Guild Wars 2

Bread.7516:

phys.7689:

but this thread is not really about inflation? Did he even mention inflation?

Mat prices, crafting, new players – part of OP’s issues.
Inflation and economics, it’s all connected, who would’ve guessed?!

Otherwise the argument to the concepts of good/bad is a worse topic with no end.

connected is not the same thing.
Essentially his premise is that it is hard for players to be competitive in terms of achieving goals without playing the TP, because its gains are way above other methods of play for a similar time frame.

Inflation is about prices generally going up, if it was caused by inflation, a new or regular player wouldnt have that much issues, because the value of everything would be going up similarly.

inflation most directly effects savings, not earnings versus what you can do with them.

Bread.7516:

phys.7689:

Bread.7516:

LordByron.8369:

The theory that demand drives the price and economy is fine can be applied to any mmorpg ever existed.

Doesn t prove economy is healthy anyway, nor that flipping is a good thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

Yet those with biased/negligible amount of data, studies, evidence still push that it is a “bad” economy.

lol, people tell people their theories and beliefs are wrong based on some one elses philosophical beliefs?

You also compare the a philosophy based on religion, to an idea of the economy, which one lives in and interacts with, and has much data, and reasons to form as valid an opinion as anyone else here?

The concept speaks of when you have a belief that seems unlikely based on the current knowledge set, versus a very likely one. The idea that economy is good (for the average player) is no more logically well founded than the idea that it is bad.

The best argument one can propose on this matter is that neither side has much evidence to support thier claims.

In the case of a lack of evidence, you generally rely on other factors such as reason, experiments, and even anecdotal evidence (which is actually better than no evidence) and philosophy.

What the…
The 2 statements only touch each other with a tangent. Do you not understand the concept of russell’s teapot?

With lack of evidence you go for number and statistics, if you can;t conduct a proper study then don;t bother coming up with a conclusion – simple as that.

The man with the data has told us that gw2 inflation is very well controlled, either believe that or conduct your own study.

So to people with crackpot theories – show data or go home.

but this thread is not really about inflation? Did he even mention inflation?

Smith.1826:

phys.7689:

Smith.1826:

phys.7689:

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

Which begs the question: How urgent was it to get the megaserver up and going? I can’t imagine the newly released S2 content being all that hindered without it. I can see someone being bummed that they “picked” a server that wasn’t all that active but that could’ve been helped by having more accurate player counts (having everything say “high” didn’t help), and the concern was mostly invalidated with guesting. Provided that the scaling systems are actually working, player count shouldn’t be an issue in the open-world ever, or rather it shouldn’t be a concern.

I still find it incredibly interesting how much both the mega server and new trait progression limit player choice.

to honestly answer this question?
imo, the most likely answer is that they wanted to have these systems in place before they launched in china, because although they hadnt hammered them out, they thought these type of changes would best if players never experienced the previous systems.

Therefore they rushed them because they needed them in place, and wanted to have them tested by china release.

Yeah that’s pretty much how I feel. Dont get me wrong, they’re both solid concepts and I can see how the megaserver and new trait progression can provide more gameplay to some players. Its a given that most new ideas all have their pros and cons, but in these two cases I can imagine many of those cons being stamped out due to a more thorough and steady implementation.

Sure, the “majority” can be happy, but like you said it’s about making everyone happy. While it’s naive to literally expect everyone to be happy, there are a handful of things they can change to help.

yeah, neither change is totally bad in theory, however, the implementation, and iteration on both is far from where it needs to be in order for them to be overall positive changes.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Vayne.8563:

Kohlteth.3715:

I was referring to this thread that they created for feedback on the new system, and then nothing back from them, not a word in 30 pages.

So you’re saying that changing stuff isn’t as good as them saying something in this thread.

Anet put in an update and asked for comments. They changed what they did based on comments. You come in and say they did nada.

What they didn’t do was type something on a forum. What they did do was change something people asked to be changed. I’m convinced more changes are coming but that they’ll take time.

Why not say something? Possibly because they’re trying a variety of things and don’t want to talk about stuff they can’t do.

Obviously they do not have the QA for proper testing so they should run these things by the community for feedback on any possible outcomes they haven’t thought of. So they should say something. Dropping blind and untested changes over and over is a recipe for failure

yes, exactly what you said here.

They cant test these things, therefore, they should at least try to get preliminary feedback. With neither, you have these big sweeping changes that can sometimes miss the mark

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

Do you personally think that a trader/merchant playstyle should give you a greater potential to gain value, than other playstyles in a game that hopes to have many different viable ways to interact with the world.

Yes.

Any system that attempts to prevent merchants from making higher profits than other playstyles results in a broken or non-functional economy.

Merchants can only exist in places where one of two things is present:
1. Complete economic control by a governing entity with merchants limited to only those who are authorized to engage in monopolistic trade, usually via buying the exclusive rights to a market from the government (see mercantilism).

2. Free trade, whereby buyers and sellers are able to negotiate prices based on supply and demand.

It is a fact of life that those who engage in trading will make more money than those who don’t. Because it is a fact of life, it is also a fact of game economies that use real life systems.

I never said that the solution should limit the profit potentials of merchants. That would be the specifics and tests you run after you have a solution, before you have a solution you must first have a clearly stated problem.

This is the current method for science and engineering.

So you say yes, ok, why? without saying that its because merchant profits should be artificially limited, because that is not required to be the case.

Smith.1826:

phys.7689:

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

Which begs the question: How urgent was it to get the megaserver up and going? I can’t imagine the newly released S2 content being all that hindered without it. I can see someone being bummed that they “picked” a server that wasn’t all that active but that could’ve been helped by having more accurate player counts (having everything say “high” didn’t help), and the concern was mostly invalidated with guesting. Provided that the scaling systems are actually working, player count shouldn’t be an issue in the open-world ever, or rather it shouldn’t be a concern.

I still find it incredibly interesting how much both the mega server and new trait progression limit player choice.

to honestly answer this question?
imo, the most likely answer is that they wanted to have these systems in place before they launched in china, because although they hadnt hammered them out, they thought these type of changes would best if players never experienced the previous systems.

Therefore they rushed them because they needed them in place, and wanted to have them tested by china release.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

comparing playing the TP to powerball is laughable.

phys.7689:

Thats an evasion, Thats like saying in a winner take all poker match people on average no one makes money.

You´re right, Poker is a way better comparison than Powerball.

within the scope of what we were talking about, it was.
you were saying that the tp on average loses 15% value.

my comparison to poker was to show that the fact that others lose money is not really relevant to how much money is gained.
You dont want to use poker fine, we can put it a lot simpler

By your analysis definition, no market irl gives value on average, most people lose 10-20% of value based on taxes. Which completely evades the truth that some jobs make way more money than other jobs with similar resource expenditures.

