Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Tying stats to trait lines was a horrible mistake. All it does is reduce the number of viable builds. Too late now.

Wasn’t that EXACTLY what GW1 did though? Tying stats to the attribute lines?

i think he means tying stats that determine dps to certain traits. While the traits may be good, getting vit or toughness or healing power may not be helpful to you. Even if say you want to cause random boons or have your pet share your boons or something.

In gw1, the type of stats you see here werent linked to any attribute. Earth magic increased the power of your earth spells, swordsmanship boosted sword skills, etc. It wasnt like, if you want to get special abilities for hammer, you need 300 toughness.

Tao.5096:

Copestetic.5174:

Harper.4173:

The GW1 system was designed for a completely different game with a completely different type of “average player” playing it.

This system we have now – both stat-wise and skill-wise is designed to be as “dummy proof” as possible so terribly bad people can still perform and don’t drop the game.

That’s the short answer.

Pretty much this. It’s amazing how dumb-down games have become in such a relatively short amount of time.

why dumb-down?

Can I assume that smart games provide 9999 skills, 999 foods and drinks, 999999 other items and allow top gaming sets to be fully utilized and full time own those with basic keyboard and mouse?
Is it dumb down also that everyone have access to endgame gear and are gear and stat wise on pair with everyone else?

you know. I’d like more of such dumb games.
I really do.

im guessing you arent familiar with gw1 stat system, because it was less big numbers, and it was the same stats for 7 years, it also was easy to get max stats and everyone was on par.
Difference is, your stats mattered, and gave you a lot more build diversity and playstyle differences.

Boneheart.3561:

It could also walk on water, make the blind see, and miraculously survived an assassination attempt by Claus von Stauffenberg.

i wouldnt really mention it, except the current stat system only works well if players must take damage, which is kind of not the way the game really plays.

berserkers/condi focused dont get hit risk vs reward is skewed
defensive players cant force themselves to get hit being defensve is selfish
healing isnt meant to be a focus stat doesnt do much.

this stat system just doesnt really work well in pve

truth is, yeah the stat system in gw1 was way better now that we have gotten to play with gw2. there are many flaws that i dont think can be solved with this stat system. This stat system is based on trinity type play, but the game is based on control support and dps. For the most part this stat system is about setting length of fight versus how easy it is to die.

In hind sight, i can say a stat system more based around this games mechanics/playstyles would have been a better system

BilboBaggins.5620:

phys.7689:

Monk Tank.5897:

Gems can be purchased for real-world money in various fixed amounts; there is no discount for bulk purchases.

I’m no accounting major but i cant fathom why there is no break on these, ever. Obviously who ever is in charge never shopped at BJ’s Wholesale or Costco.
They can put the items in the Gem Shop on “Sale” but why not a break on the Gems themselves. Why not have a 10,000 gems for $100 and see just how many people cash in on the savings. The Gem Cards could be more flexible also, $15 or $25 doller cards that dont match the prices in the Gem Store. How about kitten or $100 card so i dont have to ask for six cards at Best Buy or Gamestop. I would like to just enter one key instead of six seperate codes. And before you awnser, “why dont you just buy $100 worth of gems off the Gem Store”, I dont need to explain to anyone why there is a $100 charge on my bank statement (for a game) when they didnt get flowers this month.
Love the Mad King Event, cant wait for Echoes of the Past, would just like a bulk sale on gems periodically and an easier way to give you guys $100

giving discounts is a bad method for currencies. They will give discounts on the items in the gem store, which basically serves the same purpose. Unless you are buying gold with your gems, but it really isnt that great an idea to give discounts for those purposes, it messes with the actual values and profits from the exchange.

The main glaring difference is with a discount to currency, I can choose to apply the saving to whatever item(s) I want. Most MMOs that I know of have bulk discounts otherwise why purchase $100 in-game currency at once?

the difference is that gem currency is tied to gold to gem exchange. Its not impossible, its the type of thing most people wouldnt like to do. Because it essentially means the exchange could be operating at a loss, which could cause a lot of issues.

if they had a discount it would have to factor in the exchange cost, so that would put the exchange rate even higher.

your better off asking for a coupon for gem store savings when people buy a lot of crap. Or some system for discounts. It would not be good to tie it directly to gems because of the exchange.

tolunart.2095:

I think raising a child would be a better example. Parents have different perspective than children. If you give in to every demand you end up with a child who eats nothing but cake and candy, stays up until midnight every night, never goes to school or takes a bath, etc. The child doesn’t understand the importance of a balanced diet, proper hygiene and getting rest and education, he is focused only on what he wants now and does not appreciate the big picture.

Likewise, if Anet gives players what they want right now they will quickly become bored with what they have and want more. So devs will need to either introduce a gear treadmill to keep players distracted by the new shiny or see the game population dwindle because they already have all the shinies.

the problem is people arent asking for it right now, they are asking for a way to achieve it.
Lets say a kid wants a bike, but you want him to learn to have long term goals and work for it.
you tell him he has 3 methods;
win the lotto.
every time he goes to school, he can deal himself 5 cards, if he gets a full house, he gets the bike.
make enough money to buy 1000 shares in micron technology in a lump sum. lets say its currently valued at 600 dollars but is showing a growth of 300% over the last 18 months.

one might say, hmm why dont you just tell him you ll get him the bike if he gets all As, this year, or tell him if he helps the old lady down the block for a month. Or helps his mom around the house until summer or something.

The key is anet should figure out what is the ingame purpose of precursors, and design a system that encourages the type of play they would like to incentivize, that is satisfying for most players.

Ashen.2907:

A car hobbyist building a car on par with what could be purchased is going to spend vastly more for the materials than the major manufacturer will. He will need to rent space where the work can be done as some portions of the work will not be possible, or legal, in a residential environment. He will need licenses for some of the work as it involves the use of hazardous materials. He will need to buy equipment that costs more than the vehicle itself, or could rent it. And so on. Of course none of this applies if you are talking about a car kit, but assembling the equivalent of a large model kit is hardly an appropriate comparison.

Value is subjective. Profitable is something else entirely. I throw away things that other people value because its not worth my time to deal with them.

Point is, the people who are dedicating themselves, and their resources to producing something can always do it cheaper than the market will pay (or they will not produce said item for the market) that is not the case in GW2.

you choosing to throw away things that arent worth your time is fine.

But if you want an economy that means something, you wont make people like you a signifigant source of the supply for an item. Because manufacturers/hunters/adventurers cannot compete with a guy who considers these items he gets to be essentially trash.

essentially the way items are distributed, contributes to the lack of desire for a great many things, at the same time makes it less desirable for one to do anything but kill a lot of easy stuff over and over again.
One gets a lot of stuff they dont want, and the best way to get what they do want is to get as much stuff they dont want but other people want as fast as possible.

Ayrilana.1396:

There are other factors at work as to why ascended inscriptions and insignias are all relatively the same price. Hint: It has nothing to do with the final output.

Yes, supply and demand levels are not the same across all precursors. This does not mean that something needs to be done though. The drop rates for precursors do not have to be manipulated because their demand outweigh their supply. Anet intended for precursors to be a long term goal on the basis of everything you have to gather to craft one.

i never said it had to do with the final output, it has to do with the cost/difficulty to create. Since insignias are all created with intent, and all have similar difficulties(costs of materials/time investment required), their costs are similar.(with regards to ascended inscriptions and insignias)

The point is precursor item creation is extemely poor at adapting to supply on the low level, and just moderately poor at adapting to demand at high levels.
On the low level, you have precursors that are very difficult to create, but have no value due to overproduction based on their demand.
On the high level you have a system which only people with a substantially greater amount of money than a precursor costs have the resources to normalize the rng in order to be able to add to the supply at a predictable level. (therefore it cannot be created with reliability versus its market value)

• this leads to low value precursors having no value
• and high value precursors seeming unattainable other than on the market, (for people who can only afford one) IE, creating more market demand, aka increasing the price. (this is less drastic than the low value implications)

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On scaling: it is true that we have a certain amount of “magic” scaling in the game, commonly seen in dynamic events. The intent of that system is to keep difficulty consistent across a variety of player counts. The sticking point for myself on raids and scaling is that while we can scale enemies, it is far more difficult to meaningfully scale objectives.

To elaborate, in a 10-player raid, each player is responsible for approximately 1/10 of challenge. As you add players, that challenge share diminishes, so in a 20-player raid, the individual role is about half as important as it would have been with 10 players (challenges of coordination aside).

Of course, group content is rarely so singular and for a good reason. If we have 3 objectives, we divide the focus of the group and your ownership of a 20-player challenge goes from 1/20 to 1/6ish.

Is it possible, then, to just scale objectives along with the player counts? Perhaps. But it seems that would equate to just making many tiers of the content which, to me, sounds like a good way to diminish the total amount of content we could build. What do you guys think?

I think its best to scale with multiple objectives, Multiple objectives will increase the life of the instance, as well as assure that more people can play and yet matter.
let say you got an instance.
It has 5 different objectives/paths. Bonus is handed out if you complete one of the objectives.
The more objectives you complete at the same time, you get a bonus to rewards

This will allow people to scale the difficulty a lot and create a great variety.

