Guild Wars 2

honestly some of the exploits are cool and remind of things like phantasy star online challenge mode. Some are cheesy, but i hope in the future fractal design, they actually design some hidden shortcuts, and other possible paths, or differing behavior on bosses. These type of things are actually semi fun.

like for example, if for the collussus boss, you could beat him the normal way, or you could stagger him, hit the thingy normally, but then throw in a new more exciting more kitten less rinse and repeat shorter but more difficult fight for the last 25%

or you cut through the the dredge door part by finding that secret path, but it triggers a timed bomb that blows up if you dont open the door in a certain time.

some of these side paths and errant behaviors could have actually been cool level mechanics if somewhat tweaked.

numberbb.8724:

simply

We need Matching Join system. (like Rift LFG system)

toooo maaaanyyy Silence pepole.

better lfg, would help, but at the end of the day, i think it will still be too seperate for some difficulties.

Ok the idea i had is basically that for each tier of difficulty, you get a certain amount of points for each difficulty, once you have enough points you unlock the final difficulty in that tier, upon beating it you advance to the next teir.

so lets say you the amount was 45 points to unlock difficulty 10

you beat difficulty 1, you get 1/45 points and the ability to access difficulty 2
you beat difficulty 2, you get 2 points, added to the 1 you already have, 3/45 to access difficulty 10
you beat difficulty 3, you get 3 points, and are now at 6/45

so now, you are looking for a level 4 game, but none are happening, you see a difficulty 3 game, you join and win
you get 3 more points and are at 9/45, 1 more point to unlock difficulty 5, and 36 more for 10.

now of course with this system one could beat level 1, 45 times to access level 10, but to be honest if you beat level 1 45 times, you are probably ready for level 10.

now the system resets for the next tier,
you need 45 tier two points to access level 20 11 gives you 1 point, etc.

so would there be some seperation, yeah, but not as much it would basically be hard seperated by 1-10 11-20 21-30 etc, with a soft seperation in between, notice as well 45 points is 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9, which means you would never have to repeat a difficulty to progress if you didnt want to.

side note, i think that each tier difficulty should be unlocked at the proper number if you had got up there normally, like

tier 4 would unlock at 10/45 (1+2+3+4)
tier 7 would unlock at 28/45 (1,2,3,4,5,6,7 sum)

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

Lady Vireo.5189:

This is the best post yet in the Ascended gear debate. Very well said, OP, and said with intelligence and respect for both sides of the argument. I wish everyone could express their heartfelt opinions in such a thoughtful and courteous manner.

I hope everyone reads and emulates this post, whatever side they are on. And I hope Anet will read it, too, and keep in mind all of us who loved the horizontal progression of GW1 or who came to GW2 from vertical progression games hoping for something different.

The real problem ANET faces (or, if the choice has been made, faced) is that these two different kinds of players – stat-progressives and stat-cappers – have an irreconcilable difference in how they require their game to be fundamentally structured. One game simply cannot serve both.

I think it is highly unlikely that GW2, which focused so much of it’s original content philosophy, integrated design and mechanics on a stat-capped system, can simply switch over and significantly compete in a market saturated by stat-progression titles that are created from the ground up to be just that very thing. The game might continue on, but I doubt it’s going to enjoy a larger revenue from the saturated stat-progression market than it would have garnered being the only modern AAA MMOG on the market with capped stats.

the problem with what you said here, is that GW2 was never made with horizontal only progression in mind. It is actually built for vertical progression. Colin johansson mentioned months before the game came out in an interview that he would totally increase the level cap when an expansion came out.

people assumed because GW1 was a stat cap game that gw2 would be, thats not the case, its not in the manifesto.

Do not confuse the companies philosophy on grinding to experience content with a philosophy on a finite growth. They are two different concepts and are not mutually exclusive.

BrunoBRS.5178:

Oh Snapalope.1378:

CoE is the only dungeon I think Anet did right. It’s actually FUN! Also Alpha is a joke, he’s more of a joke than Lupicus. Wait for 2 seconds and roll you dodge everything. What’s so hard about that?

not all classes can spec into free, almost infinite dodges like thief. my ranger friend has mentioned that even if he only uses dodge on the charged attacks, he runs out of dodges and has to start legging it instead, which is very unreliable on room-wide AoEs. the safe spots on his rock attacks are also rather unreliable, since the rock AoEs can overlay each other.

there isnt simply 1 way of dealing with him. Ranged players can walk out of every AOE except for the conal attack, which you just have to dodge if hes looking at you before doing one of his 3 attacks.

