Guild Wars 2

Zefar.4278:

I feared as much with the quest. They can name them whatever they want but they will still be quest to me.

I grew up with Ragnarok Online where Quests where hidden and cryptic which made them neigh impossible without a guide most of the time. I liked it. So it was all about killing monsters and now it seems I’m forced to do these quests no matter what.

That might just be a deal breaker for me. Because Questing only just drags the fun out a game.

I will check up that bloodlust sigil.

they kind of made the start up bad for player types like you, but the core game is still there.

you probably want to turn off your arrow telling you what you are missing on the map in options
level by looking for areas people havent been, or monsters no one killed recently, you can get a lot of bonus exp this way. Make sure to eat food and use a sharpening stones for extra exp per kill.

they dont show you a lot of the other objectives on the map at 8.
sorry the game start kinda sucks now.

Jerus.4350:

spoj.9672:

Think of the wheel of fortune as a compromise. Its not a perfect system for those of us who hate RNG. But its better than what we have currently.

And it prevents people always farming the path of least resistance. Without forcing the devs to scale rewards per fractal shard. Which even if they try to do it will never be perfect.

^^

I still want the whole 4 fractals in a row thing abolished, I want to be able to run every fractal on 50 nightly for funsies if nothing else, though they should be rewarding however they decide to do it (i put my suggestion in more depth earlier in the thread).

The option to at least weight the RNG would be a very welcomed thing as opposed to just the current bend over and take it approach.

are you against dusks suggestion?
you can pick fractals seperately, but no daily reward.

i suppose it wouldnt be bad to let the daily be gotten either via one random, or clearing all without random

mobilefactor.1843:

Give us different types of dodge (take no damage) animations

Another stupid idea I want the community to know.

As a guardian, I would like to have an animation of me pulling out my shield instead of dodging like a light weight ninja.

you would need to be moving the same distance as a normal dodge, and probbly wouldnt be that easy to pull a shield out of space if you dont have a shield

but overall might be cool to have different animations, long as they follow the same rules

Linken.6345:

Hey you dont even have to have low ap to be kicked i did a all welcome party in ac, we started 3 man it so we could get to first boss while wating.

The fifth man joins kick the ranger for being a ranger kick the warrior for being in the wrong guild when i ask after he and the other pug kicked them both.
So when he and the warrior started killing spiderqueen saying we dident need more i left.

Joined another party needing people that the same elem joins after 30 sec and then kick me.

I tell the other guys in whisper that they should be carefull of that elem he kick people without reason, they ask me to join back and we finish the run.

So no ap aint the only mesuring stick its peoples warped mind aswell 1 person from that guild is bad i wont play with anyone from that guild pfft.

they really need to fix the kick system to either be leader only, or require at least 3 people.

Reverence.6915:

In all honesty, Silk is ridiculously easy to get. I’m selling a stack of them nearly every day (usually every 2 days). The price is driven up by people who aren’t willing to do a little grinding and just buy it off the TP. People like me drive the price up by continually offering higher prices for the people who are willing to pay :P

your selling a stack every two days

now if you actually needed them

you would need 1.2 stacks a day, for a month.

you are getting less than half of what you would need per day to craft ascended in a month time frame.

as opposed to mithril, where you only need 100, and can get 1 per minute.
so 100 minutes(actually can get more but lets say your lazy/unkowing) versus 2 days.

King xiuras.3615:

I’m playing the game since launch, ive played 255 fractals in total and i got some skins:

Fractal longbow (twice… :/ )
Fractal gun
Fractal Spear gun
Fractal Hammer
Fractal shield

I don’t know or i’m lucky that much or not… However Anet need to bring in a system that can exchange a fractal skin you already have for another skins.

you sound lucky, but maybe you spent a higher % of your fractal amounts at higher tiers.

Wylf.2586:

Am I the only one that smells the stench of troll-sweat in this thread?

in actuality, the dungeon community actually does use AP as a filter for parties, so the main difference is he is asking this question to the larger community. Basically even if this is a troll, it represents an existing situation that is thought to be somewhat true.

vpchelko.4261:

Azure Prower.8701:

I have to ask. Which dungeon?

Random dungeon. Does not matter which.

actually some dungeons are just more commonly done than others. Most people arent too familiar with caduceus and sorrows furnace. I think more people have tried COE HOTW and COF

probably pretty low, a fairly large % of currently active players probably havent even gone to fractal 10

Fermi.2409:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Most people doing dungeons expect you to know what to do. It’s even worse if you have a high AP. They somehow think that means you do dungeons enough to know what to do without being told.

How is that an unreasonable expectation, especially if you don’t say anything at the beginning of the run?

its unreasonable, because AP doesnt represent dungeoneering. Getting AP is mostly about doing dailies, and events.

Yall are basically like, how are you 21 years old and cant play basketball. The two have little to do with each other.

Zaklex.6308:

For those that say SW is not a quick method to gather Silk without also gathering excessive amounts of Elder Logs and Mithril, I present to you these number. These are from salvage only(no node gathering) and with comparison to Mithril and Elder Logs. These numbers are from opening 50 Heirloom Seed Pouches and salvaging what ever came out of them:

• Silk – 101 pcs
• Elder Logs – 49 pcs
• Mithril – 27 pcs

I can and probably will get the same or more from opening another 50 Seed pouches as well as Embroidered Coin Purses…and that’s with having 1000 storage capacity, not even max, of both raw and refined materials full. I already have enough of each refined to fully fill up a max storage at 1500 each if I wanted to increase my capacity to that amount.

your saying a lot of things, but they arent connecting
what does your storage capacity have to do with drop rates?
What are you saying is the relationship between seed pouches and embroidered pouches?
Are you saying that leather armor is not on the drop table for seed pouch?

Im not sure what your data is supposed to illustrate

Ensign.2189:

Zenguy.6421:

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

He isn’t listing it because while a) is true, b) is not.

It’s an issue of optics. They could double the requirements of mithril, elder wood, and thick leather as well, but I suspect that would have only a minimal impact on ascended armor prices or silk prices.

There’s a case for symmetry in the crafting requirements from an optics perspective, but that’s rarely being made; the asymmetry is being used to legitimize the argument that the price of silk is too high, which is John’s point 1).

If you want to make the argument for 3), asymmetry in material requirements, argue for increasing the requirements of mithril ore, elder wood, and thick leather to 300 as well so it isn’t easy to dismiss as another flavor of argument 1).

