Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Umm. I don’t think you understand how the distribution curve functions.

Yes I do, distribution curve represents how the total results are distrubuted.

The chance of heads is. 50% or 1/2 over a large number of trials. it Will average to 50%. Different people will experience different distributions of heads or tails (this is what the curve shows) but this does not change the overall results, which would represent the supply.

You have a normal distribution curve calculated with data consisting of a number attempts. The data is spread out like the typical bell curve with half the data spread across the various intervals on each side.

What happens when you redo the calculation after you take all of the data points above the previously calculated average and change them to be that average? Do you have the same results?

its not clear what your “if” case is here.

the point is there is very little statistical difference between and average that is random, and an average that is based on predetermined events.

this means, supply wise, there is virtually no difference between having a random chance of 1/2 your kills of X monster giving a pebble, as compared to every second monster you kill giving the item. In the case of having a large number of attempts, the resulting items will be virtually the same.

now the distribution of items among players who attempt it may be varied in a random system, but the total supply approaches the given probability.

Point is, it really doesnt matter economically whether your supply is random or your supply is not random.

In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a theorem that describes the result of performing the same experiment a large number of times. According to the law, the average of the results obtained from a large number of trials should be close to the expected value, and will tend to become closer as more trials are performed.

the problem lies that while the supply evaluates of a large amount of attempts to the expected value, on an individual level (small number of tries)this is not the case

There is no principle that a small number of observations will coincide with the expected value or that a streak of one value will immediately be “balanced” by the others (see the gambler’s fallacy).

so a probability of 1/10 will over a million attempts evaluate to close to 100,000 items
if i want to have the same supply without random, i can make it every 10th attempt wins, and you will get the same supply of items.

the major difference is, how these items would be distributed among users who attempt the same amount of times. which for random would be represented by a bell curve, but for 10th attempt would look like a straight line.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Essence Snow.3194:

Ok then……why isn’t it true, give some examples….Saying no without adding anything doesn’t help anything.

Just look at whatever items in the game have low supply but high demand. Look at precursors. Whether something will have a low supply and high demand is not in the player’s control but with Anet. They have their own vision on what they would like for each item. Since precursor drop rates are very low, and they’re highly sought after, it’s pretty safe to assume that they intended for this imbalance between supply and demand.

you can simulate the exact same output from random through other means. in large numbers random is fairly predictable and known.
for example, it is highly likely their is a consistent number for the current random implementation that you can represent like this.
X amount of enemies killed per precursor drop.
which also translates into X amount of player hours per precursor drop.

once you realize this formula, it wouldnt be difficult to create a set of conditions that can simulate the exact same output.

random is a design choice, its not a necessity in terms of predetermining supply.

I think you quoted the wrong post of mine as your post doesn’t have anything to do with what you quoted of mine. I’ll go ahead and answer you anyway.

You’re assuming the determination of the drop rate is based on player action rather than a manually added percentage. I may have read your post wrong. If i did, could you clarify.

Point is, anet can generate the same supply without random, if they choose to do so.

The advantages of random are not really about controlling supply, its mostly the benefits of unpredictability

I brought that up in a previous post. Supply of an item will increase greater under a system with a guaranteed than one on RNG. When players have a guaranteed way, they will flock to that way. Those with a lot of free time will farm that way nonstop flooding the market. With an RNG system, this would not happen.

You are oversimplifying supply. You can design.systems that produce the same behavior.
If precursor from mob drop is .00001 chance you can make precursors drop from killing 100,000 monsters.
If the average player hours in combat is 5000, you can make it take 10,000 runs of a half hour activity

If 200 precursors are generated per day, you can create content that awards to the top 200 scorers (limit pet account per month)

Point is for any randomized supply there exists a direct predictable method to provide the same supply with the same input

First off, something having a 0.0001% does not mean you’ll get it after 100,000 monster kills. If you were to set it exactly at 100,000 monster kills, you’d be cutting off the entire right half of the distribution curve and shifting those that would fall under it to the middle. This produces more supply as now those people acquire the items sooner.

It’s for that very reason that you’d be eliminating the probability of getting an item above the average which is why supply would increase more.

First I’m simplifying for the sake of clarity

Second
No it wouldn’t be cutting the curve because the on average the behavior is accurate. Supply is decided by the total over time which is predictable to a small %.
If the average is truely 1/10 for example, you will get 100,000 out of one million attempts. That 100,000 includes both sides of the curve. To produce the same supply in another system you might make it every tenth attempt.

If you are combining both methods you come up with a different equation.

Point is it just a case of mathematics you can produce the same results over large numbers with. Non random system as a random one. The benefits if random have to do with psychology/game design not output.

Umm. I don’t think you understand how the distribution curve functions.

Yes I do, distribution curve represents how the total results are distrubuted.

The chance of heads is. 50% or 1/2 over a large number of trials. it Will average to 50%. Different people will experience different distributions of heads or tails (this is what the curve shows) but this does not change the overall results, which would represent the supply.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Essence Snow.3194:

Ok then……why isn’t it true, give some examples….Saying no without adding anything doesn’t help anything.

Just look at whatever items in the game have low supply but high demand. Look at precursors. Whether something will have a low supply and high demand is not in the player’s control but with Anet. They have their own vision on what they would like for each item. Since precursor drop rates are very low, and they’re highly sought after, it’s pretty safe to assume that they intended for this imbalance between supply and demand.

you can simulate the exact same output from random through other means. in large numbers random is fairly predictable and known.
for example, it is highly likely their is a consistent number for the current random implementation that you can represent like this.
X amount of enemies killed per precursor drop.
which also translates into X amount of player hours per precursor drop.

once you realize this formula, it wouldnt be difficult to create a set of conditions that can simulate the exact same output.

random is a design choice, its not a necessity in terms of predetermining supply.

I think you quoted the wrong post of mine as your post doesn’t have anything to do with what you quoted of mine. I’ll go ahead and answer you anyway.

You’re assuming the determination of the drop rate is based on player action rather than a manually added percentage. I may have read your post wrong. If i did, could you clarify.

Point is, anet can generate the same supply without random, if they choose to do so.

The advantages of random are not really about controlling supply, its mostly the benefits of unpredictability

I brought that up in a previous post. Supply of an item will increase greater under a system with a guaranteed than one on RNG. When players have a guaranteed way, they will flock to that way. Those with a lot of free time will farm that way nonstop flooding the market. With an RNG system, this would not happen.

You are oversimplifying supply. You can design.systems that produce the same behavior.
If precursor from mob drop is .00001 chance you can make precursors drop from killing 100,000 monsters.
If the average player hours in combat is 5000, you can make it take 10,000 runs of a half hour activity

If 200 precursors are generated per day, you can create content that awards to the top 200 scorers (limit pet account per month)

Point is for any randomized supply there exists a direct predictable method to provide the same supply with the same input

First off, something having a 0.0001% does not mean you’ll get it after 100,000 monster kills. If you were to set it exactly at 100,000 monster kills, you’d be cutting off the entire right half of the distribution curve and shifting those that would fall under it to the middle. This produces more supply as now those people acquire the items sooner.

It’s for that very reason that you’d be eliminating the probability of getting an item above the average which is why supply would increase more.

First I’m simplifying for the sake of clarity

Second
No it wouldn’t be cutting the curve because the on average the behavior is accurate. Supply is decided by the total over time which is predictable to a small %.
If the average is truely 1/10 for example, you will get 100,000 out of one million attempts. That 100,000 includes both sides of the curve. To produce the same supply in another system you might make it every tenth attempt.

If you are combining both methods you come up with a different equation.

Point is it just a case of mathematics you can produce the same results over large numbers with. Non random system as a random one. The benefits if random have to do with psychology/game design not output.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Essence Snow.3194:

Ok then……why isn’t it true, give some examples….Saying no without adding anything doesn’t help anything.

