Guild Wars 2

Guhracie.3419:

I was surprised to find myself feeling disappointed at the patch notes today. I seriously didn’t think I still expected Anet to address the trait system. Guess I’m a slow learner.

they will no longer add much besides hotfixes and polish in LS patches, dont expect anything big except in other patch types

Labjax.2465:

As someone who didn’t play until after the new trait system was introduced, I can tell you that I accepted it as it was, but I do feel like the “fun” factor didn’t really pick up until later levels when I had a lot of traits to work with.

The first time I leveled, it wasn’t bad, considering that I got some levels through crafting too. Second time I leveled a character, I was itching in my seat, waiting to get some help from those traits at level 30+.

I can’t say whether the other system was better or worse because I didn’t play it, but that’s my take on it.

Edit: Also, I feel it’s worth noting that because of the cost and the number of different events/etc. needed to unlock all of the traits, I’ve yet to unlock all of my traits on a single character. It just doesn’t feel worth it, unless I want the specific trait.

yes, the system is very bottom heavy
its really bad with certain classes for who traits essentially make or break the build.
and yeah, i would imagine anyone paying gold will leave many traits out, people hunting traits probably will leave some for a long time from now.

i think that it would be better for traits to be unlocked at 15, happen every 5 levels, and for the adept traits to be given free, or possibly by for completing various tutorial level quests, think heart of the mists pvp npcs.

the rest need to be tweaked and have multiple unlock options for WvW or PVE (and less annoying unlocks)

Behellagh.1468:

Depends on what you mean be “control”. I don’t think any one person or cartel can control the precursor market. Now if you mean control as in only accessible to the very rich, well that’s a problem with supply and that has to do with the devs wanting to give legendary weapons a truly rare status and since precursors are required, they inherit the truly rare status.

With any low supply, high demand item only those with the most money will be able to get it. And as the game drags on the wealth gap increases. And since nobody can really control supply for very long of any one precursor, the prices are what the market can bear, sort of.

I’m of a mind that the various charting sites can’t detect when one is priced significantly less than what we see as the low sale price and is bought almost immediately. Those sites simply don’t sample frequently enough to notice them. So the low sell price we are seeing is the nobody willing to pay price and the actual price is much closer to the high bid.

Essentially the prices of precursors will continue to go out of reach as you say. And man, if they introduce new legendaries with a similar system, those prices would be insane.

But I think the point of his post is, within this system precursors of high demand will always be a problem for people who are below that high earning rate.

lordkrall.7241:

The problem with having a flat price for it would be inflation.

100g today is MUUUUCH easier to get than 100g at release.

So unless they actively changed the price based on the current value of gold (which is exactly how the TP works) it wouldn’t really work out that well.

Desired precursors prices are not going up at the dame rate as inflation, or earning.

Dusk used to be 80 gold. farmer could make that in 30 hours just npcing crap (if not less) haven’t heard of farming that can make 1500 gold in 30 hours.

Wonderly.1324:

tolunart.2095:

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re close.

Think of the gem/gold exchange like this:

There are two boxes. One has gold in it, the other has gems in it. If you want to take some gold out of the box, you have to put gems in the other box. If you want to take out gems, you have to put gold in the other box.

You can’t put something in without taking something out, and you can’t take something out without putting something in. How much of each depends on how full the boxes are. Right now there’s a lot of gold in one box, but only a few gems in the other box. So in order to take out one gem you have to put in a lot of gold. But on the other hand, if you put just one gem into the box you can take out a lot of gold.

I like your response more than the previous quotes response because its a simpler analogy. But, how does buying gems with money fit into the analogy?

gems are created by people spending real money, except for when anet seeded it, unless they did so by spending real money.
gold is created by people playing the game.

they exchange doesnt create either, their goal is to transfer it over, but some amount stays in the pool.

as for the math behind the algorithm that decideds the value of each, who knows, but i would guess they compare the amount of people supply gems versus supplying gold in specific time frames.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Beldin.5498:

phys.7689:

just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one.

In the end they play just try & error .. to see what works and what not.

Personally i have no problem with that .. there is not really much else you can do
if you don’t want just to copy again and again the same that has worked for years.

Especially if you know that the same old stuff doesn’t work that good anymore.

Not really saying they should recreate raids, but the should develop the depth of high level/long term player content, imo

Which happens to be different for everyone. Most of the long term play options that exist in other MMOs didn’t interest me at all.

Every one may have different needs but they still have needs. In order to retain a large % of players and keep new players around longer, every game most solve this issue.

LS has its moments and has probably improved, but it doesn’t create great replayability or a desired goal for many players, it does give a reason to log in once a week, but is that enough for high retainment?

Like I said raids may not be anets answer to the question, but I wouldn’t say they have solved the problem

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of the situation.

Would you rather be a half-baked shop that sells everything but nothing really good, or would you rather cater to one small niche demographic better than everyone else. I’m thinking that’s the choice here.

Anet’s not going to out raid raiding games, and no amount of content they can reasonably provide will keep hard core people interested long term. I really believe that.

What they do have is something no one else has, or at least something I’ve not been able to find anywhere else. They need to improve that experience, because that’s the one that differentiates them from the herd.

At the end of the day, this is just back seat developing by the both of us. I’m pretty sure Anet has a plan. They simply haven’t revealed it to us.

just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one. The fractal reset is an example, its clear right now, that reseting people to 30 served very little purpose, and they will still have the same problems they were trying to solve (but did not) next time they want to add content/levels etc to fractals.

no one always has the right plan, one should not assume that people will always do everything right, just because they are paid to.

You’re 100% right. There’s absolutely no guarantee Anet has a good plan. However, I think it’s likely they have access to data you and I don’t. In fact, I’m 100% sure of that fact.

So who’s more likely to come up with a better plan? You? Me? Or Anet?

At this point, id say me (in concert with anet) but I may be biased

Beldin.5498:

phys.7689:

just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one.

In the end they play just try & error .. to see what works and what not.

Personally i have no problem with that .. there is not really much else you can do
if you don’t want just to copy again and again the same that has worked for years.

Especially if you know that the same old stuff doesn’t work that good anymore.

Not really saying they should recreate raids, but the should develop the depth of high level/long term player content, imo

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of the situation.

Would you rather be a half-baked shop that sells everything but nothing really good, or would you rather cater to one small niche demographic better than everyone else. I’m thinking that’s the choice here.

Anet’s not going to out raid raiding games, and no amount of content they can reasonably provide will keep hard core people interested long term. I really believe that.

What they do have is something no one else has, or at least something I’ve not been able to find anywhere else. They need to improve that experience, because that’s the one that differentiates them from the herd.

At the end of the day, this is just back seat developing by the both of us. I’m pretty sure Anet has a plan. They simply haven’t revealed it to us.

just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one. The fractal reset is an example, its clear right now, that reseting people to 30 served very little purpose, and they will still have the same problems they were trying to solve (but did not) next time they want to add content/levels etc to fractals.

no one always has the right plan, one should not assume that people will always do everything right, just because they are paid to.

Vayne.8563:

@phys

And what percentage of alienated people wouldn’t return anyway? I think it’s likely pretty high. Rift alienated me and I never looked back.

Exactly, which is why i think its a bad idea to simply go by what your current majority says when you are talking about polarizing/alienating descions. Its in your best interest to try to appease both sides and come up with mutually beneficial solutions, or at the least solutions that dont directly alienate groups of your customers.

Its not black and white, you cant ALWAYS please everyone, but you should attempt to please many types of people, and not simply distill your product, but also to expand its appeal.

Either that, or you just make a product you think is awesome and ignore everyone, and take your chances, appealing to no one directly, but that method does have real risks

Vayne.8563:

You have said it. I still don’t agree. There’s a flaw in your math. You’re assuming everyone is leaving and no one is returning or starting to play. That’s a kittenumption.

