Guild Wars 2

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Jimaruto.5389:

Dawn at 1600g now on TP by only 2 sellers! I wonder where the new “balance point” will go this time. Back at around 950g (as was previous days)? Or some hundreds gold higher? We will see that in a few days… as we will see about Dusk too.

PS: In case someone misunderstands, I am talking about dawn this time, not dusk.

Same argument, different item. The balance is where the players stop paying the high prices. Smart traders never make purchases from listings, but rather by placing Buy Orders. If someone is willing to pay 1600 Gold, so be it. I’ll gladly take their money.

buy orders tend to follow sell orders in price. buy order on dusk went up abour 200 sell price went up about 300-350.

but its up to the buyers whether it sticks/this happens.

Morrigan.2809:

The entire point of MMO’s are to be a special snowflake- more so in a game that is basically cosmetic based,

Now I had no problem whatsoever with this- even when I missed out, because the things I did get, showed that I was there.

This goes for stuff I would have loved to have but didn’t get at the time, too- like the gas mask skin

This also goes for “limited offer” stuff on the store btw.

Sooo.

Now I have a mini white kitten I bought originally as well as a witch’s outfit…
I also have, let’s see- a Fervid Censer, Zypherite helm, a Zephyr back pack, Cthulhu backpack ……
and what ever else I have..

I was proud to have them.

I missed the Clockwork combat tonic last time- and really regretted it- guess what?
I have no desire to buy it because I missed it.

I want aalllll the things is a disease.

In MMO’s you need to honor your long term players.
Being there matters

Edit: if the GW2 cap didn’t make me bald I might actually wear it :P

thing people forget is even limited time items usually have a last chance thing. But i dont think they would have lost much by not giving people a last chance

perhaps the items should be unbound though, so people could sell it to people later, maybe not

Kurrilino.2706:

You want an easy answer ?

The LS items are incredible ugly.
Either you look like Spider Man characters or like a Viking hobo.

People just don’t show stuff that is considered ugly.
Especially in a fantasy world where you have the classic sword n’ board cliches.

If A-Net makes fantastic looking armors and weapons, or staffs people would proudly show what they archived.

Simple and plain

dont diss spiderman!

Behellagh.1468:

Except that was the whole purpose of having the exchange in the first place. The rate is high enough now that a $25 gem card is worth around 150 gold. Evon’s weekly post is all about what to buy with gems, preferably gems bought with cash, and gold is one of those things. Gold is the gift card of Tyria.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell. The Gold to Gems side of the exchange was set up to finance the Gem to Gold side. It’s designed so that as long as players convert gold rather than convert gems, the rate will rise, faster and faster, thus requiring more gold for similarly priced items from 6 months ago. This is an attempt to ween players from gold to gem and encourage them to crack open their wallets and pay some cash. But instead players are desperately looking for a way to get more in game gold to buy gems the buy the nifty doohickey just introduced at the Gem Shop. But the devs are NEVER going to increase the drop rate of coin into the game and nerf any activity that perverts gameplay for the almighty loot.

So we have this disconnect. ANet needs players to buy gems with cash. Doesn’t have to be a lot of players, but I assume they do have goals they are trying to meet in terms of quarterly income. And we have players who only want everything in the Gem Shop for “free” by earning in game gold. Except all the use of in game gold to buy items from the Gem Shop has now made it increasingly difficult to buy items from the Gem Shop using only gold.

Irresistible Force … Immovable Object

Your choices are spend a little money, complain about it or leave. Of course the 3rd choice leaves you only F2P MMOs with paywalls that deny you actual content, dress you in drab rags and give you a lunch sack size inventory or a P2P MMO with a monthly fee in the $140-180 a year range that will still charge you for exclusive DLC.