I honestly think its one of the best designed dungeons in the game, in terms of fun, except for the destroyer which is simply not enough time to damage him, and ends up with a tedious exploit the parts where you cant be hit strategy.

darkyn.6201:

To the bad trolls : we don’t want an EASIER way to get them, but a challenged based method, not just spending tons of gold. I want feeling glad after a long and hard journey

Making tons of gold is the only difficult thing in GW2. If you want something else, then you want an easy way to get a precursor.

Sure, Anet can make some kind of insanely difficult one-man dungeon with no waypoints and respawning mobs, but this way you will discriminate PvE-weak classes.

you already need to make tons of gold to get a legendary, or become a great farmer, (making tons of gold is the easier method)
they never needed this to be needed for the precursor. Also i dont think they intended becoming a master merchant to be the only way to get a legendary. If it is, then it is as many have already said. The only thing legendary about a legendary is how you got so much gold.

While that is one facet of something being legendary, it shouldnt be the only facet in an online role playing game about being an adventurer and fighting the remnants of the gods and dragons.

UrieltheFlameofGod.8643:

The question with precursors is “what does earning a precursor demonstrate?”. Right now, getting a precursor demonstrates that you’ve invested ‘sufficient’ time gambling in the Mystic Forge…but that was already demonstrated when you got your 77 clovers. Other things you have to do to earn the legendary are map completion, farm a single dungeon, earn badges of honor, have a lot of karma, have a lot of gold…there’s no point in changing the precursor to require any of these things. What’s missing? An honest-to-god demonstration of skill.

Either make it so the precursor is “earned” through some difficult achievements (WoW, for example, awarded mounts for completing the hard-mode achievements in high-end dungeons and raids) or maybe make it purchaseable for 600 of each dungeon token (since right now people only run one dungeon for armor set and one for legendary).

as many have said, teh precursor should be a demonstration of skill. I think they should still have the mystic forge/tp path for those who dont have these skills.

oZii.2864:

Cerise.9045:

I got all of the component for the legendary that don’t involve money in less than a week.

I already have the karma/badges/other non-money junk for a 2nd legendary laying around, and I didn’t do any farming for those at all. The karma is extremely easy with the karma from dungeons and dailies/monthlies.

I’m strongly considering making a second legendary and selling it now.

People being able to sell base weapons for 300+ gold also results in people being able to control this market and make enormous amounts of profit because many of them have a profit margin of 50+ gold. I have seen evidence that trading in these base weapons is one of the ways RMT companies use to make money to sell to players illegally. But ANet is probably well aware of this as well.

Being able to make 50 gold just by buying and selling one item on the TP is completely insane. I’ve done it myself so I know how effective it is, in fact it’s by far the best way in this game to make money at all.

A better price that the base weapons should be around is 30 gold. This prevents a few people from controlling this market and making hundreds of gold each day.

And before people cry “but then everyone will run around with a legendary” or “you want free legendaries!?!?!” Think about it for a second.

You’re still dropping 140G on NPC items and 200+ G on lodestones, 100+G on ecto, and whatever else you need for the materials, so legendarily will still be expensive and hard to get.

The problem with this is, unless there is a a way for everyone to get a cheaper base weapon, for example with a mystic forge recipe, the horrible scenario I described on the first page will occur, and the market will become even more damage.

My suggestion:
Add a new temporary mystic forge recipe that requires

• 100 elonian wine
• whatever(ecto or something, not too much because the price is high enough)
• whatever(mystic coins, again not too much because the price for these should be stable, if the price for this skyrockets again it will allow speculators to again make hundreds of god and damage the economy)
• whatever(eldricht scroll? a different exotic weapon)

This will set the price for base weapons at around 40 gold WITHOUT DAMAGING THE MARKET BY LETTING PEOPLE GET 300+ GOLD THROUGH A RANDOM DROP

In case anyone is wondering why I want this changed so much even though I make a lot of money out of this, it’s pretty simple. I want this game to be a good as it can be, and this broken system is reducing the quality of the game. The money I make is just going to sit in my bank until the GW3 hall of monuments comes out and I use my money to buy my friends GW3 HoM points so they get cool things in GW3 so it doesn’t matter to me if I make 100G more or less.