Just look at whatever items in the game have low supply but high demand. Look at precursors. Whether something will have a low supply and high demand is not in the player’s control but with Anet. They have their own vision on what they would like for each item. Since precursor drop rates are very low, and they’re highly sought after, it’s pretty safe to assume that they intended for this imbalance between supply and demand.

you can simulate the exact same output from random through other means. in large numbers random is fairly predictable and known.
for example, it is highly likely their is a consistent number for the current random implementation that you can represent like this.
X amount of enemies killed per precursor drop.
which also translates into X amount of player hours per precursor drop.

once you realize this formula, it wouldnt be difficult to create a set of conditions that can simulate the exact same output.

random is a design choice, its not a necessity in terms of predetermining supply.

I think you quoted the wrong post of mine as your post doesn’t have anything to do with what you quoted of mine. I’ll go ahead and answer you anyway.

You’re assuming the determination of the drop rate is based on player action rather than a manually added percentage. I may have read your post wrong. If i did, could you clarify.

Point is, anet can generate the same supply without random, if they choose to do so.

The advantages of random are not really about controlling supply, its mostly the benefits of unpredictability

I brought that up in a previous post. Supply of an item will increase greater under a system with a guaranteed than one on RNG. When players have a guaranteed way, they will flock to that way. Those with a lot of free time will farm that way nonstop flooding the market. With an RNG system, this would not happen.

You are oversimplifying supply. You can design.systems that produce the same behavior.
If precursor from mob drop is .00001 chance you can make precursors drop from killing 100,000 monsters.
If the average player hours in combat is 5000, you can make it take 10,000 runs of a half hour activity

If 200 precursors are generated per day, you can create content that awards to the top 200 scorers (limit pet account per month)

Point is for any randomized supply there exists a direct predictable method to provide the same supply with the same input

John Smith.4610:

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

Brother Grimm.5176:

…
I’m pretty sure that nobody think there is special code about that.

But we’re a lot to rather think that RNG is bugged in some way, and that’s why, in addition to a “gauss distribution” as described in the previous post, some players are always lucky and some are always unlucky. As the RNG mechanism is all in all quite complex (modified by magic find ; depends on damage done by the player / by his group compared to damage done by other players ; special items with a different table loot ; …), there could be several bugs introduced in the system. Remember that the % of magic find displayed in the hero panel is wrong since months (but the real number is supposed to be correctly applyed), so it wouldn’t be surprising that there are some bugs in the loot mechanism itself.

There are CERTAINLY very vocal players that are convinced of the “secret LUCK stat”.

its not really relevant weather there is a secret luck stat or not. If a random works properly, there will be people who will, will seem lucky, or those who seem unlucky, when compared to the data. This is the normal expectation of the bell curve.

So whether it is a bug or not doesnt matter. The point is these people are bound to exist.

My take on RNG, isn’t that it exist or it’s broken, it’s just that it’s practically everywhere. Neither of those solutions would work anyway, since the game would have to predict what you’re after in the first place, then reward you for failure of what exactly? Do we put a merchant in the game that carries everything a player might want in exchange for a loser token?

This was the first problem I thought of as well. It’s simple to say failure and success, but that’s not an easily definable concept in real life.

The loser token is a simple solution,

You can create a hunter system, whereby drop.rate of certain items of which you select one, have the behavior of increasing chance/streak breaking

You can make it so the mystic forge has methods of altering drops (forge can change weapon types, stat distributions for example)

There are a number of ways to skin a cat. However I think the best way is to design it into the game design of rare items that their is a more predictable alternate method of obtaining them

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Essence Snow.3194:

Ok then……why isn’t it true, give some examples….Saying no without adding anything doesn’t help anything.

Just look at whatever items in the game have low supply but high demand. Look at precursors. Whether something will have a low supply and high demand is not in the player’s control but with Anet. They have their own vision on what they would like for each item. Since precursor drop rates are very low, and they’re highly sought after, it’s pretty safe to assume that they intended for this imbalance between supply and demand.

you can simulate the exact same output from random through other means. in large numbers random is fairly predictable and known.
for example, it is highly likely their is a consistent number for the current random implementation that you can represent like this.
X amount of enemies killed per precursor drop.
which also translates into X amount of player hours per precursor drop.

once you realize this formula, it wouldnt be difficult to create a set of conditions that can simulate the exact same output.

random is a design choice, its not a necessity in terms of predetermining supply.

I think you quoted the wrong post of mine as your post doesn’t have anything to do with what you quoted of mine. I’ll go ahead and answer you anyway.

You’re assuming the determination of the drop rate is based on player action rather than a manually added percentage. I may have read your post wrong. If i did, could you clarify.

Point is, anet can generate the same supply without random, if they choose to do so.

The advantages of random are not really about controlling supply, its mostly the benefits of unpredictability

Ayrilana.1396:

Essence Snow.3194:

Ok then……why isn’t it true, give some examples….Saying no without adding anything doesn’t help anything.

Just look at whatever items in the game have low supply but high demand. Look at precursors. Whether something will have a low supply and high demand is not in the player’s control but with Anet. They have their own vision on what they would like for each item. Since precursor drop rates are very low, and they’re highly sought after, it’s pretty safe to assume that they intended for this imbalance between supply and demand.

you can simulate the exact same output from random through other means. in large numbers random is fairly predictable and known.
for example, it is highly likely their is a consistent number for the current random implementation that you can represent like this.
X amount of enemies killed per precursor drop.
which also translates into X amount of player hours per precursor drop.

once you realize this formula, it wouldnt be difficult to create a set of conditions that can simulate the exact same output.

random is a design choice, its not a necessity in terms of predetermining supply.

LordHogFred.3691:

RNG can be fun in order to provide that “Oh snap, look at the drop I just got” feeling but I feel like the way loot and gear works in GW2 that feeling just isn’t there.

WARNING: Wall of text incoming! TLDR at the bottom.

I would love to have actually obtained my exotics from drops but the rates are so low it’s just not worthwhile doing so. I can earn the money to buy a full set from the TP in the same time it would take me to just get a single exotic drop (I am not taking dungeons into consideration here as that gear circumvents RNG already).

I honestly think part of the issue we have in GW2 and RNG (in regards to gear) is the trading post, or more specifically the global market for “rare” gear. For example, exotics HAVE to be super rare in order to maintain their global economic value, this makes sense, but the issue is that an unrestricted, global trading post means that it’s far easier to obtain “rare” gear from the TP. Obtaining gear this way is just a bit lackluster in comparison to getting it through drops and it isn’t a particularly exciting or fulfilling experience.

Diablo 3 is a perfect example of a similar scenario; legendary gear rates were so low so as to maintain their global rarity and value on the auction house. Removing the auction house, and thus the need to maintain said value, allowed for drops to be far more common leading to a much more fulfilling and exciting loot experience.

Now before everyone starts thinking I’m a nutcase and am going to suggest “remove the TP lol” that is not what I’m going to say. Mainly I just wanted to try and highlight what I perceive to be a problem with the current state of the game. However, I do have a proposal. I want to say now that this is by no means a fully fleshed out proposal and it undoubtedly has issues that I haven’t considered but an idea can’t be iterated on if it isn’t given in the first place.

So, on to the proposed changes. For ease of discussion I’m going to assume we are talking about exotic gear drops specifically here but it could be extrapolated to include other drops. If all stat specific exotics (exotic zerker gloves, exotic dire sword, etc) were made account bound on acquire, soulbound on use, it would be possible to bring the drop rate of exotics up to a more satisfying level, for the sake of argument, say 1 in every 500. Even though these are now far more common we aren’t flooding the market because they’re account bound. However, on top of this we keep the old exotic rates but when these are dropped they are tradeable exotics that have no stats that become soulbound once the stats are chosen (similar to the new crafting backpacks). This gives us the best of both worlds; Tradeable, rarer exotics are still valuable as they allow any stat distribution to be chosen and so are a surefire way of getting the exact stat set you want. The more common, untradeable exotics provide a more satisfying rate of exotic drops but you’ll likely spend longer finding the specific stat combo you want. The higher drop rate for untradeable exotics should provide a more motivating experience making the search for the stats you want seem more obtainable rather than waiting ages for that one exotic drop and finding out it’s something you don’t want anyway.

As I have mentioned, this is far from a complete solution. For starters it doesn’t take into consideration the increase of exotic salvage or the effect this would have on the mystic forge. However, I hope that there are some ideas here that will act as useful and meaningful points for discussion.