I’ve seen a lot of people coming back to the game since the Living Story Season 2. The ones in my guild are certainly enjoying it and looking forward to the next chapter. But they don’t appear anywhere your equation.

The people who left, briefly, to play ESO or maybe try Wildstar, some of those people are coming back too. That’s the thing. Without a subscription fee, the barrier to trying the game again is very small. And some people come back and are happy and like it. And some leave again, because that’s what they do.

You can’t worry about pleasing every demographic, or you’ll end up pleasing no one.

people dont come back if you alienate them, unless you give them back what alienated them. People do come back if they lose interest/get burned out.
As for new people, if you have a representive pool of statistics, IE you have a good slice of the general population who will play your game, the math ends up being the same.

sure you may increasse your numbers, but you still decrease them from what they would be.
IE, lets say you add a 1000 new players, if your initial sample of 1000 is a representive of that average gamer, you will once again only appeal to 360 of those players.
so instead of having say 80% of your inital players (With some not being alienated, but simply getting tired/looking for a change) and 80% of the new players, you end up with 36% of both.
so you get 1600 players versus 720.

: lets say you make a game that only appeals to white women age 15-20 who like one direction and you get 1000 new random people to play, you will still lose all the people who dont fit that demographic. Even if 51% of your players were women, 80% of them were 15-20 and 60% of them liked one direction.

The person who leaves to try wildstar wasnt really alienated, they just wanted something new, the person who leaves because he feels megaservers ruined his community, and anet never did anything to respond to that demographic isnt going to come back until anet solves that problem, and even then they may not because of a bad taste in their mouthes.

this is why its bad to alienate players.

Essentially:

• alienated players often dont return till you change what alienated them (which means you have to appeal to those outside the majority, in fact, at that time out of your population, they are an even smaller minority because many left)

• If your design is specific to multiple passes of your majority, you will lose the same % of new players.

Therefor
It is bad to continously make changes based on what the current majority is repeatedly(if they are changes on the level of alienation), unless you want to shrink your appeal.

KarlaGrey.5903:

The problem is, they seem to have opted for the former approach (mastering the art of making angel cakes), because otherwise their customer base would get ‘too fragmented’.

yes, imo thats a bad idea, trying to herd many different playertypes into one form of content will to the exclusion of others is essentially going to shrink your market.
You can only get chocalte lovers to try and love your great angel cake if you are also selling some decent chocolate cake, and even when they like your angel cake, if you stop selling chocolate cake, or have a big quality downgrade, they will probably stop coming to you as often.

a solution for fragmentation that leads to you reducing your player base total, doesnt sound like a good idea to me, especially as it iterates.

One of the problems i think anet has with their design solutions are they tend to be too focused on a single condition to the exclusion of other considerations. This causes them to over design for those solutions, and cause problems in other things.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Except for the freedom of people who live in like, I don’t know, Oceanic countries to find other people to play with in the open world at the hours they play. Because before the April 15th patch, I stopped playing my prime time altogether, because there was no reason to play. Why wander the zones alone? Didn’t matter what server you were on splitting up everyone made it a poor MMO to play…certainly for me. I don’t play MMOs to solo.

And while there were occasionally people to be seen even though I don’t play MMOs to occasionally see people. It’s all well and good if you live in the US, but not so good for Australia, New Zealand anyone who plays from Asia.

We have more freedom now. So do people in the US who work weird hours or are awake weird hours.

People on different servers used to have to guest to get stuff done and complained about it. What about their freedom?

Freedom is a funny word. Everyone assumes because changes were made that takes away their choices, it means that everyone has less freedom. Well some of us have more freedom.

what your are essentially saying is other peoples freedoms, are less important than your enjoyment.
Your freedom wasnt being taken away, your enjoyment was.

Thats the distinction. Now, i am not against you getting your enjoyment, but they probably needed a more complex system in place in order to not have your enjoyment and another players freedom/dynamic world/etc become opposing forces.

Actually no. If you wanted to find people to do specific stuff you had to guest. And guesting at certain hours made no difference.

And I’m not saying that my enjoyment is more important than anyone else’s. I truly believe more people were aided by the mega server than hurt by it. There are plenty of things in this game that don’t really match my play style, but I know I have my own play style and I don’t expect anything just for me.

However, if the majority benefits even if some lose some freedom, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think the majority has benefited in this case. I think the people complaining are by far a minority, at least in the US. Again I won’t talk for Europe.

i have said this in other threads, but constantly appealing to the majority is a dangerous strategy, over time it creates more losses. Its a mathematical reduction, even when it is a high %

say you start with 1000 people
i do something that alienates 40% for the good of the 60% i now have 600 customers

for my next change i do something that alienates 25% and appeals to 75% i now have 450 customers

i do something which alienates 20% of my customer base for the good of 80%, i now have 360 customers.

and this is how you come up losing. you need to appeal to different markets, and look beyond your current playerbase, or maximize and dont drop your playerbase. And you cant do that by continously only looking at the majority.

you would lose less people from your initial pool of people interested by appealing to them all somewhat, than you lose by appealing to the majority over time.

Vayne.8563:

What you’re saying here is very easy to say. However you don’t know how big the majority is and neither do I.

However, there are some demographics that if you cater to them you will ruin the game for your main demographic. Let’s say they added open world PvP. You’d certainly lose me as a player. I have no interest in it. Moreso the type of people attracted to that playstyle are people I’m not particularly interested in hanging out with generally. It would take the fun casual aspect of the game away and replace it with something very different.

Moreover there’s not one group of people asking for stuff. There are many. Working on doing something for each of those groups will take away what you can do for you main group. If Anet priorities PvP, WvW and dungeons and raids, they’d have to put a lot of time/energy, money and man hours into it.

And I believe most of those things don’t really help the core player base. If that is the case (and that’s if, I don’t really know, but I assume Anet does), then taking that amount of resources away from the main thrust of development would be more harmful to the game than helpful.

It doesn’t mean those parts of the game shouldn’t get any attention but it does mean that the content coming out for those times would take longer. We know for example that a new PvP game type is currently being worked on. But it’s going to take longer than it would to come out with the PvE stuff, because, in theory anyway, less people are interested in it.

Even if it’s the case that the people interested in those others things have left, putting it in won’t necessarily bring those people back. You have to work toward your strength to keep the primary population.

And a majority in this case doesn’t have to be 51%. It just means more people are playing this than anything else. Let’s say 45% of people are playing open world PvE/living story, but the other 55% are divded between RPing, playing the auction house, PvPing, WvWing, running dungeons, and minigames. each of those groups might encompass 15% of the player base.

Making stuff for everyone in enough quantity to please everyone is very easy to say. It’s not so easy to pull off, however.

its not black and white, you wont please everyone, but you can please many. There are obviously somethings that are mutually exclusive, or wont work, but the majority of things arent exclusive, and the ability to design solutions that work on many levels is the name of the game.

As far as everything being in competition for the same resources, (manhours of dev time) Streamline your pipelines, and come up with ways to better montetize the things that bring value to the game.

This is not easy, but this is the goal that an mmo/business of this type should be aiming for, even if they fall short. (as long as they dont fall short in money)

My feeling/educated guess based on various things is that playerbase is contracting. This is normal, but by constantly putting resources mostly to people who are currently satisfied you essentially guarantee to have yourself a shrinking market, until the point where you have distilled your highly specialized product so that no person who likes that flavor can resist it. However, thats a much smaller number of people than you could have reached.

Analogy inc:
becoming an ultimate master of angel cake guarantees you that the angel cake conessieurs wont be able to ignore your shop. However you will slowly lose everyone else, because even the people who like angel cake a lot will get bored of it and show up at your shop less often eventually.

You d probably make more money making some really good angel cake, and a lot of other cakes decently, than being an angel cake master, unless angel cake-o-files are willing to pay enough for you to ignore all the customers you gave up.

