Guild Wars 2

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

where do you guys get your info on the inner workings of the gem exchange, preusing JS history of posts tends to suggest that what you diescribe is not the case

John Smith.4610:

There seems to be some confusion:
The currency exchange has a supply of Gems and Gold.

If players are converting Gold to Gems, then the Amount of Gold player will receive for their gems goes up.
If players are converting Gems to Gold, then the amount of Gems players receive for Gold goes up.

The exchange rate changes based on the scarcity of each supply. You cannot inflate it, it’s an exchange rate. As players purchase in one direction, it entices purchases in the other direction.

To paraphrase:

The exchange contains X gold and Y gems. These numbers change constantly as transactions occur.

When X goes up and Y goes down, the gold value of gems increases because there is now more gold and less gems. So if you sell gems you get more gold, while it costs more to buy gems with gold.

When Y goes up and X goes down, there are now more gems and less gold, so the value of gems decreases and it costs less gold to buy each gem, and you get less gold for each gem you sell.

yes its an exchange rate, based on a transaction algorithm, its not like a literal fort knox. It doesnt really matter effectively if it is or it is not, but it is not.

Essentially its not like an old school bank, its just an exchange rate determined by the calculated value based on the exchanges. They print money or gems as needed. They can even make adjustments if they feel the rate isnt condusive to whatever their goals are at the time. such as not making it spike too kittene way or the other.

There was a whole debate on the fact that it wasnt direct at one point, and how they could adjust it.

But hey maybe that was misrepresented, or i got it wrong, but i doubt it. US had big problems with hitting the wall on having to actually have real money, and going bankrupt, I doubt anet would tie them selves to hard numbers they couldnt alter as needed.

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.

DonQuack.9025:

phys.7689:

DonQuack.9025:

snip

what exactly do you gain by keeping people ignorant? I mean really other than you getting to insult them and tell them to l2p when they fail marrionette, and die on grenth. What would you lose by actually getting a greater % of players to know the game basics?

You seem to be adamantly for people not being taught anything, but there really is no gain for that.

Its less about l2p and more l2r. r being read. its something I want to scream at the top of my lungs as I walk to the subway and back. I guess Im stuck in my ways.

I guess its how I was raised? Never really watched tv as a child it was reading and more reading. I would read textbooks months before I actually started class.
As an "adult’ I dont own a tv. I have 2 bookshelves full and a maxed out gen 1+2 kindle(none of that video Fire crap)

I dont know. Maybe I feel its better they complain when they fail and they dont have something holding their hands rather than having something hold their hands and still complaining.

Case in point bf4. My first BF since 2. my first games I was utterly dominated. Im talking 2-40 12-50. I backed out. I found symthic. I spent an evening between gw2 and reading symthic. I learned. Watched levelcap- learned he was somewhat fos stopped watching him. Ingame I found the good squads and joined them. Watched what they did. Emulated. and now I can say I am somewhat good atleast better than the average bf player. I am consistently called a hacker, attempted bans/kicks are atleast once daily tried against me. Did I mention I play laying down on a bed with my cheap satin sheet as my mouse pad?

Conversely my friend he only plays when he is “blazed”.(supposedly) He is generally quite horrible at the game. Thankfully it is bf4 multi-player there-for he can call hacks or bf4 net-code “aka every bad players convenient excuse”. He can be very good but he doesnt want to. I tell him things. Give advice. Generally ignored. I get upset trying to educate a person that doesnt truly want to. He wants to hop ingame press W left click a few times and hopefully kill people.
——-
About 4 weeks ago I was put on a small team to train new hires in our policies and such. A young woman complained to TL that I didnt give her the same attention that I gave the others. I was confronted and I said " Sit in during class and watch".

I asked everyone a basic questions. Hospital wide policy questions that everyone without question should atleast have the basic gist of if not be able to repeat it verbatim. She was the only one who didnt know it. ANY of it.
Mind you all new hires get a folder with that written down and are told to know it. But that is not what I was teaching I was teaching R&R for L&D.
TL understood me fully. I know I didnt see said young woman since then. I can only presume she was fired.

I forget my point. Or rather the point is in my head and I dont really deem it important enough try and figure out my thoughts on this so I can properly put it down.

tldr crap players with no desire to learn will always be crap players so why cater to them in the blind hope they will somehow be somewhat better?

you read, you analyze, your brain has a certain optimal way of proccessing, and intellectual curiosity. But not everyone works the same way. There are different ways that different people learn more easily. The number of people who are incapable of learning/improving is lower than you think.

tolunart.2095:

Sauzo.6821:

And yes, it is very smart of them to do but again they are just using the same cash store models that other games have used for years. I personally still think they create the gems to meet the demands. I mean if they had a finite amount and for some odd reason they ever ran out, what would they do, close down the cash shop? No they would create gems since that is their main source of income. Regardless, I wish I would bought tons of gems on head start instead of mastering all the crafts

The discussion is about the gems to gold exchange, not gems in general. Go into any WalMart and there are boxes with thousands of gem cards, you can buy gems online via credit card. Those gems are limitless, because they are produced in a similar manner to the gold awarded for killing a boss or running a dungeon. The supply in both cases is limitless because they are created, not exchanged.

But when you buy gems for gold, it comes from a separate pool of existing gems that have already been paid for and the gold (minus tax) is set aside in a similar “box” for later use when someone buys gems for real money and trades them for gold.

The gold to gems exchange works only with existing gold/gems and does not create a single unit of either one. In theory one side or the other can run dry, but long before that happens the exchange rate will encourage players to cash in and replenish the supply.

Keep in mind that thousands of transactions happen every hour, the gems/gold supply is in the billions, at least, and working with numbers like that is a little different than handling a few hundred or thousand.

where do you guys get your info on the inner workings of the gem exchange, preusing JS history of posts tends to suggest that what you diescribe is not the case

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.

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.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

6)reasonable means that it is backed by reason, or logic, and mathematics,my relationships are reasonable.
What strong economic theories are you talking about that explain something? you talk of these strong economic theories, but you never present any. Being that my logic and mathematics is pretty simple, im pretty sure economic theory already has much of it somewhere in its thought process.

Well I was going to respond to your posts until I read the bolded part above. It shows that you do not know much about economics, did not make an effort to look, nor read (or comprehended/remembered) what I was posting. This explains why this is just going in circles and why, against my better judgment, should have ducked out of this thread long ago.

So with that, this thread is yours and you can do what you wish with it.

good day sir

5) once again, you as a gold focused player see it in terms of gold, why is it people who focus on gold more deserving of items than people who focus on community? or people who focus on fighting other players? people who focus on saving the game world? people who focus on exploration? What is it about focusing specifically on earning gold that makes it more valuable than spending the same time, energy, ingenuity on another facet of the game?
The answer? nothing really, but they had to decide on something. For what ever reasons they went with gold, so this is a natural result of that.

6)reasonable means that it is backed by reason, or logic, and mathematics,my relationships are reasonable.
What strong economic theories are you talking about that explain something? you talk of these strong economic theories, but you never present any. Being that my logic and mathematics is pretty simple, im pretty sure economic theory already has much of it somewhere in its thought process.

7) again i disagree, items are marketed for certain segments of the population, their different prices reflect this, as i pointed out, its why some items are not profitable to make, its because the price selected is not marketed towards people who want to use it for that purpose. You must be thinking of marketing in terms of advertisements, Im talking about figuring out who is your target demographic, and figuring out what they are willing to pay for said item. Its a very basic principle of business.

8) gold is not the only measure of success in the game, but it is by far the most targeted in terms of what you can actually obtain by achieving success.

Am i saying highly desired items should be obtainable without gold, yeah that could be viable, but notice i didnt say that you couldnt use gold to obtain it, i said it would be obtainable(in a reasonable fashion) without gold. As an example, in another game, they had big hard to kill world bosses, they had some drops that could be sold, so you had two choices, gather and kill this big hard to kill boss, and sell the drop, or make enough money that the people who could kill this thing thought it was worth it for them to sell it to you. There was another drop, that you could get more of based on how well you played a certain instance, that was an ingredient for one of the super long term best items, so you could either buy it, or get good at that instance and play it again and again.
Its not really a foreign concept.

Due to the rng nature of drops in this game, that type of thing isnt really an option. Many of the goods come to the market by accident.

3)the relationship is not created by the numbers, the relationship is created by logical analysis, numbers are provided to give context.

(how many of an item are sold a year)/(the population of the game) = the % of population who has that item in a year.

If you are talking about a high demand item, lets represent it as the %of people who would pay something for an item. to figure out what % of the people who want the item have gotten it, you can divide that by the % of people who want the item in the population.
the % of the population who has item in a year/the % of people who want that item = the % of the population who has the item who wants that item after a year. lets call this B so i dont have to write it again

If your purpose as a seller is to get that most money for your product within a year, you will sell it at the highest price that B is willing to pay for it. essentially you dont price it for the bottom of the demand curve, because then you wont get the most money, you price it for as much as B is willing to pay.

A big factor for how much something is worth to a person is how much money they have, so now we can look at the difference in wealth to different segments of the population to see how approachable an item aimed at different groups is worth.

Lets say a player decides this item is worth 10% of my excess money in 2 months, that number is very different if what they make in two months is very different.

all of this is logic based analysis, without any numbers, i plug in numbers to make it easier to understand, and give people a context.
my value for population is severely scaled back and based on released numbers sold. If i didnt scale it back, it would look even crazier. i went from 3 million+ sold to 500,000 playing
the number for a low supplied item was based on when JS told us how many dusks sold in a time frame
the numbers for the wealth distribution are based on graphs for the US, even though i believe we our actual graph will be more harsh when comparing the top 20% to the bottom 50%.

point is, the mathematics is based on logic, the numbers, you can ask JS for those numbers and see what it brings, but i dont think that will happen.

4) i explained the that the relationships were generated logically, without numbers, then i put numbers estimated from known data to simulate the situation as i stated above. My logical representation accounts for each player only needing and wanting one precursor, it actually simplifies the relationship, so that helps.