That doesn’t fix the problem and it does damage the economy. If you make it 40g thats alot of people with Dawn right. What happens to charged lodestones? They skyrocket. The market is a free market hate it or love it. If they make precursors like your suggestion then someone with enough assets will buy the lodestones up and charge even more for them. Alot of the ingredients for precursors can be bought because of this making the precursors more available will cause those ingredients to go up. Anyone and everyone that has some capital will buy it up. I know people only 4 gold that will get in on a hot deal if you tell them to flip x on the TP or buy in on this or that.

lodestones are better than precursors because you dont have to buy them, and it has an incremental process. no matter how bad lodestone prices are, you can run dungeons, or hunt elementals to get a modest amount, and make progress over time. The fact is due to the range some people will never get precursors in any other way than the TP, but the price of precursors wasnt well planned out. They made them rarer than they had planned for. At the current rate, with what 2 million people who bought the game, how many have legendaries, 100? 1000

even if its 1000 thats, .05% they said they wanted 5% to have it. The amount of attempts it requires really would have put legendary costs insanely high if it wasnt for gold farmers supplying the market for overproduction.
looking at exotics costing 2 gold, and rares costing 25 silver (which is still pretty cheap really) with people saying it takes like 5000 rares, your looking at a cost of 1250 gold.

yes precursors were a huge problem, and they were only as cheap as they were because gold farmers/or whatever had materials that should have costed 10 silver costing 50 copper, and exotics which should cost 3 gold+ to costing half that.

truth is precursor, if it retains its current method of obtaining would always be out of reach of the same amount of players. It would essentially become only a rich mans game. Its price would continue to inflate with the economy.

TWMagimay.9057:

TSLlol.4879:

I really hope they address precursors with this update… Maybe put it in the new “very difficult dungeon” as a reward? Let’s hope.

Or else I’m out.. nealy 1000 hours played, 3 lvl 80 chars, ectect… I’m already rapidly losing interest in the game sadly.

And having a weapon that shoots rainbows will change that how exactly?

and he wants to take part in the other long term goals the game has?

really i understand why they may be afraid of making precursors have a different method, afterall, the entire ecomony is basically getting a huge focus of goods created/sold towards precursors, however the all or nothing gambling system, is pretty poor, and the rate at which they are getting introduced is fairly low. im pretty sure way less than 5% of the population has legendaries, and of those who do, the most consistent thing you can say about 90% of those people, is they have a relatively insane amount of money at their disposal.

Daulnay.4971:

—continued—
“Not to mention the fact that as a player of a video game, I have no cost of living to consider.”and “If my average spend per day in game is about 20s for repairs & WP’s, if I sell something I make for 1g that pays for 5 days worth of my daily cost of living.”

ANet has done an impressive job of linking the in-game economy to real world money. Gold in the game can be traded for gems, which can be traded for bag slots, character slots, vault slots, and a host of other things. As of 11:35 PST on 11/08/2012, 6g 40s will by you $10.00 U.S. in gems, the 800 gems necessary for a new character slot.

The money you leave on the table when you don’t watch how you sell stuff on the GW2 market has a very real cost for you (if you would ever buy gems for real cash). I estimate that I’ve saved myself $20 by making money crafting (which is cash for having fun, can’t fault that!). Bought a character slot, bag slots, and vault space. (I hope I have not spoiled anyone’s fun by removing the illusion that this is a fictional, not a real, economy. )

[ Side note: the economies in GW2, WoW, EVE Online and many other MMOs are actually part of the real world economy. It’s a fascinating RW development — online economies are quite large, and the economic activities we indulge in here do replace economic activities we otherwise might be doing in meatspace. Crafting, especially. Gold farming is one sign of the fact, and has become a surprisingly large ( 3 billion) industry. Yes, with a B. See the report “Knowledge Map of the Virtual Economy” published by the World Bank/International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in April 2011. ]

daulnay, im not completely disagreeing with you here, but what you are making money off of here, is not so much crafting as much as playing the market. You make money of being a superior merchant, and use crafting as one of the tools.

Now im not exactly saying being a master craftsman should make you rich, but it should do something. Someone who truely is an expert at say making clothes, makes money because they are good at making clothes, the make cooler looking, higher quality clothes (in theory) How well they can be marketed is a different issue.

So possibly what they could also do… (i dont think they would do this though) is add a quality rating to items, the better its crafted (can be decided by number of materials, crafter level, special crafting goals achieved or whatever) effects its durability to repair cost.

So for example a extremely well crafted item is more valuable because it costs less to repair it. (this introduces quality variance based on crafter skill/ability/resource/whatever) now they just have to add the cool looking part to the equation

Auvic.5679:

1. There’s already recipes that need skill points.
2. If there was a system to get karma from delivering materials, you’re effectively putting a market price on karma = bad idea.
3. Skill points continue to be awarded past 80, because you keep leveling up with experience. Case in point: I’m still at 60% world completion, but I have something like 100 skill points that I haven’t used, and I’ve already spent a good 30-40 points buying stuff from the MF vendor.