Vayne.8563:

Except for the freedom of people who live in like, I don’t know, Oceanic countries to find other people to play with in the open world at the hours they play. Because before the April 15th patch, I stopped playing my prime time altogether, because there was no reason to play. Why wander the zones alone? Didn’t matter what server you were on splitting up everyone made it a poor MMO to play…certainly for me. I don’t play MMOs to solo.

And while there were occasionally people to be seen even though I don’t play MMOs to occasionally see people. It’s all well and good if you live in the US, but not so good for Australia, New Zealand anyone who plays from Asia.

We have more freedom now. So do people in the US who work weird hours or are awake weird hours.

People on different servers used to have to guest to get stuff done and complained about it. What about their freedom?

Freedom is a funny word. Everyone assumes because changes were made that takes away their choices, it means that everyone has less freedom. Well some of us have more freedom.

what your are essentially saying is other peoples freedoms, are less important than your enjoyment.
Your freedom wasnt being taken away, your enjoyment was.

Thats the distinction. Now, i am not against you getting your enjoyment, but they probably needed a more complex system in place in order to not have your enjoyment and another players freedom/dynamic world/etc become opposing forces.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

KarlaGrey.5903:

What does your personal choice whether you stop to rez or not have to do with the fact it doesn’t reward you towards the action you were performing before you stopepd to rez.
Basically, what Ashen posted some time ago (bolded part by me):

At least in the open world content I play GW2 is far more competitive than cooperative. Helping another player means potentially not getting credit, or at least not full credit, for the events I play. The game punishes me for stopping my DPS to rezz another player. Conversely the game will reward me for ignoring players who need my assistance in order to maintain maximum possible damage output.

It didn’t used to be like this…or at least not to this degree. I think that the Megaserver is a net gain for the game, but it needs tweaks to prevent some of the current situations where it makes the PvE game more competitive and less cooperative.

Also, if there are about 50 people spanking a mob, 2 or 3 of which stop to rest, that kinda boils down to ‘most don’t bother’… naturally, many don’t even notice, and some can’t because they might die in the process.
I myself rezzed when I could, but that is beside the point.

Because there’s not much difference in Gold vs Silver rewards? Far as I’ve seen the only people who risk not getting a reward are those who get Bronze . . .

And don’t throw Tequila at me – most people explicitly are told to WP and run back because resurrecting is too dicey to do there. Along with some other high-level world bosses, where sitting about waiting to get picked up is worse than just standing there not doing anything. (At least if you’re standing there people using the “F” key to do stuff won’t accidentally start resurrecting you.)

its often a bad idea to res dead players, resing a downed player is generally a good idea, unless they are really bad and die very often. Teq, etc just make it more obvious. Anyhow, how did this even get into a discussion about ressing, Highly competitive dungeon runners res people in dungeons as well, what does this have to do with endgame, or social or whatever.

placing competition againts social as if they are mutually exclusive is a false dichotomy.

Heres the thing.
Regardless what you want for endgame, this game does not have much of it. regardless what you want for endgame, this game does not expand/refine/renew itself.

I think the endgame best developed and scaling in trading post pvp. You consistently get more progress, going as far as you like, it consistently renews and changes itself. And getting more money in shorter periods requires you to go further in depth.

Now sadly i am not the type who will enjoy that type of gameplay even though i can do it.

But lets say you like exploring, the game offeres very little new exploration comparitively, and not much for truely mastering the map.
I would add mini quests and events, timers and stamina based exploration events (end game for explorers)

lets say you like setting up community events, a political/social system where people can throw events, while getting good at it gives them access to more event related tools/uses/etc

regardless of what you are talking about, what you prefer, the endgame for it is generally fairly shallow.

And there are ways to expand open world endgame AND expand instanced dungeon endgame. Keep in mind the purpose of dungeons was SUPPOSED to be to appeal to the audience who were looking for a challenge. Just because you like open world, doesnt mean they should abolish, simplify or give up on dungeons.

As far as vaynes belief in the majority rule, its a bad idea to appeal to the majority to the exclusion of every one else. The best solutions appeal to a broad range of groups, or you create different solutions for different groups.

Just because 51% of the people buy angel cake doesnt mean its a great idea to make a business that only sells angel cake. you are giving up 49% of your customer base to appeal to angel cake market. Now this doesnt mean they should get rid of angel cake either, it probably means they should create systems that better adapt to the needs/desire of the customer overall.

xev.9476:

Lord Kuru.3685:

• The megaserver nature of EoTM ensures it has no community.
• No community means there’s no “team spirit.”
• No team spirit means no one cares about winning or losing.
• No one caring about winning or losing means 24/7 karma train.

EoTM’s massive failure is actually a great lesson on the importance of community. Of course Anet didn’t learn that when they used EoTM as a beta for megaservers.

The importance of community is emphasized ad nauseum, but the alleged significance of server community seems to me overblown. Many of the most dedicated WvW guilds care(d) almost nothing for PPT (although they did PPT to maintain their spot in a tier) and instead transferred servers repeatedly in search of quality fights and winning servers. Their desire to do well stemmed not from a concern for server pride or community, but from a desire for engaging large scale PvP. If server pride/community was instead of supreme importance, how would we explain the frequency of server transfers over the past 2 years?

For that matter, although I’d agree a sense of community is important, limiting our understanding of community to server community is misguided. Guilds are also important communities and, I’d argue, far more important than server community. We’ve even seen strong trans-server communities develop, like the GvG scene where players across servers cooperated to form their own player driven content.

Personally, I think EotM’s ktrain status is mostly the result of its rewards and shoddy map design that does more to encourage AC wars than quality PvP. Server pride/community was irrelevant, for instance, in the old days of Blackgate’s and TC’s world boss tours and champ bag farms in Queensdale, Frostgorge, and Cursed Shore. People regularly guested to those servers in search of loot, just as people mostly join EotM for the xp and rewards.

First i think you are looking at server pride as an absolute. Wanting my server to win in WvW doesnt mean i will never talk to any other server, or never want to do an event with another server.
Second, i think you are totally undersestimating how much people get caught up in the battle against enemies. If you remember the match up threads, many of the fight loving guilds had immense server pride, constantly screaming the name of their servers. Go look at any maguma match up thread (if you can find old internet records) and you will see wanting fights and thinking your server is the best is far from mutually exclusive.

As far as server swappers, people get bored and try to change up their relationships, but many times while they are in that relationship they love it and will swear they will never leave. Then when they get into the next one they still say the same, this doesnt mean they didnt have pride/connection to that relationship back when they were in it.

That aside, WvW still needs goals to work, and the goals of success in EOTM isnt enough to keep people actually trying to do the objectives. Its not just about community, its also about just not having a goal that matters or a shared interest in intent to pvp. If winning objectives and killing players had some value, people might actually work together, and try to achieve this.

Since winning is fairly irrelevant in eotm, they need the reward structure to guide players to the type of play they want people to have. This is a problem in WvW as well, however server connection/shared goal/whatever acts with enough force to make people play the game sometimes

Swift.6124:

Hello guys and gals.