• people can choose to have more or less players on a single objective
• small groups can still complete it
• skilled organized groups try to complete multiple objectives.
• since the bonus is for a random objective, many people will vary their play.

essentially i think the replay value will be high, it can scale better to 5-25 players. Difficulty can be adjusted by the team, how many they take per path, etc. Highly replayable, varied (you can be on different paths)

I would also make it so that other players progress can effect the other paths, and some paths can meet up. Lets say if they defeat X boss before team 2 gets there the conditions or map is different somewhere else. etc.

Think of a dynamic dungeon

eithinan.9841:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

such as they are created with very little link to peoples actual desire for them. (the cheaper ones)

Really? Why aren’t people rushing to make underwater legendaries with those precursors being so cheap? It’s because a lot of people don’t want to make them.

So we all agree it is a demand issue?

phys.7689:

i should say they are supplied in a way that causes inconsistencies in value.

You sir, are all over the place. It is not a supply issue.

my point is that the fact that some precursors cost 70 gold, and some cost 1300 is due to the fact that the items supplies dont match the demand at all.
you have the ones on the lower end, whose supply is is higher than its demand per day
and you have ones on the higher end whose supply is low compared to its demand per day.

Essentially precursors are supplied to the world via drop irrelevant to their demand, which causes the prices to be skewed. If the system was one where people created precursors by choice, you would see their value primarily determined by the total supply introduceable versus the demand.
this is why you dont see such a large disparity in ascended inscriptions and insignias. Even though some are a lot less desired, the market simply makes less of them.

The fact that there are 60 gold precursors is not a testament to supply and demand it is a testament that the system of item creation creates inconsistent values across various items that are supposed to be in the same teir as far as difficulty to obtain.

see, in a good system, supply and demand accurately reflects how hard something is to obtain, How worth it, it is to produce this item. This is not the case for many items in the game.

it is very much a supply issue.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

problem has little to do with the price of the cheapest precursors, and more to do with the demand vs supply of the more expensive ones. Your example actually highlights how precursors are supplied in a way that is inconsistent and causes an unstable price.

Precursors are all supplied in a consistent manner, whether through forging or drops. The price of precursors are stable too. The highly demanded ones have spiked in price a few times based off of complete system(wardrobe) changes but then they have stayed stable.

Ohoni.6057:

Precursor availability is more important than the trading post.

This is wrong. Precursor availability is not more important than a core element of the game world.

i should say they are supplied in a way that causes inconsistencies in value.

Such as some are more desired than others causing them to have higher prices than the least desirable ones? Is that the inconsistency that you’re speaking of?

such as they are created with very little link to peoples actual desire for them. (the cheaper ones)

Really? Why aren’t people rushing to make underwater legendaries with those precursors being so cheap? It’s because a lot of people don’t want to make them.

we are talking about precursors not legendaries.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

problem has little to do with the price of the cheapest precursors, and more to do with the demand vs supply of the more expensive ones. Your example actually highlights how precursors are supplied in a way that is inconsistent and causes an unstable price.

Precursors are all supplied in a consistent manner, whether through forging or drops. The price of precursors are stable too. The highly demanded ones have spiked in price a few times based off of complete system(wardrobe) changes but then they have stayed stable.

Ohoni.6057:

Precursor availability is more important than the trading post.

This is wrong. Precursor availability is not more important than a core element of the game world.

i should say they are supplied in a way that causes inconsistencies in value.

Such as some are more desired than others causing them to have higher prices than the least desirable ones? Is that the inconsistency that you’re speaking of?

such as they are created with very little link to peoples actual desire for them. (the cheaper ones)

eithinan.9841:

phys.7689:

problem has little to do with the price of the cheapest precursors, and more to do with the demand vs supply of the more expensive ones. Your example actually highlights how precursors are supplied in a way that is inconsistent and causes an unstable price.

Precursors are all supplied in a consistent manner, whether through forging or drops. The price of precursors are stable too. The highly demanded ones have spiked in price a few times based off of complete system(wardrobe) changes but then they have stayed stable.

Ohoni.6057:

Precursor availability is more important than the trading post.

This is wrong. Precursor availability is not more important than a core element of the game world.

i should say they are supplied in a way that causes inconsistencies in value.

Erick Alastor.3917:

Two big titles of the past and the new trends of the overhyped ones we have today:
http://tinyurl.com/mmocurves

I doubt that curves are how they are due to the lack of competition in the past, all I see today is the lack strategies to build customer loyalty and the increase of fast money grabbing tricks.

I don’t know if customers are becoming dumb, I know for sure I often feel treated (in the mmorpg industry) like I am a giant dumb and that’s why my loyalty is almost non-existent right now.

that is really interesting. It kinda shows that wildstar never really had a chance at being a big boy, the amount of people who knew of it, and looked it up was never even high. Right before release, it reached aion levels of interest, which is a pretty bad starting point for a game.

However if the game was more appealing they wouldnt have had the sharp drop of at the least.

btw when you put wow online game you get an insanely big interest spike that behaves totally differently
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F064ln09%2C%20%2Fm%2F021dvx%2C%20%2Fm%2F02q25c_%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h55krg%2C%20%2Fm%2F026653&cmpt=q

Monk Tank.5897:

Gems can be purchased for real-world money in various fixed amounts; there is no discount for bulk purchases.

I’m no accounting major but i cant fathom why there is no break on these, ever. Obviously who ever is in charge never shopped at BJ’s Wholesale or Costco.
They can put the items in the Gem Shop on “Sale” but why not a break on the Gems themselves. Why not have a 10,000 gems for $100 and see just how many people cash in on the savings. The Gem Cards could be more flexible also, $15 or $25 doller cards that dont match the prices in the Gem Store. How about kitten or $100 card so i dont have to ask for six cards at Best Buy or Gamestop. I would like to just enter one key instead of six seperate codes. And before you awnser, “why dont you just buy $100 worth of gems off the Gem Store”, I dont need to explain to anyone why there is a $100 charge on my bank statement (for a game) when they didnt get flowers this month.
Love the Mad King Event, cant wait for Echoes of the Past, would just like a bulk sale on gems periodically and an easier way to give you guys $100

giving discounts is a bad method for currencies. They will give discounts on the items in the gem store, which basically serves the same purpose. Unless you are buying gold with your gems, but it really isnt that great an idea to give discounts for those purposes, it messes with the actual values and profits from the exchange.

IndigoSundown.5419:

phys.7689:

IndigoSundown.5419:

• The design intent is clearly not to generate the maximum amount of sales — because there would clearly be more gem sales if players could not exchange gold for gems.

incorrect, the ability to buy gems for gold, is profitable, it allows them to make money off someones desire for items, who would not pay real money. They sell the gold they get from that to a player who has no desire for anything else in the gemstore.

Not only that, but they take a cut of the profits. Essentially, any item that is bought for gems—>gold->gems costs more gems to create. If you cant follow this, just realize something simple. Every single gem (aside from promotional gems or achievement gems) is paid for whether it came from gold or gems, at some point anet got paid 1.25 cents for every gem.

Point is, yeah they make money off the gold to gem conversion. Otherwise they would have to come up with some other system for selling gold that takes out as much money as it puts in, which is probably not feasible.

I didn’t say they did not make money. I said they’re not maximizing profits. I believe that, were there no gold-for-gem exchange, they would gain more in sales from people who currently get their gems via gold than they would lose from those who buy gems to exchange for gold now.

Gold-for-gems serves several purposes in the game:

• Competes with 3rd party gold sellers, giving those who want to buy gold an outlet that will not get them banned if caught
• Facilitates many rewards being available regardless of play style
• Gold sink
• Makes ANet money

So, OK, people don’t like the gold-for-rewards part. They still benefit from reduction in gold sellers and the gold sink. If the system were a “cash grab” there would be no merit to it at all. Since this is clearly not the case, my point stands.

They are maximizing profits because they get paid more per gem store item introduced for gold.

trace it back one step at a time. let say someone wants an item for 700 gems but doesnt want to buy it with real cash. they give the Exchange 17.25 gold for each 100 gems, which means they put in 7×17.25 or 120.75 gold. Now some one decided they want to buy 120.75 gold from the exchange, how many gems do they have to buy to get that 120.75 gold the guy sold. Well last i checked the loss was 28.5% so that means he can sell 100 gems for 12.33 gold, in order to get 120.75 gold at 12.33 per 100 gems.
he needs 979.31 gems. which costs 12.24 dollars

TLDR
so 12.24 dollars was spent to bring this 700 gem item into existence through the exchange. versus 8.75 dollars to bring the item to existence directly from the store.

So i wont use words like cash grab, because honestly, while they are making money off it, many people feel like its worth it, and are happy its there. But it is a mistake to think they would make more money without the exchange. They get paid for every item created, as long as everything is working as its supposed to. They get paid for brokering the exchange of gems and gold between players. Its a win win for anet. As long as people buy the items, regardless of their source, anet is getting paid for it.

