Guild Wars 2

GoddessHrist.8472:

KDXX.9520:

I am so very, very tired of yelling at ANet this week. So. I’ll keep this simple.

/Signed

And also regarding the sudden and dramatic change in the exchange RATE of gold to gems being generated solely by the new build…prove it. Wait, you can’t because you got rid of the trend history.

Putting that aside, we know it’s a lie. We know it was a price fixing. I’ve seen patch shifts in the market before, heck I count on them to make ANY sort of real amounts of gold since you started nerfing loot. A regular patch will move the exchange by maybe half a gold in a DAY of play. A big patch usually moves 1-1.3 gold in a day.

Your new exchange moved it anywhere between 3-4.5 Gold in less than 5 hours.

The math doesn’t add up. It. Does. Not. Add. Up.

I totally agree. Something had to have changed in the conversion formula. This price jump happened immediately when the patch went live. I’ve never seen anything like this.

Here is a chart from my personal exchange tracker.

they basically forced a lot of people to buy a ton more gems than they usually would to get the same items, which skews the gem exchange.

the algorithm of the gem exchange has to react to large influx of gold, with predictive values, so they wont take losses on the gold/gem exchange most likely, therefore you will see a large spike in value.
the only thing that can balance this is a large spike on the other side,

but since selling gems gives you better options to sell as much as you want, whereas buying gems is in huge increments, its unlikely that the system will track the real demand that well anymore

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Tulki.1458:

Immediately before this patch: 10g = 70 gems.

Immediately after this patch: 10g = 57 gems (going off the 400 gem exchange rate).

They tampered with prices to make gems more expensive at exactly the same time as they removed the price history and made 400 gems the lowest increment you can buy in. Did anyone else see this? No other holiday event has had that big a fluctuation before.

Hey Tulki,

I wanted you to know I went immediately to see if I could get an answer on this, and don’t worry, there was no “stealth nerfing” of gem costs. What happened is a common occurrence with new builds: A whole lot of people made exchanges when the new build went live. And as you know the conversions are market driven.

So that’s why you saw the seeming discrepancy in the exchange rate. All is well, and it will continue to ebb and flow according to the volume of exchanges, as always.

I’ll explain where the discrepancy comes from clearly, so that everyone can see.

If someone wanted to buy 300 gems before, they would be converting gold into 300 gems only.

If someone wants to buy 300 gems now, they have to convert gold into 400 gems. That extra 100 gems gets factored into the supply vs demand in the currency exchange rates because the person bought 100 more gems that they do not need. And that is for EACH person. Let’s assume 500 people converted for the 100 extra gems that they do not need, that’s 50000 gems that was not supposed to be bought. That 50000 extra gems increases the gold>gem conversion rate by X amount of gold, hence artificial inflation.

There is a very good reason why Bank notes and coins exist in the following manner:
$1 coins, $2 coins, $5 notes, $10 notes, $20 notes, $50 notes, $100 notes.
1 $100 note = 2 $50 notes = 100 $1 coins

If i were to receive $100,
I dont mind receiving 2 $50 notes instead of 1 $100 note. I do mind receiving 100 $1 coins instead of 1 $100 note though, as it would be difficult to carry.

If I were to receive 200 gems,
I dont mind clicking a “100 gems button” twice to get 200 gems instead of clicking the “200 gems button” once. I dont mind clicking a “50 gems button” 4 times either. I do mind having to click a “1 gem button” 200 times though.

If i went to a store, and hand them a $100 note for a $20 purchase, and they tell me they are unable to return me $80 in bank notes but they will give me $80 store credit instead, i wouldnt purchase from them.

So please, reconsider your Gold > Gems system with just this tiny little change:
1000 gems
500 gems
100 gems
50 gems

I doubt anyone will complain about clicking the “100 gems button” 4 times instead of clicking a “400 gems button” once…

yeah man, the mistake you make, is you think this was actually about fast buy options, as you say, if the goal was to give people fast options to make change, they would not have gone in increments of 400.

The purpose of the change was to make the minimal amount of gems purchaseable to be 400 gems at a time (no matter gold or gem) this is shown to increase the chances for more spending, or waste. which leads to profits.
this is why the gem-gold side gives somewhat reasonable increments, like 100 10 1, and the gem side gives stupid increments that dont allow you to make change.

Aveinda.9260:

The thing is, I can’t even spend my 750 gems on gold now. I can spend 678gems and get 100 gold, but what happens to the left over 72 gems?? This is madness. And irritating.

buy gold in lower increments with the 78.
that problem amounts to
10 gold for like 68 gems or something
1 gold for 5 gems
anddd you get to keep 3 gems till the exchange catches up, or something like that.
not user friendly? yeah, but thats not really the point, its all about the cash

every gem created is paid for, when you go gold->gems->gold, you essentially destroyed some gems. AKA anet gets money without providing a good or service, well you get the service of them making change for you.

lol imagine if a store charged you 30% of your change to make change for you.

overwolf and anet entered a partnership recently, gw2 officially promoted their add ons.

Aveinda.9260:

I want to be able to spend as many gems (or gold) as i like. Why should you force me to purchase an ‘amount’??? If have 750 gems, I want to buy 750 gems worth of gold! if I had 120 worth of gems, and I wanted to spend them all on gold, why couldn’t I? Today I had 650 gems, and wanted 50 gems to get an outfit. I couldn’t get the 50 gems with my gold, so I go without. This is not fair for either party (gem buyers AND gem sellers). Do not punish us because you have no faith in new players intelligence. It is unfair and rude.

hint, its not really for new players, its so you have no choice but to buy 400 gems with gold, or 800 gems with cash.

you can either spend your excess gems on another item, or you can convert it back into gold, at 30% loss.

So you ll either have to pick up some crappy cheap items you normally wouldnt buy, or you can get even more gems until the things you want go in evenly to how many gems you have (close to evenly)

Behellagh.1468:

First how is this making more money for ANet since we are talking about exchanging game currency for Gems.

Second the minimum purchase size for gems in gold is half what it is with cash.

That said it’s still stupid. Yes some players requested a means to buy an exact amount of gems without playing guessing games but it’s easy enough to do the calculation based on what they wanted to buy, not limited tiers. And we can’t even sell the exact amount of gems we have.

