Guild Wars 2

eithinan.9841:

About the definition of what grind is. It was defined by anet.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/No-grind-philosophy/page/4#post4733273

In the context of gw2, this is the definition of grind. People who do not agree with that definition are wrong. Not because their opinion contradicts it but because they do not acknowledge that definition as being what the devs are working under.

To me “grind” is being required to do the same content(for example, instanced dungeons) for BIS items. Many other mmo’s have this kind of grind. The whole thing where you run a raid/dungeon and gather a piece of armor here or a weapon there from a certain boss only, so you can get all the gear to do the hard mode of that same raid/dungeon. That is locking content behind a grind. Or even worse, the whole xpac thing where other mmo’s jack the max level up and introduce a new line of gear you need to have to participate in the new content or areas. This is also always locked behind the same “repeat content” grind in those games.

Going out and playing this game and getting rewarded with items you can vendor or trade for what you need is great because GW2’s economy and primary currency(gold) are not in the toilet like a lot of those other repeatable content grind mmo’s. In Gw2 there are more rewarding play styles compared to others in gold terms, but in the end anything you choose to do advances you toward whatever goal a player has. If you want mjolnir you can go farm sparks, farm Dust Mites(grindy activity but not grind because you can also..) run COE for cores and lodestones, among other activities you can choose to do.

truth is, it doesnt matter how anet defines what grind is. You can call it a different word if you want, the fact that people feel it, and dont like it is whats important.
an example of this logic
A man may define cheating on his wife as having intercourse with another woman.
But if his goal is to make his wife happy, and not feel cheated on, he has to consider her definition more than his own.
If she feels that kissing and taking women on dates is cheating then he cannot do that, or she will feel cheated on, and leave him. If his goal was for her not to feel cheated on, he has failed.

Anets goal was to make a game that doesnt feel grindy to players, if players feel what they created as grindy that is important.

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

IMO the best way to design long term goals;
is to set lots of smaller goals along the way.
dont put too much of the goals reward on the end of the task
dont design the number of hours first, then adjust the repetitions to fit that.

So Mawdrey crafting works? Does this fit your ideal? If not how does it differ?

Luminescent armor? Same questions.

Star of gratitude? Same questions.

If not your ideal set up, are those examples moving into the correct direction for you design wise? If not, how would you change the acquisition of future items similar in nature?

Genuinely curious, because I see them moving towards what you want already, especially with precursor hunt/whatever they do in the xpac.

havent really tried for most of this stuff, but id say mawdrey looks decent even though it looks like too long a list of random mats, but it probably feels better .
star of gratitude i havent seen much info on, and i wasnt playing much when it came out.

luminescent seems to be more straightforward but like i said, i havent interacted with these items directly so, im a bit fuzzy

I honestly think its possible they could do a lot right with HoT, and some things seem to be moving in a good direction. Buutt its possible they could miss the mark too.

Andred.1087:

Well what, should the game give you less stuff? I don’t imagine that would go over well, when people are already complaining constantly about the rewards.

Honestly you just have to get used to it. Stop hoarding things you don’t need, stop spending time thinking about things you don’t want to think about, etc. Sure, you might end up doing things sub-optimally, but that’s the choice you have to make. Nobody’s making you keep or sell or salvage or deposit anything you don’t want to, other than yourself.

it should. but that ship has sailed, hopefully they will keep this item creep from getting worse with future content.

Thing i dont think yall realize, is all this stuff yall are talking about, which helps with low inventory is a pretty big hassle.
The game gives you a ton of stuff you have to sort through, salvage some, sell to npc, put on trading post, store in bank, store in tabs

i think his point is it seems like he is constantly having to manage, yall guys are giving good info for saving space, but its still a time consuming hassle that isnt as bad in other games, because they give you less stuff, and require less stuff from you.

gargamel page bug fixo

Olvendred.3027:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Test.8734:

Vayne.8563:

This whole conversation is completely meaningless because everyone is using different definitions of what grind is. I don’t grind in this game. I don’t have to grind.

Just because you don’t call it grind, doesn’t mean it’s not grind. Your definition of grind is very… Colorful.

No, my definition of grind is not doing anything I don’t want to do at any time, even if it takes me longer to get stuff. I don’t do the same stuff over and over because it bores me to tears.

i think the game is best experienced in this way, however the reward system doesnt really encourage that type of mentality.

Sometimes, just by putting huge numbers on things people want, you alter how people interact with it.

For example, teaching some one, if you approach them a certain way, it can be fun and exciting, but take even the most interesting thing one can learn, and say something like i will give you 20 bucks after you do these 1000 problems, and you have turned it into a grind. Some may do it, but few will feel like the experience itself wasnt a grind.

On the contrary. The game’s reward system is designed specifically around Vayne’s playstyle. You can do anything and still make gold. You’re not forced into certain, specific “challenging” activities to make gold. What you can do, is choose particular content, or methods of farming, that will make you gold more efficiently.

The large numbers for rewards is a misconception. You can get the vast majority of things relatively quickly, and relatively cheaply. This puts them well within the grasp of people who play as they want, and just make gold along the way. [Sure, if you want all of the things, the numbers for them do add up.]

Only a small amount of (variably desirable) rewards have massive pricetags/requirements attached to them. It’s almost always the same few things that come up when people complain about grind. These are in the game to provide long-term goals/rewards for the players who (for whatever reason) engage in the most efficient farming a lot. Or to provide very long term goals for the average player.

i hear you can get things with bandit crests, somewhere in the number of thousands?
i heard you could get a wolf mini with some box, but people open 10 thousands of these boxes for it.
you can get ascended armor for 10800 silk, amongst other things
the game isnt very grindy, till you hit 80, and you start doing the things that they expect 80s to do. Then grind pops up again and again.

IMO the best way to design long term goals;
is to set lots of smaller goals along the way.
dont put too much of the goals reward on the end of the task
dont design the number of hours first, then adjust the repetitions to fit that.

as for the game rewarding vaynes type of play, it doesnt really reward it well, it just doesnt make it worthless. Not many games i have played ever made things worthless so i dont really understand why yall are so impressed with that.

Most MMOs i played you can get gold doing most things, even killing nobodies, and turn that gold into items that allow you to do the vast majority of the content in the game. you may have to do that stuff longer, but you will get there. Its generally faster to do it in otherways though, like hunting rare monsters, Challenging world bosses, dungeons, or special questlines, which were for most people more entertaining than harvesting plants, killing weak enemies and whatnot.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

phys.7689:

The types of repetition they encourage are not well designed. They tend to reward the least entertaining, most repetitive, least challenging content the most. Many a farmer i have seen talk about how they are watching netflix while they have their screen shrunk down.
and even in this most effecient mode of play, you basically still have to dedicate hours upon hours to achieve your goals.

And in the other hand , we have the Aetherblade Dungeon based on the freeback of the community that wanted the most hardcore istances ever , where only a handfull amount of ppl would do it .
Results : They called it TENDIOUS and not REWARDING FOR MY TIME .
And neither the casulas , nor the ‘’other ppl’’ is doing it …
(And we must do the same in the inc Raids !!!!)

I am all ears about hearing SOLUTIONS , rather than minigless words from all the ppl :P
Otherwise it will be again a round loop and the thread will be closed

For example Devata wants more ingame items , even with 2-3% chance (we had a Megathreads about the Sunless pet and ppl moaned that the chance to drop it too low)

While Test wants 100% chance to drop from each event .

I find it funny , becucause 2 years ago the company used to bump up things to collect in a very allarming way , the community moaned to them t slow down .
But history must repeats itself :P

Aetherblades, the reward doesnt match the time expenditure, and some elements lower its replayability.
Also, for me personally? twilight arbor is pretty low on the cool places to hang out list.

Its not good to create hard content without giving people a reason to actually do it.

Vayne.8563:

Test.8734:

Vayne.8563:

This whole conversation is completely meaningless because everyone is using different definitions of what grind is. I don’t grind in this game. I don’t have to grind.

Just because you don’t call it grind, doesn’t mean it’s not grind. Your definition of grind is very… Colorful.

No, my definition of grind is not doing anything I don’t want to do at any time, even if it takes me longer to get stuff. I don’t do the same stuff over and over because it bores me to tears.

i think the game is best experienced in this way, however the reward system doesnt really encourage that type of mentality.

Sometimes, just by putting huge numbers on things people want, you alter how people interact with it.