Hmmm, I dunno, at the end of the day they seem to be making a lot of money. But if i would hazard a guess as how to make more? it would probably through real content. As for how to monetize it?
the classic sell for gems, many returning and players with decent cash flow would rather buy it for 40 dollars than spend 400 gold, or 400-80 hours and their ingame resource to get access.

another option, i think they should add, is a sort of vote with your dollars system.
If they dont want to charge because it will seperate the playerbase, they can give it for free, but essentially with this vote with dollars system make players who feel content is worthwhile show support.

when you have a patch that you like, you can buy a vote with dollars gemtype. These gems are slightly more expensive. say instead of 10$ for 800 its 10$ for 750 but, you can buy in increments of 1 as long as you are over 750.
Also they give special titles based on the patch you support.
i wouldnt put too much of actual value here, you wouldnt want people to do it for any other reason than to show support for whatever content just came out.

the advantage? this type of gem is voting with your wallet. Anet gets direct feedback on what people like, what they will pay for, and what engages them and keeps them coming. The success of things like kickstarter show that people will actively support something they like. they can even add a short message people can add to the purchase for better feedback
I believe this will encourage anet to make good content, and encourage people to support the type of content they like. Whats the difference between that and what we have now? messaging, and feedback.

anyhow just some thoughts

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

Hence, the disconnect for many players, who dont realize that earning gold is the actual focus of the game.

Well, this is not agreeing with me. In fact it’s pretty much the opposite of my position. My main goal in this game is to have fun, not to collect gold or buy shinies or make people jealous. Aside from the last of these, they are fun side activities, but my goal in playing the game is to have fun.

A certain part of the player base has been taught that “fun” is an endless hamster wheel-like chase after the latest shiny, and because GW2 is meant to be casual friendly most of these shinies share a lowest common denominator – they can be traded for gold.

So, if your definition of fun is “more shinies” then you’ll look for the fastest ways to make the most gold, and therefore obtain the most shinies. Since these activities are often boring, always repetitive (which eventually becomes boring for most people) and utilize a very limited part of the game world, it generally turns into not-fun very quickly.

Because I don’t care about shinies, I don’t care about gold either. I need a little for specific purposes, occasionally I make an effort to collect more for a specific goal, but I stop if I find the game becoming not-fun. I believe that this kind of play is what the game was designed for, the complaints come from those who want to remake the game into what they want, rather than accepting that this is not the kind of game they want to play.

i dont disagree with you in some respects.
i generally agree with some of your analysis

the main difference is, that while i understand that this is the way the game is. I dont think its a good paradigm to continue as the game matures. it doesnt necessarilly have to be shinies, but the game needs to create some more goals whose focus is less based on heavy grind/gold.

I personally believe that when you set up a games rules/rewards in a way that you have to ignore those systems to have fun, its a very bad rule/reward. it means you have good basic gameplay, with a bad execution of that gameplay.

You say accept it, and deal, i Say accept it, deal, but try to suggest they improve the game. That said, precursors/legendaries arent the most important thing in the game, i think attention tends to get focused on them once a player has little other goals to achieve.
but as you say any goal they add, that requires massive gold, or excessive grinding will suck the fun out of the game for many people.

APW.1569:

phys.7689:

back to the point of the thread, it appears that dusks are selling at 1500+ and the buy orders are not getting filled as fast as people may be used to. the buy orders seem to range from 1220-1300.

as it stands, it seems like the buy order will come up to the 1300 range,

im guessing if we take a look at the 60 hours after the gangsta move, we will say a fairly large increase in price.

So you think that increase in demand was triggered because someone bought out the 3 remaining dusks right after patch and not due to the changes for Eternity?

i think that the market can support higher prices for precursors in general. I think that in order for that to actually happen someone/group had to act in a way that leads others to follow suit.

because prices for luxuries of limited quantities are decided a lot by perception.
not just the perception of the buyers, but also the perception of the sellers.