Ashen.2907:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

This is actually an interesting issue. Its there you’re right but its a bit perplexing. I think its an issue caused by player’s mistake and farming. I mean some things take an effort to get yet people sell them for a couple of gold. Others things take an effort to get but they sell for 100s of gold. why is that? the low prices are probably mistakes players make not really thinking over what they should actually charge. The high prices are probably because of farmers. 200g is like 200 hrs of game time for someone who doesnt farm but less then 20hrs for farmers. This is an issue you’re right, technically it shouldnt matter much whether you try to earn something directly then playing other content to achieve it. I wouldnt say this issue is caused by the game though its more a player induced issue the way I see it.

its caused by a reward structure that gives players a lot of stuff they dont need, that they then have to sell to get the things they want, but cant go out and get themselves.

IRL people get confused, but the best way to get anything is to get it directly. not to work and pay cash for it.
you want to fix your sink? it will be cheaper if you do it yourself
you want to make cars? the car company makes them for less than you buy them for.
you want to eat vegetables? its cheaper to grow them yourself.

this game is designed where everyone can get anything fairly randomly, this makes them have to have lower rates, and it also makes it unlikely you will get anything specific you want, this means you HAVE to sell a bunch of crap (remember limited inventory, and you didnt need it anyhow) to get the stuff you want.

This is why players often dont sell things at their real value, they have no idea what their real value is. They arent in the business of selling stuff, they are just following whatever the market says.

Basically things work the way they do because they designed the games item distribution the way they did. Its why the game feels like a big gamble for anything good, mostly a grind for gold, where best gold comes from killing a lot of weak easy stuff in large groups. This is the natural result of the item design.

For the average person it would cost much more to make their own car than to buy it from a manufacturer. The same is true for growing produce in the quantities that compare to what many purchase. Also can be true for sink repairs for that matter.

Also, nothing has a, “real value,” other than what, “the market says.”

for the average person, it costs more because they are not the profressionals. They have not the skills, or the knowhow, or access to the materials, but for those that do, it is still cheaper to build it yourself. Even now, there are car hobbyists who can build a car for substantially less. GW2 tends not to work this way. Also, making produce in your backyard is still cheaper than buying it at a store, even at low yields. See the thing is, the people who are professionals set their prices, based on what they think their time/abilities are worth, and they optimize thier tasks. The Supply in gw2 tends to be generated randomly. Almost every item produced has a signifigant portion of its supply given by people who had no intention, nor desire for said item.

Also actually things do have real value other than what the market says. There are tons of ineffeciencies in the market, that TP players and merchant types take advanatge off. For example, a long time ago it was actually profitable to buy wood and salvage it. Peolple didnt actually know what wood was worth. There are times when it was more profitable to salvage ectos for crystaline dust, on average.

It happens very often that something is worth more than it is priced for. Just because you find someone who doesnt know what they can do with an item doesnt mean that is its true value.

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Relshdan.6854:

Devata.6589:

Relshdan.6854:

lordkrall.7241:

….The Labyrinth available right now is a rather good way to get rather much money….

this.

it’s rewarding and isn’t rng-based………you get tons of bags (and mats). you get more than enough candy corn to convert them to “cobs” and buy the new items that the halloween vendor sells.

there will always be some level of rng “gambling” in the gem store/game……they need to make RL money (some people get a thrill out of gambling). it’s only lame when that is the way most of the event rewards are earned.

that isn’t the case here. there are plenty of non-rng rewards that are earned by playing the game.

It’s still just grinding for currency.

which has nothing to do with “rng-gambing”….or the thread topic. thanks for nothing.

But it is what lordkrall talked about where you reacted on.

Also getting the items from those bags (The two mini’s that can drop and the tickets for the 2012 Halloween skins) are still gables. Like I did say before, because of the high drop-rate of the bag you get a average that sort of hides the gable but it’s still there.

That highly depends on the situation. If you could only get them from the bags and they were not tradable then yes it would be entirely gambling.

If they are tradable then its not strictly speaking just gambling… the rng part would be merely an attempt to the reward for free because chances are its going to be quite expensive to buy off tp.

This year they went a step further. You can also buy it off an npc vendor. You get an average of 12 candy corns per tot bag in addition to a chance for each of those rewards. which means 1000 candy corns (or 1 candy corn cob) in about 80 bags. You can easy get that much (actually more) in 1hr. You can use that to buy the rewards from that vendor if luck doesnt smile on you. Its basically a mini per 6 hrs of labyrinth cleansing. You also get skulls, teeth etc.. which can also be used instead of the candy corn cobs for some of the rewards.

So yeah you’re gambling to get the reward for free but at the same time there is an element of 0 gambling in that while you’re gambling you’re making direct progress towards the rewards. I personally love this approach and hope they keep it up. You’re constantly getting that rush… will I get lucky will that thing I am after drop? but if it doesnt you’re not just wasting your time you’re getting closer to it anyway.

and you can get all the drops from the vendor? interesting

with the exception of the necklace, Mini Gwynefyrdd and old pillowcase yes… in the case of the gifts you can craft them rather then buying them from the vendor of course. why? what where you thinking of?

nah i just find it to be an interesting approach, that is probably overall better than the usual pure gamble. but i havent really investigated it.

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

incorrect, the ability to buy gems for gold, is profitable, it allows them to make money off someones desire for items, who would not pay real money. They sell the gold they get from that to a player who has no desire for anything else in the gemstore.

Not only that, but they take a cut of the profits. Essentially, any item that is bought for gems—>gold->gems costs more gems to create. If you cant follow this, just realize something simple. Every single gem (aside from promotional gems or achievement gems) is paid for whether it came from gold or gems, at some point anet got paid 1.25 cents for every gem.

Point is, yeah they make money off the gold to gem conversion. Otherwise they would have to come up with some other system for selling gold that takes out as much money as it puts in, which is probably not feasible.

You need 1 premise for this to be true. That every gem sold to player is actually bought. I am pretty sure this is not the case. Even on day 1 you could exchange gold… well silver back then for gems. At no point in the game’s live has there been a situation were people tried to buy gems for gold but there were none available. I find it really really really hard to believe more people were buying gems to sell in the first week of the game then there were people trying to buy gems to hoard for later on. There just wasnt any motivation for people to sell gems in the first couple of days and every reason in the world buy as many as possible as quickly as possible.

Not just that but the exchange rate has been increasing and increasing which technically means more gems are being bought with gold then they are being bought and sold with real money. Yet not once did gems run out.

I think this is a clear indication that gems sold arent restricted to a pool of actual gems being purchased by players. There is probably an infinite number of gems and people actually buying the gems simply brings the price down but every gem bought with gold will not mean a player actually paid for it.

john smith said the orginal gems they seeded the exchange with are long since gone. And he also said the gem exchange no longer has created gold or gems in it. While i thought it might be infinite, he flat out said it was not.

Basically the guy in charge says that it they are not created, and everything in the pool is long since past the initial seeded amounts. this means every gem is paid for, aside for achievement point gems, and probably gems they give out for promotions.

as for the not running out, people think of the rates as being about the amount in one versus the amount in the other, but its more about the flow in, versus flow out.

if 100 gems are added and 10000 gold is added the rate matches. The reason it doesnt run out is because the price gets higher the greater the difference in flow. All that gold coming in becomes less effective, and some people begin to opt out on one side, on the other side people start opting in more.

so really the costs show the ratio, of in to out, and adapt to balance them at all times. It doesnt show the actual magnitude.
So lets say the rate is 1 gem for 50 silver. there could be have been 1000000 gems added in one day just means there was 50000000 silver added as well.

Anyhow it could work otherwise, but he basically said it works that way, and that the gem or the gold could in fact theoretically run out.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Relshdan.6854:

Devata.6589:

Relshdan.6854:

lordkrall.7241:

….The Labyrinth available right now is a rather good way to get rather much money….

this.

it’s rewarding and isn’t rng-based………you get tons of bags (and mats). you get more than enough candy corn to convert them to “cobs” and buy the new items that the halloween vendor sells.

there will always be some level of rng “gambling” in the gem store/game……they need to make RL money (some people get a thrill out of gambling). it’s only lame when that is the way most of the event rewards are earned.

that isn’t the case here. there are plenty of non-rng rewards that are earned by playing the game.

It’s still just grinding for currency.

which has nothing to do with “rng-gambing”….or the thread topic. thanks for nothing.

But it is what lordkrall talked about where you reacted on.

Also getting the items from those bags (The two mini’s that can drop and the tickets for the 2012 Halloween skins) are still gables. Like I did say before, because of the high drop-rate of the bag you get a average that sort of hides the gable but it’s still there.

That highly depends on the situation. If you could only get them from the bags and they were not tradable then yes it would be entirely gambling.

If they are tradable then its not strictly speaking just gambling… the rng part would be merely an attempt to the reward for free because chances are its going to be quite expensive to buy off tp.

