Guild Wars 2

Aidan Savage.2078:

phys.7689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

TheDaiBish.9735:

We had word about precursor crafting back in April:

We want to let you know that the ability to build your precursor will not be in our upcoming Feature Pack. The way progression and rewards work in Guild Wars 2 have changed quite a bit since we initially talked about that feature, and our main horizontal progression systems are about to get some additional updates in the upcoming feature pack. Because of that, we are looking into several ways to integrate building your precursor into our new updated reward and progression systems we’re working on, which is requiring additional development time and iteration. As always, we’ll share details on this system once it’s far enough along in production we’re ready to discuss it.

Source

I speculate it’s something to do with the unlocking achievements thing to do with the LS.

Considering a few weeks (months?) after that post, they posted a news announcement about the Story Journal changes.

On that note however, they never PROMISED to give us precursor crafting/scavenger hunt last year. And not one person has been able to find a post by ANYONE on their payroll that explicitly states “We promise precursor crafting/scavenger hunt will be out by the end of 2013.” All we have are people extracting incorrect and wildly wrong meanings from posts that merely say if everything goes well and does not change, it should be out around then.

If some one pays me for an art commision, and i say, i should have it by next week. It means i should have it by next week. Sometimes i dont have it by next week, i cop pleas, make excuses, appologize, and try to get it to them asap.

But see i recognize, the customer has a right to ask me when, and i should tell them, and should i go beyond the date, thats really my fault, my poor planning, or lack of being able to identify the issues.
When you are late, and the customer hounds you every day, he isnt wrong, i am wrong, because i am already very late.

There is also a factor of degrees of lateness, this has been a known issue since like november year 1?
they said they were going to have a solution ready by the end of 2013, that was the outside date, not the best case scenario, then it went on for 6 months? 6 months is a long time in the development business, technologies rise and fall in that time period, processing power goes up by like 25%,
for one feature?
and i think we can say that the feature will probably not be drastically different from other items that already exist in game.

I mean if its the greatest progression/mmo gaming/fun/ ever, i will say kudos monsiuer anet, twas worth it’all but thats highly doubtful.

Art is not code development. Dont ever mistake them as being the same. The rest of your post is pretty much bunk too. What the hell do changes in technology have to do with the lack of any definitive proof they PROMISED precursor crafting last year?

i have done both, the requirements dont change, because you are providing a service

promise is an irrelevant word, in business any thing you publicly announce is expected to occur. And not announcing anything is not the proper answer to the equation, the proper answer is to deliver. Every other application out there says hey, this software is coming out in fall, it generally comes out in fall, if they say its coming out before end of the year, it generally comes out before the end of the year. Sometimes they are late, but they dont act like they arent, the apologize, and try to get out asap, telling people new dates they expect to deploy.

they said this is what is planned for 2013, they still havent delivered it 6 months later. You can bet if i have a client who wants an application, and i tell them i should have it finished by end of the year, when its 6 months late, it will not be overlooked, or easily accepted. They will continue to ask you when it is coming and they will be right to do so, and they were right to ask you for a date to begin with.

this has nothing to do with software development, its just sound business practices.

Aidan Savage.2078:

TheDaiBish.9735:

We had word about precursor crafting back in April:

We want to let you know that the ability to build your precursor will not be in our upcoming Feature Pack. The way progression and rewards work in Guild Wars 2 have changed quite a bit since we initially talked about that feature, and our main horizontal progression systems are about to get some additional updates in the upcoming feature pack. Because of that, we are looking into several ways to integrate building your precursor into our new updated reward and progression systems we’re working on, which is requiring additional development time and iteration. As always, we’ll share details on this system once it’s far enough along in production we’re ready to discuss it.

Source

I speculate it’s something to do with the unlocking achievements thing to do with the LS.

Considering a few weeks (months?) after that post, they posted a news announcement about the Story Journal changes.

On that note however, they never PROMISED to give us precursor crafting/scavenger hunt last year. And not one person has been able to find a post by ANYONE on their payroll that explicitly states “We promise precursor crafting/scavenger hunt will be out by the end of 2013.” All we have are people extracting incorrect and wildly wrong meanings from posts that merely say if everything goes well and does not change, it should be out around then.

If some one pays me for an art commision, and i say, i should have it by next week. It means i should have it by next week. Sometimes i dont have it by next week, i cop pleas, make excuses, appologize, and try to get it to them asap.

But see i recognize, the customer has a right to ask me when, and i should tell them, and should i go beyond the date, thats really my fault, my poor planning, or lack of being able to identify the issues.
When you are late, and the customer hounds you every day, he isnt wrong, i am wrong, because i am already very late.

There is also a factor of degrees of lateness, this has been a known issue since like november year 1?
they said they were going to have a solution ready by the end of 2013, that was the outside date, not the best case scenario, then it went on for 6 months? 6 months is a long time in the development business, technologies rise and fall in that time period, processing power goes up by like 25%,
for one feature?
and i think we can say that the feature will probably not be drastically different from other items that already exist in game.

I mean if its the greatest progression/mmo gaming/fun/ ever, i will say kudos monsiuer anet, twas worth it’all but thats highly doubtful.

Vol.7601:

Just stop Wanze. It’s a battle you cannot win >_>

Let us hang out along the Royal Terrace conducting our transactions while the peasants mingle and protest outside!

lol irl the balance for this thing is peasant revolt, perhaps they need a revolt system so part of the TP players goal is to get as much as they can without having the peasants revolt, that would add some more depth to the TP game.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

You got it and that is exactly my point. Speculators are bad for the economy because they serve no purpose.

This is incorrect. Once you learn why this is incorrect we can continue the discussion, until then however you are starting with a false premise and the topic can not be discussed further.

So tell me which great use we all get from speculators. I’m really curious.

I try to explain.
First we have to determine what a speculator is. Many people have a different definition of them but for my explaination they are people that buy items that are not in demand at the moment (supply is higher than demand), hold on to them (either in their personal storage or as a high listing on the tp) in order to sell them at a higher price in the future, when the item gets into demand. By doing so, they offer several benefits to other players and the economy.

1. An item whose supply is higher than demand will fall in price until it reaches vendor value because nobody will buy it. If speculators put in buy orders higher than vendor value, they give sellers more gold for their goods.

2. If speculators wouldnt buy up those items, they will be sold to vendors. This destroys the item and generates gold, which lowers overall supply of the item and inflates gold. If they buy it, they keep the supply in game and sink gold through fees and taxes, which tackles inflation.

3. Now the item gets into demand out of a sudden, most propably due to a new patch.
Due to speculators, there is a higher supply on the tp which means the price will not spike as fast as when they wouldnt have listed their items after buying them when they werent in demand. Those speculators that held on to their items in personal storage, will start listing them now, competing with each other, which leads to a faster equilibrium.

1) an item whose price is close to vendor value is a failed item, it has virtually no value, as most vendor items are priced extremely low compared to what they are supposed to be worth too players.

2)these items should be destroyed, or never created in the first place, they are mucking up the market, and reducing the value of playtime

3) the market correcting patches, designed to give these glut items value and reduce their oversaturation only exist because people held on to useless items to begin with.

Essentially the entire cycle you mention is a self fullfilling prophecy created by the lack of control of supply by the market. The solutions cause mass waves, and problems, with generally little benefit to the game.

Do you think halloween items are better implemented now that it takes 10000 candy corn to make? Its honestly a circle of fail.

keeping items with no value in the market is actually really bad. They shouldnt have created a market with so little control on the supply side.

So what? People should be forced to destroy the items? Forced to give them to poor players?

There is control of supply on the market, it is called DR, and it is one of the most hated features of the game.

control of supply does not mean limiting it, it means the players cant control supply adequately themselves. IRL an item with no value is not produced, that is not the case in GW2, the item is continuously produced although it has no value. This is what i mean by a huge flaw, players dont have enough control over supply, way too many items are generated as an accident along some other purpose, until they have no value.

And yes people should destroy items with no value, 1 copper above npc price means the item is failing as an item. They price items value at like 1/10th or lower to what their expected value is, when an item sells for 1 copper above minimal price, and only value is to be a hedged bet for a designer game changer, that item has failed, it is dirt, and the developer shouldnt be trying to turn dirt into gold, and rewarding those who keep massive stockpiles of dirt on the TP.

i never said give your items away for cheap, im saying you should be able to be like, this item is a waste of time to get, im going to focus my item creation ability creating an item i value. This is how supply and demand are supposed to work to create balance. A person who hunts leather because they want to sell it is a peer to a flipper if the flipper isnt giving a worthwhile price to the effort, he will stop hunting, a person who has leather appear magically whenever he tries to study his favorite subject, needs the flipper to get rid of the item asap.