For example, teaching some one, if you approach them a certain way, it can be fun and exciting, but take even the most interesting thing one can learn, and say something like i will give you 20 bucks after you do these 1000 problems, and you have turned it into a grind. Some may do it, but few will feel like the experience itself wasnt a grind.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

This whole conversation is completely meaningless because everyone is using different definitions of what grind is. I don’t grind in this game. I don’t have to grind. I do a variety of activities and I can get what I want…I’ve done it all without grinding, including five legendaries. Yeah, it takes a lot longer my way, but it can be done.

if you dont feel there is any grind, then you really have nothing to add to the topic of how to ease, eliminate, or change it. Let the people feel it express their views, and possible solutions. It wont really effect you in any case.

I didn’t say I don’t feel there’s any grind, so why put words in my mouth. I simply said there’s no required grind and on top of that, I choose not to grind because I dislike it.

Nor can you say something will or won’t affect me, even if it doesn’t directly affect my play style. If people end up pressuring Anet to make the game less grindy and then people run out of stuff to do and leave the game that affects everyone.

There are people here who don’t understand that having long term goals you have to work towards are the only thing keeping some people in the game. Maybe not you. Maybe not all people, but some people.

You have to give enough people enough of what they want for the game to exist…or it will cease to exist at some point. I’d say that affects me.

In all honesty, i dont think that the OP, or other players are really trying to have no goals. In fact i think the OPs prefered methods would probably still take a long time. And may not be how i would handle it.

But thats what discussion is about. Talk about what you think, discuss problems and solutions. Some times you disagree, some times you agree, but ideas are shared, and new ideas are formed. At worse you come out with a better understanding of peoples perspectives.

And i dont really think the OP says that all grind is required, i think their point is that you shouldnt design anything to feel grindy, optional or not.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

It’s not all equal based on YOUR personal playstyle.

It’s a simple matter of content, gating content behind grind makes it mandatory, regardless if you do or not even enjoy that content. If by any chance you ever WANT to do it, you can’t, unless you grind first.

Skins on the other hand are completely optional “grind” because you are not locked out of anything if you don’t get them.

Optional grind doesn’t lock you out of content, therefore it’s not mandatory, so it’s optional. Also, if you want skins, you can get most of them in a million different ways, you might get lucky and get them instantly, you might get lucky and get a valuable drop, sell it and get that skin. You at least have a lot of choice on how and when to get your skins, it’s not like it’s locked behind specific content that you first need to grind in order to get them (with some exceptions)

There are some rare exceptions, the luminescent skin set, precursors and some unique exotics that depend way too much on luck (they are “fixing” the precursors, maybe they will fix the others too?). Those are horribly designed, but what about anything else? You can get Gem Store skins too simply by playing the content you enjoy, the only question is WHEN.

The difference with mandatory grind is that you can’t get the rewards it gives, usually playable content, but can also be unique skins as well, by playing anything else the game has to offer. I can’t get access to specific high end skins and high end content without first grinding to access it.

On the other hand, the grind in GW2 is almost completely optional, you can get nearly everything by playing anywhere and doing anything you want.

the Op never said that it wasnt optional, but more that it really doesnt matter if its optional or not. Optional grind, is still grind. Its just optional.

anyhow, i think the Ops points are this

Optional grind still feels grindy, You have to realize that most of the game will be spent pursuing optional goals. Therefore if most of your game, is spent on optional things, if you design optional things to be grindy, your game will be grindy overall.

The types of repetition they encourage are not well designed. They tend to reward the least entertaining, most repetitive, least challenging content the most. Many a farmer i have seen talk about how they are watching netflix while they have their screen shrunk down.
and even in this most effecient mode of play, you basically still have to dedicate hours upon hours to achieve your goals.

Vayne.8563:

This whole conversation is completely meaningless because everyone is using different definitions of what grind is. I don’t grind in this game. I don’t have to grind. I do a variety of activities and I can get what I want…I’ve done it all without grinding, including five legendaries. Yeah, it takes a lot longer my way, but it can be done.

if you dont feel there is any grind, then you really have nothing to add to the topic of how to ease, eliminate, or change it. Let the people feel it express their views, and possible solutions. It wont really effect you in any case.

Azhure.1857:

Bahlol.6125:

Anet did NOT say “the game has NO grind at all” they know there is ( they made the game. lol) however, they said you don’t have to do it.

I did not read the whole thing but here are my thoughts on this topic in general:
the reason they took WvW map completion from the 100% world completion is because many servers are stuck vs way stronger servers, and never get a chance to do the WvW map completion, so that’s not something they are changing about the ‘Grind’ in the game rather its a fix for a problem.

take away the grind and make the game grind free!, everyone get dungeon master because they played the dungeon once and just for playing the game for 100 hours lets give you a legendary(that a grind for hours though) and lets not reward players who played the game days in and days out and invested many hours of game play and make em just like everyone who played the game for 3 days and quit, no more special skins for fractal grinders who played them for 100’s of hours to get that lame underwater skin that no one ever see and make it once you play an underwater fractal you automatically get the skin, and once you finish all fractals you get the fractal tonic that only a hand full of players have ATM, and once you kill a player in WvW you get the “ultimate dominator” title and kill a player in PvP and get dragon rank and finisher, I think you know where im going with this.
if you don’t want a ‘grind’ in a game maybe you should be playing a single player game not an MMORPG

I agree here. So many players are quick to complain about “grind”, its many interpretations, yet very few are taking a moment to think about what a game with no grind at all would be like. We would play it for a few days and then walk away from it. There would be nothing keeping us there.

Thankfully the grind in this game is entirely optional — whether people accept that or not.

Just because you got beaten in other games in the past, doesnt mean you should look to be beaten again.

grind as most of you know it, and talked about in other games, is not the only way to design or handle things. Sure you want people to repeat things, but there is many ways to not make it become a grind.

Test.8734:

Devata.6589:

The thread can be better be used to talk about how it can be approved. How to move in the better direction again for the HoT release, because if it doesn’t imho that is going to be a big problem for Anet. People will not keep coming back if they keep being disappointed.

Devata, your intentions are noble, but I don’t think your idea of reducing grind and increasing fun will happen.

ArenaNet has no reason to make it happen.

When people grind, they play through content they don’t even enjoy in order to get a reward. This reward can be anything – from just a monocromatic reskin of something already in the game with minor particle effects (aka luminescent armor) to just gold, since with gold they can get other rewards already in the game. In the specific case of GW2, this allows ArenaNet to release rewards mostly through the Gem Store, and allow people to grind for gold so they can buy gems and get those rewards (for armors and outfits), and for people to sell the rewards they get from the Gem Store to make gold (for weapons).

That setup is easy for ArenaNet. What options do they have? They could focus instead on making fun content, but “fun” is subjective – even if they did manage to make great and extremely polished content, some people would like it, and some would not. Of course, making it with great care would lead to more people liking it and less people not liking it, but it would still not be a 100% success. Add to it how finite this content would be – players go through fun content in a very small fraction of what it takes developers to make it.

So the best ArenaNet could have done would have been to release bursts of great, very polished content, knowing the playerbase would go through the content faster than they can deliver it, and hoping people would enjoy the content so much to the point of coming back when they release more, despite the lull in between. This is what they did with the original Guild Wars, mostly in the beginning of the game.

But that is a lot of work. And it’s a bit pointless, when they can do something far cheaper and still get a lot – if not more – people playing. When making grind, they don’t have to worry about making content fun. When making grind, they don’t really have to worry about making it polished. They can just give people stuff to grind for, and that’s it.

That’s the direction the game has been moving since release. Ascended equipment? Just one more reward for a lot of grind. Fractals of the Mist? Almost by definition this is grind, just repeating very few maps over and over. The Scarlet invasions? The same event repeating over and over across different maps, without any difference between the events. The Silverwastes? Copy and paste of the same fortresses with the same events through the entire map, with a strong lack of polish (why aren’t the new currencies in the wallet? What’s with the ugly yellow message spam in the middle of the screen?).

Yet a lot of people play the game this way. We know ArenaNet cares about the number of unique logins per day (they give people plenty of rewards for just logging in), so having a lot of people grinding is good for them.

ArenaNet does not have to bother making a good game. They can just make grind and people will play. That’s why they have no reason to make the game any less grindy than it is, and that’s why the expansion will likely be a lot of grind and very little of anything else.

too much beef.
I agree they design grindy rewards, goals, but ehhhh
i think you are downplaying the quality of the content they designed.
fractals is pretty good, dungeons were somewhat interesting, marrionette was fun. Tower of nightmares, and attack on lions arch, not really my cup of tea, but pretty interesting in world sense. Dynamic event chains, actually generally pretty well designed, some more than others. Depth of the world, stories to find.

I want some more better content, i think their reward design doesnt do well to highlight the strong points of the game. But i wouldnt say they didnt design anything worthwhile, or that they just design grind.
On the contrary, i think the game has a lot more to offer than grind, I just think the way they incentivize play and highlight their content is pretty poor.

The rewards arent enhancing the game, they are taking away from it.

