Guild Wars 2

ok, you are mixing up a lot of things here.
There is a point about kill claim benefiting DD more. But you are adding in other things. It really has nothing to do with the trinity or lack thereof.

Also, the way those rewards were figured out seems like they were different for a group, IE in a group after less tagging effort, your whole groups contribution was figured. IE support focused players in a group have to do a lot less damage to tag. This is probably why loot feels better in a party, because you are getting full loot contribution.

Anyhow, yeah support and non damage types appear to get screwed when it comes to credit, this is mostly only an issue with super large events, in smaller groups its a lot more likely you do enough damage to get credit, since it appears to be comparing %s done to the monster.

Its very likely they never really realized the effect until the karka event, and even then they didnt realize the extent to which it effected drops, got to remember, their live team is fairly small in comparison, how often do they have 30 people at one event, and then how much data can they even get to see how loot is being effected.

So yeah, its messed up, but i hardly think it was intentional, they thought they tuned the damage contribution low enough that even a support chr would get credit, they consider the groups overall contribution in a group, they probably thought that would be enough. Outside of large events (and possibly bugged situations where others have done damage and failed before you got there) it really is enough. Dont think this is intentional.

Thoughtless.7148:

Will.9785:

Thoughtless.7148:

im guessing you havent farmed much? you are right, there was no gun to my head, it was my choice. BUT consider the time involved, 600 dragons over a month or over 5 monthes is still 600 dragons. why should everyone be able to get in 5 dragons down rthe line because a small group complained hard enough

I’ve farmed enough to know that something’s got to give. It isn’t a small group of people either. Most folks don’t have legendaries therefore I bet if you asked the majority would be in favor of such a change.

if everyone has it, is it really legendary? of course you want a Lamborghini for the price of a civic…everyone would jump at that chance.

actually precursors arent rarer because they have random attached to them, they are just measured in a simple way.
This means Anet says for every 1000 man hours of play 1 precursor drops. One could design content that takes 1000 man hours, or created content that take 1000 man hours to master, or any number of ways.

Also the whole rarity thing is an illusion, a lot of people like things not because how much they cost, but because of what they represent, or the actual quality of the item, or they just like the item. If i like my lamborgini, i really dont care how many other people have it.

Anet has represented legendary as the endgame actvity to aim for for people who hit 80. Not surprising that people actually want to to be able to make concrete progress toward this goal

Mourningcry.9428:

With all due respect, the discussion seems to have shifted more toward Legendary acquisition, and while still a valid component of the TP & economy it’s a very niche component. And as stated numerous times throughout this thread, they are not a necessity, a requirement, or in any way a mandatory component of play.

Further, and most importantly, acquisition of the legendary components via the TP in no way precludes players from all the other aspects of the game (JP, dungeons, quests, etc.). While there is little argument that it offers a faster time to acquisition of these items, it also allows a player to participate in other aspects of the game, while using gains from those endeavors to still acquire, albeit at a slower rate, items they would otherwise not have gotten via these others methods.

Simply put, without the TP, participation in activities other then those directly associated with required components of a Legendary would be undesirable for those in that niche. As it stands now, which is undeniable, the TP offers the option of doing other activities while still allowing acquisition of said components. This is a good thing as it offers options and choice.

once again the problem is not that the TP allows you to trade time etc, the problem is that rewards are designed so that you cant achieve much without using the TP. also, activities arent designed to be rewarding in terms of earning gold.
The endgame has way to large a focus on competitive gold earning.

The tp or gold will always be the primary metric for trading time and effort between players, in this game there is even less choice about that without secure trading. In this game it will always be that. The problem is not the fact that TP exists, it is that the basics of the economny are extremely flawed.

biggest flaw of economy. It is difficult to consciously meet any specific demand.
ie, the majority of creations of goods are either totally random, or have enough random ways of obtaining it that not obtaining it randomly is of less value.

You cant trade your good or service because the game doesnt allow you to have a good or service.
materials supplier? a great many materials are awarded randomly by scavenging
item crafter? a great many items are awarded randomly by enemy drops
drop hunter? almost every drop is awarded randomly, so being the best ele hunter, or dragon hunter is worthless.

the game is primarily controlled by predetermined random rates, you cant even choose which type of gambling you prefer. The only winners are the lucky, and the people who stand outside of the game, the merchants. Some would say grinders are winners, but they arent really the winners, they just are the manufacturers, the blue collar guys who put in the hours. The game design forced them to work in a gold factory, and the wealthiest players decided how long they have to work in the factory.

Ursan.7846:

Azjenco.9425:

Do you know what would have made these items worth being called legends?

The fact that Anet designated this weapons tier “Legendary?”

While what you’re saying is great and all, Anet designed Legendaries to be only wielded by a small percentage of the population.

If you want this legendary epic quest to be only completable by only a small percentage of people, it has to be a very long and very difficult quest.

Lets just ignore how unfair a quest so difficult, a majority of the player population can’t do it. And how hard it is to come up with a metric for player skill. It has to take a loooong time to do to enforce rarity.

In order to not make it repetitive (grindy) there has to be a TON of unique content created, just for the sole purpose of creating a Legendary.

So you’re devoting TONS of dev work-hours to creating content on something that 1% of the population will experience.

While, in a perfect world, your ideas would be nice. But if we are working on the assumption that Anet wants to enforce Legendary rarity, your proposed solution is incredibly impractical.

I mean think about it. Say it takes 1000 hours of “grind” to earn a Legendary. In order to make this non-grindy and non-repetitive, Anet has to create 1000 hours of unique gameplay? (Perhaps more, seeing as more people would play through unique content than grind repetitively?) While certainly possible, it’s impractical, and really takes away from the rest of the game (yes, the game exists even if you ignore Legendaries)

Actually they dont have to design unique content, the methods of obtaining a precursor should actually use the already existing world to achieve its goal. The game is very large, with a lot of content, much of this content is ignored in favor of gold grinding activities. The endgame is basically Gold Wars, and its not the way in which the game is the most fun, or challenging.

They have difficult puzzles, mini dungeons, dungeons, hidden and hard to reach areas. dynamic events people have never done or seen. Gold can be an alternate path to achieving legendaries, but making it the only path essentially is shortchanging the large world they have created, and making the main endgame goal into a battle to be rich.

Once again i will reiterate, the problem is multifold.

a lot of people enjoy obtaining their rewards themself, or at least a rough direction. They enjoy doing activities that lead towards X. Maybe they wont hunt every single piece, but they like to be able to hunt. You simply cant do this with precursors in anyway that has any tangible progress.

A great many people do not like hoarding money: you say they cant save or have no self control, this may be true, however john smith said about 10 to 15% of people enjoy amassing large amounts of wealth, this means the large majority of players do not.
long story short its not fun for a lot of players.

The key here, is that some people are huge believers in monetization, they love turning everything they do into money. When you have that type of belief, its all the same, everything goes back to how much money it costs, and how much it earns. The game is designed with a HEAVY focus on monetization, however, its important to note, that a great many people do not enjoy monetization. many people like materialism, they like to get an obtain actual things, many others like experiences, they want do and experience interesting things, others like to progress.

Precursor works against all of these people, due to the heavy monetization focus and where that leads.

Experiences are anti rewarded in terms of money. 9/10 times doing something that is mostly for the new interesting experience pays very poorly.

Materialism, when it comes to precursors, materialist need not apply, the only reliable way to get it is to liquidate all of your goods. And you cant hunt it and get the precursor yourself.

Progress lovers simply cannot progress to legendary, except by saving gold. this can be seen as progress, except the price continues to rise, for some people they cannot reach the point of earning toward legendary.

long story short. Precursor is the most ungratifying part of the legendary process, many people dont get that much joy out of directly purchasing something.
Its hard for many people in this subforum to understand, because they mostly think monetarily.

CassieGold.7460:

Just to make this really clear: You want to forge Twilight, you’re okay with the cost of the 100 lodestones + the cost of the hundreds of ecto + the cost of the stacks of Orichalcum ingots you need…. but the cost of the precursor bothers you?

I have never understood this……

but you dont actually need to buy most of those things, you will get them through normal play over time. Precursor is the only one that you cannot get through intent, and the only one you can do no work towards by normal play. Its essentially gates who can obtain a legendary by being in the top 10% of gold earners in the game.

I ve probably had my hands on at least 1000 ingots, 1000s of ectos, prolly 200 lodestones(though not 100 of any yet) all together, all through doing the types of things i kinda like doing, or focusing my efforts on a something i want. Precursor doesnt work this way, you can only get a precursor reliably by amassing a large amount of wealth determined essentially by the most wealthy players. (the precursors will always cost what the richest 5% is willing to pay if its something only 5% of players will ever see drop)

Now you say, why dont you just sell everything and buy it. Mostly because that type of play doesnt entertain me. Hitting buy in a virtual store is one of the least entertaining things in any game for me. I simply dont think the endgame goal that is supposed to show people how much you play or are good at GW2 should come down to amassing wealth in the top 10% of players.

Why is an adventure/action/rpgs greatest achievements and awards, based around how good you are at being a merchant/investor? This is illogical

Syeria.4812:

phys.7689:

problem is your tying the player to doing just the gold thing per hour, no matter what they actually want to do. By stripping it down to the equations you are missing the point, it is a game, that is supposed to be about adventuring and doing fantastic things, for many of the populace, they play the game to do fantastic things. So while in equation form, yes just earning money is actually saving you time most likely, so one could say its better, however, its also forcing you to play the type of game you dont want to play.

There’s a (theoretically) simple adjustment to that that solves everything. Quantify the value of “enjoyment” in in game currency. How much gold is the pleasure from an hour of [in-game activity x] worth? I mention that it’s theoretically simple because the math and theory behind it are extremely simple, but the actual practice of quantifying is fuzzy at best. But from a pure theory standpoint:

Option 1:

Gold earned per hour 1 + enjoyment value 1 per hour = Gameplay value 1

Option 2:

Gold earned per hour 2 + enjoyment value 2 per hour = Gameplay value 2

If Gameplay value 2 > Gameplay value 1, pursue option 2, otherwise pursue option 1. (Note, enjoyment value can be negative if it’s something you actively dislike, it’s also likely logarithmic rather than linear with respect to time.)

The game is about doing all sorts of things, but even the most mundane activities have merit in game insofar as they allow or enhance your attempts to do other things. To use (generic) examples from other games, inventory management can be a desired feature, even though most people would argue it’s not fun to manage inventory space. Non-instantaneous travel in an MMO can add value. Farming the same fight over and over again provides great enjoyment for some people. Camping a mob/event/etc often enhances the value of some other facet of a game.

Simply put, a game without those side activities wouldn’t last long. “All action all the time” is usually a negative comment about a game. The balance between certain activities and the alleged “meat” of a game is very important, but you can’t just simply say “well GW2 is about going stabby stabby on dragons so everything that’s not directly impaling mythical flying beasts is bad.”

Once again you are starting off with the premise that gold makes people happy, it really doesnt work that way, however the lack of reward, or disincetizing behaviors is proven. For example, many kids love playing tag, but most will like playing tag less if all the kids who dont play tag get chocolate. The key here is, people may not be happy with money, but it doesnt mean it doesnt bother them if others are getting rewards and they are not.