B) is strictly speaking true.
The main reason silk has a value of 2-3 silver is the ascended formula.
That may not be the main reason that it went down, but its the reason its crawling back up to reach its former equillibrium.

but really if anyone actually read The OP, and not just the title, its clear this thread is about the price of silk and its relation ship to damask, and ascended crafting. As well as a disparity between mats

Shiyo.3578:

Can you please change it to only needing 2 scraps per refinement and not needing 100 per ascended material instead of the 50 every other mat requires? The price of silk is going up AGAIN and there’s no reason for a single ascended mat to be 4x the price of the other ones.

Behellagh.1468:

How many players got upset over losing the original light flamekiss skin? ANet went ahead simply because it had more blowback from cribbing Human T3 than taking it away from those quick enough to buy it.

The flamekiss issue was more of a political issue, not really a game balance thing
flamekiss wasnt really an improvement on any system either

Wanze.8410:

William Bradley Knight.2609:

Wanze.8410:

Basically any solution, that enables the average player to obtain his daily silk demand on his own, without having to buy from the tp, will most certainly crash the silk prices because the silk that people get who dont need it (as a byproduct of playing), wont have a demand anymore.
Thats the status quo of leather right now.

Probably a silly question, but why is it important for silk not to crash, but okay for leather? What is the economic or game design purpose of the inflated demand of silk compared to leather?

Its not okay for leather to be at vendor value. I dont think I ever said that.

I just tried to illustrate the mayor differences in demand for the 3 mats.

Most people obtain more mithril than they need for they daily consumption and sell it on the tp to precursor forgers.
Most people also obtain more leather than they need but nobody is buying that access because there is no additional sink.
With silk, basically everybody is only able to obtain half of their daily demand themselves but not everybody crafts his daily bolt of damask. So one half of the player base buys 150 scraps each from the other half and all daily supply is used up every day.
If everybody can farm his own silk every day in a timely fashion, the supply from players that dont need it atm, will just be dumped on the tp until it reaches vendor value.

it will only go down until it reaches the point that it is not worth it to get it yourself.
Most people will not go get it themselves if people offer them a better value than they feel getting it themselves is worth. That is way above vendor.
The key here is the method has to require intent, and time investment.

It should be more effecient than doing it unintentionally by a large margin. Unintentional pays in many ways, experience (which will get more valuable with masteries) karma, gold, other drops of value.

Behellagh.1468:

Aomine.5012:

Andred.1087:

I don’t see how the market-dictated price of silk is a problem to begin with. You might not like how much it costs, but that’s just the way it goes.

No it’s not, it’s Anet way of price manipulation way back 1.5 year ago.
They looked at the price of the silks back then and decide to make silk consumption way more than other ascended material. They manipulated the demand so much to try to “balance” the market. (Because silk was like 7 copper back then)

However they didn’t do enough research and overdid the effort to make silk’s price broken. If they broke the market, they should fix it by lowering down the material requirement to the level of other materials because there’s no longer any excess supply.
The market is already balanced, so they should revert this intentional consumption of silk.

My suggestion is make silk thread cost 50 silks to make. Also make Ascended Insignia cost one bolt of damask and one elonian leather to balance out the consumption of both silk and leather. (I know you’re going to say how about armorsmith? Easy, just make armorsmith able to craft elonian leather.)

It should not be a problem for Anet to manipulate the market because THEY ALREADY DID IT BACK THEN.

But they did that before Damask or ascended mats hit. You are suggesting altering a known recipe that’s been crafted a lot by a lot of players who will now be … upset, that the price has dropped. Before when silk bolts were changed from 2 to 3, the impact was non-existent. Ooo, we went from needing 12 silk scraps to craft a rare light chest to 18. As you said silk was at vendor +1c so literally the difference in price was less than 1s on an item that required three T5 fine mats in the insignia creation. It affected nothing.

Upsetting people who suffered a bad system before is not a good reason not to progress.

Gas should stay at 4 dollars a gallon, because i bought gas for that price last year?
or
I bought my 20 miles per gallon SUV 2 years ago, so they should not make the 2016 version a 40 mpg SUV, not to upset me?

it makes no sense to me.

Wanze.8410:

Basically any solution, that enables the average player to obtain his daily silk demand on his own, without having to buy from the tp, will most certainly crash the silk prices because the silk that people get who dont need it (as a byproduct of playing), wont have a demand anymore.
Thats the status quo of leather right now.

Mithril is a different story, because it has a huge additional sink in crafting rare weapons for precursors.
If mithril would drop by only 10 copper, it would result in at least 50g off the final precursor price, so additional supply for mithril is sucked up for that.

Silk prices wont have such a safeguard.

lets say it takes 2-3 hours to get 300 silk without intent or 300:2.5 or 120 silk per hour.
then there should be a method that gives you more silk per hour, with intent
lets say 300 silk per hour.
now, you say, then people will oversupply silk!
keep in mind, people will only use the 300 silk per hour method, and sell it, if the value is worth an hour of their time, or they thorughly enjoy getting and selling silk.

so lets look at it. let say people can get silk for 300 per hour, if silk was 2 silver, that would still only be 6 gold per hour.
grinders make more than that right now. If the price drops to 1 silver (well above vendor, and not bad relative to other crafts) then they would be making 3 gold an hour, which is a pretty crappy rate of return

so they stop doing it that way.

you dont have to fear a direct method of obtaining silk, because people will only bring silk from that method to market, if they feel they are getting paid well for their time. As far as silk going down in value for the randomly generated types, due to less demand, yes it will go down in value, up to the point where people feel 300 silk in an hour would be worth to gather for themselves.

See, with a direct method, people will actually be paying the value that they think silk/time is worth, rather a value that is more disconnected.

it works, trust me, how do you think soft wood still has value, while not being useful for mystic forging, because even though there is a direct method that gives greater amounts, people are willing to pay other people to do the task.

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

schneiw.4896:

Zenguy.6421:

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

This question is continuously avoided, even though it has been asked repeatedly. IMO, they know they screwed the pooch on this, but refuse to take ownership.

From October through January the price of silk went down and its supply up. During all that time, it was 300 scraps for 1 bolt of damask. So it cant really be at the heart of the changes of silk going back up now.

i think the poster is saying ascended is at the heart of the value/cost of silk in general.

He is basically saying, its hard to divorce these issues, disparity in effort for vertical progression and price of silk, because they are connected.

The main reason that this disparity exists is to make silk valuable. Thats it.

I dont think its a good idea to introduce disparity into vertical progression, just to give one item more value when you loot it.

Except that ascended armor crafting followed the same pattern as all other quality levels, just with a higher quantity. On the surface the only fault it doubling the amount of refined T5 for light vs refined T5 for medium or heavy. Underneath the problem, as it is at all qualities, you need twice as much cloth with light as oppose to medium and heavy as well as cloth is needed at all weights where it isn’t reciprocal with leather and metal. But it wasn’t a problem until ascended armor came out.