However, some of the ideas they are presenting in HoT MAY help this.
Focus on exploration
Adventures to highlight events/areas
Well integrated boss fights/enemies
transitioning from gold/item progression to experience/skill progression

however, its still up in the air, Anet has always had a tendency to pick really bad numbers for things. Still, I wouldnt be as grim. Provide feedback and ideas on how to improve the game, lessen grind increase fun, and reward interesting gameplay. Nothing really gained by doomsaying at this point.

IndigoSundown.5419:

phys.7689:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Salvage, deposit collectibles, profit.

Doesn’t really work that way the inventory hasnt adapted to the game play.
You need to keep stuff like boosters, pristine relics, various gifts, sand, shovels, gear swaps, agony infusions, fire clusters. Crafting items in excess of 250 like silk iron mithril obsidisn shards clovers geodes

Basically a dramatic increase in xurrencies uniqe items and recipes/vendors requiring items greater than 250. In conjunction with a drop system that fills up extremely fast.

I think they need to reduce item bloat

I got a grand total of one extra bag slot on 1 of 8 characters. While I think the various currencies should go into the wallet, I don’t seem to have the on-character storage issues the OP describes.

i think the OP is saying they find inventory management to be unecessarily onerous. You probably dont mind managing your inventory as much, so have less issues. I have never bought a bag or bank slot, but i would definately say you spend a decent amount of time just dealing with your inventory in that case.

and its not just storage, heres what a post fractal session involves
go to npc,
sell leather blues, sell greens,
salvage none leather blues
Salvage rares with black lion salvage kit, or salvage with master kit.
open bags
deposit collectilbles
open champion boxes
sell leather blues sell greens
Salvage non leather blues
possibly buy new salvage kits
deposit collectibles
open TP
sell items in excess of 250 usually mithril.

now is it undoable? no,
is it a pretty long time, and if you dont particularly enjoy sorting things, not really entertaining and somewhat annoying? yes.
will you have to do it more often if you have less inventory? yes.

Wanze.8410:

Psientist.6437:

I would keep the Elonian square recipe as is, and depend only on the increased demand for more squares and squares faster to increase the gold price.

TL/DR: The reason why I opted to raise the requirements for t5 leather in elonian leather is because it would also address the oversupply of t5 leather.

Sure, if we leave the recipe as it is, it will also raise the price of elonian due to the 50% added demand for the insignias. But the added value would only come from t2-4 leather because the ratio in which the player base creates t2-5 leather doesnt match the recipe. Right now, for every 2 coarse leather, we use 4 each rugged and thin leather and 15 thick leather. While more or less for every coarse leather, the player base also creates 2 each thin and rugged, we create way more thick leather than the 7.5 we would need.

Therefore, when demand for elonian is raised, we will run out of t2-4 leather way sooner than t5 leather. Its hard to say, how much t5 leather we really produce because by now, the mayority of the excess isnt dumped on the tp but sold to a vendor.

In general I have no problem with raising the value of elonian leather just by adding value to t2-4 leather because i think its a great mechanism to transfer some of the gold rewards from end game players to new, sub lvl80 players, while making sure that you also gain loot that you can use, while leveling an alt.

No matter how you slice it leather is way over supplied considering its usefulness. However, not aure we should make one item use so much of it. It doesn’t create systems people want to deal with

IndigoSundown.5419:

Salvage, deposit collectibles, profit.

Doesn’t really work that way the inventory hasnt adapted to the game play.
You need to keep stuff like boosters, pristine relics, various gifts, sand, shovels, gear swaps, agony infusions, fire clusters. Crafting items in excess of 250 like silk iron mithril obsidisn shards clovers geodes

Basically a dramatic increase in xurrencies uniqe items and recipes/vendors requiring items greater than 250. In conjunction with a drop system that fills up extremely fast.

I think they need to reduce item bloat

Just to be clear, your general plan is to make some of the insignias used for cloth ascended be made using leather?

Then an adjustment to make leather more valuable?

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

JS, I made a suggestion in the silk price thread but it got buried so fast in useless discussion that even I dont care to look it up anymore but I would like to hear your opinion on it:

Some people complain that silk isnt directly farmable and dont like the idea of just earning gold rewards with something else and then spend it on the tp to buy silk.

So can you think of any risks involved, if players had the choice of getting a gold reward or a reward in form of silk scraps?

Dungeons would be the easiest example. If you complete a dungeon path, you usually get 1 gold as a reward. But now you can choose, if you want the gold, or rather get 1g worth of silk scraps, depending on their average price on the tp.
The silk value should be halfway between the lowest listing and the highest bid.

So if silk has a highest bid of 1.9s and a lowest listing of 2.1s, you can either choose to get 1 gold or 50 silk scraps.

This would give players a choice, if they rather inject some gold into the economy, or some silk. If they choose gold, they basically “vote” for the silk price to go up, if they choose silk as a reward, they vote for its price going down.

Edit: Just got a system warning that I am bumping a sticky.

There isnt really much point to that type of mechanic. The main purpose for creating an alternate means of item creation, is not to avoid paying players, but to set a standard method for obtaining something, that isnt going to be effected by prices.

lets say you think diamonds are too expensive, and decide to get it yourself, if the other method involves turning your paycheck into an equivalent to market price amount of diamonds, its fairly pointless.

Yet people claimed that having to buy additional silk on the tp to craft their daily bolt of damask makes the game too much tp-centric.
This mechanic would give players a direct way of obtaining silk without devaluing it too much. Its an idea i had concerning Johns question:

John Smith.4610:

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

your method is still TP centric, is the problem. Its value is centered on the TP.

I think my suggestion is less tp-centric, though, as players dont really need to interact with the tp and they get the choice of either creating silk or gold.

like i said, its not really an aversion to the TP itself, but rather an aversion to the prices other people determine that you dont feel comfortable with.

for example, even a tp hater probably buys leather, because they think its a deal. The people who want to avoid the TP usually do so, because they dont think the prices people are asking are worth it.

Wanze.8410:

A lengthy discussion has been going on in this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/19#post4873983

about silk prices in general, the high requirements for silk in bolt of damask and the disadvantage of of light armor users because they need about 50% damask than the other two weight classes, which makes it longer to acquire and substantially more expensive.

With the current recipes, i think it will be hard to balance out costs for Anet by adjusting material faucets, so the best solution would be to adjust the recipes. And I dont mean to adjust the silk recipes because it wouldnt really cure the imbalance between weight classes, just make asc cheaper in general.

As alot of new players came in in the last couple of weeks,that might not be too familiar with ascended crafting, lets have a look at the status quo again and the problem at hand. Good info can be found on the wiki page:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/19#post4873983

If we disregard the account bound materials (empyrial shards, bloodstone dust, dragonite ore, karma, obsi shards, skillpoints, globs of dark matter, laurels) and just focus on the refined t7 mats, Bolt of Damask, Deldrimor Ingot and ELonian Leather, we have the following requirements for a full set:

Light:

• 36 Damask (18 for the insignias and 18 for the armor pieces)
• 6 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Medium:
• 24 Damask (18 for the insignias, 6 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Heavy:
• 25 Damask (18 for the insignias, 7 for the armor pieces)
• 16 Deldrimor for the armor pieces

So overall, to craft 1 set each, we need 85 damask, 24 Elonian and 16 deldrimor and their prices on the tp are:

• damask 14g
• deldrimor 4g
• elonian 2g

So the refined t7 components add up to the following values for each set:

• Light: 516g
• Medium: 372g
• Heavy: 414g

So the 2 problems that arise are the discrepancy of timegated t7 mats and the price spread between light and leather armor and I am trying to find a solution that solves both problems without Anet having to micromanage the values of the mats involved and doesnt require too much changes to crafting mechanics and drop rates.

In general, I think the average price tag of ascended armor is fine as it was intended as a long term goal, so I am aiming to find a solution that brings the price tag of all sets closer together in a price range between 350-450g, depending on market prices.

As Damask makes up the bulk of the costs of each set, I think its easier to find a solution in which silk retains its high value compared to deldrimor and elonian, rather than bring all 3 mats to the same value. While raising Elonian value should be part of the solution, I think Deldrimor is fine at its current price point because its also the only one of the 3 mats that is used extensively in ascended weaponcrafting (lets disregard elonian for bowstrings), so a higher price tag would mean additional costs for weapons for all classes.

Overall, we need to address the extensive use of damask in light armor, to solve the higher timegate and costs and bring leather up in value, preferably up to deldrimor.

As already mentioned, a light set needs 18 bolts each for the armor and the insigias and the other two sets, need 24/25 damask, so we need to shave off 12 bolts and preferably substitute it with elonian.

It doesnt make sense to take them off the armor parts (for immersion), so we just take them off the insignia.