So yeah, im not saying they should take away rewards from any activity, im saying they should change how the decide what is awarded, some tasks should primarily award gold, other should primarily award items, this allows the drop rates to be better for people hunting specific things, and also allows the people to supply demands and balance costs.

This allows people people to actually obtain things they want. To go out and say, hey today i want to hunt a rifle, and have a better chance of getting a rifle, it may take them the same time that they would have been farming in ORR, but they will feel better for it. They will feel rewarded, and not feel like they have to participate in an economy they dont like in order to get ahead.

Essentially what it boils down to, is in a game, for many people money isnt paramount, but this game forces people to the TP and forces them to measure their time in money earned rather than what they can do or achieve.

money shouldnt be the end goal, money is supposed to be the liquid means of trading goods and services, by making money the only predictable reward for tasks, you make getting the most money per hour the best way to do anything you want to do. This is why it starts to feel like work to people, because they are doing things they dont really like, to get something they like later.

Mourningcry.9428:

phys.7689

see thing here, is you are taking it back to money and wealth earned per hour. If you decided you are going to buy lodestones, you basically will be able to get 1 per hour of farming. (for the above average player) now if you take that same player, and tell him to actually hunt lodestones, he will essentially spend 30 minutes trying to create the circumstances that allow them to be farmed, then if he has average luck, he will get 1 per 1.5 hours.

Actually, I was trying to tie the item to time rather than gold. X -> gold -> Y as a function of time.

The only other alternative way to quantify this would be to say, “kill rate”… Which you allude to in the destroyer analogy. Kill “X” of whatever to get “Y”. But then you’re eventually going to reach the conversion of kills per hours which translates to “Y”/hour. Same thing. And then the more efficient killers will be the next target of contention of those unable to match their rate.

The point is regardless of base measurement, it’s going to come down to how many “Y” can be achieved per hour.

phys.7689

Essentially the best way to obtain anything is generally to try to make money, then go to the tp, but heres the thing, a lot of players of rpgs and adventure game dont particularly enjoy massing wealth or playing a merchant/finances guy. They actually want to go and hunt the things they want, and preferably theyd like hunting things to be entertaining and exciting.

I absolutely agree. Which is also why the TP is a good tool in that it allows you to do what you want, while still offering a means (if not the most efficient) to get items you otherwise wouldn’t. Again, it’s a function of how efficient the other actions are that is under contention.

phys.7689

The game is better served when you have to say, go to mount maelstrom and hunt destroyers to supply destroyer lodestones, rather than kill random things till you can buy them. They can tie it to lore, and make it an interesting adventure.

As I mentioned above, this then becomes a kill rate optimization. The more you kill, the faster you kill the more you get. Make it a jumping puzzle then? Then it’s a success rate conversion. At least with the gold/hr a player is not tied into being able to perform a single, or few tasks well to be able to effectively acquire what they want.

phys.7689

This is the flaw of the current economic design, and it will continue to incentivize the type of play which doesnt make the game do what it wants to do well.

I understand these arguments, but I still would like to see some kind of quantification as to what would constitute a fair rate of acquisition for these desired items? At least then a possible implementation in game to meet this rate could be discussed.

problem is your tying the player to doing just the gold thing per hour, no matter what they actually want to do. By stripping it down to the equations you are missing the point, it is a game, that is supposed to be about adventuring and doing fantastic things, for many of the populace, they play the game to do fantastic things. So while in equation form, yes just earning money is actually saving you time most likely, so one could say its better, however, its also forcing you to play the type of game you dont want to play.

If money was acting as a means of transfer of time, it would be cool, but it isnt, due to the drops, because you cant make a real choice in activities that yield profit, because the reward system doesnt require most people to choose an activity to succeed. People arent doing the things they most like doing then turning them into gold, to get the things they dont like doing, they are all doing the same 3 or 4 things, because these yeild the best gold per hour, and thats the best way to get anything specific.

Numerous activities the game devs wanted to be something people love doing, are not done, primarily because if you have a goal, its not a good way to achieve it.

exploration,
exploring lore,
fighting difficult monsters,
providing goods,

all of these things you are better off not doing and going to whatever farming is en vougue, because rewards arent given out based on intent, but randomly spread out to every player.

there is no reward or specific items hard monsters drop. There is no secret places that are better for doing x y and z. exploring and hunting treasure chests and the like gives less reward. Doing out of the way DEs where the npcs are essentially abandoned is much more difficult, and much less rewarding.

the devs said they want to improve the open world, but it will be hard to make the open world appealing if they dont start to make there be reasons to do the many other things in the game.

Mourningcry.9428:

Just to put a little perspective on things, let’s take a look at actual pricing.

Take Charged Lodestones, which are one of the currently highest priced items required for many of “exclusive” items available. They’re currently being priced between 3.25 and 3.5g a piece. The Gifts that use them require 100 lodestones.

Now also take into account many of the posts around that offer guides to earning 3-6g per hour (there are some claiming as high as 10g) but lets say 3.5g per hour for the sake of this discussion as a reasonable rate.

Simple math, that’s one lodestone an hour. Or 100 hours for that portion of the Gift. Figure a conservative rate of 2 hours a day, that’s 50 days to complete. Let’s say 2 months to be fair.

Other Tier 6 materials are a fraction of this cost. For example ectos which can be had for < 40s, or Powerful Vial of Blood @ ~30s. Or roughly ~10 mats an hour.

So, I put the question out to those arguing that the grind to get materials is too excessive than the current rate as discussed above – What then is a “fair” rate?

Quantify it. And please, offer a better explanation than, “more because it’s too slow now”. Then we would at least have some actual basis for discussion.

see thing here, is you are taking it back to money and wealth earned per hour. If you decided you are going to buy lodestones, you basically will be able to get 1 per hour of farming. (for the above average player) now if you take that same player, and tell him to actually hunt lodestones, he will essentially spend 30 minutes trying to create the circumstances that allow them to be farmed, then if he has average luck, he will get 1 per 1.5 hours.

If you want powerful bloods, and you target blood droppers, with their drop rates, you will probably get less powerful bloods than if you stayed at pentinent and shelter. This is the problem when money is the best way to do things, the only viable gameplay style becomes the ones that make the most money.

So now you say, if that is the case, why is it worth less than it takes to hunt? mostly because you get random drops from doing dungeons, so why not do dungeons, well thats because the rate isnt actually better, just that people doing dungeons get it by accident, and dont need it.

Essentially the best way to obtain anything is generally to try to make money, then go to the tp, but heres the thing, a lot of players of rpgs and adventure game dont particularly enjoy massing wealth or playing a merchant/finances guy. They actually want to go and hunt the things they want, and preferably theyd like hunting things to be entertaining and exciting. The random distribution of items

now i know 1 reason they may have randomized drops, so as not to split players based on objectives, but overall i think it reduces the economy and game overall.

The game is better served when you have to say, go to mount maelstrom and hunt destroyers to supply destroyer lodestones, rather than kill random things till you can buy them. They can tie it to lore, and make it an interesting adventure.

Imagine if the best(you could still do it other ways, like farming) way to get incinerator actually meant you went into the pits of hell and fought hundreds of flaming enemies, played eat the fire flower with a lost haylek tribe, defeated The hardest flame elemental in the game, and broke into the flame legion headquarters and fought the most insane flame priest. that would be a better story, and lead to a feeling of a more full world, than spending hours in pentinent camp. But as is, the best way to do these type of things is to stay in the same place and do the same thing repeatedly, which has little to nothing to do with whatever your goal is.

This is the flaw of the current economic design, and it will continue to incentivize the type of play which doesnt make the game do what it wants to do well.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I also wonder about chest loot in GW2. Just for comparison, item rarities in GW1 and GW2:

• GW1: White * GW2: White
• GW1: Blue * GW2: Blue/Fine
• GW1: Purple * GW2: Green/MW
• GW1: Gold * GW2: Gold/Rare
• GW1: Green * GW2: Orange/Exotic

Now, the only chests that I can recall in GW2 were in dungeons, FoW and UW. Those chests always dropped 2 items (gold or green), as well as rare crafting materials. The chance for a Green (given the frequency with which I saw them) was not a miniscule chance. Some of the gold items were also highly sought after (more valuable than the greens, really), as they were rare and highly desirable skins (e.g., Voltaic Spear). Even the common yellows might have a desirable mod that could be salvaged. Now, in GW1, doing a dungeon might take a bit longer (though there were speed runs there, too).

So, how does the same company come to the conclusion that chests (dungeon and open world) in GW2 should drop blues and greens, whose value above vendor price or salvage is mostly non-existent?

simple answer:
Gw2 anet need to change the reward guys vision, the rewards in this game a very poorly executed on numerous levels.
A) no feeling of control (very few drops you can actually hunt for by targeting specific enemies or events
B)generally unrewarding, as you said the vast majority of rewards you get a fairly worthless, basically vendor
C) the rewards arent balanced with difficulty or rarity of circumstances, for example a jumping puzzle that takes 15min to an hour to complete, and can only be completed once per day generally gives way less reward than an activity that lasts 5 minutes and you can repeat once every 15 minutes
D) requirements for creating items of value tend to be fairly crazy, as is, an ascended neck piece takes one month to obtain, ascnded back piece requires 250 of the rarest crafting mats
E) rewards arent balanced to reward the type of gameplay they wanted to create, they spent lots of time on exploring and putting DEs and events everywhere, but the rewards are skewed toward being a merchant, and farming repetive tasks in one place repeatedly.

All in all, the reward systems are probably the biggest flaw of GW2 and one of the ones we ve seen the least progress on. I hope they can iterate to some better systems soon

Lucas of the Desert.2165:

You can’t make a legendary challenging that is the point! Whatever you do people will find a way around it! Make it pvp cause pvp is challenging right?? NO!!! You’d see entire maps of people standing next to each other w8ing until they get killed then the others rezz them and that will be done over and over and over!

By making it a frigging hard battle you’ll get 95% of the community here on the forums complaining about it being an unreachable goal (because that really is unreachable) Like you have to do all 3 CoE paths and all 4 Arah paths after each other without getting downed once. Sure some will be able to do it but the majority? They will never ever get it.Since they require gold a player can get it through everything! You don’t like dungeons?No problem just do some awesome dynamic events instead! You don’t like wvw? Well you can at least get it through jumping.
As it is now you get gold for everything so it’s possible to get you legendary by doing what you like. But trading is just the best method of getting gold. Stop crying and already accept it it always was and always will be the best method (without making a crapy grind game)

Back to topic though i’ve found no clesr argument why this is a bad economy! Players are setting the prices and you have all the freedom you want! Fell like selling an UI dye for 2g? Sure go ahead you don’t have to vendor it you can try your luck. Please people stop commenting the same posts over and over again. The economy isn’t bad and he only really bad thing of legendarys is that they can be sold at the TP other than that they implemented an awesome system that is actually hardly exploitable (compared to other stuff from other games…)

problem is, no one can get any specific thing better by actually not using the tp.
Want a berserker rifle? well you can spend X amount of time and energy crafting it, but you can probbaly get it on the tp for less.

want a lodestone, well you can go hunt elementals, and do specific dynamic events, or a special dungeon, but you probably would have better spent that time in at the tp

the rewards are designed so that everybody gets a lot of stuff they dont need, so they have to go to tp to turn it into things they need. Say for example the overal distribution of an item is decided in player man hours.