Mystic.5934:

I’ll bring up this point: without the various forms of TP traders, inflation would run rampant in the game. TP tax is easily the largest gold sink in the game; orders of magnitude above the next-highest. And TP traders, in my estimation, make up more than half of all TP transactions.

To put some fake numbers to it:
let’s say 1 million gold entering the game per day through players completing dungeons and stuff.
to have no inflation you also need 1 million gold to leave the game per day. Players list things on the TP and 900 million gold leaves the game through TP tax. the other 100 million is taken care of with other gold sinks such as the gem exchange, icy runestones, cultural armor, etc.
If you remove all the TP trading professions, instead only 400 million gold leaves the game through TP fees (because more than half of that was stopped). So you’d have 500 million extra gold per day accumulating.
you thought precursor prices were high now? hehe. they’d all go up 100g a month and never stop, because people would have the money to pay those prices. By christmas, Dawn would be 1,600g.

Be as annoyed by them all you want; but just respect that each time they flip something, 30% of that gold leaves the game and delays inflation (15% on buy + 15% on sell).

so make new, more fullfilling gold sinks.

Everything we know runs on oil, is not a good reason that if i can make an engine powered on compost, it should not be done.

and i dont believe there is a tax on buying items, only selling them. unless you mean 15% when the first guy sells it, and 15% when the 1st middleman sells it.

Wanze.8410:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

You got it and that is exactly my point. Speculators are bad for the economy because they serve no purpose.

This is incorrect. Once you learn why this is incorrect we can continue the discussion, until then however you are starting with a false premise and the topic can not be discussed further.

So tell me which great use we all get from speculators. I’m really curious.

I try to explain.
First we have to determine what a speculator is. Many people have a different definition of them but for my explaination they are people that buy items that are not in demand at the moment (supply is higher than demand), hold on to them (either in their personal storage or as a high listing on the tp) in order to sell them at a higher price in the future, when the item gets into demand. By doing so, they offer several benefits to other players and the economy.

1. An item whose supply is higher than demand will fall in price until it reaches vendor value because nobody will buy it. If speculators put in buy orders higher than vendor value, they give sellers more gold for their goods.

2. If speculators wouldnt buy up those items, they will be sold to vendors. This destroys the item and generates gold, which lowers overall supply of the item and inflates gold. If they buy it, they keep the supply in game and sink gold through fees and taxes, which tackles inflation.

3. Now the item gets into demand out of a sudden, most propably due to a new patch.
Due to speculators, there is a higher supply on the tp which means the price will not spike as fast as when they wouldnt have listed their items after buying them when they werent in demand. Those speculators that held on to their items in personal storage, will start listing them now, competing with each other, which leads to a faster equilibrium.

1) an item whose price is close to vendor value is a failed item, it has virtually no value, as most vendor items are priced extremely low compared to what they are supposed to be worth too players.

2)these items should be destroyed, or never created in the first place, they are mucking up the market, and reducing the value of playtime

3) the market correcting patches, designed to give these glut items value and reduce their oversaturation only exist because people held on to useless items to begin with.

Essentially the entire cycle you mention is a self fullfilling prophecy created by the lack of control of supply by the market. The solutions cause mass waves, and problems, with generally little benefit to the game.

Do you think halloween items are better implemented now that it takes 10000 candy corn to make? Its honestly a circle of fail.

keeping items with no value in the market is actually really bad. They shouldnt have created a market with so little control on the supply side.

Cyrrin.1230:

OP.. You do understand there is a TREMENDOUS amount of risk in playing the TP right? It’s not nearly as easy as you may think just because people commit to it. A lot of that flip the TP don’t just sit all day watching it. It’s a passive income that we create and let it do its thing while we play the game. It’ very simple if you are good with numbers and spreadsheets.. and if you aren’t.. it’s not exceptionally hard to learn.

Tell me why wouldn’t you want to login, set some buy orders and then run some fractals/dungeons/WvW/PvP or whatever you want to do and just let the TP work its magic.

to be perfectly honest, the only risk on trading is the 5% tp cost, and honestly, if you are not a fool, your item will always sell, its just a matter of how long. Which does lower your possible earnings from reinvestment, but that is essentially complaining about whether you can make 5-20% interest on your investment per hour, or per week, you are still profiting.

unless you are talking about the gamble like speculation based on predictions, insider info, or predicting the trends, which is a different beast.

pdavis.8031:

@Phys

You may be correct. I don’t flip, but I have read up on flipping, and was of the understandiing that in order to be the most profitable, you’d want to start out with a lot of gold. Either way my point still stands. People need to get over themselves, and stop trying to nerf legit ways to play the game that aren’t really doing any harm to anything just because they don’t like it. Just like the “Zerker” trend. I don’t play zerker, but I’m not crying for a nerf because I don’t like it.

hmm i dont think killing all flipping is the answer, but it does have an effect on the game, they hardwired trading into item creation. so flipping is an extremely large business, and it cannot be avoided. The other large effect is that it provides more gold with a different type of relationship than anything else in the game. This basically creates a class structure based on how you fit into the market. While class structures may be unavoidable, having them based primarily on your role in the market in an adventure game is probably the thing people have the biggest issue with.

The most effecient gameplay by far in terms of rewards (gold/items of high demand/utility) is tp playing if you are ok at it. Followed by farming. Since the game tends to be rebalanced on a macro level, a lot of normal people feel the effects most harshly. For a above average tp player, 40 gold for an ascended item is like a days work, for the average normal player, its like 1.5-2 weeks, for a below average player, it could take a month or more for one item.

Lethalvriend.1723:

I think posts like these are the reason they didn’t put a roadmap up like last time, people take the list as if it’s set in stone the moment they read about it. They have already implemented alot of requested features etc, it’s just a matter of time. They aren’t as big as Blizzard or something so they have to push certain things further down the list.

What you are really saying is its ok to meander and go nowhere.

If i tell people where i am going, they may expect me to get there, so if i dont tell them, i can do whatever i want and not be held responsible.

Its true, but its not a productive way of thinking. A productive way of thinking is to make promises and fulfill them.

IMO one of the big problems with the game is that it doesnt seem to have evolved or moved foward much, a lot of that can be tied to not having a roadmap that they wanted to follow, and worked towards filling.

Say it how you want, but they were vague when they talked of precursors, they said sometime this year, like 5 months before the end of the year. They are now like 6 months overdue, thats anywhere from a 9-6 month delay. That is like 1/10th to 1/20th the life of a good mmo.
For a single feature.

What if you bought a house with a problem, the seller said they would fix it before the end of the year, in july. next year, in june its still not fixed, is that acceptable? would you have been happier if the seller told you, i will fix it when i can, no promises?

honestly, its a problem. you can try to look on the bright side, or say they shouldnt make promises, but really thats stupid. When something needs to be done, You should say you will do something, and then you should do it, and when you can’t you should explain to the best of your ability why not, and still work toward doing it.

Its really simple, i flake out sometimes too, but i dont try to pretend im not flaking out, or act as if by not making any promises, i still dont have a responsibility to do something. And hiding behind a lack of a schedule doesnt change that.

pdavis.8031:

@ OP

Although I understand where you are coming from, and can see that flipping the TP to get rich is “A cheap way to play”, I have to disagree. As said many times before, flipping the TP takes patience, skill, research, timing, and knowledge. Just like any other aspect of the game, with the exception of champ trains (But thats another discussion). There is one thing that has hsan’t been brought up yet. A very important aspect to flipping the TP. Seed money. One simply cannot start flipping the TP without a sizable bank roll to begin with. Sure, you might be able to do a little bit with 5 gold, but that small amount isn’t going to make you rich over night. With that amount it might take many months to actually begin making a sizable profit. No, you NEED to start with at LEAST a couple hundred gold, and maybe alot more, to even make it worth your while. So where does this seed money (hundreds of gold) come from? Well either through PLAYING THE GAME or buying gems and converting to gold. Well the current rate for gem conversion (.13 USD for 1 gold), it would cost $65 dollars for 500 gold. So with serious flippers, they most likely are paying RL money to start flipping, and making a significant amount of money. Which of course is actually beneficial, as these people buy gems with cash, and convert to gold, it drives the gold to gem conversion price down.