To those of you that have made it this far, thanks for taking the time to read

TLDR:
Increase drop rates for exotics but make them account bound on acquire, soulbound on use.
Replace existing exotic drops with tradeable exotics that let you choose their stats.

i think it might be a good idea to have items that can be sold drop at lower rates, and methods, or drops for your charachter only that have lower rates.
however, i think they would have to make the difference between sellable and not sellable more clear, and i would still allow such items to be salvaged.

(i personally think all non salvageable/npcable gear needs to cease to exist)

Darmikau.9413:

What is this in reference to? RNG rewards from Dungeons and Fractals? The mystic forge?

I don’t want to get too detailed without knowing the context, but obviously human bias plays heavily into these things. Additionally, RNG is often a very good reward distribution system even if players claim to hate it. It’s variable interval reward scheduling. Even if players say they hate it, their brains love it. That’s why people who claim to hate Fractal skins being RNG keep doing Fractals – when they do get a skin it feels great, even if they say they hate it.

this is a non specific thread, random is in many facets.
The talk is not really saying to do away with random, but rather how to mitigate it so that one doesnt feel its pointless to try.

for example, there many more people who never play the lotto than those who do. Now if you try to make the reward for a task a lotto ticket, many people will not be interested in doing it.

Ayrilana.1396:

I do want to point out that we need to be very careful with any system suggested that relies less on RNG and more on doing some particular number of tasks. My minds jumbled at the moment so i can’t think of a better way to describe it.

RNG slows down the flow of supply as players cannot target a specific set of tasks to obtain a particular item. If players have an option to farm X event Y number of times to get Z item, you’ll have a greater influx of supply for that item which could potentially disrupt the market for it as well as those that rely on it.

This may have been what you meant by “flatten the experience”, but I just wanted to make sure.

there is no real logical reason why a player should not be able to target a specific set of tasks in order to get a specific item. There are many methods of limiting output without random. To be honest random is one of the worst means of limiting output. However, i think the strength of random is, surprise, and the possibility of coming out ahead.

I would not eliminate random, however aside from streak breaking mechanics, i think that specific methods that are slower, with limited output also can work well when properly designed into content.

You may have never played gw1, but they had a zone called domain of anguish, beating each submission had a guaranteed way to get tokens, but also you could get random tokens from enemies in the zone. The random tokens was exciting when you got it, and made it interesting, but the tokens for beating an area made it so worst case scenario by defeating the area, you could achieve something.

Brother Grimm.5176:

…
I’m pretty sure that nobody think there is special code about that.

But we’re a lot to rather think that RNG is bugged in some way, and that’s why, in addition to a “gauss distribution” as described in the previous post, some players are always lucky and some are always unlucky. As the RNG mechanism is all in all quite complex (modified by magic find ; depends on damage done by the player / by his group compared to damage done by other players ; special items with a different table loot ; …), there could be several bugs introduced in the system. Remember that the % of magic find displayed in the hero panel is wrong since months (but the real number is supposed to be correctly applyed), so it wouldn’t be surprising that there are some bugs in the loot mechanism itself.

There are CERTAINLY very vocal players that are convinced of the “secret LUCK stat”.

its not really relevant weather there is a secret luck stat or not. If a random works properly, there will be people who will, will seem lucky, or those who seem unlucky, when compared to the data. This is the normal expectation of the bell curve.

So whether it is a bug or not doesnt matter. The point is these people are bound to exist.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

…

Galen i think the point your missing, is that while what you say is true, its not really the point, yes having npcs which walk around and say stuff relevant is more background information, yes different charchters react differently, etc.

but none of that makes for good story telling. Its not what you do, its how well its done.

thing is how can be done better? so far the only thing suggested seemed to be remove color from dialog which I personally think would detract rather then add to the experience.

“Color” in dialogue is a staple of movies, books and television. Sometimes it’s even somewhat realistic. I have no problem with color in GW2 story dialogue. Quips, one liners and especially digs at other characters happen in tense situations. People talk about things that matter all the time, but they also say things that might be considered inappropriate to the mood. This is a means of coping with stress.

However, there’s also the separate issue of having things make sense. One person does not form the rear guard against an army. Imo, that is the weakness in the Battle of Claw Island chapter, not the dialogue — which is no worse than most movies and TV shows offer.

Color is fine, when done correctly, good color keeps in mind what type of color comment that specific charachter would do. It also gives you insight into their charachter. But honestly color is not the issue, its how well the storytelling is executed. As far as telling them how to improve, I mean one can point out flaws, and how it felt flat, and how the way they chose to present certain scenes didnt work, but there is no simple answer to better storytelling.
I would suggest they hire a storyboarding artist to bridge the gap between writers and event scripters/CS guys. And hire an editor who is used to dealing with serialized fiction. Comic book editor, TV series editors, etc.

also, the music is adds nothing to this game in the way they added it. get someone to actually score the game.

Galen Grey.4709:

…

Galen i think the point your missing, is that while what you say is true, its not really the point, yes having npcs which walk around and say stuff relevant is more background information, yes different charchters react differently, etc.

but none of that makes for good story telling. Its not what you do, its how well its done.

I think the game had a very strong release, its full of some pretty good things. Recent years however havent properly continued that though

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

i think you are missing something. It doesnt really matter if its caused by bad random generator, or if its actually a great random generator. Essentially the reality of random is, some people will be lucky, some people will be in clusters, etc. Hindsight doesnt really care what the source is, the fact is, it exists.

So the question then becomes, knowing that if it behaves properly, random, will cause these issues, what is your plan to minimize the negative effects. How do you design the game so that the players fate doesnt feel entirely controlled by forces/trends/statistic distributions which are out of their control?

ketchup.2783:

If young children can play and learn minecraft without one single instruction within the game, itself, how is guild wars just as hard to learn?

its not really about age, kids are smart, its just some people who when they cant figure something out completely and instantly, recoil from it. However there also people who when something looks too simple and easy lose interest.

They are more concerned with the first group, at this time. If they do tests and determine people are bored 5 months from now, they will try again. Such is the way when you choose trial and error as your main method of solving problems

well i figured NPE might be better for a few players, the thing is, i think they may gain your BF, but lose some one else.

Numbers will tell the tale.

regardless, the npe now, isnt that bad (at low levels), though i find it less entertaining and more boring. but overall i find the road to 80 to be kind of cumbersome now, and doing it on multi charachters even more annoying.

Galen Grey.4709:

NewTrain.7549:

No, I read it. It is fairly juvenile.

Lionguard Quatta: Your first patrol. Think you’re ready?
Lionguard Brenn Hillow: The armor, it’s so heavy. I don’t… I don’t remember my route. I don’t… I can’t…

It reeks of artificiality and forced exposition.

Lionguard Quatta: Ferkinna! How’s my favourite keg thrower?
Ferkinna: Quatta, you gill-sauced squeaker. Didn’t see you there. Who is this runt? Looks like he stumbled out of the crib.

“Gill-sauced squeaker”? Sounds a lot like a star-bellied sneetch. Seussical.

If this example was your evidence of good writing, you’re going to have to try a lot harder.

I think you’re not taking into consideration the medium here. This isnt a novel, its a game. More specifically this isnt narration but rather character dialog. Writing here needs to convey character more then anything else. If Queen Jennah used gill-sauced squeaker then yeah you’d have a good point. But soldiers in a city founded by pirates, sailors and merchants no less? It fits the character.

As for Lionguard Brenn Hillow, this is a new recruit in an organization that has recently lost huge numbers. Such an organization is desperate to re-arm itself in order to still be able to defend the city should the need arises. As such it no longer has the luxury of properly training good recruits. Dialog there is intended is trying to tell us a number of things. Its telling us this is a new recruit. Its telling us he had 0 training… Lionguard Brenn Hillow never wore an armor before now, he isnt used to it one bit, it feels heavy, suffocating. They’re nervous. In part because they’re new, in part because of the trauma everyone suffered in the attack I suppose. Whatever the case that nervousness is expressed both through the hesitation in speaking and also by the character being forgetful.