You only needed 18 silk scraps for a rare chest piece. You need 2400 silk scraps for an ascended chest piece. So we went from 3 for the insignia, 3 for the lining and 12 for the panel (1:1:4 ratio) to 900 for the insignia, 300 for the lining and 1200 for the panel (3:1:4 ratio). And here’s another “problem”. The lining and panel are 100x the rare but the insignia, which is needed on all armor weights, is 300x the rare. Hmmm, didn’t realize that until now. Interesting.

So we have altering the bolt recipe from 2 to 3 scraps. Not a problem since the T5 leather which was also under a glut needs 3 for the refined version. Then we have the boost in the ascended mat recipe from 50 to 100. That seems a bit excessive. Lastly we have the insignia mat requirement scaled by 300 vs 100 times for panels and linings.

It may be the insignia’s overscaling that’s the root of the demand problem. But exotic was 10/2/8 T6 cloth scraps for insignia/panel/insignia (5:1:4 ratio) so maybe we should feel fortunate that they didn’t make insignia need 1500 silk.

yes, and that basic formula they developed was always a bad one based on how silk/leather/mithril were supplied.
the thing that solved it was over production to the point that demand had little effect on the price. By getting that demand high enough to matter, it once again highlights the basic flaw in the crafting recipes, and style of supplying materials.

yeah when i looked at the ratios of basic materials, it became fairly obvious that silk in ascended recipes is way out of wack, even compared with the old recipes.

but more importantly, its extremely out of wack with the ratios of how silk and leather are supplied. which leads to leather costing nothing and silk being comparitively over valued.

with things as they stand, leather will always be worthless, and silk will always be overpriced, unless the supply far outstrips the demand.

good thing mithril has weapons being eaten in the forge

Andred.1087:

phys.7689:

Andred.1087:

I don’t see how the market-dictated price of silk is a problem to begin with. You might not like how much it costs, but that’s just the way it goes.

its not really dictated by the market. Its value was created by turning a desire to have best in slot into a value for silk.

The crafting recipe being noticeably different than other ascended basic recipes, and the structure of silk in every armorcraft is the main reason the cost for silk is so high

How does the market not dictate the price? It’s all supply and demand. What you’re talking about is factors that determine demand, which in turn affects the price.

I know that ANet tweaked the recipes to do something, honestly I can’t recall what, but frankly I don’t care. Supply and demand are still the determining factors of the market price, and I don’t see the current price as problematic. Sure, it does make ascended light armor more expensive than the rest, and ANet could have maybe thought that through a little better if they wanted it to be roughly equivalent, but the amount of money required to make ascended armor is not terribly difficult to obtain, and ascended is far from required for anything other than the highest level Fractals.

If the only two factors that determine price are supply, and demand, and anet have primary control of both for this item.
The price is basically set by anets policy.

Problems with the current price
makes ascended cloth cost noticeably more time/effort to obtain
Is noticeably imbalanced in respect to other teir 5 values
is noticeably imbalanced in respect to basic versus fine value
is noticeably imbalanced in respect to t5 versus t6 values

these are objective issues.

Andred.1087:

I don’t see how the market-dictated price of silk is a problem to begin with. You might not like how much it costs, but that’s just the way it goes.

its not really dictated by the market. Its value was created by turning a desire to have best in slot into a value for silk.

The crafting recipe being noticeably different than other ascended basic recipes, and the structure of silk in every armorcraft is the main reason the cost for silk is so high

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I don’t get it… silk is only like 50% the cost of damask. Why is everyone so hung up on silk? The other mats are even more expensive, much harder to get, and have a much more limited supply. Do people just freak about because they see such a large number next to silk?

Silk is the only T5 common mat that seems to have a reasonable price. Leather is utterly useless, and mithril is pretty good in large quantities, but it isn’t making anyones main income source.

Silk needs no solution, and the only decent argument I’ve seen against the price of damask is that light needs more days to complete their armor set than medium and heavy. Up medium and heavies requirements so heavy needs 36 ore and medium needs 36 leather and then I don’t see a problem anymore.

because 300 silk costs 6-7 gold.
because other mats require 50 silver for the same part
because if you dont want to buy it, it takes you 2-3 hours in the good farms, and even longer on the bad farms.
because its part of the daily craft, so every day it hangs over your head, i should get 300 silk… today… or im going to fall behind schedule

Wanze.8410:

schneiw.4896:

Zenguy.6421:

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

This question is continuously avoided, even though it has been asked repeatedly. IMO, they know they screwed the pooch on this, but refuse to take ownership.

From October through January the price of silk went down and its supply up. During all that time, it was 300 scraps for 1 bolt of damask. So it cant really be at the heart of the changes of silk going back up now.

i think the poster is saying ascended is at the heart of the value/cost of silk in general.

He is basically saying, its hard to divorce these issues, disparity in effort for vertical progression and price of silk, because they are connected.

The main reason that this disparity exists is to make silk valuable. Thats it.

I dont think its a good idea to introduce disparity into vertical progression, just to give one item more value when you loot it.

but why would you go all the same build? thats not synergistic..

Glabb.9163:

I played quite a bit at beta/launch … then RL happened in a big way. I’ve been doing some reading around the forums, new player guides, etc. I’ve decided to take the plunge and download the clinet and give GW2 another go. Wall of questions INC!!!

Where should I begin…
Should I use characters that have not been touched in 2 years?
Should I start fresh?
I love melee combat for PVE (and dont care much about pvp, wvw) Which profession would you recommend?
I’m an mmo junkie and liked the non tradtional approach to the game … look forward to seeing y’all in game!
-Glabb

most interesting melle would probably be thief, mesmer sword pretty good.
use your old charachters unless you want to try the new trait system, which have been critically panned.

Test.8734:

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?

Worse. It would reward grinders, who would have another way to farm, while punishing casual players (prices would remain at the current ones or higher).

