Over time doesn’t mean right now. And keeping a game alive, in light of the recent number with sales, doesn’t mean it’s dead. It means the game is not in a good place after the PvE content drought. My personal opinion about legendaries doesn’t equate into this discussion. I like to deal in facts and reason not in personal opinions and assumptions.
Given that I’m now repeating myself, and in light of a personal attack, I see no amount of reasoning is going to get through . . . and I’m not inclined to continue a debate with anyone more interested in personal attacks than logic.
You’re not getting your legendaries until the game is on more solid ground. They also said no expansions and no grinding for gear. Things change. If you feel so strongly about it, take it up with customer service.
Good luck.
the situation they are in now, is a direct result of the plan to place more emphasis on the expansion, as opposed to ongoing content. legendaries were the obvious aspect of this development shift, but its no coincidence there wasnt much content in a long time period.
looks like overall their plan is to reduce ongoing content, and prioritize the manufacture of expansions. I would expect very little meaty content outside of expansions in the future. the plan is essentially to get faster at expansions.
here is how I figure it … Anet could probably push the P2W even harder, as long as it doesn’t offer advantages in the competitive part of the game (WvW or sPVP). Will they lose a few people because of P2W in Gstore? Probably, but what kind of people are they? Likely people that have issues with the Gstore in the first place and not purchasing gems. i.e., not the most desirable players.
They might even gain players. I mean, who wouldn’t purchase a level 80 booster as an example? That’s pretty close to P2W, but it’s completely transparent if I buy one and use it …
i think the real point is it doesnt matter if its p2w, it only really matters how players feel about it.
That’s the thing though .. how do you know they saved money and didn’t use those resources to deliver more relevant content to a wider audience? You assumed they did it to save money; I think that’s a bad asumption.
Legendaries will not bankrupt the company but that doesn’t mean they should continue stupidly developing that kind of content if there are better things to develop that add more value for a wider audience of players. Looks to me like you should also read up on opportunity cost and Return on Investment. You will never get away from considering decisions a company makes about their products and services without considering these kinds of concepts. These are concepts your arguments (and most other people’s) ignore.
they did it to save money because they could have done both, by spending more money.
opportunity costs assesses value based on whats best for anet’s profit, not the consumer. also opportunity costs rarely reflect the integrity of the product, and are only tangential to what is legal. there also many opportunity costs that are hard to quantify correctly, and must be mostly guessed at, or approximated.
also you and others are ignoring that they already sold people the product, its not a question of whats best, but more a question of weather you do, or dont meet your obligations.
its up to the consumer to decide weather they are willing to renegotiate an agreement, not the developers opinion on what the consumer really wants. if they offered refunds that didnt damage your product, it would be less of an issue.
basically once you advertise and accept money for a product, you are responsible to meet the terms.
however law and what actually happens is different, because its not worth the hassle to sue for 50.00, at best you can probably get 50.00 dollars back.
so it really just comes down to whats important to each consumer.
the consumers complaining, are correct, however, anet is more concerned with the next expansions content level, and their operating costs, rather what they delivered on the last product they sold.
Guild wars 2: where you can buy gold directly from the publisher and the fans will gut you for saying its paying to win. Lol.
At this point im juts gonna go ahead and say screw it, you’re wrong. It is 100% paying to win regardless of others opinions.
At this point, I’m just going to thank every single person that takes advantage of GW2’s ‘massive’ P2W opportunities so I can continue to play without paying a monthly fee.
GO WIN!!!
you are correct here, ultimately this monetization plan works because non p2x people feel that its worth whatever annoyances or imbalances may occur, and p2x people feel that its worth it to get whatever advantages/special things real cash offers.
its far from the worst example, and probably one of the better monetization strats if you dont want to pay monthly.
monthly payments are being offered less and less though, because its less profitable, so this is how things will roll, until there is a paradigm shift.
Linken, The Heart of Thorns expansion is completed. Maybe not to your satisfaction, but shipped as complete nonetheless. The current team is working on the next expansion (i.e. PvE content). You are asking for that team to stop working on PvE to return to legendary weapons.
That’s not going to happen in the near future for reason I’ve already gone into.
The continued life of the game is more important than any item whether promised or otherwise. If the game is dead, legendary items are moot. Not saying I like that certain ‘promises’ were not kept, but I am also fully aware of the bigger picture.
And, once again, that does not mean legendaries are gone forever. It means they are on hiatus until the game is once again in a comfortable place, as far as numbers, in the near future.
Meaning: it’s making money.
the premise that the game would die with 6 people working on legendaries is not based on anything.
Even MO never claimed the game will die without those devs working on the expansion.
also you miss his point, the legendaries are not simply some extra. they are part of the last product, you and the developers are acting like hot is over, but it hasnt been delivered as advertised.
his point is that anet is reneging on the last product they sold, supposedly to improve the next product they want to sell.
the only way your reasoning makes sense is if you assume
1) delivering on legendaries will bankrupt the company
2) if the company doesnt go bankrupt, they will later deliver on what they sold you at no new cos
neither of which is likely.
1) because even though earnings are down, a 1 million investment(hiring more developers) over the next 2 years, would not come close to breaking their backs
2) because last time they were in the same situation, they chose to develop legendaries as part of HOT, in order to enrich their new product, rather than include them in the old product they already sold.
from anet’s best for business side, the question is, is the loss of integrity going to negatively impact earnings more than the cost of hiring 6 additional devs for 2 years.
from the consumer side, its weather the loss of trust in the developer will change the percieved value of the product. or more simply, do you feel comfortable doing business with these guys.
i personally think the loss is greater than their money saved, especially outside of box sales.
If your definition of “pay to win” includes anything beyond “can pay real money for a stat advantage over others, thus giving those who pay the ability to win regardless of their skill level”, then your definition is a personal one based on an opinion and cannot be used in a rational discussion.
It is important that clearly defined phrases remain clearly defined. Attempting to misappropriate an unpleasant label that means one thing onto something else so that you can misapply the unpleasantness to the new thing is intellectually dishonest.
problem is that is not what most definitions say. many include being able to buy top teir gear, regardless of weather its possible to earn in game. it is not, and has never been clearly defined in the way that you claim.
one of the most basic p2w methods has been to allow people to buy power others have to spend time grinding to achieve.
As much as I dislike the turn this thread took, let me ask this: What do you want ANet to do? ‘Indefinitely suspended’ means it’s suspended until the authority over it decides otherwise.
That doesn’t mean forever. It mean it’s suspended until another criteria is met and fulfilled. Given the recent numbers on another thread, it was absolutely prudent that ANet did what it did until Living World and the upcoming expansion is out sooner than later.
The game is not in a good place now. The content drought proved this out. To complain about legendaries, even with all the opinions provided, is like complaining about not getting a nice table when you’re starving to death.
Can we please at least be rational?
you are actually wrong, in saying it was the right business descion.
how well your next expansion does is going to have a lot to do with how you fulfilled your last expansion.
many people in discussing the last expansion’s worth, said its not just whats in the box, its what they will add in the future.
a content drought, 25% the legendaries they promised, late on a number of things, does not help sell a new expansion.
many people feel they should have delivered on their public statements, even if that lowered their short term profits (like hiring 6 new developers), which costs about 1 million over the course of 2 years, at average salary.
seeing as how the game makes 60-100 million a year, and hot boosted earnings by 20 million over two quarters, its a reasonable cost to maintain consumer trust.
that ship has sailed at this point, its best to just realize anet really doesnt believe in deciding the future of their game, they want you to buy what exists now, not invest in the future. this is why MO doesnt want to talk about game plans, he has no real commitment to any specific plans.
this is different than what people are used to, disney already told us to expect at least 4 more star wars movies, netflix told us two years ago they would have 4 more marvel series. capcom told us which 4 chars to expect 6 months after release.
but its just not the reality of the gw2 product
He won without paying. That exactly makes it not pay to win.
paying in order to win doesnt exclude winning by other means
did i pay to win a fight, if i pay someone to take a dive?
does the fact that someone else really beat him change the fact that i paid to win?