This is definitely exposition no doubt about that, but its good exposition in my opinion. I’d be more let down if instead of having the dialog tell the story, they’d have the character tell the story.

Imagine if instead of this:
Lionguard Quatta: Your first patrol. Think you’re ready?
Lionguard Brenn Hillow: The armor, it’s so heavy. I don’t… I don’t remember my route. I don’t… I can’t…

we got this:
Lionguard Quatta: Your first patrol. Think you’re ready?
Lionguard Brenn Hillow: Yeah, I think so. Its just, I am so nervous. I havent even recovered from the trauma of the past days. It would have helped if I had a little training before being sent on patrol too.

Much worst. The original dialog gives me the same background as my bad dialog does but does it way more organically. Dont think its forced, on the contrary I think it blends really well.

I disagree with your assessment of bad dialog, but i will say the whole thing comes off as pretty uninteresting. Which i suppose is fine as random background noise, but i doubt it would draw people in very much

Vayne.8563:

Stormcrow.7513:

The boss fight could have been better.

Vayne, could it be that you are finally seeing the light?

Frodo and friends also didn’t throw Gandalf’s fireworks at Sauron’s tower until he finally got so annoyed that he decided to fall to his doom. Just sayin

I might not need a boss fight but you had better have a better conclusion to a story than what GW2’s was.

On a side note I really liked the fight with the eye, that was a good fight and also had some cool music.

It wasn’t a boss fight. That’s my point. It could have been a boss fight. It was essentially a cut scene with a bit of interaction.

There is almost nothing I care less about than boss fights. That’s a personal thing. It’s one of the reasons that Hirathi and Straits of Devastation on my favorite zones. I prefer feeling like I’m in a pitched battle to fighting one big boss.

It’s the reason I don’t really enjoy dungeons.

There could have been a boss fight…but it wouldn’t have made Arah story mode better for me personally. I do acknowledge it would likely have been better for a huge percentage of the playerbase.

But I personally would have liked it less.

Boss fights serve no real purpose in my mind.

it was also crappy as a cutscene. Who would not have skipped the cutcene after seeing the player shooting fireworks at a lizard stuck on a rock for 4 minutes

Beldin.5498:

phys.7689:

Beldin.5498:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Well yeah, I did feel that about Zhaitan because I think drama as in book and not boss fight as in game.

I spent ten levels fighting Zhaitan. Cutting off a lot of his power. The last bit was the final cut scene.

When people write endings like that in books, its called anti climactic.

It would be a bad ending of a book .. since no book ends with a fight against a mob .. at least i don’t know any.

Heck .. does Lord of the Rings end in a 100 page fight against Sauron, where everyone
dies 50 times, and then they have to wait to get revived .. and try again .. and die again
and try again ? Can’t remember every having read something like that.

There is also no 50 pages long fight against the Balrog .. where Gandalf first has to
find 23 other people to form a raid.

Why are you bringing up page size? its not analgous to anything here. The fight didnt have to be long, it just had to be exciting/signifigant. It was neither. There was no feeling of growth, and no resolution in that fight. In terms of building excitement, it was also poor.

I dont know if you are a writer, or read a lot of adventure based fiction, but no matter how you slice it that was a very poorly executed climax, in almost every way possible.

Page size just because the so called “challenging” content for many only seems to
be challenging if they first have to die 100+ times .. so that means it takes forever.

For Drathar in EQ2 for example i spent more than 50 hours until we finally had beaten him.

Else i have maybe 400-500 fantasy books .. and the only one where fights a really
described longer are the books of R.A. Salvatore.

Back to LoTR .. the Balrog Fight is only described later in very short .. and there isn’t
even a big epic fight against Sauron at all.

Look .. this is the end .. very anti climatic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4fYBTa6b54

A climax is supposed to be the most exciting/interesting part of the story, its also supposed be where things change for the main charachters, the peak of the charachters growth. like i said, it is poor on all fronts

Beldin.5498:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Well yeah, I did feel that about Zhaitan because I think drama as in book and not boss fight as in game.

I spent ten levels fighting Zhaitan. Cutting off a lot of his power. The last bit was the final cut scene.

When people write endings like that in books, its called anti climactic.

It would be a bad ending of a book .. since no book ends with a fight against a mob .. at least i don’t know any.

Heck .. does Lord of the Rings end in a 100 page fight against Sauron, where everyone
dies 50 times, and then they have to wait to get revived .. and try again .. and die again
and try again ? Can’t remember every having read something like that.

There is also no 50 pages long fight against the Balrog .. where Gandalf first has to
find 23 other people to form a raid.

Why are you bringing up page size? its not analgous to anything here. The fight didnt have to be long, it just had to be exciting/signifigant. It was neither. There was no feeling of growth, and no resolution in that fight. In terms of building excitement, it was also poor.

I dont know if you are a writer, or read a lot of adventure based fiction, but no matter how you slice it that was a very poorly executed climax, in almost every way possible.

Every expansion that comes out is still a reminder of what we dont have, and are not sure is ever coming. They really waited too long to put out an expansion. They got side tracked by the living story, which could have worked, But it should have been built to introduce actual expansion like content. The LS was/is still more focused on fixes with the addition of a small narrative.

The world could have grown, while also changing.

regardless, LS to date, has not replaced the expansion in terms of what it delivers, and does for the game. The next WoW expansion will bring up comparison to this game, EVEN if someone has no intent to play it.

kitten FFXIV is about to release a new job without an expansion, and new quests and plotlines. Seems more like a living world than what we got.

Vayne.8563:

Well yeah, I did feel that about Zhaitan because I think drama as in book and not boss fight as in game.

I spent ten levels fighting Zhaitan. Cutting off a lot of his power. The last bit was the final cut scene.

When people write endings like that in books, its called anti climactic. Its actually one of the simplest forms of screwing up your story. Now some writers can break the rules and make it interesting even with anti climactic things, but in general its considered a flaw.

Dragons are built up as a primordial force, Zhaitan in particular is built up as a fairly cunning one, who has the entire knowlege of all he has taken over. The climax of the entire story arc, is him getting hit by a laser, shot by side charachters.

Imagine a story about a scrappy young man, seeking to bring down the corrupt overlord of his country, who is a great martial artist, military mind, and he in fact possesses superhuman powers!, Scrappy builds a resistance, he loses his friends. Breaks into his lair, Ready for the final confrontation! He walks in the room ready to try to contend with a man beyond human, smarter faster, and with superhuman abilities. A side charachter shoots him im the back/spine. And The main charachter spends the next two pages kicking his paralyzed body.

Sorry its just as bad if not worse in written form.

i was actually shocked when i saw the trait unlocks, that they seek to force players to do that fight. I would go out of my way not to encourage people to see one of my biggest failures in the game.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

Context? Really? I’m sorry but you cannot justify that we were saying players were guaranteed a precursor after so many forges or exotics. Please try again.

Nust because something isn’t 100%, does not mean that it should just be disregarded. You may have the general idea of statistics in regards to this situation but you do not know how to apply it.

Its not about it being disregarded for not being 100%, its about it being disregarded for the issue at hand.
statistics are not predictions of short term events.
" Probability describes the long-term proportion with which a certain
outcome will occur in situations with short-term uncertainty"

notice, its long term, in the short term the outcome is always uncertain. 127 attempts in this case represents the short term odds of success for getting a precursor.

You should not advise people that rares/exotics represent any type of progress towards a legendary because each person is not a collection of cases, each person is few trials at in general.

to be clear, statistics and probabilities do not reduce, they are long term predictions based on large numbers.
the short term events are still unpredictable.

I do agree that overall, for many players, and on a macro level, a certain amount of rares/exotics are destroyed for each precursor on average in the MF.

Nobody was advising anybody doing anything. IT was only stated, that statistically, the chance to forge a pre is better now than at the start of the game and the average loot you need is easier to come by now. If you dont want to hassle with price inflation, forging your own precursor allows you to do that at the price of RNG involvement.

ok, so essentially you battle price increase, or you gamble. Problem is what caused this line of discussion was the desire for some stable, incremental progress towards a precursor. Gold does not provide that over a long period due to market forces, and gambling doesnt provide stability (predictable outcomes on a per player basis).

also, not sure that materials are easier to get, back in the days, before orr nerf you could get a lot of bags really really quickly.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

Context? Really? I’m sorry but you cannot justify that we were saying players were guaranteed a precursor after so many forges or exotics. Please try again.