I am not talking about markets irl, i am talking about the tp in game.

ok, forget these side debates, lets get to the core issue, i am asking players.

Forget what is right now, or why it is right now.

Do you personally think that a trader/merchant playstyle should give you a greater potential to gain value, than other playstyles in a game that hopes to have many different viable ways to interact with the world.

I think the potential to gain value should reflect the risk, knowledge and skills involved.

ok, i dont really disagree with that.
(another question, what about time invested, should that be a factor?)
but thats more the specifications the answer would have to meet.

assuming in whatever solution is presented, that should be the case,

do you think a merchant/trader playstyle should give more potential to gain value than other playstyles?

Vayne.8563:

Just about everything you’ve said can be seen from a different angle. For example, as someone on TC, I’m on a server people guested to all the time, so I was always running into people from other servers even before the mega server.

Some of the people expressed annoyance at feeling they had to guest. Like they couldn’t stay on their server. Like their server somehow wasn’t good enough.

I’m not going to sit and argue with you point by point, because it’s 1:18 am and even I sleep sometimes.

But I will say this. Virtually everything you said is from a specific point of view and changing that point of view changes the truth of it, as I just illustrated above.

you talk about majority, but you realize that TC experience was the exception not the rule right?
also people complained about having to guest, so the solution is to destroy the server?

that aside,

My points arent about what side you are on, they are about design mistmatches between systems. It basically means these megaserver design is currently working against a number of other elements basic design. In this case its not so much what side your on, its more like ok, are we throwing away these design idealogies? or are we going to try to meld the two different ideaologies more. As far as we have heard from anet, we have no idea which is the case on any of these issues.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

comparing playing the TP to powerball is laughable.

phys.7689:

Thats an evasion, Thats like saying in a winner take all poker match people on average no one makes money.

You´re right, Poker is a way better comparison than Powerball.

within the scope of what we were talking about, it was.
you were saying that the tp on average loses 15% value.

my comparison to poker was to show that the fact that others lose money is not really relevant to how much money is gained.
You dont want to use poker fine, we can put it a lot simpler

By your analysis definition, no market irl gives value on average, most people lose 10-20% of value based on taxes. Which completely evades the truth that some jobs make way more money than other jobs with similar resource expenditures.

I am not talking about markets irl, i am talking about the tp in game.

ok, forget these side debates, lets get to the core issue, i am asking players.

Forget what is right now, or why it is right now.

Do you personally think that a trader/merchant playstyle should give you a greater potential to gain value, than other playstyles in a game that hopes to have many different viable ways to interact with the world.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

comparing playing the TP to powerball is laughable.

phys.7689:

Thats an evasion, Thats like saying in a winner take all poker match people on average no one makes money.

You´re right, Poker is a way better comparison than Powerball.

within the scope of what we were talking about, it was.
you were saying that the tp on average loses 15% value.

my comparison to poker was to show that the fact that others lose money is not really relevant to how much money is gained.
You dont want to use poker fine, we can put it a lot simpler

By your analysis definition, no market irl gives value on average, most people lose 10-20% of value based on taxes. Which completely evades the truth that some jobs make way more money than other jobs with similar resource expenditures.

and i dont consider myself a majority, i merely say there are a signifigant number of people effected. I base more of what i say on things i can logically, or reasonably discern. The inconsistencies in how well the megaserver design fits/limits other systems.

as for majority? i dont know, but i do know a signifigant number of communities, and people will feel the effects, and even if a group is not a majority on its own, you dont help yourself out by alienating large groups of people when you dont have to. The best solutions dont just cater to the top 51% and alienate 20% here, 10% here, 5% here. The best solutions try not to be divisive, you make descions that some like, and some feel neutral about, and a few may actively dislike. You dont want to make solutions that alienate people if you can avoid it.

I get you like having people around, and i see the strength, but the fact is megaservers essentially work against many core systems, and while im not saying you cant come up with solutions, we have no idea, anything really, they essentially blew the core of the game up, and they havent told us what was intentional, what was not, what will change what will not.

The very future of the game at a core level is in a state of flux with no known direction. Yeah you see more people on the map but
how will you play with your friends?
How will the world ever have any shared permanence again?
How will WvW be effected by death of server identity?
What type of large scale dynamic events can you expect in the future?
How will this effect map narratives?
What does a “guild” mean now?
What is the purpose of a server?

We have no idea how they will answer these questions, and thus no idea if the game is still one that will appeal to the type of gamer that we are. To further this, they have told us nothing, so you dont even know if you are wasting your time playing a game that will no longer appeal to you.

right now, we essentially have no idea what type of game GW2 is anymore, or what their primary goals are. Thats probably why a lot of people left, not necessarily that everything was horrible, but they really have no idea if the game will be something that works for them, and anet isnt saying much about these major effects.

Vayne.8563:

edited for space

Just because this isnt specifically effecting you, doesnt mean the effects are not huge, most of these problems occur at a basic design mismatch level. Which means although the daily problems may not be every day, the design problems are huge and require big solutions to fit in the rest of the game.

i ll list some.

Guilds:

• now the system makes people with different servers as likely or more likely to interact with other servers, and yet, server chapters have a host of hidden effects, like seperate influence tracks, guild banks, claim credit. The mismatch is, if we play together, how come we cant be in a guild together without a bunch of weird rules
• megaservers make it harder to gather your guild on the same maps, the difficulty increases greatly the more people you have. The very design of current implementation of megaservers means you will have more difficulty on average getting 15 people or more in the same place, unless you were on a crowded server that was often in overflow before the change (this was rare for most servers, outside of special events)

dynamic events

• Megaservers have a huge impact on the present and future of dynamic events,
• megaserver essentially makes it difficult to know when event is going on, or have shared experiences with anyone outside your current map. This effects every event, it means that it is harder to help/get help. Your friend can no longer tell you whats going on in a map. etc.
  • megaserver limits the scope of any dynamic event based changes, to only one map. This is huge for the possible futures of dynamic events, it means you will never see any mechanics where what happens on one map can effect another map.
  • megaserver limits the design principle of large events, making it so boss schedules (the opposite of dynamic) are the simplest solution to getting people do events together, this is because it is improbable with the new system, that players could organize to take on events since they would often end up in different instances, and would have no idea what is going on on any map until they get there.
  • megaserver means the world is no longer a dynamic place based on what players have done, every instance is different, and you can end up in any instance at any time.

• megaserver design goes against the dynamic event chain to large super event dynamic. This effects the smaller chains that are supposed to lead up to the big events, and makes it so design wise its generally best to place these events as their own thing. This detracts from the specific map narratives, and detracts from the large events themselves.