There’s really no point in this thread. Some people don’t understand what a real p2w game is. They probably never played one. At the end of the day you won’t change their ignorance. Maybe someday they will play one and realize how off they were. But no big deal if they want to go through life thinking gw2 is p2w
this is a false idea, just because there are worse examples of something doesnt negate things.
you think you can win in gw2. YOU CANT WIN IN GW2 THERE IS NO WINNING. you made this thread to try and find comfort from others agreeing with you. oh noes you cant get a legendary in 1 day how dare they. legendary’s provide no advantage. even wow sells currency in their cash shop which you can turn into gold and pay2win. thats the biggest mmo on the market. every mmo copys them. so every mmo is pay2win according to you.
if wow is p2w it is p2w. not all mmos sell currency.
legendaries do provide an advantage, they are top teir gear with stat switching capabilities, i have used it again and again. it gives me an advantage over exotics, and even ascended.but i am including ascended because it is of signifigant time and effort to obtain a full set.
winning in game is not only defined as beating another player.
im not talking about weather p2w is popular, or evil, im talking about if it exists in this game
took me a week to farm everything needed for a ascended weapon. “significant” LOL
a weapon is 1/12 of what you need to be max stat so yeah, 12 weeks to catch up is pretty signifigant for a lot of players.
even though due to overlap, id say if you know what you are doing and play 3 hours a day, you can probably cut it to 5-6 weeks, which is pretty signifigant for a lot of people.
Except that without a gear treadmill it hardly matters. Also, the longer something takes to get the less difference it makes statwise. It’s fast and easy to get trinkets which are largely free and can’t be bought at all.
It’s takes a bit longer ot make weapons. It takes a lot longer to make armor but armor gives you the smallest buff over all.
And, unlike most games, you get it once, and you have it. You don’t have to get a new set every six months.
wether a cost is up front or recurring doesnt change the cost. 5-6 weeks of 3 hours a day is not considered a small investment for most people.
many would actually prefer the recurring over the up front (credit)
anyhow point is you can get to this games end goals, through long term time spent, or you can pay and advance straight to the end, and compete, or cooperate at the same level, with people who spent an extra few hundred hours playing than you have.
but that option is only available for those who pay.
But you don’t need to pay to do that content. That’s the point. You can do that content without paying, or getting ascended gear and you can get ascended gear without paying.
Saying that you can’t do raids with say just ascended jewelry (which you can) is false. P2W had a definition for years. This wasn’kitten
By your definition Guild Wars 1 was pay to win as well, since each expansion gave access to different skills, or even entire professions that weren’t available to people who didn’t have that expansion.
not sure why you keep putting expansion as p2w up, i have never claimed it was. p2w has included paying for power that can be earned through great effort for a long time. it isnt some new thing
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pay-to-win dated 2011
etc, most definitions of p2w dont exclude things just because it can be gotten in game.
also there is no universal or original accepted definition of p2w, its a word only created in recent times to describe certain game designs.
most discussions i see include buying top teir gear for real money as p2w.
Like “Grind”, “Pay to Win”’s definition is in the eye of the beholder.
and as murky as each concept is, its extremely important for mmos/f2ps to understand the concepts enough to find the right balance of these two elements
There’s really no point in this thread. Some people don’t understand what a real p2w game is. They probably never played one. At the end of the day you won’t change their ignorance. Maybe someday they will play one and realize how off they were. But no big deal if they want to go through life thinking gw2 is p2w
this is a false idea, just because there are worse examples of something doesnt negate things.
you think you can win in gw2. YOU CANT WIN IN GW2 THERE IS NO WINNING. you made this thread to try and find comfort from others agreeing with you. oh noes you cant get a legendary in 1 day how dare they. legendary’s provide no advantage. even wow sells currency in their cash shop which you can turn into gold and pay2win. thats the biggest mmo on the market. every mmo copys them. so every mmo is pay2win according to you.
if wow is p2w it is p2w. not all mmos sell currency.
legendaries do provide an advantage, they are top teir gear with stat switching capabilities, i have used it again and again. it gives me an advantage over exotics, and even ascended.but i am including ascended because it is of signifigant time and effort to obtain a full set.
winning in game is not only defined as beating another player.
im not talking about weather p2w is popular, or evil, im talking about if it exists in this game
took me a week to farm everything needed for a ascended weapon. “significant” LOL
a weapon is 1/12 of what you need to be max stat so yeah, 12 weeks to catch up is pretty signifigant for a lot of players.
even though due to overlap, id say if you know what you are doing and play 3 hours a day, you can probably cut it to 5-6 weeks, which is pretty signifigant for a lot of people.
Except that without a gear treadmill it hardly matters. Also, the longer something takes to get the less difference it makes statwise. It’s fast and easy to get trinkets which are largely free and can’t be bought at all.
It’s takes a bit longer ot make weapons. It takes a lot longer to make armor but armor gives you the smallest buff over all.
And, unlike most games, you get it once, and you have it. You don’t have to get a new set every six months.
wether a cost is up front or recurring doesnt change the cost. 5-6 weeks of 3 hours a day is not considered a small investment for most people.
many would actually prefer the recurring over the up front (credit)
anyhow point is you can get to this games end goals, through long term time spent, or you can pay and advance straight to the end, and compete, or cooperate at the same level, with people who spent an extra few hundred hours playing than you have.
but that option is only available for those who pay.
There’s really no point in this thread. Some people don’t understand what a real p2w game is. They probably never played one. At the end of the day you won’t change their ignorance. Maybe someday they will play one and realize how off they were. But no big deal if they want to go through life thinking gw2 is p2w
this is a false idea, just because there are worse examples of something doesnt negate things.
But changing the definition of something does negate things. You can’t go back two years and find anyone calling any MMO expansion a pay to win situation, because MMO expansions are simply not considered pay to win. They all make you more powerful. They all give you some kind of advantage other than just more content and no one called the pay to win.
i never said expansions are pay2win, but thats an entirely new discussion, because the nature of monetization has changed.
back in the day there were few free games that were designed to make money. it was understood you were always going to have to buy games. for many today this is no longer assumed to be true.
the reality is nothing is really “free” and at some point money is going to come into the equation.
pay to win is most likely going to be in any long term game without a subscription(and some with subscriptions) because people tend to be willing to pay for things that increase value. The simplest way to give value in any game is to increase your liklihood of winning.as far as f2p goes, its becoming not a question of p2w, but more a question of how much p2w can exist while still making the game profitable.
People’s assumptions may have changed. But that doesn’t change the original definition of what pay to win means. Pay to win had a meaning. You could buy power for cash in the cash shop. That’s just not true here. You can’t make it easier to get power, but you can’t buy power.
And you can get all the same stuff by playing in game.
The problem is the original words pay to win had a definition that comes with an implication. You can change the definition but if you can’t get rid of the implication than comes with it, you’re maligning a company for no reason.
Since it never included expansions, if you decide to include them now you pretty much have to include everyone and that means every MMORPG is pay to win. If that’s the case the original value of the words is gone.