This year they went a step further. You can also buy it off an npc vendor. You get an average of 12 candy corns per tot bag in addition to a chance for each of those rewards. which means 1000 candy corns (or 1 candy corn cob) in about 80 bags. You can easy get that much (actually more) in 1hr. You can use that to buy the rewards from that vendor if luck doesnt smile on you. Its basically a mini per 6 hrs of labyrinth cleansing. You also get skulls, teeth etc.. which can also be used instead of the candy corn cobs for some of the rewards.

So yeah you’re gambling to get the reward for free but at the same time there is an element of 0 gambling in that while you’re gambling you’re making direct progress towards the rewards. I personally love this approach and hope they keep it up. You’re constantly getting that rush… will I get lucky will that thing I am after drop? but if it doesnt you’re not just wasting your time you’re getting closer to it anyway.

and you can get all the drops from the vendor? interesting

Galen Grey.4709:

This is actually an interesting issue. Its there you’re right but its a bit perplexing. I think its an issue caused by player’s mistake and farming. I mean some things take an effort to get yet people sell them for a couple of gold. Others things take an effort to get but they sell for 100s of gold. why is that? the low prices are probably mistakes players make not really thinking over what they should actually charge. The high prices are probably because of farmers. 200g is like 200 hrs of game time for someone who doesnt farm but less then 20hrs for farmers. This is an issue you’re right, technically it shouldnt matter much whether you try to earn something directly then playing other content to achieve it. I wouldnt say this issue is caused by the game though its more a player induced issue the way I see it.

its caused by a reward structure that gives players a lot of stuff they dont need, that they then have to sell to get the things they want, but cant go out and get themselves.

IRL people get confused, but the best way to get anything is to get it directly. not to work and pay cash for it.
you want to fix your sink? it will be cheaper if you do it yourself
you want to make cars? the car company makes them for less than you buy them for.
you want to eat vegetables? its cheaper to grow them yourself.

this game is designed where everyone can get anything fairly randomly, this makes them have to have lower rates, and it also makes it unlikely you will get anything specific you want, this means you HAVE to sell a bunch of crap (remember limited inventory, and you didnt need it anyhow) to get the stuff you want.

This is why players often dont sell things at their real value, they have no idea what their real value is. They arent in the business of selling stuff, they are just following whatever the market says.

Basically things work the way they do because they designed the games item distribution the way they did. Its why the game feels like a big gamble for anything good, mostly a grind for gold, where best gold comes from killing a lot of weak easy stuff in large groups. This is the natural result of the item design.

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

Galen Grey.4709:

Devata.6589:

… Lots of stuff I am skipping over cause its already been discussed many multiple of times but if you want me to reply to something specifically let me know not ignoring or avoiding just dont wanna get locked in a debate circle …

Let me give the example why it’s the worst option. Let’s say you want a specific skin in this item that drops from a champion bag at an extremely low rate. Then working directly working towards it is by farming those bags. But you likely have earned to gold to buy it by doing so before the item drops. So going for that item is the worst way.

Champion bag skins are a bit of a catch 22 true. Getting the item directly is farming just as much as getting the gold for it. But luckly we have the 3rd option, the 3rd option I’ve been advocating so much, currency as it is intended to be. Your nice weapons skin that drops from the champion bag costs dont know say 20g. You currently have 200 gold but we’re not going to outright buy it that would be boring. We’re going to earn 20g and buy it once we have 220g. I personally am a dynamic events person so I am going with playing in the open world. Strickly speaking we need 400 dynamic events to earn 20g but we can cut that down as until we earn out skin we’re going to sell stuff we earn even though generally I keep the mats for my crafting. That will probably cut the events needed by about 1/3 and not counting the mats you gather along the way and sell. All in all we’ll need approximately 280 events. Will do close to 25 events per day and it will take me 2 weeks to earn that 20g and buy that skin. I may take a break do a dungeon, a fractal may a few jumping puzzles and why not perhaps try to kill a couple of champions and see if I Get lucky and it drops. At the end of the day whatever i’ll still get closer. At the end of 2 weeks I’ll be happy because I did an effort and it feels I earn the skin. I still played the stuff I would have played had I not set my eyes on that skin. I didnt have to do any mindless grinding. I got the skin I wanted.

Sure if I farmed I could have got that skin in 2 – 3hrs instead of 2 weeks but what would that have got me? since I like open world stuff after I got the skin by farming gold now that I dont have a reward to strive for I will spend the next 2 weeks doing open world stuff with my new skin wishing I could earn my skin doing open world stuff rather then boring gold farms probably which ironically I already could do!

So your solution to the currency grind is… currency grind?

Oow and the stuff I like to do like JP’s don’t earn me a lot of money. What I also like is WvW but then mainly staying in a keep upgrading it and defending it. Running with the zerg would make me money, upgrading and defending a keep cost me money. The other thing I like to do is going directly after those rewards but we already concluded that was not really possible (in this case).

is playing 2 weeks of what you like doing really a grind?

of course you can go directly after the reward like I already explained a billion times but going after rewards directly that arent a common drop is always super grindy in absolutely any game.

If you love doing it then go on nothing wrong with that. I though your issue was primary with grind. If luck doesnt smile upon you in a few hours you can always buy it with the money you make while going directly after the reward, win/win

the thing that you are totally missing is the distaste a person might feel for buying something.

You know how people say there is a different feeling from fishing up your dinner versus buying it in a store?
Or how some people enjoy doing home improvements themselves?

Satisfaction from a job well done, or prizes from winning a competition, finding something valuable hidden in an obscure place. These are the feelings some people are looking for in an adventure game. And for many items in this game, that is not an effecient means of achieving anything.

in fact very often, you could not hunt/obtain/earn something directly if you tried. Even in those cases, it is generally the worst method of achieving it.

he wants an adventure with rewards for the adventure. Not a paycheck where he buys everything.

All that would really have to change for him is have the primary method of obtaining many good/interesting items be specific tasks/enemies/places etc. They could be sold after that, but he would know the best way to get anything would be to hunt it, and gold would be a secondary way. Which is now often the opposite.

Galen Grey.4709:

If you aim is to get things better boycott is the last thing one should do. Even if a boycott is successful (think of the message you’d be sending if it fails!) what will you really achieve? if they decided not to action something they did so because of valid reasons making less money will not make those reasons any less valid all you’re going to get is at best they will not be able to hire more people to improve the game. At worst you’re going to get layoffs which will naturally damage the game.

One thing thats important to remember is an MMO is a game aimed at many different types of players. Its easy to say I dont like the zerker meta but can it really be fixed ? why makes zerker meta? Obviously the fact that DPS is the optimal thing to have. Why is DPS the optimal thing to have? because at the end of it all what we want to achieve is to Kill an enemy and DPS is the thing that does that really. So how can you remove DPS from being the Meta? by forcing some players to play other roles (like say making players unable to keep themselves alive without a healer or unable to stay alive without crowd control)

Oh look it requires bringing down one of the main pillars of this game which is also the reason why so many chose it no reliance on the trinity. There is also the question of how much such a change is really needed. I mean its not like you’re forced to go Zerker but if you introduce the trinity you or someone in your party will be forced into specific roles.

Classic case of the cure being worst then the ailment if you ask me.

Like Vayne said Arenanet have been listening and have been changing a lot of things requested from the community from day one when they introduce crafting from the bank to like a week ago when they reverted the gem exchange. They cannot action everything not just because they ignore feedback but because not every requested change is in the best interest of the game.

ehh oversplificication. The problem is not so much that you need to nerf dps, its that dps can do almost everything based on use of an ability as well as any other stat set, but the other stat sets get no boost to dps.

why would you need someone statted for support? dps guys might is just as good. Why would you need someone statted for defense, dps guys blocks, endure pain, etc is just as good.
Anyhow there are many discussions on the topic, with more in depth analysis and solutions that dont involve making every one die if they are all alone. Do people actually read these forums? not everything is great, but there is a wealth of analysis, and solutions to many of the games issues.

Ohoni.6057:

So if Gwynefyrdd came in 20 colors, the chance to get one color could be attainable to everyone, while still making it very hard to get all colors or the one color you like best.

I don’t like this, because “getting the one you want” should be the goal for ANet. If Gwynefyrdd came in 20 colors, and he was rare enough that you’d only be likely to get one or two of them, then the better solution would be to either drop a “Gwynefyrdd box” that allows you to choose the one you want, or to just always drop a “Blue Gwynefyrdd ,” but have recipes that allow you to craft one of those into any of the other colors by adding a number of reasonably cheap ingredients (like maybe a specific dye, or unidentified color dyes, or some food mats, or whatever).

Likewise it would be nice if all Precursor drops (from non-MF methods) were replaced with a “Precursor box” from which you could draw whichever Pre you prefer.

if you can select the color it would kind of defeat the purpose of his solution.
I dont think you will agree with most of what he says, because his premise is to preserve rarity, which you dont really think should exist.