They decide X sword drops on average only 100 should drop a day.
in the current system those 100 swords a spread amongst 1 million players, randomly.

in other systems they may put those 100 swords only on specific monsters, thereby increasing the reward rate without increasing the amount of swords in the world.
now people who look for X sword have a sure goal, the designers can design events that make sense for that sword, and people feel gratified having sought and achieved the thing they wanted, the drop rate is a lot better because its not going to 100/million people who may or may not have a need for the item.

So we end up with an economy where the only reliable means to achieve things is generally to use the TP. The most desired items can only reliably be obtained via the TP because drops are essentially randomized. The current economy will by and large feel unrewarding because very little of it actually rewards people with what they are looking for.

So the rewards in the game are only actually rewarding once you turn whatever crap you got into money, to get the things you want. This puts the focus of the game on obtaining money, which incetivizes money generation over all other activities. up till 80 the focus is on exp, which is rewarded for doing various things, exploring, killing big monsters, doing event chains, which is actually decently rewarding for doing adventure game like activities.
however money amassing isnt really why people bought the game. john smith said 10% of people enjoy amassing wealth in games. that means 90% do not. however, the best way to feel a sense of reward is to play with a focus on amassing wealth. This leads to many people being disatisfied with the way the economists choose to reward the goods and services and time of the player.

by and large in this game, the players dont control the economy, the rng controls the economy, or money.

Mourningcry.9428:

Mesket.5728:

Because of the offer/demand on TP many drop rates are tweaked constantly…, It’s impossible to pretend it doesn’t exist and it impact us all everyday. The value of whatever you pick up from the floor its set by people in the TP.

Pure conjecture, unless you have proof into how drop rates are controlled and changed.

Regardless, as I explained above, any acquisition can be directly expressed as a factor of the time required to acquire it. Time is what it comes down to, and the TP offers an alternative to convert other reasources into time. If you don’t want to pay the TP cost, the alternative cost is the amount of time you will now be required to pay in order to get that acquisition.

Further, it only impacts you if time is a consideration. If you don’t have a set expectation of how long it should take you to make an acquisition, the impact of drop rates is inconsequential.

The individual perception of how long it should take to acquire something is entirely arbitrary and varies by person. Conversely, the TP offers a mechanism to circumvent the time required. Again, at a cost.

i dont think any one is denying they change and alter drop rates for the purpose of the economy. its happened numerous times already.
drop rates and consumption rates on wood, drop rates on butter, what type of items undead drop, drop rate of precursors has been tweaked various times. Even before it gets in game, designs people have to run reward idea by john smith and some others, he mentions it in his interview, and another Dev mentioned having to run ideas by the economy guys to make sure thier ideas dont blow up the economy.

The Tp is only one facet of the economy, but in a game, the devs control most facets. How much items an ascended item cost is also part of the econmists/item guys baliwick. So yeah, if people are discussing the economy, it isnt just about the TP, its also about the worth of their goods and services, and how they can go about obtaining items, through any means.

Mourningcry.9428:

Mesket.5728:

John Smith.4610:

Tyria is a its own world. The Black Lion Trading Company exists in that world and plays the roll it was meant to play. The TP was intentionally designed to be part of the game and, much more than real life, you may choose to live how you like inside Tyria. It’s your world to live in.

This basically says nothing John.

It’s a shame how legendaries (and almost all that is needed for it) are inmerse in the TP.

It says enough.

To put it plainly, if you don’t like the TP, pretend it doesn’t exist, and get all your requirements for your legendary via other means – it can absolutely be done. (Just like Aragorn. Heck, maybe you can even be like Bilbo and Gandalf and find named exotics in some random loot pile off some random mob trash…)

If you like the TP, use it, and accept/come to terms with the cost it entails.

These are really not sophisticated concepts.

problem is the designed these systems in a way that makes the TP the best, and almost only way to get said items. The distribution of items is highly random, such that the only way to work towards any specific goal, is to sell said items, and get other items. if you want to get a sword, you either make one, or obtain one from someone who made a sword. The way they designed the economy (which is not just the TP but the overall balance of goods services and what you can get for various activities) The best way to get a sword is to use the TP, because if you try to get a sword yourself, you will unintentionally get axes, scepters clothes, rocks, and other things that only have value to you in the TP, or you can trade it to an npc for gold, which is only useful in the TP.

but i do agree that probably playing ignoring the TPs existence would probably make the game a lot more fun. however they essentially have built the distribution of items to make the TP a requirement in game

Calae.1738:

Ethics.4519:

Calae.1738:

Ethics.4519:

Use fire breath #2 before using #5 if you want the extra damage.

Combos are a sequence of abilities that players must execute with timing and accuracy. Timing and accuracy are skills that players can sharpen with practice. With enough practice, you can execute the combo faster, giving your opponent less time to react.

Fire 2 is a channeled ability, similar to a flame thrower. This ability would have to be interrupted midway through to land the combo quickly. Even though your solution works, I would’ve built Fire 2 differently. Instead of channeled, it would’ve been a 1 hit attack that applies burning.

However, if Fire 3 had burning, Fire 2 would be redundant. Fire 2 could be retooled to work in a combo with Fire 4. Fire 4 is a Ring of Fire on the ground. Fire 2 could be a flaming fist ground slam that caused AoE damage but; also causes an AoE knockback stun when used inside the Ring of Fire.

The combo then would be, Air 4, Air 5, switch to Fire, Fire 3, Fire 5, Fire 4, Fire 2.

A more complex version would be, Air 4, Air 5, switch to Fire, Fire 3, Fire 5, Fire 4, Fire 2, switch to Earth, Earth 3 (magnetic grasp to bridge the gap), Earth 4 (Earthquake knockdown), Earth 5 (Churning Earth), Lightning Flash teleport if target gets out of range.

You seem to contradict yourself a little. In your original post, from what I understand, you’re saying that you want the #3 to have longer last burning, to allow you to hit #5, but then you say my idea wouldn’t work because you wanted the combo to be fast, and you want skill to come into play so you have to pull it off quickly, counter to your original complaint.

My combo is similar to yours, except I use the #2 and interrupt it halfway through (sometimes) which I think is worth it. Then I switch to earth, hit #3 to share fire aura, hit arcana blast for the finisher, then hopefully pop in #5 to get an extra 3 stacks of might, maybe popping my cantrip to gain stability, depending on the mob I’m fighting.

All your combo ideas are good and interesting, but what I just said is interesting enough as well. The issue is that it eventually becomes button mashing. It no longer becomes “zoom in, knock down, surge ahead, burn, hit big damage, combo field, share aura, share might” after awhile it turns into “f3, 4, 5, f1, 3, 2, 5, f4, 3, r, 5, e” (with my keybindings)

That’s what a combo is.

A sequence of attacks that if executed correctly and precisely would reward you with additional damage. You can choose to not execute any combo but, you would not be rewarded for spamming auto attacks.

In the current meta, some professions deal more damage just standing there hitting auto attack. Hitting ANY other button would be a DPS LOSS. Think about it.

i think overall your choice in design is too specifically combo heavy, which would lead to very few good builds and what not.
However i agree that for many classes there isnt enough ways to synergize that are advantageous.

also spamming one button is the best way to play for many classes, that should probably stop.

So yeah i think they need more synergy, and even combos, but i think your combo style is too static and leads to less options for fighting.

John Smith.4610:

Tyria is a its own world. The Black Lion Trading Company exists in that world and plays the roll it was meant to play. The TP was intentionally designed to be part of the game and, much more than real life, you may choose to live how you like inside Tyria. It’s your world to live in.

The TP is only one facet of the economy, though, and in this case you guys control all facets of the economy. you decide how items are distributed. The problem isnt that there are rich people, or that the TP is an open trading system, its that the item distribution favors the TP in terms of obtaining any specific item.

Essentially the economy you ve created favors making money over doing anything else, in terms of getting what you want. This is not to say there is no reason to create anything, but too many things are created via rng. Making it so the actual sure method of obtaining said items is competing with randomly generated items, that are created unintentionally. This means everyone takes everything to market, and a lot of the things they got were things they never needed. In the terms of rare items, this means the only effective way to obtain them is to enter the market and compete with others who want it at playing the money game.

Perfect example. leveling a craft to 400, and then realizing even at 400, its easier to buy a carrion exotic pistol than to craft one.

The economy as is, isnt about trading the things you want to do, for the things you dont want to do. Which i think is ideally what an MMO economy should try to achieve.

Lucas of the Desert.2165:

This forum post is getting incredibly laughable…

I want to make everyone that posts further to be aware of two things please:

- as long as you have a trade option players will be able to get rich through it faster than anything else

- if you make things drop for you so recently that you can get a legendary with your loot alone than you destroyed any challenge of the original game… or made it a grind fest!

Please consider this when you are about to write new posts, thanks!

you are right in that the people who make money fastest, will be the people who try to make money and trade.
you are wrong in saying that making legendaries being something you can get on your own/with a guild or group, destroys the challenge, or makes it a grind fest.

many games award the best rewards for best performance, or most understanding of the game, or most contribution to making the game good.
In FFXI i got black belt via hunting down rare, and difficult NMs as well as traveling the world and doing various quests, and interacting various NPCs. In PSO i got an SRANK weapon by essentially beating the whole game in minimal time, with unpredictable elements, with nothing given but predetermined stats.

Sure money should be an option to get things you want that you may not be able to obtain on your own, through doing things you like doing, but this game gives very few rewards for doing things people like doing.

Manufacturing items, in general is worthless, or too volatile to make money without essentially playing the market (playing the market is essentially the act of buy low and sell high)

Hunting items is by and large not doable, or feasible, it generally turns out that you are better off doing repetive task A to get any item than to actually hunt it.

a big part of the problem is not the tp itself, or the fact people can make money there, but rather that making money is the best way to get anything specific. Drops and item creation is to randomized in its distribution, rather than people seeking to create things, many items are created by random chance, byproducts to people seeking other activities. this means in this game, money is the most effective means to get what you want, which means it encourages the trading game, or the work for the trader game.

Mourningcry.9428:

In the end a player absolutely does not have to use the TP. However, by choosing to do so, they are able to shift the time that would have been required to acquire that item, to another, more preferable, endeavor.

ideally this would be the case, ideally money is a means of shifting your time doing something you dont mind doing to get things you dont want to, or cannot do. However the problem is, when money becomes the prime measure of all activities, the best way to do something is to make the most money possible per time frame. This is essentially the real world situation, people dont, in general work for fun, they work so that they can get or do the things they want to do.

Much of GW2 endgame is playing like the game is a job, you can run dungeons, however, if you want money, you will take the easiest path, with the most effiecient build set up, and try to complete it with as few difficult (interesting moments as possible)

You can kill monsters in the open world, but you are rewarded best for staying in the places which have the most other people, against the easiest monsters that die the fastest, where the most other people are.

or you can play the merchant/investor game, which as far as such games go, GW2 is probably pretty decent at. Not to good for manufacturing mini game though, that path is generally barely rewarding, probably because so many people are playing the merchant mini game, whose job is essntially to pimp the manufacturers as much as possible.

Ursan.7846:

Why are we assuming that the only “rich” people are people who play the TP?

First of all, you don’t know that. You can argue your face blue, but in the end, you don’t have any data/evidence to back up this claim.