It was designed to let people know this game is not a legitimate product because you’d get some sort of competitive edge from paying cash that you couldn’t earn in game.
pay to win always meant, winning the game. which means its going to be different as applied to different games.
for mmos, winning is generally considered to reach peak level strength, and be able to complete endgame actvities efficiently.
most peoples bad examples of p2w are not about beating another player, they are about how much easier it is complete whatever the games main goals are by paying money.
you are saying gw2 isnt that bad because you can attain the same level of power as people who spend without excessive effort.
thats an argument of degree, not an argument of nature.
or are you saying that as long as it is in anyway possible to obtain something without paying then it cant be p2w.
because that is a cheesy out that makes the p2w term useless for describing the concept it was meant to describe.
if 1/10000 players can find godsword, its no longer p2w when its in the cash shop? may as well throw out the term then
There’s really no point in this thread. Some people don’t understand what a real p2w game is. They probably never played one. At the end of the day you won’t change their ignorance. Maybe someday they will play one and realize how off they were. But no big deal if they want to go through life thinking gw2 is p2w
this is a false idea, just because there are worse examples of something doesnt negate things.
you think you can win in gw2. YOU CANT WIN IN GW2 THERE IS NO WINNING. you made this thread to try and find comfort from others agreeing with you. oh noes you cant get a legendary in 1 day how dare they. legendary’s provide no advantage. even wow sells currency in their cash shop which you can turn into gold and pay2win. thats the biggest mmo on the market. every mmo copys them. so every mmo is pay2win according to you.
if wow is p2w it is p2w. not all mmos sell currency.
legendaries do provide an advantage, they are top teir gear with stat switching capabilities, i have used it again and again. it gives me an advantage over exotics, and even ascended.but i am including ascended because it is of signifigant time and effort to obtain a full set.
winning in game is not only defined as beating another player.
im not talking about weather p2w is popular, or evil, im talking about if it exists in this game
took me a week to farm everything needed for a ascended weapon. “significant” LOL
a weapon is 1/12 of what you need to be max stat so yeah, 12 weeks to catch up is pretty signifigant for a lot of players.
even though due to overlap, id say if you know what you are doing and play 3 hours a day, you can probably cut it to 5-6 weeks, which is pretty signifigant for a lot of people.
long and short of it is, you cant trust anet to deliver on what they say. this means when trying to figure out if the product is worth it to you, go primarly on what you ve seen in the past, and on the present.
nothing they say regarding future plans really means muchThe long and short of it is, Anet has promised hundreds of things and didn’t deliver on a small handful. You should judge everyone you know that way.
It’s a matter of focus.
They also delivered a bunch of stuff I didn’t know about that I really liked.
I’d say, over all, they delivered more than I was expecting, not less.
they were late with tons of things, under delivered on many, and changed their minds on many things.
im not saying they had no reasons, but as far as developers go, they are not top of the list on intentions and what they deliver.basically, if anet says this is what to expect, take it with a grain of salt. even if they deliver on 80% of what they say, there is still a substantial chance that it may not come to pass. this doesnt mean they should say nothing, just that you got to realize who you are dealing with.
following through on ideas, or schedules is not high on anets priority, their priority is doing whatever they feel is most important in that moment.
there are some people who will show up to a concert in the rain because they said they would, there are others who will cancel because they think concerts in the rain suck for all involved.
like you said, you start to know what to expect when you deal with people after a time, you know who is the former and who is the latter.
Except that the percentage is probably closer to 95% not 80%. If you list everything Anet has EVER said, and you take away what they haven’t delivered it’s a very low percentage.
its actually noticeably larger if you combine
undelivered/changed/exagerrated, which is what most people consider when they weigh someones trustworthyness.
There’s really no point in this thread. Some people don’t understand what a real p2w game is. They probably never played one. At the end of the day you won’t change their ignorance. Maybe someday they will play one and realize how off they were. But no big deal if they want to go through life thinking gw2 is p2w
this is a false idea, just because there are worse examples of something doesnt negate things.
But changing the definition of something does negate things. You can’t go back two years and find anyone calling any MMO expansion a pay to win situation, because MMO expansions are simply not considered pay to win. They all make you more powerful. They all give you some kind of advantage other than just more content and no one called the pay to win.
i never said expansions are pay2win, but thats an entirely new discussion, because the nature of monetization has changed.
back in the day there were few free games that were designed to make money. it was understood you were always going to have to buy games. for many today this is no longer assumed to be true.
the reality is nothing is really “free” and at some point money is going to come into the equation.
pay to win is most likely going to be in any long term game without a subscription(and some with subscriptions) because people tend to be willing to pay for things that increase value. The simplest way to give value in any game is to increase your liklihood of winning.
as far as f2p goes, its becoming not a question of p2w, but more a question of how much p2w can exist while still making the game profitable.
There’s really no point in this thread. Some people don’t understand what a real p2w game is. They probably never played one. At the end of the day you won’t change their ignorance. Maybe someday they will play one and realize how off they were. But no big deal if they want to go through life thinking gw2 is p2w
this is a false idea, just because there are worse examples of something doesnt negate things.
you think you can win in gw2. YOU CANT WIN IN GW2 THERE IS NO WINNING. you made this thread to try and find comfort from others agreeing with you. oh noes you cant get a legendary in 1 day how dare they. legendary’s provide no advantage. even wow sells currency in their cash shop which you can turn into gold and pay2win. thats the biggest mmo on the market. every mmo copys them. so every mmo is pay2win according to you.
if wow is p2w it is p2w. not all mmos sell currency.
legendaries do provide an advantage, they are top teir gear with stat switching capabilities, i have used it again and again. it gives me an advantage over exotics, and even ascended.
but i am including ascended because it is of signifigant time and effort to obtain a full set.
winning in game is not only defined as beating another player.
im not talking about weather p2w is popular, or evil, im talking about if it exists in this game
Wow, you could almost come to the conclusion that Anet is your average game development group; nothing here is differentiating them from any other game dev. How terrible ><
this is not my experience with other developers. most that i remember tend to follow through with publicized plans. also most developers wont stray far from their initial game plans. love it or hate it, anet doesnt believe that staying the course is valuable. they prefer to be open to redesign.
it has its strengths and weakness, knowing what the future holds for the game is not one of them.
many other games are very predictable, and deliver on what they promote.
There’s really no point in this thread. Some people don’t understand what a real p2w game is. They probably never played one. At the end of the day you won’t change their ignorance. Maybe someday they will play one and realize how off they were. But no big deal if they want to go through life thinking gw2 is p2w
this is a false idea, just because there are worse examples of something doesnt negate things.
long and short of it is, you cant trust anet to deliver on what they say. this means when trying to figure out if the product is worth it to you, go primarly on what you ve seen in the past, and on the present.
nothing they say regarding future plans really means muchThe long and short of it is, Anet has promised hundreds of things and didn’t deliver on a small handful. You should judge everyone you know that way.
It’s a matter of focus.
They also delivered a bunch of stuff I didn’t know about that I really liked.
I’d say, over all, they delivered more than I was expecting, not less.
they were late with tons of things, under delivered on many, and changed their minds on many things.
im not saying they had no reasons, but as far as developers go, they are not top of the list on intentions and what they deliver.
basically, if anet says this is what to expect, take it with a grain of salt. even if they deliver on 80% of what they say, there is still a substantial chance that it may not come to pass. this doesnt mean they should say nothing, just that you got to realize who you are dealing with.
following through on ideas, or schedules is not high on anets priority, their priority is doing whatever they feel is most important in that moment.
there are some people who will show up to a concert in the rain because they said they would, there are others who will cancel because they think concerts in the rain suck for all involved.
like you said, you start to know what to expect when you deal with people after a time, you know who is the former and who is the latter.
long and short of it is, you cant trust anet to deliver on what they say. this means when trying to figure out if the product is worth it to you, go primarly on what you ve seen in the past, and on the present.
nothing they say regarding future plans really means much
Guild wars 2 is pay to win, however it is pay to win done stealthy.
The comparison is what you can do with a free account and what you can do with heart of thorns. While most of the options are purely cosmetic there is one big thing that pushes gw2 over the threshold of pay to win. Elite Specializations.
Pretty much every Elite Specialization is a direct upgrade of the class. so much so that if you are playing pvp you must have a elite specialization equipped or be at a disadvantage.
Go take a look at meta battle. Nearly every build that is considered “meta” (or what you should be using) is an elite specialization.
Truthfully Elite specializations should have been available to everyone, or better yet been balanced so they weren’t such a must have.
Every MMO has expansions. Every MMO raises the level cap. Every MMO adds power to expanded characters. By your definition, every single MMO is pay to win. Even Guild Wars 1 was pay to win by those standards.
The term pay to win wasn’t coined for you to complain about having to buy an expansion. The term pay to win was talking about continually having to pay money to the cash shop to stay relevant in the game.
It was how you separated WoW (and other legitimate games) from Maple Story (and other truly P2W) games.