Ayrilana.1396:

1) Yes. I’m saying items are not marketed to the wealthy. You are saying the exact opposite of that as evidence by your post with the made up drop rate and how long it would take for players to supposedly all get a precursor.

2)There is no niche market in this game where items are specifically available for certain players. Also, nowhere did I state this and that this assumption was normal and expected. This assumption was created by you so please do not say it was from me and then twist my own argument that was against it as a way to support it.

3)I agree that math is about relationships between numbers. However, you’re missing the point that I was making. You created some arbitrary calculation using numbers

4)Again you’re using a made up number that you got from some arbitrary calculation that you used to pose as having a mathematical relationship with the prices or whatever. I will also point out that players only need one precursor as the legendary they create from it will have its skin saved to their wardrobe.

5)As far as the gold rate, yes it is fair. People who put the time and effort to earn more gold deserve the item more than though who do not. Self entitlement does not get people very far. The percentage are not set in stone and players are very easily able to earn more money if they choose.

6)I bolded the part that you’re missing. Reasonable normally means that it’s backed up by something. Pulling something out of the air and plugging the numbers into some formula you created is not that. Especially when there’s strong economic theories that explain it. That last bit you did not do so I don’t know why you included it.

7)Yes. But these mathematical relationships are based on proven economic theory. Something of which yours are not. Again, items in this game are not priced for a certain segment of wealthy players in this game.

8)Gold is not the only measure of success in this game. So you’re telling me that highly desired items should be obtainable without gold?

1) in relation to your point you never said that it was the way it was supposed to be and normal in an economy:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

but i dont think this can be avoided, we have come to a fairly unbalanced economy in terms of the haves and the have nots. Basically anything of value is marketed on top earner basis first and foremost, and they earn money faster than other people. Im not just speaking of TP barons, but anyone who is somewhat focused on the economic side of the game.

That’s in every economy and it’s supposed to be “unbalanced” in the way you stated. Just look to the real world’s economy.

i basically said, the economy is unbalanced, and everything of value is marketed to top earners, you said that is every economy, and thats the way its supposed to be. Never mind it really isnt in every economy, look at the most common basic structure of economies, families, but never mind that. *you directly said its supposed to be unbalanced the way i said, like a real world economy"

2) Yes, items are marketed towards certain players, i dont even know if its possible for them not be. it kind of happens naturally.
look at this
http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/6773
these items are not marketed to those who want to craft givers at a profit, they are priced for a different market. Every item has its markets, and that determines its price. I dont even know if this is debatable.
as to your second part about me making up you saying this, look at answer to number 1, i dont make up anything, if you didnt mean to present that image, thats on you, not me, but that exactly what that your response presents.

Behellagh.1468:

These weren’t suggestions silvermember. I’m making fun of the notion brought up time and time again that raking in money on the TP is somehow unfair to those that “play the game”.

The countless threads wanting more ways to filter the not LEET from joining your party. The threads complaining that you can’t sell your loot on the TP fast enough to get back to your next speedrun/boss train stop. The threads that insist that the most desirable items should only be dropped from the hardest content so only those “worthy” can get them. The threads asking for super tough content. The threads asking for mounts to show off on. The threads on how the new wardrobe devalues legendary weapons allowing them to be skinned onto lesser weapons over and over again. The threads complaining how expensive it is now to get free gems to buy exclusive skins.

They all dovetail together into a picture of a player who is upset that the game is unfair to the talented player, by allowing the untalented (in their eyes) to succeed. A player who values their appearance as a way to establish their skill who gets upset because others can achieve it without the same dedication.

Maybe this goes back to WoW style repetitive raiding until you “put in your dues” and get a full set of BIS for your character, thereby establishing this notion between BIS gear and ability level. If people can buy BIS gear, or the look of BIS gear, that destroys this notion. This leads to wanting to see AP, gear stats, trait picks, etc of other players because you can’t simply look at and judge. It leads to threads where players are upset that other players are earning more doing activities that they see as not core gameplay, ie bopping things on the head.

And some of these notions have popped up in this thread as well. That wealth is “unfairly” distributed across the player base. That it’s the wealthy’s fault that prices go up and that gems cost so much now. And how did they get so wealthy? Well it must be because they are filthy flippers who control the market and ratchet prices up just to see if they can. “Burn him, he’s a flipper!” hysteria.

I’m neither LEET or a flipper. I simply enjoy playing an hour or two and I feel that I earn enough for what I want. I’m patient. I place bids if I want something or price my own sell orders to sell off the night’s haul. 99.9% of everything sells in 24 hours and I’m earning 10-20% on top of those who sell to highest bidder. These are observations from reading this and the GW2 Discussion board.

I’m not suggesting fixes because I don’t see a problem. If the price spikes the first thing I check is it’s chart to see what supply and demand did. I don’t call every bubble inflation. Is there inflation? Yes. But it’s not what’s happening 9 out of 10 times someone drops that word.

really it comes down to incentives, Some people play games to get good, it annoys them that the best way to succeed in this game is not to do that. I do feel it detracts somewhat not to have incentives to improve. But regardless, the reasoning that a meritocracy based on game skills is not valid, why is a meritocracy based on gold earned any more valid? The cries of the Elite Skills people sound exactly the same as the leet money earners.

l2p
work harder
get good
be smarter
survival of the fittest

but now they are applying it to their own strengths. Its basically the same thing except the leet game mode isnt dungeon running, but competitive gold earning.

silvermember.8941:

How do you define a leet player? Everything in PvE can be accomplished either by persistence or by following a guide some better player has made for you. The point being there is no such thing as some leet level.

So how exactly do you define leet?

Just like in life, wealth favors the lucky and the most intelligent, it doesn’t reward the foot soldier, it never can because being a foot soldier is a matter of following a guide presented to you by dulfy. If you give everybody something, you end up giving them nothing.

Anyways, your suggestions will never really work unless they completely get rid of player’s laziness or lack of foresight which is the driving force behind the fastest way to acquire gold.

actually life many times favors the foot soldier. Life varies, sometimes the strong rule, some times the smart, some times the resilient, some times the lucky.
As far as following the guide, that has to do with planning, its easier with a guide, but sometimes it still takes skill and planning to execute, some times the guide doesnt work for you. I will admit in this game right now, there is little challenging content but thats a different thread.

Anyhow the key to my ideal situation is to reward different kinds of progress with rewards that fit that style of play.

People who love being social be more social, and get social type rewards, the more social they are, the more rewards they have access to. (progress in being social = social rewards)
People who love organizing events, get more and better tools, are able to reach more people, etc. get better at organizing successful events, get more tools with which to do it, and more incentives to get pople involved.
People who love doing dungeons get access to more dungeons, and dungeon skills/traits/options and dungeon related loot
people who love doing dynamic events get dynamic event trackers, dynamic event plotlines, back stories, and can start new unique dynamic events. Npcs throughout the world know them, and they get karma boosts, and access to enhanced movement in open world, etc.

so on and so forth, as far as whats leet? that can be determined by the players, all the designers have to do is have different levels for people to surpass, for some content it would be about numbers, for others it might be player appreciation, for others it might be beating harder content.

And what is gold for? well its to trade some of the things you get easily for the things obtained for things you dont like doing, or dont do well. As long as people make progress towards things they enjoy, they are usually happy.

But i realize this will not happen, the game isnt going to have that much of a drastic change.
The system we have is as is, and it will have its pluses and minuses, one of them is saving for big expensive items probably wont work out too well if your income isnt past a certain point.

Behellagh.1468:

silvermember.8941:

Behellagh.1468:

So we went from discussing inflation back to the old standby of “fair” earning per hour.

If Wanze makes a ton of money per week from players not willing to be smart about buying and selling on the TP, good for him.

but it is not fair because for some reason video games specifically MMO have always been a bastion of fairness.

[sardonic]

I think it’s more EGO self gratification. Only LEET players with SKILZ should earn the most and get the best items. Therefore displaying them proudly on your character is proof of your greatness. Any game play that opposes that is a sign of the game being broken. Allowing players to buy such an item with earnings from sources that aren’t rewards from being a LEET player with SKILZ tarnishes the rep of that item which in turn diminishes their use as symbol of a players greatness.

So therefore it burns their buns when a player can earn money doing an activity that doesn’t highlight SKILZ. But it turns out that it’s because these LEET players are actually the ones throwing their “excess” gold to those who understand how to gather it for themselves on the TP.

So sure, your skills rescued the Queen in record time but all that loot you simply dumped onto the TP as fast as possible (kitten error selling bug slowing you down), well a TP master was able to turn a profit on them because you couldn’t be bothered to spend the 5 minutes earning it yourself. It’s the age old Brains vs Brawn rivalry. And like the tech industry in the real world, brains win. And this ticks off brawn to no end.

i dont believe every reward should be focused on leet player with skills, but they should have some things that you can best obtain by reaching that level. I think that ideally, they would reward different players diffierently appropriate to their chosen playstyles, and have the rewards get better as you progress in that content, whether that be through leet skills, time put in, or ingenuity.
An even more ideal structure would some how reward players for adding value to the game, but that would be complex to design.

But to the point of the thread, rare items will always be expensive with this system, and will generally move out of reach until the people with greater resources get theirs first, essentially lowering demand. It doesnt have to be inflation for this to occur. In fact such items can go up in value even while general earning and many other items stay the same or maintain their value.

This is basically the way this system will express itself given the right circumstances.

Behellagh.1468:

So we went from discussing inflation back to the old standby of “fair” earning per hour.

If Wanze makes a ton of money per week from players not willing to be smart about buying and selling on the TP, good for him.

actually im not advocating universal earning per hour, but i dont know if the incentives here are right, in normal capitalism, in theory the consumer is rewarded by getting better quality products for cheaper, and innovation, in this system it really isnt the case. The reason we need 300 silk a day, was because we had too much silk, the reason we had 10000 candy corn recipes is because we had too much corn, the reason we get drops nerfed, is because people are too good at farming. TP players essentially take money from people wanting speed/unaware of value

The general user does not benefit from most of the highly profitable ways of playing the game. The game just readjusts, with everyone getting less.

and thats aside from the whole fact that the system will always incentize whatever play is the easiest/profitable/effecient/repeatable way to earn gold

KarateKid.5648:

Korossive.7085:

…Some players have accumulated so much wealth, over 100k of gold and upwards, that ArenaNet doesn’t know how to bring them down anymore..