I would like to first introduce myself and then I will talk about my cause.
I have been a huge MMO fan since the early days back in 2004 when WoW came out ever since then the only games I played were MMO’s. Guild wars was brilliant ! Played it quite a lot and I couldn’t wait for GW2 to come out, and it finally did. Almost 2 years have passed since the release date and I myself am starting to look around for other MMO’s, whats on the market now and how GW2 compares to the new kids on the block. So recently I tried Wildstar which had a lot of promise for competitive PVE and to be a hard game in general with a unique combat system. Well…. the combat system has nothing unique about it, it’s basically GW2’s combat system with worse animation. When I saw that this started me thinking, I don’t want a new MMO, I love GW2 and since Arenanet has always listened to their users I decided to make this post with a few suggestions from a hardcore PVE fan.
Lately I log in and wonder what to do online … Dungeons got quite boring after the bazilion run. World bosses you say ? Well after the merger of the servers they get melted on the spot and it really doesn’t bring a lot of challenge. Well yeah there are some tactics to them and some phases but when you are 300 people doing it there is a very slim chance to mess up. As a very competitive player I need a goal in a game I need to know that there is an item out there that only few can acquire only by being constantly good in their PVE mechanics. A legendary item some may say ? And I would disagree, you can get that with just a few months constant farm which has nothing to do with your individual PVE skills. So my suggestion is quite simple. I know you love adding content and expanding the game, the living story has been excellent so far but its not a real challenge for players like me. I do the quests in a day and then just wait for the next part. I would love to really see competitive raids being created. Something of the sort 20-30 players enter the dungeon (after all its a MMO, 5 mans just doesn’t cut it any more). Where individual skill matters and where working as a group really shows results because like I mentioned earlier on the worlds bosses I see people only standing there and getting loot with out doing any real damage and really contributing to the kill. So what I am trying to say is, I want to see raids! Where I have to learn tactics to bosses to bang my head against the screen for months before I get the drop I need and to be challenged from bizzare creatures from the GW2 universe. And I think I am not the only one, a lot of people love this game but some of us find it too easy. Make us suffer for gear and kills.

Thank you

20 man raids usually arent about personal skill, They often require organizational skill, and strategy, etc. But thats not really close to the same thing.

Unless you made a 20 man event/dunegon/area where your broke into smaller groups with specific goals, that could be fun.

Rauderi.8706:

Brother Grimm.5176:

See, the ability to CONTROL the supply kind of makes it NOT like commodities at all (and anyone that believes Anet is NOT in 100% control of this is delusional). I have no problem with how it works, but I am a bit “concerned” that players being led to believe gems are a fixed quantity commodity when they are not is something the SEC might raise an eyebrow to if it were in fact a REAL market.

I’m pretty sure the supply for gems is based on legit transactions and not fluffing of numbers by ANet. Might they occasionally tip a few extra gems into the market? Possible, but I’ll stay away from conspiracy theories.

Thing is, some people will use gems to buy gold, especially if the price goes up significantly. That brings more supply and lowers the price. But the price keeps climbing since many more people are likely to trade gold for gems.

With a large enough pool (say, in the millions), it would take a long time for the difference in buyer rates and seller additions to leech the gem pool enough to run it out completely.

Which leads to an interesting (though likely policy-disallowed) question: How many gems did the BLTC start with? Millions? A billion? I’m totally curious.

if the overall pool is increasing, the rate can still be high.

lets say when its 10 gold to 1 gem the ratio makes it 10 gold for one gem
you can get the same ratio with 1×10^10 gold to 1 × 10^9 gems.

essentially its theoretically possible that the value of gold to gems decreases, while the pot gets fuller on both sides.

Brother Grimm.5176:

phys.7689:

…..
The only people that might use extractor are those trapped with sigil/runes in karma gear andvpeople with ascended.

Any player that uses the extractor on runes that cost less than the value of the extractor (in gold) has nobody but themselves to blame for wasting resources. I’m not against a solution for the “trapped” sigil/runes conundrum, but only an idiot would use 6 extractors to pull Strength runes off a set of armor….

….
The gem pool expands when players trade in gems for gold. If you assume two stockpiles of currency, it works pretty much exactly like you would expect.

So are you willing to state (in public) that gems are never destroyed or created? (I get if you are not going to answer).

See, the ability to CONTROL the supply kind of makes it NOT like commodities at all (and anyone that believes Anet is NOT in 100% control of this is delusional). I have no problem with how it works, but I am a bit “concerned” that players being led to believe gems are a fixed quantity commodity when they are not is something the SEC might raise an eyebrow to if it were in fact a REAL market.

from what i remember, some posts seem to have been lost, they said they initially seeded both stockpiles of gold and gems, but now the initial money isnt a factor. After examining the system, i dont think they would gain any benefit by not having it work like a normal exchange.

before i thought they might be afraid of large fluctations, but honestly if the exchange ran out of gems or gold, it would probably correct pretty fast, and any time they created fake money, they would actually be messing up the monetary values, not in their benefit, giving people free gems hurts them, and giving people fake gold overall reduces the value of gold, and throws off the gold/gem exchange books.

essentially counterfiet money doesnt help the government, and counterfiet bonds would help them even less.

gems are destroyed when you make a purchase.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

Galen.9042:

Wanze.8410:

Galen.9042:

I know you can’t comment on the gem store or I’d also ask why the Upgrade Extractor is so unattractively priced.

The upgrade extractor is intended for infusions, not sigils/runes.

Then why isn’t there another, cheaper option to remove sigils/runes from karma/WvWvW gear?

If there was one available for like 50 gems/5g, everybody would buy it with gold to extract runes/sigils that cost more than 5g. In the process, gems would get more expensive and the runes/sigils would get cheaper on the tp until a point is reached that it is not profitable anymore to buy the extractor with gold.
We would be at square one again, with an inflated gold/gem ratio.

this is a bit oversimplified,
first of all gem value is based on the value of many products, not just one product, even should extraction become a big seller, it would not probably raise the overall value of gems that much
2nd, most sigil/rune resuse on expensive runes are rare anyhow. Mostly because of the assoicated cost, by having runes be able to be removed, it might actually increase the value of many runes.
Essentially by making something accessible, you can actually at times increase the demand.

Really you have to look at it the whole product, I dont think this product, with its design would work as you describe.

That said regardless, any price set in gems is going to be fairly innacurate over time. The value of gems/gold changes all the time.

In truth some of these items should be in game gold sinks, increasing the demand for gold in game does not hurt their bottomline, and it provides reusable and choosable sinks for players.

Point is, that the Upgrade extractor is not unattractively priced, the user just expected to make a “gold” bargain by buying it with gold. It makes sense to buy it for high agony infusions, where you cant really influence the market price with it (afaik infusions become account bound after extracting) or utility infusions. I rather spend the gold for the extractor than spending 20 laurels for a new one. If Anet makes the extractor available for a flat gold price in game, they effectively put a price ceiling on all rune/sigil prices, which could become a problem over time with general inflation because it will not only affect runes and sigils but also prices for materials that are used to craft them.

Its would not be a cieling on rune prices any more than 1/25th of a black lion salvage kit is a cieling.

If anything extractor use effects armor destruction more than rune/sigil prices.

The only people that might use extractor are those trapped with sigil/runes in karma gear andvpeople with ascended.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Leo G.4501:

They aren’t constantly working on these projects in the background? If not, then they should. If they are, have they mentioned anything about a time-line and the type of stuff we’re likely to be getting? Like alternate skills or just different weapons? Ulitities? Etc…

First, they don’t owe us a breakdown of what they’re working on and their progress towards everything. If we were shareholders or such, then we would be owed such (not that there’s a guarantee we’d get it even then).

Secondly, I . . . personally . . . would rather they work on what they want to work on rather than what we tell them to do. SAB is a prime example of something nobody asked for which most players enjoyed, and was worked on in spare time mostly.

Lastly, I would present the opinion we don’t need new shiny skills/weapons/et cetera . . . what we really need is for the existing game to be tightened down and tweaked a bit more.

The game has been being tightened down for 2 years. Time for new stuff.

Vayne.8563:

Lian Olsam.9541:

Raids are awesome, i still do it in other games, cause is something unique repetable, as someone told no one wanna a gear treadmill, but skins etc etc raids u can do once per week make them special, with some different team compositions like 8 or more ppl should be really awesome…
I play this game since bwe i m the one who log in just for teq and daily and i do this no everyday, there is some entire weeks i dont play anymore.. ; dont care about legendary treadmill or living story, i wanna enjoy the game with friends/guildis with something special like raids are

So many of us came here specifically to get away from raids.

i want endgame goals, but i have very little desire for instanced 12+ people content. I like difficulty adventure and rewards, but i dont really like managing 18+ people, and i dont like feeling like one semi useless soldier among many.