If your personal definition of pay to win includes all MMORPGs, then I can’t see the value in using the term at all.
p2w has never had anything to do with having to pay to stay relevant. p2w most often is when paying provides you with top teir power considerably quicker than by playing normally.
which basically means gw2 became p2w with introduction of ascended, and legendary stat swap, for the average player.
building full ascended without gold requires multiple hours a day of farming for like 6 weeks.
power leveling crafting and buying the pieces takes like 3 hours with gold.however, its not end of the world grind to get ascended, but yea real cash allows you to go straight pass the last grindy power teir.
but the game was always clear they would allow people to use money to get around thier time based power progression, its just that the progression got a lot greater as time went on.
initially, they could only get exp faster than you, and buy easily obtainable gear faster, that changed.
You are wrong in your statment that ptw is getting to the top faster.
Pay to win is getting stuff thats 5, 10, 20% higher then whats in the game normaly.
if you really believe this than your p2w definition misses many of the most agregious offenders.
the vast majority of cash shop games do not sell unique power boosts, they sell things that are a lot harder to get through normal play.
rare drops, endgame armor, experience or level boosts.one of the main arguments against p2w games is they make unreasonable goals/systems, so they can sell people ways to get around it.
if you want to define p2w some other way you arent really saying anything, because its pretty easy to make an item drop at .0001 rate and magically by your definition make the game not pay to win, which is the model many p2w games use.
If people want to pay to not play the game Im fine with that, thats what most of this pay to progress faster to then end is imo.
And then please tell me what are this drop that only drop 0.000000001 and give you a advantage over other players in this game?
Because I havent seen it in over 5000 hours in said game
precursors, i havent gotten one from monster/chest in 3000? hours
ascended drops, i think i have gotten 4 in that time.
if you try to get either precursors/legendaries or ascended in other ways, you are looking at 100s of hours of work, which you can skip by paying.
you play a lot, so you see it as no big deal, but someone who wants to try raids, or fractals, or have the top teir gear in wvw, or open world, who doesnt have 100s of hours to grind sees it differently.
i will say that gw2 is far from the worst offender in this f2p model, and in f2p its not likely to find many games that arent some degree of pay2win. but lets not lie to ourselves and claim that real money doesnt buy you power in this game.
the truth is most people are ok with limited p2w, if it saves them on fees, and is not insurmountable given their playtimes. (if they care about top stats)
Earlier in the thread I linked to an MMOGAMES article on 5 tiers of Pay to Win. I’ll summarize them here.
- Convenience Items – these include boosters, inventory slots and the like. Even the author acknowledges that most players don’t see this as Pay to Win. For GW2, most players consider these items as either way overpriced for convenience, like the perma-gathering tools, salvage kits, gathering nodes or the passes to hubs like the airship; or they are worthless drops from BLC like boosters, express contacts, revive orbs. Only a few like bank, bag and collection slots are popular convenience items.
- Subscriptions – Since GW2 doesn’t have these this doesn’t apply to us. Many so called F2P games offer subscriptions but under the name Gold tier or VIP.
- Content Check – Many F2P games lock off content from it’s F2P players, offering access as a perk to their “not a subscription” VIP tier or as a one time fee just like a paid expansion in a non-F2P game as ours. Of course this means WoW is also “Pay to Win” and pretty much any MMO that ever sells expansions, like GW2.
- Buying Gold – Well can’t deny we don’t have this but as I stated earlier that as long as RMT companies exist, a player can buy in game currency in every popular MMO, at risk and any game officially offering this simply wants a cut of the money players are already spending with the lure being risk free but at a lower exchange rate. In GW2 gold can be often used to short cut time-gated material crafting as well as acquiring ultra rare (tiny supply/huge demand) items like precursors, legendaries, limited available minis, etc.
- Purchased Power – direct selling of more powerful gear that can only be acquired with cash. GW2 doesn’t have this. This is what most players think of when the phrase “Pay to Win” is tossed around.
Let the nitpicking begin.
you can never judge a game system and design from the aspect of illegal or things that break the rules of the game.
that would be like saying basketball is ultra violent because people in prison shank people while playing.
im not sayng gw2 is the worst example of p2w, but it is a part of the game, intentionally so.
Guild wars 2 is pay to win, however it is pay to win done stealthy.
The comparison is what you can do with a free account and what you can do with heart of thorns. While most of the options are purely cosmetic there is one big thing that pushes gw2 over the threshold of pay to win. Elite Specializations.
Pretty much every Elite Specialization is a direct upgrade of the class. so much so that if you are playing pvp you must have a elite specialization equipped or be at a disadvantage.
Go take a look at meta battle. Nearly every build that is considered “meta” (or what you should be using) is an elite specialization.
Truthfully Elite specializations should have been available to everyone, or better yet been balanced so they weren’t such a must have.
Every MMO has expansions. Every MMO raises the level cap. Every MMO adds power to expanded characters. By your definition, every single MMO is pay to win. Even Guild Wars 1 was pay to win by those standards.
The term pay to win wasn’t coined for you to complain about having to buy an expansion. The term pay to win was talking about continually having to pay money to the cash shop to stay relevant in the game.
It was how you separated WoW (and other legitimate games) from Maple Story (and other truly P2W) games.
If your personal definition of pay to win includes all MMORPGs, then I can’t see the value in using the term at all.
p2w has never had anything to do with having to pay to stay relevant. p2w most often is when paying provides you with top teir power considerably quicker than by playing normally.
which basically means gw2 became p2w with introduction of ascended, and legendary stat swap, for the average player.
building full ascended without gold requires multiple hours a day of farming for like 6 weeks.
power leveling crafting and buying the pieces takes like 3 hours with gold.however, its not end of the world grind to get ascended, but yea real cash allows you to go straight pass the last grindy power teir.
but the game was always clear they would allow people to use money to get around thier time based power progression, its just that the progression got a lot greater as time went on.
initially, they could only get exp faster than you, and buy easily obtainable gear faster, that changed.
Guild Wars 2 isn’t pay to win, because anyone can get that stuff without taking out a credit card. Hell you can’t even buy ascended armor, weapons or trinkets.
Trinkets anyone can get through fractals, guild missions and laurels. Weapons and armor are crafted, or drops.
Even if you pay money you still have to play the game to get dragonite ore, empyreal fragments and bloodstone.
You have to get your crafting professions to 500.
It’s faster if you break out a credit card, but many of us farmed and had plenty of mats leading up to the release of weapons and armor.
I know I made all that stuff without breaking out my wallet and I had it pretty fast.
Not sure how you think that’s pay to win.
And by staying relevant I do mean buying the stuff you need to compete in end game content.
whether it is possible to earn in game is not relevant, most p2w games give you some method to earn things in game. if you are putting these games in a dif category, you miss some of worst examples, like buying raid level gear, super rare drops, etc.
Also the fact some minimal level of play is required, does not negate p2w, for example most of items sold in p2w shops have a level requirement, does it not become p2w since they had to level their charachters?
Guild wars 2 is pay to win, however it is pay to win done stealthy.
The comparison is what you can do with a free account and what you can do with heart of thorns. While most of the options are purely cosmetic there is one big thing that pushes gw2 over the threshold of pay to win. Elite Specializations.
Pretty much every Elite Specialization is a direct upgrade of the class. so much so that if you are playing pvp you must have a elite specialization equipped or be at a disadvantage.
Go take a look at meta battle. Nearly every build that is considered “meta” (or what you should be using) is an elite specialization.
Truthfully Elite specializations should have been available to everyone, or better yet been balanced so they weren’t such a must have.
Every MMO has expansions. Every MMO raises the level cap. Every MMO adds power to expanded characters. By your definition, every single MMO is pay to win. Even Guild Wars 1 was pay to win by those standards.
The term pay to win wasn’t coined for you to complain about having to buy an expansion. The term pay to win was talking about continually having to pay money to the cash shop to stay relevant in the game.
It was how you separated WoW (and other legitimate games) from Maple Story (and other truly P2W) games.
If your personal definition of pay to win includes all MMORPGs, then I can’t see the value in using the term at all.
p2w has never had anything to do with having to pay to stay relevant. p2w most often is when paying provides you with top teir power considerably quicker than by playing normally.
which basically means gw2 became p2w with introduction of ascended, and legendary stat swap, for the average player.
building full ascended without gold requires multiple hours a day of farming for like 6 weeks.
power leveling crafting and buying the pieces takes like 3 hours with gold.however, its not end of the world grind to get ascended, but yea real cash allows you to go straight pass the last grindy power teir.
but the game was always clear they would allow people to use money to get around thier time based power progression, its just that the progression got a lot greater as time went on.
initially, they could only get exp faster than you, and buy easily obtainable gear faster, that changed.