Server Identity

• megaservers kill the idenity of a server, servers now mean nothing of import.
  • the people on your server, you may see or you may not see
  • server specific events are virtually impossible to organize
  • any new player now, has no connection to his server at all in pve.
  • what is the point of a server now? i really cant think of any

WvW

• the biggest effect on WvW is the destruction of server identity, this cannot be understated, Now in PVE you see people who would normally be your enemies, your friends you leveled with are sometimes your foes, The very concept of my server, means so little, how can they make it seem to matter in WvW? Without server identity, it becomes very hard to have a war versus some other server that you feel invested in.
• recruiting and communciation

languages
all of these flaws are compounded by language differences, megaserver in general adds a layer of complexity, and unpredictability as to who you are grouped with, and what is happening in any particular map instance, as well as putting more players in every map, this makes communication even MORE necessary to solve these issues, and yet, communication is a lot more difficult with the systems in place.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

The main question to first be answered, is SHOULD this be the means with the highest potential for gaining value. Then you can explore the ramifications, and ways in which value is gained, and whether it is created or transfered, etc.

Yes, as it was intended to be. Because there is also the greatest potential for loss. Entering a dungeon doesn’t cost 100 gold, but you can easily spend – and lose – that much and more trying to play the market. You’re pointing to those who claim – and those claims are not always accurate – that they make a lot of money from the TP and going “it’s not fair!” But most players lose money because they lack knowledge and experience, or just got unlucky and bought or sold at the wrong time.

I can just as easily point to dungeon speedrunning groups and say it’s not fair that they make so much money constantly, because I don’t know how to run the dungeons most efficiently. Even more so because if they make a mistake it doesn’t cost hundreds of gold, it just takes a few minutes longer to finish the dungeon.

The TP was set up to interact with the way the game works, and it simply is not possible to change the TP without changing the way the entire game works. Nor should it be changed, because all this happened by design, not by accident.

most TP players dont lose more money than they gain, most people involved in the TP lose money, but those people dont actually play the TP, they provide the vast majority of the profts the other tp players get on average.

As far as you answer, it should be this way, for the reason that it is this way, is not a good answer for an engineer, whose focus is solving problems.
Yes, it is clear that with the current design, it is a fact that the tp makes more money, yes we can discuss the mechanics of how this solution makes its decsions, and the pluses and minuses of each.

This does not make it the right solution, or the right question, that is simply a study of what is.

Say for example, many years ago, some engineer decides people should travel faster than birds.
Critics tell him, what you are saying is foolish, birds can fly, and have hollow bones, and weigh like 1/10 the weight of humans. They tell him the amount of power in atp that the muscles can generate, and the maximum effeciency in pushing that weight over land.

and in doing so they completely miss the point, examining the mechanics of how the problem is currently solved, or why by current designs something cannot be done is useful, but is far from a reason why you cannot solve the current problem in most cases.

now with hindsight, we can say hey, people can travel faster than birds, they can learn to fly, they can build cars, etc.

So when looking at whether TP earning should earn more than other gameplay activities, dont look at why it does now, just decide, is this the way i prefer things to be? Is this how i would have things if i could design any solution?

the question after the should, is the how to do it, within whatever specifications are placed on the solution. Thats, the hard part, but first one must decide what is the goal, then you can figure, and compare solutions, or even decide there may be no good solutions within what you have to work with.

But like i said, first comes the “should this be the case”

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

To be clear, i am not claiming in the slightest, that the TP generates value. I said it has the highest potential for gaining value.
gaining value is not creating value.

Every $2 Powerball ticket you buy has the potential to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. That doesn’t make it the best investment strategy in America.

For every TP player who sold his unid’d dyes at the peak of their value, a hundred TP players bought them and lost most of their investment. One guy gets lucky but a lot of people lose their money. You know that playing the TP is in no way a sure thing, pretending otherwise is getting tiresome.

comparing playing the TP to powerball is laughable. You can very easily make money off the tp, with daily market fluctuations. Im not talking about speculation here, Which would be still, extremely far from powerball, and closer to playing the stock market.

Im talking about basic TP use, buy low sell high, daily price fluctuations, item transformations etc, will yeild a noticeable profit, consistently based primarily on your initial investment, and how often you can reinvest.

Bread.7516:

LordByron.8369:

The theory that demand drives the price and economy is fine can be applied to any mmorpg ever existed.

Doesn t prove economy is healthy anyway, nor that flipping is a good thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

Yet those with biased/negligible amount of data, studies, evidence still push that it is a “bad” economy.

lol, people tell people their theories and beliefs are wrong based on some one elses philosophical beliefs?

You also compare the a philosophy based on religion, to an idea of the economy, which one lives in and interacts with, and has much data, and reasons to form as valid an opinion as anyone else here?

The concept speaks of when you have a belief that seems unlikely based on the current knowledge set, versus a very likely one. The idea that economy is good (for the average player) is no more logically well founded than the idea that it is bad.

The best argument one can propose on this matter is that neither side has much evidence to support thier claims.

In the case of a lack of evidence, you generally rely on other factors such as reason, experiments, and even anecdotal evidence (which is actually better than no evidence) and philosophy.

Vayne.8563:

Azhure.1857:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure what you want them to say.

• What they view as issues.
• What they’re currently working on.
• Where they intend to go.

They need not defend themselves. Just make a statement. I’m not expecting them to answer everyone’s individual questions/concerns. But they’re currently doing nothing to alleviate concerns given.

It’s still the same as what I said. They may not have yet decided what to do. It really is that simple.

There are 300 people working or Anet. It may simply be that they don’t know yet, because they’re tossing the ideas around. For one thing, they might not all agree. They might be arguing. We don’t know and they’re certainly not going to tell us that.

This is a big game. It has a lot going on. The mega server is one part of it, but there’s still other stuff. So it goes in a queue like everything else. Game development really is a slow business.

Anet made a decision, rightly or wrongly, that this would be better for the game, even with the problems. I’m still convinced people who value server community are a minority, perhaps a vast minority. Anet is much more concerned with new people coming in during sales, playing for two days, seeing no one in zones and leaving. People play MMOs to see other people…at least many do. That problem had to be solved, or there might not eventually be a game. That’s my theory on why it was done as quickly as it was done.

Then the complaints start. Some like the RPers, represent another minority. All the concerns here are legitimate. It’s not that they’re not. But Anet may look at the percentage of people that RP and they might think…well, I’m sorry they’re hurt, but we had to do this. But again, what do they say. They can’t say we hear you and we’re working on your concerns if they’re not. They’re also not going to say we’re not, because there’s no way to phrase it that doesn’t make them sound like they don’t care. They may care and still not be able to do much about it. Keep in mind this is still all during the China launch, the living story season 1 launch, other stuff is going on.

And let’s say they did decide what to do. Maybe it will work maybe it won’t. If they say something and find it doesn’t work when they test it, now they’re lying to us. Any time they say anything that doesn’t come to pass people call them liars.