Now we have the following material spread:

Light:

• 24 Damask (6 for the insignias and 18 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian (12 for the insignia, 6 for the armor pieces)
  Medium:
• 24 Damask (18 for the insignias, 6 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Heavy:
• 25 Damask (18 for the insignias, 7 for the armor pieces)
• 16 Deldrimor for the armor pieces

This means that the asc insignias crafted and used by tailors need to be a different one ot the other ones, otherwise accounts with a tailor and an armorsmith would use them to craft heavy armor, which would screw up the balanced costs.
It would also result in a balanced timegate of 24 days, if we adjust the heavy set to 24 bolts and add 2 deldrimor ingots.

---

I am getting close to the post length limit and its wvw reset soon, so i gonna post later about raising the price of elonian to about 4g.

should the replies in this thread be focused on your specific solution? or all solutions, and yours is mostly your contribution to the solution pool?

SonOfJacob.7396:

Forgive me because I never took economics in college, but doesn’t this completely ignore supply and demand, and therefore the values would pretty quickly reset themselves roughly to how they are now?

supply/demand is created through, in part, these recipes. Also you can create a recipe that is more in line with how the base items are supplied. Right now leather and silk are the less easily and controllably supplied, and yet silk makes up the majority of the recipe.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

JS, I made a suggestion in the silk price thread but it got buried so fast in useless discussion that even I dont care to look it up anymore but I would like to hear your opinion on it:

Some people complain that silk isnt directly farmable and dont like the idea of just earning gold rewards with something else and then spend it on the tp to buy silk.

So can you think of any risks involved, if players had the choice of getting a gold reward or a reward in form of silk scraps?

Dungeons would be the easiest example. If you complete a dungeon path, you usually get 1 gold as a reward. But now you can choose, if you want the gold, or rather get 1g worth of silk scraps, depending on their average price on the tp.
The silk value should be halfway between the lowest listing and the highest bid.

So if silk has a highest bid of 1.9s and a lowest listing of 2.1s, you can either choose to get 1 gold or 50 silk scraps.

This would give players a choice, if they rather inject some gold into the economy, or some silk. If they choose gold, they basically “vote” for the silk price to go up, if they choose silk as a reward, they vote for its price going down.

Edit: Just got a system warning that I am bumping a sticky.

There isnt really much point to that type of mechanic. The main purpose for creating an alternate means of item creation, is not to avoid paying players, but to set a standard method for obtaining something, that isnt going to be effected by prices.

lets say you think diamonds are too expensive, and decide to get it yourself, if the other method involves turning your paycheck into an equivalent to market price amount of diamonds, its fairly pointless.

Yet people claimed that having to buy additional silk on the tp to craft their daily bolt of damask makes the game too much tp-centric.
This mechanic would give players a direct way of obtaining silk without devaluing it too much. Its an idea i had concerning Johns question:

John Smith.4610:

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

your method is still TP centric, is the problem. Its value is centered on the TP.

Behellagh.1468:

I saw an overcutting/undercutting thread again recently. Haven’t seen one in a while, probably someone returning with that issue still stuck in their craw.

The answer to the title was answered relatively quickly, the new source of cloth during Wintersday ended so the price is returning to pre-Wintersday levels.

The reason why silk is in high demand has been talked to death as have alternate ascended mat and armor recipes and reasons why higher tier mats are going for lower prices than lower tier mats.

Can we stick a pin in this, it’s done. It’s soup.

did you actually read the OP? you realize the title thread is not always going to accurately represent the OP, it has to fit a certain amount of letters.

The op has always said, silk price is an issue as it relates to damask and the requirements for ascended crafting. That issue still hasnt been resolved.

Rauderi.8706:

As a side note, I acquired a whole bunch of silk yesterday, as the result of casual play.
..of course, it involved the trading post, but I didn’t feel bad about it at all.

I do a fair amount of alt leveling, so I tend to have scores more middle-tier materials that can trade at a reasonably 1:1 basis with silk scraps, or better than that ratio. Linen sat well over 5s last night, so I traded that out for silk 1:1 and kept the profits. From the right mentality, I got paid to farm silk by doing what I normally do, but merely adding barter as a part of it.

The fantastic part, I saved roughly 20-30% via buy orders. …and they still filled up instantly. So thanks to all those “bad, naughty” farmers selling on the trading post. Keep hacking away at those plant meanies and zombies.

Being less silly now, my point is you don’t have to spite the trading post as some evil machination. Or, if you’ve got a chip on your shoulder about capitalism, use the system to beat the system. Or something. >_> Sorry, I’m losing my point in silliness. Perspective matters.

My actual point is, silk acquisition isn’t terrible. The actual material amount is where the imbalance sits. So, in a basic adjustment formula, what would the thought/impact be on making the relevant recipes 2 per bolt/square/ingot and 100 per intermediate ascended material? Still doesn’t solve the cloth-insignia balance, but making thick leather and mithril more in line with silk would promote more trading between them.

When you look at your ability to earn silk, you should keep in mind how much work you had to do to reach point A.
You may be looking at now, without thinking about it, and say hey! i ll use some of these excess mats from leveling alts!
keep this in mind
1) your bank and stored items are your savings, representing many hours of play
2) once those charachters level, it will be a lot harder to obtain the same amount of low level materials with them, and it will be a lot less entertaining to be on those areas.
3) you need 7200-10800 silk, if by selling all your excess materials for a week, you were able to get 600 silk, it would still require you 12 to 18 weeks, just to pay for the silk in ascended.
4) If you sold anything that you may need to buy later, you basically lost 15% of the gold in that transaction, if prices stay the same.

Anyhow just things to consider.
regardless it doesnt really address the main issue of the OP which is the imbalance of value/requirement of silk within the framework of damask and ascended armorcraft

eithinan.9841:

Behellagh.1468:

Again the thread turns. Now it’s about the those devilish TP flippers.

Notice how any complaints involving the BLTP and economy turn towards the “flippers” “TP barons” or “speculators”. The issue is, for some who feel Entitled, they let their envy override their common sense when it comes to the subject on the TP.

The wheels on the bus go round and round…..

Id like to point out that TP baron issue was raised by smooth penguin, an indirectly wanze, as an illustration for how fast he can earn money.

I said very little on the topic because its a derail. Nothing can be balanced around TP players earnings because their earnings are irregular.

if yall dont want to talk about tp baron topic, stop bringing it up.

pdavis.8031:

Ohoni:

Thats not entirely accurate. (referring to the price and willingness to pay)
You seem to be leaving out willingness to sell. So player A farms a bunch of silk to sell, and player B wants to buy it. It’s up to the seller alone to set the price. So even if anet increases supply or reduces demand, are players going to be willing to sell for less than what it is currently? Probably not. I know I wouldn’t. But if player B wants to buy for cheaper, he needs to find someone willing to sell at his asking price, otherwise pay what the seller Asks.

Are farmers going to ask Anet to change their farms so that they can sell at a lower rate? Are those who just sell a bit here and there going to be content that they are making less money?

You can’t look at one side of the TP and say that lower prices benefit everyone. It doesn’t quite work that way. The lower the buying price means lower the selling price which means that less gold is being sunk per transaction which means more gold in game which means prices begin to inflate and increase because more people have more money to spend which then leads to gold having less spending power (i.e. losing value). Which is not healthy for the game in general.

gold is used mostly for trading, anything a player isnt spending doesnt matter as far as gold inflation.
Essentially they will just spend money elswhere, which will stil get 15%

also, sellers who want to keep thier silk will keep it, but the majority of sellers really dont care, any money is better than negative inventory for them.
people sell mithril at 50 copper, what makes you think they would want to keep their silk?

Vayne.8563:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

Sorry Tobias, I’m not arguing semantics at all. I said Anet said something which I know for a fact they said. That’s not a semantic argument. I simply won’t trawl through dozens of four year old videos to find the proof.

But that’s not a semantic argument. Anet did use the Shadow Behemoth as a specific example of what they meant when they were talking about not grinding to get to the fun stuff. They said you get the fun stuff throughout the game. It’s not like other games where you have to grind to level before you get to the fun stuff.

I’m sure I’m not the only guy who remembers, but how is that a semantic argument. Test is claiming it never happened. He’s wrong.

Oh, Vayne, my friend . . . there’s not the semantics being argued. And you’re losing yourself in the inconsequential bits of the argument by being just constantly distracted by remembering the Manifesto and other interviews and all that. They’re not important at all.

No, the heart of the matter is the semantics around the topic of “grind”. See, that’s where all the argument is springing from. Some people feel there is grind which is unavoidable, and some others . . . like myself . . . feel the grind exists but is unimportant to the game – a postscript, something to do while waiting for something else to do.