4. “Alter item appearances”
Actually, this might be rather interesting. Why not give crafters the ability to add special visual “modifiers” to their gear by consuming a number of resources? Something like, oh, say, extra shoulder spikes, or a small pennant you can fly from your backpack in WvW.

…Hm.

1)the recipes im aware of that need skill points dont actually offer anything really, except a bulk crafting formulas, but i may be missing some, i do think they make bulk crafting a choice, IE, should i get this one or this one? the problem is, it doesnt actually make anything you cant make in some other way, so its value is limited.

2)while putting a gold value on karma may something to watch, i dont think its really “bad” but even if they decide it is bad for karma they could use something else that requires you to get rid of valueless items. Essentially im looking at things that people can actually do involving crafting, that will allow them to make special items but not over produce them, without working hard

3) are you saying experience is awarded for crafting past 400? While i understand you can get skill points past level 80, i dont think you can get them from being good at a particular craft. The idea here is that people who put extra time and energy into say being an armorsmith, can make superior or rare, or custom/special armorsmithing things that will have value to people. By making it something that uses personal resources, like skill points or karma, you make it unlikely people will just get every recipe, and instead focus on the ones they feel have value, or that they like. Now, im not married to using karma or skill points for this stuff, but it would be best if it is an earnable resource that you can get by crafting. we cant make it gold, because the best way of getting gold is not through crafting.

Thinking along some of the lines in my previous post, i have an ambitious idea;

it might involve a lot of work, but i think long term it will enrich the game greatly.

Essentially one of the big problems with crafting is that this is a looks based game, which means they have to create a lot of art assets.

So in terms of creating a lot of art assets, what they might be able to do is, create a system by which players, users, artists can create visual appearances of gear. Players can than vote, and in accordance with some judges from Anet select 1 new model for each craft a month (maybe one per item type)

this item recipe would be obtainable for skill points/karma/some crafted items/ gold. The creators would get a certain amount of gold/copper per from that purchase.

So essentially this would give crafters exclusive access to some very specific looks, it would enrich the game visually, basically giving some highly demanded new designs each month, Since it would an investment on the part of the crafters, it wouldnt simply be everyone with every recipe.

It would also give some players a means of making gold by contributing to the overall game content. If you make the next hit gear BAM your rich!

The simplest solution is to create recipes(i mean the actual recipe itself not the materials needed once you have the reciple) that require time or effort to obtain, like a recipe that needs skill points, high amounts of materials, karma (although karma isnt the best currency since crafting gives no karma)

possibly they could set up a system for getting karma from crafting, possibly involving doing supply runs, whereby crafters can get karma for delivering materials to various places in the world (and they could make it so the items chosen use materials that are currently being over produced, or over stocked)

then in terms of the actual items required to make them, make some items be karma, or skill point related, i think this is better than a straight up limiter on production, because it allows people who enjoy crafting or making things to allot their resources, rather than simply saying you can only do something once a day.

(the problem with skill points, is i believe they are no longer awarded when you hit cap)

Of course, since the game is looks based, this would require that they produce a wealth of new visual appearances for gears, also, they would probably need to add a viewer to the tp.

Another possibility, is to give crafters the ability to alter item appearances (using some limited resource possibly from crafters destroying excess items) to allow them to sell what amounts to transmuted (excluding prestige armor sets of course) gear,

also a possibility is to have them be able to set the colors via their own dye, this way someone could buy an abyss black hood with exotic level stats. even if they dont have abyss dye, of course if the recolor it themselves they would have no access to get it back.

Vaulken.6983:

Disclaimer – Just to make things clear Orr is annoying, not hard. Please understand this difference as it is generally synonymous with those who dislike the zone.

Nothing has ever ruined my gaming experience in a game like Orr has. The ramp up from Straits of Devastation to Malchors Leap to finally reaching Cursed Shore has highlighted a lot of things I dislike about the game and then some.

We get the point that Orr is a cursed land of the Risen, sure, sure….driving home a narrative is one thing but drowning players in undead quite literally everywhere that respawn very quickly is beyond reason.

Oh and it doesn’t stop there either: “EVERYONE, COME!”. Not only do they cover every inch of the map, occupie 90% of all way points and respawn quickly; they have every, EVERY skill in the game to make travelling from point A to B as monotonous and painful as possible. They can:

• - freeze you
• - cripple you
• - immobilize you
• - pull you back to them
• - daze you
• - stun you
• - knock you down

AND THEY’RE ALWAYS IN GROUPS!!! Playing in Orr at times is comparative to being suffocated. It is tiresome and unenjoyable. When people complained before I got there I thought they were signet warrior newbies just complaining about things they could complain about. But woe is me. This place doesn’t define annoying, it reinvented it.