It’s entirely possible that things are being discussed and attempted that they can’t talk about for any or all of the reasons above, or even other reasons I don’t know about.

People who assume a two month silence is a long time in development, mostly likely haven’t been in development.

And I still think there are a ton of people who really love the megaserver. I think this is the best change they’ve made to the game since launch.

its not just RP, its guild issues, dynamic event megaserver mismatches, hard boss schedules, broken waypoint systems, language barriers, no meaning for servers any more and no vision for their identity.

the amount of problems it introduced, or highlighted is huge, and they havent said anything on any front.

like i have said before, its not that megaservers are horrible, its that they broke many systems, and what they put in place to handle it is weak at best, and defies the general design of the whole rest of the game.
I mean core issues
guilds
WvW
dynamic events

thats 3 huge things it all negatively impacted.

Phoenixlin.8624:

Don’t dream about “tweaks on algorithm can fix stuff” since the problem is not the algorithm but the domain it is used. I will try to explain it as simple as possible:

To conclude, don’t expect any tweaks or optimizations in the algorithm/code. The problem is not the algorithm but the domain itself. There are too many possible cases to be handled and there is no algorithm to fix them all. Obviously, ANet did not think about Megaserver idea as they should be. Even with 30 minutes of self-brainstorming, I can tell you most of the possible cases that Megaservers fall short. I don’t believe that any staff at ANet hadn’t thought any of these issues; however, some higher-ups, that wanna bath with money, made them implement this system to create a crowded game illusion to attract new players.

As far as i can tell, the algorithm will never work that well, as you describe, its not simply a case of matching the right people, soft caps come into play, hard caps come in to play.

What about a guy who has guildies on 5 different instances, what about the dude who has 25 server mates on one and 25 on the other.

As long as the system cannot reshuffle players to be together, i dont see how the system will actually work most of the time.
There are going to be many times, when all of the “best matches” are bad, or you are simply not going to be allowed on the best map match.

Vayne.8563:

You’re simplifying this. The people kittenpond to most forum posts aren’t devs. And devs wouldn’t have the time to respond to most forum posts.

Let’s say there are so many suggestions as you say, and there are. So a dev can respond to five, maybe ten. And then fifty people feel disenfranchised. The devs didn’t respond to them.

All they need do it read them, not respond. Responding to each, getting into a conversation about each, it’s a huge amount of time they’re taking their head out of coding.

And if you’ve never coded before, once you get started, you can’t take your head out of it and put it back in. You can get lost in lines of code for hours upon hours. It’s just not that simple.

I don’t think it’s realistic to expect responses until responses are parsed through a system of meetings and such. No one person has the authority112c11 to look at an idea and say yes, good idea, we’ll do that. Why should they? Half the stuff suggested would probably have unseen consequences players never think about.

Until the idea is tested by a bunch of people thinking about it, trying to poke holes in it, a dev can’t reply. Should they have those meetings hourly? Daily? Weekly? Weekly is far too long with the number of suggestions.

I think it’s unreasonable to expect replies to long long threads like that.

when you are skilled at coding, aka its your job, jumping in and out of code is pretty easy, the main problem is when its someone elses code.

Anyhow the problem is, i think they need feedback before moving on a final implementation, i wouldnt be saying that if the initial implementations were smooth, but both megaservers and traits, big changes that a decent amount of people realized the flaws as soon as the basic details were released. If they dont have people who can see something ahead of time, until its implemented, then perhaps they need to have more targeted feedback to projects they are actually working on, so we dont end up having to wait like 6 months for whatever new features problems to be solved when its up for review.

eh well, i also dont really play anymore, its their game, ball is in their court, hopefully things get better.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

I am saying i see no evidence that the TP should be the best method of obtaining value in the game.

Maybe you should first bring evidence that the TP is the best method of obtaining value in the game.

i dont think anyone debates that wanze, every other method i can come up with a direct mathematic relationship based on the time required and maximum output. The only method that has a even a chance of comparing would be soloing arah, and selling paths. And that is only a possibility because theoretically people could pay anything.

in reality from the prices i have seen people selling, and assuming they are not using exploits, that still doesnt compare.

even JS has made comments essentially accepting the premise that TP has greater potential for gaining value than other game play types.

I would still argue that the TP on average provides a value loss of 15% (through fees and taxes).

Thats an evasion, Thats like saying in a winner take all poker match people on average no one makes money.

To be clear, i am not claiming in the slightest, that the TP generates value. I said it has the highest potential for gaining value.
gaining value is not creating value.

Exactly, so you cant really compare activities that gain value to those that create value.

yes, actually you can, and the government does. The only distinction they make between the money you win in a poker match, and the money you make farming corn, is they take higher taxes when you win it in poker.

Many methods of gaining value, do not create value, that doesnt make them uncomparable at all.
Also this is a game world that is created. They can actually design more things that dont, in and of themselves, create value. In this type of situation, where the main limit is what you can design, and imagine, the question is about what the design specifications should be, not the limits of what is currently in place.

The main question to first be answered, is SHOULD this be the means with the highest potential for gaining value. Then you can explore the ramifications, and ways in which value is gained, and whether it is created or transfered, etc.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

I am saying i see no evidence that the TP should be the best method of obtaining value in the game.

Maybe you should first bring evidence that the TP is the best method of obtaining value in the game.

i dont think anyone debates that wanze, every other method i can come up with a direct mathematic relationship based on the time required and maximum output. The only method that has a even a chance of comparing would be soloing arah, and selling paths. And that is only a possibility because theoretically people could pay anything.

in reality from the prices i have seen people selling, and assuming they are not using exploits, that still doesnt compare.

even JS has made comments essentially accepting the premise that TP has greater potential for gaining value than other game play types.

I would still argue that the TP on average provides a value loss of 15% (through fees and taxes).

Thats an evasion, Thats like saying in a winner take all poker match people on average no one makes money.

To be clear, i am not claiming in the slightest, that the TP generates value. I said it has the highest potential for gaining value.
gaining value is not creating value.

Stooperdale.3560:

“to be honest, one of the biggest problems with AI, is how you can basically “taunt” aka completely control what the AI does by having everyone in the same place.”

There is no problems with stacking in one place to fight to share boons, use combo fields, apply conditions, apply damage, etc. That’s fine. Mobs also find it easier to apply their aoe and conditions too against a stack. The problem is that movement of enemies can be controlled too easily without using skills. A corner typically controls the fight as well as any utility skill.

i didnt say stacking should be stopped for boons, combo feels, or applying conditions, i said the enemy shouldnt adopt a predictable pattern and stand around getting pimp smacked while you do it. You dont really need a corner, the monster generally doesnt move anyhow, main advantage of a corner is negating player movements which allow you to stay on one spot and do big dmg, or dodge without as much time spent walking back, or the monster changing his tactics because you are at a slightly different range.