Astral Projections.7320:

One person boycotts because of too many armor/weapon skins in the gem store.
On person boycotts because they like the weapon skins in the gem store but don’t like the RNG Black Lion Chests.
One person boycotts because they don’t like Megaservers. The maps are too full.
One person boycotts because they left before Megaservers and the maps were empty.
One person boycotts until they put in expansions.
One person boycotts until they change back the NPE.
One person boycotts until they change the traits system.
One person boycotts until ANet gives them a roadmap.

It’s a bit much to think that ANet will respond to each and every person boycotting the game for whatever reason they are upset about.

this is true, logically boycott is only really effective when you have a clear goal that you can organize people around, and thus make a demand from a business. However, if you just have a bunch of people randomly mad without demands, you basically just lose customers, and lose money and your business suffers.

So i guess the first thing the OP would have to do theoretically, is get a large amount of people to figure out what would make them happy with the game, present it, and act on it. Pretty difficult task, and fairly unlikely.

However, as some have already said, they are losing customers who dont like x y or z. It may be unecessary to organize anything. I dont play much anymore, probably mostly because i have done most of what the game has to offer, and much of the new things dont entice me much. The endgame is grinding easy content for gold, which i dont find that entertaining. So im basically not gonna play often until they have something i want to play.

Funny thing, now that i think about it, someone who could actually organize a boycott, gather demands and give anet a list of what would make a large number of people come back to the game, would actually be highly beneficial to them.

However, thats no easy task

Vayne.8563:

The problem still remains that some people think that the entire community speaks with one voice. There are many who hate the zerker meta but there are many who love it as well. I think everyone can agree about the condition situation, but it’s probably not that easy to fix. What this post absolutely ignores is the number of things that have been fixed that never seem to get mentioned.

We don’t have anything for guilds to do. Intro Guild missions.
Culling is a huge problem. Culling fix incoming.
We can’t craft stuff from the bank. Problem solved.
Champions aren’t profitable to kill. Incoming champ bags.
Dungeons aren’t rewarding enough…incoming gold for finishing dungeons.
Commander tags need to be account bound … done.
Can’t have two sigils on a two handed weapon…fixed
PvP rewards suck…here have some PvP reward tracks
No progession in WvW…here have some specializations
Too many queues in WvW proper…here have Edge of the Mists
Too many PvE’ers ruining WvW for achievements during tournaments…fixed
The WvW jumping puzzle is causing queues..okay we’ll move it to a separate map
Ranger long bow is useless, and the 2 skill interupts itself when you switch targets…fixed

There’s such a long long list of bug fixes, this was all off the top of my head. If you can list 100 things not fixed, I can list 200 that have been. But no one pays attention to those.

And believe me it takes a lot longer to fix stuff than point it out.

if it actually takes much longer to fix a bug than it does to find a bug, its highly unlikely you can show twice as many fixes as found.

voidwater.2064:

I would suggest a completely different rewards philosophy, one that is not centered around RNG at all.

RNG/grinding should never be the “primary” reward mechanism.

Desirable items/unlocks should be reliably given as rewards for successfully demonstrating player skill, for completing challenging content.

I offer the following definition for “challenging content”: content/achivements that are significantly difficult to complete, even when you know the optimal strategy/tactics, with the source of difficulty being proper execution of fighting strategy and tactics (not some luck-based difficulty, for example)

A sufficiently skilled player (someone with innate talent and/or lots of practice) should never have to grind for anything, unless you think the process of improving your skill is also “grinding”.

For the less capable, I think RNG and token grinding are acceptable mechanisms for making the content/items accessible. But these should be “secondary” reward mechanisms.

I agree that rng being the primary means of obtaining things of value is a problem.
I think the reality is, people use rng because its easy, and coming up with good methods of giving out other things is pretty hard to do reliably. It costs time and money to develop good distribution systems, whereas rng they just have to plug in simple formulas, decide the type of supply they want to have and divide by the number of monsters killed per hour, and voila, done.

Problem is this type of system while easy to create, is not well designed when the % chance gets too low. The experience of each player becomes wildly different

DarcShriek.5829:

The mistake in your math is that you forget that the gems that are obtain from gold are being recycled. They are not new gems.

they are gems that are created solely for the purpose of trading with players. No one who buys gems and sells them for gold wanted anything in the store with those gems.
These are players anet would have been unable to monetize.
the people who create the supply of these gems desire gem store items, but they would not pay for them
These are players anet would have been unable to monetize.

and anet takes a charges in total more gems for the same item that is generated by this method.

To give an example, say you like customized T shirts, you go to a skateboard store, he has no T shirts, but he knows a guy who can make a customized T shirt for you, this guy never has money to buy stuff in the store. He charges you 30 bucks. Now he goes to T shirt guy, and gives him 20 bucks store credit to make the T shirt.
He has turned turned this other guys desire for skateboards, who he is normally unable to cash in on, into money, by letting him get store credit from you. He made 30 dollars he would not have been able to make if he didnt make this transaction. In fact he gets 10 extra dollars for setting up that transaction on top of that.

anet is still getting paid, it is profitable, dont think the store owner is doing it to be kind, he is doing it to make more money off the same merchandise.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Labjax.2465:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Also, unpopular Precursors have the same drop rates as popular Precursors. How could they not? They’re all Precursors. The main difference here is Supply and Demand.

2nd paragraph: Um, duh? Exactly no one is contesting that point.

This basically goes back to the whole point of this thread. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Precursors in this game. Nothing wrong with the RNG to get them, and nothing wrong with the prices they demand. So if it ain’t broke, no need to fix it.

problem has little to do with the price of the cheapest precursors, and more to do with the demand vs supply of the more expensive ones. Your example actually highlights how precursors are supplied in a way that is inconsistent and causes an unstable price.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Devata.6589:

Where did I say them trying to make money is a bad thing? I just say I don’t like the cash-shop approach because of some of the effects of what I just showed you one using purely facts.

I don’t say.. don’t make money, I say, make money in another way. But you know that as you end your post with that.

I am not sure what you mean with ‘just a cash-grab’ or where I did say that. They use the cash-shop to make money and it effects the game in a specific way. A way I consider bad and in fact a way many people seem to consider bad looking at the complains about the grind. What I just showed how at least partially that is factually linked to to cash-shop.

And there is a difference between using the cash-shop to earn your money and having a cash-shop.

The idea that making money with box-sales if over seems to be a little strange. It is still the most used way for most games. It’s just not done a lot in MMO’s but then again that has never been the case and there was a time (just a few years ago) nobody believed in F2P games (read.. cash-shops) while now that is the standard for MMO’s so who says box-sales won’t be the standard for mmo’s in the future?

The fact that the cash-shop way is the most popular at this moment does not stop me from going against it. If it’s bad, it’s bad and I will say it’s bad even if the whole world world would say it was good. I’m not somebody who just go’s with the flow of the masses. Anyway, luckily there are many people who dislike it. Many of them did come to GW2 because it was sold as B2P and had a good name for it’s B2P model with GW1.

GW2 would not have existed where it for GW1 using that model. It is what made them big.

None of which matters. I made a general post, not addressed to you specifically, and you responded. In that post and since, you have clearly failed to respond to most of the points I’ve made.

So, I’ll give it to you one more time — but don’t expect me to respond if you continue to talk about things other than what I posted.

Here it is, as simply as possible.

• Many items are available in GW2 via gold, either through the cash shop or the TP.
• The design intent behind this availability is clearly to make these items accessible to anyone who wants them.
• The design intent is clearly not to generate the maximum amount of sales — because there would clearly be more gem sales if players could not exchange gold for gems.

That’s it. As to your points, I know you’d rather they sold expansions and put everything that’s in the gem store into the game instead. That’s not relevant to the point you decided to argue in the first place.

incorrect, the ability to buy gems for gold, is profitable, it allows them to make money off someones desire for items, who would not pay real money. They sell the gold they get from that to a player who has no desire for anything else in the gemstore.

Not only that, but they take a cut of the profits. Essentially, any item that is bought for gems—>gold→gems costs more gems to create. If you cant follow this, just realize something simple. Every single gem (aside from promotional gems or achievement gems) is paid for whether it came from gold or gems, at some point anet got paid 1.25 cents for every gem.

Point is, yeah they make money off the gold to gem conversion. Otherwise they would have to come up with some other system for selling gold that takes out as much money as it puts in, which is probably not feasible.

tolunart.2095:

Gibson.4036:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

And why only world bosses? Hand out tokens for doing events which haven’t been done for a while, hand out tokens for players who play different jumping puzzles or explore the map.

This idea reappears every once in a while on these forums, and I love the it.

This already exists. Dungeon-specific tokens, laurels, karma, game-mode tokens like badges. Tokens are not unanimously appreciated, however, and a lot of players prefer a universal token system (gold) because you can get it almost anywhere and trade it for almost anything. Didn’t they remove a token system from PVP (glory) in favor of more gold a while back? Not sure because I don’t PVP but that was the impression I got. They wouldn’t have done that, and would be adding more items to karma and dungeon vendors if token systems were popular with the player base in general.