This will always be the case, both in RL and in any game that lasts for a while…
So what do you suggest to “bring them down”?

you dont, you just build content so that it isnt gold is not the main means of reliably obtaining things, but rather the main means of trading between people who reliably obtain things, that said gem store stuff can only be obtained two ways, so gold will always be the determining factor

SkyEagle.5029:

This is what they are working on.. a game that looks like a 3rd grade cartoon.. http://www.wildstar-online.com/en/
screwing over GuildWars for a crap kitten concept. Don’t keep your franchise going, kill it and go away…. good luck with ‘WildStar’ pos

pretty sure arena net is totally different company than carbine, and the dont share resources, but i could be wrong.

That said, wildstar may be cartoony, but the game design, pretty good i think.

Boneheart.3561:

For those that enjoyed Underworld and Fissure of Woe.
Some want similar content placed in the game, and more like it’s original rather than a re-imagined adaptation, because it was, at the very least, done well.

I played a Paragon.

To be crystal clear, that meant I could not participate in the “challenge” of Hard Mode Fissure of Woe, and I could only dream of ever reaching Dhuum in Normal Mode. No one would play with me, I was told numerous times it is impossible to bring a Paragon, guildmates couldn’t be bothered.
The lore behind Fissure of Woe intrigued me, and the Underworld’s scenery and inhabitants were a wonder to experience.
How was their difficulty not inherently flawed?
Why was it alright to lock an entire profession out of major content?
In what way could their difficulty be implemented in Guild Wars 2 without alienating players that favor certain Traits?
What made them so good that you could ignore the problems that seemed painfully clear, as the naked sun in your eyes, to me?

I really dont think that paragon was locked out of the content by design, it was probably just due to meta and elitism. Im pretty sure every dungeon could be completed with 1 paragon in the party.

Ayrilana.1396:

Sigh. You’re using biased numbers that could have been filled out of nowhere and then using them into some mathematical equation to argue how the economy/market is.

i dont even really get your point, are you contending that items with high demand, and low supply will not be marketed to the wealthy? because that is the basic premise of what i am saying.

It is totally logical, and makes total sense within this economy, that the people with more money are the market for rare, sought after items. in previous posts you said this is normal and expected. Mathematics is about relationships, you can plug in different numbers but the relationships are the same.

given that it is normal and expected, if the wealth curve is constructed in certain ways, these items will be disproportionally difficult, and time consuming for regular players to get.

If 50% of the population earns 40 gold per week
and 20% of the population earns 400 gold or more per week
and an item is rare enough that only 1.8% of the population can get one per year, who do you think thats items price will be aimed at? what the 40 gold per week player thinks is fair, or what the 400+ gold player thinks is fair?

As far as having no data, JS specifically said, try to come up with reasonable logic, because we have no data, this means we have to assume things, to get a better understanding, By coming up with data, you can test your hypothesis by comparing it to data, and see how the changes in that data change the relationships. You can figure what data is the most relevant. Its pointless to say you have no data in science. You still hypothesize, then you test, or approximate, and repeat the process.

With these mathematical relationships, you can then figure out at what supply would a high demand item, be able to be priced so that the people in a certain segment of the wealth gap arent the target.

but to be perfectly honest, the problem is more one of philosophy, the current descsion is gold earning is the meter of success as far as itemization goes. As long as this is the case, the most desired items with low supply will always be out of the reach of most players(the ones who dont play gold focused), until the demand drops.

Essence Snow.3194:

Wanze.8410:

Rare and expensive drops also benefit the average player because once they get one, they ARE rich.

That’s more of an exception. It’s like saying that the lottery benefits the average player b/c if they win they are rich. For example: those that do not get a good drop from the gauntlet would have benefited more by doing something else instead. Thus in trying for a “good” drop the good drop has essentially been more of a detriment to the player. Unfortunately this is more so the case than the other.

essentially this, and im not saying they should take away the lottery, but its a bad system where winning the lottery is the main hope for upward mobility outside of 3 job types.

eithinan.9841:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

average player for a long time, no matter how skilled they are, or how good they are at anything in the game aside from gold making activities.

Once the average player is skilled at something, he will make more gold than the average player.

I also think the highest aim in a game is fun, not gold.

Rare and expensive drops also benefit the average player because once they get one, they ARE rich.

There are players that run dungeons way faster then me and make much more gold from them than I do. They are much better at it than I am. People also have learned to farm black lion keys and I have no idea, or interest in how to do that quickly. These are examples of people who have gotten proficient at these tasks and make more money than I do at them.

Wanze is better at playing the TP than I am, so it would stand to reason he has more skill than I do at that task just like the examples above show others who are better at other tasks or aspects of the game.

the max payout of key running, (changes depending on ticket) but it ends up being like 3-4 gold an hour. The side benefit is you can get a bunch of account bound stuff you cant get easily through other types of play. but there is a max effeciency, and it doesnt really pay well. i have done a bunch of keys and looked at various data.

dungeon running is one of 3 or so main ways to farm, so speaking of that is kind of pointless. The tp playing stands completely out of bounds than all other forms of play, it has a totally different rule set and totally different equation for succcess than anything else in the game.

whats max average payout on fractal level 50?
jumping puzzles?
chest hunting?
completing random dynamic events (as opposed to the massed farmed meta ones)
gathering?
hard path dungeon running?

yeah, if they get better at things they enjoy outside of the main gold farms, they get more money, but it starts bad, and maxes out poorly.

Essentially they cannot compete with the best gold farms, that is why those activities are not the best gold farms.

There are other factors like time, but the main point is that this is the natural end result that this system will play out. The people who have the most money will continue to outpace the others by a fair margin, and even without inflation, low supply items will not be priced for them, for a long time. There is also the fact that the costs of living will effect you more adversly the less you make. (thats probably why they reduced it)

In another system, if they decided they wanted something they could work to that goal slowly, but low supply items will always be priced in ways that a very uncomfortable unless they get good at gold earning specifically. This will only increase with new items, as the disparity grows.

As for the pursuit of fun, If GW2 increases the fun quotient and goals/progression outside of gold at level 80+, it will mitigate the perception that the economies imbalances are that important, but we arent there yet. We dont even know if that is a goal that they wish to achieve.

For the people who have fun getting gold, the game has a robust and unending endgame, with constant shifts in meta, new items, new trends. For other types of play, there is not too many goals, changes, new things for them to aim for.

Galen Grey.4709:

remember all the things people said Anet was never going to do cause they dont listen to feedback that they actually ended up doing.

Patience people last thing we want is for them to rush something like this… However they end up doing the precursor acquisition it will have to be something that takes effort. The easiest effort to implement is grind (1000 ancient wood, 1000 this, 1000 that etc..) I am in a way glad this is taking time because I imagine they’re trying to make something thats engaging but that will take time to complete which is at least for me many times preferable to something thats straight up farming !

uhhh i would be very surprised if it wasnt mostly get 1000x +1000y, thats basically how all item progression has been in the game. Which makes me wonder why its taking so long. I will be happy to eat my words if it ends up being a great system with depth that has you mastering more and more of the game, and having fun while doing it.

But ehhh
its prolly going to be a 1000 polynomial expansion answer.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

The numbers I gave are conservative estimates based on numbers anet released. Which number do you think is exaggerated?

The top 30% of players make 10 times more than 65% of the population, for example.

its not that crazy a number,
our curve wasnt super great in beta, and things have gotten a lot more disparate since then.

Of course i dont have hard data, but people have brought it up, and JS hasnt claimed their isnt a large disparity in wealth since beta.

even if i scale it back to the top 20% making 10x, it would still take 11 years with a 500k population for the top 20% to get all theirs, thats if new earners dont come in.

point is, in a capitalist system the prices on rare goods are set by the people with the most money. This means even without inflation, in general, any highly desired rare item will be out of reach of the average player for a long time, no matter how skilled they are, or how good they are at anything in the game aside from gold making activities.

This is not really surprising, The best teachers in the world, Engineers, Architects, firefighters, etc. They may be good at their jobs, and their jobs may be important, but they should not expect to get a rolls royce, or a ferrari, or yacht. In real life this is acceptable, because their are other valuable rewards that may not be tied to excessive money.
But a game? well a game is pretty simple, you want to win or progress, once you hit 80 the avenues of progress narrow, and most of the stuff on that path requires a decent amount of gold.

This means even if there is not across the board inflation, its likely the prices of highly desired items will go up as the wealth disparity of the upper 20% and lower 60 goes up. Since supplying these items is generally random, gold will be the only way to achieve these items with any surety.

take a look at chaos of lyssa before the drop boost, do you really think the average person would have been able to compete in money for that any time soon? do you think 1.5k gold is even conceivable expenditure for a large majority of players?

The numbers I gave are conservative estimates based on numbers anet released. Which number do you think is exaggerated?

Beldin.5498:

phys.7689:

Beldin.5498:

Or in other words .. those game force you to do content you maybe don’t like at all to get your stuff, while GW2 allows you to play whatever content you like and you still can get your stuff.

Not really, as long as you can sell the gear you get, other games you choose the content you enjoy, you get really good at it, and you sell items from what you are good at to get the money for the items that arent in a mode you play.

In those other games most of the better gear is bind on pickups, so if you don’t like raiding you never have the chance to get the better gear.

the one im thinking of, a decent portion of the endgame gear wasnt bind on equip, though they had a large variety of gears, and some of them were bind on equip. Best in slot wasnt really an accurate term exactly, somethings were best in slot for Doing special weapon abilities, some for low end Dots, some for specific playstyles, etc.