Nust because something isn’t 100%, does not mean that it should just be disregarded. You may have the general idea of statistics in regards to this situation but you do not know how to apply it.

Its not about it being disregarded for not being 100%, its about it being disregarded for the issue at hand.
statistics are not predictions of short term events.
" Probability describes the long-term proportion with which a certain
outcome will occur in situations with short-term uncertainty"

notice, its long term, in the short term the outcome is always uncertain. 127 attempts in this case represents the short term odds of success for getting a precursor.

You should not advise people that rares/exotics represent any type of progress towards a legendary because each person is not a collection of cases, each person is few trials at in general.

to be clear, statistics and probabilities do not reduce, they are long term predictions based on large numbers.
the short term events are still unpredictable.

I do agree that overall, for many players, and on a macro level, a certain amount of rares/exotics are destroyed for each precursor on average in the MF.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

From a philosophical standpoint, it is incremental (assuming you keep going until you get one), you just don’t know what the increments are since they are subject to RNG.

Each MF attempt is equal to approximately 1/127 of a precursor.

In reality, each attempt is an independent event that has no bearing on the previous or future events, however, if you make enough attempts you will average out to the 1/127 rate.

which is true only in theory, the point was that people were advising people on how to get a legendary without losing value of gold, bringing up the overall macro average of results doesnt really work in the actual streets.

Its not a good idea for someone to save 400 exotics over the course of 2 years, throw them in the forge, and assume they will get a precursor. UNLESS they are fine knowing they are gambling, and may in fact get nothing, in fact they should realize a signifigant portion (30ish %) will not get precursor.

the amount of attempts that is required to make it likely you will average out to 127 attempts is fairly large. essentially for the law of large numbers to be accurate, with a base chance of 1/127 you would have to do more trials then any normal player can probably afford.

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

They don’t have to increase in value as long as the drop rate from the forge remains the same.

If you need 127 exotic forges to get a precursor (the average, so your mileage may vary), you will need to acquire 382 exotic weapons (less if you want to use up any Mystic Forge Stones). Crafting 382 exotic weapons will require the use of 1,910 T6 fine materials, thus each T6 fine you acquire is ALWAYS worth 1/1910 of a precursor.

notice while he says your mileage may vary, he then goes on to say t6 is ALWAYS (in capitals) worth 1/1910 of a precursor, which is not true even within his own statement.

you then brought up averages, which are not really relevant for any one players path to 1 or even 2 legendaries.

what you could say is that 1 t6 mat is sometimes 1/1910 of a precursor, and sometimes it is 1/3820 of a precursor, and sometimes its 1/20th of a precursor.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

do you really want to compare statistics and gambling? statistics gives you overall analysis of large trends, it does not apply to single cases.

1/6 odds of picking a red marble out of a bag doesnt mean if you try 6 times you will get a red marble, it doesnt mean if you try 20 times you will get a red marble.

if a red marble is worth 60 dollars, you should not pay 9 dollars for 6 chances, thinking you will make 6 dollars, that is not the way gambling works.

statistics mean, that if i take a large amount of trials, overall i will notice a trend toward 6 attempts, within those attempts there will be a bell curve, this means a signifigant number of people will take 7 8 or 9 attempts (usually almost as many as took 6) some edge cases may take 100 attempts.

the flaw with using statistics for gambling, is statistics doesnt predict the future, it doesnt know whether you are one of the people in the middle, or the end of the bell curve. therefore, do not assert that every time someone throws 4 exotics into the forge they are 1/127 their way to precursor. You have no idea.

dont confuse gambling with statistics/probability, its a fatal flaw many gamblers have. probability doesnt normalize until you have an extremely large sample size.
you also can never predict any future occurences based on past occurences.

Nowhere did I say that you were guaranteed to get a precursor within X amount of forges. How difficult is that to understand? When I said on average, that’s just want I mean. Some people will get it in exactly that many, some will take more tries, and some will take less. What you seem to be suggesting is that you cannot use any form of statistics to calculate probabilities. You are wrong.

you were responding to post in relation to the idea that every exotic/rare you get, can be seen as making progress towards a precursor.
this was proposed in opposition to the fact that gold value is not a static progress towards a precursor, because the price fluctates steadily upward, and so far has outpaced golds vale substantially.

the point is, no rare or exotic represents progress towards a precursor if you are using the forge. Averages, and probabilities are not that relevant to small sample cases. All they do is compare the expected outcome (over many trials) to the actual outcome. You guys are advising that people could store rares/exotics and think of them as progress towards precursors, you are ignoring that statistically speaking your advice will be wrong for 33% of people, 25% of people will spend substantially more, and 10% of people will probably have to work insanely hard for the same results.

In short its bad and inaccurate advise.

Im telling players, you can gamble on the MF if you like, you can look at the probabilities to see if its a risk you want to take. But nothing you do in the mystic forge is progress. you are no more likely to get it on your 1000th try than your first try. many players will not fall within the positive average.

The real truth is you can only really figure out what was progress towards your precursor once you have it. its an all or nothing system.

Wanze.8410:

T6 mats arent really a good comparison to precursor prices as they are seldom used to craft exotics to throw them in the forge. Why? Because the average price of exotic weapons on the tp is lower than the crafting value due to random loot drops.
So a better comparison would be to take the price of the 10 cheapest exotic greatswords on the tp over time (buy order) and compare them with the price of dusk and dawn.
T5 fine mat price evolution should be closer to the price evolution of precursors but again, i would rather compare the prices of the cheapest rare weapons to their corresponding precursors. As crafted rare weapons are usually the cheapest, you can actually also take the lvl 80 rare inscriptions and compare their prices.

As was already mentioned, the timeframe of dec 2012 until now is not very good either due to many market shocks inbetween. I guess the clearest picture of how close the price inflation of precursors and rare/exotic weapons is, you will get when comparing a timeframe from shortly before the feature patch in April until now.

Edit:
The comparison of t5-6 fine mat and precursor prices came up, i think, because i mentioned that all those mats can be regarded as some kind of “precursor token”, which will enable you to forge a precursor eventually. The same applies to rare and exotic weapons you loot. If you used all your rares/exos for forging and all your t5 and t6 mats for crafting rares/exos to forge, the chance to earn a precursor is actually better now (due to buffed chance from the forge and a higher rate of t5-6 mat and rare/exo weapon loot drops) than at the start of the game, while you can disregard gold inflation entirely.

oh thats what you meant, you cant use any ingredients you put into a forge as a representitive of tokens, because for each case the results vary wildly. While the average may be X, in the streets, more people will not fall into the average, and a fairly signifigant number of people will fall outside. Some particularly unlucky (maybe the unlucky 5%) will spend substantially more.

Ensign.2189:

phys.7689:

some of them are, others are not, for example
from dec 1 2012 till now;

It wasn’t worth crafting precursors back in 2012 – people were still far too liquidity constrained. Precursors hit a price point where it started to make sense to forge them around April-May of 2013; that summer was the high point of profitability.

I see your point but please understand that quoting prices from the first couple months of the game really isn’t very illustrative – yes, very valuable items were super cheap early on when no one had a lot of cash on hand. T5/T6 prices have tracked closely with precursor prices for about a year and a half now, and the gap between them has been narrowing steadily. That’s the behavior that’ll be consistent in the future – throwing in a few data points from the first couple months just misleads people about that general trend.

i was taking data from dec, because it was long enough to establish the basic economy, but far enough to give an overall picture. However i have not studied the trends for all of these items and compared them, looking for sept 2013, it seems some mats have grown a lot, some have not. some demanded precursors doubled in value, some have not

now, i didnt do a detailed study, but it does not seem as black and white as you make it seem, or even as i thought, but it definately seems like something that would require long term investment strategy and predictions to come out ahead. You make a prediction that precursors and t5 t6 will now stabilize and move at similar rates. You may be right, but that is a guess based on a decent amount of observation and research into the market. Most players are not of that type.