Essentially the demand is high, the supply is low, but someone has to change the sellers paradigm thats why they buy up, and price high, so other people catch on to the fact they could get more for their goods.

based on my rough estimates on drop rates, populations, and risks to create, im pretty sure most popular precursors could sell for higher.

back to the point of the thread, it appears that dusks are selling at 1500+ and the buy orders are not getting filled as fast as people may be used to. the buy orders seem to range from 1220-1300.

as it stands, it seems like the buy order will come up to the 1300 range,

im guessing if we take a look at the 60 hours after the gangsta move, we will say a fairly large increase in price.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

you are the one who said its purpose is to be a rare motivating item that keeps people playing, i didnt disagree with you. Now you say its not supposed to motivate people.
ok

This is what I said:

“Yes, Legendary weapons were never meant for “the average player.” The way MMOs are designed, there have to be rare, hard to obtain items to motivate some players to keep logging in. A fair number of players stop playing, or at least play a lot less often, after obtaining a Legendary because they lack a long-term goal to work towards.”

Some, a fair number, not for the average player.

This is far from saying that Legendaries are there to motivate everyone. They are motivation for hardcore players, just as ascended gear was intended to motivate hardcore players who want to move up to high level fractals, but it is not necessary for open world content.

The casual player can enjoy the game just fine without either. The complaints against ascended/Legendary gear are based in misconceptions and therefore are invalid. I don’t complain about the price of luxury cars and yahts, because I know that they were never intended for someone like me.

once again i didnt not say you said it is to motivate everyone. I said people.
Complaints based on misconceptions are not invalid. in fact a great deal of conflict/complaints/issues are actually because of a misconception, or disconnect between two parties.

however it is harder to identify the source of the complaints/issues/contention if you have misconceptions, or misunderstandings.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

yup, and this rare motivating item is designed around how much more you can earn in gold over other players. Hence, the disconnect for many players, who dont realize that earning gold is the actual focus of the game.

I don’t accept this as a legitimate argument.

I am not motivated to create a Legendary, and I don’t believe most of the casual players are either. There’s a large enough number who want them, yes, but it’s not the central focus of the game.

This is why they were not designed to be obtained through casual play. They are not intended for casual players. They never will be obtainable through casual play, because the players they are intended for will be offended by this.

For me, gathering gold is an intermediary step towards a specific goal, such as gearing up a new alt that just hit 80. And I can do this just fine by playing the game, I geared up many characters by doing the world bosses in the 1-15 zones every day and selling the loot I got. That represents about an hour out of my day, the rest of my time was spent doing things I enjoyed.

I don’t think you are capable of understanding that how you see the game is not how everyone sees the game.

you are the one who said its purpose is to be a rare motivating item that keeps people playing, i didnt disagree with you. Now you say its not supposed to motivate people.
ok

as far as me thinking everybody is me, i dont thats why i said the disconnect for MANY players, and not words like
every
50%
most

the point is a large number of people did not realize that the goal that is made for players you define as “hardcore” is based around a gold earning laddersystem. When they do realize this, thats when you see the people talking about problems getting precursors.

You really dont have to disagree with me just out of habit, i am not really saying anything that goes against anything you have said.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

tolunart.2095:

What we know is that the demand for Dusk is high enough to support the current prices. This is because of the wardrobe system and the recent upgrade of Eternity’s graphic effects. More people want Twilight/Eternity and therefore there are more people trying to outspend each other.

This is a natural consequence of changes that were made to the game, not manipulation. If players say “1500g for a precursor is too much” then Dusk would not be selling at that price. Yes, that means if someone is willing to spend more money than you, or has more money to spend than you, then you will not get the item. Anet can do nothing about this, it is purely the result of the willingness of players to spend more money than everyone else.

anet designed an item with a means of obtaining it that is only marketed to those who can make the most as you say, which means dusk is a rich mans weapon until the rich get bored with it.
as the differnce in wealth grows, so to will the attainability of this item for the non wealthy.

Yes, Legendary weapons were never meant for “the average player.” The way MMOs are designed, there have to be rare, hard to obtain items to motivate some players to keep logging in. A fair number of players stop playing, or at least play a lot less often, after obtaining a Legendary because they lack a long-term goal to work towards.