So in that situation you could buy a lot of the endgame gear, however it was pretty expensive. But you also had a lot of different ways to get a large amount of money if you chose to, but it was generally concentrated in the tougher content, or content that was accessible only after some initial investments/planning.

mtpelion.4562:

Essence Snow.3194:

I hope you realize you said in the same breath that “it isn’t based on gold” and “it achieves this marvel by utilizing gold”. ergo It’s based on gold…

That’s just as ridiculous as saying “houses are based on hammers”.

You are really grasping here…

phys.7689:

ill say it again, this is simply not true, it would be true if all content rewarded gold similarly, but this is far from the case.

Also, just because a game gives better rewards through focused play doesnt mean its not sellable/tradeable. That is the type of system where gold would actually be players exchanging value for what type of content they are playing. GW2 doesnt do that because it doesnt have a system where the majority of drops are focused drops. a signifigant amount of supply is generally unintentionally created.

This means that you are forced to play the best gold earning content, or not get the stuff you want, which is essentially the same as other games.

The payout need not be equal for my statement to be perfectly true. You are not forced to do anything you don’t want to do, you are CHOOSING to do things you don’t like in order to achieve rewards faster and BLAMING the system for your poor selection of content.

What you have, is a personal problem, not a game problem.

given what you are saying there is no advantage to this system over having items in specific content, as long as its sellable.
you would actually have an extra option.

1) option earn gold, buy item
2)option play specific content get item

GW2 currently is
1) earn gold buy item.

i think more options is better than one.

also the game is telling you mathematically that you are doing it wrong if you are not doing the most effecient method. So like i said, you can choose to ignore the rewards and the reward system if you want to enjoy yourself
the only point of a reward system where you do the things you dont like in order to succeed, is if somehow doing the things you dont like benefit the game as a whole more. Thats not the case here. In fact there are many negatives associated with most of the best gold earning metas.

mtpelion.4562:

Essence Snow.3194:

Or you get gear you want for said content via said content.

I prefer getting the gear I want from the content I want, which is the GW2 system. It isn’t based on gold, it is based on playing how you want and still getting rewards and it achieves this marvel by utilizing gold.

ill say it again, this is simply not true, it would be true if all content rewarded gold similarly, but this is far from the case.

Also, just because a game gives better rewards through focused play doesnt mean its not sellable/tradeable. That is the type of system where gold would actually be players exchanging value for what type of content they are playing. GW2 doesnt do that because it doesnt have a system where the majority of drops are focused drops. a signifigant amount of supply is generally unintentionally created.

This means that you are forced to play the best gold earning content, or not get the stuff you want, which is essentially the same as other games.

Beldin.5498:

Or in other words .. those game force you to do content you maybe don’t like at all to get your stuff, while GW2 allows you to play whatever content you like and you still can get your stuff.

Not really, as long as you can sell the gear you get, other games you choose the content you enjoy, you get really good at it, and you sell items from what you are good at to get the money for the items that arent in a mode you play.

This is trading value for different goals/gametypes.

In GW2 its essentially the same, except there is no way to get what you want directly (or its very ineffecient).
you basically must farm, or just take longer to do everything

example, lets say you want silk, the best way to get silk right now, is to do whatever makes the most money, and then buy the silk. If you like playing fractals level 50, you will be able to buy your daily required silk for crafting in 5-3 runs, which is 4-5 hours to earn 7.29 gold.
or you can spend less than one hour power farming, or .7-1.5 hours running the easiest paths as fast as you can, or you can play the TP.

so no, you cant really do whatever you want any more than you could in other games, the difference is at least there was a possibility that what you wanted to do could get you the items you wanted, or the better you got it, the more you could get for doing it.

one game i played was like this:
master gatherer? he was able to get highly valued items by going in to dangerous areas and mining rare nodes with a chance for good drops
master crafter? he was able to 1 items and make massive loot
18 size guilds? do 18 man content regularly and split the profits from the drops
6 man groups? target profitable enemies, then use token they get while farming enemies to do special boss fights
solo players? Hunt rare Soloable NMs.
Farmers, hunt monsters who drop valuable drops but were easy to kill repetedly.
Best way to get most things? (fastest way) hunt it yourself(your group of people) if you can, if not buy it with money made from doing the things you are good at.

it was far from perfect overall, but you felt like you could get good, and get the things you wanted by playing content.

Gw2 best way to get things is to do whatever max earning meta is currently around. Its very rare that you make more with direct targeting anything. Most forms of gameplay give substantially less profit than whatever the current max earning meta is.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Devata.6589:

Tokens is yet another currency (so boring) so while nice to have as an extra there should also be some unique drops in there you would really want to go for.

Nerelith.7360:

As opposed to tokens, which make me feel Like I am clocking in, and clocking out… Like a job.

Well, you see, there’s a reason I go to Tokens as a means of determining loot, or even a chest item you can open and choose your reward out of (a la Weapon/Armor boxes). It’s because I’ve, in the past, been burned by RNG or even the choice of random rolls, heck even DKP systems which are supposed to be fairly adjudicated have been broken due to corrupt methods of accounting them by guild leaders.

Heck, most of my dungeon loot in Eye of the North would be diamonds, uncommon rare items (with useless stats), and maybe some onyx. Saurian Scythe? Emerald Blade? Amythest Shield? Please, I had to pay people to get those if I wanted them. Pretty big collection of stuff I’d never use though. (At least it raised my Wisdom track.)

Tokens or otherwise is a fair choice, it’s guaranteed to be useful instead of “yay, two greens and a blue”™, and it’s less like the Precursor Lottery.

It is also maybe boring, maybe not exciting to go “what’s in the box?!” but . . . show of hands . . . how many people really expect to get the awesome-and-useful end of the loot spectrum opening loot bags or end-area chests?

best method would probably incorporate both, so you get the lucky drop, or you end up working toward it, either way your happy.
Another method might be a gold ticket you can exchange for a random roll, or a token.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

The point is the thread is as you say, how the user feels about the value of top end items, does not necessarily reflect strict inflation.

The fact, is within this system it is normal and even fine that certain items prices fall out of reach, as the earning/gold by the top players increases. This isnt really inflation, because its normal that the people with more money can buy the best item.

The point is you are saying the economy is functioning as it should, and are missing the point that the economy functioning close to a real economy is not necessarily a very satisfying experience for the user. And the main purpose of this economy is to be satisfying for the user, unlike our economy whose main purpose is very different.

No. It’s not about how a player feels. That whole subjective concept is something you introduced into this thread. The thread was created as a complaint that prices appeared to be rising more than gold could be earned blaming inflation and that there were not enough gold sinks to prevent this.

Others then chimed in who did not know basic economic concepts (the same as if I entered a quantum mechanics discussion when I knew nothing about it) and made it off as there’s rampant inflation going on based off the sell prices of a handful of items. Not once did they think to check for underlying factors that could be causing price increases in a few items.

Prices of items and how much the top players make have little to no correlation. Prices of items are determined by how much demand there are for them and the supply. There’s obviously much more to it than that but I wanted to point out that how much a few people have, and their ability to purchase items, does not influence the price of said items. The only way those few individuals could affect the price is if they manipulated the supply.

No, I am not missing the point. You don’t understand the role of the economy/market. Your reasoning reminds me of socialism. I also don’t see where it was ever stated that the economy in this game was specifically supposed to benefit all users. Please cite your source.

The point of the thread was that desirable items are rising faster than their ability to earn, and that gold sinks could curb this. IMO its not a correct assumption that gold sinks will solve that problem. But the real problem the OP has, is that desirable items are rising faster than the ability to earn, which is a natural course for top end demanded items, its mathematics.

If an item comes into being one per hour of 500,000 peoples playing time, it would take 20833 days, or 57 years for every one to get one. This means in the first year, this item is only actually marketed to the top 1.7% of earning potential. With new users coming in all the time, it means it wont nessecarily be marketed to the next 1.7% in year two. While this is not absolute because it is not neccarilly true that every body wants it, it essentially means out of the people who do want it, the price will be determined by what the top players think is ok.

So essentially, for an extremely long period of time, a low supply item, will only be marketed to the richest players. just being conservative lets say its marketed to the top 30% of earners.

Now if you realize that hey the top 30% of earners make 10 times or more the amount of say 65% of the population, you realize the prices will not reflect a value that is approachable for many of the players.

And yes it happens irl too.

socialism is not the opposite of an economy, its actually a socioeconomic structure, much like free market is. It is just one of many possible answers to how a group of people agree to deal with economics.

And yes the point of an economy IN A GAME is to foster the type of gameplay you want and make it enjoyable for players. Keep in mind an economy is not just about the TP, but its actually about the rewards systems, the goods and the services that are available, and their relative value. You can have economies without having money at all.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

what i get from this exchange is you believe in gold focused gaming. This is why everything seems good to you, you expect the game economy to mirror our economy. The thing you are not getting, is there are signifigant number of people who do not like gold focused gaming, and thus the type of system that rewards doing whatever makes the most gold, over whatever is the best content, does not entertain them in a game.

There is also a signifigant number of people who dont really like our real life economy, or the choices we have to make in it. Mirroring a real life economy in a game means you will mirror its faults as well as its strengths.

and it really isnt in every economy, its dominant in our economy, but not so much in others. I think many people want gold to trade with others, and get things they dont get on their own, but they also want their adventures to feel like they have value, and be entertained.

See the key here is a game is about entertainment, the game is best played by ignoring the rewards, or just learning to balance grind versus fun for many people, thats not really that optimal.

Ummm… yeah. This has absolutely nothing to do with this thread nor my posts.

The point is the thread is as you say, how the user feels about the value of top end items, does not necessarily reflect strict inflation.

The fact, is within this system it is normal and even fine that certain items prices fall out of reach, as the earning/gold by the top players increases. This isnt really inflation, because its normal that the people with more money can buy the best item.

The point is you are saying the economy is functioning as it should, and are missing the point that the economy functioning close to a real economy is not necessarily a very satisfying experience for the user. And the main purpose of this economy is to be satisfying for the user, unlike our economy whose main purpose is very different.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

It doesnt matter if its life threatening or not, even if you go to a doctor with a tummyache, hes supposed to try to see exactly whats wrong and offer the best solutions, even if you think its meningitis.