ArenaNet rewards grind way too much. Today grinders can have a steady supply of silk by buying it from the TP after farming gold. There isn’t much of a point in introducing a silk farm.

grinders dont buy silk, they sell it to you.

the best way to reduce the grind would be to lower the recipe costs, but i dont think they wil do that unless they have another cloth destroying mechanic in place

King Noob IV.3560:

I bought the game yesterday after asking a bunch of people if I should get the game that day or wait for a sale and all of them, and I mean all of them said that there’d most likely be no sale for spring break and the sale would be in a couple months when that expansion comes out. So I bought the game and the very next day it’s announched that the game is going on sale. I’m so upset with myself right now lol I was telling my self “hey just wait a couple more days until school’s out then by the game” but noooo I bought the game for 40 bucks when I could have bought it for 15 ugh I’m really hating myself right now I even joked around with those people that I’d punch myself if something like this happened and it actually happened

Is there any chance I can get some money back if I message them somewhere?

contact support, i think they actually give a grace period on sales within a certain time frame if you ask them about it

Orangensaft.7139:

went through some HoT pictures and saw this…

i know its probably just the light
but he really looks like a black skinned man on that picture

do you mean black as in african descent, or its equivalent in Tyria? or do you mean dark skinned.

he as always been dark skinned, in comparison to marjorie and kasmeer. He may be of african tyria descent, but he may not. Just like the real world, there are many people of various cultures/regions who can be dark skinned.

dark europeans
dark indians
dark asians

Mikuchan.7261:

phys.7689:

Mikuchan.7261:

Summary / TL;DR
Create cloth gathering nodes
This could balance cloth price.
Make insignias craftable with all 3 armor crafting materials.
This could balance the material prices in relationship with eachother.

Click here to see long arguments for why and how

hide spoiler

Cut out to save characters, read original post at: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/11#post4850840

cloth crafters would likely still be screwed, and leather would likely still be cheap. Youd also increase the minimum time to craft. (though not as much as now definately)
let insignias be craftable by any armor proffession using any material, and you solve the issue similarly, cloth will likely still be more expensive, but not as drastically. leather will likely rise in value. Time to craft will be similar for each, and overall more adjustable.

I don’t see what you mean with that minimum crafting time would increase?
Like.. I literally don’t understand what you mean.

Cloth crafters would indeed be screwed initially, but over time the prices will balance out. And you have the option to get another crafting discipline in order to get the insignias with those materials instead. So a cloth crafter could spend some 50-100 gold to level leathercrafting up enough to make elonian leather and then use those to make the insignias, thus creating demand for leather.

However as you say, things will be more easily adjustable.
It does sound like you agree with the idea?

maddoctor.2738:

Changing the non-armor recipes that require Damask could also help in reducing demand. I’m talking about Wings of Dwayna, a very popular back skin that requires 15 Bolts of Damask to make. 15 Bolts of Damask a very very large amount that pushes the value of cloth materials way up, adding recipes for Wings of Dwayna (and the Grenth recipe too) that use Leather and/or Metal could easily help with Demand.

I also think more item made with recipes using Leather can really help push Leather prices higher. Like a new skin recipe that requires 25 pieces of Elonian Leather to make. Imagine allowing people to craft the Black Wings with Elonian Leather

Wings of Dwayna and the Grenth recipe too can be crafted by a leatherworker with Elonian Leather instead of Damask and since it’s a backpiece it doesn’t have a weight class, so any class can equip it.
This is also how I argue that insignias should work in my post, read above.
If you can use any material for the insignias, just like with the backpieces, the imbalance between the demand for Damask, Elonian leather and Deldrimor steel is removed and the prices will balance over time.

Edit: Similarly, an armorsmith can craft the backpieces with deldrimor steel.

hmm have to look at the recipes again, may not make much difference time lock wise.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

maddoctor.2738:

pdavis.8031:

What about adding silk to the salvage tables of medium armor? This would allow ~2/3 of armor drops (not counting for RNG or loot weighting per armor class) to be able to produce silk. What effect would it have on the silk market? Would it cause a massive influx of silk into the market and crash the prices? Or would it allow silk to become a bit more affordable, and still make “farming” silk a more viable option?

I think that’s by far the best solution to the Silk problem and I also suggested this earlier in this thread (I’m sure others did too). For some reason nobody commented on it though. Of course it should be used for other cloth materials too.

It could also be used on all items in the game. You are salvaging items to get materials used in their creation, so why not getting those types of materials when you salvage them?

This change is much much more preferable than changing the current recipes, changing the amount of silk needed for bolts, or how many bolts needed for damask will have a negative effect on people who already used the old prices to craft their items. I’m against that completely.

this wouldnt really help anything, it would just increase the random element of what you get from a salavge.

its not that no one ever sees cloth items, they tend to drop at similar rates (at least they used to) its that the demand is high, and the supply is low. the supply would basically end up in the same place, assuming cloth would sometimes drop leather as often and leather drops cloth.

Changing the non-armor recipes that require Damask could also help in reducing demand. I’m talking about Wings of Dwayna, a very popular back skin that requires 15 Bolts of Damask to make. 15 Bolts of Damask a very very large amount that pushes the value of cloth materials way up, adding recipes for Wings of Dwayna (and the Grenth recipe too) that use Leather and/or Metal could easily help with Demand.

I also think more item made with recipes using Leather can really help push Leather prices higher. Like a new skin recipe that requires 25 pieces of Elonian Leather to make. Imagine allowing people to craft the Black Wings with Elonian Leather

i would love to see what percentage these cosmetic recipes add to the overall demand, my feeling though is that it is very small over time.

in order to be a really good sink it either needs tons of materials, or it needs to be something people see some benefit in getting. possibly both.

i base this idea on the fact that ascended change made the value of silk go through the roof, whereas the value of silk after these recipes were introduced was a small bump, and then back to the previous value.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

maddoctor.2738:

pdavis.8031:

What about adding silk to the salvage tables of medium armor? This would allow ~2/3 of armor drops (not counting for RNG or loot weighting per armor class) to be able to produce silk. What effect would it have on the silk market? Would it cause a massive influx of silk into the market and crash the prices? Or would it allow silk to become a bit more affordable, and still make “farming” silk a more viable option?

I think that’s by far the best solution to the Silk problem and I also suggested this earlier in this thread (I’m sure others did too). For some reason nobody commented on it though. Of course it should be used for other cloth materials too.

It could also be used on all items in the game. You are salvaging items to get materials used in their creation, so why not getting those types of materials when you salvage them?

This change is much much more preferable than changing the current recipes, changing the amount of silk needed for bolts, or how many bolts needed for damask will have a negative effect on people who already used the old prices to craft their items. I’m against that completely.

this wouldnt really help anything, it would just increase the random element of what you get from a salavge.

its not that no one ever sees cloth items, they tend to drop at similar rates (at least they used to) its that the demand is high, and the supply is low. the supply would basically end up in the same place, assuming cloth would sometimes drop leather as often and leather drops cloth.