Wanze.8410:

Sylvari.6083:

Hey, are mass buy orders against the tos? People are bumping different items to the “Top demanded items” list in order to bring up the price even more.

How about you read the ToS and state which part of the agreement those buy orders are violating?

i think he was just asking a question, if he knew the answer it wouldnt be a question, but a statement about how he feels about it. Also, really the TOS is full of grey areas, and gives anet the right to make judgement calls on many things, so honestly, only an anet staffer can give the real answer. However it is possible that you guys have heard an answer from a staffer outside of the TOS, hence it makes sense for him to post here, and ask the question.

For all you know, he has plans to do it, and wants to make sure its not a bannable offense.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

I am saying i see no evidence that the TP should be the best method of obtaining value in the game.

Maybe you should first bring evidence that the TP is the best method of obtaining value in the game.

i dont think anyone debates that wanze, every other method i can come up with a direct mathematic relationship based on the time required and maximum output. The only method that has a even a chance of comparing would be soloing arah, and selling paths. And that is only a possibility because theoretically people could pay anything.

in reality from the prices i have seen people selling, and assuming they are not using exploits, that still doesnt compare.

even JS has made comments essentially accepting the premise that TP has greater potential for gaining value than other game play types.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

lewi.5497:

i know that the prices are set buy players …but if anet raise the drom rate or something..
for example look what happend to “monocle”

all im saying is that an exotic weapon shouldn’t have a price that hight and something should be done about it

peace

IIRC John Smith once said by increasing a drop rate for such an item would actually casuse the price to increase…he had graphs and charts to prove it too

actually he said, that a specific set of occurences, with a specifc timing, and specific means could lead to that effect, not that it would always be the case. He later pointed this out when people brought it up in relation to chaos of lyssa

These are the quotes I was refering to: (took a bit to find)

This is very astute. All evidence we have shows that doubling the precursor drop rate would actually increase the price, not decrease it. The shape of the curve looks something like this (obviously ignoring any actual numbers on the graph).
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28x+%2B+2x%5E2+%2B+x%5E3%2Bx%5E4+%2B+x%5E5%29+*-1

One more time:
1. “In economics, a shock is an unexpected or unpredictable event that affects an economy” This would be neither. Just because two terms are similar doesn’t mean they can be used interchangeably.
2. I’m not trying to touch on anything in particular, I’m informing you about how life works.
3. It’s not a sine curve, nor is it a supply curve, nor is it lacking a demand curve. It’s a representation of the shape of changing price over time or quantity.
4. You have a good grasp of elasticity, but I’m referring to a more complicated concept here, one that’s specifically visible in virtual economies, but present in other economies as well, depending on the state of the market.
Ensign – this is to your question as well.
We’ve seen before that at certain points in certain markets, changes to the supply side of the equation has resulted in an effect that is opposite of what was expected. We noticed that shifting the supply side equation caused the demand side of the market to shift even further. As people see the changes in the game many of them decide to enter the market. The changes to the in game content, cause a change in individual preferences. The phenomena falls off pretty quickly as you push harder on the supply side, but small changes so far have resulted in increased demand due to changing preferences. That’s why if we were to increase the input by 10 prices would drop, but if we were to increase it only slightly, prices would most likely go up

From here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/showposts/John-Smith-4610/3
In a thread about doubling the precursor drop rate.

right, and he basically said later that is a very specific set of circumstances that may not occur in different situations, being that we are months from when he said that, and have different economy, I dont think we can reference that possibility as a rule for precursors in general

The point I made a long time ago about precursor rates increasing price was speaking to an anomaly that can/did occur with a very specific set of market circumstances. It does not automatically applies to other markets or changes.

Tonberry.7824:

So I bought the new shadow assassin costume from the gem store and then realized that you cant replace individual parts of the item set because its a “costume”. I’m just wondering why this costume system is doing this, why can’t we just buy the costume for gem and then have our own say in how we want to mix and match? Isn’t one big part of mmorpgs standing out and sort of being different from the rest of the crowd? Why implement the costume system in the first place? Did people beg for this to be included into the game?

On another note, is it just me or do the designers at GW2 really need to step up their game. A lot of the light armor gear looks horrible (especially the ones on the gem store) and medium armor sort of follows that train as well. It feels like all the love is going towards heavy armor and even at that sometimes they look ugly as hell. I can understand if low level gear looks bad, but when you get to end game wouldn’t it make sense to have good looking gear?
Don’t get me wrong, there area few OK looking armor sets out there but none of them really have that jaw drop effect where you think “I NEED that gear”

apparently proofing the armors to be taken apart, and work with other sets is not worth the effort.
This is one of the reasons they redid wardrobe/costumes the way they chose to.

As far as how it looks, i would probably agree somewhat, however you have to realize that aethetics will always be somewhat subjective. And its a pretty high level skill to be able to tell what people will find to be fashionable. This is why the big fashion designers get paid the big bucks, and the wack ones work for pennies.

essentially its a dishonest practice used to manipulate peoples behavior, however, as far as i have heard, its not illegal.

pdavis.8031:

lewi.5497:

i know that the prices are set buy players …but if anet raise the drom rate or something..
for example look what happend to “monocle”

all im saying is that an exotic weapon shouldn’t have a price that hight and something should be done about it

peace

IIRC John Smith once said by increasing a drop rate for such an item would actually casuse the price to increase…he had graphs and charts to prove it too

actually he said, that a specific set of occurences, with a specifc timing, and specific means could lead to that effect, not that it would always be the case. He later pointed this out when people brought it up in relation to chaos of lyssa

Behellagh.1468:

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

this is something that cuts both ways. I guess one has to be honest with oneself

pdavis.8031:

Behellagh.1468:

People get fixated on a belief on how something works, no amount of education or evidence will change their minds.

Very true. However having a gem store 101 and TP 101 sticky might reduce the amount of threads started that claim the gem to gold exchange rate is broke, or TP flipping is OP, or the economy is ruined because I’m a casual player and can’t buy a precurser QQ, etc. As 10% of those threads are just the OP claiming whatever, and the other 90% are saying that it’s not broken and is working as intended until JS shows up, says “it’s not broken, learn to economics”, to which the OP responds JS doesn’t know anything, and the thread gets shut down for the 90% calling the OP a moron.

Having a sticky would allow such threads to be dramatically shorter, as each response from the 90% could just be a link to the sticky, or the section of the sticky. In essence, forcing the OP to either read the sticky or continue to rant by himself. In any event it will certainly free up much of JSs time so he can be doing other things, like his job.