And im sure even you concede that it may not pan out that way

i will say that in general based on most the trends i have seen in this game, for long term value, you are generally better off investing in items over gold.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

do you really want to compare statistics and gambling? statistics gives you overall analysis of large trends, it does not apply to single cases.

1/6 odds of picking a red marble out of a bag doesnt mean if you try 6 times you will get a red marble, it doesnt mean if you try 20 times you will get a red marble.

if a red marble is worth 60 dollars, you should not pay 9 dollars for 6 chances, thinking you will make 6 dollars, that is not the way gambling works.

statistics mean, that if i take a large amount of trials, overall i will notice a trend toward 6 attempts, within those attempts there will be a bell curve, this means a signifigant number of people will take 7 8 or 9 attempts (usually almost as many as took 6) some edge cases may take 100 attempts.

the flaw with using statistics for gambling, is statistics doesnt predict the future, it doesnt know whether you are one of the people in the middle, or the end of the bell curve. therefore, do not assert that every time someone throws 4 exotics into the forge they are 1/127 their way to precursor. You have no idea.

dont confuse gambling with statistics/probability, its a fatal flaw many gamblers have. probability doesnt normalize until you have an extremely large sample size.
you also can never predict any future occurences based on past occurences.

Ensign.2189:

phys.7689:

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.

Materials are increasing faster; the margins claimed by precursor forgers have fallen substantially over time.

Essence Snow.3194:

How many accounts do we have of long cold streaks? That’s kinda what I am getting at. As soon a players hit those..most of the time they stop forging, stop collecting data, and/or submitting said data. So the data that does get collected and submitted tends to be a bit luckier.

This is a real problem – deciding to quit gathering data when you hit a cold streak will bias estimation of the real odds from simply taking the mean. A lot of the odds I see posted in this forum are over-optimistic, presumably because of this.

It’s not an insurmountable problem. We know the underlying distribution and can estimate a real mean by accounting for the under-dispersion in the data, for one. Even with that, it gets increasingly difficult to narrow down the real range further without making assumptions about the drop table structure – to reduce the credible interval by a factor of two you need roughly 4x more data.

I was pretty confident that the drop rate was 1:160 before the update, but that was due to some more intricate model selection that presupposed integer table parameters and modeled the drop rate of every single output, not just precursors; post update I’m still at a loss and need a few thousand more data points to start to feel conclusive.

Ayrilana.1396:

As far as whether we have reached a sufficient sample size, I do not know.

The question, of course, is sufficient sample size for what?

some of them are, others are not, for example
from dec 1 2012 till now;

• powerful blood has gone from 26 silver to 66 from , 2.5 times the value
• dusk has gone from 366-1400 3.8 times the value
  *ancient bone has gone from 2.38 to 55 silver, 23 times the value
• spark has gone from 221 to 1359 6.5 times the value
• large scale has gone fro 1.49 to 3.36 2.2 times the value

i didnt go through them all, and didnt pull some average values, but point is, precursors have gone from 4-6 times the value
materials have ranged, but many are in the 2-3 times range

while it is possible, for some precursors, and some materials, you could get a better value, it is not true for all. overall, high demand precursors have increased in value more greatly than materials. with smart investment (say in ancient bones) you can definately beat inflation, but like i said, now you are stepping into the sphere of long term investment, which is not something that is even common among tp players (most are short term)

definately materials are a better investment than gold, but they still arent keeping pace with precursors of demand (so far) UNLESS you are good at picking the items with long term value, which is probably not any where common for this playerbase.

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.
Their value in general is 2-4 times the value whilw precursors are 4-6 times the value.
Rares have are about 2-2.5 the value.
Exotics have been all over but let’s say 2-1 times the value depending on the exotic

Also there is no feasible method of storage for rares/exotics long term other than massive gem inventory expenditures.

Yeah items are better for long term investments, but are not at the same rate as precursors

Not to say its impossible to do it, but it amounts to playing the market with a long term investmrnt focus.

They don’t have to increase in value as long as the drop rate from the forge remains the same.

If you need 127 exotic forges to get a precursor (the average, so your mileage may vary), you will need to acquire 382 exotic weapons (less if you want to use up any Mystic Forge Stones). Crafting 382 exotic weapons will require the use of 1,910 T6 fine materials, thus each T6 fine you acquire is ALWAYS worth 1/1910 of a precursor.

You can’t make any absolute number or values for what percent of progress based on the mystic forge. The variation is too large. The amount of trials you would have to do to normalize the results with such a low rate is extremely large, and defiantly nothing more than a gamble for most players.

It’s like saying every lottery ticket you are 1/100000 closer to winning

Not to mention you cannot store enough rares/exotics without a large investment in inventory expansion

There is no amount of rares or exotics that guarantees a precursor

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

/threadwin

Just because you say threadwin, doesn’t mean anything’s been won. Do you see the game getting much harder. I don’t. Do you want to know why? Because Anet knows what side the bread is buttered on.

The thread was lost the moment someone tried to convince the rest of us that the MMORPG playerbase largely consists of people who want hard/challenging content.

Maybe they should take the words RPG out of it, and just make it a fighting game. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Wait rpg means easy/casual? When did this occur.
Also you do realize the game was and is advertised as having action combat? Don’t say fighting game like its a dirty word. They have some of the most balanced finrly tuned responsive action systems out there.
There are things to be learned from fighting games.
Also some fighting games are fairly accessible, ever play powerstone?

You miss my point. What made a lot of RPGs hard where thinking challenges, not fighting challenges. The problem is that people who want hard stuff, they’re really looking for boss fights. Since when did RPGs become all about boss fights. I remember older RPGs we didn’t even know what a boss fight was. It was about story, and lore.

My point is all sorts of people play these games and not all of them are after challenge. In fact many aren’t after challenge. They’re after immersion, collecting, achievement point hunting (even if there’s no achievement to it), getting rich by playing the market.

You should look at the people I’m responding to, instead of taking my text out of context. Because it is a response.

Since when does everyone who plays RPGs or even most people play them for the challenge. Most people that I knew didn’t. They played the for the story.

Guild Wars 2 needs help in that department too, but that doesn’t mean that’s not why a lot of people play the game. Or to explore an fantasy world with cool stuff.

The question is do most people want challenge? I don’t think so. Did most people play RPGs to be challenged? Not in the same sense of challenge a lot of people in this thread are asking for.

Thing is this is an action rpg, that includes action and combat is a major part of the focus. If it was a turn.based rpg or rts rpg you would have a point. But its not.

And part of the reason its action based is to have a wider appeal. The combat is one of the major facets of this game and they need content that makes full use of that

Wanze.8410:

Ohoni.6057:

Those T5 and T6 materials are still income even if you do not liquidate them on the trading post.

In a sense, but it was being discussed in the sense of gold income. If we’re only considering it’s base value pre-liquidation then it really doesn’t matter what their price on the TP is. The discussion was that if the price dropped on the TP then it would “ruin” “most” level 80 players’ incomes, which would only be true if “most” level 80s were liquidating their mats. For those players that were accumulating mats and not putting them on the TP, they would carry the same value either way.

Just think of t5-6 mats and rare/exotic weapons as precursor tokens. Once you accumulated enough, you will be able to forgethem into a precursor.
In that way, precursor prices have been pretty stable, they even got a kitteneaper since launch, as the forge rate was buffed a bit and t5/6 as well as rare/exotics drop more commonly now, after the introduction of champ bags, world boss daily chests and account mf.

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.
Their value in general is 2-4 times the value whilw precursors are 4-6 times the value.
Rares have are about 2-2.5 the value.
Exotics have been all over but let’s say 2-1 times the value depending on the exotic

Also there is no feasible method of storage for rares/exotics long term other than massive gem inventory expenditures.

Yeah items are better for long term investments, but are not at the same rate as precursors

Not to say its impossible to do it, but it amounts to playing the market with a long term investmrnt focus.

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

/threadwin

Just because you say threadwin, doesn’t mean anything’s been won. Do you see the game getting much harder. I don’t. Do you want to know why? Because Anet knows what side the bread is buttered on.