You are wrong in your statment that ptw is getting to the top faster.
Pay to win is getting stuff thats 5, 10, 20% higher then whats in the game normaly.
if you really believe this than your p2w definition misses many of the most agregious offenders.
the vast majority of cash shop games do not sell unique power boosts, they sell things that are a lot harder to get through normal play.
rare drops, endgame armor, experience or level boosts.
one of the main arguments against p2w games is they make unreasonable goals/systems, so they can sell people ways to get around it.
if you want to define p2w some other way you arent really saying anything, because its pretty easy to make an item drop at .0001 rate and magically by your definition make the game not pay to win, which is the model many p2w games use.
Guild wars 2 is pay to win, however it is pay to win done stealthy.
The comparison is what you can do with a free account and what you can do with heart of thorns. While most of the options are purely cosmetic there is one big thing that pushes gw2 over the threshold of pay to win. Elite Specializations.
Pretty much every Elite Specialization is a direct upgrade of the class. so much so that if you are playing pvp you must have a elite specialization equipped or be at a disadvantage.
Go take a look at meta battle. Nearly every build that is considered “meta” (or what you should be using) is an elite specialization.
Truthfully Elite specializations should have been available to everyone, or better yet been balanced so they weren’t such a must have.
Every MMO has expansions. Every MMO raises the level cap. Every MMO adds power to expanded characters. By your definition, every single MMO is pay to win. Even Guild Wars 1 was pay to win by those standards.
The term pay to win wasn’t coined for you to complain about having to buy an expansion. The term pay to win was talking about continually having to pay money to the cash shop to stay relevant in the game.
It was how you separated WoW (and other legitimate games) from Maple Story (and other truly P2W) games.
If your personal definition of pay to win includes all MMORPGs, then I can’t see the value in using the term at all.
p2w has never had anything to do with having to pay to stay relevant. p2w most often is when paying provides you with top teir power considerably quicker than by playing normally.
which basically means gw2 became p2w with introduction of ascended, and legendary stat swap, for the average player.
building full ascended without gold requires multiple hours a day of farming for like 6 weeks.
power leveling crafting and buying the pieces takes like 3 hours with gold.
however, its not end of the world grind to get ascended, but yea real cash allows you to go straight pass the last grindy power teir.
but the game was always clear they would allow people to use money to get around thier time based power progression, its just that the progression got a lot greater as time went on.
initially, they could only get exp faster than you, and buy easily obtainable gear faster, that changed.
Come on Vayne, you know I never said to DELETE HoT maps…..
Look the game had a bad quarter after a 9 month content drought. You can say all you want about the downturn due to people not liking the new stuff, but until we have more new stuff, there’s no real way to know that’s the case. Your assumptions are premature, at the very least. And that’s all they are…assumptions.
I’m guessing that there are some people that really don’t like the new zones. I’m also guessing there are some people who came back because of those new zones.
But you know, 9 months passes and if you don’t raid or PvP, you’re going to take a break again. And if you’re taking a break, you’re probably not spending much money in the gem store.
Before I get all doom and gloomy I’m going to wait to see what transpires. This is the only reasonable course of action I can see.
the trend isnt a one quarter trend though, this is the lowest earnings ever.
also part of the trend is based on the quarters previous to that, as compared with the intial two quarters of sales. they have lost a tremendous amount of people interested in paying for guild wars.
the point is, whatever they have been doing is leading to contracting sales, also you keep blaming the content drought like its a freak occurence. The content drought has been their problem for years. They simply cannot create content at a sustainable pace. The vast majority of content in this game was here 4 months after release.
the game started with a lot of content, and added small amounts at a slow rate. Right before this content drought they had another one leading up to hot, before that they had a much reduced living story, that amounted to two small maps and 5 hours of story in a year.
point is, if content drought is the problem, what in their past leads you to believe they are capable of increasing their output?
the game can only last so long based primarily on the initial release content.
i stopped playing a bit after Hot. which i thought was a solid expansion, if it costed 25-30 bucks.
i think the real main issue was that it became clear that gw2 would never expand in the way i would like.
while i enjoy challenging content, i dont enjoy finding people for 10 man content.
goals were too driven by gold earning
content was further and further apart, and less likely to be something i liked. Overall the entire story after release was not a story i found interesting. (mostly the story of the sylvari)
the promises they broke before the expansion, and their inability to deliver after the expansion
it just became really clear what you can expect from gw2, a company cnstantly reworking systems, (mostly to increase grind) while not building on anything they created, with a really slow unsatisfying content pipeline.
many had hoped they could do better if they had an expansion, but apparently they simply arent capable of putting out the quantity and type of content i would expect, no matter what plan they have.
oh yeah the thing about gem stores in games, that often fool developers, its not really the stuff in the gemstore that matters, its how engaged people are in the game. when people are happy and excited in game, they look for ways to enhance their experience. when they are not, they become tightfisted, and eventually quit.
The price is same as old legendary, I’m not sure why the game suddenly become Grindy. It always was grindy.
Because it cost as much as the most expensive legendaries used to AND you have to spend additional time getting all the other parts.
Yeah the game was grindy, and its getting worse and worse with time. 100 charged lodestones, might take you 200 coe runs. 4000 minutes. Or less if you start to get good at the paths by playing well you may get it to 2000
Orbs take you at best 5-6 min per orb at 2250 needed or 10000-12000 minutes.
So they doubled the time requirement and made it a more monotonous task.And thats just one part.
Every other facet of the legendary is more grindy now.
You need more than 250 obsidian stones
More experience than the 250 skill point item
Way more basic materials, in all level zonesBasically they make you work harder than the first legendary, and then they throw the amalgamated gemstones on top of that.
In pure time its the largest grind ive ever seen in a game.What game requires 240 hours of some of the most effecient gold earning in game?
Even ffxi dynamis would take less than 250 runs if you were actually good at it
2000 minutes (very optimistic, but w/e) @ 15g/hr = 500g = done with gemstones.
You’ve just disproved your own point. Takes the exact same amount of time as before lol. Your insistence on ignoring a major part of the game (TP) is your own problem, not a game problem. You are choosing to make it a longer grind than it is, and that is not the game’s fault.
15g an hour is a fairly effecient gold grind, which means in this game, boring and tedious or monotonous.
Their item design is like if someone took basketball, got rid of the other player and said you get 40 points for walking around the court.
Then offered you trophies and nike shirts when you scored 40000 points
Basically best way to play the game is ignore the new rule, and ignore the reward. Which means the reward fails as incentive
The price is same as old legendary, I’m not sure why the game suddenly become Grindy. It always was grindy.
Because it cost as much as the most expensive legendaries used to AND you have to spend additional time getting all the other parts.
What other part is that? I thought that is interesting content which you don’t mind.
Why are you even grinding legendary. I thought the idea is just play, and if you have the gold use it, else don’t.
That’s what people told me before GW2 come out, “oh you don’t need to grind more powerful gear.” Why are people grinding cosmetic now.
Actually in not playing anymore, because the goals feel like chores instead of gameplay. Ill prolly jump back in if they add new interesting content, but none of the end gamd items are incentivizing me to play the game.
Anyhow, if thats how they want the game to be i xant stop em, but i think that legendary item design is once again pushing more away than it is retaining
The price is same as old legendary, I’m not sure why the game suddenly become Grindy. It always was grindy.
Because it cost as much as the most expensive legendaries used to AND you have to spend additional time getting all the other parts.
Yeah the game was grindy, and its getting worse and worse with time. 100 charged lodestones, might take you 200 coe runs. 4000 minutes. Or less if you start to get good at the paths by playing well you may get it to 2000
Orbs take you at best 5-6 min per orb at 2250 needed or 10000-12000 minutes.
So they doubled the time requirement and made it a more monotonous task.
And thats just one part.
Every other facet of the legendary is more grindy now.