Second of all, the only person with data on the buyers of precursors have said this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Gold-seller-boasting-about-precursors/first#post1417993

Take it or leave it. But please note that whenever you make claims like “Rich people are rich because they play the TP,” you’re making a assumption, and that there’s a dev who disabuses this notion (not to mention the ton of anecdotal evidence that I’m sure posters in here can provide.)

It doesnt really matter, the point is Wealth is the prime determinate for the designed endgame activity. And yes legendaries are the endgame activity. When asked questions about endgame before release, they explained how legendaries were basically that type of objective.

By and large the best way to make money is to try to make money. This sucks the air out of the game, because what it comes down to is, whats the fastest way to make money, and currently its not to play the game as the devs intended.

best ways to make money;

repeated dungeon speed runs;
How it goes against the game design vision:
tends to require specific builds of one type (berserker warriors is the popular one)
requires the main technique for play be to avoid as much as possible, minimize risk(exploit enemies).

Zerg rushing events that spawn many mobs;
game turns to being about tagging as many monsters as possible
rewards specific classes at a much greater rate
requires large amounts of people to be effective(so you have to do the event everyone goes to)
with so many people, the challenge is extremely low.

TP and merchant based.
The main problem with this, is its a big person game, the most consistent profits require large investments, and hence the more money you make, the more you can make, which basically means, there will always be a disproportionate amount of earning potential.

the point is no matter how you look at it, the endgame is gold wars. And the best gold is not distributed in ways that promote adventure, difficulty, epicness, fun. etc. In other games the best loot generally comes from the most epic bosses, or the hard to find enemies, or in EQ i hear the most epic quests, in this game its generally randomized and distributed for the most simplified grind, or the most money earned.

JaironKalach.4938:

The funny thing about this whole argument is that in order to be able to buy these things off the TP, there is someone earning legendaries the good old fashioned way. In fact, given the fact that I am always seeing the for sale on the TP (unsatisfied sell orders), I would speculate that there are more people getting them through earning than through buying.

lets review the ways in which precursors are generated

Random drop for killing monsters/chests anywhere in the world by extremely low chance (so low that may 1 or 2 drop per 24 hours per weapon across 1 million+ players

mystic forge

the random drop, is unhuntable, and unpredicatable, it will happen however anyone betting on recieving their precursor through those means, well large chance of dissapointment, look at the odds, and then also realize that you have no way of influencing what 1 in a million precursor you will get.

This means its highly likely any precursor that isnt created will go to market, because a precursor of the wrong type is generally worthless to that player.

The second way is also chance, but it is controllable, you can pick which legendary, and create the circumstances to retry again and again. HOWEVER the main limiter on this attempt is gold, do you have enough gold to create a more realistic chance of getting the precursor.

So essentially its still a money game. precursors are currently designed to be obtainable primarily through wealth, either by buying the lotto winners throw aways, or by using gold to overcome the odds in the mystic forge. Or you get extremely lucky.

JaironKalach.4938:

Mesket.5728:

JaironKalach.4938:

Mesket.5728:

And if you strongly disagree with me, then I’m sorry. I must have been fooled by the game:
Not seeing trading as an important part of the game here…
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/

You really must have been fooled, because I’m not seeing legendaries and an important part of the game according to that link, either.

well you deleted where Im telling you I can’t find that link now.

Edit: found it:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/my-legend-grows-forging-your-first-legendary-weapon/

Its a HUGE LOL.

They should change all that to: Jump in WvW, Farm Karma and play the TP.

That link is not part of the other link, so no, I didn’t delete anything relevant. The presence of that article only indicates importance at the same level as any other news articles. So, say… an explanation of the new sPvP map. It’s still all about your perceptions and your unhappiness that you can’t get a legendary easier, and it sounds like a bit of jealousy, as well…

its not about the ease of obtaining legendaries, their diffculty to obtain is probably right, problem is its difficulty is in earning money at a high rate, or being highly lucky. No one can control luck so lets dismiss that. The legendary process is dominated by earning large quanities of money. Essentially the endgame revolves around gold. You play the game exploring, killing monsters, helping random people and seeing a glimpse in to their story for 79 levels, then at the end the game turns into a financial game, where the entire goal is to amass as much wealth as possible while hoping other people can amass less. (because you can only be rich if other people are poor)

The problem is, GW2 endgame should not be only ascessible through gold. and thus, reward gold earning mastery more than any other skill/knowledge/etc

Mesket.5728:

JaironKalach.4938:

Mesket.5728:

JaironKalach.4938:

Mesket.5728:

And if you strongly disagree with me, then I’m sorry. I must have been fooled by the game:
Not seeing trading as an important part of the game here…
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/

You really must have been fooled, because I’m not seeing legendaries and an important part of the game according to that link, either.

well you deleted where Im telling you I can’t find that link now.

Edit: found it:
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/my-legend-grows-forging-your-first-legendary-weapon/

Its a HUGE LOL.

They should change all that to: Jump in WvW, Farm Karma and play the TP.

That link is not part of the other link, so no, I didn’t delete anything relevant. The presence of that article only indicates importance at the same level as any other news articles. So, say… an explanation of the new sPvP map. It’s still all about your perceptions and your unhappiness that you can’t get a legendary easier, and it sounds like a bit of jealousy, as well…

“They’re designed to stand out and show everyone that you are a true master of Guild Wars”

My cat…

True master of the TP it should say.

Going back to topic;

I still think the economy is not bad and I like harsh economy. What I don’t like and think it was a flaw in design is this kind of things that should rewards players, end up rewarding traders. Change legendary for monocles and batons like I said before and introduce new legendaries only attainable with ingame challenges (outside cities).

this i agree with, i think the game needs to have things for gold getters to show their achievements, and it would be cool, but that should just be a small subset of the endgame rewards. make some expensive legendaries that drop gold, give your charachters golden hands, or randomly cause the enemies to turn to gold statues on death. very legendary, and also very related to money. The primary means to obtaining other legendaries should not be amassing large quantities of wealth, it can be a secondary means, but definately shouldnt be the only reliable means of obtaining it.

Syeria.4812:

Folk.2093:

I guess the vast ammount of people and number of threads popping up complaining about the economy in this game doesnt mean a thing.

This is known as argumentum ad populum. You are correct when you state that it doesn’t mean a thing.

logical fallacies dont mean they are inccorect or valueless, it just means its not a logical arguement.

also, even logical fallacies can be logical within a scope. If you are trying to objectively measure whether the economy is bad in numbers, maybe its a fallacy, but if the question is,
Is guild wars creating a satisfying economy, then the amount of people who complain becomes relevant.

The problem with guild wars is,

A)the main means of profiting over the predetermined baseline for most activities is, by being the merchant class, Manufacturing, and gathering(includes geting drops from enemies) is generally undervalued.
B) almost all mid to long term goals at 80 can be bought
C) many mid to long term goals at 80 have enforced rarities (IE only a certain limited amount of these items will drop[, and hunting for the specifically is not that effiecient or heavily luck based in effectiveness)
D) this means the prices for mid to long term goals at 80 will be determined by the people with the most money, IE the merchant class, as well as some people who can afford to spend the time to do massive farming. the third option, buy gems.

essentially the system will continue to be less friendly to normal players, IF they want to pursue endgame goals, like mystic forge skins, legendaries, or craftable ascended pieces and infusions. These goals money component will always shift to prices representitive of the top earners and the top earners continue to have an increasing ratio of money to the low earners.

I would really love to see data on the difference in wealth between the low, the average, and the top 5%. as well as how it is changing over time.

Syeria.4812:

Silly question but, are you looting (and having other loot dropped by) the mobs you kill through the fractals?

Additionally, which class are you playing with which weapons?

I know I’ve seen a number of people who complain about poor drop rates on the various vial items, but found many of them kill as few mobs as humanly possible, and are often using single target damage builds. The combination of only a few opportunities for loot with the low rate of successfully tagging mobs means they don’t end up getting those items. It’s like playing nothing but swamp. It’s nice and fast, but you only kill 1 mob that has a chance to drop loot like that the entire run.

this basically it, many teams kill virtually no monsters that give loot (not all mobs give loot)

thisolderhead.5127:

Dante.1508:

Gibson.4036:

Some people like gambling.

Some people like working toward a goal without being at the mercy of chance.

One is never going to convince the other that their way is best.

That’s why BOTH should have an equal chance at getting what they NEED from the game, not one or the other both should be able to enjoy the game as much as the other.
Sadly at this time the game only appeals to Gamblers..

What?

So what you suggest is that there is NO manner in which you can plod through the game and progressively and slowly build towards… whatever – probably a legendary weapon based on the “hard stuff is hard” link between drop rates and getting hard to get stuff.

If only you could just play away and build up some form of currency or another, then you could use that currency to allow for the purchase of the things you want, all the while having a slight chance you could just find an item you want in a drop, or some other item of value you could trade or sell to speed up your own journey…

Anyone got any ideas what we could call a currency like this if it got implemented?

you theory might be sound, except for the fact that the highly desired items will always be marketed to the top 5 to 10% of earners, who make way more money than people can save through normal pay. Precursors dont cost a fix amount, they cost what the top earners can afford to pay, what they can afford to pay will continue to rise at a geometric rate.
you will never buy a dusk saving 1gold a day, because by the time you get 400 gold, you can bet that it will have gone up. In the 180 days since the game came out, dusk has gone up from what like 20 gold to 600-700? i think last month it was 400-500,

regardless its a bad game design mechanic to reward primarily on long shot odds, even vegas knows its better to have people win and lose constantly than to have them lose all the time.
Id rather play roulette or blackjack for high end items, its far more gratifying.

Ursan.7846:

Geikamir.6329:

It’s not out of thin air BECAUSE of the algorithm. Just because Arena Net is the market maker doesn’t mean that they don’t need to have the gold sank in some way to make up for the extra coming into the economy.

I’m confused. It is created out of thin air. Just like how gold is created out of thin air. And items in this game. And we’ve already discussed why this doesn’t create rampant inflation (because Gem/Gold ratio has been pretty steady, which means conversion both ways is pretty steady.) And why I believe more gold has been converted to Gems in the long run (general overall upwards trend since launch)

Geikamir.6329:

It’s just like trading in used video games for store credits. Do you think GameStop does it because they are nice guys? No. They are a company. Everything they say or do is designed in a fashion to increase revenue. They use your old game to resell for greater value than they paid. The fact that you can turn in your unwanted items to purchase items that you do what is all part of the plan and is a mere byproduct of the initial intent. It’s then used to market the service in hopes of getting more customers from both ends of the transaction.

Gamestop what it does because they can re-sell these old games for greater value than they paid. They have every reason to give incentive to people turning in games, because they profit from each transaction.

What can Anet do with the gold players turn in for Gems? There is no profit to be made, and there’s actually a LOSS in the sense that the player just used in-game gold to buy something with gold rather than real money.

the profit is made due to the exchange rate. It doesnt matter if there is gold in fort knox, people believe their money has value, and part of why it does, is because the government prints up money in relation to how much goods and services they have.

Essentially the algorithim means that gems are not really printed out of air, they are a representation of how much a non gem user values his time in terms of getting gem items. The gold/time people are willing to give up, which is then purchased by other people.