Then make is so cloth doesn’t drop leather. Just add cloth to leather armor. So salavging medium armor would have a chance to drop a bit of cloth, as well as the normal leather. This would increase the supply, although demand would stay the same. But having a larger pool from which to gain cloth would certainly increase the supply, no matter how you look at it. So those trying to “farm” cloth, would have a larger chance at getting it via salvaging. Leather would likely stay the same as well. And the only way to fix that, would be to have another significant leather sink. But thats another discussion and doesn’t really apply to this conversation.

it might work, but that would assume that the recipes and their salvage rates were similar

but since ascended requires different rates of materials silk would still be unnaturally valued.
basicaly a t5 body armor has a ratio of 15:9 leather to silk basic materials, or 5:3 ratio(1.6 to 1)
and a ascended body armor has a ratio of 750:1200 leather to silk, or .625 to 1 ratio

man, no wonder leather is completely screwed up.

adding your change would help, but it would still be pretty unbalanced.

good change though, from a balance standpoint.

bad for being able to pick what you want though, but ehh, might be the way to go.

they should bring ascended crafting ratios of what is needed back in line though. Kind of crazy you need more silk than you need leather to make leather items.

I almost had a heart attack!!!!
At last an idea you can (kind of) agree on! :P

However, I still am not convinced that bringing the ratios in line with each other would actually be a good idea. But as thats been discussed Ad nauseam, so I’ll just leave it at that.

i agree with all ideas that i think may solve the problem, and yeah this is something i noticed in the beginning of the game that i had long forgot about.

leather is supplied similarly to cloth, as if they had similar use in recipes
but cloth is used to a much greater extent.

basically cloth and leather is supplied sort of like a 1:1 ratio, but the recipes dont use them that way.
its even more exagerated with ascended leathercraft, too the point silk the most numerous material in all the recipes, but it still created at a similar rate to leather.

with this basic structure, leather will always be comparitively worthless with silk.
the demand for silk is always going to be at least 3-4 times higher than leather, while the supply is probably around somewhere in the family of 1:1, perhaps 2:1

this means, with this structure, cloth users will always have to pay noticeably more for their armor.

Cameo.4073:

I have a question about the ‘trait changes’ since my wallet is closed to anet until the system gets an overhaul…

If the trait changes affect everyone, wouldn’t it have to be independent of Heart of Thorns?

Or will it be like the NPE/trait system where only characters created after the new code is implemented get the trait change? (and if you don’t buy the expansion you are stuck with the old system or your characters made during the Trait 2.0 year are stuck with that)

Really would like some more concrete information (and I don’t mean cinder blocks thrown in this direction with ‘Trust me’ written on them)

i dont think tying old traits to the new expansion would happen. Its too much work maintaining and balancing two different systems, and would cause too much problems. Basically its just an all around loss, so i dont think they would do it.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

maddoctor.2738:

pdavis.8031:

What about adding silk to the salvage tables of medium armor? This would allow ~2/3 of armor drops (not counting for RNG or loot weighting per armor class) to be able to produce silk. What effect would it have on the silk market? Would it cause a massive influx of silk into the market and crash the prices? Or would it allow silk to become a bit more affordable, and still make “farming” silk a more viable option?

I think that’s by far the best solution to the Silk problem and I also suggested this earlier in this thread (I’m sure others did too). For some reason nobody commented on it though. Of course it should be used for other cloth materials too.

It could also be used on all items in the game. You are salvaging items to get materials used in their creation, so why not getting those types of materials when you salvage them?

This change is much much more preferable than changing the current recipes, changing the amount of silk needed for bolts, or how many bolts needed for damask will have a negative effect on people who already used the old prices to craft their items. I’m against that completely.

this wouldnt really help anything, it would just increase the random element of what you get from a salavge.

its not that no one ever sees cloth items, they tend to drop at similar rates (at least they used to) its that the demand is high, and the supply is low. the supply would basically end up in the same place, assuming cloth would sometimes drop leather as often and leather drops cloth.

Then make is so cloth doesn’t drop leather. Just add cloth to leather armor. So salavging medium armor would have a chance to drop a bit of cloth, as well as the normal leather. This would increase the supply, although demand would stay the same. But having a larger pool from which to gain cloth would certainly increase the supply, no matter how you look at it. So those trying to “farm” cloth, would have a larger chance at getting it via salvaging. Leather would likely stay the same as well. And the only way to fix that, would be to have another significant leather sink. But thats another discussion and doesn’t really apply to this conversation.

it might work, but that would assume that the recipes and their salvage rates were similar

but since ascended requires different rates of materials silk would still be unnaturally valued.
basicaly a t5 body armor has a ratio of 15:9 leather to silk basic materials, or 5:3 ratio(1.6 to 1)
and a ascended body armor has a ratio of 750:1200 leather to silk, or .625 to 1 ratio

man, no wonder leather is completely screwed up.

adding your change would help, but it would still be pretty unbalanced.

good change though, from a balance standpoint.

bad for being able to pick what you want though, but ehh, might be the way to go.

they should bring ascended crafting ratios of what is needed back in line though. Kind of crazy you need more silk than you need leather to make leather items.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

For people who do spring forward an hour, the world boss schedule will indeed be different.

As for why daylight savings time exists, it’s to allow for more sunlight hours in the day during winter, which encourages people to shop more. It actually does have a sizable impact on businesses, particularly in regions further north where the days get noticeably shorter in winter.

basically people had to be more in tune with when the sun was out in order to work, so the general schedule of the day would shift drastically for the time of the year.
sometimes you gotta get up at 5 am, and other times 8 am. daylight savings reduces that.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

Thaddeus.4891:

Shiyo.3578:

People are easily disposable and no one even tries to make friends or group up with the same people again, even if they’re good. Everyone might as well be NPC’s in dungeons and I doubt ANYONE would notice a difference or care at all.

PUGS are easily disposable. I have 400 ppl in my guild to make friends or group up with, that will take me a long time to become friend with even 1/10th of that. Why should we care about everybody in the game?

yeah, maybe you are right, but thats actually a problem.
So one should look maybe and try to see why in other games, people feel less comfortable treating random pug players as disposable.

Interesting…

I can see that in a trinity situation where you absolutely need X profession in order to clear a dungeon or do an event or it will fail, and you’ll have to wait a certain amount of time to be able to try again, where a pug wouldn’t be treated as disposable.

However in this environment, where you have a loose “trinity” and damage is desired far above support, you can afford to be more picky in who you take.

if it was just about the trinity, people would be punting DD players like footballs in kicking practice

maddoctor.2738:

pdavis.8031:

What about adding silk to the salvage tables of medium armor? This would allow ~2/3 of armor drops (not counting for RNG or loot weighting per armor class) to be able to produce silk. What effect would it have on the silk market? Would it cause a massive influx of silk into the market and crash the prices? Or would it allow silk to become a bit more affordable, and still make “farming” silk a more viable option?