“EVERYONE, COME!”

Something Orr really drove home is how LOCK-ON ranged skills should not be in a combat system where the whole point is to avoid attacks, but the attacks are unavoidable?? Instant crowd control skills that can’t be anticipated??

I realized I wasn’t anticipating and dodging like I do in Tera, but I was running around in circles and kiting. I am a burly Norn warrior with a big 2h sword/hammer, but my primary way of dealing with the majority of mobs is to take out a longbow and kite them like I’m legolas. WHAT THE ^&%$ “EVERYONE, COME!”

AAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

At the end of the day, I realized the most fun I had, was not the combat, not the dungeons (definitely not the dungeons) but anything, ANYTHING not to do with attacking something “EVERYONE, COME!” i.e. exploring, vistas and jumping puzzles. This is the first game where I’ve become a vegetable. What the hell is going on? I believe red is dead and teabagging my foe because I’m the alpha you don’t mess with and now I’m trying to avoid combat at all costs.

I don’t have a problem with grinding, believe me I got a full gold abyss set including jewels from Aion, I mean business. So when I’m avoiding mobs instead of killing them without second thought, woe is me something is wrong.

“EVERYONE, COME!’

you expect to move easily in freely in the endgame zone, while enemies chase you fruitlessly and give up?

yeah i find the knockdowns and pulls annoying, but one should expect that enemies dont just allow you to go wherever you want. Its still all avoidable or manageable, i run through orr probably 3 times a day avoiding enemies on 3 different jobs, it really isnt nearly as difficult or annoying as it could be. The respawn seems too fast? thats probably because this zone in general has to accomodate more people than other zones. This was not a zone balanced for being alone, and it really shouldnt be, because this is where people end up.

I do think that one of the main problems with ORR is it has no other options. Its where you get the most karma, a large amount of moeny, etc. Frostforge is the zone closer to what people are used to, but its not all level 80.

Orr needs some bug fixes but it should pretty much stay how it is with a few improvements. Its a warzone. However it would be nice if they had some other maps to choose from that arent built around the same idea.

To be honest in most MMOs i played, avoiding enemies is a lot harder, especially in endgame areas.

ehh people value their skill points too low, after you do map completion, in the time it takes to get 200 skill points you could probably make 200 gold. It also requires all those skill points on one charachter, i wouldnt sell 200 skill points cheaply if it was me.

Op, you want a new game, the type of mechanics you want are horrible and would go against the nature of the game.

you have to aim your heals, this is on purpose, it makes healing more about paying attention to the battlefield and coordinating with your team.

you want healing to equal dps, this is overpowered, it means that it would be impossible to kill someone as long as a healer is around, AND keeping in mind people have self heals. It also implies you think you should be able to outcure a pure dps, this would trivialize all game modes.

You are ignoring that anet said they didnt want a dedicated healer. The class roles they were talking about were control support and dps. Support is more than “altruistic healing” support is blind, interupts, reflects, boons, and healing.

Now one cold argue for more interesting healing skills, and lower cooldown/lower healing skills, but dont know if it matters that much, i think prevention skills are more interesting and fit the game style better. Maybe a sacrificial healing skill where you give away your hp.

Essentially the stuff you want makes for a different type of game, that i dont think would be a good change to what this game offered people. I understand feeling like the healing stat sucked, but they had it more effective in beta, and even in that short a period, those classes quickly became dedicated healers.

diabluz.2860:

There’s a huge flaw with the current gameplay mechanic in this game. The lack of the “trinity” system ruins the group mechanic for things like dungeons.

This will seriously hamper the long term success of Guild Wars 2.

Every instance/dungeon in this game turns into a chaotic mess with no aggro system and everyone spamming dps. Full party wipes are frequent because there is no aggro system or roles such as healer, tank etc.

This is also why dragons are so boring. The dragon essentially just stands there for 10 minutes while every wails dps on him then he dies and a chest is dropped.

The only way I see of fixing this is by actually making each class capable of being. heals tank or dps by buffing certain weapon choices to suit those roles for each class.

This needs to be changed if this game is ever going to have any longevity.

first of all, how often you die has a lot to do with the skill of the players and the knowledge they have.
Second of all, if you want to play in a trinity style, you actually can, its just that its not particularly better than skilled play from other builds.