My point is this. If you feel that this is unfair, either learn to flip the TP yourself, or pay more money to be on a level with the “high rollers” by buying gems and converting to gold. QQing about someone elses play style because you don’t like it for whatever reason is pointless, and only makes you look entitled and jealous.

you can grow your money at all levels, its actually usually easier and more consistent to flip cheap items. if you started with 5 gold, probably by the end of the month if you are a slightly above average TPman you could make 300-400 gold. I say this because at times i have done it, and im far from all pro TP player.
I dont think most flippers buy gold, even though it may be worth it, the point of gold hunting is to make the most with as little investment as possible, and it really isnt too hard to come up in the flipping game.

i believe the vast majority of gems>gold is from impatient people, which in general is not type of trits that lend itself well to long term profits

Mesket.5728:

Why do you care so much if any class added to the game will use full zerk and the most dps melee weapon at his disposal? A new class will only mean other ways to get the same buffs and debuffs on the same mobs. Another class will add only to the graphic/cosmetic aspect of the game while changing nothing to its core. I prefer a polished to the system. First they need to fix the lack of class variety with the classes we already have. Currently 8 classes have only 1 rol to fit. After they polished that, they can start thinking what a new class can add to the game.

new classes can give a totally different feeling and way of playing, doesnt really matter if they do the same thing if the method is totally different.
some people build toys by hand carving, and some make designs on a computer and output it to a machine. Still the professionals who do this have different skill sets, and enjoy different things, some may enjoy doing one and not doing the other

martial artist, hand to hand fighter/bo staff/spiritual, different sequences of skills for greater advantages, reactive playstyle, counters, not an escape artist.

marksman, long range/ and close range tactical fighter,best used with preparation and careful management of resources. Best used when thinking ahead/has a plan.

yeah they never did have a what to expect in 2014 blog like they said they were going to do after ls1 ended I think essentially arenanet hates being held to deadlines with a passion. Thats why they dont like to say anything.

I dont really think this is a great idea, but ehh if they make lots of money it works for them, if they dont, it doesnt. I think how the players feel about that is already known, and is acceptable for arenanet.

Vol.7601:

phys.7689:

William Bradley Knight.2609:

Vol.7601:

If only I knew how to photoshop or make .gifs ;(

But I have no time…cause IM FLIPPING!

Wait, I thought flipping is easy and takes almost no time? ;-)

I actually found myself appreciating flippers just last night. While leveling up a new warrior I found myself not doing as much damage as I would like because I was just wearing gear that I picked up while playing. It seemed like a good idea to buy some cheap zerky gear so I did some searching on the TP and found stuff that upped my damage for just a few silver. Just looking through the list of stuff, it seemed likely that some of it (e.g. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/45925) was stuff that is flipped. Even buying it immediately I was glad it was available and a reasonable price. Let’s hear it for the flippers. :-)

to be honest flippers dont do anything good for players, other than give them some quick liquid cash.

That’s a pretty big ‘good’ or advantange. I like how you downplay it by saying it’s worth nothing but then add a little snippet to pretend like it’s not worth mentioning.

hmm, well its good for our Ids, but there really isnt any benefit in actuality to players. When i played other games, i might have to wait a day or so for things to sell, but in reality i made more money for the same amount of work.

So yeah people love it, they use it, i know i have sold many times to the lowest seller, when i felt the need to gamble and needed my quick fix for gambling or making progress towards some goal, but that doesnt mean its actually beneficial, just means i am impatient, and lazy.

but the truth is the trading itself is more satisfying without it, i get more for what i sell, or buy things cheaper, and most items are worth what they are actually worth, not what 3 guys who each took a 18%+ cut made it cost.

essentially its not good for the value of goods and services, in a system where the suppliers are not intentionally supplying. It wouldnt be bad if most of the suppliers were making calculated moves, and business decisions, but that is not the case. Its generally the sellers who get screwed, and the non business oriented buyers.

Azrael.4960:

The fundamental mistake is comparing the Trading post to a stock market. The TP is more a commodities market. If you look at it that way it makes more sense. Flippers are more in line with speculators.

Regardless of how you look at it every game has an in game economy, formal or otherwise. Using it to bring in an income to fund your in game activities has been the mainstay of all of these games.

The OP’s suggestion is ridiculous as that would drive up prices not bring them down. Under their idea, in order for the prices to even be held static, the same quantity of items removed from the TC would have to equal the volume being put in. This is just not going to happen.

What you see as illegitimate is actually a very legitimate way of playing the game. You go off into the world and hoover up vast quantities of materials, weapons and gold then sink it into the TC or merchants. Adventurer’s gold is created more or less out of the air and as such, there is effectively a limitless supply of it. What does a limitless supply of currency cause? Inflation, then hyperinflation.

Flippers are a necessary part of the in game economy. They’ll will do dungeons, sell Arah paths, gather mats, and all the stuff that anyone does but the gold they earn from that is sunk into the TC, which acts to keep the economy balanced. They earn a great deal of gold, this is true but 5% fee also acts to remove a great deal of gold from the market which in turn helps control inflation. Even pulling a number out of the air, one could consider that 100s of thousands, if not millions of gold are sucked out of the economy by flipper trading.

Remove flipping from the game and you’ll destroy the economy

an economy is like an ecosystem, yes you would destroy it, but something else would undoubtedly spring up in its stead, the question is, would what comes be better? maybe not, but honestly the economy we have is not really that good. Many goods services, tasks have no value, or low value, the ones with high value end up being degenerative.

And although flippers do keep inflation down somewhat, they also increase the wealth disparity, after all what a flipper essentially does, is either skim money off the item creator, or the item user, or both. they basically make everyone else poorer to make themselves richer.

so they arent really a slam dunk in terms of benefits to the economy.

William Bradley Knight.2609:

Vol.7601:

If only I knew how to photoshop or make .gifs ;(

But I have no time…cause IM FLIPPING!

Wait, I thought flipping is easy and takes almost no time? ;-)

I actually found myself appreciating flippers just last night. While leveling up a new warrior I found myself not doing as much damage as I would like because I was just wearing gear that I picked up while playing. It seemed like a good idea to buy some cheap zerky gear so I did some searching on the TP and found stuff that upped my damage for just a few silver. Just looking through the list of stuff, it seemed likely that some of it (e.g. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/45925) was stuff that is flipped. Even buying it immediately I was glad it was available and a reasonable price. Let’s hear it for the flippers. :-)

i dont know if flippers helped you at all there, in fact that item looks like a market failure on a number of levels.

to be honest flippers dont do anything good for players, other than give them some quick liquid cash. Everything they buy is worth more than its sold for, or it must be worth less than they sell it for.

flippers arent really the end of the world though, truth is, anet forces everyone into business, basically making it a flippers paradise.

Everyone needs to use the trading post to get what they want
Everyone needs to use the trading post to get rid of all the stuff anet gave em that they didnt ask for.
the only balance for flippers is other flippers, the problem is even though they are competing with each other, they are still both looking to defeat the average player. Which means? they only provide a service to you if they are juicing you.

The other problem is, the only way the trading economy works well is if there are a lot of flippers constantly competing for everything, and if anet can make everything have as value based on the design for supply of that randomly generated drop.

i think the biggest fail of this economy comes down to supply being controlled via rng. And an inability to specialize in most products through intent.

The market has very little ability to correct itself

Protoavis.9107:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

What do you play? Do you play the Stock Exchange simulator? Last time I checked this game was named GuildWars2.

In a game where there’s no actual guild wars (as the name comes from lore, not a game mechanic) you’re argument makes no sense at all. It’s like saying you hate pears because you’re eating an orange..ie stupid and completely irrelevant.

Flippers are the biggest gold sink in the economy with every purchase AND sale they remove 15% of the gold per transaction…want to prevent flipping you better hope they reduce the rewards in game a huge amount to compensate otherwise inflation will occur at a massively accelerated rate…..granted that’s just going to increase the whines about the game being unrewarding ten fold. That or waypoint fees will need something like a 1000% increase or the implementation of daily taxes (ie everyday you lose 1-5% of your gold or significant gold sink.

they are a lame gold sink. Place gold sinks on things people dont mind spending on. IRL people burn money on things like candy, movies, people singing in the street. A gold sink like 10% of the money you spend in the store, we throw in a fire, Is not one you should use as the main one.

I dont think free market is the best solution for economics, it doesnt usually do well in the real world without controls(america is a mixed economy btw), but i will definately agree that we dont have a free market, its probably impossible to have one in an MMO though.

KOPPER.1458:

Gems and their value will continue to rise. There will be some dips here and there but it’s simply something that will continue to increase. More players want to turn gold into gems, rather than gems into gold.

more players want to turn gold into gems, because they have less use for gold, than they do gems. If there was more use for gold, people wouldnt want to turn it into gems as much.

Say you are building a legendary, gems is doing nothing for you at all. The key here is there is not a lot of value in gold the longer you play, unless you are going for legendaries.
ascended was probably supposed to help fill this gap, and it did to an extent, but i think many players just abandoned ascended pursuits, because it really isnt that fun/useful compared to the grind for it. bleh need some fun goals

Psychol.5783:

I don’t believe that there’s more demand for gems than for gold because there’re few items worth to buy and much more items for gold, I’m guessing that Anet is tampering with the price.

theres items for gold, that people already got, or arent that interested in. For gems you got armor, minis, special dyes, new weapons, more bank tabs more loot slots, charachters, transmutations, etc.