I think that’s by far the best solution to the Silk problem and I also suggested this earlier in this thread (I’m sure others did too). For some reason nobody commented on it though. Of course it should be used for other cloth materials too.

It could also be used on all items in the game. You are salvaging items to get materials used in their creation, so why not getting those types of materials when you salvage them?

This change is much much more preferable than changing the current recipes, changing the amount of silk needed for bolts, or how many bolts needed for damask will have a negative effect on people who already used the old prices to craft their items. I’m against that completely.

this wouldnt really help anything, it would just increase the random element of what you get from a salavge.

its not that no one ever sees cloth items, they tend to drop at similar rates (at least they used to) its that the demand is high, and the supply is low. the supply would basically end up in the same place, assuming cloth would sometimes drop leather as often and leather drops cloth.

Thaddeus.4891:

Shiyo.3578:

People are easily disposable and no one even tries to make friends or group up with the same people again, even if they’re good. Everyone might as well be NPC’s in dungeons and I doubt ANYONE would notice a difference or care at all.

PUGS are easily disposable. I have 400 ppl in my guild to make friends or group up with, that will take me a long time to become friend with even 1/10th of that. Why should we care about everybody in the game?

yeah, maybe you are right, but thats actually a problem.
So one should look maybe and try to see why in other games, people feel less comfortable treating random pug players as disposable.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s currently a BiS item for something that doesn’t substantially help you unless you do fractals and this is including the stats from infusions. The only reason that I got them was to free up bank space. I’m sitting in around 50 bolts of damask right now contemplating whether it would be worth it to craft a PVT set my light armor for if I were to take them into WvW.

I don’t think there is any really good solution to resolve this. Changing out what materials are used for insignias could have its merits but then there would be the need to rebalance this across all recipes and then the after effects this would have on the materials and recipes involved.

I think the gains of having the option to use other materials would outweigh the weirdness of not being able to craft the lower end materials.
But that said.
armor already has access to silk
and leather has access to leather
and silk has access to leather

so if heavy could make insignias out of cloth or metal
leather could make insignias out of leather or cloth
silk could make insignias out of cloth or leather

you would still have a lower cost option.

heavy wouldnt be able to take advantage of leather, but it would have the most direct, and cheapest means time wise of getting an insignia. And since leather will probably go up in value anyhow, metal may end up being similarly valued to leather.

As far as not substantially helping you, it really doesnt matter. a vertical increase is a vertical increase.
in many games there is virtually no difference between max level, and max level-1, but people still want max level. you are still objectively weaker. When things get tough, and supposedly they will in HoT, when a mission or event fails, they will be looking at that 3% difference. even if it isnt the main factor, thats easy objectively provable difference.

Zenguy.6421:

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

On a related note:
Do you feed information on major market changes back to the game designers?
If so, have you informed them about what is happening to the silk price?

valid question.
the 2 times the amount of effort is really the heart of this discussion
perhaps his intention to make it all use the same higher amounts,

then it would be more about aquisition, and whether the cost(time/money) is the in the correct place.

I would say that the 300 t5, 2-3 hours, 6-7 gold is not the right place, but before we can get there, we first would need to create more parity.

John, you mentioned parity not being necessary before, i spoke in this before, but a new simpler angle is this.
parity IS important for vertical progression
parity is LESS important for horizontal progression
parity is not very important for cosmetics

thats what i believe is true after mulling it over in my mind.

the problem is ascended is vertical progression.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

I was referring to the ascended only recipes for metal and leather T7 refinement to require 300 materials. This will negate the argument that it’s unfair that non-light armor players need less materials. The only argument that would remain is the differences in acquisition which would mainly be the differences in obtaining cloth/leather vs ore.

this would balance it, but i dont think the 300 material thing is actually a good daily requirement. requires about 2-3 hours of effort just for that 1 material, keep in mind these all require more materials/resources elsewhere, putting your total time investment in ascended armor per day, at like 4 hours or more. over 36 days. thats 144 hours
assuming the average player gets in 12 hours a week, thats 12 weeks. 2-3 months for a modest increase is discouraging for players.

Why does it have to be daily though? It can easily be made a long term goal which you can do over the course of several months. If all else fails, you can buy them off the TP. Even then, getting 300 mithril ore is not difficult and in no way requires more than an hour.

even if people dont do it daily, the time requirement is still there, you can decide to only put in 2 hours of work a day, but your still going to need to spend 144 hours actively pursuing it.
Which i think is too much for a lot of players. It would be ok for balance, but i dont think its the right number in terms of player investment.

Mikuchan.7261:

Summary / TL;DR
Create cloth gathering nodes
This could balance cloth price.
Make insignias craftable with all 3 armor crafting materials.
This could balance the material prices in relationship with eachother.

Click here to see long arguments for why and how

hide spoiler

The problems I see:
1. Cloth (silk is not the only problem) are unproportionally more expensive than leather and metal.
2. Light armor is also unproportionally more expensive than heavy and medium armor.

The reasons I see why the problems exist:
1. Cloth is unproportionally expensive. Silk is not the only problem. It’s easy to brush this off by saying “supply and demand”. It is true that the price is caused by supply and demand, however, the supply and demand idea is not the base problem. Cloth is used in all 3 ascended armor crafting disciplines and also in a very large scale in all of those. It cannot be gathered, which metal can. Leather cannot be gathered, but also isn’t required nearly as much. Metal can be gathered infinitely on nodes at set random locations. As such there is a huge imbalance between the supply of metal, leather and cloth and the demand of metal, leather and cloth and this imbalance is the problem. It causes demand and it hinders supply.
This imbalance is even greater when you consider middle tier cloth, which is much harder to get for lvl 80 characters since much of the armor loot you will get will be lvl 80 and not the lvl you are farming and thus you get silk from it.

2. Ascended light armor is unproportionally expensive. This is, in my opinion, not caused by high demand of light armor compared to other armors, which would be a fair case if it was. The reason why light ascended armor is the single most expensive armor is because of the unproportionally high supply/demand ratio of damask compared to the other materials, which is not only caused by demand of light armor, but also caused by demand of heavy and medium armor. Demand of light armor does not affect the demand of Elonian Leather (in any significant way since it does not require enough of it to make a difference) or Deldrimor Steel (at all).
The reson for this is that insignias are only craftable with Damask.
As such, an imbalance can again be seen.