Just saying….

many of the things you are speaking of, are not fact based, and based on design descions, other than stating what the overall unchangeable design parameters are, i dont think you would find much in a sticky that would be considered the solution to most of the discussions on this forum.
It may be useful for certain mechanics, and immutable design descions, but to be honest i doubt JS has the time nor desire to create that. It would have to be very carefully considered, and 100% accurate. That is probably too time consuming for him. When you look at his posting history, you realize he says very little, and lets people come to their own conclusions, most times. I doubt he will write Cliff notes to the bltc.

but i could be wrong

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

I’ve seen threads where accusers have clearly not read the official response on how systems like the gems:gold system works, even whe it is posted directly ahead of one of their responses in the thread.

Since reading appears to be a problem (on a forum!) I suggest that, for his own sanity, a certain staff member create a few of those “whiteboard” style auto generated animations which visually demonstrate that which he is trying to explain.

Sticky them, and put the simple “see this sticky thread” link reply post and be done with it.

We have “how to play” for the rest of the game in beautiful videos

I think you are a bit biased, based on your word choices, (accusers) for example.
That said i think stickies that explain key features of the BLTC, especially the the gem/gold exchange would be a good idea. However, i doubt they would do that because, when i was looking for some old quotes, i saw some old dev posts about these thinks were deleted, or not easily accessed. I don’t think they want the level of accountability that would bring.

That said, aside from TP tax+tp fee, gem/gold exchange buy/sell order of transactions, and other mechanics, i dont think they have much that is mechanical, the rest is mostly design decsions, and not a matter of knowing how things work.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Sunshine.4680:

Maybe the problem is too many boons, might stacking and stacking in general and some classes making bosses/dungeons jokes. Maybe that is what really needs to be looked at seeing how the meta players are so rabidly against anything new. Makes me wonder why?

People say ranged is a crutch yet isn’t Zerker gear wearing, melee stacking burning down the boss asap pretty much a crutch? After all you’re just burning down the boss asap so you won’t have to really do much other than burn down an HP punching bag.

It’s a “crutch” to have 5 competent players in the party now apparently.

If you have one zerker DPSing Lupi while the rest run around at range pulling Lupi away from ideal positioning, making AOEs explode on allies instead of reflecting them, and causing bubbles to happen, I’m not sure that zerker is crutching on anything very hard.

to be honest, one of the biggest problems with AI, is how you can basically “taunt” aka completely control what the AI does by having everyone in the same place. This basically turns battle into a similar playstyle as the tank and spank/heal/dps formula that they were supposedly trying to avoid.

I think the best solution would to be make the enemy have better positional movement. The goal isnt to have the enemy auto killing everyone, but when the enemy does move, the party needs to adapt to the new tactics that creates.

Curse Drew.8679:

phys.7689:

nothing you said shows that it would be a good idea for TP fllipping to continue to be the best means of gaining value in game

Ah yes, the 15% trading post fee is the gold sink that’s removing gold from the game. The more flipping the more times all this gold keeps getting taxed that 15%. The more gold sinks there are to remove gold from a game, the better value gold will have. Players will have trouble saving up gold, and need more of it, increasing it’s demand. If gold sinks are not in the game gold would never disappear, and prices would be crazy high, and new players would be introduced to a way worse economy.

Gold sinks can be solved/added in many ways. If the sole purpose of the TP is to reduce the amount of gold generated, There are other methods.

To be clear, i am not advocating for the destruction of the TP, or saying it serves no purpose. I am saying i see no evidence that the TP should be the best method of obtaining value in the game.

it wasnt thought out well is what it boils down to. Traits are a personal thing, so the unlocks should have, for most of them, been personal ( a few high end, or special new traits needing teams would be fine)
since this is something every new charachter would need to do, it should have been different for each profession.
Low level traits should have been easier, and more about learning the game for unlocks.

pushing to level 36 made level 10-30 pretty boring.

the problems are numerous, if this was actually playtested, it would not have gone through most likely, but we know they couldnt playtest this really, hardcore playing would probably take you 1-2 weeks to level up to 80, and longer if you had to do these events, they would need to simulate people being in the world, events not being up etc.

maha.7902:

For gear, I think givers weapons used to be used in old engi builds. Rabid is extremely powerful for soloing heavy armour bosses (superior to berserker). For runes you have scholar, strength, ranger and aristocracy.. Infusions you have power, precision and condition damage as options. Sigils you have force, night, slaying, accuracy, battle, bursting, energy, bloodlust, perception, corruption, frailty all as options dependent on build and whether the dungeons are day or night and whether running power or condition.

rabid is basically berserker for condition damage. IE, this is mostly about offensive sets being superior because only active offense is rewarded through stats. active defense/support/control is uneffected by stats.

boon duration is one of the few exceptions to the effectiveness of stats on active skills rule, however, they basically make it really weak because they feel it might be useful. Also, some sets/group set ups negate most of the benefit for it.

Yes, sigils/runes are generally more about build, just as traits are. And can provide interesting choices. Shame the inventory/armor system doesnt encourage experimentation here.

Fact remains though, the actual armor stats, are mostly set up to have various levels of training wheels, rather than choices of how you want to actively play.

Perhaps game would be better if stats didnt exist, but they do, so they should mean more than just your skill level.

maha.7902:

If five offensively built players is calculated to be higher DPS than four offensive and one guy stacking boon power, we’ll still use five offensive builds.

What then?

problem is not that you can do this, its that since active play is dominant, dps sets are the only sets that enhance active play.

IE, yeah you should be able to do that, but you shouldnt be supporting/defending/controlling just as well people who have invested in those roles.

or rather, whether you should, or should not is the question.

As long as most stats are irrelevant to active play except one, no other stat sets will actually be very useful.

Eggyokeo.9705:

Chokolata.1870:

It just makes for unsatisfactory gameplay. *

I think this comment somes it up the best.

I get very little enjoyment fighting a thief when roaming and they are the majority of the available fights, participating in a fight where you are just waiting for you opponent to make a mistake is not rewarding, other classes i can often find away to get upper hand, but a thief if i get an upper hand they just stealth and run away and come back 2-5min later and and try again only to run away.

With other classes if i lose i can safely assume that they are a better player then me, or i did something silly. With a thief i can not be sure whether they are a better player then me or that it was just there class the carried them.

in sPvP i have no problem with thiefs as stealth can be a hindrance, but in roaming there is no down side to stealth.

The idea, that people should play classes in pvp that you enjoy fighting against, is one that i have heard a lot, and it is complete and total bull

people will always want to fight on their terms, that doesnt mean every single class should only fight one way because thats the type of fight some player prefers.

Jemmi.6058:

hmm I did notice that traits had a drastic overhaul since I last played. Maybe that is the change I needed.

When I last played, berserker most definitely gave an advantage. Kill it faster than it can kill you. The way it scaled between the 3 stats was also just superior to how any other 3 stats scaled together.

Anyway, after reading a bit more on the trait overhaul and some other changes (LS Journal, Outfits, Ascended armor drops etc), I think I will give it a go.

Thanks for the response.

not sure if i was clear, berserker is still the best damage. Its not as high damage as it was before, but its still the best.