You want to offer tiers, fine but give us an “advance trade” button to get to the old interface or one where we can specify the amount of gems we want to buy or sell as well.

because anet makes money from people buying things from the gem store regardless if its gold or gems, the currency exchange ensures that. ( i know you dont believe this from previous discussions, but its accurate)
having people with excess gems regardless of the source will overall make them buy more.

people being able to make change with gold, also undermined their buy 800 gems at a time style system.

they will make more money per player this way. However they may lose players.

my guess is the large spike in gem cost is the algorithm over correcting for the new disparity in gems/gold influx, so as to make sure they dont take in gold at a value they cant recover.

brokenrabbit.6538:

Tulki.1458:

The damage is already done, even if they revert it back. They artificially inflated gem prices the moment the patch released, and ripped the price graph out of the game UI and disabled the gem price function call on the API to hide it. That’s why if you go to GW2spidy the gem price graph hasn’t updated since the patch but everything else has.

Don’t even think for a second that this change was done to accommodate a certain type of player. Gem prices don’t naturally spike 22% in the span of ten minutes, not even on a patch day. That has never happened in the history of GW2, even on the anniversary.

I’ve defended this game since launch, but this…this is just too far. I’ve never seen gem prices spike anywhere near that much overnight. It just doesn’t happen. And that this happens just when the history graph disappears and the API stops working? It’s not fishy, it’s obvious.

I think it might be time to move on. There’s something sinister going on behind the curtain.

actually it easily could.
see the gem exchange is feuled by people buying gems, now people are angry, they dont want to support anet, but people still trade gold.

the rate goes up, because its based on gold in the system versus gems in the system. This combined with Popular halloween in GW2, and a system which will generally cause more spike purchases of gems, (since everyone who wants to exchange needs to buy 400s at a time) essentially guarantees increased gold to gem ratio. My guess it will get higher.

the only balance is that it will look more attractive to those who want to buy gold. they may bring the rate down.
still, anet will profit, so in the short term its probably a big win. The marketing feedback though, may lead to an overall negative outcome. If people lose trust and leave the game, yeah they will make more per player, but they will lose a lot of players

hmm kinda interesting side effect, the gold to gems price will spike as players refuse to buy gems and start spending gold.
Then more people will change gem to gold for the good rates.
anet wins, players lose.
the only way to really stop anet from profiting is to completely boycott gems, whether the source be gold, or gems.

but ehh i think the pushback will be too negative, in the long run, if something doesnt change i see less and less people being a part of this project.

Ayrilana.1396:

Wanze.8410:

Ayrilana.1396:

Blude.6812:

John—-just a single concept is needed to guide the team—-Fair and equitable for all players.
I believe you understand the current method is neither.

How’s everyone having the same chance as each other not fair and equitable?

Because he didnt get the same drops as his buddy.

Except him getting those same drops and his buddy not (and vice versa) have equally the same chance of occurring. With everyone having the same chance to roll a precursor, I can roll two in a row and everyone else has the same chance to do just that as well. It’s more of an issue about perception and jealousy than unfairness and inequality.

The problem people should focus on is a lack of progression rather than one of fairness and equality.

whethe r they had the same possibility doesnt mean they have the same reality. At the end of the day two players with same input get different outputs. Thats his beef.

random is unfair by its nature. If it was fair, it would be predictable, and thus not random

hmmm well, your probably right. being able to buy exactly what you need/want is the simplest method

IndigoSundown.5419:

draxynnic.3719:

Ashen.2907:

It is interesting to note that the dev’s quote does not in fact include the bolded section of your claim.

Chris Cleary.8017:
“There are really two sides to this, and when it comes down to it, you are both right – and you are both wrong. Both sides have the right to complete the task that they set out to do (completing or not completing).
Challenging another player’s play style is the issue here, and since this revolved around an event that was designed to be completed, it is being changed so that the original design of the event can be carried out.
When something in the game (such as this event) changes negatively as this has, we need to step in and remediate the toxicity. The byproduct of this change happens to be that a champion farm is being slowed, but since that was the originating factor for the toxicity, it’s unavoidable.
I encourage players to remember that not everyone has the same goals when they play, and sometimes they will clash.”

This actually quite worries me. One of the points that ArenaNet made during development was that they were trying to make the event system work in such a way that there would never be clashes in the goals of different groups – the best rewards would always come from winning the events (including whatever might come later in the chain).

Mind you, temple defenses have been a big flaw in that theory since release (you don’t get a chest for a defense, so it’s often better to let it fail and then retake).

Some time ago, posters complained about Champions being a waste of time to kill (along with other general complaints about poor rewards). ANet decided to create Champion bags as a means to entice players to fight the Champions. They also, to sweeten the pot, modified event scaling to proc Champions when numbers of players passed certain thresholds. Both changes were an attempt by ANet to improve the game’s rewards, which have been a sore point since launch.

Unfortunately, it looks like ANet didn’t anticipate that players would find event mechanics which had been implemented prior to those two changes and use these mechanics to farm, while also creating points of conflict between different groups of players. Those event mechanics were not a problem until better rewards became available. Events only failed if there were not enough players to complete them. So, what we have, is two updates to the game — Champ bags and event scaling — which are interacting with previously-enacted event design in an unforeseen fashion.

ANet does not want to take those farms away from players — despite farmer insistence that ANet does not want them to farm. The truth is, ANet does not want them to fight. Unfortunately, player greed and the infighting in chat that greed generates leaves them little choice but to modify events where the verbiage gets out of hand. Essentially, some of the farmers (and perhaps some trolls who enjoy tormenting them) are ruining these farm events.

actually they made events scale up to champions before champion drop loot, as a means of nerfing loot, and not having everything die in .01 seconds. people were highly upset at the nerf, because even now, its better to kill 30 enemies(if you can actually get claims) in 5 seconds 4 times than fighting 1 champion for 1.3 minutes
before champion loot it was a literal smack in the face.

once champ loot existed, it was no longer crap, just not quite as effecient as murdering wave upon waves

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Nilkemia.8507:

The only real misconceptions regarding level gating are those that suggest the level gating is a good or beneficial change. While some may have exaggerated about the badness of the changes, it doesn’t change that they are bad, and do not improve but rather degrade the quality and fun of this game.

The leveling rewards make later leveling much more fun for me personally. More fun is an improvement to me.

most of those rewards are more than balanced against the loss of all drops from personal story monsters. I mean it feels nice to get it yeah, but personal story tends to suck more than its share out now, especially since some of the missions have a decent amount of enemies.