You need more than 250 obsidian stones
More experience than the 250 skill point item
Way more basic materials, in all level zones
Basically they make you work harder than the first legendary, and then they throw the amalgamated gemstones on top of that.
In pure time its the largest grind ive ever seen in a game.
What game requires 240 hours of some of the most effecient gold earning in game?
Even ffxi dynamis would take less than 250 runs if you were actually good at it
The TP is part of the game, you are expected to use it. There is absolutely no reason you should feel you can earn every item for a legendary without using the TP.
It is just some absurd limit people have decided to use for themselves with no bearing in reality.
It’d be like saying, I want to earn a new legendary but I refuse to go into DS, please nerf legendary’s so that I can earn them without ever going into DS.
Legendary’s are supposed to be hard to get. The first set became much more common than Anet originally intended, it didn’t feel legendary to have a Gen1 legendary weapon because almost everyone in the game had one. They attempted to correct that problem by adding value to this new set.
Gem’s will never rise to 6g each because their value is set by supply and demand just like everything else in this game. At 3g it becomes profitable to convert crystals into orbs for 2 types of crystals. At 4g almost all types of crystals can be converted. At 5g you could profit from converting T3 and T4 into orbs. As such the price is limited to the infinitely farmable T5 crystals at ~3g.
the with system designs based on the tp, is they are based on flawed premises, currently.
1)high demand, low supply items in a free markets value will be determined by the upper echelon of money earners. = grinders, tp baron, real money whales, and people with a lot of time.
2)item design is not based around how things are obtained in game, or by personl play, but via macro economics statistics.
for example 5×10^9 wintersday bozex will be generated per year, so lets make people need to use 1×10^4 to get this backpiece. ignoring you are asking people to grind winterday for 100 hours in a 30 day periodcombine 1 and 2 and you get item design that is designed to be unfullfilling to obtain via gold or gameplay, except for the upper echelon of grinders, which is a drastic curve. a mid range grinder makes many times over what a normal player does.
aside from gemstones, legendary process does a decent job of setting short term goals, with a bit of heavy crafting based economies (but manageable) then at the end gemstones shoot it out the window.
compare the other goals for maguma, and you see how illogical it is.
complete all maps
max maguma based mastery
1 bloodstone
then 1 part, of one piece needs 2250 of an item that you get from grinding t6 gathering nodes for 150 hours.it essentially ruins the whole process
1 seems to be exactly who legendary weapons were designed for. the top 5% of players who have a lot of time, skill, or money to complete them. That is the whole point of legendary weapons, they are super rare hard to obtain status symbols that take a lot of time and money to make.
2. No one has to grind 100 hours in 30 days to get that item. That is why the TP exists in the first place. You are artificially imposing a limit that you must obtain every item by yourself without using a system that the game is designed around. Just play the game doing what you have fun doing and spend the money you earn to buy what you want. That is how the game is designed.
The mag gift is very easy to obtain, which is precisely why they added in a money sink to it. It is one of the key components to the legendary and one that takes a good amount of work. I would bet that the money you earn from getting the HoT map items needed for the gift would be enough to buy you at least half of the gemstones that you need, if not more.
Skill is not the gate for legendaries as is.
Time based is ok, if you base it on interesting content.
Competitive gold earning is not interesting content in this game, it always leads to degenerative play styles. Competitive gold earning, even without gemstones is the biggest part of the legendary, adding gemstones just makes it ridiculous and off putting.
Keep in mind, the 1800 gold it would cost if gemstones did nit exist at all, is far from cheap.
And the problem is, trying to get gold through normal play is incredibly ineffecient, drastically so, and since they design legendaries so you need virtually every single item you get, selling items for cash isnt much of an answer.
Heres the problem with gw2 item/economy design, its most fun and least broken when you ignore it.
Which means the economy and itemization is doing the opposite of whats its intended to do. Which is enhance gameplay.
Im not the one who wants things easily, but that doesnt mean i want it tediously.
The amount of resources you get from hot is no where close to how much yoy need for amalgamated. Like i said keep in mind you need virtually everything you get for other parts.
Eh well whatever, most likely i just have to accept that the game is designed for grinders now. It wasnt at the start, but this game is now designed to grind moreso than any of its competitors, and most of its predecessors.
If all open world content has to be face roll easy, then they need way more mid level diffuculty content in instances.
I lnow you guys like to win with minimal effort, but when thats everything in the game, it makes it fairly boring.
The TP is part of the game, you are expected to use it. There is absolutely no reason you should feel you can earn every item for a legendary without using the TP.
It is just some absurd limit people have decided to use for themselves with no bearing in reality.
It’d be like saying, I want to earn a new legendary but I refuse to go into DS, please nerf legendary’s so that I can earn them without ever going into DS.
Legendary’s are supposed to be hard to get. The first set became much more common than Anet originally intended, it didn’t feel legendary to have a Gen1 legendary weapon because almost everyone in the game had one. They attempted to correct that problem by adding value to this new set.
Gem’s will never rise to 6g each because their value is set by supply and demand just like everything else in this game. At 3g it becomes profitable to convert crystals into orbs for 2 types of crystals. At 4g almost all types of crystals can be converted. At 5g you could profit from converting T3 and T4 into orbs. As such the price is limited to the infinitely farmable T5 crystals at ~3g.
the with system designs based on the tp, is they are based on flawed premises, currently.
1)high demand, low supply items in a free markets value will be determined by the upper echelon of money earners. = grinders, tp baron, real money whales, and people with a lot of time.
2)item design is not based around how things are obtained in game, or by personl play, but via macro economics statistics.
for example 5×10^9 wintersday bozex will be generated per year, so lets make people need to use 1×10^4 to get this backpiece. ignoring you are asking people to grind winterday for 100 hours in a 30 day period
combine 1 and 2 and you get item design that is designed to be unfullfilling to obtain via gold or gameplay, except for the upper echelon of grinders, which is a drastic curve. a mid range grinder makes many times over what a normal player does.
aside from gemstones, legendary process does a decent job of setting short term goals, with a bit of heavy crafting based economies (but manageable) then at the end gemstones shoot it out the window.
compare the other goals for maguma, and you see how illogical it is.
complete all maps
max maguma based mastery
1 bloodstone
then 1 part, of one piece needs 2250 of an item that you get from grinding t6 gathering nodes for 150 hours.
it essentially ruins the whole process
We need more ways to get these things.. at such a high demand from it’s requirements.. and hardly any reliable way to get them…
The only other alternative is to buy them at 700+ Gold which no one but the big money ballers want to do.
It’s barely 500G. The cost to craft the three legendary weapons is relatively similar to what it costs to craft similar high demand legendary weapons from the original set (Twilight, Bifrost, etc). Compare prices to before HoT was announced and they’re practically even.
If anet isnt slow with content releases, the next 3 will be out soon, probably doubling the prices.
Also, there is no logical reason for all new legendaries to be priced at the top value of precursors, that the players chose based on demand. Thats like saying all new cars should cost 200,000 because lamborgini costs 200,000.
In fact this is an account bound item, market value is totally irrelevant. It should primarily be decided by effort to obtain. The reason they made this account bound was because gold was not a reliable arbiter of difficulty, or a very fun mechanic for game play.
The problem is that well off players are willing to burn 2500 gold on items of high demand, and they end up setting the price value of prestige items.
These legendaries are once again failing at being a suitable goal for mid range players, and are dominated by the gold earning players.
Why is that bad? Because it means there isnt much keeping people playing, legendaries are a carrot that fails
slowly lost their value, even before HOT
But that’s what the market dictated. Not everything needs to have a relative value. Not everything is designed to be utilized at high rates.
Unfortunately, this principal of niche markets, seems to have been lost on our current economist. Now everything must have an “arbitrary value” determined by “reasons”.
It’s dumb, and the person who designed this new concept should know that forcing (read Fixing) markets like this has only ever been detrimental to stabilization from a historical standpoint.
ascended materials are the ‘end game’ materials for armor and equipment, why should they be worthless?
and the longterm need for many different materials, even low level materials, ensures that almost all content stays relevant
They were not worthless. Their worth was being determined appropriately by the supply of the materials at the time and the need for their use.