The thread was lost the moment someone tried to convince the rest of us that the MMORPG playerbase largely consists of people who want hard/challenging content.

Maybe they should take the words RPG out of it, and just make it a fighting game. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Wait rpg means easy/casual? When did this occur.
Also you do realize the game was and is advertised as having action combat? Don’t say fighting game like its a dirty word. They have some of the most balanced finrly tuned responsive action systems out there.
There are things to be learned from fighting games.
Also some fighting games are fairly accessible, ever play powerstone?

Astralporing.1957:

VOLTCIEAGE.3029:

But most people dont ask for SUPER ULTIMATE HARDCORE CONTENT , but just for content where you have to use your brain .

Actually no, most people ask for hard content that doesn’t require any brains – just muscle memory and high reflexes. Frankly, any content that would require actual thinking would exclude 90% of even hardcore crowd.

muscle memory and reflexes are skills, just as quick thinking and even slow thinking. In the entirety of an MMO world, you should be able to develop many different types of challenges.
so yeah, i want some muscle memory and reflexes, i also want some tactics and strategy, there are even facets of the game that could work with more slow thinking type scenarios.

Bring it on, i like a challenge

Wynne.3908:

ANET is making a mistake by focusing on releasing primarily story driven content. The real strengths of Guild Wars 2 are in it’s gameplay, combat, event system, and beautiful environments, and this is where the focus for ALL future content should be.

It’s baffling that ANET would choose, of all things, to concentrate their resources on telling a story. The story of GW2 (and most other MMO’s) is arguably its weakest link. So why build on that? It does not seem to add anything to the game at all.

There is no doubt that the potential for absolutely fantastic new content is there, it just needs to focus on what made GW2 such a great game at launch! And the time to start working on these things is LONG overdue.

it is always a mistake to only attempt to do one thing.
That said, they need advances to the gameplay itself, new more interesting dynamic events (this includes dynamic event backstory) A more interactive explorable world. The world was really good at release, hidden caves, parts of the map with their own stories, mini dungeons etc. New maps need this level of thought, and advance it, with more special events/chests/storylines/lore through exploration. They should also create lore/explorers system that helps encourage and track this type of thing.

expand combat of course with more skills, new proffessions etc

short version, yes it shouldnt just be story, but also yes they should also expand and better develop gameplay content/systems

eithinan.9841:

Ohoni.6057:

I think it is fair to say that Penguin has no interest in “meaningful debate,” if he did his repeated stand of “some Precursors can be bought for cheap" would take into account he dozens of times people have pointed out how meaningless that statement is.

“some Precursors can be bought for cheap" 100% accurate.

You want dusk cheaper.

its accurate, but its fairly pointless, because many players dont just want any legendary. Just like most players will not be happy with an ascended drop of a stat spread they never intend to use.

its not about the item rarity, its about being able to get the item they want.

Olvendred.3027:

phys.7689:

break the 24 hour periods into 3 rounds
win two rounds, you win the day
win 4 days you win the match

this way, one 8 hour shift cant win you the day. 2 however can, but i think if you lose two timeslots, then ehhhhh you lost that day.

soo now there would need to be a reason to play when you are getting blown out.
hmmm

Honestly, this doesn’t solve any of the ‘problems’ mentioned in the OP.

24 hours coverage: NA prime time would only account of 1 of the 3 8-hour slots. So no matter how you do in NA, it can still be overridden by whoever wins the other 2 slots.

Snowballing: the match can literally be absolutely decided after 4 days. Even if the PPT scores would actually be close enough to allow a comeback. And a single day can be decided after 2 8-hour slots: if it is, there’s no point in playing in the 3rd slot at all.

Stagnation: basically, the same things as said in snowballing.

---

My own opinions:

Snowballing/stagnation: Neither of these things are symptoms of the PPT scoring system. Both are simply because the matches last a whole week. Let’s imagine this is a basketball game (which lasts 40 mins, in 4 quarters). Team A manages to take a 70 point lead in the first half. Whereas it is technically possible for Team B to come back in the second half, it’s extremely unlikely, since Team A is probably much better than them, to have been so dominant in the first half. To have a fighting chance in the second half, Team B needed to give themselves that chance in the first half. The same applies to WvW – you have one whole week to get your server points and put yourselves in the lead; if you fail to do so early on, then yes, you will have very little chance to actually win later. Note that, due to reset and the weekend, there is generally far greater player participation in the first half of the week anyway, so it would be a bad idea to make the second half of the week somehow more decisive.

The week-long match also influences stagnation: Team B in our basketball game only had to keep trying to win for a further 20 mins, which, although it might have been almost impossible, was well within the bounds of human mental fortitude. A losing server has to continue playing for an entire week, which, quite frankly, gets boring. And a basketball game only happens every so often… WvW happens all week, every week without fail. Even if you shorten the matches, WvW would still be going on every day.

24 hour scoring: here, I have a solution. Designate the bottom few Tiers of servers as “NA-Prime” (or EU-Prime), while the top few Riers would be “International.” Offer some free transfers, and make it so points in “off-hours” count for less in the Prime servers. That way, players from OCX/SEA/etc would have a place where their contributions could count. Which would simply assist the situation at the moment, where “off hours” players are concentrated in the top few servers anyway.

forget NA or not NA, at some point you have to accept, if a server can outplay you 2/3rds of the time, they deserve the win.

you bring up a basketball analogy. Think of how the playoffs work, do you think the playoffs are unfair?
i mean you can lose 4 games by one point and win 3 by 20 points and still lose. The advantage to this system is blowouts in one game, dont effect the whole rest of the series. You can take a hard loss, and still come back. This is likely the reason they dont continue the scores in game series in proffessional sports.

Now in conjunction with my idea, i think they should keep track of, and create some special rewards for people who win within their time slots.

you may lose the overall match, but you can get some special credit/rewards/titles something for winning in your slot.

Ohoni.6057:

As for more challenging content, I feel it would be a good start to go back to the discreet warning circles rather than the solid orange horribly obvious broadcasts.

Boooooo. We need more orange telegraphs, not less. There’s no skill involved in avoiding attacks that you can’t see coming because they are hidden in the mess of incoming player attacks.

No. Yes, the zerg mentality is strong, but as we’ve seen in the Crown Pavilion, there are definitely ways of preventing people from zerging up, and the community will adapt. I’ve personally been in charge of gold crown pavilions multiple times, it was really fun to do. At first it was difficult to get people to follow, but once people understood how the content should be approached, people were glad to follow the commanders advice to victory instead of zerging up.

But the Crown Pavilion is a perfect example of 7-8/10 on goals, 4/10 on execution. Yes, if you are on a gold map then the zerg splits well, but because the game does such a poor job of automatically communicating this to the players, any random PUG map is fairly well doomed.And really, all the Pavilion did was split the one zerg into six, which actually doesn’t improve much of anything.

The real benefit to the Crown Pavilion was not in splitting the zerg, but in each boss having tactics that required slightly more attention than “stand and hit 1.” I mostly specialized on Pyro over that month, which was hardly the most demanding of the bosses, but it was pretty fun timing out reflects and knowing when to deal with his Retaliation.

Dry Top splits the zerg reasonably well too, as there are a few places where Zerging is fine, some where it’s downright pointless or even counterproductive, but ultimately you need at least 6-8 distinct groups moving around the map at any given time to hit T6 (mostly very small parties though). The problem again though is a complete lack of built in organization. From your own viewpoint, it’s impossible to tell which events are working and which are not. You can only estimate based on chat with people who may or may not be working the various events. Instead, the UI should clearly display every single event that is operating in the zone, and how well each is doing, how many players are there, and how many more are needed.

The mechanics should make sure that everyone knows what they should be doing, rather than requiring players to organize the map somehow.

splitting the zerg is of huge benefit, because zergs destroy anything mattering in the fight.
because you cant see much, you get lag, and scaling makes your individual contribution to any encounter, comparitively worthless.

Ohoni.6057:

As a matter of fact, playing the rl version of the AH is most profitable, while things like working on an oil platform, or in public service (police, firefighters, medics, construction …) is usually mediocre or subpar in terms of financial reward.