Every time people buy gems with gold, it causes the value of gems to go up, real money spenders then buy the gems, because of their worth in gold. If no one sells their gold then gems are less valuable, and people buy less of them.

And no, anet cannot do the same thing without destroying the economny, which is the primary means by which gems have value. If they just sold in game money the economny would collapse and in game money would be worthless, which would lead to people not buying in game money.

The premise is basically this, they get more money with this system, because people who want to spend money spend way more money. The guy who dropped 100 dollars in the gem store day one, will probably drop 100 dollars again, as long as you have something worthwhile to sell him, the guy who never buys isnt going to the gems store. So now, you get the guy who never buys to create the item the guy who likes spending wants, gold.

Otherwise you would have to constantly be creating items of value for the guy who wants to spend, and youd only get value from that guy.

Essentially every item that gets bought with gems is paid for, either directly or indirectly.

This is why the economy is important for anet, there needs to be reasons for people to want gold.

Bri.8354:

From my experiences with the game over the past few months the downed state has only caused problems.

In PvP the defensive side of the downed state makes it near impossible to single out players in zergs and in smaller scale fights it gives an even larger advantage to the group with a few more players. On the offensive side things like quickness or stealth stomping feel necessary for finishing off downed players, putting classes and builds which don’t have access to these things at a disadvantage.

In PvE it greatly reduces the difficulty of the game. Did you just mess up? No problem, you just got a second wind where your allies can revive you in mere seconds, an enemy that you have attacked can be killed to get you back up, or you can use defensive downed skills to escape and heal yourself back up.

Overall the downed state is just too much of a factor in the combat system and does more harm than good. I’m not advocating a removal of the system; I just want to see a few changes to make it less of a factor in the game and to balance out ways to deal with downed opponents.

Anyways, here are two simple changes I feel will address this:

• Players cannot revive downed-state players while in combat.
• As an alternative to the above: If a reviving player is damaged they are interrupted and cannot attempt another revive for 15 seconds.
• Finishing moves should remove stealth, quickness, stability, and anything of that sort.

the flaw in your premise, is you are missing that downstate is part of the TEAM effort in the game, if people are good at ressing their friends, they have an advantage, and they are supposed to have that.

People always complain the game is too DPS focused, and lacks strategy, in the same breath they hate downstate, which is a strategic team focused non dps way to help allies.

Part of the advantage of toughness and vitality is to be able to better revive allies ( this is why revive boosting/helping skills are usually in these trait lines)
essentially you succeeded at part one of the DPS game, but you failed at tactical planning and dealing with your opponents ability to recover.
the battle isnt over when your opponent falls down, its only over when they are dead, that is intentional, and logical, and mirrors real fights. And yes people who have someone who can support them in combat have an advantage over you, this is completely logical. and intentional.

Ursan.7846:

Geikamir.6329:

The gems come from players who have spent cash and traded them for gold in the first place. It’s why the price fluctuates. Without this distinction, Arena Net would just be ‘printing money’ to give to gem->gold conversion purchases. Which would cause tremendous inflation.

No, you’re wrong. The gems/gold that you get from converting each other are created from thin air.

The reason why the price fluctuates is because they have an algorithm, whenever a player converts Gold -> Gems, the Gem/Gold ratio increases (Gems more expensive) and whenever a player converts Gems -> Gold, the Gem/Gold decreases (Gems become cheaper)

The reason why you don’t see this massive inflation you talk of is because transactions both way are balanced. If you look at the currency exchange, you see that it’s pretty stable. Which means the amount of gems being converted to gold is about the same as gold converted to gems.

Overall though, I think more gold have been converted to gems, just because of the general upward trend of the Gems/Gold ratio since launch.

Sorry but gold to gems is meant to set up a workable system for trading value, it actually keeps the value of buying gems accurate to the economy, and ensures that the value of gems is fairly accurate based on the economny.

A large portion of the money they make is probably tied to the value that gems have for getting money. This is why they hire an economist to handle the market, because how the money is valued in game makes money from the gem value.

Let me try to explain it directly, lets say you have no gold to gem sales, then you cant have gem to gold sales, or you have to come up with some fixed price that is supposed to represent the value of money that doesnt scale with the value of gold. On top of this you have to come up with means of draining large quanities of money into the game from no source.

To put it simply, the fact that people can trade thier time, for gems makes anet money because other people buy gems, not to buy items, but to buy other players time. IE the fact that you can trade your hard earned gold for gems makes gems way more valuable than they would otherwise be. Every player who makes gold to gem purchases is making it more attractive for people who actually spend money, to spend money.

Long story short, yeah its in there because it makes money.

As to the scavenger hunt, its effectively not happening. i mean they may work on it, and get it, but likely it will not come into game until the game has changed signifigantly enough that it doesnt matter. Think for example if the whole context of legendaries and endgame changes, then adding a scavenger hunt isnt really the same thing effectively is it?

Fact is john smith is here primarily to help anet make money, he said so in an interview. However, it is possible that he believes the best way to make money for anet is to make something that appeals to many players.

however, i think that his vision is much more mathematically oriented, and not well oriented in directions of game design and psychology. Mathematically the economy is pretty strong, and sadly similar to a real world economy. Its really not a very inviting, but then again, you dont have to participate, unlike real world economies.

Part i think is the flaw, is its messing up game design elements, like precursors, which have actually been taken from being a game design thing to being a game economy tool. And open world drops which cant be rewarding based on content, because then people will flock to it and generate more gold. And the non monetary drops must also be limited to ensure the value of gold.

Economically, (in terms of feeling of getting value while having fun) the game is pretty depressing. The game is most entertaining when you ignore the economy, sadly most of the end game goals are based around gold.

Ursan.7846:

phys.7689:

dungeons really dont compensate you any better than farming events in ORR, its at least competitive though.

Dungeons give you access to exclusive dungeon armor/weapon skins.
Dungeons have high guarenteed gold drops from bosses/completion.
Higher drop rates for rares/exotics compared to open world. Though this is based on personal experience, can’t say for sure.

in my experience i make generally less doing dungeons (not counting the tokens being turned into gold) though i can see that with a little luck you make more. Farming events in ORR though pays a lot, in 2 events you probably earned more in straight up gold, it also rewards Magic Find, and gold find builds/foods at much greater rate due to the shear number of difference in the amounts of enemies you kill.

Vol.5241:

“The bias of the economy development guys seems to be to pay everyone minimum wage, regardless of how difficult, how intelligent, or what the task the most you should be able to earn doing it is set. even worse, the most difficult, requiring knowledge skills, etc tasks tend to pay the least (barring high end fractals, maybe but im guessing it is still around 5g an hour there).”

The market is willing to pay you minimum wage if you refuse to put in the effort to work hard for your money.

Run one dungeon per day? Casually farm for 10 minutes? You won’t be rewarded as much as that guy who puts in 4 hours a day doing hardcore farming

you are more focused on being hardcore than designing a fun game. Im not saying the dude who plays 4 hours shouldnt get more, but why should the dude who spends 4 hours running between pentinent shelter with an occaisonal jofast get substantially more than the guy who spent 4 hours exploring hidden caves with champions and packs of murrows in a tight space.

also think, people working on interesting new challenging content now, who will do it, if its harder than farming pentinent/shelter/jofast, but rewards less?

Lets say they add some dynamic events the scale better, and have enemies in varied packs with much better AI scattered through out the world, you have hunt them and they frequent out of the way hard to reach places. Now, would anyone do it with the current reward systems? Its harder to get to, rarer, and more difficult, and it awards less or the same as doing spam events.

This is the current design bias, because some of this content does exist, and no one does it, primarily because it simply isnt worth it. hardcore or not hardcore, the current itemization is not encouraging the type of gameplay the world seemed to be designed to create.

Ursan.7846:

I feel you have a pretty different idea of what “difficult” is. Fighting dragons is not difficult. Nor is doing JPs, or killing champion mobs.

The most difficult content in this game currently are dungeons and fractals. They have many one-shot mechanics, as well as sequences which requires teamwork and coordination.

And players are well compensated for it, IMO.

dungeons really dont compensate you any better than farming events in ORR, its at least competitive though.
fractals, at high levels may be rewarding, for me its generally similar to farming in ORR, though i have had some good runs here and there.

i use jumping puzzles as an example because it is a good midrange activity, but its rewards are way worse than probably, just killing random enemies even with no event going on. Some of the JPs are also fairly time consuming, difficult to get to, and more limited in how often you can get anything than a fractal.

They have some beautiful environments, and well thought out and designed mechanics, however if you have any actual goal, you should never do any jumping puzzle except the WvWvW one.

Its fine to say killing champions is not difficult, but is it more difficult than doing the tar elemental event, shelter, pentinent, jofast, or plinx? than why are all those things more rewarding?

I think fractals has a good mechanic, difficulty and reward scaling, with a decent chance of cool stuff, but its the only thing like that in the game.

The Devs said they wanted to improve the open world, but no matter what they do, if the itemization continues to be biased towards uniform value gained, with even less given for more difficult/rare/hidden/knowledge/many condition required actvities then no matter what they do the open world will always be stale. Much of the content is ignored because it doesnt reward you.

Gehenna.3625:

Sharkinu.8096:

The hate for RNG doesn’t really make sense. People are acting like this is a new concept, but this was a thing since the first RPG ever. Mini Polar Bear in GW1 was a RNG game, every rare loot in GW1, like Dryad Bow and Frog Scepter was a RNG game. Diablo was full of RNG. I don’t see how GW2 is different.

The Polar Bear was a mini pet. Not the BiS weapon. Also when you are level 80 it is pretty much the only thing to go for. There isn’t much else to progress towards. There was lots of stuff to get in GW1.

That makes a difference.

yea, this is a major problem, while GW had tons of ways to progress, various armors, skill hunting, challenge missions, improving campaign specific buffs, fighting endgame dungeons for skins, GW2 has one, and its primarily determined by rng. game needs more goals, on the high end, that have something rewarding (heck bring back skill hunting if anet wants the economy and gold earnings to be crappy forever)

Rieselle.5079:

People hate RNG because they dont think things through properly.

Let’s assume ANet wants to keep the ratio of item rarities at a certain level (whether their intended ratio is correct is another debate.)
So for every 1,000 blue/green items dropped in the world, a yellow gets dropped. For every 100,000 items that drop in the world, a precursor is dropped, etc.

So let’s assume ANet wants to keep those ratios constant.

- If they make a token system, the tokens required to get a precursor would need to be high enough so that precursors are just as rare as they are with RNG. ie. a ridiculous amount. Remember when the game first released? People complained everywhere about the high token costs of dungeon armours.

Because making miniscule progress towards a goal is work. Whereas gambling on RNG, where you might get your precursor in the first run or the 10000th run, triggers our brain endorphins more because EVERY run has a tiny chance of getting you that item.
Whereas with a token system, all you see is a long, long grind ahead.

- If they make a skill based system, the bar would be so high that most of the people complaining would not be skilled enough to get the item. Anyone with lag would never be able to get the item. Anyone who’s older, has a disability, or is new to games, would never be able to get it. So basically a small group of players would be able to get the item (and indeed, most of the precious items) whereas everyone else gets nothing.

---

So yeah, ultimately, if we’re talking single systems, then RNG is the most “fair” and “fun” out of the alternatives.