How I think the problems can be fixed
1 Introducing cloth gatherable “nodes” (and potentially even leather). Introduce a new “harvesting” tool, “carders”. Hand carders and drum carders of varying metal tier – Copper hand carders, iron hand carders, mithril drum carder, etc. The gatherable nodes then, provided you have carders, give you cloth scraps. This way you introduce a “realistic” way to harvest cloth and provide a sure-fire way to supply it that of course could have varying droprates. The reason why I wrote “nodes” in quotation marks is because they don’t need to be actual gathering nodes like trees or metal veins. They can also be living or corpses of animals for example. Wool would be a bit hard to grow due to it’s nature, so a wool gathering node could be a (wild) sheep. To gather it, you walk up to it and interact with it or it’s corpse, holding the appropriate tool. Once interacted with, that sheep, respawned or not, has it’s wool cut for an appropriate time compared to other gathering nodes. Or alternatively there is a chance to get wool from it for each time it respawns. Or yet alternatively, the sheep is an invulnurable NPC.
Cotton would naturally have a “normal” gathering node much like other plants.
Leather could be implemented in a similar way as I suggested that wool is implemented, by utilizing “gathering node animals”.

2. While lowering the price of cloth would certainly help to balance the prices themselves, it still doesn’t get rid of the imbalance that I suggest is in place where all armors need damask, but light armor and medium doesn’t need deldrimor steel, etc. To counter that imbalance I suggest rebalancing of the material requirements for the different armors.
The main reason why all armors require such a huge amount of Damask is without doubt the insignias. The different parts of the armor (padding, lining, plating etc) seems fairly ok in terms of material requirements. But the only way to get insignias is with cloth.
Make armorsmithing require deldrimor metal for insignias, leathercrafting require elonian leather for insignias and tailoring require damask for insignias.
The problem is then sovled and the prices will balance out with time.

cloth crafters would likely still be screwed, and leather would likely still be cheap. Youd also increase the minimum time to craft. (though not as much as now definately)
let insignias be craftable by any armor proffession using any material, and you solve the issue similarly, cloth will likely still be more expensive, but not as drastically. leather will likely rise in value. Time to craft will be similar for each, and overall more adjustable.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

I was referring to the ascended only recipes for metal and leather T7 refinement to require 300 materials. This will negate the argument that it’s unfair that non-light armor players need less materials. The only argument that would remain is the differences in acquisition which would mainly be the differences in obtaining cloth/leather vs ore.

this would balance it, but i dont think the 300 material thing is actually a good daily requirement. requires about 2-3 hours of effort just for that 1 material, keep in mind these all require more materials/resources elsewhere, putting your total time investment in ascended armor per day, at like 4 hours or more. over 36 days. thats 144 hours
assuming the average player gets in 12 hours a week, thats 12 weeks. 2-3 months for a modest increase is discouraging for players.

I believe we need some new item sinks that give t5 and t6 armor materials more consistent, and long term value, but are not required for maximum vertical power. Using the concept of legendary weapons, which have equalized the values of mithril and elder wood (to be at least above vendor) but provide a non essential horizontal progression.

new item sink.
legendary armor upgrade item.

• upgrades ascended armor to legendary status (stat switchable)
• provides a modest particle effect when you have a full set.
• obtained by
  • via mystic forge with rare armors and exotic armors
    • weighed perhaps more heavily to exotics than precursors, t6 mats going up increases the value of t5 mats indirectly, while keeping the heirarchy pure
    • like precursors, but with higher rates (since you need like 6 of them)
  • OR (two methods, ones a gamble, one is guaranteed, but requires more investment on average, maybe 3x as much)
  • via npc that appears in stone mist castle, and in PVE at end of dynamic event chain, and in aetherpath after clear and some bonus objective is done.
  • The npc asks for
    • 6 damask and 500 bolts of gossamer
    • or
    • 6 elonian and 500 hardened leather
    • or
    • 6 mithrillium and 500 orichalcum.

The numbers are just thrown in there, but i would caution against going too crazy, keep in mind you need 6 of these, and you would have already had to invest in acsended.

• I would, as this is released lower the requirements for damask, because silk will get sunk from being destroyed in the mystic forge, or being promoted en mass to create gossamer for the direct recipe. This allows one to roughly unify the effort for ascended, without fearing price drops.

• people can use any of the basic materials to get a universal upgrade, this will bring the values closer together, but not exactly even.

this would increase the desirability of ascended armor, and make ascended armor a step on the way to fully unlocking your class

increase the value of t6 mats, and also t5 mats value from possible promotion.

this would be a horizontal progression, rather than a vertical progression.

possible issues

• may explode the t6 basic mats price
• may decrease the desire for specific stat fine materials (but this should take awhile, so would you be kitten while you work on ascended, and the legendary upgrade for months?

to solve the possible t5 explositon
create direct renewable means of getting t5 materials at a bit better than your average farm, (300 in 2.5 hours) but thats the only(or main) thing you benefit as you are doing the activity. (it should definately require active participation) perhaps a dynamic event based minigame in cities.

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

maddoctor.2738:

tekfan.3179:

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

The base-price also includes the crystalline dust, the common amount of Spools of Gossamer Thread and the Thermocatalytic Reagents for Vision and Lesser Vision Crystals.

But yes, excluding the base-price, you pay the following:

Light: 260,724
Medium:118,524
Heavy: 163,634

Using your data

Weapon: 63.336-74.736 gold.
Average 69.036, taking into account 1 2-handed, and both offhand and mainhand versions of weapons for the list below (so an Elementalist needs 2 daggers).

Armor:
Light: 608.016 gold
Medium: 465.816 gold
Heavy: 510.926 gold

Scholar
Elementalist: 6*69.036 + 608.016 = 1022.232
Mesmer: 10*69.036 + 608.016 = 1298.376
Necromancer: 9*69.036 + 608.016 = 1229.34

Adventurer
Engineer: 5*69.036 + 465.816 = 810.996
Ranger: 11*69.036 + 465.816 = 1225.212
Thief: 8*69.036 + 465.816 = 1018.104

Soldier
Guardian: 11*69.036 + 510.926 = 1270.322
Warrior: 14*69.036 + 510.926 = 1477.43

With all the above, to get a full Ascended Weapon/Armor set, including dual weapons:
Warrior: 1477.43g
Mesmer: 1298.376g
Guardian: 1270.322g
Necromancer: 1229.34g
Ranger: 1225.212g
Elementalist: 1022.232g
Thief: 1018.104g
Engineer: 810.996

Tough luck for Mesmers! The sheer amount of weapons available to Warriors explode them to first position. No surprise the Engineer is at the bottom of the list.

comparing every possible combination of weapons is interesting, but not useful, because having more weapons is not a quantifiable balance.

armor and full weapon slots. A warrior with 14 ascended weapons has no more power than a warrior with 2 ascended. He has more options out of combat, but that becomes impossible to properly compare in value.

however, we can directly compare the difference in power between a mesmer with exotic armor, and a mesmer with ascended armor. we can say a mesmer without ascended armor may be at 9500/10000 power, and a warrior with full ascended is at 10000/10000 power.
and getting that difference costs more on some classses than others

a difference in power definately exists and it cost to progress is very different per armor weight

runeblade.7514:

pdavis.8031:

runeblade:

Ok I’ll concede that not joining guild groups will increase your chances of not getting kicked. However I don’t want to scare off or preclude people from learning and using the LFG, which is why it’s not included. Some guild groups are good peoples, others not so much. But you are going to find good people, and kittens in every aspect of the game regardless of what you are doing.