Read the second paragraph of my post. The conclusion was that tree was nothing wrong and the user did not understand basic economic concepts. Hence why he was told to read up on them.

phys.7689:

That said, i will accept that JS isnt really the doctor, its not literally his job to cure anyone. However, as the designer, and maintainer of an economy whose main purpose is to foster exchange AND make the user feel satisfied (more so than a real economy). He should be concerned if a signifigant portion of players are complaining of tummyaches when he is the nutritionist.

Sorry but a handful of people on the forum is not significant. I know the current generation was raised to think otherwise but it’s not true. Alluding back to my previous response, check the second paragraph of my post as well as my response above.

phys.7689:

As for his response, my interpretation of the exchange was that the poster was saying that inflation should be measured on items of high demand, rather than overall, and basing that on the way some countries calculate inflation.

You cannot measure inflation on such a small number of items. It’d be like us trying to measure real world inflation on automobiles. It just doesn’t work like that. You have to take a much broader look over the entire economy. There are a lot of variables that could influence a particular item or group of items that have nothing to do with inflation.

He was trying to do an inflation index but lacked the knowledge of the economic principles behind it.

phys.7689:

John smiths response was more to the effect of, inflation is within acceptable ranges in this game.

Yes and no.

phys.7689:

Which i dont really think is false, in a strict sense, but i think the reality in the street, is once you start looking towards the goals that are supposed to inspire/direct you to keep playing, players are seeing prices that grow faster than they like. And when the items are expensive enough, that rate of growth is uncomfortable when compared with their rate of earning.

Yes but that does not mean inflation is the cause.

phys.7689:

but i dont think this can be avoided, we have come to a fairly unbalanced economy in terms of the haves and the have nots. Basically anything of value is marketed on top earner basis first and foremost, and they earn money faster than other people. Im not just speaking of TP barons, but anyone who is somewhat focused on the economic side of the game.

That’s in every economy and it’s supposed to be “unbalanced” in the way you stated. Just look to the real world’s economy.

phys.7689:

Someone who concentrates on earning gold amasses wealth at a considerably greater rate on average than those that do not. This means high end items are priced within thier demand curve first to them, and then filter out to everyone else, depending on time, and supply.

Of course they earn more as the should. If people want more gold, they have to put in the time and effort for it. There’s also a very smaller percentage of players that have a lot of gold compared to the rest of the player base. With only needing to get a legendary once for the skin, and the few people with large amounts of good compared to the player-base, their impact is negligible.

what i get from this exchange is you believe in gold focused gaming. This is why everything seems good to you, you expect the game economy to mirror our economy. The thing you are not getting, is there are signifigant number of people who do not like gold focused gaming, and thus the type of system that rewards doing whatever makes the most gold, over whatever is the best content, does not entertain them in a game.

There is also a signifigant number of people who dont really like our real life economy, or the choices we have to make in it. Mirroring a real life economy in a game means you will mirror its faults as well as its strengths.

and it really isnt in every economy, its dominant in our economy, but not so much in others. I think many people want gold to trade with others, and get things they dont get on their own, but they also want their adventures to feel like they have value, and be entertained.

See the key here is a game is about entertainment, the game is best played by ignoring the rewards, or just learning to balance grind versus fun for many people, thats not really that optimal.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

That said, i will accept that JS isnt really the doctor, its not literally his job to cure anyone. However, as the designer, and maintainer of an economy whose main purpose is to foster exchange AND make the user feel satisfied (more so than a real economy). He should be concerned if a signifigant portion of players are complaining of tummyaches when he is the nutritionist.

You don’t have any data to suggest that a significant portion of players are complaining. Let’s also not assume that it’s part of his job to make players feel like their nonsense conspiracy theories about their own failure is being corrected. Again, he’s already addressed people. It’s not clear what kind of ‘cure’ you are after but whatever it is, JS doesn’t have it.

phys.7689:

but i dont think this can be avoided, we have come to a fairly unbalanced economy in terms of the haves and the have nots. Basically anything of value is marketed on top earner basis first and foremost, and they earn money faster than other people. Im not just speaking of TP barons, but anyone who is somewhat focused on the economic side of the game.

Someone who concentrates on earning gold amasses wealth at a considerably greater rate on average than those that do not. This means high end items are priced within thier demand curve first to them, and then filter out to everyone else, depending on time, and supply.

This is not indicative of an ailing economy. In fact, if it DIDN’T work this way, people would have a cause to complain about it.

you are right, it isnt indicative of an ailing real life economy, but it sucks as a game economy, because earning gold as fast as possible is not placed in the best designed parts of the game.

Thats what people are missing, you can have a functional economy, and still have bloody revolutions, great dissatisfaction etc.

As for my numbers, i have none, and even if i did, i wouldnt have the exit polls to tell what was the main reason for peoples departures, or decreases in spending. The fact that you dont have data does not mean that you are wrong though. You can say prove what you say, and i can say prove what you say, but there is no proof for nor against.

Your premise is that all the people complaining make up a small % of the people who have played the game, my belief is they make up a signifigant portion, which doesnt mean its like 50%, if only 15% of the people who left the game did so based on the rewards systems/economy/gold and 1 million people left the game, thats still 150,000 people. Thats more than total population of some MMOs, and if only 10% of those 150,000 spend 10-20 dollars a month, thats 150-300k a month lost.

so does it matter? maybe but its worth investigating, or thinking about regardless.

Obtena.7952:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

penatbater.4710:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

GW2 seems to have trouble figuring that out, which I think comes back to the issue that this game is economy focused instead of content focused. Every encounter is designed around how it will affect the economy instead of centered around the reward like in other MMO’s.

I dont think the game is economy-focused. But every single decision regarding rewards, loot, item WILL have an impact on the game economy. The fact is, you really do have to take into consideration the game economy, because a lot is hinged on that. I’d wager a poor economy turns people off faster than poor content. (case in point: count how many threads there are that complain about how a.) the market is screwed b.) difficult it is to get a certain reward vs the lameness of the dungeon, living world, game mechanics, etc.)

But it doesn’t have to be. Rewards in Wildstar, WoW, Rift, etc don’t have any effect on the economy. Gold is used for fluff and if you have bad luck and that is it.

Sounds like GW2 … Gold is also primarily used for fluff. You don’t need gold once you outfit yourself for whatever aspect of the game you want to play. Ascended gear is not needed for anything but the MOST difficult encounters only because of a specific gating stat to boot, not the increase of stats you get from the gear itself. That’s where the difference you speak of is a wash. Other games evolve around ever increasing tiers of more powerful gear. GW2 does not.

People need to understand that FUNDAMENTAL difference between GW2 and everything else before they start QQing about rewards, gold, inflation, economy, etc… most don’t. Once you come to realize that almost ALL game content is balanced around the rare/exotic-level of gear, you come to realize how silly crying about the difficulty of obtaining Ascended gear actually is.

the gear in other games is really just a gating mechanism, or an incentive. It doesnt really matter as much as the fact that their is teired content, it basically allows them to simulate a beat this level and progress to the harder new area thing.
GW2 has gear teirs, but it isnt leading you anywhere. I dont object to that in principle, but the problem is it does lead you, just not into playing the game in the best way. The best way to play gw2 reward wise, is to do the simplest easiest thing that generates the most equivalent value in gold. In other games, the best way to play is to do whatever they decide is the best things to do.

take a look at FFXI, they had no level cap raise for like 6 years? they had a functioning economy, although it had problems, but the best way to get rewarded? travel the world hunting rare NMs, or getting together to be Huge difficult NMs, or doing any of a number of instances with different themes that was difficult, or doing limited time challenges, a boss group battle, based on things you earned while going on regular adventures.

Rewards dont have to be about teirs, and they dont have to be designed primarily around the macro gold economy.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

If someone tells a doctor they got stabbed in the gut because 5+5 is 55. you could argue that 5+5 is not 55, but the fact remains he has an abdominal wound, the doctor shouldnt really be focusing on telling the guy to go back to school, and should be trying to deal with the wound.

Its exaggerated, but the even with a less exaggerated analogy, if some one goes to the doctor with an incorrect self diagnosis, the doctor isnt really helping the guy by telling him to go to medical school.

No. Your whole argument is hinging on the fact that a wound is a life threatening situation so of course a doctor will have to treat it. When you ignore the whole life threatening part, your argument falls apart. It’s also questionable as to whether this is a logical fallacy.

John Smith addressed a user who was arguing that high prices of precursors and such were caused by inflation. That user did not understand basic economic concepts and was arguing that there was an issue when there wasn’t for reasons that were incorrectly applied. With an understanding of basic economic concepts, it would be seen that there isn’t an issue and it’s what you would normally see in a market.

It doesnt matter if its life threatening or not, even if you go to a doctor with a tummyache, hes supposed to try to see exactly whats wrong and offer the best solutions, even if you think its meningitis.

That said, i will accept that JS isnt really the doctor, its not literally his job to cure anyone. However, as the designer, and maintainer of an economy whose main purpose is to foster exchange AND make the user feel satisfied (more so than a real economy). He should be concerned if a signifigant portion of players are complaining of tummyaches when he is the nutritionist.

It could be nothing, but it could be something.

As for his response, my interpretation of the exchange was that the poster was saying that inflation should be measured on items of high demand, rather than overall, and basing that on the way some countries calculate inflation.

John smiths response was more to the effect of, inflation is within acceptable ranges in this game.

Which i dont really think is false, in a strict sense, but i think the reality in the street, is once you start looking towards the goals that are supposed to inspire/direct you to keep playing, players are seeing prices that grow faster than they like. And when the items are expensive enough, that rate of growth is uncomfortable when compared with their rate of earning.

but i dont think this can be avoided, we have come to a fairly unbalanced economy in terms of the haves and the have nots. Basically anything of value is marketed on top earner basis first and foremost, and they earn money faster than other people. Im not just speaking of TP barons, but anyone who is somewhat focused on the economic side of the game.