Of course, the best of all worlds would be a hybrid system – imagine if, when running a dungeon, you had a chance of getting your item via RNG from drops and chests, earned a token that would eventually get you the item, and also there’s a super hard optional boss or JP that is competitively ranked, and the top performers every week would get the item instantly.

The flaw in your thinking is that your premise assumes that enforced rarity is good game design and the way things should be.

Progress should not be determined primarily by random. It can be a factor, and make things interesting but it should not be the determinate.

And if you decide to make a large portion of things be based on something random you better be certain that you have THE BEST RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR in existence, because it is the cornerstone of your game. I think most people can say that the rng in GW2 is not the most random, their are definite streaks and patterns on the individual level.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

phys.7689:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

The inflation on gold/gem is getting worse. The prices are constantly going up and the ratio between gold-to-gem and gem-to-gold is slowly moving appart.

Also I have, on several occasions, observed that mystical plot based on ‘y=mx+c’. If this is not an indication of market manipulation then please correct me if I’m wrong.

You’re wrong on two issues.

1) Inflation happens over time. The dollar in 1970 is not the same as a dollar in 1975, 1980, 1985, etc. It’s not getting worse, it’s just running it’s normal course.

2) There is no market manipulation.

0_o ???

1) Have you ever wondered what is causing the dollar value to change? One or several aspects of the economy get manipulated by individuals/groups and eventually, over time, the economy has to ‘adjust’, or as you said “…it’s just running it’s normal course.”.

2) Refer to 1)

Also, I’m still waiting on an awser to this – “On several occasions I have observed the mystical plot based on ‘y=mx+c’. If this is not an indication of market manipulation then please correct me if I’m wrong”

So please, anyone, prove me wrong this is not part of market manipulation.

So… you’re saying inflation in the real world is cause by a person or a group of people manipulating the market? Must be them Illuminati eh?

actually inflation is caused by a group of people manipulating the market. Its government sanctioned, because in general its better that thing inflate in a controlled manner than if they are too volatile, and the worse thing for governments is generally if money deflates (supposedly) So yeah irl, inflation is essentially caused and promoted by a group of people manipulating the market.

This game is a bit different though, in that it is basically meant to inflate. (albeit controlled) Now i wouldnt say market manipulators exactly cause inflation, they exists, but most of what they do is transfer wealth to themselves, probably overall, they slow inflation, because they overall make money by taking money from a lot of other people. Overall, people have less money because some people have a lot more money.

the problem isnt exactly inflation with them, its more about the fact that the disparity in wealth makes it less and less likely that anyone can get something high end, that can be sold, without a strong participation in the money game.

This is wrong on a few levels.

1) Inflation reduces the purchasing power of everyone. Deflation actually expands a person’s purchasing power.
2) Government has some control over inflation. Which is why in the real world inflation hasn’t gotten out of hand in the U.S. It is not “sanctioned” per se. Unemployment levels affect inflation. Investing does. Too much “overheating” by the investors…
3) Market manipulators do not have an infinite amount of market power to keep price levels rising for long periods of time as long as there are suppliers of whatever market they are in. There are other reasons for inflation…
4) Good ole supply and demand has an effect on inflation. When production levels (supply) falls, price levels begin to rise.

1) i never said inflation didnt reduce purchasing power, i think it clearly does
2) yes i was saying irl, teh government are market manipulators, its part of their job/goal
3)I am saying market manipulators (non government) generally dont add to overall inflation, they just redistribute the wealth to themselves, and cause inflation of high end items, just by the mere fact that they are richer and can pay more for highly desired items)
4) yeah supply and demand effect inflation, but that part will always be the case, (never disagreed with this)

Syeria.4812:

Ultimately, any “skill” reward system ends up conflicting with corporate sales goals. GW2 is designed to be a mass market game. The reality is that 50% of players are below the median skill level. Any content that is awarded based on “skill” will either be extremely common or limited to an extremely small subset of the game’s population. In the case of the former, the content either is too common to carry any meaning (think average level 80 exotics right now) or is very discouraging to those players unable to attain it (think the constant complaints about ascended items, especially prior to the laurel system). In the case of the latter, great expense and a lot of developer time and effort must be devoted to an entire system that only a very small percentage of the game’s population will ever see. Since GW2 is intended as a mass market, and not a niche game, that goes very strongly against the development direction and principles that Anet has pursued.

heres the real key, people want to feel appropriately rewarded for their efforts, they also want to see progress.
people really dont expect something for nothing, or expect to recieve the best rewards easily, as long as they do feel rewarded appropriately for the task

The bias of the economy development guys seems to be to pay everyone minimum wage, regardless of how difficult, how intelligent, or what the task the most you should be able to earn doing it is set. even worse, the most difficult, requiring knowledge skills, etc tasks tend to pay the least (barring high end fractals, maybe but im guessing it is still around 5g an hour there).

So why did they make this so unrewarding? because even though it is difficult, if the jps (for ex) all gave consistent good rewards, say 2 rares, they are afraid everyone would do them, back to back, everyday.

It makes sense, if your goal is to create an extremely stable TP, but it speaks really badly for what the other devs can do with the content they add, because it essentially means, they can never have anything, no matter how difficult, whether it happens rarely, requires knowledge or requires you to have done X Y and Z that can actually be any more rewarding than spam killing enemies in a high volume enemy area.

Now the other problem with this whole 1 value per hour for all activities, or less, is the TP breaks this rule, the TP is the only place where you can earn a substantial amount more per hour, not only that, but up to a point, having more money available allows you to make more money(not as high as irl)

so what you end up getting is this high inflation of highly desired goods, because the highly desired goods cost the most, and so the people with the most money set the prices. And there is an increasing gap in wealth between the rich and poor, hence, hence this will only get worse with time.

So what this reward system creates, you have to work longer at repetive easy tasks in order to compete for high end items with people who can make 4-20 times what you can make in the same time frame. This is set in stone by the current system, it will always be the case as long as the design philosophy remains the same, its an equation, and it will follow the curve.

Now the balance to this might be if everyone entered the TP, and played economically, but thats just not a realistic expectation for what is primarily supposed to be an adventure game. It also makes all of the other parts of the game unfullfilling.

rewards need to be more dynamic based on various factors, it doesnt have to be insanely better, but you should never feel like succeeding at high end content is a waste of time in terms of achieving endgame goals.

alcopaul.2156:

I see many people hating on RNG.

BUT..

Life is based on RNG. Your conception was RNG. Out of 375 million sperm cells, one only get to fuse with one eggcell and formed you.

1/375000000. that’s still worse than the mystic forge.

probably because life isnt a random number generator, truth is that sperm cell hit the egg because it was the right time, the right cell, and due to various behaviors of the parents.

problem with random number generator is, it isnt really random, there is a pattern, nothing a computer can do is random. the whole point of a random number generator is to try to seem random, and how effective it is at mimicing random behaviors is a science in and of itself.

one of the main flaws of your average number generators is that while in aggregate it seems random, it has very real patterns that end up repeating in specfic cases. Now taking this into a game, it essentially means you have some people who would be consistently luckier than other people and some who are consistently unlucky.

So yeah if you are the guy who the rng hates by equation and pattern, then you probably dont like the rng too much. This is why some people believe in having back ups in your random, like if you do something X times you will win at least once, or multiple methods to achieve something involving rng.

hharry.1967:

The problem is that you may never get one, no matter one, having such RNG is dumb. At least, make fractal weps sellable or something, legendary weps can be sold/traded i see no reason why fractal ones couldnt, with this you could actually make use of the items you get that you cant use, and shorten the RNG a bit.
Just because you have a fractal weapon doesn’t mean you have run FOTM a lot, just means you were lucky, thats it.

If you want to make fractal weps fotm users exclusive, just add a level requierement for them and DONE!.

actually it does mean you ran it a lot, you have gotten to at least level 20? and most likely have run level 20 at least 10 times (according to what you said about it being 1/10)

Now they could come up with some trade system where say you trade 1 fractal weapon and say 10pristine fragments or something for a weapon of your choice. but eh, as long as the drop rate isnt that crazy

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

The inflation on gold/gem is getting worse. The prices are constantly going up and the ratio between gold-to-gem and gem-to-gold is slowly moving appart.

Also I have, on several occasions, observed that mystical plot based on ‘y=mx+c’. If this is not an indication of market manipulation then please correct me if I’m wrong.

You’re wrong on two issues.

1) Inflation happens over time. The dollar in 1970 is not the same as a dollar in 1975, 1980, 1985, etc. It’s not getting worse, it’s just running it’s normal course.

2) There is no market manipulation.

0_o ???

1) Have you ever wondered what is causing the dollar value to change? One or several aspects of the economy get manipulated by individuals/groups and eventually, over time, the economy has to ‘adjust’, or as you said “…it’s just running it’s normal course.”.

2) Refer to 1)

Also, I’m still waiting on an awser to this – “On several occasions I have observed the mystical plot based on ‘y=mx+c’. If this is not an indication of market manipulation then please correct me if I’m wrong”

So please, anyone, prove me wrong this is not part of market manipulation.

So… you’re saying inflation in the real world is cause by a person or a group of people manipulating the market? Must be them Illuminati eh?

actually inflation is caused by a group of people manipulating the market. Its government sanctioned, because in general its better that thing inflate in a controlled manner than if they are too volatile, and the worse thing for governments is generally if money deflates (supposedly) So yeah irl, inflation is essentially caused and promoted by a group of people manipulating the market.

This game is a bit different though, in that it is basically meant to inflate. (albeit controlled) Now i wouldnt say market manipulators exactly cause inflation, they exists, but most of what they do is transfer wealth to themselves, probably overall, they slow inflation, because they overall make money by taking money from a lot of other people. Overall, people have less money because some people have a lot more money.

the problem isnt exactly inflation with them, its more about the fact that the disparity in wealth makes it less and less likely that anyone can get something high end, that can be sold, without a strong participation in the money game.

Vol.5241:

^

It’s very hard to design a system based on skill while maintaining item rarity.

How exactly do you determine ‘skill’ in an MMO? And how do you program the game to properly recognize those skills and prevent exploits?

Rarity is highly overated in terms of game enjoyment. Milestones on the other hand are very important. I contend that forced rarity is bad in conjunction with milestones.
You dont have a lottery to determine who plays in the playoffs, it would discourage players of the sport.

In all honesty it doesnt matter if everyone has something if you made the path to getting it challenging/fun/rewarding.