Use the LFG, join with others doing dungeons. It’s a fun and rewarding experience. You may just meet some really cool people. But if you are starting out, just make sure you’ve done your homework, and don’t expect anyone to carry you.

Information is still information.

If you don’t want to scare off people, then include it. Leaving and finding another dungeon party takes about 10 seconds. Plus the newbies can waste time doing stuff while waiting. Getting kicked at the end of the run is the quickest way to not care about dungeons anymore. Its better off that the newbie leave early so he doesn’t waste his time because of toxic guild members.

I don’t know about you, but I rather waste 10 seconds finding another dungeon party than waste 40 minutes doing a dungeon path only to be kicked at the end.

i have no emperical numbers, but i find it hard to believe that the vast majority of people in guilds would kick pug player they asked for, for no reason. Perhaps im just a crazy idealist

the other thing when you are talking about parity within teirs.
scale has a big factor on whats acceptable.
lets say a hamburger costs 3 dollars, and turkey burger costs 5 dollars.

people dont care much, because even though it costs 66% more for turkey burger, in terms of effort to get, they both feel the same. for a minimum wage guy, its a difference of 20 minutes of work versus 35 minutes, no big deal. The turkey lover only feels slightly persecuted.

but when you magnify that situation, people will react differently.

lets say the purple car costs 3000 dollars, and the red car costs 5000 dollars. Now you are talking about a large difference in investment. Now, add to that that one guy is not allowed to buy a purple car, and you get a problem.

TLDR small scale differences will generally be acceptable, but when these changes are magnified, it causes discomfort

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium. Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

You assume that absolute parity is required inside of tiers, I don’t necessarily agree.

You dont have to micro manage all the time, but somebody has to do it sometimes. Unfortunately the game cannot simulate the opportunity created by a design that isnt quite hitting the mark.(to make a better design for profit) Which one way that real economies get micromanaged.

as far as parity within teirs, it doesnt have to be the case, but the lack of parity should not be manufactured. It would be one thing, if there was simply more cloth users, and they wanted cloth more, its a different thing when the system is designed to require more effort, and the items designed to cost more.

the price of damask is not a natural development of a balanced system, it is the natural development of an unbalanced system.

1)it requires directly more effort to create damask. twice as many items with a similar drop rate
2)damask is designed to have a higher demand.
3)silk production is extremely time ineffecient.

See, it would have been fine if there wasnt parity, and this was a cosmetic thing, but this is Best in slot, its not cosmetic, its actual progression for a charachter, this type of thing has to be a lot more balanced, or people tend to get upset

Aidan Savage.2078:

Shiyo.3578:

None of that matters, why does damask STILL take 100 bolts of silk and the other ascended mats take 50 of their material? It made sense when silk scraps were worth nothing, it doesn’t anymore. Damask is basically 4x the price of every other ascended mat.

Because anet cannot, and should not be changin recipes willy-nilly just because a handful of people take issue with it. If they did, this game would have been a clusterkitten within a month.

John Smith.4610:

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

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

Worse, definitely far worse. Places like Silverwastes was a good step, and balance, in the direction of price management. Unfortunately, it’s an issue when such methods also bring in an influx of other items. That can cause a price drop across the board, leaving earnings and expenditures basically the same as they were before, or worse.

Additionally, tinkering with recipes is also undesirable, in either direction. Yes, it reduces the silk needs, but it also crashes the cost of silk. Silk costing a couple silver IS a good thing. It actually has value. Leather? I get more value out of vendoring it than I do putting it up on the trade post. Mithril I get value out of by turning it into weapon inscriptions.

All in all, I think one of the better “solutions” offered so far, was the material-specific AND craft specific insignias. This would allow deldrimor ingots to be used in a heavy armor, leather insignia in medium, same with cloth. Also while preventing a massive influx of cheap insignias for all armor thanks to the currently dirt cheap leather prices.

they change recipes all whenever they wish, silk is an example, it went from 2 silk to 3 silk. They also create recipes when they want.

the problem with making it craft specific, is you still have cloth sucking.

John Smith.4610:

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

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

depends what you mean by slowly

but if you mean something like 5-10 scraps a day, no that wouldnt really change much regarding how obtaining silk feels with regards to crafting ascended

This isnt really just about silks base price, its about its price compared to other t5 materials/t6 materials and a general imbalance in the amount of work it takes to craft damask as well as an imbalance in the amount of work it takes to make cloth ascended versus other ascendeds.

The reason silks price feels so bad is because you need so much of it, and so much of it compared to other similar uses in other recipes. If you didnt need 300 silk per day people probably wouldnt care too much.

The issue is the price/cost/time of obtaining silk for ascended crafting specifically because it is unbalanced compared to other ascended crafts, and the recipes treat them as if they should be equal in value.

Rauderi.8706:

phys.7689:

yes clothcraft has always been a fairly bad proposition due to it being used for all armor recipes. then ascended takes the same bad formula and makes it worse by doubling the amount required.

Triple, actually. 2->3 scraps and 50->100 for one ascended grade material.
Triple. On top of being used for every armor class.
Which really makes me wonder if there could be an accurate model the scenario of returning silk to equate with the other recipes.

well for metal its triple, for leather its double

gricks.1897:

So I have been thinking of this for a while. I have seen the ability in other MMO’s, I really do not remember the one I played, where people could “hire” a crafter to create Soulbound weapons/armor for them.

Personally I love crafting the ascended items and weapons and I enjoy unlocking them. I know several of my friends do not like the crafting though. They really do not want to take the time, energy, and money (or simply do not have the time, energy, or money) to sink into ascended gear, but they love the skins.

I was wondering if this has ever been thought of, or discussed. The ability for people to “hire” a crafter to create soulbound/account bound items for them. I would love to craft ascended gear for my mates who enjoy the look, but do not have the time to create ascended gear.

i think its generally a pretty hard system to set up, though its a nice addition.