Someone who concentrates on earning gold amasses wealth at a considerably greater rate on average than those that do not. This means high end items are priced within thier demand curve first to them, and then filter out to everyone else, depending on time, and supply.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

gw1 reward system was better because the best way to get most things was to do the challenging content. Unless you were a trading hustler. The other option was to grind, which generally took longer to get the things you couldnt beat on your own.

I don’t know, there was the Zaishen RNG Chest, which could make you some money if you were lucky. Or doing certain dungeons for rare skins with good stats you could pawn off trading with little effort. Or, most possibly, getting a green minipet from a birthday box.

The dif is in GW2 the best way to get everything is to do the type of cheesy grinds they would always nerf in GW1. Doing any specific/challenging content is always the worst way to achieve any goal, that isnt hardwired to that content.

want ascended? buy inscriptions for 40 gold, earned in 8-4 hours of grind, other option? get to level 11+ in fractals, get a 1/100-1/20 chance for 40 min to 2 hours of play, you can only attempt it 1-4 times a day tops.

It may be just me but I had well over 40 gold by the time I hit 100% Map Completion (the only goal I’d realistically set myself when I started).

The game design basically screams at you to do the easiest content possible repeatedly to get anything. This would be like if the best way to beat an FF game was to stay in the level one dungeon forever.

Funny you should mention that, there were more than a few kitten which rewarded the behavior of grinding in the early areas. Mostly 2, 3, 5, 8, 9, and to a lesser degree 12. There’s seriously a trick you can access around 1/3 of the way into 12 where you can almost auto-level to 99 . . . almost.

And that’s without going further back to “Power Peninsula”. A glitch so amazing for jumping levels and grinding cash fast with a moderate amount of danger, assuming you had two black magic casters and access to Fire2.

one of them had scaling mobs, its been awhile. Anyhow, basically, they dont have to do anything really, but i think the game would benefit from content thats a bit deeper, and some sort of good reward for it. Maybe they could gate some more hard content behind it. or do something totally different, but I play other games now, and i really miss the challenge. I played a mini game in another game that was essentially Simon, and i felt a huge rush of satisfaction beating one annoying level, that i have not felt in GW2 to date i think. I will admit the reward was crappy though.

Foosnark.1784:

MMOs are huge projects. The production schedules for content has almost no relation to whatever it is people think their competitors, whoever they are, are doing.

Also your subjective measure of how populated the server is honestly says nothing about the financial health of the game. Simultaenous online players are a cost in terms of bandwidth and server load. Revenue comes from initial sales and from gem store sales, and you can learn practically nothing about either of those based on how many people are hanging around outside of dungeon entrances, or whatever you’re trying to measure.

just because a project is huge, doesnt mean you cant time its release to your satisfaction, in fact i would say more often then not, huge projects are timed. Look at like almost every big movie in the last 10 years.

Simultaneous online players is a data point, its meant to give an idea about the type of traffic you are getting. If the % of players and the amount they will spend is fairly static, then increasing your numbers is highly likely to increase revenue, but this a known factor in business, the more people who walk by your shop, the more likely you are to get sales.

That said we have no good measurements, but even though people like to dismiss anecdotal evidence, it generally tends to reflect some aspects of the truth, though it may not show the whole picture.

That said, i do think the OP is a bit more doom and gloom than the actual situation is. And its possible that a strong LS could turn things around anyhow. Even if it doesnt do it completely, truth is if they make a couple hits in a row, that will keep people entertained, its really more about what have you done lately than what have you done before.

So, while i agree that they had a pretty big lull, and havent generated a big feeling of growth and satisfaction coming on 2 years, i acknowledge they still got a pretty good game, and they still have the ability to have a great run, they just got to hit it off really well with the rest of the year.

Must say, hasnt been too great this year though.

penatbater.4710:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

GW2 seems to have trouble figuring that out, which I think comes back to the issue that this game is economy focused instead of content focused. Every encounter is designed around how it will affect the economy instead of centered around the reward like in other MMO’s.

I dont think the game is economy-focused. But every single decision regarding rewards, loot, item WILL have an impact on the game economy. The fact is, you really do have to take into consideration the game economy, because a lot is hinged on that. I’d wager a poor economy turns people off faster than poor content. (case in point: count how many threads there are that complain about how a.) the market is screwed b.) difficult it is to get a certain reward vs the lameness of the dungeon, living world, game mechanics, etc.)

i disagree, many games have no economy, or poor economy and do better for it. If you design a game so that it stands on its own, without the economy, people wouldnt care about the economy. Its when you create a system where you cannot live without the economy that it becomes the main issue.

Obtena.7952:

Realist.5812:

I’ve never seen John Smith post anything insightful. Or answer player questions with reasons as to why something is done or not done.

Each post comes across as:
“This is my baby, and being its mother I believe it has no flaws.”

And then the sycophants come in and cheer him on.

Maybe players shouldn’t ask the kind of questions or make the statements that deserve the kind of answers he gives. If people get their knowledge and background from a Cracker Jack’s box and use it to make conclusions about something as complex as the ingame economy and periodically press the same non-issues, they don’t really deserve insightful and respectable answers in the first place.

Good examples:

“I can’t afford a precursor, Inflation is to blame”
“Game doesn’t have good rewards”
“People that don’t camp TP can’t afford to buy stuff ingame”

and etc …. Someone should start a list.

If someone tells a doctor they got stabbed in the gut because 5+5 is 55. you could argue that 5+5 is not 55, but the fact remains he has an abdominal wound, the doctor shouldnt really be focusing on telling the guy to go back to school, and should be trying to deal with the wound.

Its exaggerated, but the even with a less exaggerated analogy, if some one goes to the doctor with an incorrect self diagnosis, the doctor isnt really helping the guy by telling him to go to medical school.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

It’s amazing people want to attribute things to Final Fantasy which weren’t part of it as the version I talked about. Final Fantasy on the NES. No number, no re-release, no extra content, and no Pearl Sword to break the game. (Just Xcalbur and Masmune..)

Also, Zelda’s progression . . . the first game . . . was almost entirely based on exploration. Sure, you could get better swords but you could also go quite a distance without ever bothering. (Or, if you were really feeling like a challenge, almost at all.) The vertical progression was minimal, natural, and not nearly as important as the more linear progression of “find tool to get past X obstacle”. I enjoyed it a lot, and enjoy Zelda games where that’s more of a thing than “get special object in dungeon, never use it again”.

Again, we do come to face what I consider one of the lacking things of an end-game focus – there’s not as much of “this is new and/or interesting” as there is this focus on whether it offers tangible rewards. I was asked what I considered rewarding, and went into what video games I remember the most . . . and softballed the answer.

Because of the games outside of MMOs I remember most, three come to mind for having a “rewarding” feeling when all is said and done. “Ys 3: Wanderers from Ys” on the SNES, “King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow” on the PC, “X-Com: Terror From the Deep” on the PC.

The first one because it was an introduction to a series I have grown to love for the music and gameplay, the second because I beat it without a guide to tell me how to do things or a hintbook, and the third because it is balls-out the toughest game I can think of which I not only beat but outright destroyed.

FF1 was far from their best game, but even in it, they had progression, i remember at some point you change from cartoony guys to bad kitten (for 8 bit pixels) guys.

And you are ignoring that all of those games was way tougher than GW2 and the ones that i know of had vertical progression in the form of progressively harder levels the further you go, Every time you beat a level, which got progressively harder, you got access to some new area, with new things, which was usually harder. Im not saying it has to be this exact way, but you got to have depth, and you got to have a reason to do it. GW2 lacks depth/challenge, and generally a reason to do it.

you realize candy crush has more depth and feels more rewarding than Gw2?

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

bhcbose.9615:

I played these game you stated because I am also old enough. But lets not compare these games to MMO.

Why not? It’s all valid to me, because we’re discussing what I find rewarding. Not why I play MMOs, which is almost the same reason I occasionally whip out my copy of Settlers of Catan when friends are over and three drinks down for the night.

Because it is fun.

If you truly played real mmo before you would clearly understand why there is currently an issue in Gw2 regarding reward vs difficulty.

“Real MMO”. Were you not reading when I listed that I played EverQuest? Often credited as one of the forefathers of the modern MMO? Or would you like me to list off others? Ultima Online, perhaps? Should I go for total oldschool cred and list Meridian 59, where endgame was all PvP and guild fights?

I played through to Plane of Time in EQ1, and before that I did Plane of Hate raids semi-regularly, Sebilis camps, I had a blast at one point just farming the everloving crap out of Velketor’s Labyrinth.

In Ultima Online, I was a miner, carpenter, and blacksmith. I enjoyed that immensely – dressing up a little tower in the woods with various things and staying the heck away from people who could crush me due to having everything prepared for “utter ownage”.

Meridian 59, last and oldest of them, I would routinely fight in Brax and off on the Island because it was fun, and it usually resulted in the most interesting and tense experiences I could have – no safety for a long way, and not an easy way to escape being caught there.

And you want to know what? All three of these games had a risk vs reward system which was usually completely out of balance. Meridian 59 had very little cool rewards which weren’t from the RNG box (yes, one existed there too), Ultima Online had no unique rewards which you didn’t hide in six layers of boxes in the bank so people wouldn’t take them. EverQuest was the first time I ran into the “gear treadmill” in the full absurdity of always chasing better loot with better stats as a reward for yet another absurd raid, ending with /random 0 100 to see if you got the privilege. (Or if you were in a certain raid and your guild chose to award that way, DKP.)

I honestly don’t miss the reward system of those three games.

Most of the people that player Gw1 can say that there was an endgame in Gw1 that was not cash shop related.

Sure, but I’ll still contemplate and point out the “rewarding” aspect of GW1’s endgame dungeons/missions/content was usually purely cosmetic or another aspect of gold-grinding.

gw1 reward system was better because the best way to get most things was to do the challenging content. Unless you were a trading hustler. The other option was to grind, which generally took longer to get the things you couldnt beat on your own. The dif is in GW2 the best way to get everything is to do the type of cheesy grinds they would always nerf in GW1. Doing any specific/challenging content is always the worst way to achieve any goal, that isnt hardwired to that content.

want ascended? buy inscriptions for 40 gold, earned in 8-4 hours of grind, other option? get to level 11+ in fractals, get a 1/100-1/20 chance for 40 min to 2 hours of play, you can only attempt it 1-4 times a day tops.
so for like a 60% chance to get ascended, you can spend 25ish hours playing fractals, or you can spend 4 hours on a champ train, and actually get a guaranteed success AND select exactly what peice and stat type you want.

