

Did that events a lot in the first days, but can’t say that i really got much T6 there.
Had the feeling mostly i got T6 from the non-mordrem mobs like scorpions, hyenas
and drakes.

I noticed this too. The non-mordrem appear to have better T6 rates.
Both types are still better than any other map though.

phys.7689:

i know you dont like it, but essentially the point of the initial post was, stop complaining about precursors being overpriced, you can get these ones instead! The ones people want are meant to be out of your reach.

Which essentially brings in the whole, should high demand precursors be out of reach or not discussion. This thread was always meant to incite this type of debate. Penguin just chose to frame it in a way that diminishes one side.

High demand precursors are only expensive if you buy them. All of the ones that are for sale came from somewhere, and every single player in the game has the exact same ability to make them appear out of thin air.

It isn’t a very fun, predictable, or rewarding process, but even the poorest player in the game can acquire the most expensive precursor for no gold.

Using the TP is a shortcut. As such, it carries a hefty premium. That premium goes up if there are players with more money than you who want that convenience more than you do.

This means that you’ve got three options:
1. Save up until you can outspend the other offers.
2. Grind out/luck into a precursor of your own.
3. Buy a less demanded precursor so that you can check off the “legendary” box.

High demand precursors are not out of reach, they are just difficult to reach because of their high demand.

Leamas.5803:

Apolo.5942:

Cose they sell gold?.

And gold is not worth nearly as much as it used to be indicating the model has issues with uncontrolled inflation.

2 years ago 100 gems would cost about 80s. Now it costs about 14g. That’s over 17 times the price increase. Likewise 2 years ago 100 gems would convert in to about 60s, these days it converts in to about 10g…again, about a 17 times increase. They’re printing money without providing sufficient means to remove it from the economy and it’s causing runaway inflation.

This is part of the reason they’re afraid of mob loot, it adds even more to an already out of control economy. I would surmise this is a large contributing factor to so much of the new stuff being craft only and account bound. Such dynamics contribute far less to market destabilization.

Here’s a graph on GW2Spidy showing the constantly decreasing value of gold. This graph actually shows the value of gems increasing, but as the value of gems increases, the worth of gold decreases. Back when you could only get 60s for 100g, that’s about 24 gold for $50, why would one bother buying large amounts of gems with irl money since you could make 24g with a couple days of regular play, though surely some did. Now that you can get massive amounts of gold for relatively cheap irl money, that same $50 now gets you ~450 gold, more people are using it and it’s glutting the economy, causing terrible inflation….and it’s only going to get worse because the model has no way to control it. The gem to gold conversion should never have been allowed. There’s no way people are spending nearly as much gold on gems as is coming in to the economy, so ANet is just printing more and more money…which is generally bad.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

The currency exchange has absolutely nothing to do with inflation in any way, shape or form.

An increase in the gold cost of gems means only one thing: that more players are converting gold into gems than are converting gems into gold.

This actually means that the gold supply available in the game economy is LOWER over time, which is the exact opposite of the point you are attempting to make.

Khisanth.2948:

Yeah … throw in 4 twisters and get back an item with a value equal to two twisters.

I’m wondering how deep the MF drop table is for exotic amulets, rings, and accessories. I’m going to attempt to see if valuable items (like the Treasure Hunter collectibles) are included and if so at what drop rate.

I’d like to see buried chests be spawned by successful defend and supply events rather than guaranteed at set intervals.

This would mean that in order to get tons of chests, you also have to ensure that the entire map is clicking with both defense and supply running.

I do think that the chest loot should be based heavily on the status of the forts in order to promote cohesion. We’ve currently got different maps with different goals. With a few tweaks you could have all the maps having the same ultimate goal (succeeding in defending the forts and supply lines) with everyone getting what they wanted out of it.

Your friend will need to create a support ticket.

At the top of this webpage, click on the Support link.

These boss fights mix two concepts:
1. Damaging the boss at the appropriate time.
2. Figuring out the mechanic by which you trigger the appropriate time.

They are no more difficult than the boss fights in any Zelda game, and those were designed to be played by children 10-20 years ago. They are also no less enjoyable than the boss fights in any Zelda game, which is why I’m enjoying them so much.

What they really needed to do was either not allow ANY rune/sigil to be craftable, or make ALL runes/sigils craftable.

It is pretty irritating that all of the “good” runes/sigils require pure dumb luck to be created.

Of course, I also think that there are just far too many rune/sigil varieties (moreso on the rune side), the vast majority of which are completely useless in nearly every single in-game scenario.

I really think that they dropped the ball big time on both the initial implementation and the overhaul for runes/sigils. It’s really the only area of the game where I feel this way.

I have never had lag (other than when everyone in the game is also getting bad lag), but there are definitely lag spikes while in the Silverwastes.

If you let Superior Runes/Sigils be forged, then the value of the many worthless ones will increase simply because people will be buying them to forge them for ones that are actually useful.

I’m down with that, as few things are as annoying as dropping 4 rare runes/sigils into the forge, seeing orange pop out, and knowing that it is going to be worth about 1/8 of what you could have gotten had you sold your 4 rare runes/sigils.

My sister got Zap by running dungeons all the time, spending the tokens on exotic weapons, and throwing those weapons into the Mystic Forge.

I got Leaf of Kudzu from the Mystic Forge. I crafted a bunch of exotic weapons to unlock the skins in the Wardrobe and threw the results into the forge to try and get some additional skins.

ItsTheFritz.8749:

Thanks guys!

I guess the only ones I would want are the candy corn, quartz, and sprocket nodes. Are any of these available anywhere else other than events like Halloween for candy corn?

Candy Corn can be generated all year long now thanks to the addition of the “Vial of Maize Balm” item.

Sprockets can be generated by killing Aetherblades in the three places they exist, or by using the Watchwork Mining Pick.

Quartz can be mined in Dry Top.

These are probably three of the hardest to generate resources in the game, so it is nice to have a small, steady supply of them from the home instance.

I’ve got enough nodes to always get daily gatherer, so to me they are worth it as a convenience item (I don’t have to hunt down nodes if I’m trying to quickly get my daily done).

In terms of the resources you harvest? They will eventually pay for themselves… but without doing the math I estimate that it will be several YEARS before they do.