(Why else does Fractals exist other than sheer busywork?)

Whatever the Manifesto said is irrelevant. Even Colin, straight up, admitted there was a problem with how to acquire Ascended Gear. But also that he felt it didn’t betray the design ideals they developed under. I sort of agree. It’s grindy as Grenth’s molars. It’s also entirely unnecessary to see every aspect of the game.

But what I think doesn’t really matter either. It’s a distracting set of thoughts which basically draws away from the heart of the issue.

People feel there is grind. Others disagree on whether it matters, and thus it descends into semantics with tons of side-shows.

Honestly? I just want people to stop trying to make me ashamed for liking the game.

See when I see fans say someone is lying, and there are other explanations available, I want to make sure those other explanations are in plain site. Sure, the grind conversation is not furthered by this, nor is it furthered by calling people liars. I’m not even sure why that’s allowed, because it’s maligning something.

If what I say is true (and it is) then the definition of grind gets further enhancement from what was said back then. I mean you can hardly discuss grind without discussing what grind is and means.

Anet was pretty kitten ed clear back then, and just because some people don’t remember it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t said.

So yeah, maybe it is a distraction from the main argument, but knowing that that was at least part of what Anet meant, because they said so BACK THEN, does change the complexion of the argument.

you need to realize that advertising and marketing arent really expected to be truthful.

Anet is not going to be truthful in marketing and public face, when it doesnt suit their needs. Its peoples jobs to go out there and say what the company line is, even if it isnt accurate.
truth is when they were promoting the manifesto, they knew that it might not be how things were going to end up. They had already started to considering how and when to shift their options.

The manifesto is not the first inconsistency, it wont be the last.

So yeah, they were dishonest. Just accept it and move on. Is it shocking that company isnt truthful?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’ll just leave this little tidbit here to help everyone:

John Smith.4610:

We design in some volatility and some stability (silk wasn’t an accident ). We use our past experience, mixed with data to make predictions of what will happen given our choices. We then select outcomes that match whatever goals we have and use the data/experience to match those outcomes. We’ve gotten surprisingly good at this, but if we do make a mistake, the robustness of the player market helps smooth any bumps. For example, at one point a long time ago, we had an ecto exploit with snowflakes. This exploit produced a decent amount of ectos and put them into the market, but the market absorbed that and return to normal in a very short period of time.

As for mistakes, it seems that if any are made, TP players help correct them.

the tp players dont correct mistakes, what he means is if a mistake is made, AND then fixed, the market will quickly adapt to the new equilibrium.

As for his silk price, its fine in a vacuum, but its not fine withing the design of ascended.
if clothcraft didnt require 10800 silk scraps, its cost of 2-3 silver would be fine. (even though it means the costs of a whole bunch of other items are relatively wrong)

This thread is more about the disparities of silk aquisition as its related to crafting ascended armor.

Wanze.8410:

JS, I made a suggestion in the silk price thread but it got buried so fast in useless discussion that even I dont care to look it up anymore but I would like to hear your opinion on it:

Some people complain that silk isnt directly farmable and dont like the idea of just earning gold rewards with something else and then spend it on the tp to buy silk.

So can you think of any risks involved, if players had the choice of getting a gold reward or a reward in form of silk scraps?

Dungeons would be the easiest example. If you complete a dungeon path, you usually get 1 gold as a reward. But now you can choose, if you want the gold, or rather get 1g worth of silk scraps, depending on their average price on the tp.
The silk value should be halfway between the lowest listing and the highest bid.

So if silk has a highest bid of 1.9s and a lowest listing of 2.1s, you can either choose to get 1 gold or 50 silk scraps.

This would give players a choice, if they rather inject some gold into the economy, or some silk. If they choose gold, they basically “vote” for the silk price to go up, if they choose silk as a reward, they vote for its price going down.

Edit: Just got a system warning that I am bumping a sticky.

There isnt really much point to that type of mechanic. The main purpose for creating an alternate means of item creation, is not to avoid paying players, but to set a standard method for obtaining something, that isnt going to be effected by prices.

lets say you think diamonds are too expensive, and decide to get it yourself, if the other method involves turning your paycheck into an equivalent to market price amount of diamonds, its fairly pointless.

Some math on what type of price relationships would create parity withing classes

basically to figure out the relation ship between the prices that would make the t5s roughly equal in cost, you need to solve these equations in terms of S
10800s+900L=7200s+2700l=7500s+1600m

where s = silk scraps
l = leather
m = mithril.
you can solve the first set to figure out what L = in terms of S
then use that to figure out what M = in terms of S

basically you end up with this

2 scraps of silk should cost the same as 1 piece of leather
3.1875 scraps should cost the same as 1 piece of mithril.

so basically the prices are all wrong, mathematically.

now, in the streets, its not so simple, because not all materials are as easy to get as others, even considering that, the design is still messed up, the item that is the most required should be the easiest to get, but its actually not.

if they could get prices to be around a 1:2:3 ratio silk:leather:mithril, then they would have solved the issue just with lack of parity in t5 prices

of course that would only solve it monetarilly, there are still other issues, like just having to aquire more materials/how difficult it is to get said materials, time gate imbalance

Still i think it would be better not to solve it with just prices, but create a more balanced recipe design, like has been suggested previously, as well as a more elastic supply

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

What is even more interesting is that people are pretending to be ignorant of Anet knowing about their ingame economics and that they have already addressed this issue and would likely do so again if needed.

Anet makes economic mistakes all the time. Nobody is omniscient

That just reinforces what I said. Anet looked at this has taken action to address this issue over LS2 events.

the issue is silk inparticular makes it so its unbalanced to obtain ascended armor for some classes.
The only way to fix the issue, with price alone, is if they could get silk to actually be cheaper than leather and mithril (since the amount of silk required is so much higher) no changes they have made have ever achieved that.

The root of the problem is the ascended recipes, If they had to pick a material to be expensive, silk was the wrong one.(with the material requirement increase)

Vayne.8563:

Bernie.8674:

Vayne.8563:

Silk isn’t an ascended mat. And you certainly don’t have to run dungeons for silk.

It’s effectively an ascended mat because you need 300 scraps of it for one bolt of damask. Damask is required for all ascended pieces. I have ascended mats coming out my ears. The limiting factor in my obtaining a full ascended set right now is the silk. Honestly, when most of us say that we’re required to grind for ascended gear, silk acquisition is at the heart of that grind.

Right but here’s the deal with silk. You make gold doing everything in this game. You can farm Orr or Silk, or the Silverwastes, or Frostgorge, or run dungeons. You can get silk from salvaging any 80th level cloth armor drop which you can get anywhere in the game, even from doing jumping puzzles.

The concept of grind was meant that you had to do one thing. I don’t have to do one thing to get silk. I can play the TP (if I were any good at it) and make enough gold to buy all the silk I need from the TP and some people do. I can run the Silverwastes and get a ton of silk which is why silk prices went so far down until recently. I was buying silk at 4 gold a stack at one point.

I can get 4 gold quite easily playing the game. If your focus is on the silk itself, and that’s all your doing, grinding silk, that’s a mental thing.

But if I’m playing the game and eventually I get what I need to buy the silk I didn’t incidentally pick up, I wouldn’t qualify it as grind.

But your definition anything you have to do repeatedly is grind, even if you would get it anyway just by playing.

If you stayed in Queensdale long enough because that’s what you’d like, as a level 80 character you’d be getting silk along the way.

that definition of grind is the problem. liadri mini isnt a grind, even though only have one source for the item.

abbetd.5912:

oxtred.7658:

RoseofGilead.8907:

How one would do that, I have no idea. Like the first room in Arah Story, I think you need an actual body on those areas to continue.

Send a ranger pet.
You can also low man the cof p1 console using barely moral strategies (read: exploits) as far as I know, but I don’t know it precisely. Ranger pet is still easy when 4 manning.

oh, and before I forget: Dungeon selling is obviously an exploit because I’m not good enough to do it myself and successful people should be punished and taken back to my level of gameplay so I don’t feel bad for being less competent.

Nah. It’s an exploit because it’s a way for someone to get the reward without doing the work. Props to the guys that can solo/duo these dungeons (I sure can’t), but it does exploit the way completion bonuses are handled. The intent was to reward players for participating in the completion of a dungeon/path with gold and tokens. Path selling allows players to get the completion reward without actually participating.

I’m not really against path selling, I just find it odd that so many people are so eager to pay someone else to play the game for them.

they basically want dungeon tokens. Mostly for legendaries, and dont feel like spending the time doing the content.

Coffee.7058:

phys.7689:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Oh, okay. lol I didn’t realize there are many trains left in the game. The only one that comes to mind atm is the Frostgorge Champ train.

eotm train, and silverwastes is the big ones nowadays, i hear orr still has people doing events for cash too

“eotm "?