The game design basically screams at you to do the easiest content possible repeatedly to get anything.
This would be like if the best way to beat an FF game was to stay in the level one dungeon forever.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

bhcbose.9615:

@Tobias

You have been given many definitions of rewarding. Then please feel free to give us your definition of rewarding since it seems like none of all the things written here satisfies you.

Errant was pretty accurate with his definition of reward vs difficulty.

I’m completely satisfied with my “reward” for content being the experience of doing it. I’m old enough that I used to play games with a “high score” tracker on them or a scoreboard you could put initials into. I never got onto them, as usually it was hard enough to get to the finish line.

But games like the first Super Mario Brothers, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy . . . there wasn’t any reward for them. There wasn’t even an Achievement list to check off. There was beating it. The first game I legitimately finished on my own with no help (guidebooks or other people pointing out solutions) was King’s Quest VI.

And that pretty much is why I play games: to play them. Shiny wonderful items? Achievements? That’s secondary to the experience. In MMOs, usually it’s more the experience with friends and other people which I find far more appealing than “get the shiny loot”.

. . . I am extraordinarily weird like that.

I played all these games, and while they seemed simple, they were very deep.
Mario got harder the further you went, enemies sped up, which in that game signifigantly increased difficulty, the levels were designed with tons of secrets and things to find. It had challenge, and it scaled to a high level of difficulty.
Zelda had progression, and reward, you got better weapons, and new different abilities that took you to new places, places that you thought you beat had hidden secrets, and when you beat it? they shuffled the game/levels/locations and made everything harder so you could try again and be challenged.
Final fantasty? tons of rewards and even an endgame, you could beat the game at like level 50, but there were hidden enemies with more complex skills and difficult patterns, not only that but they give you super special powered weapons like pearl sword, a huge dmg sword that also does light dmg. Not to mention a really cool story for most of them, and a deep world.

Coming from that era of games you should actually expect a fairly decent challenge, and rewards (which isnt really about gold) as you play. The least rewarding would probably be mario, where your primary reward was more lives, so you could play longer.

Heres the thing, beating GW2 isnt challenging enough to be the point of the game. Zaitan was a chump, 7/8 of the dungeons was just a matter of time until success, fractals, probably the most endgamish thing, but it could use some tweaks, some more unpredictability, more exciting reward system, and some more content that appears as you get deeper in. I would throw in some bonus challenge objectives for greater rewards.

Galen Grey.4709:

yerok.5469:

lol why do people keep defending gw2 in this? I love this game too, but after 2 years of promises and content being predominantly temporary, while also being just a rehash of last years same content I’ve given up hope. I know a lot of you are still new and it seems like there is so much more but soon you will hit the same wall.
LS isn’t working, does anyone honestly know what the hell is going on? besides a giant sylvari brought robots and ufo’s to kill everyone? I would assume one would need an actual story to create a living one.

have legendary and several lvl 80’s, i beat the game i guess.

because we like it?

There most definitely was a story in S1 of the living story and yes some people followed it closely too. You should visit the lore sub forum now and then while its going on to see people engaged in theories and speculation.

in anycase here is the story for Season 1:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Living_World_season_1

pay special attention to the little see also links that have support stories that further expand the story for the characters or events involved.

Its all subjective, but subjectively i can say imo, the story of season one was very poor, and most times the content wasnt compelling, though their were a few exceptions to both.
Also, every one i know in game, said it was bad, now thats anecdotal at best, but id be willing to gamble that a large % of the playerbase either found it bad, it or felt neutral towards it.

But i concede, it could just be my circle, but like i said, i wouldnt bet on it.

edit, the page gives a summary of the plot, but a fairly large amount of the story is in the execution. You can have one film about a boy and his dog that dies that makes you cry, and the same premise handled by someone else makes you fall asleep, or fills you with cynicism.

Galen Grey.4709:

One little problem with your analogy, in basket ball 5 year olds dont get to play with 60 year olds….

Hardcore and casual have opposite needs most of the time, you simply cannot achieve both in the same game, satisfactorly! …

well considering they’ve maintained the same income level through the past 2 years I think your observation is incorrect…..

Also I think we need to make a distinction between depth of play and challenge. The combat system in Gw2 is actually pretty deep more so then majority of other MMOs out there I would say it just lacks the challenges where it can truly shine. …

Well I wouldnt say no to more depth of course

as for a reward system to lead people … thats tricky for them to do….

1) now that they have megaservers, there is no reason for them to fear splitting the playerbase any more, they can add new modes that better adapt to the skill level of the player. They can literally create a hard mode, and extreme mode map without fear of splitting the playerbase, in fact they will keep like minded people together. If this is too drastic, the simple solution is to make more instances, but i think the best solution is to do both.

2) Hardcore and casual is a is a simplified term lets just say people of various skill levels 1-10. Their needs are somewhat different, but they arent really in different realms. Basketball has the same rules for kid to adults, its just more forgiving, and properly matched difficulty. Now if we start talking about other facets of hardcore, like time investment, etc, that is a different beast.

3) They maintained the same income, in a market where your income would normally increase if you are doing well. They are treading water. MMOs are supposed to be long term profits and players, if you are continuing to sell new boxes, but your income from the shop is the same, either people have stopped spending money, or you are simply replacing players who leave. In either case, you have a problem. 2 years into the big name MMOs they were just getting started.

The ideal curve for an MMO is to start high go a little lower, then continue to build with time, getting more players than you have leaving, being more comfortable with spending money, because they love your product. I could be wrong, but at this moment i dont think thats where the game is at. Its not the end of the world, and its not guaranteed, but my feeling is they have a slow drain on population, which probably increased recently due to a lack of new content, big changes, etc, and a population that is not as excited about spending as they once were. This of course is just my gut instinct, it could be completely wrong.

4) there is no depth if you are in shallow water. While i do agree the system has a lot of depth possible, If you dont have the a deep pool, it doesnt matter if theoretically you could dive, use high level swimming techniques like the mermaid, or butterfly. You can the pool is only deep enough for so many things to actually matter/have use.

5) the reward system to lead people, its a bit tricky yes, but it really needs to lead people, since the game is also about progression, you will have people doing all sorts of things that are not adding to your game, unless the reward/penalty system encourages them to do things that add to the game. At the same time they are doing this, they are also dissatisfied, which is bad. They begin to associate the game with negative feelings. Other games defeat this by having really strong highs to go with the lows, but gw2 doesnt have that with the same easy to succeed design.

I think the people who best enjoy the game ignore the rewards, or care less about them, but even those people tend reach the point that the game isnt really giving them depth in terms of mastery and they have done most of the breadth content. But, once they start setting goals, they get drawn into the reward system that best rewards degenerative play, or stagnant play. So once again if they dont want to make people play with depth, and build better reward systems, they basically have to come up with compelling new stories/settings/toys for people to play with fairly often. But thats not easy at all, out of 100 tries at that maybe only 10% succeed, and to do that month after month? that will be hard.

Galen Grey.4709:

….

By default the game is easy, no doubt about that and its not a flaw its a design choice they made to be casual friendly. But beyond that people also play in a manner that trivializes it more but joining together and refusing to spread out that makes the issue that much worst.

All this being said I love a challenge as much as you or anyone else and although I understand why there arent more challenges because of their design choices (not because I accept sub-par content) I am hopeful S2 might include more peripheral challenging content since its one thing they specifically mentioned as a major request they heard loud and clear from a large part of the community. I am curious to see what they’ve come up with. 2 more weeks to go

you are actually mistaken in assuming that you can only design for casuals, or hardcores, good well designed systems work for both and appropriately give them something to do at all levels of play.
Basketball, playable by 5 year olds, all the way up to 60 year olds
Chess, learnable at 8, mastered for a lifetime

good game design does not choose casual or hardcore, is made for both. Now we are talking about hardcore in terms of skill here, (which doesnt really always map to time spent) And it really has to in order to last, because eventually if they keep playing, even the casuals become hardcore (skill wise) If they dont build for more depth, you will end up getting greater turnaround.

IE many players will come, enjoy the game, then leave when it offers nothing deeper. You can bring in new players by being casual, but eventually you will have used up your market.

This pattern seems to be anecdotally correct from my observation. Many many people have come, and gone.

The only way anet can keep people going without creating depth of play, is to keep creating new interesting stories, and places, In this respect both the casual and the hardcore could enjoy it. However, this would basically be like creating a hit TV show/comic book on your first attempt, its not really what they built themselves for, its unlikely they can do it, and probably not the best course of action to depend on that.

Best bet is for them to try to make a deep and compelling game, that you can keep getting better at playing, and have things to do as you progress in skill. They also have to design the reward system to lead people.

DonQuack.9025:

phys.7689:

Snip &…. Some blast finishers say no where that they are blast finishers. Some projectiles say that they are proccing, but in fact are only proccing 20% of the time that the info appears on the screen. most attacks hit farther than the animations show.

Odd on the proccing 20% of time ….. Clearly the game didnt tell us this. There must be a tutorial level where they give us all bows and we have to fire 5 times but only proc once then onscreen in large sparkling letters it will say PROJECTILE FINISHER!!! ONLY HAPPENS 20% of the TIME but only for this skill because this skill is different! Now lets practice proccing with all the different projectile abilities because we believe you are too stoopid to mouse over your abilities and put 1+1 together.
http://s4.postimg.org/gncn2531p/uwut.png
http://postimg.org/image/5cekrilk9/
http://postimg.org/image/637axanxl/
http://postimg.org/image/t5xtwgpex/

How much can you teach someone who cant be kitten d to mouse over a skill on their bar? Rather
How much more do you need to teach them? At that point youre also going to have to give a tutorial saying teaching how to open the Guild Menu how to open Options dont forget to show the shortcut keys for said things too.
Oddly enough when pressing some items in upper left dont show shortcut keys… There must be some poor legendary weapon holder with 32 lvl 80’s who clicks the icons because he doesnt know the shortcut keys. Game is utter crap at teaching now.