Also, tying new rewards to tokens like karma or laurels is problematic. Players who already have a quantity of these tokens stockpiled get a head start towards obtaining the new rewards, and players who don’t have a lot of these tokens or who just spent them on something else (buying gear for alts, for example) feel bad because they have to work that much harder to get the things other players already have.

Introducing a new token for each reward is also problematic. Tying laurels to Dailies and Monthlies led to complaints of time-gating, because players were limited to buying one item every X days. Tying new tokens to specific activities leads to complaints of “more grind” in a game that wasn’t supposed to be grindy, because players who focus on obtaining those rewards will do that content over and over until they get what they want.

There are already token systems in the game. If they were utilized more by the player base, they would be expanded upon, but they are not. In fact many players care about the tokens only to the extent that they can be converted to gold (using karma and skill points to produce items to sell on the TP, for example, and forging/salvaging equipment bought with dungeon tokens), so there is not much incentive to create new tokens that will just be converted to gold.

you missed his point. This idea isnt so much about the tokens themselves, as much as giving rewards for doin different tasks based on how commonly they are done. Essentially discouraging repetitive play and having people going everywhere looking at the things most ignore.
Im guessing he would link the random item vendor to these type of tokens

lordkrall.7241:

People keep shouting about all these massive issues that have been here since release and is not fixed and yet I have never actually seen anyone that have said WHAT these issues are and HOW to fix them.

you havent been paying attention, its pretty common that someone identifies what they believe are problems and outlines methods of fixing them.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

Sorry, i would rather struggle for years to beat a hard dungeon 20 times to get an item, than struggle for years killing non stop waves of too weak enemies for the the same reward. One you can aim for, improve, learn and each time you succeed you make notable progress.

I am of two minds here. See, on the one hand I’d agree it’s a better arrangement than “pure RNG”. It gives you a feeling you’re going to eventually get there if you work hard enough, versus merely getting lucky enough.

. . . of course, there’s the other side. If you can cleanly do it, get the item within a few tries, why would you go back? Assuming, of course, the fun of it isn’t figuring into the equation. (After all, people love to throw around things about Skinner conditioning pretending to be “fun”, so it’s arguable we can’t trust “but it’s fun” as an excuse to repeat things.)

I don’t know. Honestly, I’m looking right into this situation right now – I can’t beat the Clock Tower and have hit a point where I’m no longer making progress on the puzzle. I also can’t beat the Aetherblade jumping puzzle and then get that dive. I make it a little farther each time but the need to start all over again killed my desire to do either. I mostly am just waiting to get a couple people who can just portal me up to the Aetherblade goggles so I can keep trying.

the other, well you can watch netflix while pressing buttons repeatedly i suppose, and hope one day your pressing of 1 wins you the day.

Yeah, no. I can’t do that. It really messes with my connection when I stream video and play GW2. Mostly because two rooms over my brother is playing League, and in another part of the house the parents are streaming things from their computers to the television, so the network tends to get a little . . . testy . . . sometimes.

you make the content actually rewarding to do well even after you get the main item. Lets say you could choose between the special item, and say a laurel, or crafting bag or a token towards an account bound random rare skin you havent unlocked.
perhaps a weapon you can name, select the stats and upgrade to ascended stats eventually

perhaps completing it adds to world totals that unlock something for the entire world. There are many ways to reward gameplay.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

KarlaGrey.5903:

The game most likely felt dead to them based on the changes in numerous channels of interaction (guilds, fl, preferred game mode). However once the game feels subjectively dead to large enough a number of people, it normally means it is also “statistically dead” (in terms of revenue generation), unless said people are able to keep the game in the black through their purchases alone.

A few month ago, some guy was bashing GW2 on mmorpg forum, and I ask him a really simple question. Name me 3 mmorpg that he think is doing better than GW2, and he can’t…

Quite honestly, after playing mmorpg for 10 years. I would say Anet have done a fantastic jobs. Because for a game that is 2 years old, it is doing much better than many other studios.

If you think, many people are complaining about GW2, you probably never visits the forum of other mmorpg. I’m not here to tell you GW2 is the greatest mmorpg in the world. I’m saying there is only a few mmorpg out there, that is still doing good. And GW2 is one of it.

you are comparing it to the worst competitors. Keep in mind GW2 had a 5 year development time on a pre existing franchise which sold in the millions. Cant really compare gw2 to a stary up mmo developed by a small studio in a couple years.

gw2 is doing ok, its running with some big guys, but that really was the lowest expectation of the game. Anything else would be considered a failure.

well just recently, eso, wildstar? they got good budget right? And over the years I played AOC, warhammer online, those got budget right?

I would say Anet did a much better management job than them.

If hope Anet do a better job like the rest of the complainers. I just find it a bit harsh to be too critical, since it’s probably not so easy. (seeing how so many studio have tried and failed).

wildstar isnt a franchise, its trying to come from no where.
eso however is a good example of a failure.

but my point is you are comparing them to failed games. I wouldnt be a considered a successful musician if i sold 1000 records, and muscians comparing themselves to musicians who sold 1000 records arent saying much.

If you really want to use analogy…

The whole point is there isn’t many musician that are able to break the 1000 records mark. So how can you say the musician is doing poorly.

there is a difference between doing good, and doing ok, and doing poorly.
Also there is actually a big difference in expectations based on investment and past performance.

For justin beiber who has sold records in the 1-5 million mark, selling 100,000 is considered a failure, selling 1 million is considered doing ok.

guild wars 2 imo is doing ok, with a slow downward trend. Its definately not a failure at this time. But i wouldnt say its doing well considering its initial stats

I think it is doing well considering the initial stats. Not awesome, but well. Not just okay. Because there IS a lot of competition and all games have natural attrition.

It’s in line with what most popular MMOs are doing, except WoW which is it’s own case.

not really doing well considering its initial stats.

The game sold 3 million by 4 months time. Far as i heard they have yet to hit 4 million not counting china.
Ok, i will give you, 3 million users is good enough, but what type of retention did they get from that 3 million?
My feeling is a large amount of that 3 million can no longer be considered active. And no, new players arent replacing them, or else they would have surpassed the 5 or 6 million mark by now.

Now they are competing with games that probably keep 500k-1 mil users around, which is decent, but most of those games didnt start with 3 million 4 months after release.
gw2 is contracting, other games are expanding or maintaining. Its doing ok

Have you seen the business plan?

What decides if a game is doing well or not is the expectations in the business plan…nothing else.

I’m pretty sure this game is performing at or above expectation.

i doubt it, they dropped by a large % last quarter, and dropped the quarter before that, also some of the trends in spending look disturbing

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

KarlaGrey.5903:

The game most likely felt dead to them based on the changes in numerous channels of interaction (guilds, fl, preferred game mode). However once the game feels subjectively dead to large enough a number of people, it normally means it is also “statistically dead” (in terms of revenue generation), unless said people are able to keep the game in the black through their purchases alone.

A few month ago, some guy was bashing GW2 on mmorpg forum, and I ask him a really simple question. Name me 3 mmorpg that he think is doing better than GW2, and he can’t…

Quite honestly, after playing mmorpg for 10 years. I would say Anet have done a fantastic jobs. Because for a game that is 2 years old, it is doing much better than many other studios.

If you think, many people are complaining about GW2, you probably never visits the forum of other mmorpg. I’m not here to tell you GW2 is the greatest mmorpg in the world. I’m saying there is only a few mmorpg out there, that is still doing good. And GW2 is one of it.

you are comparing it to the worst competitors. Keep in mind GW2 had a 5 year development time on a pre existing franchise which sold in the millions. Cant really compare gw2 to a stary up mmo developed by a small studio in a couple years.

gw2 is doing ok, its running with some big guys, but that really was the lowest expectation of the game. Anything else would be considered a failure.

well just recently, eso, wildstar? they got good budget right? And over the years I played AOC, warhammer online, those got budget right?

I would say Anet did a much better management job than them.

If hope Anet do a better job like the rest of the complainers. I just find it a bit harsh to be too critical, since it’s probably not so easy. (seeing how so many studio have tried and failed).

wildstar isnt a franchise, its trying to come from no where.
eso however is a good example of a failure.

but my point is you are comparing them to failed games. I wouldnt be a considered a successful musician if i sold 1000 records, and muscians comparing themselves to musicians who sold 1000 records arent saying much.

If you really want to use analogy…

The whole point is there isn’t many musician that are able to break the 1000 records mark. So how can you say the musician is doing poorly.

there is a difference between doing good, and doing ok, and doing poorly.
Also there is actually a big difference in expectations based on investment and past performance.

For justin beiber who has sold records in the 1-5 million mark, selling 100,000 is considered a failure, selling 1 million is considered doing ok.

guild wars 2 imo is doing ok, with a slow downward trend. Its definately not a failure at this time. But i wouldnt say its doing well considering its initial stats

I think it is doing well considering the initial stats. Not awesome, but well. Not just okay. Because there IS a lot of competition and all games have natural attrition.

It’s in line with what most popular MMOs are doing, except WoW which is it’s own case.

not really doing well considering its initial stats.