That said, not everything in the game has to be designed around me, it wouldnt hurt for it to exist, as long as it isnt the only endgame goals/progression available, or the only way to get any cool stuff (its fine if they have some exclusive stuff as long as other endgame stuff has its own things)

Romek.4201:

noone ever could read this over 50 sites full with suggestion spam …

and ye they do – i dont know bout US but in EU they do

i know only bout the german one and Ramon Domke(german comunity manager) meet with people from Wartower.de, gw2ts, leaders from big guilds and alot other big german comunity sites ….

this people ask and talk and filter in there comunitys for 2 weeks bout a thema and than tell the results the comunity manager and this guy to arenanet

last was bout WvW and WvW-Guilds i think and bout Living story

when you know german you can check it here:
http://www.wartower.de/forum/showthread.php?1121310-Zweiter-%F6ffentlicher-Runder-Tisch-mit-Ramon-Domke

dont know bout other languages but how he said they do it in french, spain and english (EU) too

havent heard much about in in NA, but i dont really associate with large guilds. Also they may figure their interactions with NA through twitch and FB etc are good enough

i dont think they should really post JUST to see we hear you, but they should post with overall plans, and try to understand the nature of the feedback being presented.

Its not easy dealing with irate customers, and handling customer expectations, but it really is a part of business. Communication brings you more than you lose. This is why virtually every other successful business out there discusses plans, overviews, releases teasers/promo s etc.
When is the last time you saw a movie without a trailer?
how long ahead of time did you know your favorite game was coming out? (years?)
what happens when you ask questions in a retail shop?

Businesses do this because its profitable, people who interact with a person tend to like them more, even if its bull. Yeah you get some salty people, but by and large you gain way more than you lose.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

Filling it in with something was better than leaving it the way it was.

The dev time wasted on doing that should have been spent on something else.

lot of people hate on the bloodlust mechanic, but you realize its one of the only wvw mechanics that scales well in terms of ppt, based on population differences?

IE gives more points to the teams who kill more of their enemies than they themselves get killed, and gives less points when less people are playing, and more when more are playing.

Also gives a decent short term goals/small group objectives. Its not perfect but i would say its overall pretty worthwhile, and more objectives probably need to scale better with player performance and ratio of people playing on each server.

Wanze.8410:

Galen.9042:

Wanze.8410:

Galen.9042:

I know you can’t comment on the gem store or I’d also ask why the Upgrade Extractor is so unattractively priced.

The upgrade extractor is intended for infusions, not sigils/runes.

Then why isn’t there another, cheaper option to remove sigils/runes from karma/WvWvW gear?

If there was one available for like 50 gems/5g, everybody would buy it with gold to extract runes/sigils that cost more than 5g. In the process, gems would get more expensive and the runes/sigils would get cheaper on the tp until a point is reached that it is not profitable anymore to buy the extractor with gold.
We would be at square one again, with an inflated gold/gem ratio.

this is a bit oversimplified,
first of all gem value is based on the value of many products, not just one product, even should extraction become a big seller, it would not probably raise the overall value of gems that much
2nd, most sigil/rune resuse on expensive runes are rare anyhow. Mostly because of the assoicated cost, by having runes be able to be removed, it might actually increase the value of many runes.
Essentially by making something accessible, you can actually at times increase the demand.

Really you have to look at it the whole product, I dont think this product, with its design would work as you describe.

That said regardless, any price set in gems is going to be fairly innacurate over time. The value of gems/gold changes all the time.

In truth some of these items should be in game gold sinks, increasing the demand for gold in game does not hurt their bottomline, and it provides reusable and choosable sinks for players.

kickstarter is used for funding projects. Sometimes projects that arent getting enough support elsewhere.
So it makes some kind of sense.

However, They are a company already, they are profitable, and their salaries are already paid to work on the game.

Also, any such project would require a high level of coordination withing the existing teams, which boils down to time and effort of existing developers, which they have already decided are better off doing whatever else they want to do.

Essentially, its probably not money perse blocking anet from doing those things, its lack of desire on anets part to do that versus other things they want to develop.

And lastly, this would have to be something anet themselves set in motion, i cant see them doing that just because it would look pretty bad on the parent company that a profitable company has to go to kickstarter to fund something players want.

Rauderi.8706:

Behellagh.1468:

Rauderi.8706:

John Smith.4610:

I’m not sure what you mean by growing gulf between the rates, the gulf has always been the same.

The gold/gem rates have very little to do with gold inflation inside the game.

To clarify with some basic (albeit third party) info:
100 gems sells for 9 g .
100 gems costs 12 g 46 s to buy.
Source http://www.gw2spidy.com/gem

Pretty sure the gap wasn’t 3.4 gold at launch. Though that’s in absolute terms. Is there a calculated percentage in the algorithm to handle the difference that makes this difference relative?

Or, parallel to that, is it based on acceleration/deceleration of gem supply, similar to how sometimes buy orders and available sales are sometimes very close together and sometimes much further apart?

The gap is and always been 27.75%. Or another way of putting it the Gem to Gold rate is 72.25% of the Gold to Gem rate. 72.25% is 85% squared. To me that implies that gold is sunk going in and coming out of the exchange.

I suspected something similar. Still seems like a bit of a rip-off, but having the gold sink is a good thing.

its unknown whether its sunk or not, i imagine its there more for the purpose of stabilzing risk of fluctuations and giving anet more profit per transactions, much like real currency exchanges charge fees

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

John Smith.4610:

The gold/gem rates have very little to do with gold inflation inside the game.

Ok, I’m not the best at economics, so please explain me what of the following is wrong:

Game Inflation:
More Money in the game, so players have more gold to spend on items,
but Item quantity stay the same -> prices go up.

Players want things in the gemstore, but don’t want to spend real money -> they convert gold to gems (Gem is kind of an item).

The more gold the players have, the more they are willing to spend on gems
-> gemprices go up.

So in my opinion the gemprices reflect inflation to a high degree (maybe not totally because it depends also on the gemstore itself, if it has good offers people want the things more and the prices go up, if it has bad offers people don’t convert much, so prices are stable (history shows: gemprices never really fall ), but for the most part
I think it does.

Hopefully you can explain it to me more

the gold to gem exchange will reflect how valuable people find ingame money versus how valuable they find gemstore money. Or more directly how much gold comes in, versus how much gems come in.
While inflation may have an effect, it is not the primary factor.

For example if gold was inflated, but the only thing in the gem store was karma boosters, you would still find that gold would be way more valuable than gems.

Serophous.9085:

It won’t work. Having someone running around to the different departments while they are working and interrupting them because people feel ignored wouldn’t be productive.

People these days don’t grasp the concept that if you are standing around, talking on forums or to another person, then work isn’t being done. In my younger years as a front end manager, it was my duty to make sure cashiers weren’t standing around doing nothing and either help bag or clean. Yes, I had to be the bad guy, but if I didn’t do it, then the store manager came down on me.

Developers have deadlines, goals, etc, they are told to meet and get working. And one falling behind can really screw it up.

So, players need to ask themselves, would you want the revs spending more time on here if it meant a longer development cycle for the same amount of content we are getting?

this doesnt seem to make sense, you realize that it should already be in place that they have records of what is being worked on, what is not, how far along everything is, and a general overview of what is being expected.

They also should already have some one who gathers feedback in here, who can boil it down and give devs some of the bullet points. ( i think some mods say they already do this)

The major difference would be people speaking, and deciding what has reach the point it should/could be mentioned in a general fashion.