Right, as I said, “of similar skill level.” I’m not a fan of the inequities of the modern economy, but there is some point to it. If policemen or firefighters were capable of being successful stock brokers then they’d likely do it, but they can’t because they don’t have the sense of the economy that actual stock brokers do. But being a policeman or fireman tends to pay better than many other jobs that they would be capable of with the required level of education and capability. Stock brokering is the more profitable of the tasks because it is the more difficult, if not the more life threatening.

not really true, most people who are firemen do it out of desire to save people, not due to having no other skill sets. Also, you believe that stock market things are harder, with no real justification.

It has nothing to do with difficulty, it has only to do with profit. Stock brokers make money because they are attached to a profitable business. Just like in GW2, the average TP player will make more than the best of the best dungeon runner. (especially now with vote kick)

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Royale.5863:

phys.7689:

In terms of new things gw2 future will remain unknown. Its not their company policy to discuss future plans.

What you can expect is living world season 2 to end.

Is this actual company policy? Appaling if true.

It’s not exactly that simple. What the policy is, says more like “we’re not going to talk about what’s coming up until we know it’s ready” as opposed to “let’s tease ‘precursor scavenger hunt’ and hear about it for eighteen months”.

Nah, they pretty much said its not their policy to discuss things until its in game. Even when the NPE changes were being discussed, which they knew would be released within a week. People asked for an overview of what type of changes were going in/being planned.
They basically said they dont want to talk about it till its in game.

So to put it clearly, here is what the policy is.
They will not talk about any future plans, other than marketing promos for the next release, a couple weeks before release.

do you find that last bit in bold to be accurate?

Etienne.3049:

phys.7689:

break the 24 hour periods into 3 rounds
win two rounds, you win the day
win 4 days you win the match

this way, one 8 hour shift cant win you the day. 2 however can, but i think if you lose two timeslots, then ehhhhh you lost that day.

soo now there would need to be a reason to play when you are getting blown out.
hmmm

What would this actually solve? And how?
Wouldn’t this make having people at night even more important?

I also really don’t like this idea although I can’t quite determine why.

it would make having people at night less important. See, lets say you have close ppt for 16 hours a day, then what happens is night time the ppt can be insane. You lose the match, even if you perform better in primetime and another time.

Thing is right now, at night you can have like 20-600 ppt going on. it basically creates blow outs.
Also, this means if you can perform really strongly over the weekend, you can lose a couple during the week.

break the 24 hour periods into 3 rounds
win two rounds, you win the day
win 4 days you win the match

this way, one 8 hour shift cant win you the day. 2 however can, but i think if you lose two timeslots, then ehhhhh you lost that day.

soo now there would need to be a reason to play when you are getting blown out.
hmmm

Ohoni.6057:

rare gs sell for substantially more than other weapons.
rare gs sells for 72 silver, or 30 silver over ecto value
rare speargun sells for 42 silver, or basically ecto value

Right, which I noted, but I would think that if people were just buying spearguns for ectos, but were buying GSs for dumping four of them into the MF each time in massive numbers, then the market value of GSs would be even more than 70% more than Spearguns, they would be three, four times as expensive, perhaps even more. So my read on that is that while some people are doing that, it can’t be the massive number of people that some suggest it would be.

Just because there is an achievement for all 14 doesn’t mean Anet intends for everyone to be able to get that achievement. lt’s the same argument for achievements for storylines that were temporary.

They also have a character select screen medal for having a legendary, alongside ones for World Completion and PvP rank. Most people had the world completion one within the first six months, if they even bothered to try for it, and the PvP one nobody had, until they nerfed the requirements significantly and now almost anyone serious about PvP has one. Yes the Legendary one is still a problem for a lot of players.

Again, IF their goal is to make legendaries a super rare, long term goal, then that’s fine, but they need to do it in such a way that the “long term” element of it does not translate to “collecting massive amounts of gold at a rate that is faster than the general inflation of the Precursor markets.” If it’s meant to be a long term goal, then it needs to be a long term GAMEPLAY goal, achieving multiple difficult and time consuming objectives, not just collecting coins.

the thing is the value of GS is determined by the values of dusk. people wont pay more than that because at 70ish silver, they are taking a large risk in exchange for a 1300 payout. Its not overall profitable to throw in GS at 70 silver a pop. I mean if you are little lucky, sure, but if you are a little unlucky? not really

Essentially the value of GS wont go much higher than they are now, until dusk increases in price.

72 is equilibrim point right now for dusk manufactures as a whole. if it costed much more, you would be better off using exotics, or buying a dusk (unless you were lucky)

to be honest, its actually worth prolly like 50 or 60, but the impatient gamblers pay 72ish

In terms of new things gw2 future will remain unknown. Its not their company policy to discuss future plans.

What you can expect is living world season 2 to end.

Astralporing.1957:

NoTrigger.8396:

Draknar.5748:

This isn’t even a skill issue, it’s a time issue. Raids discriminate people on a time-basis, rarely on a skill basis, as raids aren’t difficult content, they are just really long dungeons.

you are probably speaking from WoW LFR perspective.

Well, discrimination based on time and skill is not that much better. At least in a game mostly aimed at casuals.

They don’t have to make challenging rewarding content require a lot if time in one sitting

Vayne.8563:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Vayne.8563:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Vayne.8563:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Jana.6831:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Vayne.8563:

They may not be explaining the downstate, but it’s easier to read a single skill when you’re down and figure out what it does than four at once.

On the other hand, this is one of the changes I really didn’t like.

Instead of adding the skills to the weapon overview in the hero panel, they lock them away. Yeah… sounds rational.

So you expect people who just started the game to know about the weapon overview?
(Yeah I’m out)

I expect ANet to implement a simple tooltip or a proper tutorial to direct new players to said overview. Something like “If you ask yourself what your weaponskills or your Downstateskills do, just go into your heropanel and look them up”.
Can’t be that difficult.

Proper tutorials work for some people and don’t work for others. Nothing works for everyone. That’s why multiple teaching tools should be included.

However if you have the time and resources to implement one, you implement the one that tests shows are most effective.

Tooltips are there for the other half. If people neither use the tutorial, nor the tooltips and then quit because they don’t understand the game, then it’s entirely their fault and other players shouldn’t be crippled just because of the stupidity of a minority.
And what are those tests you’re always talking about? I never heard about someone testing this, exept the Q&A section and I don’t trust those guys, they’ve done too many mistakes in the past.

I don’t care who’s fault it is. It’s their fault and Anet’s problem. See, more players is better for the game. Turning away people who’s fault it is is exactly why hard core play is dying.

Many hard core players think everyone learns like them, everyone plays like them, everyone thinks like them. So they raise the bar so high that new people often don’t get a chance. They get abused. They get bullied. They get insulted. And they leave. That’s only a step away from what you’re doing.

These people aren’t like me, so they don’t deserve to play. How does them not playing, their fault or not, help anyone?

Sometimes players are their own worst enemies.

New players that aren’t even willing to understand the game, which was entirely possible pre NPE, aren’t neither helping the game, nor ANet because they’ll leave quickly and they wont buy gems.

You repeating something doesn’t make it true. As I’ve said elsewhere, there are people in my guild who were dreadful at the game when they started. Didn’t get it at all. If my guild hadn’t found them, they might have left already. Some of them have become quite good. What purpose does turning those people away from the game serve, besides some elitist idea that certain people should be playing these games and not others.

Many people who get turned off or turned away CAN learn and can be taught. Some, of course, can’t as well. Those people will leave.

So Anet makes the game to try to get more people playing longer. What’s your beef with that? What makes you think people who invest more time are more likely to leave?

the people in your guild were interested and engaged enough to seek a helpful guild. The people who leave in the first 15 levels, are not the same type of people.

Im all for improving retention of new players, i just dont feel that this new system will retain as man players as they will lose on the other side due to a less well designed starter experience. The game basically starts off as a random grind to level 10 with no context, random direction, and few designed explanations. I really dont think this is more engaging to a new random player overall. It may in fact be better for a subset of players who quit because of option shock, but i dont even think the majority who quit early quit for those reasons.

The problem with asking people why they quit, is because they will say something, but that doesnt mean its really the reason they quit.