The game sold 3 million by 4 months time. Far as i heard they have yet to hit 4 million not counting china.
Ok, i will give you, 3 million users is good enough, but what type of retention did they get from that 3 million?
My feeling is a large amount of that 3 million can no longer be considered active. And no, new players arent replacing them, or else they would have surpassed the 5 or 6 million mark by now.

Now they are competing with games that probably keep 500k-1 mil users around, which is decent, but most of those games didnt start with 3 million 4 months after release.
gw2 is contracting, other games are expanding or maintaining. Its doing ok

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

KarlaGrey.5903:

The game most likely felt dead to them based on the changes in numerous channels of interaction (guilds, fl, preferred game mode). However once the game feels subjectively dead to large enough a number of people, it normally means it is also “statistically dead” (in terms of revenue generation), unless said people are able to keep the game in the black through their purchases alone.

A few month ago, some guy was bashing GW2 on mmorpg forum, and I ask him a really simple question. Name me 3 mmorpg that he think is doing better than GW2, and he can’t…

Quite honestly, after playing mmorpg for 10 years. I would say Anet have done a fantastic jobs. Because for a game that is 2 years old, it is doing much better than many other studios.

If you think, many people are complaining about GW2, you probably never visits the forum of other mmorpg. I’m not here to tell you GW2 is the greatest mmorpg in the world. I’m saying there is only a few mmorpg out there, that is still doing good. And GW2 is one of it.

you are comparing it to the worst competitors. Keep in mind GW2 had a 5 year development time on a pre existing franchise which sold in the millions. Cant really compare gw2 to a stary up mmo developed by a small studio in a couple years.

gw2 is doing ok, its running with some big guys, but that really was the lowest expectation of the game. Anything else would be considered a failure.

well just recently, eso, wildstar? they got good budget right? And over the years I played AOC, warhammer online, those got budget right?

I would say Anet did a much better management job than them.

If hope Anet do a better job like the rest of the complainers. I just find it a bit harsh to be too critical, since it’s probably not so easy. (seeing how so many studio have tried and failed).

wildstar isnt a franchise, its trying to come from no where.
eso however is a good example of a failure.

but my point is you are comparing them to failed games. I wouldnt be a considered a successful musician if i sold 1000 records, and muscians comparing themselves to musicians who sold 1000 records arent saying much.

If you really want to use analogy…

The whole point is there isn’t many musician that are able to break the 1000 records mark. So how can you say the musician is doing poorly.

there is a difference between doing good, and doing ok, and doing poorly.
Also there is actually a big difference in expectations based on investment and past performance.

For justin beiber who has sold records in the 1-5 million mark, selling 100,000 is considered a failure, selling 1 million is considered doing ok.

guild wars 2 imo is doing ok, with a slow downward trend. Its definately not a failure at this time. But i wouldnt say its doing well considering its initial stats

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

KarlaGrey.5903:

The game most likely felt dead to them based on the changes in numerous channels of interaction (guilds, fl, preferred game mode). However once the game feels subjectively dead to large enough a number of people, it normally means it is also “statistically dead” (in terms of revenue generation), unless said people are able to keep the game in the black through their purchases alone.

A few month ago, some guy was bashing GW2 on mmorpg forum, and I ask him a really simple question. Name me 3 mmorpg that he think is doing better than GW2, and he can’t…

Quite honestly, after playing mmorpg for 10 years. I would say Anet have done a fantastic jobs. Because for a game that is 2 years old, it is doing much better than many other studios.

If you think, many people are complaining about GW2, you probably never visits the forum of other mmorpg. I’m not here to tell you GW2 is the greatest mmorpg in the world. I’m saying there is only a few mmorpg out there, that is still doing good. And GW2 is one of it.

you are comparing it to the worst competitors. Keep in mind GW2 had a 5 year development time on a pre existing franchise which sold in the millions. Cant really compare gw2 to a stary up mmo developed by a small studio in a couple years.

gw2 is doing ok, its running with some big guys, but that really was the lowest expectation of the game. Anything else would be considered a failure.

well just recently, eso, wildstar? they got good budget right? And over the years I played AOC, warhammer online, those got budget right?

I would say Anet did a much better management job than them.

If hope Anet do a better job like the rest of the complainers. I just find it a bit harsh to be too critical, since it’s probably not so easy. (seeing how so many studio have tried and failed).

wildstar isnt a franchise, its trying to come from no where.
eso however is a good example of a failure.

but my point is you are comparing them to failed games. I wouldnt be a considered a successful musician if i sold 1000 records, and muscians comparing themselves to musicians who sold 1000 records arent saying much.

Rasimir.6239:

phys.7689:

People have opened 10k-27k trick or treat bags, and not gonna the rare drops.

Everyone keeps quoting the people that have opened high numbers of bags without mini, but nobody quotes the people that have opened less than a stack or two and got the mini …

What I’d really be interested in is the amount of bags opened total across all servers, and the amount of minis found total compared to that. Unfortunately, only ANet has those numbers, and I doubt they’d ever release them. It’s the only real indication if the chance works out the way ANet envisioned it, no amount of anecdotal evidence on the forums can come close to that.

thats because statistically, if the odds were reasonable, people opening 1k-27k bags and not getting the item would be extremely unlikely.
for example, if the chance were 1/1000 bags, your chance of opening 10k, and not getting anything would be .004%

See when odds are extremely unlikely the result becomes truely unpredictable. All you can really say about it is that it is unlikely.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Trick-or-Treat-Bag-research/first#post4518271

basically, the solution they came up to the insane grind of last years halloween, is to hide the grind behind insanely low rates.

On average you may still need 30k items to get the item you want. However people dont realize that, so they can enjoy the event more.

I will say this, i find it disturbing how people these days seem to believe it is impossible to draw any conclusions without all data in existence being available.

you realize almost all of the science that drives the world you live in is based on a lot less data?

laokoko.7403:

KarlaGrey.5903:

The game most likely felt dead to them based on the changes in numerous channels of interaction (guilds, fl, preferred game mode). However once the game feels subjectively dead to large enough a number of people, it normally means it is also “statistically dead” (in terms of revenue generation), unless said people are able to keep the game in the black through their purchases alone.

A few month ago, some guy was bashing GW2 on mmorpg forum, and I ask him a really simple question. Name me 3 mmorpg that he think is doing better than GW2, and he can’t…

Quite honestly, after playing mmorpg for 10 years. I would say Anet have done a fantastic jobs. Because for a game that is 2 years old, it is doing much better than many other studios.

If you think, many people are complaining about GW2, you probably never visits the forum of other mmorpg. I’m not here to tell you GW2 is the greatest mmorpg in the world. I’m saying there is only a few mmorpg out there, that is still doing good. And GW2 is one of it.

you are comparing it to the worst competitors. Keep in mind GW2 had a 5 year development time on a pre existing franchise which sold in the millions. Cant really compare gw2 to a stary up mmo developed by a small studio in a couple years.

gw2 is doing ok, its running with some big guys, but that really was the lowest expectation of the game. Anything else would be considered a failure.

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

amassing currency by repetitive simple behaviors at a very low rate, is not considered to be enjoyable for most people. Or else people would be signing up to work in sweat shops.

Even if you dont get lucky for anything to drop you can probably buy most of the things in just 2 weeks. How is that a very low rate?

I also heard mentioning people selling tot bags (Which I dont do) earn like 7g per hour, thats very much above the game average per hour has that very low?

And then you have the drops themselves. while earning the currency to buy stuff you want you may get it for free as well.

I am not sure which one of these compares with a sweat shop analogy to be honest

if i told you i would give you a drawing of your charachter(lets say i sell these for 60 bucks), but you have to click the microsoft button on your desktop and close the window for 3 hours a day for 2 weeks, to me that would be a pretty low rate.
essentially, that 42 hours of monotonus activity for a 60 dollar value. 1.42 dollars per hour.

you could do boring repetive task for 7 gold an hour, and get what you want for 290 gold in 2 weeks, or you can spend twenty one dollars worth of work (1-3 hours).
that is a low rate.

7 gold an hour is like 60 cents an hour.
that is sweat shop rates.

Okey let me give you a different perspective on this. How would one know if they have a good wage or a really terrible wage? There is only one way really by comparing what others earn and what you earn together with the purchasing power your wage gives you. There are places in the world where $1 is actually a lot of money. According to wikipedia the lowest minimum wage in the world is in Uganda and it sits at 3c per hour. The $1.42 you mention as being extremely miserable would mean 47 hours of work over there. Everything is relative.

Then you have an element of currency conversion. $1 would convert to 1000s of their currency why is that? different currencies have different values.

$24 can buy me a lot of things in the real world like say 5 burger where as 140 candy corn cobs dont buy me a thing which naturally makes them less valueable.

More then that what exactly I am going to be doing these two weeks? playing the game which right now generally means earning candy corn so technically speaking I am still getting those things for free as i am doing what I will be doing regardless.