However like the dude above me said, builds are more about traits/skills. What you can do, and how well you do it, is almost totally based on traits and skills.

Gear is, at this point, other than boon/condition duration sets, almost totally about how much risk you want to take versus dmg you want to do.

zerk is still highest damage/highest risk stat spread. As far as various builds? i would say builds are mostly about your trait/skill selection.

There is still no advantage in terms of killing monsters via spike dmg, in using another stat set.

Chrispy.5641:

Tman.6349:

Ranger is ‘an unparalleled archer’ though. The only other competitors are longbow warrior and short bow thief, both of which, a Ranger would destroy given a weapon vs weapon duel. This, however, has ABSOLUTELY NO BEARING on the fact that Ranger can “adapt to any situation” and that melee is inherently a superior choice. Being ‘an paralleled archer’ doesn’t change the fact that a melee Ranger is superior in a melee situation. It seems like you are ALL mistaken " an unparalleled archer" for ‘bows are (should be) the Ranger’s superior option". These are entirely different expectations/assumption and you should recognize the difference.

And ‘archer’ isn’t the only meaning of ranged combat. If you would like to argue this, then I’d be more than happy to wreck ANY bow Ranger with my staff Ele.

Then you missed the point of almost all of this thread. Rangers are a big talking point because everyone incorrectly refers to them as ‘Ranger = Ranged’, but that’s not all of it. Instead of a Ranged Ranger vs. a Melee Ranger, Look at the situation from a general Ranged Weapon vs. Melee Weapon standpoint. If Melee weapons were purposely designed to be superior in 99.9999% of all situations, then why bother to have Ranged weapons in this game at all if they were purposefully designed to be inferior weapons?

(That’s what the discussion evolved into, though the original thing was about the range of boons..)

ranged damage is not an inferior weapon, it just isnt as much direct dps. Which is fairly accurate, you can do way more damage with a sword at close range than arrow at long range, in a shorter time frame irl.

The advantage is, less risk to the archer, and tactical advantage.

In order to give/benefit from boons, position should be important.
People who want to stay at max range and get all the benefits are missing the point. Ranger is supposed to be a skirmisher in this game, going in and out of melee range as needed. You dont need to be literally on top of someone to benefit from, or give boons. Ranger has some of the fastest abilities to continously move in and out of various ranges for a reason. You will not be as effective standing far as if you move around to where you need to be, based on what is happening in the party at that moment.

That said, i dont think it would hurt to have SOME abilities that give boons through cone, or some new combo fields that have a conal effect.

Curse Drew.8679:

We all play the same game. Everyone has the same oppritunity to flip items on the trading post. If overdone it can be boring time & consuming work, but sometimes you can hit the jackpot if an update change happens in your favor. Sometimes the opposite happens and you loose gold. No one is denying that the trading post has better profits then ingame playing, but regaurdless flippers are helping remove gold from the economy.

Using the gold to gem ratio for the value of gold for ingame items, things haven’t changed much since the start. Take the super weapons, jetpack, mystic forge conduits, really anything that’s old and no longer drops. All have gone up in price about 3-4 times thier initial value was established after the living story ended. The Gold ratio back then was around a year ago was 3gold/100gems and now its 12gold/100gems. While some may be better ratios then others, they’re all pretty similar, some are bigger ratios because of higher demand/less supply. People see these items going up and think flippers are ruining the economy, but it’s just the value of gold is changing. How many threads of accusations that precursers are raising in price due to manipulation have we seen? As time goes on more and more gold is constantly being produced from dungeons and every type of gameplay, exept the trading post which a gold sink. I’m sure most of the players from over a year ago are going to agree that gold was 4 times harder to earn a year ago, then it is now.

I think many players are lying about how much they making also, trying to make other jealous, or trying to convince people the trading post is evil. Or maybe they are just saying the most they’ve ever made in a day, and the jealous people are blowing it out of proportion. Whatever the case, it is time consuming, probably boring to most, risky, they are helping improve golds worth, and you have the same oppritunity to do exactly what they are doing.

nothing you said shows that it would be a good idea for TP fllipping to continue to be the best means of gaining value in game

it sells at whatever price you put in the box. Cant beat the tax with low price method anymore

They got to keep people engaged in the game, people who quit or go on haitus don’t come back for new skins in shop (mostly).
Its a tricky balance.
Problem is cosmetics were supposed to be the carrot.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

1) Yes we are all valuable customers. But only the paying players bring in revenue.

2) Yes the Gem Exchange is a brilliant tool that brings in revenue for Anet/NCSoft, from players like me who purchase Gems with real money.

3) Someone trading their time for in-game items does not help a company to profit. Someone trading their cash for in-game items does.

4) And yes, the guy who got the 100 Gems got it for free. Thus no revenue is generated from him.

sorry penguin, you arent any more valuable than the gold-> gem buyer, until the point in time in which people are no longer willing to pay real cash for his gold.

I’m more valuable as a paying customer, as I bring in repeated revenue to the company. That’s not to say that Anet doesn’t value all players. But if you look at one player spending $10,000 in microtransactions in a year, and one player who spend $0, in a business sense, the one paying $10,000 is more important.

If you gave them 10,000 and he got other people to give them 50,000 By selling them his gold. He is more valuable.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

1) Yes we are all valuable customers. But only the paying players bring in revenue.

2) Yes the Gem Exchange is a brilliant tool that brings in revenue for Anet/NCSoft, from players like me who purchase Gems with real money.

3) Someone trading their time for in-game items does not help a company to profit. Someone trading their cash for in-game items does.

4) And yes, the guy who got the 100 Gems got it for free. Thus no revenue is generated from him.