I’m not buying it. A certain levels I get rares and exotics now. I get an ecto for level 69. My personal story rewards are still better over all than I used to get by a long shot. I’m not sure what you’re talking about here.

you realize 1 ecto isnt really a big deal? a non level 80 exotic you cant salvage is worth very little.
you get a lot of loot from personal story/used to. Many arcs have a decent amount of enemies
put it like this, lets say you wandered around killing enemies for 30 minutes in the open world, you would probably generate more value than an ecto.
killing stuff in the personal story used to be fairly similar drop wise to killing stuff in the open world, now, its worth nothing.

Behellagh.1468:

Satire is not trolling.

At the very least this topic was to counter the insensate wailing of some players that precursors were priced out of the range they could afford and thus was totally unfair. The thread at it’s most basic shows that demand is behind the high price of certain precursors but if demand isn’t there, prices are allot more reasonable. If anything it encourages players not to use such a broad brush when they say a whole group of items are not affordable.

Ignoring posters saying they weren’t talking about these inexpensive ones were either ignored or countered in the same manner when players post on the complaint threads when they inform why or suggest ways to get the gold to buy them. Thus satire.

If you find this thread annoying just understand the feeling some of us get when we defend the TP and economy.

satire is almost the very definition of trolling

wwwes.1398:

The more I think about it, the more I think the problem lies with the way that exotics just drop from anywhere at any time. The feeling you get from attacking some random enemy and getting an exotic item (or even a rare) is not the same as when you get it from a chest or a boss. If the loot tables were adjusted to make super valuable things MUCH MUCH more likely to drop from bosses and chests than from mobs, that would make people happier.

This should be coupled with measures to clip the outliers of RNG and give better/worse luck after a streak, but I think that this would be considered a very positive change.

Also, throw different types of items into the mix. I’m guessing 99.99% of players salvage the blues/greens they get, why even bother? Who’s going to equip a blue piece of armor at level 80? Instead, why not just award the mats and the luck directly? Asking for minis to be added to the loot tables is probably asking too much, but getting random minis is also something that would be fun.

problem is this would further lower the value of regular monsters. perhaps if regular monsters represented consistent progress, and bosses/special enemies/chests represented spike progress it could work.

However if you just make bosses more valuable you get even more pressure to do things like boss train, or ignoring everything except bosses in dungeons

Squishy.3694:

So to recap, at this moment in time, you have two options – either sell your soul to the farming gods who still seem to roam Tyria or be willing to spend I don’t have the time to farm and gems just aren’t favourable sighs ANet when will you love us?

basically you either farm gold like a exploited laborer, or you spend cash

other option is take your time.
Overall i think they need to add some less time intensive goals, more skill/objective based stuff, or ways to increase your earning(of gold or items or whatever) through skills/objectives.

However i think their intention was to have people time valued similarly, and thus they dont really want to do what i suggested overall.
they want it to be about time

Behellagh.1468:

Shylark.4951:

I traded 250 gems and got like 26.6 gold last night… It varies only way to know what you will get is just do it… Wish I could give better advise but really the in game chart is about the best we have….

And if you aren’t near a computer with the game installed, use the API.

https://api.guildwars2.com/v2/commerce/exchange/gems?quantity=100

Use in the number of gems you are looking to convert instead of 100 in the above link and get a real time result of the amount of gold you will get by selling them. Just remember the exchange fluctuates constantly.

For example 2000 gems at this moment is about 207.5g.

kitten spidey is slow, and the fluctuation seems to be large

Squishy.3694:

So talking figures here, if you are going to get anywhere near the gold range of 1500+, you would need over 12,000 gems. which works out at somewhere near the answer of – I’m not that rich…… So what have we learned? That even by ANet’s own methods (and don’t get me wrong I love ANet) they make it very hard to trade gems for cash

gems is basically a means of you trading players gem store items for in game gold. Its not exactly made to make getting items in game easier, its more giving you a way to trade players your real world time for their in game time, at a rate that is somewhat based on the demand comparison.

Basically, you are paying players to farm for you, and i dont think you could hustle someone for more than that.

The question is, would you rather in grind gold farm in game for 150 hours or give someone 195 dollars. about 27 hours of real world work if you make 7 an hour.

John Smith.4610:

Checking back in. This isn’t meant to be a discussion of just those three ideas that I posted, those were just a primer for options. The idea is to discuss RNG as a concept inside of games and reward systems. I think more discussion will lead to better understanding of the problems current systems may have, and the pros and cons of other possible systems.

That being said, this is not a discussion of how you should get a precursor. I’d prefer the discussion to be much more general, solving specific problems is easy once you have an excellent framework.

basically my feeling on random is that the standard way it has been done was wrong. Many developers were operating with the same incorrect ideas that players have. Like

• if he plays 2000 hours, he probably will get it (which is true but ignores the fact he may not)
• the belief lucky streaks will balance out
• not considering how low % chances dramatically changes the amount of time for a system to normalize. (something with a 30% chance normalizes over fewer trials than something with .001% chances) the lower the rate, the more disparate and greater the range in personal player experience.

however, random is probably the simplest solution, with the least amount of planning, and is creates short term unpredictability, at the same time as creating a predictable supply (for the economy)

Still i would say that low % probability is a bad overall system for these types of games. I would generally prefer smaller luck and something more predictable.

Once again SABs first iteration of rewards, i felt was really good.
accountbound based on predictability, and how well you knew the levels/beat the game. IE by knowing the area well you could get a lot more currency, beating bosses gave currency, etc.
the tradeable skins were random drops.

Essentially i think random overall as the main method of achieving goals, is probably bad.

Wanze.8410:

We are just discussing market manipulation in a different topic and I was wondering what you would consider market manipulation within the guild wars 2 economy.

If we go by the real life wiki definition of Market Manipulation, which examples stated there would be considered MM in game as well (and therefore shouldnt be practiced)?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMarket_manipulation

Personally, i dont see any of the examples given being illegal in GW2 (and i think I know why but an explaination might be great).

The only things i can think of that would be considered illegal are:
Insider Trading
Using exploits like duping or the snowflake bug during wintersday 2012

it was a loooooonnng time ago, and may no longer exist but i think JS weighed in on pumping and dumping unfavorably, though i dont think he said it was illegal, and that it would sometimes fail.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I just want to quickly add, there are some errors on this chart of how stuff is unlocking, as well as 1st character vs. account unlocks when some of these systems were carried between regions. We’re trying to identify what happened and repair those things assigned the wrong account/character fields, as well as levels.