You are implying they are working in a lot of different bubbles with poor communication between each other and the outside world, with poorly developed time lines and projections. That is bad if it was the case and should be changed even without us.

essentially all of this should already be in place and should be occuring internally. Figuring out how much they can communicate to players should be a matter of using a highlighter on already existing documents. Anyone reading this document and sharing player feedback should have a pretty good idea the overall vision, and focuses of the team just as a matter of course

If these type of processes are not already in play, it would be worth it to the workflow, and the overall team to get this type of communication going between each other. Giving some of it to players at that point would be fairly easy.

i look at endgame as what you can do when you beat the game, in GW2 things dont evolve much past level 80, and map complete/story complete.
they do have items to hunt, but they dont change your playstyle (would probably be better if gear and sigils were unlocks) and the game doesnt have much in the way of variability, or difficulty, or even much benefit/loss for how well or not well you play.

So essentially it gets boring during “endgame” time frame.

Smith.1826:

NewTrain.7549:

Godzzila.3752:

I’m not sure at what point did this topic turned into Dark Souls vs Guild Wars 2… But I don’t think it is on-topic

You’re absolutely correct. I just couldn’t allow such a ridiculously false post to stand uncorrected.

ON-topic: That being said, I find myself playing Dark Souls 2 FAR more than Guild Wars 2 (which at this juncture is roughly 0 hours a week) despite it being a single player game with no “endgame” save the arenas. Why? Because it’s actually fun and there’s tons of builds to experiment with.

Sans (maybe) the PvP, the Souls series has zero “endgame”. What it does have is loads of replayability. New Game+, the huge amount of variable and viable builds, the open-ended character and story progression, and the rewarding combat are just some of the major facets that give the game inherent longevity.

Honestly, I’m not too big a fan on the idea of “endgame”. I just want a really solid and replayable game – and unless you find the rewards enticing, I find GW2 to lack a lot of it. To be fair, I felt the same for GW1, but it had loads more due to the amount of customization.

PS and off-topic: The new Dark Souls 2 DLC is well worth it, if you’ve yet to grab it.

endgame is in dark souls II, its really well designed, it basically is the fact that the game scales in difficulty the higher you get, and that enemies eventually get killed off till the new difficulty. You also have an extremely high leveling potential.

So essentially you have non stop leveling
difficulty increase the more you play(better drops, more exp)
rare(that actually change playstyle) items to hunt, that you can specifically target
many different builds.
And more fun designed fights that dont take forever

essentially GW2 is missing the variable difficulty, rare item hunting, and much smaller growth curve.
so i think if gw2 added hard modes with new monsters/layouts
special items with special abilities that dont suck
more growth (probably via skills/traits) that are easier to get with scaling difficulty content
people probably wouldnt complain about endgame, however there might be other complaints.

Its not currently a legal issue, though some states/countries do out law it as gambling now.
Im not saying it should be outlawed either, a lil bit of gamble isnt the end of the world.

Labjax.2465:

Behellagh.1468:

Since the BLTC is listed as containing three random items of similar value to the cost of a key, it’s not gambling, it’s a grab bag. Just because you wouldn’t have ever bought most of the stuff you get from a chest doesn’t negate it’s implied value. The fact that by adding much rarer, highly valued items to the list of possible items doesn’t make it gambling either.

Not technically maybe, but let’s be real here, we all know that it feels almost identical to gambling.

And in the case of things like the permanent style kit, there is a hint of actual gambling, considering that you can spend gems with real money, potentially get a kit, sell it for gold, and then exchange that gold for more gems (which could technically yield you a monetary profit). You are never getting your RL currency back in its original form, but it’s borderline.

no, its technically gambling,
“Gambling thus requires three elements be present: consideration, chance and prize”

just because there is a standard payout of lower value doesnt mean its not a gamble, it just means you have better chances.
Essentially as long as some one is making the purchase/wager, with a hope of a certain outcome that they feel is profitable, its gambling.

And yes, many things are actually gambling, and gambling is about intent. If you are purchasing a box of crackerjacks because you are hoping you will get the popeye tatoo, you are gambling, if you are purchasing crackerjacks because you love the caramel popcorn, you are not gambling.

AlphaNeonic.1925:

laokoko.7403:

mtpelion.4562:

Here is an example using small numbers to illustrate why the method they currently use is good for generating revenue:

1. Directly selling skins
1a. 100 people buy the skikitten0 each.
1b. Total revenue = $1,000

2. Indirectly selling skins via tickets
2a. 1000 people buy a ticket at $2 each.
2b. Total revenue = $2,000

You make more money selling something very cheap to a LOT of people than you do selling something that costs more to a few people.

That is why Black Lion Keys exist.

I think the math is more like 10 people spend a few hundred dollar buying keys. And most of the skins aren’t even bought with cash.

If the drop rate is so bad, players are to blame for this, why sell black lion weapon so cheap.

I’d wager most of the black lion weapon skins being sold on the trading post are from key farmers. They make a new character, run it to the level 10 quest, get black lion key, repeat. The only investment on their end is time.

It offers players a way to get skins cheaper in the short term, but undercuts ArenaNet and makes the skins less valuable.

even through that means they generally undervalue their time. You make very little gold per hour doing it, the only thing you can sell is tickets, special drops, mini’s and dyes, last time i calculated it, you could expect to make around 3ish gold an hour, on average. The special contracts/tonics are so rare that you shouldnt really consider them as possibilities, any more than you figure in getting a 20 gold exotic from killing random champs.

but to be honest its pretty common for players to undervalue their time. Just look at the gem exchange. Not everyone selling their gems makes a lot of gold per hour.

Wanze.8410:

I took a closer look and use the droprate research from the wiki for my calculations:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Clover/Drop_rate

It seems that the droprate is roughly as followed:

~30% chance to get clovers (no gold value)

~5% chance each to get 20-40 of the 8 fine t6 mats, their current prices:
(blood 66s, bones 55s, claws 55s, dust 20s, fangs 44s, scales 58s totems 44s, venom 37s)
Makes an average of 47.375s per t6 fine mat. As you get 20-40 fine mats per attempt, I assume an average of 30×47.375s= 14.21g

~5% chance each to get 10-30 of refined common t6 mats, their current prices:
(Ori ingot 11s, Gossamer Bolt 2.5s, Ancient Plank 14s, Hardened Leather 0.4s)
Makes an average of 7s, an average of 20 per attempt results in 1.4g

~3% to get 10 each of one of the 7 different Lodestones, their current prices:
(Glacial 23s, Charged 309s, Destroyer 79s, Molten 84s, Onyx 85s, Corrupted 80s, Crystal 30s) Makes an average of 98s and as you always get 10 it results in 9.8G per attempt

Then we have a ~1% chance to get either 20 ectos (8g), 50 Mystic Coins (50s), 20 Crystals (no value), 20 Obsi Shards (no Value), 10 Hidden Treasure (30s) and 10 Putrid Essence (16s).
Now lets assume we make 100 forges for the 10 clover attempt:
32 times we get no gold value in return
40 times we get an average value of 14.21g resulting in 568.4g
20 times we get an average value of 1.4g resulting in 28g
3 times we get an average value of 9.8g resulting in 29.4g
1 time we get an average value of 8g
1 time we get an average value of 0.5g
1 time we get an average value of 0.3g
1 time we get an average value of 0.16g
So we gain an average gold value of 634.76g
What did we spend?
1000 ectos 420g
1000 mystic coins 10g
980 Crystals 588 skillpoints
980 Obsi Shards 2 million karma

TL/DR: In order to make ~205g profit from forging clovers you need to spend 588 skillpoints and 2 million karma, thats an average cost of 10k karma and 2.87 skillpoints per gold profit.

Worth it? I think not.

nice math,

so with this said the question becomes, how fast can you earn gold? how fast can you earn karma and skill points? which do you have in excess?