Keep in mind, that nerfed dungeon rewards has effectively removed part of the reason those materials were in such high supply, while additionally those recipes were altered to require more materials over all.
Additionally, lower level materials still had value. The problem with the assertion that they did not have value is that the market determines the value. The principal being that you can shift the market by meerly adding or removing sources slowly. The problem with this is that when changing the market your “Game Economist” should ideally be thinking of how much of the game is removed when designing it. As is, several markets are crashing, whether by design or not.
Do you think those markets also need intervention ?
How are you going to determine what items are supposed to have what value ?What we currently have here is effectively over regulation of markets causing stifling and pretty massive deflation. The problem is, this is taking players out of the game. Making them play more economic focused than they probably should be. It’s still a game, however the trading post and the economy at large is being treated more as a commodities exchange market than an traditional marketplace.
Anet no longer wants players in dungeons. Hence they told their economist to remove the rewards from dungeons to move players out of them. It worked.
Anet determines what items have value. They change that list of items over time in a cyclic manner. Some items they keep constant (ectos) while others they let be cheap for a while then increase their value later.
I see no evidence of deflation. All major market indicators are either steady or increasing in value, indicating a slight inflation if anything.
Anet only makes big changes to the market about twice a year. I wouldn’t call that stifling or over regulating.
Anet took a single item, increased its demand, and thus increased the demand of 30+ items from 0 to having value. If they change the influx of mid tier dust it would increase the value of an additional 30+ items, while also regulating the price of gemstones. With a major festival coming up I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw dust and crystals drop from the loot tables.
Anet has a history of using temporary festivals to inject supply into markets that give them temporary fluctuations.
and further increase item bloat. If you keep trying to solve equations by multiplying and increasing values, you create unwieldy systems that no one wants to use.
if you want to make a car equally balanced, so you add a bunch of lead weights to the back of the car, you just created a car that is ineffecient and less agile. Thats what anet keeps on doing.
the car is just getting heavier and heavier, and less and less people want to pay the gas to drive that car.
It is very excessive. The two arguing that it is fine NEVER oppose anything Anet does.
Even if there were only two arguing that it might not be excessive (and there are far more than two), it wouldn’t change things: claiming that something is excessive doesn’t make it excessive. It’s up to the critic to support the critique.
Besides, nearly everyone agrees that the amount of clicking to make a full stack is annoying.What people disagree about is whether the current price of orbs|doubloons|crests is excessive (leading to the current prices for AmGems). And the primary rebuttal is: “high” or “higher than before” isn’t, by itself, enough of a reason to label it “excessive”; it’s got nothing to do with ANet.
Some people are frustrated by the price shifts and some dislike the difficulty of farming crests|doubloons|orbs directly, especially those opposed to simply farming gold and buying stuff on the TP. By itself, that mood is something that should concern ANet.
tl;dr stop worrying about whether it’s excessive and instead ask ANet to focus on the frustration that some players feel. That’s worth their time to address, regardless of the of the economics.
- its excessive because it arbitrarily creates an inconsistent value for 1 item. (compare to other crystals and upgrades)
- its excessive because it bloats the trading post elements of the legendary design to too high a level. ( you already have large straight gold requirements, and tons of TP sinks from large material sinks)
- its excessive because if you seek to avoid trading post you would have to farm T6 nodes for 189 hours, assuming you get at least 1 every 5 minutes. AND since t6 nodes are a limited resource, you can probably only get 5 or 6 per level 80 charachter a day.
its excessive
- Its excessive because it bogs the entire design of the legendary aquisition down in a singular purposeless item grind, whereas the entire other facets of the new legendary design seeks to vary your requirements up constantly both to hide grind, and create less tedium.
this one part of one part of the legendary uses 600 gold. this is totally unbalanced in its design.
- Its excessive because its a part of the maguma gift, and has little to nothing to do with play in maguma
- Its excessive because this type of item design that is best handled by grinding gold, encourages a gold first gameplay, when the game is very bad at giving gold for the most entertaining/healthy playing styles. Essentially gold grind in this game tends to cause people to have less fun playing, and create degenerative play styles.
- its excessive because it forces the value of incandescent dust to 4.50, essentially destroying all of its other uses, most notably as a transference item.
Dust requirement in item exchange values should not far outstrip the costs of the constituent materials, this is now the case for most other item transfer methods. Its basically supposed to be the tax for exchanging, and now the tax tends to cost more than the items
This creates a bottleneck on these promotion and cross promotion items, which creates greater supply of over supplied items, lowering their value further.
- Its excessive because now, their most likely solution will be increase supply(probably of dust), which further bloats an already bloated inventory, and drop system, and continues the cycle of item inflation which has been going on since the game started, which they tend to solve with further item inflation.
its bad on many levels.
(edited by phys.7689)
It’s excessive.
How is it excessive? These items weren’t in demand at all before and most sold at vendor + 18% (the minimum possible price). Now, suddenly everyone wants them and the price spiked. Eventually, people will realize the value of their mid-tier gemstones and sell or upgrade them via jeweler recipes, the demand will tapper off, and Orbs will reach a new equilibrium price.
There’s always a crowd of people complaining that too many items sell (on the TP) for too little. If ANet does anything that changes that, there’s another group that complains the new price is excessive.
“Balanced” prices are in the eyes of the beholder. As long as there’s enough supply that people can buy these on the TP, I don’t see an issue requiring government intervention. Perhaps that’s because I try not to be in a rush when working on legendaries and the mats in this game accumulate eventually.
Its excessive because its based on how many were generated over the course of 3 years.
Which is a common problem with thier jtem design. Its often based on current supply rather than the new demand they create and the actual amount added over time.
Also they never consider the game design elements.
Orbs are primarily obtained through t6 node farming at a rate of like 1 every 3 to 5 nodes.
T6 nodes are less predictable than they once were, and are only in a few maps.
You need 2225 of them.
So yeah they messed up.
Some times they should look at the time required for an item to come into existence, and not just supply.
Often if it is not over supplied, time to create or obtain items will fit into the answer of the value of the item.
And the truth is the game is better off with vendor value orbs, than needing 2225 of them and it taking 20 min of time to create each.
They keep trying to balance with larger numbers, the best answer was not to increase demand, and the best answer to the problems of demand is not to increase demand. These type of solutions lead to all of the unsatisfying economy numbers they keep creating.
In a system designed to have 250 of an item max, way too many items involve numbers in the 1000s. Its design failure
Honestly I think the big problem is they wanted to “fix” too many systems with HoT, like progression with masteries and the destruction of fractals. They’ve been working on all these features and that left not enough time for content. That’s why the xpac is so small. Anyway, raids coming out at a slow pace is to be expected. It’s not their priority.
No… it’s the other way around. They know they can’t create enough content in the time they have; so they create even less content in order to have the time to code the grinds (masteries, guild halls, etc.) which give the appearance of more content that there is.
As for raids. They’re Anet’s current “big thing”. Soon the next big thing will pop into their minds and raids will be forgotten. Just like how fractals are now what the dungeons were. (And raids are now what fractals were).
Ehh maybe. Time will tell. The fact that they’re promising new fractals doesn’t rly support your theory. But anyways, there’s rly no way of knowing, so this discussion is fairly pointless.
Fractals will be their next big thing for 1 month, like fractured was 2 years ago. When they sId, these new changes will allow us to add fractals easily! You can expect new fractals to be realease periodically now!
1 new fractal in 2 years, or even 3 new fractals in 2 years is not really a sign of commitment
Its been more than 2 years since we’ve had new guild missions. Its been a year since new fractals. One new dungeon in three years. It will (most likely) be more than 5 months before the next open world map. One new pvp map in years. And Im sure Im forgetting something.
Those are the things they need to be focused on – not raiding, which, by their own admission is designed for a smaller percentage of the game population.
I know I will probably catch hell for saying it from some of the more vocal members on the forums, but raiding, while it can be part of the mix, cannot take precedence over any of these things. As soon as it does, the game is no longer GW2.
If they were focusing on other content, you may have a point, but they are not. Raids are the only playable content of note revealed for next 3 months.