For example phantasy star online,
challenge modehas many super rare drop items, it was pure luck whether you obtainined them, and pretty low chances over all. But to me, the best thing they added to that game was challenge mode. It was basically a mode where you started off each level with predetermined items, level, stats, and basically had to beat the level with whatever you could find. Monster spawns were somewhat randomized, and even what skills and abilities you had varied every time you played. the goal was to beat all of these levels in under a certain time limit. (i think it was 4 hours for all the levels combined) If you succeeded at this, you could choose one item, which basically had a rare skin from a list of rare weapon skins, you could name it, and while these weapons seemed weaker, you could upgrade them to become some of the strongest weapons in the game. IMO it was the best content and the most rewarding they ever added. I had a certain level a respect for every s rank weapon user, because i know they had achieved a certain level of mastery in the game. But make no mistake, it wasnt super rare, many many people got these weapons, many people made multiple charachters to keep getting them, but every one who had one basically earned it (non tradeable). And difficulty wise, it was simply the hardest thing in the game, (not to say impossible by any means)
point being it didnt have to be rare to be prestigous, or desired, it just had to be challenging and fun to obtain, and worthwhile. Now they could have given it for killing farming for 1000 hours, but that would have been less worthwhile and enjoyable.

figuring out the item reward level needs to not be just about the bottom line of controling supply, limiting volatility, and meeting metrics on value per hour. It needs to be about goals, milestones, and playing the game well, or at least playing the game presented. Honestly in many respects GW1 had this better, sure you could farm a lot, but the highest value in earning took you to the most dangerous and hard to farm places.(mostly) and generally required you to have done most of the content in that campaign, and display more mastery of the game than other lower places.

right now the vision seems to be that these type of activities are really not comparatively rewarding, and this is not really an error, this is the plan of specific people who have reasoned and decided this is the way things should be distributed.

It doesnt have to be just about rewarding skill, but really everything should not give you the same reward. What is the benefit for playing well or achieving greatness, how does the reward system reinforce adventuring or fighting monsters.
The current rewards dont, and they cant. The people in charge of items decided that they want the highest reward (in value per hour) from normal play to come from repetitive simple activities.
look at jumping puzzles, they may an hour to complete, and you can only do them once a day, but the big chest reward at the end gives the equivalent of 1/2 of one kill lots of monsters dynamic event.

Fighting a dragon, though it can only happen once every few hours, also gives less.

fighting a champion, who takes 5 minutes to kill gives less than fighting 10 nobody enemies.

this is all because the design bias is towards controling the value per hour to be virtually the same for all tasks.

I dont see how they can every create the reward level necessary with this mentality. Im not saying it needs to be completely skill based, but there has to be incentives to play well, and gains for skill or intellegence or something. There is no point to having the out of the way hidden behind a wall treasure chest if it gives less than killing 2 monsters.
If its not money, or items, it needs to be something else, maybe they need to bring back the skill system because at least that gave you something to hunt, and some reason to delve into the secrets of the game.
If the only type of smart non repetive play that is rewarded is playing the TP/merchanting you will lose a lot of players who want an action adventure based game.

Vol.5241:

Item distribution should be tiered

Legendaries should be rewarded to the least amount of people while whites rewarded to the most, which is how it works in this game.

How are they rewarded? Time, gold and skill, with heavy emphasis on the former two.

Why is skill less worthwhile of a measure than time or gold. Why is gold a top tier method for deciding item distribution, when the game doesnt really reward gold that much for regular play, or high end play? why is luck higher than effort?

Also, should things really distributed in teirs, with forced rarities? If you have strong mechanics behind difficulty, time, skill and even luck deciding items, why does there need to be forced limits on items.

this aside, what im kind of asking, is it essentially seems like the game design team dont really get to decide how much of a reward activities can give. Not just precursors, but everything in the game, even spvp rewards are essentially decided by items distro people/economists/etc You can be fairly certain that how much items are required for ascended backpieces was decided here, as well as what type of loot champions can drop. What type of items dungeons can give, and how much of them.

So what im getting at, is what is their vision for item distribution since they are controling it. It seems they prefer a production line style for item creation. IE most activities reward similar level of small value items, the distribution of good items is based on rng, which amounts to the same thing, IE overall, a rare drop balances out to, generally not much in terms of how much you earn. Difficulty also plays in very little, you essentially get about the same level of drops in a dungeon as doing the easiest kill massive amounts of monsters dynamic event (actually you generally get more doing such events)

Then for higher tier items, its usually about putting these tiny items together. put 20 in mf maybe get 1 rare, craft using mats you only get by breaking down 20 trash items.
put 250 rare drops to get an ascended. etc.

My guess is that their plan is essentially to be a pyramid of time spent with time measured primarily as the production of gold, and the TP one of the main means of getting around this(Ie not having to spend 300 hours obtaining something)

however, if this is the case i think they need to be more dynamic in their approach. monetary value will be determined by the market regardless, its fine to set a bottom for items value by raw production and brute force creation, but There should be some things that are awarded primarily due to adventure, or difficulty, not every activity should boil down to the same thing.

For example, charged lodestones, the main method of obtaining them requires an event, that spawns high level sparks, but the rewarding of these items for the timed farmed, is generally less or similar to just grinding in Orr, so essentially this special activity unlock, is not really giving you a better way of obtaining anything, also the means of obtaining it is fairly tedious.

Essentially you can manage the economy with just some simple metrics that boil down to gold value per hour earned for all activities, then make all items of higher desire require more gold/value per hour, but that cripples the world.

it means, that the guys in charge of rewards will not allow difficulty, adventure, etc to signifigantly impact what type of items you get. This means you will never get much more for delving into the hidden area no one found, or beating the monster no one has beaten. Surviving wave after wave of monsters and beating a champion without dying, than you would get spamming AOE at shelters gate or similar.

It suggests that no matter what cool content the other developers create, nothing will ever be more rewarding than the straight up focused farming because all methods of obtaining value/hr should be roughly similar regardless of skill, knowledge, difficulty and even rarity of the circumstances that lead to them

maddoctor.2738:

I’ve said it before and it is unfortunately true:

It’s odd how a cooperative rpg based on instances, has more incentive to hunt down and kill powerful bosses than a real open world MMORPG, it’s really something that had been bothering me since the first month of release…

1) Elite skills. In Guild Wars 1 bosses were the ONLY way to get Elite skills, at least until Nightfall and Hard Mode was available. In order to get those Elites, you first had to see them in action, as bosses and normal mobs were using the exact same skills available to players. The next time your entire party wipes by a Sandstorm you will WANT to capture it
In Guild Wars 2 we have pathetic Elite Skills on most professions, few are really defining the build someone is using, we have a very limited amount of them AND we have those worthless skill challenges. Instead of some random skill challenge that doesn’t make any sense, players should be focusing on doing events, so end bosses spawn, so they can capture their skills. And on a different subject, Elite skills should feel “elite”, currently on lots of the professions they aren’t (for example Elementalist elites have little to no mixing potential with builds/traits/gear etc)
Suggestion: Maybe they could make some World Bosses award a skill point, much like a skill challenge does? It’s a start, until we get better Elites.

2) Gear. Each boss in Guild Wars 1 had a chance of dropping “Green” weapons, those items were top quality gear (like Exotics) with sometimes unique skins and perfect stats for a build using that particular elite. So if you were lucky you could get both an elite and the gear to use it in one go. Elementalist bosses that used Fire magic for example, would drop Fire Magic gear.
Suggestion: Maybe they should make certain, hard to reach, bosses drop equipment packages like those available with Laurels? Of course without any chance for Exotics.

3) Morale boost. All bosses awarded a morale boost, a +2% on health, it was also the only way to refresh the ressurection signet available to all professions. That Morale Boost was reason enough to kill a boss at times (the “easier” ones at least).
Suggestion: certain, hard to reach, bosses could apply a buff to everyone that participated in killing them, similar to the buff seen in Forest of Niflhel sPVP map, when you kill Svanir/Chieftain. The buff could be a stat boost, or, even a magic find boost for a limited time.

4) Difficulty. Bosses in Guild Wars 1 didn’t have insane health pools. Instead they had resistances to debuffs in Prophecies, and from Factions onwards they had DOUBLE damage. This meant that the most important thing everyone remembered about bosses was the damage, not their hit points. Guild Wars 2 bosses are boring, without cool attacks.
Suggestion: rework all champion bosses to make them more interesting and challenging to fight. Reduce hit points (more than 50% reduction) and instead give “group” bosses an actual group, harder to solo, and tougher for groups. Those groups in Arah Explorable with different mix of professions come to mind, they are excellent for a Boss group.

You are very right, some of the decisions anet has made has made adventuring extremely bland.
The decision to get rid of proffesion specific skill challenges comes to mind. if skill challenges were like they first described, where say you go find a hidden book in an old wizard’s unreachable keep for elementalist, or you metal gear your way past sentry mobs and steel a forgotten key for theif, It would have done a lot to make the game an adventure and stand out. Likewise boss hunting, right now, you see a champion, you just keep going, there is no logicial reason to fight a regular champion, aside from a few places where there is a chest in the room.

The buff idea is a good one, they could give random buffs of shorter duration, that stack with their other buffs, see magic find+ or damage done up, say 15 minutes, or even like kill streak bonuses.

essentially agree with most of what you said, now is the time anet needs to be trying to push their systems with an adventure in mind

i dunno, i think cantha should exist, and have some cool developed content, Its already a part of the world, ignoring it now seems more insensitive to me than otherwise

Acension.9270:

i cant really do the gold thing, i have only ever gotten a character to 24, i find levelling slow, so i cant really get gold

your best bet is to do a combination thing,
spend a lil bit of cash to buy gems, and get your friends to give you some gold to get to their server, until then you can guest with them for pve.

I would donate money for a friend of mine to switch, if they wont, then i dunno how great it would be anyhow. WvWvW is best enjoyed when at least a couple of the people in your crew has some disposable income

I was watching a video today with some of the Devs, and they basically implied when they are thinking about rewards and item distribution for various incentives, they basically have to consult somebody like an econimist, or item/reward guys.

This got me thinking, it essentially means that these developers are essentially in charge of how rewards and item distribution, etc is handled.

So then the question is, what is your vision of a good balance? How do you approach that balance? Do you favor skill, rarity, effort, ingenuity etc in what decides reward.

My interpretation is that right now, the game is more focused on either effort, through time spent farming, or ingenuity in terms of capitilizing on the market. IE most of the economy of rewards are based on efficient production of high value items, and the ability to react to and anticipate trends.

also what do you feel is a good amount of energy that should be required to achieve low end, mid end and high end rewards, do you feel this should be extremely curved, or more linear in relation.

As for the other players this is for you too, what do you think would be some good reward metrics and what should be the major factors etc

Vol.5241:

kellian.9712:

Vol.5241:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Legendary weapons are promised to ‘evolve’ with the game so if you do all that work, it’s not wasted. THAT should be the main reason for wanting a Legendary, although the bling factor is just as important to me. Prestige is really just a nice to have. That being said I want to work for it to feel better about that prestige. I will value it more if it was hard to acquire.

I DO NOT however want to grind mindlessly for years to get one. That is bull kitten.
Clovers are account bound, why not make precursor as well (IF THERE IS A REASONABLE WAY TO GET ONE). You should not be able to just buy a Legendary.
You have to earn many of the gifts, why can’t we earn a precursor?

You can earn one. You buy one.

and ^ attitude and thought process is one of the biggest problems with the game right now.

What’s wrong with earning the gold to buy something? Is there something inherently evil about that which makes me a sick person?

In the real world, I guess if I were a farmer and milked my own cows for milk, I’m a good person.

But if I’m an office drone and I spent my hard earned money on buying milk from the grocery store.. kitten I’m literally the devil!

you are a devil because you want the only way to get the milk to be to buy it, which is your own chosen means of work. You value money, and you want the determining factor for legendaries to be money.

Now im not saying buying something or selling it should not be an option, but it should not be the only option, and right now, it is EXACTLY the only feasible option.

2 ways of actually feasibly attempting it right now, the main determinate in either is wealth.
one is luck times wealth, the other is just pure wealth.