Also unless you farm mindlessly its far from monotonus. Plenty of people consider halloween their favorite holiday so pretty sure I am not the only one.

if i had to work for two weeks to get 5 burgers, then that would suck. Regardless, back to the point, the rewards in the game are fairly heavily tied to extreme low rate random number generators. People have opened 10k-27k trick or treat bags, and not gonna the rare drops.

This is not just gambling, its crappy gambling. They need to start looking at other types of reward design for the game besides repetitive boring repititous tasks to get money to buy items obtained through low rate lotteries.

I will admit, that if you really enjoy these types of activities, then whatever you get out of it is a bonus.

I find it hard to believe these activities are that engaging other than seeing item bags fill up though.

bugged out forums

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

amassing currency by repetitive simple behaviors at a very low rate, is not considered to be enjoyable for most people. Or else people would be signing up to work in sweat shops.

Even if you dont get lucky for anything to drop you can probably buy most of the things in just 2 weeks. How is that a very low rate?

I also heard mentioning people selling tot bags (Which I dont do) earn like 7g per hour, thats very much above the game average per hour has that very low?

And then you have the drops themselves. while earning the currency to buy stuff you want you may get it for free as well.

I am not sure which one of these compares with a sweat shop analogy to be honest

if i told you i would give you a drawing of your charachter(lets say i sell these for 60 bucks), but you have to click the microsoft button on your desktop and close the window for 3 hours a day for 2 weeks, to me that would be a pretty low rate.
essentially, that 42 hours of monotonus activity for a 60 dollar value. 1.42 dollars per hour.

you could do boring repetive task for 7 gold an hour, and get what you want for 290 gold in 2 weeks, or you can spend twenty one dollars worth of work (1-3 hours).
that is a low rate.

7 gold an hour is like 60 cents an hour.
that is sweat shop rates.

lordkrall.7241:

phys.7689:

amassing currency by repetitive simple behaviors at a very low rate, is not considered to be enjoyable for most people. Or else people would be signing up to work in sweat shops.

Which people quite clearly does

thats interesting because its very sad.
Im sorry that our entertainment now incorporates the failures of our society as the main means of progress towards a goal.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

fellyn.5083:

What GW2 needs is elite areas like GW1 had.

Underworld
Fissure of Woe
Realm of Anguish
The Deep
Urgoz’s Warren
Slavers Exile

And so on. These areas can be rewarding and fun.

But that takes quite a lot of effort. So lets revamp how people purchase gems to make it more profitable for us.

. . . okay, so we need elite areas for the potential rewarding feeling, and fun. I don’t know about you but I had less fun doing most of those. (Foundry of Failed Creations can go straight to …). And I never really found any of them “rewarding” in a sense where it was important I do them. Obsidian Armor, the big draw of the two ‘realms of the gods’, was terribly ugly for my ranger. Most everything else which dropped didn’t appear all that neat to make me want to spend time doing them over and over again.

You know what the real reward I was after for actually doing that list? Hall of Monument statues and that was it. Anything else was possible to get elsewhere, or to just grind out plat and buy it. (Which was, also, ridiculously easy in a few ways.)

I will agree on one thing – I would like to see (I hesitate to say it as “we need”) more challenging content for either open world, or moderate-sized groups. Without the must have carrots to draw people into it . . . I hate that crap.

Sorry, i would rather struggle for years to beat a hard dungeon 20 times to get an item, than struggle for years killing non stop waves of too weak enemies for the the same reward.

One you can aim for, improve, learn and each time you succeed you make notable progress.
the other, well you can watch netflix while pressing buttons repeatedly i suppose, and hope one day your pressing of 1 wins you the day.

Galen Grey.4709:

I am not sure why you hate currencies so much. Currency is merely a token that enables trading one thing for another. Back in the good old days before currency was invented people went with direct trading. I have this nifty shirt and will trade one of your chickens for it which was okey until the chicken person went, sorry I already have a shirt what I need is a wheel for my cart and the village tailor died of hunger because the only person with food didnt need anything out of the tailor. Biggest tragedy of them all is the carpenter actually needed a shirt but what reason did the farmer have to trade his chicken for a shirt and then trade the shirt to the carpenter. Its all just messy. At the end of the day there were two options. either the tailor, carpenter and farmer did it all themselves or else invent the awesome concept of currency.

They cleverly chose currency. The Tailor kept doing what he likes doing and what he is good at. He now no longer needs to pray the farmer would need a new shirt every couple of days if he didnt want to starve. now he can pay the farmer with the currency he got selling the shirt to the carpenter and others… etc.. etc…

Nice story and all but back on subject. If your nifty cat of darkness costs 12 candy corn cobs its because Anet in their wisdom decided they want people to take 4 days of gameplay give or take to earn the little rascal. (4 days because from I experiance you can earn about 3 of the sugary things every day on average) If instead of selling the little fluffy furball they decided to have it drop from say the mad king’s clock tower they’d have to introduce rng and set odds such that on average one would have the little ball of darkness drop after 4 days. Why would that be bad?

1. Some people don’t like jumping puzzles so you’re forcing them to grind content they hate.

2. some have a hard time finishing it while other still can do it each and every time. People who have a had time will never be able to earn one because naturally to keep with the 4 day or so time line they need to balance the drop rate with the people who rarely fail. If you can say do 10 runs an hour, people play an average of 4 hrs per day, 4 days worth of clock tower would be 160 runs. You wouldn’t go with the 160 obviously but even a 1% chance drop rate to have the thing drop every 100 run or so would be unreachable for most of the player base

3. Some people might enjoy other parts of the halloween event other then clock tower yet since they just cant live out without their their personal milk annihilator they;re going to loose the content they enjoy as they’re force to play what they actually dislike.

Currency solves all of these issues. Play the content you feel like playing and you’re getting close and closer to the cute little ball of darkness.

Like I said taking shortcuts is a personal choice. I wanted one the lovable little halloween horrors for myself as well. I didnt have to do anything, could have bought one outright from TP. Or better yet sell all the ToT bags and buy it after the first two days. Yet I personally believe whats important most is having fun playing the game so thats what I did and the RNG gods actually smiled on me this last saturday and now the scary named bag of love has been following me everywhere and Its been an awesome experience every second of it. Had it not dropped by the last day I would have surely outright bought it off TP dont get me wrong but by then it wouldnt have mattered anyway because I’d still had my fun enjoying the content hoping for Zuzu to drop.

Now if only I could get gyjwnmteujei8 or whatever he’s called

amassing currency by repetitive simple behaviors at a very low rate, is not considered to be enjoyable for most people. Or else people would be signing up to work in sweat shops.

yeah, looking at a lot of the rng in the recent events, it doesnt really inspire you to play.
The reality is that something with such a low chance becomes essentially just highly unlikely. This cannot be used as an incentive for any action.

Essentially random with low rates is just plain unrewarding. So basically random with a decent rate, that works to make something unpredictable, and serves to incentivize certain play. Random with low rates does very little for gameplay.

Also due to the nature of random, when the rates are really low, it becomes highly unlikely to impossible to defeat the random with numbers. something that is 1/million chance, is unlikely that people will be able to do it enough to normalize the random chances. So it is a really poor method for distributing anything, unless you dont want it to be something anyone ever attempts to get.

Ryan Mozo.9581:

Can someone explain to me how adding “bo” in front of staff makes it different from a regular staff?

mostly bo staff is an attacking weapon, which you can use either side. Most of the staffs we have here act as a focus to point to things and hit them with magic.

Bo staff for martial artist proffesion! They could give it to elementalist as well.

Fernling.1729:

Asmodeus.5782:

Only the trait tiers. The individual traits were free. The tiers were dirt cheap, too.

I’m an idiot. Was that in response to my post?

I was responding to Phys, saying that the OP wouldn’t be grandfathered in to the traits because he only leveled his characters to mid 20s. He would still have to jump through hoops to get the individual traits.

I’m guessing it was just a statement saying that it was easy to get the traits pre trait patch.

from what i heard, if a charachter was created before the patch, they will have all traits unlocked once the reach the appropriate level. If they are created after the patch, they will have to unlock every trait individually via task, or gold an skill points.

The main effect for someone grandfathered in is getting the traits later, and getting most of them in the last few levels, i believe.

however, i could be mistaken

Scientia.8924:

Only come back if you plan on playing toons made before April’s patch.

Otherwise, you will be very frustrated with how grindy character progression has become

(ex: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Game-Updates-Traits/page/57)

since they played a lot of classes, would probably be grandfathered in.

Elena.1543:

I like good stories, engaging content to the point you can almost get lost in it ,I enjoy pve mostly but pvp some times nothing to serious. I don’t mind chasing achievements’ or a grind if there is some goal to it . but mostly I feel it the community that a big factor in my enjoyment ,some games it can make or break it ,

hmm, stories, well to try the new ones you need to be 80, i dont think its that great but its ok.
i dont think pve in the game is generally of the type you get lost in.
there is a ton of schievements and grind if you want certain appearences/items.

story 6/10
engaging/engrossing pve 6/10
achievements/items to grind 8.5/10