But more to the point they were supposed to put it iut every 3 months, and its looking like it will be every 6 months. Keep in mind this is part of legendary armor plan.
Really overall, they are just too slow with content creation. Basically the only content planned for 6 months after release is a shatterer fix, which sounds mostly like number tweaks and simple fixes (hats off to the guy who finally got em that done tho) and a raid which is probably 2 months late, after the first raid which was late itself.
So far their quarterly content heavy plan doesnt look impressive
It should not have been more than 4 months, should have been 3 months, or once per quarter. Unfortunately, anet is very slow with producing gaming content, so its not surprising.
I really hope they have more gameplay content sooner than 6 month time gaps.
It will not be good if that is their development time frame
I know right mate. They should be doing like Trion. Release 4 major updates within an year, a raid wing that had 9 bosses, 8 of which were unplayable because of pushed unfinished content, which made half the playerbase quit including the top raiding guild. I’m sure as hell disappointed that Anet takes their time instead of pushing bugged crap down our throats. Freakin money grabbers man
Didn’t even realize that Apoth gave up on rift, but can totally see why. Quit myself after killing Aky, because screw more and more p2w cash grabs to do awful content.
I definitely prefer finished content over rushed content that doesn’t work.
Comparing something to a failure is a losing strategy.
“Why did my wife leave me, im better than my friend who got divorced last year”
Compare gw2 to successes, and you see they need more quanity, with decent quality.
It should not have been more than 4 months, should have been 3 months, or once per quarter. Unfortunately, anet is very slow with producing gaming content, so its not surprising.
I really hope they have more gameplay content sooner than 6 month time gaps.
It will not be good if that is their development time frame
I know right mate. They should be doing like Trion. Release 4 major updates within an year, a raid wing that had 9 bosses, 8 of which were unplayable because of pushed unfinished content, which made half the playerbase quit including the top raiding guild. I’m sure as hell disappointed that Anet takes their time instead of pushing bugged crap down our throats. Freakin money grabbers man
They already release buggy stuff even when it takes them 3 years to make
(legendaries)
The real point is, at 6 months between major content, you will see a large player drop off, which is very bad for profits.
If they had other types of content planned, or started with a ton of stuff they might have more time. But they didnt.
Instanced content is 2-3 years old other than one raid.
Do you really think they can release so little and still keep people playing?
What do you do now day to day? Can you imagine doing that for 3 more months?
They have to release quality, and they have to do it with enough quantity to keep people playing. Thats just the reality of the business.
If they release good content every year, they wont make much money in the last 6-8 months of the year.
People who arent playing, dont buy or contribute to the gold exchange.
" It takes a lot of work to craft these legendary journeys for release, so rather than take the time to develop the full set before releasing any of them, we will be releasing new legendary weapons in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of sixteen has been added to the game. Collections for the existing legendary weapons will be available on launch day, while the first three new legendaries will become available shortly after launch, alongside raids."
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/hot-new-legendary-weapons/
There’s the link to the full blogpost, I doubt the reasoning has changed in the intervening time and I’d guess we’ll get them with the next raid wing. Colin also mentioned last Friday he’s seen some of them so it’s not like they haven’t been working on them.
the fact he has seen them, means little. the staff was seen like dec 2014 i think
Just read the blog, though they say they are working on content, not really getting any in january.
Looks like gw2 still won’t be competitive with games like ffxiv, which add multiple dungeons new storylines high end battles and in game gear and content for getting said gear every 3 months.
It should not have been more than 4 months, should have been 3 months, or once per quarter. Unfortunately, anet is very slow with producing gaming content, so its not surprising.
I really hope they have more gameplay content sooner than 6 month time gaps.
It will not be good if that is their development time frame
Im surprised so many people defend this by saying lol patchnotes.
Patchnotes only really apply if you ve been playing the game during the patch.
Not saying the solution is easy, or will work on every case, but a solution is needed, more and more info becomes more esoteric as time passes.
There is a lot of things you have no ingame means of leatning about, not even clues
apparently HOT is so successful they are planning to works towards next expansion in 2016:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/402r80/jan_8_guild_chat_livestream_notes/General Notes
- Developer Matt Pennebaker have been working on lots of legendary precursor crafting bug fixes, some of which will go live next Tuesday.
- Colin: “I have seen some of the new legendaries, they are amazing”
- Blog post on skill balance next week, with Karl coming in the next Guild Chat on Friday to discuss them.
- Blog post on Jan 12 on 2016 Roadmap.Development Balance
- In the previous years we did lots of biweeky/monthly updates. In 2015 our focus was on HoT with some updates. in 2016 we are trying to find a balance between frequent – game updates and working on the next expansion.
- We want to focus on all the game modes. We are working on polishing existing game modes instead of experimenting with new stuff.
- WvW overhaul has been in development for over a year now. There are lots of core things we still need to do including population balance etc. (LOL, call this bs)
Or, they need another one xause this one didnt make as much as they hoped.
Or they just want to change to an season pass type structure through.
I will say that i dont know if they can charge 50 bucks for hot level of content.
Maybe if they get it better
Do what i did, dont try to get gold.
If you were content (as many of us are), to slowly build towards your legendary, you would be spending much less.
The total cost is the same, just because you spend mats and not gold doesn’t mean the value is less.
No, the total cost for me is going to be much less — those building them now are spending a premium on time or coin to acquire their mats. I am selling those very mats now and will be repurchasing them again later, at reduced prices. I’ll spend less on labor and/or coin — the difference is that I won’t acquire the new shinies until much, much later.
Or put another way, the variables affecting total expenses are: labor, coin, and calendar date — I am trading the last one (when I acquire) in order to save on the first two.
no the prices will not go down, precursors overall rose in value, so will these materials. they will continue to introduce new legendaries and new specialized items which use the same materials.
prices you see 3 months after the release are basically the stabilized prices, they will only rise with inflation, or fluctuate based on game design changes.if in 3 years the value of dusk continued to rise, what makes you think breaking dusk into 2000 pieces will cause each piece to drop?
prices of materials will only rise as more demand is generated, unless they develop less than 6 precurors a year, and dont create new items that need ascended mats.
the bulk of the cost for ascended materials is created from the demand for ascended materials. these items are created more often to meet the demand, they wont go down much in value, people will just produce less of them, except for cloth and leather.
Yes, the equilibrium price will be higher than it was before HoT launched, but we may not have hit those equilibrium prices yet. It takes time for equilibrium prices to be reached.
We have guild halls being worked on (As time passes fewer and fewer guilds will require higher mats). Demand for new gear for pre-HoT characters will go down. Think of all the people who were making new gear for their characters in preparation for the elite specs and/or revenant.
The cost is such that, as one finishes, another starts. Or rather it seems more work on it than finish.
This demand did not go down in years of precursors before, until population dropped very low.
Basically as long as the game has a bealthy population, the cost will be high. And since the new legendaries equalize the item demand, all of these items will stay valueable.
The rush is over, these are long term prices now.
If you were content (as many of us are), to slowly build towards your legendary, you would be spending much less.
The total cost is the same, just because you spend mats and not gold doesn’t mean the value is less.
No, the total cost for me is going to be much less — those building them now are spending a premium on time or coin to acquire their mats. I am selling those very mats now and will be repurchasing them again later, at reduced prices. I’ll spend less on labor and/or coin — the difference is that I won’t acquire the new shinies until much, much later.
Or put another way, the variables affecting total expenses are: labor, coin, and calendar date — I am trading the last one (when I acquire) in order to save on the first two.
no the prices will not go down, precursors overall rose in value, so will these materials. they will continue to introduce new legendaries and new specialized items which use the same materials.
prices you see 3 months after the release are basically the stabilized prices, they will only rise with inflation, or fluctuate based on game design changes.
if in 3 years the value of dusk continued to rise, what makes you think breaking dusk into 2000 pieces will cause each piece to drop?
prices of materials will only rise as more demand is generated, unless they develop less than 6 precurors a year, and dont create new items that need ascended mats.
the bulk of the cost for ascended materials is created from the demand for ascended materials. these items are created more often to meet the demand, they wont go down much in value, people will just produce less of them, except for cloth and leather.