Could you let us know what is being looked, what is working as intended and what is not?

he posted that way back in the day, they made some corrections after that. The assumption is that what you see now, is as its intended to be. Comments at this point should be based on how you feel the system works as it currently stands.

Vayne.8563:

Nilkemia.8507:

The only real misconceptions regarding level gating are those that suggest the level gating is a good or beneficial change. While some may have exaggerated about the badness of the changes, it doesn’t change that they are bad, and do not improve but rather degrade the quality and fun of this game.

The leveling rewards make later leveling much more fun for me personally. More fun is an improvement to me.

most of those rewards are more than balanced against the loss of all drops from personal story monsters. I mean it feels nice to get it yeah, but personal story tends to suck more than its share out now, especially since some of the missions have a decent amount of enemies.

I wonder what the data on the new trait aquisition is.

How many charachters created after have all their traits ?
How many new players understand trait aquisition well?
How many buy versus hunt?
How long does it take the average player to have traits in every slot/synergistic builds

one possibility, to help the problem of not getting the item you want. Is some items are flagged as lucky items, these would be the low drop rate items, like rares, exotics, precursors, etc, and some rare stuff in other categories. These would be tradeable or MForgeable, to become a random amount of luck currency (with a lucky chance for double payout), items luck currency value would be based on how hard they are to get.

then… you have an account bound item creator or vendor, that you can trade luck currency for lucky items (basically hard to get items of various types)
the items can make use of secondary currencies in addition to luck currencies so as not to cancel out certain content specific rewards, like fractal relics for fractal items, karma/gold for precursors, geodes or whatever ties into the insect weapons.

lucky drops should have some visual cue, so you know you got something considered lucky.

this however just creates a system to deal with the problem of how do you decide when someone has “won” for example a rare spear is probably considered the same as a rare greatsword random wise, but not in real value or use.

You would still institute a smaller gradual and predictable means of gaining luck currency in addition to the trade ins.

So when they decide to add a new item, but want it to be tied with a specific content, all they have to do is add a luck currency cost, and a side currency cost asscoiated with a given task.
They could also have some that have achievements associated with it, as opposed to a side currency.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m sorry John, if my suggestions/discussions go too far away from the topic, do you want to focus on your stated 3 points or are we still on the right track, I wonder?

I also think this is going a bit off topic with a general discussion about reward structures and precursor aquisition. They are undoubtely related topics and alot of people have genuine concerns about them (and some good suggestions where made here) but i think those would be the next steps of discussion and should be discussed at a later stage in a seperate topic.

reward aquisition is not off topic to discussing random loot, because if it isnt random, you have to decide how/why you award loot.
If the solution is less random, then one must say, how can achieve similar benefits to random, with different structures?

the primary benefit as far as i can tell being unpredictability, and probabably easy design.

I checked the OP again and actually youre right. JS doesnt ask, which one we prefer but to discuss them

yeah, even though most people seem to be treating those as the only options, my understanding of the OP was that those were only two possible suggestions, and the overall point of the thread is discussing random, and how to avoid the natural phenomenon of outliers having a really bad experience.

essentially random overall, amongst many people is pretty stable, but the personal experience on an individual basis.
you are on one side of the bell curve and win often or big
you are in the middle, and most items seem a bit of a grind
you are on the other side and your experience sucks.

non random wont eliminate the feeling of grind, with a simple design, but at least people on the other side of the bell curve will feel like they have another method to progress towards goals.

Squishy.3694:

Hey all,

So I like many others have decided to craft a legendary and instead of whining about precursor costs, my birthday is just round the corner and I want to know whether I should buy a gem card for 2000 gems to convert to gold to finish off the legendary. My question is, is there a stable way of calculating how much you can get gold wise in terms of gems? The rate at the moment is ~10g per 100 gems but to me ( and this math may be completely wrong but here it is) it seems like its 1000 gems for 100g. That to me doesn’t seem favourable at all and I would be very thankful if someone could tell me A) if I am wrong and how much one can get for 2000 gems

Much love <3,
~Squishy

yep its currently 100 gems gets 9.41 gold
or 1000 gems gets 94.1 gold

is that a bad deal? yeah, its a bad deal for the people selling gold, because 1000 gems costs 12.50 which is about 2 hours of minimum wage work, and you get an item which takes even good farmers 10 hours to make.
this has some range, based on how much you earn, versus how fast some people can farm, but its highly likely you are on the take advantage side of this equation.

also, the rate fluctuates based on how much gems are traded versus how much gold is traded. so it could be more different later. Most trends up to this point have you getting more gold per gem later.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Wanze.8410:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m sorry John, if my suggestions/discussions go too far away from the topic, do you want to focus on your stated 3 points or are we still on the right track, I wonder?

I also think this is going a bit off topic with a general discussion about reward structures and precursor aquisition. They are undoubtely related topics and alot of people have genuine concerns about them (and some good suggestions where made here) but i think those would be the next steps of discussion and should be discussed at a later stage in a seperate topic.

Yeah you’re right, I got infracted for posting off-topic stuff:

“Gaile, could you ask the devs if the game can now track healing-output / support skills as participation in events… now that we got the new combat log which can track healing?”

Well I guess I stop making suggestions now. Odd decision if you ask me, I was just trying to help…

Hmm i think its a bit of grey area, because you were asking that within the confines of,(if i remember correctly) is it even possible to track these things AND tie them into deciding how to reward people for participation with random breaker tokens.

However, I dont think they pay that much attention to what is being said, just if it seems that way with a quick glance, and if someone reported you, which was probably the case.

Wanze.8410:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I’m sorry John, if my suggestions/discussions go too far away from the topic, do you want to focus on your stated 3 points or are we still on the right track, I wonder?

I also think this is going a bit off topic with a general discussion about reward structures and precursor aquisition. They are undoubtely related topics and alot of people have genuine concerns about them (and some good suggestions where made here) but i think those would be the next steps of discussion and should be discussed at a later stage in a seperate topic.

reward aquisition is not off topic to discussing random loot, because if it isnt random, you have to decide how/why you award loot.
If the solution is less random, then one must say, how can achieve similar benefits to random, with different structures?

the primary benefit as far as i can tell being unpredictability, and probabably easy design.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

maddoctor.2738:

I think one great way to reduce the effect of RNG in the game is to allow party-based loot. This idea is a very old one, since FotM was first released, and I noticed how the RNG system was punishing FRIENDS/GUILDIES playing together. Players dislike feeling punished but love feeling rewarded.