Anyhow, it doesnt mean overall demand, its more about the demand of the types who want to buy gems with gold, versus the demand of people who want to sell gems for gold. There are a lot of people who dont really fit into either category, who dont contribute to either side.

Basically my guess, is as has been said, there is very little in game goals at high level play. They simply have not added enough to the game world, or developed the type of content people will pay for consistently. Simply put, the ingame rewards/goals pale in comparison to the cash shop rewards. People subconsciously recognize this, so many dont even save gold for the next big thing, because they doubt there will be a next big thing.

Also, gold sellers

basically you will probably see the rate drop when they start releasing more engaging in game content, and desired items/goals.

hard content, consumables, things with an upkeep cost (even if its handled by players) Highly desired items, etc.

Vayne.8563:

SkiTz.4590:

you do realize megaserver was implemented because of how utterly dead the maps were in the majority of the servers right?
Outside the first 3 tiers or so, majority of the servers were low pop/dead. Megaserver put in place to make it not look so bad.
They could have had mega servers anytime but why now? oh because of how dead some of the servers are getting….

Will this game be fine ? who knows about the future, I hope it will , all I know is the NOW. and right now, its not nearly as active of an MMO as it was and it has been losing players, not gaining/retaining.

Again this is theory, not fact. The fact is that people guested to busier servers because they could ANYWAY. So saying a server is dead because no one was playing on it, didn’t mean the population of that server wasn’t playing on a busier server. I used to guest all the time to different servers. You had guilds like TTS where everyone guested to a dead server at least on Australian times. So for that event that became a busy server. In fact, we’d fill up the map and sometimes have one or two overflows, even in the middle of the US night.

You can’t say what the population is, because you don’t know. The best you can do is guess.

Are less people playing this game now than at launch. Almost definitely. There’s a normal and acceptable attrition in MMOs.

The question isn’t how many people have left, because millions have stopped playing WoW. The question is how many people are still playing, how many have come back, and how many are coming on board with the frequent sales.

Those are the real questions.

I don’t think this game is bleeding players. We’ve had a number of people who left for a year and have come back.

In fact, so many people come back that on Reddit they have a scripted bot now to handle it, because we were getting multiple posts a day.

And only a tiny percentage of people post on forums.

As for the only reason the mega server being introduced is servers being dead, there was another reason. Anyone who played in the Marionette fight, will remember the dozens of threads of people complaining that they couldn’t play on their home server. Those complaints are now a thing of the past.

And I’m sure having players on less servers also saved money in the long run, because you’re not maintaining servers with small amounts of players on them.

pretty odd reasoning, people complained that they couldnt play on their server, so we obliterated their server?

Or another angle, people really didnt like being on overflows for these one monthly events, so we made them have to do it everyday!

I mean i see possible advantages, to the megaserver, if they start building new community tools/features/grouping but to be honest it was not the solution anyone was looking for.

Ayrilana.1396:

He has direct access to all of the data. His job is a lead analyst which includes managing and studying the GW2 economy. I think he’s well qualified and more qualified than anyone else on the status of the GW2 economy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superseded_scientific_theories

http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2010/11/the-top-10-most-spectacularly-wrong-widely-held-scientific-theories/

any body can be wrong, even cool people who have studied for years. Not saying whether he is wrong, but the idea that he is a guy who is educated and employed does not make him infallible or always correct.

ABrooke.7129:

“I’m fairly certain that asking to expand the world beyond the current map is a fairly reasonable request that most MMOs pursue. Very few MMOs remain in a static world state and focus entirely on social development.”

The problem with that is there is no rate of development for that part of the game that could ever be satisfactory. They spend 6 months developing new content to have it blown through in days or even hours and then here you will be asking for more.

It is a problem I do not understand. I have seen it in every game I have played. I would wager that if you went to (any game forum here) and looked it over, you would see much of the same of what is posted here. Why do what has been done or attempted before? Why not address parts of the game that can provide more longevity?

If you were to be bluntly honest with yourselves, you would see I am right. Just sit back and think of what could be done to address what you see as shortcomings of the game. Truly ask yourself how long that fix would satisfy you. How long then would it take for you to come back and ask for more? Thats not a healthy way to grow this game. To do what has been done over and over again yet in the end satisfies none.

If this game is to thrive, it must go in a different direction other than new content band aids. It must add real meat to the menu. Something that connects people to the game rather than an appeasement of temporary proportions.

I believe the game should get back to its name. Build this game through guild promotion and interaction. So many different ways to go there that would be lasting.

catering to you is a losing scenario, you are already satiated, and satisfied. Im not saying they shouldnt expand the guild/social options and planning, but with your overall strategy you and 500 people will be planning the server closing party fairly soon. No game is going to be entertaining forver without new stuff for most people. Most people actually dont log on to GW2 to hang out in a house or throw barb b que parties.

Seera.5916:

Palador.2170:

AnAspieKitten.5732:

You’re closing the discussion to those won’t don’t have the same opinion as you, not sure that’s a really healthy way of using a forum.

Several of you don’t seem to be getting what I typed while half-asleep this morning (and apologies for that), so let me try and sum it up a bit differently.

Hey guys! While I loved GW2 at start and still see some great stuff in this game, ANet’s upset me with some of the stuff they’ve done to it. Rather than just giving some feedback and letting it go, I let myself get all worked up about it, and was actually making the game LESS fun for myself because of it. I’ve recently realized this, and am currently trying to chill the feline out. I know I’m not the only one that got all worked up about it, though. Maybe more of us need to rethink and enjoy what parts of the game we still find fun, instead of basically punishing ourselves in the hopes that ANet will notice?

(As you can see, this isn’t about the game so much as it is an attempt at a discussion WITH the unhappy players. Thus, the note saying that it’s not for the happy players.)

But closing it to the happy players prevents the unhappy players and the happy players from coming to middle ground. The solution that will create the most happy players possible.

Because the solution the unhappy players come up with to save the game, might ruin the game for the happy players. But a happy player who is sympathetic to the unhappy players might have an idea that would please the unhappy players while not ruining the game for the happy players. A solution that the unhappy players didn’t think of.

A hey, solution X to legit problem A would really interfere with how I play. What about solution Y?

Just because players are happy with how the game is doesn’t mean we aren’t aware or unsympathetic to the fact that others aren’t happy. Nor does it prevent us from coming up with possible solutions.

i dont think he was saying not to respond, just saying that his message is really to those that are unsatisfied.

Honestly i think the guy likes to spend money to get what he wants, and not getting what he wants is not making the game fun for him. So he is trying to justify going back on his declaration to himself.

Basically like someone decides they are breaking up with their lover because they have no future in the long term, and they are going to stop having sex with them. But then they realize they like having sex with them, even if the relationship is going nowhere. So his plan is just to have sex and dump the person when the time comes without a word.

Is it wrong or right? who knows, just saying, he isnt really trying to solve anything, just saying hey i think its cool to just accept it as it is, and not try to do anything that MIGHT improve things, and move on when you get a good oppurtunity.

FrostSpectre.4198:

Psichologas.1063:

2. There will be no expansions in near future, which results no new classes, new weapon types or races, they will just keep patching contents like personal story, new map contents and events as well as gem store items – how long will it take for players to quit cuz they are bored without major new contents mentioned above?
(Yes I am a guy, thirsty for new weapon types, classes and contents and I am willing to pay for them, so I would really like Anet to make some of it).

Problem is with NCsoft, if they don’t want to publish at the moment, ANet can’t make an expansion, unless ANet pays all out of their own pockets…

Gem Store, NCsoft makes the money out of it, ANet gets a small cut.
NCsoft then, along with sales renevue and other “ingame stores” profits, would then work with developer of their choice, to develop and publish a game they want, not necessarily an expansion to GW2.

ncsoft wanted an expansion since year one. Anet didnt want to do an expansion, which would be good, IF they could deliver expansion like content through normal play. But we have yet to see much that is as well fleshed out/executed as is the norm in an expansion from the LS.

Ayrilana.1396:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Ayrilana.1396:

Xillllix.3485:

tolunart.2095:

It’s called supply and demand. Supply = low, demand = high.

NO, it’s called rich people flipping precursors on the market.

John Smith looked at the transactions during a timeframe and they were pretty much unique buyers and sellers. While some people do flip them, it’s not has common as you think.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Dusk-2000g/first#post4048636

That time frame was over the course of two days.

You realize of course that he chose the sample which proved his point.

Well I guess I forgot to put on my tin foil hat. I guess it was so convenient that he used the past two days at the time of his post.

actually the data included a substantial amount of time before the actual spike occured, i think it was approx 60 hours, and he included 15 from before the event occured, not only that but it didnt include the latest data and the biggest spikes and sales.

He may not have been cherry picking that may be the blocks in which the data is organized, but it definately wasnt the best data sample to hone in on what was happening due to the spike.