sorry penguin, you arent any more valuable than the gold→ gem buyer, until the point in time in which people are no longer willing to pay real cash for his gold.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

~~~ snip ~~~

To counter this whole post, I would like you to understand that the Gem Exchange brings in no money. Players like me bring in money by purchasing Gems. The reason why the exchange rates are so high at the moment, is because us paying players aren’t exchanging as much as non-paying players. The Gem Exchange is working efficiently and as intended.

the purpose of the exchange is to allow people to trade gold and gems.

the reason for its existence within this monetary machine is to transfer the desire and work of gold earning players towards gem store items, into real money.

Essentially allowing players with desire, and no money to still be monetizable by allowing them to trade in game effort/time with people who have and are willing to spend money for their ingame time and money.

the exchange rate being high isnt really that relvant to the system, other than how it influences how many gem store items are sold.
the rate essentially cancels out.
whether cash player gets 100000 gold for a dollar, or 1 gold for a dollar, the return to anet is still 1 dollar.

and what actually gets that dollar is the fact that some player wanted some gem store item and was willing to work for it. either by working at their job, or working at playing the game for someone else willing to pay anet money.

Wrong again mate, but not on the core purpose of the Gem Exchange. Yes this tool allows non-paying players to access microtransactions they could otherwise not afford, or had no intention of using real money to obtain. Let’s dive into the flaws of your argument.

Non-paying players bring no money into the game, outside of the initial box price. They trade their in game efforts (which have no monetary value) with virtual extras. Gems in the pot of the exchange were already there in the beginning. Players who exchange Gold for Gems got them for free. They bring no additional revenue. This is a simple business principal.

For example, two people walk into a store. One has cash, while the other has a coupon for free merchandise. If the person with cash makes a purchase, only he is actually bringing in revenue to the business. With your though process, you’re thinking that the person with the coupon is making the store money too. This is where your ideas are flawed.

See your example is where you miss the point.
1 guy buys the item with cash
the other guy gets someone else to buy the item for him in exchange for mowing his lawn.

In this case both the guy who buys with cash, and the guy who mows someones lawn to get the other person to buy the item are valuable customers.

anet is even more intelligent because they set up a system for people to trade thier desire to do work for someone else, into more profit than if they set it up themselves.

a coupon user would be the guy who went to pax and got a free 100 gem card.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

~~~ snip ~~~

To counter this whole post, I would like you to understand that the Gem Exchange brings in no money. Players like me bring in money by purchasing Gems. The reason why the exchange rates are so high at the moment, is because us paying players aren’t exchanging as much as non-paying players. The Gem Exchange is working efficiently and as intended.

the purpose of the exchange is to allow people to trade gold and gems.

the reason for its existence within this monetary machine is to transfer the desire and work of gold earning players towards gem store items, into real money.

Essentially allowing players with desire, and no money to still be monetizable by allowing them to trade in game effort/time with people who have and are willing to spend money for their ingame time and money.

the exchange rate being high isnt really that relvant to the system, other than how it influences how many gem store items are sold.
the rate essentially cancels out.
whether cash player gets 100000 gold for a dollar, or 1 gold for a dollar, the return to anet is still 1 dollar.

and what actually gets that dollar is the fact that some player wanted some gem store item and was willing to work for it. either by working at their job, or working at playing the game for someone else willing to pay anet money.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

3) therefore every single gem store item, must have been paid for in real money by some means or another.

Wrong. Anet created (for free) a large supply of Gems that were deposited into the Gem Exchange at the beginning of the game service. It could very well be that each and every Gold -> Gem exchange to date was from the existing pot. Us paying players who exchange Gems for Gold, increases the pot size, and alters the exchange ratio. But just because we’re depositing more Gems into the pot, doesn’t automatically mean that the same Gems are now being given to non-paying players.

To help you understand this mechanic, say Anet deposited 5 million Gold and 1 million Gems into the pot before the game went live. Over the past ~2 years, there was movement of 500,000 Gems out of the pot, and 200,000 Gems put back in via players like me. Not counting the Gems us paying players put back in, there’s still 500,000 free Gems that weren’t touched.

In other words, all Gold exchanged for Gems are free.

i will tell you that initial amount deposited is irrelvant if they have a well designed exchange (other than to prevent a spike going over, and allow initial liquidity in the exchange)

If they in fact were giving out free gems, it would largely mean their cash/gem/gold exchange is failing at its job, of creating a real exchange.

Even taking what you say at face value, you would have to provide some evidence that suggests that the initial seed gems is noticeably large in comparison to the amount of gems traded into the system, and you would have to show that the exchange failing to take in cash.

Im pretty sure at some point John smith said the initial seed gems were long since irrelvant in the exchange, but looks like they have removed many posts.

The only way that items purchased with gold, would not bring anet revenue, is if the gold/gem/cash exchange machine is failing. And if it is, its not because they seeded it, its because they didnt design it well. If it is actually well designed, they will recoup more than enough money so that they make the same or more money for every item created in the gemstore.
the exchange fee, should be more than enough to cover any calculation errors, and if well designed, would be pure profit.

gem store items are no more free, than movie tickets are free when people pay for thier friends/dates/children.

every person who buys products with gold/cash is a valued customer, and is contributing to anets wealth.

Their desire for these items is the driving force, and the root of the monetary value of the entire business model. (aside from initial sales, and royalties)

the more items bought with via any means, the more money they make.

unless, the gem/gold/cash exchange is currently failing. Which JS implied is not the case.

edit, and btw, based on the sales figures from earnings reports, assuming even half of the money earned wasnt through box sales after the first 2 initial quarters, the amount of gems created through cash would probably be in the 100s of millions if not billions

Rym.1469:

Azhure.1857:

Are you seriously trying to say that the Ranger profession isn’t iconic and known to be “range based”. Just because it has the ability to use melee weapons, doesn’t mean that its a primary weapon type for the profession. …. That because of cheap combat/game mechanics the Ranger now has to melee and view its bows as equally cheap toys?
I’m not a Ranger main… but I feel the need to speak up for them in this.

Ranger melee weapons were not created as “primary” weapons. If you take a look at Greatsword and Sword you’ll see that these weapons have very strong defensive factor included in skills.

They both have some mobility but also a lot of evades, blocks.

In case of Greatsword, we see it pretty clearly. Auto-attack having evade, a short cd block with knockback+optional cripple, mobility, small CC(pet connected) and one burst ability.

In case of Sword, two of three abilities are defensive. Chain attack was most likely designed for Beast Mastery since it cripples (making pet land hits against mobile targets) and buffs it with Might. It doesn’t stack vulnerability, apply DoTs.
Second ability has nothing to do with damage. It’s a short cd evade with bonus cripple, second time. With Leap. How many on-demand combo fields does ranger have ? Water Field. So Leap through Water field, healing you and your pet, stationary, perfect for fighting with chain attack inside it.
Third ability, longer evade and poison. Tell me that it isn’t defensive.

Conclusion: Ranger’s weapons were designed as secondary, defensive melee option in mind. At least when they were created. Not “primary offensive weapons”. It’s just that during some part of development, someone took a coffee break when designing a Ranger. It’s still going, seems like

actually, GS was nerfed in beta, it was a lot stronger before.

ranged damage is not supposed to be optimal direct dps in this game, if it was, it would be OP. it partially self tracks, it reduces your need to evade (which means less loss of dps) and its easier to do.
If they were going to give big dmg to some ranged abilities, it would have to lock down your movements or require heavy set up, or possibly make it more avoidable from certain ranges. As well they would have to design enemies that could take advantage of your lack of movement or required set up.

until these type of mechanics are in place ranged weapons can only offer fairly good dmg with low risk, and strong utility. Otherwise they will be OP, and the easiest answer for many encounters.

the distance of boons is part of the balance and design of using them. What you can ask for is other skills/combo methods that have a different positional strength.
Aka, some boons/combo could apply their effects in non pbaoe ways.