Now if this was a monetary simulation game, having the elite/legendary etc items being bound to wealth might make sense, but it is an adventure game.

And since you can make a lot more wealth by working in an office as a broker, than you can becoming a master soldier, hunter, artist, etc, it means the legendary game will always be one that is dominated by the office brokers.

Vol.5241:

Precursors are not a problem at all. If someone is willing to pay X gold then that’s fair.

I sure as hell would want to buy a Dusk at 10S. But if someone is willing to pay 600g then I guess…too bad for me.

legendary weapons that are only about how much gold you can earn as the main endgame goal, is a bad idea for an rpg/adventure game. That is the flaw with precursors, and with legendaries.

rarity by grind is annoying, but it makes sense to reward people for playing the game as it is advertised.
difficulty is something many people fear, but it makes sense to reward people for epic adventures in a rpg
gold, well its not a game about gold, its supposed to be about adventure exploration, combat etc, so why is item required for one of the major account achievement unlocks, the driving force for most of the post level 80 activities, obtainable most readily from massive gold.

Its just a bad game design, legendaries would be fine, if they had some other endgame way of progressing your charachter (doesnt have to be vertical, can in fact be cosmetic, or even story/adventure related) but they dont, you play the whole game one way, then when it comes to precursors, it turns into a corporate simulation game. Its foolish

end game can be grindy, but shouldnt be legendary grindy.

Content is the real key to endgame, but the key is, it should be fun and interesting
more fractals, fractals is an excellent way to have a scaling difficulty event with scaling rewards, now it just needs more possibilities, until it gets to the point you never know what your going to get.

In the open world, I would create some large scale dynamic events for each area, that qualify as elite, Orr is kind of has this concept, but now, tie it together even more. Add even more context to the temples, and some interesting conditions that occur when either nothing or everything is contested, with a few random ones that can happen inbetween.

Now translate this concept into more zones, their should be a story for every major area, (like orr has the things with the avatars) And it should be even more difficult, and sometimes involve new mechanics, it should scale fairly well, but start out built with 5+ in mind, and designed to scale well in complexity with up to 20+ people.
(IE when it scales up the mechanics change, new enemies come, different waves, perhaps different allies as well)

i wouldnt mind a hardmode world, where everything is harder, and your always scaled up to 80, (this way all levels can choose to participate, although its harder) i know it would split the community, but to be honest, the community is split between those that want challenge and those that dont anyhow.

As for rewards, develop some new skills
id say some swappable skills for each weapon, so basically another set of possibilities for each weapon
some new weapon types (unlocked through dungeons/fractals/high end WvWvW/high end in world content.
new skill animations
for ex.
blurred frenzy with the wild slashing animation, hits say 6 hits in2.5 seconds, at an interval of first 5 being .4 seconds apart and last being .5 seconds
can be changed to:
blurred frenzy
where after images do peircing stabs in the shape of a star for 5 hits, while the mesmer does some cool poses, at the same hits per second and interval

essentially a cosmetic skin for weapon skills.
this should be obtained through doing various endgame type activities. WITH a story element tied in, like a classic quest, say the legendary master mesmer asks you to do a wide selection of heroic activities of which you can select say 6 or 7 inbetween story element quests.

the game is solid, it has a strong framework and options to build on, the just need to get a little more imaginative with it, and tie in rewards people value to what is already fun activities.
At the end of the day its all about the content, and making the rewards for that content satisfying, it doesnt need to be a vertical gain, but it needs to be something thats cool and entertaining, or something that increases options.

Horrorscope.7632:

Rebound.3409:

Indeed. I still want an official answer from ANet on this good or bad.

That ain’t happenin, this is part of the game that feels like D3. Rarity and silence… which means it’s a matter of cold hard cash for Anet, well at least that is what I think. I like paying subs with no cash shop better, that way the devs can simply focus on fun game play. With a cash shop, I always have a paranoia of when something is really dry, it’s dry for a monetary reason.

except that when things are dry for a game with a sub, it guarantees you ll HAVE to pay more money, because the longer things take, the longer you have to play to obtain them.

A cash shop woe, might be that they will design content that is cash shop centered, like say all new cool charachter skins being cash shop only, and not maintaining things that dont make much money, like live content.

I think the problem isnt a money grubbing one, its just really poor reward/item distribution.
I mean, look at champion fighting, its pretty much a complete waste of time and energy, in the same time it takes, you can murder about 20 times the number of enemies, for about 4x the drops. Its just really really bad math.

lothefallen.7081:

LoL isn’t an MMO, GW2 is.

The Centaur King Ulgoth…players just swarmed him and DPS’d him down, you can’t see anything, just skill animations. No depth to that fight at all. A trinity system would be a step up from this, allowing the dev team to actually design interesting encounters. This would encourage people to party so that the healer could see who he is healing and their interface. Then they could build skills more tightly and then have boss / encounter mechanics that are even deeper and more challenging. That way, you still have these huge overworld battles, but they are more structured and less brain-dead. I know some players don’t like this idea, but this is the threshold of the lack of depth in this game. The devs have shown they don’t have a clue how to balance or design around their current combat system, why not try something more familiar?There is no tangible aggro system in those types of fights and players just drop at random because there is so many. Suffice to say, i don’t think anyone there thought the combat was fun. They were just doing it to farm EXP and rewards. You literally just sit there and spam your skills with no mechanics to even force you to think about what you do. No skill system depth. No mechanical depth from the boss. This is all across the game. It’s braindead.

This is why, i feel, that GW2’s weakest, and probably most worrisome issue is the depth, engagement, and variety in the combat.

At least in GW1, my Mesmer was responsible for certain hexes that were vital to put on mobs, my Necromancer vital to groups because of minion meat shields. My warrior important in PvP as a DPS to backline for the monk and assist team spikes. My monk important and fun because i was given a variety of choices to support my team. Elementalist because it WAS THE BEST AoE damage class.

The type of game you want to create is a lot more limited, as soon as you create predefined roles, and start building fights where you require X to play, you lose true diversity, because you dont really have choices, in GW1 a lot of the choices were lies, because you were essentially required to have X Y or Z. take your mesmer for example, out of the 100s of skills available, your entire focus and purpose is to maintain a few hexes? This is deep play? this is real customisation?

As for your example about the centaur, it was zerg not because of roles, it was a zerg because it was a zerg. All people can participate, and all people do. It really has nothing to do with a trinity. Zergs exist in trinity games as well, the main thing stopping it is people not getting rewards

As someone said before, GW is a fairly deep system, but most pve doesnt require you to use it, because the AI is designed simply, as are the encounters designed in a very basic way.

The designers simply add mobs, and/or tough monsters to encounters. They should be grouping healers, warriors, making more champions spawn, adding new mechanics, or conditions when scaling up. it really has little do with trinity.

The other problem is while i want more engaging combat, many people want to win through time spent. The open world, essentially, is made to appeal to people who want to win through time spent. Nothing in the open world is designed to be that difficult if you have enough people. personally i think they should change this idea, and add some difficult and dangerous areas, with a higher skill cap for the events there, and of course better rewards.

Anyhow, i seriously hope they never introduce trinity to this game, it would really ruin it, im not saying everything is perfect. (they definately could use slottable weapon skills, even if only a few more per weapon) But the answer is to keep going down the path they are on, and refine that, not to try a totally different path.

And really i can make my mesmer play completely different with different gear, skills and traits, I mean, the difference is night and day. i can be a 1 on 1 duelist, a DOT, i can counter and cause chaos among enemies, i can be a tank.

Its a lot deeper than you think, and whether or not something matters has more to do with the encounters than the mechanics, I think when beta went live, a lot of people thought the game was too hard, i think the

Astraea.6075:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Astraea.6075:

I’m not sure how the definition of gambling (in the context in which the subject was first broached) applies to Diminishing Returns or Trading Post speculation. And equating RNG to gambling is a bit of a stretch IMO.

Ok, gambling within the following aspects:

Diminishing Returns – We are not certain what controls this and this is the first indication that its outcome has more than one result. What we do know, however, is that spending too much time in a certain area can potentially reduce loot quality. Therefore you are gambling time for loot quality.

Trading Post – This is a simple one. Flipping! Using the TP is like a stock exchange – you are gambling by flipping between items.

RNG – Speaks for itself – RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR.

Mystic Forge – You put in 4 items to obtain something else. That something else, although has several predetermined results, varies with probability. Therefore you are gambling items to get something you want but may not get it every single time with all combinations.

You see guys, you are always gambling in GW2. You are using some thing(s) to obtain some thing(s) better, however, it (outcome) may not always work in your favour. This is why it is called gambling.

So you’re using the broadest definiton of gambling (i.e. anything with an uncertain outcome, or risk) to make your point. In that case, crossing a busy highway could be considered gambling, running dungeons – gambling, flying to another city – gambling.

I’ll concede that the Trading Post could be considered gambling, but I feel it’s a bit more complex than that… e.g. if I craft an item and attempt to sell it on the TP for profit, there is a risk that I won’t sell it for the price I’ve listed it at, but that’s a risk I took when I crafted the item not because of the TP (i.e. I still might not manage to sell the item at my desired price if the game favored face-to-face trading over a TP).

Diminishing Returns – gambling time for loot quality? I’m sorry, that actually sounds like most of what happens in this and other games of the genre. If I spend time playing (or farming) the game, I’m gambling that the monsters will drop valuable loot? This is where I feel you are definitely using an overly broad definition of gambling.

RNG – where I have a problem with calling this gambling is that if seems like calling a deck of cards “gambling”. A deck of cards can enable games of chance, but aren’t gambling in and of themselves.

Again, your definition (“using some thing(s) to obtain some thing(s) better, however, it (outcome) may not always work in your favour”) could be applied to almost every situation in life as almost nothing is ever certain despite our beliefs otherwise. (I go to work in order to obtain money to pay my bills, but I’m “gambling” that the company doesn’t go bust before I get my next paycheck…)

yes in truth there is a lot of gambling in life. yes there is a lot of gambling in this game. I think you are the one who is trying to narrow the scope of the term gambling, gambling is

“Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value (referred to as “the stakes”) on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods. Typically, the outcome of the wager is evident within a short period."

so yes the TP is gambling, especially when you are buying 1000 of something hoping it will go up so that you can sell it.
yes rng isnt gambling, any more than a roulette wheel is gambling, but as soon as you apply a roulette wheel to decide whether you profit or not, you are gambling
the mystic forge is definately gambling, at least all the recipes that dont have a direct formula.

Diminishing returns? not sure if thats gambling, but 3/4 aint bad.

point is GW2 has a wealth of gambling, but hey if im gonna gamble, id like it to be flashier, give me some people to blow on my dice, and a fancy parlour, with a spinning wheel that slows down (also showing me clearly what my odds are)
Or let me be the warrior who challenges people to duels putting his skills up on the line to increase his wealth.

thats a lot more as much if not more inline with a game thats supposed to be an adventure than watching/creating spreadsheets of items and value exchanges.

See, what people want from the economy here makes sense, they want items of high value, reasons to obtain large amounts of wealth, regular people to have to constantly trade and consume things so that money is flowing.

this is all good for a well structured society, its really bad for something that is supposed to simulate adventure, if the best way to do everything of import is to do the opposite of adventuring.