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

teriyakininja.4698:

I forgot where it was mentioned but Anet did say that there is a full expansion staff that is separate from the living story one — so we will be seeing an expansion eventually. The game has been out for what, a year and a half?

WoW take a good almost 2 years on each of their expansions but man, waiting for new content every 3 or whatever-so months was a pain. And there was no incentive to stay in the game except for the fact that “I better get my gear for the next patch”.

First of all GW2 was supposed to be a B2P game (turned on to be a cash-shop game) and if you earn money with game-sales you need to have an expansion every year. You can not do that every two year like WoW who is a sub-based game so can take 2 years.

Also the game is out for almost 2 years.

In addition to that they never said they had a team working on an expansion, all they said was that they had people working on the background on ‘other things’. I guess thinks like FotM, The Edge of the Mists and the new maps are coming from that team.

About expansion this is what was said “If we do this (LS) right we will never have an expansion.” They then got a lot of complains about that and then they said an expansion was not of the table. (this was over a year ago)

By now we can conclude they did not do the LS right but it seems like in stead of changing there focus to expansions they decided to change the LS and give it another try. Meanwhile for the expansion it is still not off the table. No news there.

You’re remembering what you want to remember. Anet said they were working on the kinds of stuff that would be included in an expansion, and simply haven’t decided on the way they’ll deliver it.

I’ll bet a whole lot of money there will be expansion, but on their schedule, not yours. Their priority was launching in China. It was a big deal.

The Chinese people need time to get through the content, and when that happens, I’m sure they will launch an expansion.

As for as it was supposed to be a buy to play game, it is. There are tons of people who have bought this game, played all the content and never paid a single penny.

I’m seriously convinced you’ve never played a cash shop game to make those kinds of statements.

actually devata is right, for a long time they said no expansion was planned, and currently they still say that. They did say they planned to release expansion like content, but thats pretty vague, since there have been times they released content that seemed expansion like to them, but not to a lot of players.

Rauderi.8706:

Nerelith.7360:

The sad part is, seeing the potential of crafting, and Not seeing ANet get even close to it. It’s simply another part of the game that could have been awesome, and is Bland and generic.

Sad, but true. The discovery system is nothing more than a little pattern detection puzzle, and it’s only marginally fun on Cooking. Marginally. Having the “what can I make now?” question and ending up with 15 varieties of zucchini WTFness at least gave me a laugh.

Beyond that, it’s a standard MMO crafting system with little customizability. The parts that are customizable end up gated by rare materials that come from special events or by breaking materials already of that type, looking at you Dire and Sentinel.

This makes crafting nonsensical. Some components you need to get by bizarrely WTF means or pay out several gold from the trading post. And even if you do have the components, and you’ve proven via discovery you’re capable of simple pattern detection… NOPE, still can’t make it, because that version requires a recipe, even though every other one of its grade and type do not. Celestial, guilty as charged.

FF14 and WildStar have much more robust crafting systems.

And to echo Nerelith’s other note, what do you do with items you can make, besides fulfill ANet’s desire to have a goldsink in the Trading Post?

Again, FF14 and WildStar have been much more forward-thinking about craft and trade. You can turn materials and products in to specific game vendors and quest givers, in exchange for special currencies.

Something like that could have corrected the trade market without the excessive Ascended crafting (yes, I mean silk) and given crafters something to do after they’ve made their best-in-slot gear.

Those same crafters can make other fun toys as well, or, y’know, housing decor. Even WoW has craft-only mounts and pets and toys and parachutes. …What? I like my glider-cape.

Point is, the crafting process is flat. The crafting results are flat. While they could have made great strides toward a high quality (FF14 pun, kitten ) system, instead, we got a typically-generic MMO crafting system with a bit of an XP bonus on the end of it.

well to be honest, they had said early on that their crafting was going to be fairly run of the mill. The part i dont really get, is they make it fairly run of the mill, and then make it required for best in slot.

I honestly really enjoy crafting in general, but the way crafting in this game is very odd, its pretty average, and yet you need it for endgame.

and yeah crafting in wildstar is pretty fun (though it has some issues as to its purpose endgame wise) and in ffxiv its pretty involved, and also useful, though i dont know how they handle endgame aspects in a realm reborn

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

yeah, essentially the game isnt providing a lot you can do with gold other than work towards a legendary. It is the driving force behind the whole economy. The value of gems continues to grow however, with more convenience, more unlocks, and more gear.
so yeah basically the only things people think are worth a large amount of gold, are gems, and things related to legendaries.

I spend most of my money levelling and equipping alts. So far Anet refuses to make gear obsolete, forcing players to essentially start over every six months or so when the level cap is raised and BiS level X gear becomes “less than basic level X+1” gear.

Games like WoW have raised planned obsolescence to an art form. It’s like every year as the new car models are released, the previous year’s cars were designed to self destruct, so you either buy a new car every year or walk.

Since the exotic gear you bought 13 months ago is still just as good now as it was then, if you only have one character there isn’t a lot left to spend money on. But I don’t think this is a bad thing.

I dont know if its bad or not really. But probably they should have more diverse things that people want to aim for. if there were 3 other things people wanted aside from legendaries and gold, theoretically all of them would probably be cheaper due to people having to choose.
perhaps its time for housing, guild halls, hmm what else, perhaps Politics?

Andrew Clear.1750:

Handin.4032:

Laylie.5703:

If all we get are the two traits that were already data mined then a lot of guilds will be leaving. Wvw as a whole is already on the verge of destroying quite a few guilds.

I’d say this. A decent chunk of my old guild (which was disbanded following seasons) left GW2 to go play Archeage. Why? Well, its free and has new content they can actually play, and new kinds of pvp they can play. It seems like gw2 is bleeding players and guilds in WvW, and my guess is all it will do is let anet actually use the excuse “Well theres so few of you, we can’t put out a lot of updates”

Players always come and go. They moved on to try a different game. Nothing anet does will keep every gw2 player playing gw2.

Does everyone that played EQ, WoW, FFXI, SWTOR, Rift, etc, still play those games? Nope. A core group does though, but a lot have moved on to other games. That is just how the industry goes.

Anet cannot produce enough content to keep everyone satisfied, fast enough. Also, WvW is about the fights, the battles, the community. What content is really going to make a world of difference in wvw? They aren’t going to change fundamental game mechanics (like map population, ppt related stuff, etc). They can add maps, and other abilities, maybe WvW traits that can be unlocked, but that wont be enough for the forum warriors. It will be more than enough for the people who are actually playing the game, every day, and having fun.

they can make stuff for maps, and other abilities, new mechanics, etc. People who play Magic the gathering play for fights too, but it reinvents itself every year, and has been a success doing that for like… 20? years now? 12 million players?

i know it aint easy to do, but ehhhh they will have to support WvW with new content or it simply wont last

sorudo.9054:

phys.7689:

sorudo.9054:

sigh, i knew this day would come, the day that i need to do the seasamstreet level of explanation.

player 1: i buy gems with real money
player 2: i buy gems with in-game gold
player 1 pays 10 dollars to Anet, Anet has profit
player 2 pays with gold, Anet gains no money -> no profit
player 1 exchanges the gems with gold -> fills the gem bank -> Anet has no profit
player 2 buys an item in the store -> Anet still gains no money -> no profit

that’s how things really work, there is nothing extra payed nor do gold exchangers make profit.
the only way Anet has any profit is from players who pay with real money like player 1 does, gold exchange only uses the gems that are already bought thus not giving any money just like player 2 did.

so for the third time, no money->no profit

player one buys gold with $ from another player
this is the key step you are missing,
the system only works because another player is willing to give up his time to the other player.
player one has no desire for the other products anet has at that point.

basically in order for player 2 to get gem store item X player one has to buy it for him. In buying it for him, player one actually spends more money on that item than if player two had bought it himself.

The problem is you are thinking anet is selling player one gold, that is not really true, anet is allowing player one to sell his gold to player two, at a cost. If anet did not use this type of system, the economy would probably fail and have to be extremely different. Creating money out of nothing devalues your money, and makes it impossible to actually manage the money flow. Money has to be created through gameplay/time and balanced/accounted for.

with the gem system, anet is not printing money, they are basically allowing players to barter for goods with real money and time played.

take a look at wildstar system, its packaged in a lump sum, but it basically works the same.
player one buys monthly membership tokens for real dollars, he sells it to player two for gold.
player two is not really playing for free, he actually was paid for by player one, carbine is still getting 15 dollars a month for every single player who plays. in fact they are getting more money, because credds cost 20 bucks, and there is a tax on the exchange, which amount basically means for the same amount of gold as he wants, player one has to pay more, and for the month that player two wants to get, he has to play more.

tldr, anet is getting paid for every single item sold in the gem store, aside from the gems they give away for fixed amounts of work/compensation/promotions etc.