How is this going to work:
When there is some loot that is not salvageable/usable (Fractal Skins) or sellable for nearly nothing (Ascended Rings) allow people in the same party to distribute it how they see fit. Example:

Me and my friend are doing Fractals, I do fractals daily in order to get the Fractal Dagger skin, he does Fractals daily in order to get the Fractal Sword skin, we kill the last boss and voila, I get a Sword and he gets a Dagger. This is something that shouldn’t ever ever happen in the game, it makes both players feel like the RNG system failed them.

Another example, imagine both players are doing Tequatl, one is a WvW player as well and would certainly love to have some extra Knight’s gear, the other player plays a Dire/Rabid set in WvW, and once again they both get the opposite of what they want. Same with Ascended Rings and unsellable Fractal exotics, the list goes on and on and on.

Why is this happening only in this game alone? In other games, when you are grouped with people you trust (friends/guildies) you have the option to distribute the loot the way you want. Even if two playes want the same thing, eg a Fractal Sword skin, if your guildie gets it instead of you, you are one step closer in getting it yourself if the group stays the same, so even if RNG doesn’t favor you, you STILL MAKE PROGRESS.

Even though “fixing” RNG is important, for sure, allowing parties to distribute their loot as they see fit, will solve some of loot issue. At least Ascended items (boxes, rings) and unsellable exotic skins can be freely distributed among members, as is anything else that is Account Bound or Soul Bound on Acquire.

Just my 2 cents.

main problem with part loot is it causes people to feel pressure to give people stuff, create systems for deciding who gets what loot, etc. Then you get systems where you all sell all loot, and distribute gold (to be fair) Or you decided who deserves what drop based on parucipation, or the leader decides who gets what. Or the time that guy in the guild looted the dawn and changed servers/names.

i dont hate the principle, but the reality is generally annoying.

My “plan” is to use this system when I’m running with friends / guildies. We can decide who gets what among ourselves easily, there is a reason I only included (at least at first) only items that are completely useless otherwise. The main idea is to stop punishing people that are playing together for a long time, I still don’t have my Fractal Dagger drop even after running 1000 fractals, while my “regular” team almost everyone has it!!!! And they don’t even use daggers in their characters!!! How is this FAIR?

If you don’t like the Fractal Skin, your only other option is to delete it. WHY?
If you don’t like the Ascended Ring (or even Ascended weapon/armor you got from the box) you can only sell them for some useless silver. WHY?
If you don’t like that Exotic Account Bound Skin you got, you can only salvage it, yes salvaging will get you something more, but still nothing compared to giving it to someone who actually likes it / needs it.

Making bound on acquire gear party-bound for those who “activate” this option is a good step forward in making LOOT in this game feel more important without even tweaking RNG itself.

like i said i agree with your particular case, and have been in that position before, however, i have also experienced similar systems in other games, and it lead to many sort of annoying developments. I remember guild type organizations selling good drops (even account bounds) join party loot item type deals. Guilds claiming party drops like i said, via most important guild members first, or having to create point systems to track it.
Especially consider that they may add raids soon, and you may be competing for drops with a much larger number of people who have a lot less personal stake in your interests, and the larger the group size, the less likely you will be able to play with the same people all the time.

Im not saying its horrible, but there ar4e lot of problems that come with party loot, especially the more people who take part.

How will you feel when your 4/5 people in your group and 16/24 people in your guild decide the fractal dagger should go to Sally, who has been trying for the dagger 3 days longer than you have, but wasnt actually involved in this run? hold on hurry up and enter the fractal before it autoloots sally! Shes really awesome for the guild!

many peoples solutions is just to destroy the retries, but to be honest thats a bad solution. Being able to retry fairly easily flows wellm the problem is the incentives to win and game flow is better when you fail.

Labjax.2465:

Shylark.4951:

Well if the game was right a Fail should mean no reward at all… Not sure why it is set up that a fail is better then success??? I always try to do my best I hate failing at stuff…

Basically, it’s a double-edged design sword. Some events spawn a lot of mobs (especially Champions) if there are a ton of players present to scale it way up.

Normally, completing such an event means you kill whatever mobs spawn and then you move on to the next event. But some events end up with variations on: You can let the huge swarm of mobs kill any relevant NPCs (that would cause the event to succeed) and then kill the mobs after.

These events typically have a short reset timer for when they are “failed.” The double-edged part is because this is a great design choice in theory! If players fail, they quickly get another chance to succeed.

But then on the other stabby end, it gives players the opportunity to get rewards from killing some mobs, purposefully failing, and then repeating the process over and over. The design choice is not taking into account the manipulative organization of large groups of players to reap as many rewards as possible.

Essentially, the design choice is great for game design, but it isn’t designed to handle organized manipulation from the playerbase.

the basic problem is that they designed events wrong. They make most of the reward be based on the monsters you kill during the event, as well, the better the map is doing, the less events/conflict there is.

Now lets say people doing well on the map (succeeding events) caused a fighting pit/arena type area (or areas) to be well stocked with powerful monsters and non stop events, or special monsters with higher, or special drop rates. Perhaps if winning all the temples spawned special profitable events, etc. (there is a very light version of this with elementals spawning, but no events tied to them, and only a few people can profit off this, as well as drop rates being in general poor)
suddenly people would not be interested in having the map fall into disrepair, and failing events again and again would always be a poor choice.

basically the reward design for events encourages failure in many cases, so people fail them.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I had a conversation for over thirty minutes over how Evon Gnashblade is to blame for Zhaitan taking over Orr. And if we’d voted for him LA would have been worse off. All in good fun, honestly.

Another time, we began discussing the aerodynamics of asura and skritt strapped to black powder charges and their usefulness against Jormag in case of golem failure.

It’s not that hard to get mindless topics rolling in map chat with enough people playing along.

I think the point he was making is, based on what anet has said/done in recent history they have as much evidence for those theories as he can have against them. If anet had different policies on communication, what they were talking about would be disproved.
To be honest i dont feel like there has been more change to the game than i experienced while playing champions online for 2 years, which was known to have a fairly small team in comparison at the time.

maddoctor.2738:

John Smith.4610:

This is a spinoff of the economy thread to talk about RNG tactics in games in a general form.
Here’s the premise. RNG is evenly distributed on aggregate. On an individual level this means that while almost everyone falls into a reasonable range in the middle, there are outliers on each side of the distribution that are either highly rewarded or not rewarded at all. These individuals become sample cases and spotlights for experiences that maybe shouldn’t exist.