Also “All over the U.S.A. 30 million (14% of adults) are unable to perform simple and everyday literacy activities.”http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp

As a person who volunteers a lot. Unless you ask a person to read something to you. You arent going to find out if they can or can not read/read past a primary 2 level.

---

I do agree on them not saying what kind of finisher it is. They should put that as text when it pops up. Also they should remove that funny stuff around numbers that crit and put the words Critical Hit. I dont recall them ever teaching that or make a tutorial saying that.

This way I can sorta play The Typing of the Dead!

what exactly do you gain by keeping people ignorant? I mean really other than you getting to insult them and tell them to l2p when they fail marrionette, and die on grenth. What would you lose by actually getting a greater % of players to know the game basics?

You seem to be adamantly for people not being taught anything, but there really is no gain for that.

Tree.3916:

phys.7689:

2.Dungeons, your speed running skills help here, but there isnt much excitement in shaving 30 seconds off your time, since your reward or chance of good reward is the same, Essentially making a 10 minute run into a 9.5 minute run is just a 5% increase in time saved, since every path is daily anyhow, this will only make much of difference if you do like 12 paths in one day youll save a whopping 6 minutes of time. Getting the same rewards.

This is partially correct at best. Sure, for CoF1, shaving 5% of time (if we assume that figure as a given) isn’t a huge time savings. I would argue that figure in an instance like Arah is significantly incorrect.

If you can run all four Arah paths in about an hour you’re looking at around 15g- 20g considering drops. I reckon there are not many in game outside of elite pve guilds who can manage that. Your random LFG “speed run” pug or non-hardcore guild teams would probably take close to 2-3 hours to run all four paths, especially if you stop to gearcheck to ensure competency. So there is a rather huge advantage in being able to speed run some dungeons, especially if you are limited more by daily playtime than the daily dungeon path limit. Also, consider that the more/harder dungeons you are able to do the less limiting the daily path limit is; if you are only capable of running AC and CoF you will hit the daily path limit a lot sooner than a player who can run every dungeon.

lot of people dont really desire to do 24 dungeons in one day, so the fact that arah is harder doesnt help much, it doesnt pay that much better than anything else.not sure what the average speedrun sans exploits best time is though for the more expensive paths

DonQuack.9025:

Nerelith.7360:

Calys Teneb.7015:

Guild Wars 2 is the only MMO I’ve ever played that didn’t have a tutorial. No, there’s a story intro stage that teaches players absolutely nothing but how to use 1, and that red circles are bad. From there, players are put into the wide open world, where we can do amazing things like learn about norn totems or help out on various farms with menial tasks. Players are left on their own, and if they aren’t theorycrafters like the top 5% of us, they aren’t going to know squat about how to play the game.

I stopped here because, no offense, it doesn’t sound like you’ve played many MMOs at all. Most of them are more or less the basics and then crowd sourcing knowledge. That’s intentional to push the social aspect. It’s been done since WoW and god help you if you didn’t know something in Everquest.

In EverQuest My FIRST MMO I learned the HARD way to NOT click the A key without the chat bar up if targetting an NPC.

EverQuest seemed to take a perverse pleasure in denying you basic knowledge, and expecting you to Look elsewhere… websites… other players, your Guild. And …

It worked. Back then we WERE more social. we also took a LOT Longer to hit level cap… remember Hell levels? XP Loss on death, Corpse runs…etc…

As I seee it One of the problems Not Just with Gw2, but with MMO’s in general… especially those without a devoted following is… the desire to cater to the casual player.

It leads to a dumbing down of content, and a simplifying of game mechanics.

I fear that as things are… The MMO’s of the future will have One class called “Hero” and 3 skills. " Punch" " Kick" and " Dodge".

People now a day need their hands held till about 40. If they arent told what the walk key is they wont ever look in options for key binds. They wont even ask ingame. Check the forums. use google its there.
Reading? For cats. Learning from words is for the real nerds; we are the cool nerdshipsters.

And they wonder why games are so closed off and linear.

people are getting too caught up in the learn it mentality, that simply is not the best way to learn anything. If your goal is to increase the general/knowledge or skill of a wide variety of people the best technique is education. Very few people would learn to read or write without education, and now many people learn, this allows the world to raise the level OF EVERYONE.

Even the people who dont particularly like reading or care about it know how to read, that allows us have things like forums, the internet, wikipedia, etc.

Point is, if people know the rules better, you can raise the level of the game. When everybodies minimal tool set is higher, you can get deeper content.

The other thing you are ignoring is clarity, there are some AOEs which dont match their animations, their are some cones that dont match up. Some enemy swings hit in areas that are not suggested. Some blast finishers say no where that they are blast finishers. Some projectiles say that they are proccing, but in fact are only proccing 20% of the time that the info appears on the screen. most attacks hit farther than the animations show.

Its not just about look and learn, its also about learning that you have very little actual cues for.

Obtena.7952:

Essence Snow.3194:

Gold is not a rewarding reward for a lot of players. It’s a secondary result of going for desired rewards.

Then GW2 is the game for those players because most game elements don’t make gold the primary reward. It’s certainly the case that the most accomplished PVP and WvW players don’t do it for gold. Even to a certain extent, a few PVE players don’t do spped runs in dungeons for gold either.

Essence Snow.3194:

That’s where this game misses the mark. It believes gold is the best reward.

Unless you have some specific examples, the only exception I can think of where this is true are the short paths in dungeons … rewards here don’t match difficulty IMO. I don’t believe these limited cases justify your belief that Anet thinks gold is the best reward.

To provide a counter example, Anet just recently nerfed Champ trains … because they believe gold is the best reward? Think again. Same is true when they changed dungeon loot to limit rewards from repeating paths a long time back. Sorry, but there are lots of examples that actually prove your statement to be just wrong.

what you are saying here, is opposite of what you just told me i your higher post, this post says, the game doesnt reward gold for difficult play, but in your reply to me, you say the game gives you better rewards for playing better?

These two ideas are in direct opposition to each other.

I agree with your post here, the game does not give gold, or really any rewards for playing better. Even the people who like this system say you basically farm for rewards, and have fun or do challenging content seperately.
IMO this is a bad design, you should reward people for doing the best content you have available, whether it be open world, jump puzzles, dungeons, etc. You then reward them more for being good at it, whatever that it is. Lastly if you can, you tailor the rewards to the playtype, so that the type of people who do it, get the type of rewards they would want to have.

Obtena.7952:

The rewards do come from playing the game well from various modes of play … I can get much more done or higher scores if I play the game better than the next guy, increasing my potential to earn more. Are you trying to suggest it’s not? If so, go ahead and illustrate your point with real examples. Here are a few of my own:

1. Openworkd farming … more rewarding if you know where to go, understand the market, outfit yourself accordingly.
2. Dungeons – The difference between speed running and Cleric-equipped PUGS is significant
3. WvW/PvP – Perfect example of how skills in these aspects increases your satisfaction in playing.

I’m certain the semi-AFK guy watching Netflix isn’t even close to game satisfaction and rewards the highest rated players in these game aspects are.

TLDR: What you say is needed already exists WITHIN the game model that Anet has built the game around.

1. Open world farming best to go where everyone else is going, the amount of stuff you kill is way more important than what you kill, unless you can get 20-30 people to go where you want. Or do a champ train.
2.Dungeons, your speed running skills help here, but there isnt much excitement in shaving 30 seconds off your time, since your reward or chance of good reward is the same, Essentially making a 10 minute run into a 9.5 minute run is just a 5% increase in time saved, since every path is daily anyhow, this will only make much of difference if you do like 12 paths in one day youll save a whopping 6 minutes of time. Getting the same rewards.
3.WvW is actually totally out of balance, you get the best rewards by not playing the game well. Karma train in EOTM is best rewards, and it has nothing to with skill, or the game mode. sPVP, you do get the best rewards for winning by a fair margin. This is probably in an ok place incentive wise, Though it could use some more skill based rewards.

How rewards could have been given to incentive better play, imo?

1)open world: Dynamic events give better rewards based on how difficult they are, Chain bonuses to rewards or chances of good items for completing different events in a zone. Additional bonuses for how well your group succeeds. Treasure chest challenges, get to X chest within X time from some starting point for better rewards. No death rewards, better or special rewards for experience earned while in a zone without dying, better rewards the more difficult the area/longer you have gone without dying in that area.

2)Dungeons. Added bonuses based on Dungeon clear rank, which is based on team deaths, speed of clear, objectives completed and non respawning enemies killed. Added bonuses for Secret random event completed, (difficult bosses fights hidden in a few random locations in dungeon) Overall difficulty of each dungeon path factored in to base reward for completion. Some items only available, or likely from bonus.

3) WvW: better rewards in actual WvW, System that can better track and reward defending. Bonus objectives bonuses, Map can vote pick 2 main objectives in an hour, if they complete the task they are awarded bonus points/rewards, if the opposing team prevents that goal, they award bonus points/rewards. Objectives like take enemy garrison, or hold Stone mist, OR control X amount of map for X long, take X amount of camps. Spvp, pretty fine, id add the ability to gamble on yourself, and team based stats/ratings. The tournament system was pretty good, reward wise, even though it didnt have the numbers playing it, perhaps limit the starting times, something like magic online does. Require an entrance fee which goes to the reward pot.

point is, the things that give the most reward in this game are actually pretty far from playing the best in general.
i can be more specific if you dont know what i mean.

Nick.6972:

There’s no reason to become better at this game.
Content is equally rewarded whether you’re good or bad, whether you’re using all your skills to kill the boss quickly or just spamming the auto attack while checking facebook.

And then there are people who complain about Bererker meta, they want more viable play styles, but once making tanking and healing viable is suggested, they don’t want it either.

there is more styles of play than berserker healing or tank.