The gem trade just allows anet to monetize people who would not normally buy their products, and get more money from people who would spend more money for more value in game without totally devaluing the product that they are selling

uhmm….you’re seeing a step that doesn’t exist, you only want to see that step.
player 1 doesn’t buy gems for player 2, player 1 buys gems only for him/her self.

to make it even easier to understand the system, the moment player 1 pays for the gems, no other profit is made.
what happens with the gems is no concern of Anet, they just want your money in trade of gems.
all the gems sold with real money are there anyway and they can just make gems at any time, the gems that are used to buy gold are just thrown in a bucked and anyone can buy gems with gold.
ill even make a whole diagram if i have to, explaining it trough text is clearly not good enough.

let me attack this from another angle.

every item in the gemstore is paid for with gems correct?
every gem (aside from achieves and promotions) is created through someone giving real money to anet.

This means that every single purchase in the gem store, no matter its source was paid for by real cash at the end of the day.

what happens to the gems is a concern of anet, because gems are only bought to get a product. IE, in your example,
player 1 will not buy any gems
because he doesnt want anything in the shop

the only thing he wants is someone to play for him while he is at work so that he has money to do what he wants to do in game.

player 2 wants items, and is willing to play for this guy in order to get it. Anet steps in and makes the deal for these players, but they take a fee.

heres what it boils down to
gold is worth money.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Except if you were gifted items, you could not receive a refund. =/

he didnt get a refund, he got store credit, which is pretty common for gift voucher refunds.

Gewd.8125:

TooBz.3065:

Gewd.8125:

TooBz.3065:

The price of precursors suggests that there are items that people want that require a lot of gold.

It’s just that it’s not worth it for people to exchange their gems for gold.

Tell me, without thinking about the reverse transaction, how much gold would you like to get for a dollar?

This is the wrong way to think about it.

If the price of a precursor is sky high, that doesn’t mean that gold is worth a lot.

In our case it only means that it is too easy to farm for and there’s nothing else people want to spend it on. There’s a lack of gold sinks and too many gem sinks.

I think I misunderstood your argument. Mostly because when I think of a “gold sink” I think of the taxes that are imposed on playing. For example, waypoint costs, BLTP fees, etc… I think the last thing we need is more of these. If I, for example, couldn’t afford to port around without selling gems for gold I’d probably quitthe game.

Personally, I avoid the optional gold sinks in the game. For example, I wanted the T3 cultural armor for a long time, but now that I have the gold, I’m holding on to it for the precursor.

Bottom line, I think that precursors being so expensive messes everything else up. I don’t spend money on the available gold sinks because I’m saving for the precursor. I don’t buy gold with gems because I’m not spending $100 dollars on a virtual item.

So I have no reason to buy gold. If most people feel like me, the price of gold is going to continue to rise.

That is because you don’t value anything else bought with gold other than a precursor.

The other gold sinks in the game are worthless compared to a precursor so that leaves you with precursors or gem store items.

yeah, essentially the game isnt providing a lot you can do with gold other than work towards a legendary. It is the driving force behind the whole economy. The value of gems continues to grow however, with more convenience, more unlocks, and more gear.
so yeah basically the only things people think are worth a large amount of gold, are gems, and things related to legendaries.

also if you have money beforehand or not, if the materials are worth more than 15% of the cost of the item, you would be wasting your time and money crafting them.

Except, as you say, if your goal is to get crafting exp, which as i said, is a flaw in crafing market (not unique to GW2) imo.

I think the reason so many developers do it, is so that crafters fill the need for players to have items but the pursuit of profit or a love of crafting should be the main reason someone makes an item

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

1. It is always tricky to say what is OP and what is not but one thing I think happens is there is this prevailant believe that GW2 is all about DPS and nothing else. If you try to out DPS a warrior with a necro you’re most certainly going to fail and the warrior will feel OP. Thing is all classes can do a lot but they all have their own strength and weaknesses. If i am facing a warrior with my necro I will try to disrupt him as much as possible while putting in conditions on him for example.

2. no expansion doesnt mean no new classes or no new weapons. They can do that as well and they said it already that expansion or not there will be new weapons and new classes with an emphasis that new weapons would probably come first.

3. gold trading outside of what anet provides is already against the terms and if caught you’ll get banned.

4. mirrors what i said about 1. its not just about DPS, though people seem to ignore there is also the control and support aspect of a class as well. An elementalist and a mesmer can boost the whole party damage by 80% while also disrupting the enemy and removing conditions from allies as well as DPS a bit. that means you get more overall damage then having 5 straight up warriors while also mitigating a good amount of damage recieved by the party. It has its advantages.

5. I wouldnt say crafting is useless. Its a good way to gear up cheaply. A good way to trying to acquire a precursor or one of the rare named weapons. Its a good way to get consumables.

actually its not a good way to gear up, in general most crafting recipes are done at a loss, meaning the materials are worth more. Not really good for consumables except cooking, but a great many cooking recipes are not worth thier price in materials well. Honestly, ill say they did not put crafting in the world well, they built the game in a way so that everyone should craft, i dont think that is a good paradigm.

well thats provided you have the money before hand though. If you just reached 80 its unlikely you’re going to have enough money to buy a full set but if you decided to craft it it will not matter. Granted you could always gather then material sell them and buy the stuff anyway, its an option sure but then you’ll also sacrifcing leveling your crafting and there are a few things that are cheaper to get / maintain with crafting then buying directly.

Did they? how is the game build in a way that everyone should craft? like you just said crafting is entirely optional and if anything not really the best option either in most cases. Think the issue is most likely that crafting gives leveling XP and thus a lot of people use it as a way to level their character up which in turn saturate the market with items that are sold simply to get some of the leveling investment back rather then to make a profit thus having people open to undercutting each other more then they should.

they built the exp curve to have gaps, that they directly reccomend people to craft. In beta when people asked how come they were behind level following personal story and the stuff in zones, they said they expected people to explore, craft, complete maps, etc.

Not only that but they put legendaries behind crafting, which wasnt so bad, and then they put ascended (best in slot). They also put some of the festival items and what not behind crafting as well.
Its clear they expect everyone to craft in order to be the best at the game they can be.
Crafting exp, sounded good on paper, and i enjoyed it the first time, but honestly they should not have tied exp to production of materials.

What they could have done is given quests that can level up your craft and also give exp, that use up materials, IF they needed a material sink. Or they could have made the best exp/growth come from crafting for npcs, that costs no materials, then people would only use their own materials if they also wanted to profit.

That aside, some people dont enjoy crafting/gathering at all, forcing them to do, and have virtually no other option if they want to get good gear was a big mistake imo.

Nick.6972:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but, doesn’t less farming places/methods equate to lower gold/gem conversion rate?
Less gold, less gems bought, gems cost less.

gems may cost less with less money in the market, however, its not as big an issue as you think, whats important is how hard you have to work for them, and what you are giving up when give up your gold.

but honestly i think the rate is more effected by demand of gem store items, versus demand of gold items. Gem store costs are rising at a higher rate than inflation, primarily because gold is seen as less valuable and gem store items as more valuable compared to what it once was.

Oh yeah, and gold sellers are messing up the equation by being competition for your product as gold—>gem seller, and messing up anet profits, by allowing people to directly cash out, instead of giving the money back to the gem store.

they essentially cause the prices gold→gem to rise by making the exchange feel like there are less people who desire gold, which also helps them by allowing them to charge more since the official source is charging more, and makes their product look more attractive.

sorudo.9054:

sigh, i knew this day would come, the day that i need to do the seasamstreet level of explanation.

player 1: i buy gems with real money
player 2: i buy gems with in-game gold
player 1 pays 10 dollars to Anet, Anet has profit
player 2 pays with gold, Anet gains no money -> no profit
player 1 exchanges the gems with gold -> fills the gem bank -> Anet has no profit
player 2 buys an item in the store -> Anet still gains no money -> no profit

that’s how things really work, there is nothing extra payed nor do gold exchangers make profit.
the only way Anet has any profit is from players who pay with real money like player 1 does, gold exchange only uses the gems that are already bought thus not giving any money just like player 2 did.

so for the third time, no money->no profit

player one buys gold with $ from another player
this is the key step you are missing,
the system only works because another player is willing to give up his time to the other player.
player one has no desire for the other products anet has at that point.

basically in order for player 2 to get gem store item X player one has to buy it for him. In buying it for him, player one actually spends more money on that item than if player two had bought it himself.