MrIllusion.5304:

Godzzila.3752:

And that’s why that discussion even started: Guild Wars 2 was “dumbed down” and since when is Guild Wars 2 a good example anyway? The game was the quickest sold game of all time in pre-release sales, and quickly a lot of players started running away from it.

Godzzila.3752:

Number two:
xFire makes statistics for games of the people that use their application. As of the release date the game used to have peaks of 16ks players (people that use xFire), as of right now it tends to peak with 2ks of players when a new patch is released while most of the time it sits at 500~1k.
http://social.xfire.com/games/gw2
Also, as of the release date of the game:
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-L42n7YnkFwY/UG0QkxAOmuI/AAAAAAAAAYo/d9hpl81D9xA/s1600/google_trends_combined_wow_and_pandaria.png

And before claiming: “BUT NOT EVERY PEOPLE USES XFIRE!” it’s called sample statistics, its what used on politics based statistics and so on…"

OK sample statistics.

WoW has 1280 of players on Xfire. It has a population of 7.6 million players as of Mar 2014. Therefore ratio of WoW players who use Xfire to total WoW population:

1280/7,600,000 * 100 = 0.0168

GW2 has 571 of players on Xfire. If the same ratio of players on GW2 also use Xfire:

571/P * 100 = 0.0168

Therefore, P = 3,398,809

What an awesome 97% player retention!

Unless you want to argue that a different ratio of GW2 players use Xfire, but you won’t, because “SAMPLE STATISTICS!”

i think its important to note that the statistics dont have all data, but you have to look at the extrapolations in a accurate matter.

In your case, we know nothing about what % of users use xfire, however we do know that out of our total sample, there was a reduction in players from peaks to now.

So unless you are saying you have reason to believe that the xfire type players are a biased sample, in general one would assume it is roughly accurate in terms of giving a broad idea how many are playing versus playing before.

Now, however, you can say the xfire only shows how many peak players, not players overall, if people play different times, or are intensely satisfied playing for a short amount of time, it could not really give you a good idea how many are satisfied.

Swamurabi.7890:

It’s come to this:

The most popular threads on the first page of the WvW Discussion forum have devolved into talking about talking instead of talking about issues.

probably because talking about issues, is dependent on what the Anet is willing to do for WvW, and what its priorities are, No one currently has a firm grasp about what anet intends for WvW at all. Not to mention many have communicated on these issues many times. The problem you posted about on an imbalance in defending was brought up many times, and solutions discussed. Doesnt really matter much if anet cannot commit the resources, attention, or if its not a priority, communication is a two way street. right now, as far as WvW is concerned it is not.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Xillllix.3485:

lordkrall.7241:

Xillllix.3485:

23 days of life left to this thread, then don’t forget to make a new one to pursue the discussion about how enthusiastic we are that they are making a WvW focussed expansion that will include a GvG game mode and this is why they’ve been silent for so long…

I don’t think you know how necroing works.

You are not allowed to post in threads that have been “dead” (as in no new posts) for 30 days. Not threads that are 30 days old.

But 29 days is ok? Right… Seriously it’s ridiculous.

Except this is how most forum sites do it, don’t act like this is some travesty that only Anet is doing when this is business as usual for over 80% of forum boards.

actually its not how most forum sites do it, and there is no universely accepted best practice for necro-ing. Many sites prefer necro to new threads and actively tell you to post in an old thread if what you want to talk about is there.

another forum with a poll on necro etiquette is basically split down the middle
http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/forum-etiquette-necro-post-vs-new-thread-1434911/

In fact in the code of conduct, they specifically tell you to look for existing threads to post in.

This is not a universal truth, its not even a truth outside of this sub forum. Yes, bumping old threads and saying nothing is bad, but bumping any thread and saying nothing is bad.

Truth is, forum moderators generally decide what is feasible to necro and what is not, but they dont try to penalize people across the board for it, they just close the threads.

Godzzila.3752:

Neurochazm.5370:

Godzzila.3752:

Taygus.4571:

SkiTz.4590:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

It’s been provided for Guild Wars 1 and WoW. Can’t give you info on Wildstar, but I’d bet that if the game doesn’t attract and hold casuals the game will end up with a very small player base.

Do you guys not listen to what devs have said from different games over the years?

You think GW2 has a massive player base? (not including china) I would be shocked if theres even close to 50k concurrent players at peak times in EU+NA

Regardless, the point I think is that there is MORE THAN ENOUGH casual content in this game already.
What on earth could possibly drive away more players than it already has to add just something remotely challenging content or revamp dungs to add a harder mode with better rewards? even if everyone can’t do it, its something to progress towards. compared to other terrible forms of progression this game has.

Right..
how often id lv50 fractals completed?
Do you play lv50 fracs? in zerk ascended gear?

How often does arah get completed? (can you solo arah? )
or TA aetherblade path?

The majority of the community don’t want to even aim to be able to complete them.

And most importantly, for the hardcore players, how long do these dungeons stay challenging?

Really? You are using Fractals lv50 as if it was EVEN close to a good dungeon! For you to even get to level 50 you have to play the same fracts over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over! With the same boring-kitten mechanics and same scenarios OVER AND OVER again. People don’t play lv50 fracs not because they are too hard to do, but because nobody feels like grinding the same scenarios over and over again just so that later they can do the same scenario but slightly harder.

How is that not Endgame??
Endgame is by definition repeating the same dungeon every week until you have the gear to progress to the next level.
Just because Fractals don’t match YOUR idea of endgame, does not mean it isn’t Anet’s idea of endgame.

If you don’t like it then their are a plethora of other games that offer conventional endgame.

Fractals are probably one of the worse dungeon instances out there (from every MMO).

well, now your just in the land of personal opinion. If you dont like fractals, what makes you think you would like any dungeons they ever make?

Neurochazm.5370:

Godzzila.3752:

Taygus.4571:

SkiTz.4590:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

It’s been provided for Guild Wars 1 and WoW. Can’t give you info on Wildstar, but I’d bet that if the game doesn’t attract and hold casuals the game will end up with a very small player base.

Do you guys not listen to what devs have said from different games over the years?

You think GW2 has a massive player base? (not including china) I would be shocked if theres even close to 50k concurrent players at peak times in EU+NA

Regardless, the point I think is that there is MORE THAN ENOUGH casual content in this game already.
What on earth could possibly drive away more players than it already has to add just something remotely challenging content or revamp dungs to add a harder mode with better rewards? even if everyone can’t do it, its something to progress towards. compared to other terrible forms of progression this game has.

Right..
how often id lv50 fractals completed?
Do you play lv50 fracs? in zerk ascended gear?

How often does arah get completed? (can you solo arah? )
or TA aetherblade path?

The majority of the community don’t want to even aim to be able to complete them.

And most importantly, for the hardcore players, how long do these dungeons stay challenging?

Really? You are using Fractals lv50 as if it was EVEN close to a good dungeon! For you to even get to level 50 you have to play the same fracts over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over! With the same boring-kitten mechanics and same scenarios OVER AND OVER again. People don’t play lv50 fracs not because they are too hard to do, but because nobody feels like grinding the same scenarios over and over again just so that later they can do the same scenario but slightly harder.

How is that not Endgame??
Endgame is by definition repeating the same dungeon every week until you have the gear to progress to the next level.
Just because Fractals don’t match YOUR idea of endgame, does not mean it isn’t Anet’s idea of endgame.

If you don’t like it then their are a plethora of other games that offer conventional endgame.

endgame is not by definition repeating content. Its just goals and progression that occurs when you have reached the end of the normal progression

Godzzila.3752:

Taygus.4571:

SkiTz.4590:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Compare the open world content to high level Fractals.
Which gets more frequent updates and new content.
Now. Which gets played more often? Which one doesn’t because of the lack of updates and repetitiveness?

FOTM alone is makes less than 1% of the whole the available PvE content hence gets played far less.