Edge of the mists, its the wvw lite map, but the way it is actually played, is to go around taking all the castles with a skirmish breaking out every 30 min or so. Lots of champs, vets and events.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Oh, okay. lol I didn’t realize there are many trains left in the game. The only one that comes to mind atm is the Frostgorge Champ train.

eotm train, and silverwastes is the big ones nowadays, i hear orr still has people doing events for cash too

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

What is even more interesting is that people are pretending to be ignorant of Anet knowing about their ingame economics and that they have already addressed this issue and would likely do so again if needed.

Anet makes economic mistakes all the time. Nobody is omniscient

But with what some players see as a mistake, Anet sees as “Working as intended”.

Remember, there’s a reason behind ever decision made in terms of the economy. John doesn’t have the ultimate power to decide on the fate of each item, and the players’ happiness. There are goals lined out by upper management, and John’s job is to make sure that the decisions are implemented properly so as the end result doesn’t deviate from their estimated figures.

The only mistake that I know of John admitting to was with the sheer amount of Bloodstone Dust players farmed. Something about it being 10 digits more than what he expected.

Working as intended, can be a mistake as well, when your intensions were a mistake.

There have been many many mistakes from day one till now. There will be many more.

Obtena.7952:

What is even more interesting is that people are pretending to be ignorant of Anet knowing about their ingame economics and that they have already addressed this issue and would likely do so again if needed.

Anet makes economic mistakes all the time. Nobody is omniscient

pdavis.8031:

Aidenwolf:
Did Anet go against their manifesto by adding a new tier of gear that one can aquire the materials to craft just by playing the game?
Not in the slightest.

As far as evidence? I haven’t seen any yet. Everything said is that it takes a lot of materials/time. I am not denying that. Yes it takes a lot of materials, yes it takes a lot of time.

Let me use another example from EQ.
I wanted to get a specific item from my paladin trainer. In order to get that particular item I had to go to the 1 place in the entire game where the enemies that dropped the items needed to trade to get that item were. But those enemies ONLY spawn at night. And then only a few of them. They had a 5% chance to drop the collection item. So I had to go to a specific place, at a specific time and kill a specific enemy in order to get the items I needed.

Is there anything remotely like that in GW2? NOT. AT. ALL.

Anet defined what they meant by grind. Going by their definition, crafting ascended does not fit their definition.

Simple put, their definition of grind does not line up with general players definition of grind.

That’s why they see the game as non grindy whereas many players do.

This is not really an issue of perception though, because people aren’t mad about the semantic definition of grind.

They are saying call it what you want but this game feels grindy. Anet should be more concerned that a lot of people would call the game super grindy, than the defintion of grind.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

You are missing the point. Its not about tp earning or what should give more. Its just math
A + B +C + d = enough gold for ascended

If a is 1
B is 3
C is 20
D is 480

A and b are not worth mentioning in the how I got ascended money equation.
You can mention C, but its still pretty much not signifigant

If some one wants to know how to get gold for ascended d is the only thing that really matters

You’re skipping the fact that there’s another equation.

A + B + C = Ascended gear

Where

A = playing the game to get material drops
B = time to play the game to acquire the drops
C = coin earned from playing the game

Eh nvm, we aren’t communicating well. Not that important anyhow

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

Nah just math.
If certain variables contribute comparatively little of his earnings, they don’t really illustrate how you don’t have to grind content to get to do things in a timely fashion.

Ie if doing story mode contributed 1/100th of his earnings its not really worth mentioning in the equation of how I was able to by ascended in a decent time frame

You can’t compare rewards earned from your Personal Story, with profits made off of the TP. We’ve been over this before. One is newly generated coin introduced to the game, while the other is the movement of existing coin between players, and removes 15% out of the game as tax.

You are missing the point. Its not about tp earning or what should give more. Its just math
A + B +C + d = enough gold for ascended

If a is 1
B is 3
C is 20
D is 480

A and b are not worth mentioning in the how I got ascended money equation.
You can mention C, but its still pretty much not signifigant

If some one wants to know how to get gold for ascended d is the only thing that really matters

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Bernie.8674:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You aren’t required to farm for Silk. You aren’t required to craft Ascended gear. You aren’t required to WvW. You aren’t required to PvP.

You are required if you want your gear anytime in the next year or so. What part of that don’t you understand? This is despite the fact that ArenaNet explicitly stated that you won’t be required to grind if you want your gear. What good will ascended gear do me a year from now? Most of my guild mates have quit playing because there’s nothing left for them to do except grind. They call this game Grind Wars. Mike O’Brien promised that there won’t be another tier of armor in HoT, but he didn’t rule out upgrades to existing armor. Why would I want to upgrade my exotic gear?

You know what? I’m not required to do any of that. I’m not required to play this game anymore or buy the expansion either. Ultimately that’s what ArenaNet should be thinking about. This game was marketed as being grind-free, but the current state of affairs suggests otherwise. Maybe my perception would have been different if I had levelled all my crafting when silk was going for a few coppers, but I happened to level it when silk was going for 2+ silver. When a material costs 20 times as much it’s going to take 20 times as long to purchase. That forces players to choose between grinding or spending 20 times as long as the intended amount of time to craft their gear. Either way, that’s completely contrary to the claims made in ArenaNet’s promo materials.

I just bought a new account during the sale last week. I made a new toon, popped some exp boosters and played for about 2 hours, did the behemoth, some eotm and events until i had 5 gold in my wallet. since then I retired that character to the trading post.

It has been 5 days and i made 185g through trading. That is enough gold to buy 8400 silk scraps and I didnt even have to kill more than a couple of dozen monsters to get my initial investment.

I didnt spend more than 90 minutes on that account each day.

Granted, this avenue might not be suited for everyone but its still there but if the possibility is there, you cant say its required to kill the same creatures over and over again to get enough silk for your ascended gear in under a year.

On the topic of grind

Eotm is one of the best farms in the game.
Trading TP is the best earning in the game by far, of you know how to do it.

Point is yeah, grinding one content over and over is the best realistic option for getting gear in a timely fashion.

And that’s why the game is grindy, because the feasible way to achieve bis is to grind, as you showed us.

But i wasnt grinding only one content.

I did personal story, eotm, behemoth and other pve events and traded on the tp and I only played about 8 hours so far, yet you call it a grind. Why?

The question is what activities were responsible for what earning.

I know where you’re going with this, and I respectfully ask that you not turn this into a “TP players are evil” thread.

Nah just math.
If certain variables contribute comparatively little of his earnings, they don’t really illustrate how you don’t have to grind content to get to do things in a timely fashion.

Ie if doing story mode contributed 1/100th of his earnings its not really worth mentioning in the equation of how I was able to by ascended in a decent time frame

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Bernie.8674:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You aren’t required to farm for Silk. You aren’t required to craft Ascended gear. You aren’t required to WvW. You aren’t required to PvP.

You are required if you want your gear anytime in the next year or so. What part of that don’t you understand? This is despite the fact that ArenaNet explicitly stated that you won’t be required to grind if you want your gear. What good will ascended gear do me a year from now? Most of my guild mates have quit playing because there’s nothing left for them to do except grind. They call this game Grind Wars. Mike O’Brien promised that there won’t be another tier of armor in HoT, but he didn’t rule out upgrades to existing armor. Why would I want to upgrade my exotic gear?

You know what? I’m not required to do any of that. I’m not required to play this game anymore or buy the expansion either. Ultimately that’s what ArenaNet should be thinking about. This game was marketed as being grind-free, but the current state of affairs suggests otherwise. Maybe my perception would have been different if I had levelled all my crafting when silk was going for a few coppers, but I happened to level it when silk was going for 2+ silver. When a material costs 20 times as much it’s going to take 20 times as long to purchase. That forces players to choose between grinding or spending 20 times as long as the intended amount of time to craft their gear. Either way, that’s completely contrary to the claims made in ArenaNet’s promo materials.

I just bought a new account during the sale last week. I made a new toon, popped some exp boosters and played for about 2 hours, did the behemoth, some eotm and events until i had 5 gold in my wallet. since then I retired that character to the trading post.

It has been 5 days and i made 185g through trading. That is enough gold to buy 8400 silk scraps and I didnt even have to kill more than a couple of dozen monsters to get my initial investment.

I didnt spend more than 90 minutes on that account each day.

Granted, this avenue might not be suited for everyone but its still there but if the possibility is there, you cant say its required to kill the same creatures over and over again to get enough silk for your ascended gear in under a year.

On the topic of grind

Eotm is one of the best farms in the game.
Trading TP is the best earning in the game by far, of you know how to do it.