The problem is you are thinking anet is selling player one gold, that is not really true, anet is allowing player one to sell his gold to player two, at a cost. If anet did not use this type of system, the economy would probably fail and have to be extremely different. Creating money out of nothing devalues your money, and makes it impossible to actually manage the money flow. Money has to be created through gameplay/time and balanced/accounted for.

with the gem system, anet is not printing money, they are basically allowing players to barter for goods with real money and time played.

take a look at wildstar system, its packaged in a lump sum, but it basically works the same.
player one buys monthly membership tokens for real dollars, he sells it to player two for gold.
player two is not really playing for free, he actually was paid for by player one, carbine is still getting 15 dollars a month for every single player who plays. in fact they are getting more money, because credds cost 20 bucks, and there is a tax on the exchange, which amount basically means for the same amount of gold as he wants, player one has to pay more, and for the month that player two wants to get, he has to play more.

tldr, anet is getting paid for every single item sold in the gem store, aside from the gems they give away for fixed amounts of work/compensation/promotions etc.

The gem trade just allows anet to monetize people who would not normally buy their products, and get more money from people who would spend more money for more value in game without totally devaluing the product that they are selling

scerevisiae.1972:

the GW1 system of rewarding a significant portion of skills (or in this game, traits) via quest lines worked really well there, why is the GW2 so retrograde?

actually it is incorrect to say a signifigant portion of skills were rewarded through quests, it was just the starter ones, some special faction ones, and elites. the rest you went to an npc in some area and unlocked, or you could capture them, but turns out that was better for elites, also note, capturing them wasnt always the cheapest option.

See essentially in gw1, only special skills, required unlocks, and that is the flaw with their implementation, they put it on every trait, haphazardly. hunting elites was essentially a high level thing you did for skills that were more powerful and worth it.
Doing an hour long map completion for fall damage reduction is stupid.

You dont really have enough tools, especially on some classes, to generate interesting gameplay without traits. For some styles of play you may need cool down reductions, or on dodge abilities, etc to truely play that style properly, shifting that synergy and smoothness 20 levels higher, and making some of them require you do things, that are very tailored to a certain playstyle is mistake.

guardian mechanic is boring trash without traits, steal on thief is pretty useless without traits. basically the game doesnt get started till about 50 or 60 now, and the road to 60 is pretty boring till about 50ish.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Dragonite is the hardest of the materials you cannot buy. Silk is what costs the most of those you can. I have two light sets and one medium set minus the head piece.

depends on playstyle, but dragonite is really easy if you are used to doing highlevel world bosses.
empyreal is easy if you do dungeons or wvw a lot
bloodstone is easy if you kill lots of champs

DarkSpirit.7046:

Dark Dark Binks.8210:

I’ve made my ascended armor for “free” when they where introduced. I stocked all the mats to level up armorsmith to 500 and I sold the 20 exotics i made to buy everything I needed for my armor

Unfortunately, you can’t buy vision crystals or their ingredients, which means they are a necessary grind if you want to craft them.

the vision crystal part of ascended is meant to represent playing the game world, over the economy. It isnt that hard to do actually, if you do the best thing for each currency.
WvW for a day or 2 will get you enough bloodstone and empyreal, 7 orrian world events will get you the dragonite, (which probably takes about 70-95 minutes of playtime. each dungeon path gives like 20 a path, soo 10 dungeon paths, i guess this is the grindiest part, unless you are speed running specific paths, but you can also get empyral from treasure chests if you prefer doing that.

Galen Grey.4709:

1. It is always tricky to say what is OP and what is not but one thing I think happens is there is this prevailant believe that GW2 is all about DPS and nothing else. If you try to out DPS a warrior with a necro you’re most certainly going to fail and the warrior will feel OP. Thing is all classes can do a lot but they all have their own strength and weaknesses. If i am facing a warrior with my necro I will try to disrupt him as much as possible while putting in conditions on him for example.

2. no expansion doesnt mean no new classes or no new weapons. They can do that as well and they said it already that expansion or not there will be new weapons and new classes with an emphasis that new weapons would probably come first.

3. gold trading outside of what anet provides is already against the terms and if caught you’ll get banned.

4. mirrors what i said about 1. its not just about DPS, though people seem to ignore there is also the control and support aspect of a class as well. An elementalist and a mesmer can boost the whole party damage by 80% while also disrupting the enemy and removing conditions from allies as well as DPS a bit. that means you get more overall damage then having 5 straight up warriors while also mitigating a good amount of damage recieved by the party. It has its advantages.

5. I wouldnt say crafting is useless. Its a good way to gear up cheaply. A good way to trying to acquire a precursor or one of the rare named weapons. Its a good way to get consumables.

actually its not a good way to gear up, in general most crafting recipes are done at a loss, meaning the materials are worth more. Not really good for consumables except cooking, but a great many cooking recipes are not worth thier price in materials well. Honestly, ill say they did not put crafting in the world well, they built the game in a way so that everyone should craft, i dont think that is a good paradigm.

Psichologas.1063:

Well I do know that some companies sue some websites for sharing their products for free on torrents, basically I don’t know if by law Anet could sue gold selling sites to get rid of them, it’s really easy to find those sites, other way would be adding gold sending limit, as most gold sellers send gold by mail. Indeed there is no way to 100% stop gold selling but are a lot of effective tools to reduce it.

yes they could sue them for damages, but they are generally on foreign soil, and they can pop up again pretty easily, its probably not woth the money and time, since they may very well see no return.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Does anyone know whether traits are the same in the China release? If they are, does anyone also know whether a player base that had not seen the old system is reacting?

The answers to these questions may make quite a bit of difference in how ANet reacts to the criticisms in this thread. If the new population is not complaining (or likes the system), and it they want to keep the two versions as close as possible, we may not see substantial change.

I think that some of the complaints arise because we’d gotten used to how traits were. I also think that there are some aspects of the system that are objectively bad — like putting adept trait capping in high level zones.

Isley.1649:

Did the devs even tell us WHY they came up with the unlocking system in the first place?

From the Blog on traits before the feature patch.

“This new system for acquiring traits in the game brings back an aspect of the original Guild Wars that we really liked, which was exploring the world as a major component of character progression. Acquiring traits will be a horizontal progression system which will give us new ways to add new traits to the game and promote interesting content!”

chinese market isnt just new, they have very different paradigm. I will say that these trait changes were mostly meant to fit in with the chinese paradigms, and cash shop.

also the execution was poor, and lazy, though i understand the paradigm of herding players together, you are not enhancing gameplay by having same unlocks for everything, and group orienting personal growth. Its just not good the way its been handled.

Dondarrion.2748:

Just want to chip in that the lasting effects I see of the current implementation of megaservers is that while servers are generally well populated, Anet are basically killing/neglecting the most important aspect of a thriving MMORPG; the community is at a severe disadvantage to getting relevant players together, whether that comes from friends at a micro-level to groups/guilds at the macro level and players from your own homeworld at the biggest level. Before you’d see the same names over and over and develop a sense of community and belonging, now even guilds and small groups are facing too many barriers just getting to play together, and as such megaservers in their current implementation are just killing off GW2’s most important factor.

Anet – you seriously need to revise your algorithms/implementations of megaservers and how you put players together in shards; come up with a way of handling “districts” like in GW1 and rather than having people spam “join in <zone>” to get in over and over when a shard is full, queue people up just like you do for WvW entry so that people can rather focus on playing the game in the meantime while still moving forward in queue to get in to the same shard as their friends/guilds/etc.

yeah i have said it before, ill say it again, in order for megaservers to work well, they have to come up with new means of identifying, encouraging and developing communities, and megaserver has to be able to accomodate people who specifically want to go out of their way to play together.

so allow players to create/develop/manage communities based on shared interests, and then allow them to travel together

chronus.1326:

phys.7689:

gw1 allowed more creativity definately, but i dont think elemental damage has anything to do with creativity. Its nice to be able to attack at an enemies weakness, but it essentially makes you play with one element to certain enemy types.

What they were going for is that each element type performs differently, and has different advantages based on that.
However, i think they could have rounded it out better.

fire is meant to be a damage building set, you get access to many self might fields, and might giving effects, it also has pretty strong direct dmg. This works well in short fights, or fights where you dont need to be on defense

water is primarily about recovery, its good for dealing with enemies with conditions

air is quick striking and gives you better control, and movement

earth is defensive with a focus on mitigation, and conditions.

so depending what enemies you are fighting there is still advantages tied to elements, but it isnt so straight forward as this element wins. That said, i think they could better tune the advantages, earth is pretty useless besides some aoe effects, its ability to effectively do conditions is limited, air does enhance movement and control, but it is left with few options for quick dmg because of long cool downs

water is based on recovery, but it should probably feel deeper than it does in general.

Overall i think that GW2 should basically create a skill swap system with alternate skills to choose from for some weapon skills, part of the problem is they only have 5 skills, and they have to do basically everything with those skills for every class/playstyle type. leads to a lot mundane results

Doesn’t have anything like that.