We do need to be very careful about ideas that flatten the experience entirely as that quickly becomes not fun at all.

There are two concepts that have been discussed in the other thread that I’ll briefly summarize.

1. Use a specifically non-random NG. The NRNG functions similarly to a RNG, but has characteristics that either squish the distribution so that outliers exist much less or specifically manipulate a player’s experience for loot in a more complicated way that makes it feel rewarding.

2. Implement measures that counteract low-end outlier behavior inside of game design. This would be a system that is something like: If player hasn’t received a rare drop in X time send them Y tickets for random drops.

2.5: “Add secondary reward mechanisms (ie. token based system) alongside the primary RNG system; allow progress to be made even when you don’t get the result you want.”

Obviously these are hyper-simplified descriptions, but I don’t want this to get too long.

edit: added 2.5

I think one great way to reduce the effect of RNG in the game is to allow party-based loot. This idea is a very old one, since FotM was first released, and I noticed how the RNG system was punishing FRIENDS/GUILDIES playing together. Players dislike feeling punished but love feeling rewarded.

How is this going to work:
When there is some loot that is not salvageable/usable (Fractal Skins) or sellable for nearly nothing (Ascended Rings) allow people in the same party to distribute it how they see fit. Example:

Me and my friend are doing Fractals, I do fractals daily in order to get the Fractal Dagger skin, he does Fractals daily in order to get the Fractal Sword skin, we kill the last boss and voila, I get a Sword and he gets a Dagger. This is something that shouldn’t ever ever happen in the game, it makes both players feel like the RNG system failed them.

Another example, imagine both players are doing Tequatl, one is a WvW player as well and would certainly love to have some extra Knight’s gear, the other player plays a Dire/Rabid set in WvW, and once again they both get the opposite of what they want. Same with Ascended Rings and unsellable Fractal exotics, the list goes on and on and on.

Why is this happening only in this game alone? In other games, when you are grouped with people you trust (friends/guildies) you have the option to distribute the loot the way you want. Even if two playes want the same thing, eg a Fractal Sword skin, if your guildie gets it instead of you, you are one step closer in getting it yourself if the group stays the same, so even if RNG doesn’t favor you, you STILL MAKE PROGRESS.

Even though “fixing” RNG is important, for sure, allowing parties to distribute their loot as they see fit, will solve some of loot issue. At least Ascended items (boxes, rings) and unsellable exotic skins can be freely distributed among members, as is anything else that is Account Bound or Soul Bound on Acquire.

Just my 2 cents.

main problem with part loot is it causes people to feel pressure to give people stuff, create systems for deciding who gets what loot, etc. Then you get systems where you all sell all loot, and distribute gold (to be fair) Or you decided who deserves what drop based on parucipation, or the leader decides who gets what. Or the time that guy in the guild looted the dawn and changed servers/names.

i dont hate the principle, but the reality is generally annoying.

vifesprit.3514:

I want to thank John Corpening. He proves to me that a certain degree of transparency in ANET communication is possible.

THIS is a good example of what it should be.

For the first time in many years, we have information on the future of the game and we can react before changes are made.

yeah, i will admit, corpenings method of working with players to build the game better, seems to be really good, and possibly useful. I also think the concept they have for testing something live, and being willing to change them fairly quickly is a winning strategy (as long as they can change them fast).

Still, thats like having a good leader on the battlefield in a war. But most people need the overall what are we fighting this war for, as well as good leadership.

Combine an overall path that people understand and believe in, with Corpenings communication and presentation of strategies, and i think you will have most players incredibly satisfied with player/developer interaction, and willing to invest more time/money/thought in the game, feeling good while doing it.

Behellagh.1468:

ipan.4356:

Look CIG (Star Citizen) if you want an example of a company ought to communicate with it’s players.

Well that’s because it’s also a continuing sales pitch. I don’t think a week goes by without another “Star Citizen has now raised +1 million more” announcement. More hype equals more donors.

Well people need to realize you get what you pay for, and this system is set up that anet is not really rewarded for anything but the initial game sales, and bltc.

Hence we get bltc stuff constantly, and a development that tries to focus on new players. There is very little direct profit in speaking to us anymore, (back when they needed to market towards tons of players of existing games, we heard a great deal of details, plans, visions, etc) They no longer get as much direct bang for their buck, speaking so they dont.

Surbrus.6942:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Add a “new” fractal boss where you have to fight the boss from (Insert recycled Living story instance here).

As unfortunate as this is, at least it would allow access to previous content that was removed. If the Marionette and the Battle for Lion’s Arch + final Scarlet battle could be turned into Fractals (and balanced to be challenging for a party of five, rather than just a big zergfest) that would be pretty nice. The only problems with those fights were 1) temporary content and 2) zergfests. In this case the poor story/lore logic can be pushed aside because that story aspect was simply used to deliver good content.

At least Anet has seemed to learn that temporary content is a terrible concept, especially for the specific market they’ve placed GW2 in.

marionette wasnt really a zergfest, unless by zergfest you mean any content that involves a lot of people.

there will not likely be a fractal update this year

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Another argument I really hate is the “we couldn’t do better” argument they used to justify townclothes being transformed into tonics or outfits.

They probably can’t do better.

That is, without ripping the whole system apart and starting over from the conception point. I can . . . almost see why it could have been impossible for them to handle Town Clothes in any other way if they wanted to add the Wardrobe. It all depends on how the game saw Town Clothing when they went to switch it over.

But consider the following:

- Classes are restricted to “Heavy/Medium/Light” armor so they are easier to identify on the battlefield. If you see someone charging your way with scalemail or platemail on, it’s likely they’re a guardian or warrior (probably warrior, and you should dodge that Hundred Blades now). In times of culling issues, now there is a simplified model which is put in place which is stylized into those three appearances for easy reference.

- Town Clothes break that rule subtly since anyone can wear them until they enter combat. I forget if you could use them in WvW or sPvP, but I doubt it. Basically, anyone in Town Clothing could be any class.

- Town Clothing was also one of the few systems which was severely under-utilized except through the Gem Store. It was, to be blunt, terrible.

Hence, the simplest way of dealing with it? Just remove it, and leave in a tonic for people who want to use the basic kind and add some way of costuming yourself otherwise.

whatever town clothes were considered by the game isnt really relevant. your appearance in the game boils down to mapping UI to a designed model. Designing and correcting the model is the hard part.
It would have required little effort to turn all townclothes into armor.