The amount of damage reduction from full on tank stats is noticeable, as is healing skills/traits/damage mitigation. Also classes can get a generous amount of healing if they want to. Your main issue will be holding agro, but playing well can mitigate their ability to damage other players.

you will still have to avoid some attacks, you will still have to adapt on the fly. You may have to use multiple control effects to get rid of stacks of indignant so that you can use control.

Its chaotic because you dont have the knowledge to deal with things

Hippocampus.8470:

Yours is at least a truly unlucky situation.

No precursors after 10 attempts, on the other hand, is something we’d expect to happen at least 35% of the time, and that’s if the drop rate is something absurd like 10%. By most accounts, the exotics -> precursors rate seems to be closer to 1%, in which case 10 consecutive failures can be expected more than 90% of the time.

The original poster was upset and hurt not to be one of the top 10% luckiest players in the game, in other words.

if the rate of exotics attempts to precursors is 1%
then they should expect the prices to be a lot higher than what they are now, that would mean youd need 3 exotics per attempt and 100 attempts for the average person, this means the average person youl spend 600 gold to get it. add a profit and you would be at 900 gold.

so yeah if they made it 1%, then they should not be surprised at the costs at all, in fact they should expect them to be higher

relics in FFXI had very little range in comparison, yeah you had to get a lot of items, but if you ran dynamis you would make steady progress.

Also GW2 said that they didnt like the idea of you working hard and getting nothing for it, but right now, thats what legendary precursors are.

Some people will get it on the first try, some people will get it on the 1000th try, people dont really understand probability.

if something is 1/30 chance the odds of failure is 29/30 this means, 97% of people will fail.
people will look at this and say it means if i try 30 times you should win right? not really. the outcome of a random event with replacement is never certain. each new gamble is independent of previous attempts.

every single trial, your chances of losing are 97% whether you have tried once or a thousand times.
your chance is never 100% no matter how many trials, so how many attempts with a 1/30 chance will 90% of the people who have attempted have won?
well the answer is 75 attempts.

the reality is probability is deceptive, people think 1/30 means with 30 tries you should win, it simply isnt the case, it will never be 100% in fact it will be 75 attempts before your chance of success is 90%
in fact with the 30 attempts, 64% of people will have succeeded.

so the answer is, just buy from the people who are of normal luck, the problem is, you dont know if you are of normal luck until you try, repeatedly. Also the more you try, the more your brain says i should win soon right? no, each gamble is instaneous, which means the odds that it you will win in 75 attempts before you try is 90%, but the chances you will win at the moment in time where you have failed 74 times, is still 1/30.

Probability lesson aside, ffxi had tons of other high end goals to get besides relics, and even relics, while extremely long term, still had a fairly incremental process, and many ways to control outcomes.

If they wanted to add a random element to getting legendaries, they either neeed to increase the odds win a piece of it, (like mystic clovers) or make it so that after a certain amount of attempts you auto win.

ex. they could make there be another path to getting a precursor
Say every time you put 4 exotics of the same type in the mystic forge, if you dont like the result, you can challenge Zommoros to a fight. If you win Zommoros says 10 pardons for my behavior. each time this happens he adds 10 pardons. so the third time you beat him, he says, 30 pardons for my behavior. when he gets to 1000 he gives you the precursor, or if you actually get the precursor the pardons reset.

This type of idea would set the floor at 100 fails where you beat Zommoros. So either you are lucky, or you had to beat Zommoros’ kitten 100 times. while that would be incredibly costly if you are unlucky, (if you keep one exotic, it would take 301 exotics or 602 gold at 2 gold per exotic) at least one would always be making progress towards success, and you would still have the thrill of the lucky gamble.

essentially, what it all boils down to, is the current implementation is a lottery, and thats a poor way to obtain a legendary weapon, or show how dedicated/hardcore/how much of the game you have completed.

Azi.2045:

First off, english not being my main language, I’d want to make sure that in saying
“entitled to a legendary” i mean players that feel its their right to get one, that
they have kind of a claim to it.

And it seems you guys didnt get my point, i didnt want to just start an opposive thread
to all the threads about precursor drop-rates, i just wanted some input or discussion
going on the general idea behind legendaries, so to speak. What i tried to ask above, is when 50%ish of the legendary is RnG (getting the precursor from mystic forge), why do people feel they have a right to get it, if they dont get it from the mystic forge?