There are about 4 type of skills in the game that repeat ad infinitum and make up 70% of all the skills in the game: damage skills, gap closers, retreat skills, and buffs. The rest of the skills, and even some of these are completely useless in their iterations. The additional conditions or boons are often entirely inconsequential, along with combo fields that are not really a skill to pull off in a zerg anyway and add about +10% to a boss fight that is still a tediously long rotation spam except maybe Teq but that is exactly why everyone fails it because the game doesn’t in any way make the player use and excercise his brain cells in any other content whatsoever.

Playstyles are forcefully linked to weapons, meaning you cannot have a favourite playstyle and a favourite weapon at the same time. More broadly speaking, if you do not favor two-handed swords, you might aswell forget the game.

Comes from a long way from Guild Wars were you could have and Assassin run around with a Scythe with a non-dagger crit damage build or a Warrior with a Staff when more energy was needed.

This game is a game of limitations, not a game of possibilities.

The skills system as well as the combat system and about the entire game was based around the terror of having to balance it afterwards. It is a steaming pile of kitten droppings from a bunch of people who didn’t want to work on it after they release it, just add more episodic content (DLC) because an MMO just seem to work that way from the outside when you are an amateur developer or a stupid publisher CEO who juggles around human resources like tarrot cards to get lucky.

This game was afraid of itself, and for no reason because they did a splendid job balancing GW for 7 years.

Lazyness is eating it away from the inside like cancer.

Like the 400gem monocle or the flaming gemshop armor that was so lazy at release that they had to change it due to demand.

Or the Krytan armor and the Primeval Armor and the rest are cash shop items instead of HoM rewards for GW players who farmed out Tormended Weapons to get to 50/50.

im guessing you are just trying to make a point, but there are more than 4 types of skills

damage skill
debuff skills chill, poison, weakness cripple
defensive skills
buff skills
movement skills
heal skills
condition remove skills
stun breakers
control skills
then there are various fields and finishers
resource skills

but if you want to say thats not enough choices there isnt many skills i can think of in GW1 that didnt fall into those categories.

yes, you could be more creative with your skill set in GW1, but lets not pretend that they dont have various skills, that serve different purposes.

Also while the skill selection and deck building was deeper in gw1, the combat itself was not, mostly due to a very simplified positional combat and defense being completely tied to skills.

That said the enemy encounter design is really poor in gw2, so you wont see the use for the vast majority of skills, or deep combat outside of spvp, and some high end fractals

oh yeah, and the game probably needs to have some harder contents throughout. It doesnt all need to be hard, but they need to have some things that make you be like, man i need to get better/stronger, as it is, a lot of the depth in GW2 is never seen/felt, because it doesnt seem to matter that much, 1-70 is now even easier to win, and mostly based on having the best gear for your level, and everything will be easy.

the game needs to adapt to skill level of the player better, and keep the player striving to be better.

chronus.1326:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You could always try Guild Wars (One), then. It has lots and lots of skills to choose from.

Basically this.

Or Path of Exile. Almost as diverse as Guild Wars was and it’s completely free.

Guild Wars 2 isn’t really for creative people. It’s more cut to casual gamers hopping in and out here and then, like with fps shooters like Counter Strike or CoD. Most of the skills are even the exact same skill, with a slight damage difference, accross multiple classes. There isn’t really much diversity in functions. The Ele is the biggest lie since GW2 doesn’t have elemental damage like fire, water, lightning, or earth, like GW did. No native damage resistance or weakness of enemies to it either. No damage immunities and condition immunities either, save for bosses. In GW you couldn’t bleed or poision elementals, or blind creatures that were already blind. It was closer to a simplified d&d system in terms of complexity. Water elementals took double fire damage. I think the only thing that transferred to GW2 was the Destroyer’s immunity to burning.

These things were common back then. And yet nothing was completely immune to damage like the stupid WvW bosses. Maybe Shiro.

Guild Wars also had that “skills get more powerful as you allocate more points into their attributes” thing. It might be the game you are looking for.

It was the game we were all looking for when GW2 was coming out.

gw2 allowed more creativity definately, but i dont think elemental damage has anything to do with creativity. Its nice to be able to attack at an enemies weakness, but it essentially makes you play with one element to certain enemy types.

What they were going for is that each element type performs differently, and has different advantages based on that.
However, i think they could have rounded it out better.

fire is meant to be a damage building set, you get access to many self might fields, and might giving effects, it also has pretty strong direct dmg. This works well in short fights, or fights where you dont need to be on defense

water is primarily about recovery, its good for dealing with enemies with conditions

air is quick striking and gives you better control, and movement

earth is defensive with a focus on mitigation, and conditions.

so depending what enemies you are fighting there is still advantages tied to elements, but it isnt so straight forward as this element wins. That said, i think they could better tune the advantages, earth is pretty useless besides some aoe effects, its ability to effectively do conditions is limited, air does enhance movement and control, but it is left with few options for quick dmg because of long cool downs

water is based on recovery, but it should probably feel deeper than it does in general.

Overall i think that GW2 should basically create a skill swap system with alternate skills to choose from for some weapon skills, part of the problem is they only have 5 skills, and they have to do basically everything with those skills for every class/playstyle type. leads to a lot mundane results

as mesmer, your traits are really important and can totally alter your playstyle.

they have a dueling one that gives you a clone whenever you dodge
they have illusion cooldown ones that can give you a lot more versatility
they have traits that cause your illusions to put debuff when they die including exploding
they have traits that make mantras give 3 charges instead of two
heal everytime you finish charging a mantra
trait that makes it so you count as an illusion for the purposes of shattering
traits that make you do damage when successfully interupt

suffice to say traits matter a lot.
as for weapon skills, you really need to unlock them all, and use most of them.

that said, i understand how, visually its not as exciting since your moves and powers will appear to be the same forever. there are a few small visual effects on traits, but thats about all.

Anet should look to creating enhanced weapon skill variations and graphics that you can work towards or unlock through play, however, pretty sure they will never do that.

It is kind of nice to unlock some super cool looking moves as you get higher level.

sorudo.9054:

phys.7689:

sorudo.9054:

phys.7689:

sorudo.9054:

phys.7689:

snow.8097:

and in 6 months 1g is 1gem worth and anet gonna swim in Money because no one can buy the gem stuff with Gold anymore and pays real Money for new skins
longtime Mission completed anet

actually they get more money from gold to gems to store, if the system is actually direct.
Due to the taxes. remember in theory every gem sold is acounted for by some one who bought gems.
so if you buy it direct, you pay for the item, if you buy it with gold, someone else paid, and they took some tax out.

The whole point of the system is that they always get paid regardless.

actually the only one who payed are the ones who used real money, the gold->gem exchange gives them absolutely no profit whatsoever.
taxes are already done by the one who actually bought the gems, no player generates any tax on anything with the gold->gem exchange, not even on the gem->gold exchange.

Essentially GW2 is selling gold, or rather, allowing players to sell gold to other players.
If any one makes a gems->gold purchase they are giving anet money, so they can trade with players.

So there is a value for gold =gems.

Essentially people who trade gold to gems are employees for anet, they are workers who create a product of game rewards for people who want stuff faster and easier.

the tax essentially is like the players getting paid less for the same service, or buyers getting less product for the same money.

…..no real money, no profit……that’s it.

the real money is the money the gem seller spent in order to get gold. Created by another player.

Essentially other players are creating a gem store item that people who dont care about what they actually produce in the gem store can buy.

they pay these players in items the guy with the money wasnt interested in anyhow. but they pay them at a lower rate than they would normally get it the sold it themselves.

Essentially lets say GW2 owned a store, and people could buy anything in the store, or pay the owner 10 bucks to kiss any employee. Every dude who spends 10 bucks to kiss an employee, was more interested in kissing the employee than anything in the store. They then pay the employee 7 in store credit dollars for every purchase.

The owner is actually getting more value when an employee buys a 10 dollar item with store credit, because if the employee had just kissed the customer outside of the store, they would have gotten 10 dollars, and been able to buy something they wanted, instead of getting 7 dollars and having to kiss more people to get the 10 dollar item.

So essentially the owner is selling a new product, and getting more value for a product that wasnt selling anyway, once you also realize the in store items are infinite, and take up no space, its a real gain in value to do it this way.

again, no real money, no profit.
nice try tho

the real money is the money the guy who wanted gold paid anet. every single gemstore item that is sold is either making as much money as it says, or more in terms of how much real money the guy wanted gold gave to the gem buyer to buy an item.
in fact every item that a gold—→ gem buyer spends on the shop actually costed more money for the guy buying gold with his gems.

when some one buys an item for 800 gold(10 dollars) with gold, some dude probably paid closer to 13 dollars for that item to come into the game.
Unless the gem exchange is not doing its job right.

they are losing nothing, its a clever system. Essentially the people with a lot of money are buying items for other players, but paying more for them. either way, anet is getting paid for every product.