And I’ve never heard of Lord Of The Rings online.
Provide the same info with Wildstar.

It’s been provided for Guild Wars 1 and WoW. Can’t give you info on Wildstar, but I’d bet that if the game doesn’t attract and hold casuals the game will end up with a very small player base.

Do you guys not listen to what devs have said from different games over the years?

You think GW2 has a massive player base? (not including china) I would be shocked if theres even close to 50k concurrent players at peak times in EU+NA

Regardless, the point I think is that there is MORE THAN ENOUGH casual content in this game already.
What on earth could possibly drive away more players than it already has to add just something remotely challenging content or revamp dungs to add a harder mode with better rewards? even if everyone can’t do it, its something to progress towards. compared to other terrible forms of progression this game has.

Right..
how often id lv50 fractals completed?
Do you play lv50 fracs? in zerk ascended gear?

How often does arah get completed? (can you solo arah? )
or TA aetherblade path?

The majority of the community don’t want to even aim to be able to complete them.

And most importantly, for the hardcore players, how long do these dungeons stay challenging?

Really? You are using Fractals lv50 as if it was EVEN close to a good dungeon! For you to even get to level 50 you have to play the same fracts over, and over, and over, and over, and over and over! With the same boring-kitten mechanics and same scenarios OVER AND OVER again. People don’t play lv50 fracs not because they are too hard to do, but because nobody feels like grinding the same scenarios over and over again just so that later they can do the same scenario but slightly harder.

i dont think fractals are a bad dungeon by far, but i do agree that you have to do it like 20 times before it actually gets new. It probably has too many gradations and not enough qualitative changes until you get to instabilities.

if they were going to reset people anyway, they should have changed the structure of difficulty selection, and new options, they will continue to have the same problems when they add to fractals with the current design.

lordkrall.7241:

Xillllix.3485:

Honestly, just look at the amount of great games coming in fall/early winter. (not MMOs but great games none the less). GW2 has a life expectancy of 4-5 more months maximum if they only keep doing this boring LS crap (last episode I was literally yawning all the way through) and do not provide a worthy competitive expansion.

Even ESO has had 3 features patches and is starting to look quite tempting.

GW2 has been killed by ESO, Wildstar, new WoW expansion, [insert any new game here] and yet it still looks very much alive.

The “next big thing” will always kill all games that was released before it, but usually those games doesn’t die from it.

its not other games that will kill gw2, its gw2 that will kill gw2. The people go to other games when they are dissatisfied. And, my guess is numbers are down, last reported quarter showed a noticeable drop in earnings from EU, i think the downward trend will continue, Wildstar did actually take a number of dissatisfied players. In a few days they will have quarterly report, and though we wont see the numbers of people we will see the amount earned, its safe to say if they are gaining money they wont mind less players much.

mtpelion.4562:

Here is an example using small numbers to illustrate why the method they currently use is good for generating revenue:

1. Directly selling skins
1a. 100 people buy the skikitten0 each.
1b. Total revenue = $1,000

2. Indirectly selling skins via tickets
2a. 1000 people buy a ticket at $2 each.
2b. Total revenue = $2,000

You make more money selling something very cheap to a LOT of people than you do selling something that costs more to a few people.

That is why Black Lion Keys exist.

not really, that model doesnt really represent whats going on. On average it costs more to get a skin via black lion chests, and it gives black lion keys more value. Its made to appeal to those who like to gamble/trouble resisting gambling.

They arent selling anything cheap to a lot of people. It costs 2-3 times as much

Lukyromero.6780:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Lukyromero.6780:

the point of this post is to warn players about the dangers of buying t6 mats now. …I want to warn fellow players that you shouldn’t excessively buy t6 mats off the TP, it will ruin you if you are heavily tempted and there are better alternative ways to getting t6 mats by not playing the TP.

….

…. there’s an even better way to get t6 mats …rely on your karma, the more you pve the better the reward, … What you want to do is buy more obsidian shards, and do the 10 clover recipe.

It appears the OP is suggesting that buying T6 mats from the TP will bankrupt everyone in the game. Instead, the OP argues that you should craft extra clover and hope that you get T6 mats instead.

I don’t think the first presumption is true, but even if it was, the conversion rate of karma into mats (or coin) yields only about 1/3 the value you’d get by crafting various food.

1. Average TP prices for fine mats are currently running ~45% higher than they were in Feb/Mar. Yes, prices are up, but not by as much as suggested in the Original Post.
2. Using clover recipes returns about 8-12s worth of value for every 1,000 karma invested. That’s about the same as the amount you’d save by purchasing salvage kits with karma (instead of gold). And it’s a lot less than you’d get by a variety of crafting recipes.

Lukyromero.6780:

TP flipping is a good tactic, but unfortunately players pretty much nerfed this option without even realizing it;

I’m not sure why the OP thinks that flipping has been nerfed. There are still plenty of markets that are ripe for flipping and plenty of flippers around.

You’re right I don’t think it’s nerfed, I meant that it’s nerfed for getting t6 mats; as opposed to how it used to be where mats were like 30 silver. I’ll fix that on my op.

it may cost more, but it will really come down to how good you are at flipping, people who flip well, make enough money so it wouldnt be worth it to do extra farming for it, people who are average at flipping may be better off farming, maybe.

however the best way to do it, if you are farming/doing pve, is probably to promote all materials you earn, and/or put in buy orders, you also forget that for many people getting a legendary they dont have extra karma.

also, you are forgetting that the forge can also return leather, orichalcum wood, low cheap lodestones, etc. so really, its not that good a gamble i would say, unless you have an extremely high excess of mystic coins and karma.

tadhogue.4736:

Seriously though, if the DAoC freeshards I’ve been playing on lately with their 3-5 man dev teams can implement massive changes and bug fixes, respond to in-game tickets, hold GM events, take care of custom requests (like item reskins, which are done manually by the devs), AND respond on the forums all while maintaining a day job, I see no reason why a AAA studio with multiple employees and publisher funding can’t be bothered to have a single employee take 15 minutes at the end of their shift to post a few comments and/or replies.

HOLY RUN-ON SENTENCE!

yeah this is one of the issues, when you take a stance where you are not going to communicate your long term plans, you generally have to consistently release new things. And have expected dates, etc.

This development strategy mixed with this communication policy is, imo not a good idea

lordkrall.7241:

DevilishLyx.2340:

I think you’ll find it’s the ones where they know their game is failing that refuse to reply to players.
Games which are still steadily going on, the devs and mod at least try to reply to some threads, or post updates every now and again on how the game development is, or isnt, going.

You mean just like they are doing here?
But maybe not in the part of the forums you would prefer?

people in this forum are concerned about WvW the mode dying, not the game overall. The rest of the game gets more updates, and more communication, So people dont think those modes are in danger.

The reality is the lack of updates, combined with a lack of declared intention of updates, or a general idea of the direction they want to go, is what causes people here to complain, and say that WvW is being abandoned. If they had released WvW year ahead plans, blog posts on new content, or even just forum posts, people wouldnt be as concerned.

The reality is no one really knows what the future of WvW is right now, and no one is communicating that. Therein lies the problem. The devs wouldnt need to come in every day, but the marketing team/community reps/blogs/ready ups, havent really mentioned much on the future of WvW.

lordkrall.7241:

Of course, necroing threads with the purpose of actually adding something to the thread is one thing, but many of the necros here have simply been to bump the thread up, without adding anything.
And it is simply easier to forbid it altogether than having to deal with the people feeling the mods taking wrong action when locking some of the threads.

thread bumping is against the rules, so they could use that rule. The problem is, it isnt hard to make relevant posts on any topic. Still, if the post is relevant, then there is no logical reason that it should be bannable.

Anyhow they changed their rule for this sub forum for whatever reason, which is their perogative, im just saying dont act like this is really a universal truth, or something they couldnt handle via software if they chose.