In other games where you got raids for instance, you got specific items that only drops
from certain bosses in the raid instance, and there is no other way to get it than from that boss-drop. Ive personally raided alot in other games, and some raid-instances i’ve been raiding regurarly for more than a year without getting the weapon i need from last boss, cause it simply wont drop. Then im on vacation for a week and the new guy in guild gets in on his first raid. This is an example of how things work in many other games, and there is only one reality, that if it doesnt drop, i wont get it.

Obviously we can all shout and scream about how bad RnG is, but at the moment the fact is that you can only get it from being lucky in the mystic forge, unless you got 300g to spend at the TP. And very few post have
touched on this subject, but one that has is the OP at the sticky which makes some great points. The “legendary” in a legendary weapon doesnt only translate to it looking cool, it translate to the quality of the weapon, and most importantly the rarity. Legendary weapons are not only the hardest weapons to get, but its the rarest weapons out there, and with a set recipe they wouldnt be rare anymore, only require alot of time.

I just wanted to see some other posts than “RnG stinks, kitten RnG kitten, give us a
recipe now” etc. Id like to see why people think they should get it if it doesnt “drop”
for them. I wanted to see peoples thoughts on the subject they are complaining
about, and not an endless list of how to improve how it currently is, which is why
“i felt entitled to make a new thread”.

thing is, anet said they didnt want to be like the other games where you grind and get nothing, they said they wanted more incremental gains. not only is mystic forge a gamble, but it needs a large investment to see a return. needing to invest 1 month of gold, with a decent chance of being no coser to your goal, is counter to there design, see people may not like mystic clovers, but they are a lot better than precursors, where you can spend 100 gold and get nothing, AND with probability, you are no closer, probabilty is instaneous, so right after you havent got the drop for 100 gold, your chance of not getting anything with the next 100 gold is essentially the same.

its kind of bad for a system that is supposed to be something players actually aim for.

The problem is not entitlement, its just poorly implemented.

First of all, anet expects every long term player to try to get a legendary, they have this big box as soon as you log in, saying whether any charachter in your account has equipped a legendary.

second of all, even if they gave you the precursor for doing nothing, the legendary would still require a large amount of dedication and show mastery of the game.

legendary requires;
2 crafts at 400
map completion
500 badges from WvWvW
minimum 100 gold for icy lodestones
250 of every rare crafting material
512000 karma
a minimum of 9 successful explorable dungeon successes

It basically requires you to be heavily involved in every aspect of the game.

The only thing precursors add is a part of the game that doesnt involve the achievements and abilities of the player, and instead involves luck. The only way to get a precursor is to get lucky, or buy it from someone else who got lucky.

precursor should not be the hardest part of getting a legendary, currently it is.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

We’ve seen players discussing the topic of crafting legendary precursor weapons and claiming that we’ve made changes to make this more difficult. We’d like to be clear that we did not make any across the board changes to reduce the drop rate, nor was it our intention to significantly increase the difficulty in acquiring these precursor weapons.

We did fix a few bugged recipes that were rewarding Legendary precursors more often than they should have been. These recipes were mostly using Rares in the level 70-75 range and mostly affected the precursors for the greatswords and the dagger. This has had some effect on the drop rate when using lower level rares to attempt to get a precursor but it was never intended for that to be the best way of acquiring these weapons. The recipes for throwing in level 80 exotics have not changed at all.

We have been watching the prices climbing on Legendary precursors and share your concerns about some of them becoming too expensive. We will continue to monitor the situation and will make any adjustments we feel are necessary.

You say the your watching the prices climb and are concerned, but if the rarity from drops is extremely low, they will not set the market value. If the rarity from mystic forge is such that you can attempt many times and still fail, with a large cost of materials, then you guys are in fact setting the price that high.

So if its a 1 in 100 chance from mystic forge, the average user will need to procure, 300 +1 (because it gives you back one item) ingredient items. If the cost is 301 x (cost of lowest ingredient) which is 1.8 gold, by setting the rate at 1 in 100 you are setting the cost at 540 gold, and thats the break even point, most people need to factor in a bad luck run into the equation, and want a decent profit for that large capital required to be invested, so with a 1 in 100 chance you are probably looking at a market value of 750-1000 gold.

so if you wanted to make it say, 150 gold,

let X equal the required ratio to get a certain cost for the item

you get this formula for what the mystic forge ratio should be for any value

(3x+1) * (cost of lowest material) = projected value of item * 1- desired profit %

assuming 2 gold per material,
projected value of 150
desired profit at 33%

you get
(3x+1)2 =150 * (1-.33)
6x+2 = 150.66
6x+2 =100.5
6x=98.5
x=16.41

so if your chances arent 16.41 attempts, then there is no way it would cost less than 150.

some other things to note, the average user would need to have like 114 gold to make a serious attempt at getting an exotic even at this rate.

also with such a large likely hood of failure, many people would end up paying way more, simply because of the nature of random results.