The reasoning of identify your enemy by clothes also doesnt fly, since you can use outfits and tonics on any class.

the biggest problem would be that of organization, and monetization. But there were better, more simple to understand solutions for both, that would probably have satisfied more people.

I remember their explanations for why they did what they did what they did for the wardrobe/town clothes, and they were not self consistent and logical.

munkiman.3068:

Astralporing.1957:

munkiman.3068:

We all know for sure, they’ve never been a company that released the type of info many people are looking for unless it was locked and loaded.

Really? My experience with GW1 shows that were much freer with giving info on both future and past changes once. it’s only since GW2 launch that they have clamped on information hard.

Maybe slightly more so, but i really don’t remember them being all that open, i mean they didn’t even have official forums. They were also a smaller company with a simpler game, so the timeline on releasing info was much smaller.

If you think about it, they really only went silent during China release. I’m sure they just didn’t have time to get into discussions or post info on state of the game during that period. Sadly, that’s just about the time they dropped some of the most controversial changes on us (traits, megaserver).

Not trying to defend their policy, i think it’s a bad one too, but it wasn’t all that stellar in GW either.

in gw1 i remember them stating even during prophecies they had plans to release expansions periodically. I remember there being a peice of paper promoting gw2 in my eye of the north box. (5 years ahead of time? maybe 4?) in that time period even within the first few years, we heard about wvw, people of all levels playing together, etc. Many things changed, but they told us what their plans were.

This is the type of communication that got them about 3 million of their 3.X millions sales. Long term visions related to the playerbase, subject to change (many things did change)
There really was a lot of difference between gw1 and even gw2 communication back then and within the last 1.2 years.

the idea of not telling people what the long term plan is for an online service is fairly recent.

this may not really be a difference in policy, its possible they are just so far away from commiting to any of the type of content people are clamoring for, that its too early to mention, but that would mean they severely underestimated the time tables/type of content people wanted to see in the last two years of development.

which is sad, but honestly if they told people, hey we want to add X Y Z in 2016 people would be disapointed, but probably less annoyed than they are now.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

looking at the guild CDIs I’d assume they are working on more guild-content and content for larger groups (as they recently hired a raid designer).

Good hypothesis, unfortunately even within the guild CDI they tell you that this is all just brainstorming, Its fairly unknown what they plan on doing about it. They are just gathering feedback, which is good, but it doesnt really mean the game overall will have a focus on Guilds, or that you can expect a ton of new guild content.

To me, the guild CDI tells me, the company is interested in hearing proposals related to guild content, and are considering the scope and desires of the customers. However, i dont think they have even decided if, and how much they are actually willing to invest into guild content for the future. Its essentially at this stage a fact finding mission for someone to prepare a proposal that may or may not make it into the development cycle.

As for hiring a raid designer, we dont really know if thats just a replacement for some staff that used to handle things like that leaving. After all someone designed tequatl, wurm, and most the world bosses

But you may be right, who knows, not us, we just guess.

i would actually like to know if thats their focus going forward though, because i could make a decsion about a game based on that.

Point is, as has been said. Because the base system is random with a fairly low chance of anything interesting happening, Its going to be imperceptible even with 300% difference in drops.
If you only get rares once every couple days, when you get two, you dont know if your in a cluster, or perhaps it was the extra MF kicking in.

random they use here, is just too random, chances are too low, and very little choice in what type of gambles you are taking. The game is too focused on aquiring mass quanitities of junk.

Any poster after me, Tell me what are you sure about regarding the future of this game? future projects? What direction is the game heading?

Gaile Gray.6029:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Well, new Profession balance information is coming this Friday, and they are taking feedback on those proposed changes, and will use it to adjust them….so, there’s that. =)

Thanks for noticing. Coming up in minutes.

MFoy.3284:

~snip~ Although I notice Gaile hasn’t posted in the last few pages I’d guess the thread is getting read at some level.

Yes, every word. A few comments probably could use pruning because they’re really not contributing, but I think a light hand is ok, and am trusting we can have this discussion with narry a torch or pitchfork in sight!

Oh btw, MFoy, I think your post had a light of insight. Thank you for that.

Rauderi — People respond in different ways to unpleasantness. I don’t believe “hide in the shadows” is accurate — our devs are not prone to hiding — but in a general sense yes, some people would hesitate to dive into a situation if they thought they’d be met with a lot of hostility. Let me offer up yet another Patented Silly Analogy™:
Comment — “Hey, I’m serving cake.”
Responses — “Thanks.” but then… “WTH, no ice cream?” “But I wanted chocolate cake and you’re offering spice cake.” “You suck, I wanted a full dinner!” “How about those cookies you promised us last month?” And, basically, “Yeah, there’s a lot of cake, and it’s great, and a lot of people are liking it, but what about my needs?”
Again, I’m not discounting a single dissenting point of view, here or anywhere else. Not one. But it crossed my mind how things could be seen, from an observer’s point of view.

Korossive — you don’t consider Living World to be a fulfillment of the “evolving dynamics and development?” I do — in spades!

joe — Interesting point of view, thanks for sharing that.

ok there is two major kinds of communication that you guys need to have.
low level, day to day communication, showing you know issues, discussing how to execute XYZ, which you have improved on since your communications initiative.

But that is not the only communication needed. And for retaining customers, it may not even be the most important. The other communication is focused on the big picture, the big projects, etc, that is the one that is probably more important for retaining players, its even more important for your company which has yet to establish a clear pattern of development/game direction etc.

Here is the fact no one here has any clear idea what the future development of this game is going to be about, or what the major concerns, or dreams of anet is anymore The only answer you give is living story, which means nothing, because it has meant 100 different things at different times.

Really Gaile, think for a second, you are selling a product that is supposed to have a developing future. Do you really believe anyone knows what the future of this game is? Dont you think that may be a problem?

Azure The Heartless.3261:

wwwes.1398:

No. The difference is in silence, ragers AND casual players leave in equal numbers. It is a fantasy to suggest that with silence you don’t have to worry about people who are angry about the games direction. And a difficult fantasy to maintain, too, since we are in a thread full of that.

Sure you still have to worry, but at the same time you have liberty to work on developing whatever you want and not have to put up with “but you said we’d get this!!”

Silence alone is not the issue. Silence and a long time between updates is.

sorry they never really have that liberty, whether they tell us or not, they are still held responsible for what they deliver, or do not deliver. Expectations exist no matter what. By clearly expressing your intentions, you are most likely to get end users and creators aligning in expectations.