Point is yeah, grinding one content over and over is the best realistic option for getting gear in a timely fashion.

And that’s why the game is grindy, because the feasible way to achieve bis is to grind, as you showed us.

But i wasnt grinding only one content.

I did personal story, eotm, behemoth and other pve events and traded on the tp and I only played about 8 hours so far, yet you call it a grind. Why?

The question is what activities were responsible for what earning.

Wanze.8410:

Bernie.8674:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You aren’t required to farm for Silk. You aren’t required to craft Ascended gear. You aren’t required to WvW. You aren’t required to PvP.

You are required if you want your gear anytime in the next year or so. What part of that don’t you understand? This is despite the fact that ArenaNet explicitly stated that you won’t be required to grind if you want your gear. What good will ascended gear do me a year from now? Most of my guild mates have quit playing because there’s nothing left for them to do except grind. They call this game Grind Wars. Mike O’Brien promised that there won’t be another tier of armor in HoT, but he didn’t rule out upgrades to existing armor. Why would I want to upgrade my exotic gear?

You know what? I’m not required to do any of that. I’m not required to play this game anymore or buy the expansion either. Ultimately that’s what ArenaNet should be thinking about. This game was marketed as being grind-free, but the current state of affairs suggests otherwise. Maybe my perception would have been different if I had levelled all my crafting when silk was going for a few coppers, but I happened to level it when silk was going for 2+ silver. When a material costs 20 times as much it’s going to take 20 times as long to purchase. That forces players to choose between grinding or spending 20 times as long as the intended amount of time to craft their gear. Either way, that’s completely contrary to the claims made in ArenaNet’s promo materials.

I just bought a new account during the sale last week. I made a new toon, popped some exp boosters and played for about 2 hours, did the behemoth, some eotm and events until i had 5 gold in my wallet. since then I retired that character to the trading post.

It has been 5 days and i made 185g through trading. That is enough gold to buy 8400 silk scraps and I didnt even have to kill more than a couple of dozen monsters to get my initial investment.

I didnt spend more than 90 minutes on that account each day.

Granted, this avenue might not be suited for everyone but its still there but if the possibility is there, you cant say its required to kill the same creatures over and over again to get enough silk for your ascended gear in under a year.

On the topic of grind

Eotm is one of the best farms in the game.
Trading TP is the best earning in the game by far, of you know how to do it.

Point is yeah, grinding one content over and over is the best realistic option for getting gear in a timely fashion.

And that’s why the game is grindy, because the feasible way to achieve bis is to grind, as you showed us.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Bernie.8674:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Ascended gear isn’t a grind. Anet doesn’t require you to have it to play this game. You choose to make it a grind. Big difference.

You’re trying to link two statements together, but they are unrelated. Whether or not the gear is “required” to play the game is up for debate (and I think you and I would be on opposite sides of that debate as well), but it is irrelevant because, required or not, ArenaNet explicitly stated that acquiring it was never intended to require a grind. You yourself linked a post from last month where Collin reiterated that stance.

The second issue is whether or not a choice between waiting a year to get end game gear and grinding for it is an actual choice. I contend that it’s not a choice.

Even if you were to convince me that it was a choice, I would never see it as a pleasant one. The reason I stopped playing Guild Wars for six years was the realization that the faction that I had been happily grinding for through PvP was much more easily obtainable by repeated sending my heroes on the same quest over and over ad nauseum. That was a choice, and it was one that made me realize the game’s futility. I had already achieved every other non-grindy objective that the game had to offer by that point.

Grind is not fun in any form. Waiting for 1200 scraps of silk to accumulate in my bank isn’t fun either.

Again, Ascended gear isn’t a grind as per Anet’s standards. That invalidates your first claim. It’s a long term goal that wasn’t meant to be achieved in a day. I’m not here to say that you don’t think it’s a grind, only to inform you that your definition is your own. You choose to want items faster, thus in your mind, it becomes a grind for yourself only.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get items faster. That’s why there’s the TP. It allows players to put in bids for items they want, or to buy it off of other players for a price. Want 1,200 Silk scraps now? Buy it from the TP. Want it the old fashioned way? Play the game.

Lastly, getting 1,200 Silk scraps is fun. How so? You see, before Ascended gear came out, I was drowning in Silk from just playing the game. If you didn’t sell them, you had a good supply to make Silk Bolts.

Guy already posted, been saving silk for 2 years, he had like 3k scraps. Which is only 1/3 the way to ascended cloth.
I have friend who been saving for like a year has like 1700

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Bernie.8674:

Wanze.8410:

You can get silk by playing any content in the game that has the level range of silk. Mileage may vary but the silk requirements for ascended gear dont force you to play specific content. If you complete the same content over and over again to get silk because you think its the fastest way, thats your choice, not a requirement.

I’m not complaining that silk is required. I’m complaining that I need 1200-1500 silk (4.8-6 stacks) for one piece of leather gear. I’m saying that without going out of my way to grind (i.e. by the means that you claim is reasonable) I accumulate a stack every couple of weeks. For a full set of leather armor I need 24 damask. That translates to 7200 silk, or 28 stacks. That’s 56 weeks for leather. For armorsmiths it’s slightly worse, and for cloth wearers it’s even worse than that. Was ArenaNet’s intent seriously to keep non-grinders out of end game gear for a year? Whether grinding is a choice or not is irrelevant when the choice is between waiting for over a year to acquire a full set of end game gear and spending hours mindlessly grinding for mats.

I’m willing to bet that those arguing that there is no grind either enjoy grinding or crafted their ascended sets back when materials could be purchased and salvaged with karma. It’s in their best interest to maintain this system because it rewards their grinding disproportionately and allows them to unload a material that is now worthless to them at a premium rate.

Your playstyle doesnt seem to give you much silk, if you only get a stack every 2 weeks.
Not sure what you are doing, maybe hanging out in a city, killing rabbits or speed clearing dungeons, skipping all mobs that potentially drop silk to get the gold reward as fast as possible. Or you are constantly leveling new chars and therefore mostly play lower level content.

However, you still get silk, even though at a slow pace. I would wager that if your mostly play content that rewards you with little silk, you dont need ascended armor to play it.

fractals give you like 10-30 scraps per run, it takes like .7-1.5 hours to complete. you earn about 1-3 gold an hour which drops off rapidly after dailies.(including selling stuff)
Its one of the forms of content that most needs ascended armor. You will take a long time trying to get ascended if your main type of play is fractals

But fractals has the highest droprate for ascended armor and weapon boxes of any content, plus all the rings, to make up for it. I dont know any high level fractal player that was slowed down in his fractal progress because he didnt have enough ascended gear to put his AR infusions in.

yes, actually it does, they generally do other something more effecient at earning gold (grind) and buy it. If you only did fractals, your progress would be extremely low.

You dont even need ascended armor to get 50 AR.

But you need 70 ar for level 50

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Bernie.8674:

Wanze.8410:

You can get silk by playing any content in the game that has the level range of silk. Mileage may vary but the silk requirements for ascended gear dont force you to play specific content. If you complete the same content over and over again to get silk because you think its the fastest way, thats your choice, not a requirement.

I’m not complaining that silk is required. I’m complaining that I need 1200-1500 silk (4.8-6 stacks) for one piece of leather gear. I’m saying that without going out of my way to grind (i.e. by the means that you claim is reasonable) I accumulate a stack every couple of weeks. For a full set of leather armor I need 24 damask. That translates to 7200 silk, or 28 stacks. That’s 56 weeks for leather. For armorsmiths it’s slightly worse, and for cloth wearers it’s even worse than that. Was ArenaNet’s intent seriously to keep non-grinders out of end game gear for a year? Whether grinding is a choice or not is irrelevant when the choice is between waiting for over a year to acquire a full set of end game gear and spending hours mindlessly grinding for mats.

I’m willing to bet that those arguing that there is no grind either enjoy grinding or crafted their ascended sets back when materials could be purchased and salvaged with karma. It’s in their best interest to maintain this system because it rewards their grinding disproportionately and allows them to unload a material that is now worthless to them at a premium rate.

Your playstyle doesnt seem to give you much silk, if you only get a stack every 2 weeks.
Not sure what you are doing, maybe hanging out in a city, killing rabbits or speed clearing dungeons, skipping all mobs that potentially drop silk to get the gold reward as fast as possible. Or you are constantly leveling new chars and therefore mostly play lower level content.