Its also entirely possible that with such a large up front investment, and risk they may want more than 33% mark up, after all, the buy in to this gamble as a supplier is like 100 to 200 gold plus, only rich people can even attempt to be suppliers.

Point is, if you as a designer didnt want the item to cost 200 + gold, the odds of success should be fairly high, around 10 to 15 to 1 chances. if its higher than that, then it really isnt surprising its so high, and you should make changes accordingly if you want to adjust the rate.

also note, if the value of the minimal item goes up, than so does the cost of production, so, maybe you want to make exotics more obtainable. Another option is to give out other items that have a chance of producing precursors, but are not exotic weapons if you dont want to crash the exotic markets directly. You could possibly make these craftable/sellable.

of course since one of the main markets for exotics nowadays is forge fodder this would still have some effect on the prices.

John Smith.4610:

What you’re arguing has nothing to do with the TP. It’s a simple matter of scarcity and usability. Arguing that the trading post being too large is a mistake because you can’t create imbalanced markets isn’t a good argument, and it would come at the cost of other players and a more stable economy.

I think it does have to do with the TP, its not really that simple, and its not simply scarcity and usability. I dont think it would necessarily be solved with a server based TP though.

I think summing it up its that, too many people are not fit to run businesses. There are a large amount of items that are selling for less than 15% above npc prices, this means they are being sold at a loss. Enough of the userbase doesnt know the very basics. In a system that makes selling fast, easy and have current prices instananeously, with such a large number of people using it, things get sold at ridiculously low prices.

Overall the effect is the economy is extremely top heavy, a large portion of wealth is controlled by very few people. Very little money is made from producing goods and services, most money is made from playing the market.

The only real solution i could think of, is setting up an extra minigame as requirement to sell on the TP, that sets up a mini corporation that tracks the value of goods introduced (minimal value) and the value of goods sold, and you can only sell on the TP if you maintain a profitable ratio. Too many people losing money, and setting losing prices that become the norm, or set the profit value extremely low on goods. people supplement extremely poor business practices with grinding to cover the losses.

So essentially in game you d apply for a business liscence, your corporation acts for you in the TP, the mini game of corporation is to remain in the black, and it will show you exactly how much your corporation is really making you overall (this number would include taxes paid) If you go into the red, it requires you to pay out of your own funds, your losses, and also a tax to restart the failed corporation.

for a free market to work you cannot compete with people who sell things at a loss. You assume they sell at a loss because the items have little value, but i contend that they really sell at a loss because they are foolish, and the TP encourages foolish behavior.
(it only shows the lowest prices, and only gives you information on what the rest of the prices are if you click on it)
(it doesnt clearly show the tax taken on actual sale)
(it auto lists items at buy order price if you sell to a buyer more items than they seek to buy)

the barrier of entry, and cost of failure is too low for the TP, poor business men spoil the market. and with such a large, simple market, 5% fools, and 15% just click the first options, mean the market is controled by fools at the low end

Difficulty adjustment is fine, however the punishment for completing more than 2 dungeons in an hour is bad.

the game does not have that many mechanics that reward skillfull play. Dungeons are about the only thing of that variety. I would say they should add some more game mechanics that give you greater benefit the better you play, but thats a different issue.

Essentially, if people can complete a dungeon in less than 30 minutes and make money, more power to them, thats a reward for skill full play, if they can only do this because one path is too easy, or they find errors, its up to you guys to fix that.

Anet, i like you guys, but there is no reason to have any form of timed reward anti farming mechanisms. Dont punish players for playing the game.

balance the dungeons, make the difficulty where you feel it should be, but there is no reason why if you choose to do it repeatedly you should get less results for the same work.

Its a bad idea.

not to mention some say dungeon rewards (barring the few paths that were too easy) are already subpar, really kill the anti farm tactics, its a bad bandaid. If some one wants to run a balanced dungeon exclusively as he levels, he should not be punished for that.

Since the last update heartseeker randomly misses stationary targets about 20% of the time.

Dungeons arent too hard, people are simply new to the game. Trash mobs should never have existed, the amount of encounters is low, but each encounter is signifigant, it makes a dunegon more interesting when you cant just face roll to the boss.

Its a different game, and dungeons are meant to be challenging. First you have to learn the game, and get good, then you are ready for dungeons. Im not saying they are perfect, but they are entertaining for people looking for that type of thing. lowering their difficulty would essentially ruin them.