John Smith.4610:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

hmm, first im hearing that DR has no effect. This would probably get into a side issue though, so i wont speak more on it.

But to relate it back to the discussion at hand, i strongly suggest in any systems designed to deal with the effects of random systems, i suggest it be very clear exactly what is happening, with visible, direct, predictable and understandable systems at work.
DR is mostly unknowable and unprovable (except when you directly see your karma/exp/gold effected)
dont replicate these systems going forward

lordkrall.7241:

You are assuming that casual players are even aware of the silence though. The vast majority of players never visits the forums, nor do they check on Reddit and such. They see what happens in game and MIGHT read a bunch of patch notes now and then. But that is about it. They don’t really care about what the devs say or doesn’t say as long as they can play the game.

the silence is deafening.
Casual people in fact get info
For example, even my sister and niece know that there is a star wars movie planned, they may not care, but they know.

casuals who play WoW are aware that they had an expansion in the works months ago.

casuals may not know about the latest patch notes, but they know that nothing noteworthy is going on with GW2.
They just arent going to say anything about it. They will just lose interest. They come back, look to see whats new, and leave.

hardcore leave because they want more.
casual leave because nothing new and exciting going on to make em excited for a bit

Gregori.5807:

It really annoys me when I see devs talking all over the place while pointedly ignoring this thread.

Yeah, Jon came in around page 41 to tell us that nobody has been watching and to hop on the hamster wheel again. Recently Gaile came in, copying and pasting Jon’s hamster wheel post.

Its been six months with this garbage.

By now platitudes will not help. If they had communicated throughout this thread, maybe we would tolerate them. By now, however, this issue has well passed its “sell by” date. The only thing that would satisfy me is specifics on what is going to be done and when.

I know fully well that such a thing is not going to happen. Maybe in another 20 pages we will get a non specific platitude from a dev but that is all we will get.

Recently, Anet flat out admitted that there are lucky and unlucky accounts (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/RNG-as-a-concept-Discuss/first#post4488821). It stung to have my suspicions confirmed but I also feel relief because they admitted it.

I would prefer a “deal with it” regarding the traits. At least that would be honest.

they didnt really admit to unlucky and lucky accounts, via game design/programming. However there will be unlucky and lucky accounts just due to fate. The same way there is that lucky guy who goes to vegas and always comes back 500-2000 dollars richer, there will be players who seem lucky and those who seem unlucky.

See the thing is, that will always happen with random.

The reality is, people have been using random as a means of game design for a long time, without considering what random really means. If you are trying to duplicate a random distribution, you are trying to duplicate the reality that some people will get more out of something, and some people will get less.

As far as the traits, i think they actually know its basically a failure, and they are working on it. however the problem with this is two fold

1) The amount of time it will take them to revamp the system is large, we will be stuck with the current implementation for a long time.
2)when they actually do finish the new version, track record of this last year says it will probably not be good, at best it will less bad, with a lot of problems.

I really think they need A LOT of feedback during the development process, I dont think the current development strategy is working. Every major change seems to bring with it major problems. and then we have to sit and wait months upon months with no real info on how/when/what will be changed.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Berk.8561:

And that’s probably exactly why they’ve stopped talking about anything that’s not almost ready to be deployed, because anything they say that they are working on or intend on implementing with generate type and players will care about it a lot and they’ll get angry if it never happens or doesn’t happen for a long time.

Yes, that’s definitely true. As Mike O’Brien said in a recent post, “We’ve set a clear policy in the past year: we don’t talk speculatively about future development. We don’t want to string you along. Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t; sometimes we go back to the drawing board over and over before we get something right. If we make optimistic promises and then can’t deliver on them, everyone suffers. So when we attend a trade show or give an interview, we’re there to talk about what we’re getting ready to ship, not to speculate on what we might ship someday.”

We truly understand the interest that our loyal players have in knowing more, but we’re not able to share too much at this juncture for the reasons that are stated above and outlined in more detail in Mike’s post.

Rest assured — and my daily e-mails confirm this — the devs are reading the forums daily to keep abreast of your input on a wide variety of game elements, in addition to which they’re analyzing, prioritizing, weighing whether to and how to address areas of concern, considering how to implement positive changes, and much more, based on the input you give us on the forums.

As Mike also said in his post, much value has come through the CDI’s. I just prowled the hallways to see if I could find out more about the timeline for the current and future CDI. Alas, Chris Whiteside is in a meeting, but I know he’s committed to the format so I hope you’ll be involved in those and if there are some dates he or I can provide one of us will do that later.

Yeah, he said it. Its still not a good idea. Its very bad reasoning to say nothing for fear of someone misunderstanding something. The best way to handle misrepresentation of information is with accurate information.

Not to mention in this business YOU NEED to show a path/direction. This whole game as a service thing hinges upon people believing the service will continue, and grow. If there is announcements of intent, on valued content, you would see players increase dramatically.

Because part of this business is about the future of the game, which is currently a murky mess.

Its the wrong answer, it continues to be the wrong answer. There will never be any benefit to that policy.

Wanze.8410:

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

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

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

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

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

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

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

daft inquisitor.1605:

phys, hate to tell you bro, but you’re falling into Gambler’s Fallacy (or a variant thereof).

no, im not, gamblers fallacy would be expecting that with small numbers things would behave as expected. With large numbers random occurences approach expected variables.

large by the way is pretty large, and the more rare the occurence, the more large the number has to approach expected results.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

NewTrain.7549:

Sure, good writing can, but this ain’t good writing. Your assertion also doesn’t mean it isn’t exposition, it very clearly is. It also certainly doesn’t mean it’s not an “idiot lecture”, which you actually describe it as in your post without using the term (just the definition).

1. I already said it wasn’t good writing, but that’s also not the fault of “idiot lecture”.

2. I never said it wasn’t exposition. If you want to be completely technical, it’d count as exposition. It’s not what most laypeople think of as “exposition”.

3. I wouldn’t call it an ‘idiot lecture’, since I have a less derogatory term. Which, as it stands, better encapsulates the “why” writers do this. And, notably, doesn’t preclude “good writing” from doing it either. Start looking on the list for how many things thought of as masterpieces use it.

yeah i dont think much is served by the title idot lecture, but i think the difference is that the idiot lecture represents things the audience is supposed to know. But i agree its not always bad writing to do so. In fact its often considered bad story telling not to do it sometimes.