However, you still get silk, even though at a slow pace. I would wager that if your mostly play content that rewards you with little silk, you dont need ascended armor to play it.

fractals give you like 10-30 scraps per run, it takes like .7-1.5 hours to complete. you earn about 1-3 gold an hour which drops off rapidly after dailies.(including selling stuff)
Its one of the forms of content that most needs ascended armor. You will take a long time trying to get ascended if your main type of play is fractals

But fractals has the highest droprate for ascended armor and weapon boxes of any content, plus all the rings, to make up for it. I dont know any high level fractal player that was slowed down in his fractal progress because he didnt have enough ascended gear to put his AR infusions in.

yes, actually it does, they generally do other something more effecient at earning gold (grind) and buy it. If you only did fractals, your progress would be extremely low.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Bernie.8674:

Wanze.8410:

You can get silk by playing any content in the game that has the level range of silk. Mileage may vary but the silk requirements for ascended gear dont force you to play specific content. If you complete the same content over and over again to get silk because you think its the fastest way, thats your choice, not a requirement.

I’m not complaining that silk is required. I’m complaining that I need 1200-1500 silk (4.8-6 stacks) for one piece of leather gear. I’m saying that without going out of my way to grind (i.e. by the means that you claim is reasonable) I accumulate a stack every couple of weeks. For a full set of leather armor I need 24 damask. That translates to 7200 silk, or 28 stacks. That’s 56 weeks for leather. For armorsmiths it’s slightly worse, and for cloth wearers it’s even worse than that. Was ArenaNet’s intent seriously to keep non-grinders out of end game gear for a year? Whether grinding is a choice or not is irrelevant when the choice is between waiting for over a year to acquire a full set of end game gear and spending hours mindlessly grinding for mats.

I’m willing to bet that those arguing that there is no grind either enjoy grinding or crafted their ascended sets back when materials could be purchased and salvaged with karma. It’s in their best interest to maintain this system because it rewards their grinding disproportionately and allows them to unload a material that is now worthless to them at a premium rate.

yes, this is the big mistake with colins definition of grind, he says its ok, because you can get things through many means, but he is forgetting that highly ineffecient options are not real choices.

If i could walk to work, but it would take me 3 hours, versus a 12 minute drive, then that is not a real option.

Walking is an option, if work starts in 3 hours. But you chose to do something different for 2 hours and 48 minutes before driving to work.

If a gallon of gas would cost 100 bucks, you might reconsider walking.

In those cases people tend to quit their job. 6 hours in transport makes the amount you earn roughly half as much. there is only 24 hours in the day, 8 of which is reccomended to be sleep.

If you really feel that walking is a real option, you are showing a sharp disconnect with reality

Wanze.8410:

Bernie.8674:

Wanze.8410:

You can get silk by playing any content in the game that has the level range of silk. Mileage may vary but the silk requirements for ascended gear dont force you to play specific content. If you complete the same content over and over again to get silk because you think its the fastest way, thats your choice, not a requirement.

I’m not complaining that silk is required. I’m complaining that I need 1200-1500 silk (4.8-6 stacks) for one piece of leather gear. I’m saying that without going out of my way to grind (i.e. by the means that you claim is reasonable) I accumulate a stack every couple of weeks. For a full set of leather armor I need 24 damask. That translates to 7200 silk, or 28 stacks. That’s 56 weeks for leather. For armorsmiths it’s slightly worse, and for cloth wearers it’s even worse than that. Was ArenaNet’s intent seriously to keep non-grinders out of end game gear for a year? Whether grinding is a choice or not is irrelevant when the choice is between waiting for over a year to acquire a full set of end game gear and spending hours mindlessly grinding for mats.

I’m willing to bet that those arguing that there is no grind either enjoy grinding or crafted their ascended sets back when materials could be purchased and salvaged with karma. It’s in their best interest to maintain this system because it rewards their grinding disproportionately and allows them to unload a material that is now worthless to them at a premium rate.

Your playstyle doesnt seem to give you much silk, if you only get a stack every 2 weeks.
Not sure what you are doing, maybe hanging out in a city, killing rabbits or speed clearing dungeons, skipping all mobs that potentially drop silk to get the gold reward as fast as possible. Or you are constantly leveling new chars and therefore mostly play lower level content.

However, you still get silk, even though at a slow pace. I would wager that if your mostly play content that rewards you with little silk, you dont need ascended armor to play it.

fractals give you like 10-30 scraps per run, it takes like .7-1.5 hours to complete. you earn about 1-3 gold an hour which drops off rapidly after dailies.(including selling stuff)
Its one of the forms of content that most needs ascended armor. You will take a long time trying to get ascended if your main type of play is fractals

pdavis.8031:

Bernie.8674:

Test.8734:

The statement “We don’t want people to grind” is factually a lie – if that were true, ArenaNet would not allow people to grind, much less make grind far more rewarding than not grinding.

Agreed. They used to have diminishing rewards built into the game. If you spent too long in an area grinding the same content repeatedly the drops would degrade in quantity and quality. They removed that constraint, effectively incentivizing grind over gameplay.

Are you sure about that? Pretty sure DR is still in the game. However, it is not known what the threshold for it to kick in is, as far as drops are concerned. Also John Smith did say recently that there have been very few people to have hit DR while farming/grinding. So it’s almost a non issues, but still in the game.

John Smith.4610:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

I’ve not read this whole thread so forgive me if this is answered elsewhere. I want to ask a few questions.

1. Is the loot system currently set up so people who play less are more likely to get an awesome RNG drop? There have been numerous posts like, “my friend logged on after 5 months and got X, Y, Z drop while I’ve been playing every day and got nothing!” I want to know if the way it works currently is that those who play lots get decreasing loot in proportion to playtime. Why would ANET do this? To keep people chasing the carrot.

John answered that question in a different thread, there arent any account modifiers.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/page/15#post4487484

what he is speaking of wouldnt be an account modifier, and it probably does exist, mildy. There is Diminishing returns on drops and it decays pretty slowly. You will in fact see more drops in your first few hours after not having played for awhile.

They will never tell us exactly what is happening, but your friend who plays rarely will basically have no DR for almost all of their playtime.

Still catching up, but I wanted to stop to be clear. No to this. This doesn’t happen, it’s a cognitive bias. There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

john smith is wrong or his view is very subjective, its really really easy to get DR, i can see DR in like 20 minutes in silverwastes and Orr. Quantifiable provable DR. when you start to get less karma/gold per gold dynamic event? you just hit one form of DR.

perhaps its a bug, but that just means anet doesnt know about it. It wouldnt be the first time.

Bernie.8674:

Wanze.8410:

You can get silk by playing any content in the game that has the level range of silk. Mileage may vary but the silk requirements for ascended gear dont force you to play specific content. If you complete the same content over and over again to get silk because you think its the fastest way, thats your choice, not a requirement.

I’m not complaining that silk is required. I’m complaining that I need 1200-1500 silk (4.8-6 stacks) for one piece of leather gear. I’m saying that without going out of my way to grind (i.e. by the means that you claim is reasonable) I accumulate a stack every couple of weeks. For a full set of leather armor I need 24 damask. That translates to 7200 silk, or 28 stacks. That’s 56 weeks for leather. For armorsmiths it’s slightly worse, and for cloth wearers it’s even worse than that. Was ArenaNet’s intent seriously to keep non-grinders out of end game gear for a year? Whether grinding is a choice or not is irrelevant when the choice is between waiting for over a year to acquire a full set of end game gear and spending hours mindlessly grinding for mats.

I’m willing to bet that those arguing that there is no grind either enjoy grinding or crafted their ascended sets back when materials could be purchased and salvaged with karma. It’s in their best interest to maintain this system because it rewards their grinding disproportionately and allows them to unload a material that is now worthless to them at a premium rate.

yes, this is the big mistake with colins definition of grind, he says its ok, because you can get things through many means, but he is forgetting that highly ineffecient options are not real choices.

If i could walk to work, but it would take me 3 hours, versus a 12 minute drive, then that is not a real option.

Vayne.8563:

Gene Archer.8560:

Ayrilana.1396:

Again. Read the manifesto blog and listen to what he says in the video.

So Colin is lying in his quote. Okay.

I’m sure you and Vayne know better than Colin what they meant.

I’m sure Colin didn’t write the manifesto. He performed it. What he said was very likely what someone wrote. It’s clear from the words at least what isn’t being talked about.

More to the point, I’m sure Colin after five years of not thinking about it knows exactly what he meant five years ago. Hell most people don’t know what they meant a year later never mind five.

Imagine that someone asked you what you meant when you said something five years ago. Like you’d even remember. To a fan who listened to the manifesto this was a major thing and it’s ingrained in their psyche. To Colin it was one day out of many days making a game. What makes you think this is something so important to him he even remembers it.

i think colins clarafication of what they mean by no grind philosophy in a post within the last month, probably holds more water than interpretation and reading between the lines of the manifesto.

Heres the real point, i think the devs feel like they have created something that doesnt feel grindy, but i think for players in the streets, 80+ progression feels pretty grindy.