Which is why the situation is not going to change – Anet intended Legendaries to be hard to get, the fact that they remain hard to get is not a problem. If you want one, be prepared to work for it. If you don’t want to work for it, be prepared to never have one.

yup, and this rare motivating item is designed around how much more you can earn in gold over other players. Hence, the disconnect for many players, who dont realize that earning gold is the actual focus of the game.

Nike.2631:

Trice.4598:

The fact that this is not a rich people controlling the market doesn’t change the fact that something is wrong, it’s been over a year since we’ve been promise precursor crafting and right we need more than ever.

Seriously, I wish people had to link to actual red name posts/interviews/blogs with the words “we promise” or eat a ten day ban every time they claim they were promised something.

“Looking in to” does not mean an infallible DESTINY of delivery.

actually they said in the 2013 plans, that before the end of 2013 we would have precursor quests. Now plans change, but its not the same thing as claiming they never really said they were going to do it.

Alls i got to say is the precursor quest better be awesome, if ends up being a gather 1000 items x 10 quest, then thats something they should have been able to whip up in 1 month

tolunart.2095:

What we know is that the demand for Dusk is high enough to support the current prices. This is because of the wardrobe system and the recent upgrade of Eternity’s graphic effects. More people want Twilight/Eternity and therefore there are more people trying to outspend each other.

This is a natural consequence of changes that were made to the game, not manipulation. If players say “1500g for a precursor is too much” then Dusk would not be selling at that price. Yes, that means if someone is willing to spend more money than you, or has more money to spend than you, then you will not get the item. Anet can do nothing about this, it is purely the result of the willingness of players to spend more money than everyone else.

anet designed an item with a means of obtaining it that is only marketed to those who can make the most as you say, which means dusk is a rich mans weapon until the rich get bored with it.
as the differnce in wealth grows, so to will the attainability of this item for the non wealthy.

Carighan.6758:

phys.7689:

you cannot divorce reward from game design, If you do, you will make a bad game.

its not a one or the other thing, reward design is part of game design, an INTEGRAL PART.

If the only way to enjoy a game, is to ignore the rules/rewards the people set up, it means they made a bad game. and by taking their basic gameplay and altering the rules/rewards you could make a superior game.

If I interpret this correct, you mean that as long as champ train in FGS is such high rewards, having such low rewards on an event such as this makes no sense?

Well, two things:

1. Rewards are pretty high at 48-52 champ bags per hour + 410 or so tokens per hour + >100 tickets per hour. That’s nearing 1 champ bag per minute.
2. Would you prefer devs to never fix any reward scaling because “all the other stuff is still there”? They would need to do everything in one gargantuan patch then, I can’t see that work out well. Champ loot being unbalanced every since the buff, dungeon rewards being out of whack, nothing about this changes that the old pavillion rewards were silly, and the new ones genuinely reward working together.

I do think that a) coordination is needlessly difficult due to the event popup not being as good as it could be and b) Silver/Bronze shouldn’t take as long. Maybe bosses slowly lose HP as the reward tier goes down or so. So that Bronze is 15 minutes instead of 25.

you were saying that rewards dont matter i am saying that it is part of good design.

I honestly dont think the rewards for this event, at a high level are bad, i do think the worst case scenario is probably poorly designed, people would probably all get hit by laser beam than have it go on for 40 minutes and give the same reward they would have got for 20 minutes.

when you imply rewards dont matter that touches on a lot of other facets of the game whose reward design is not helping reinforce the game design.

Mystic.5934:

no one is buying it at 2000g, so it is not worth 2000g. if they were buying it at 2000g, the sell listing price would be higher.
take the average of buy orders and sell listing and you’ll get much closer to the price that item is worth.

well for all we know the point of the initial post was to adevrtise the value of dusk being high so as to generate interest, maybe not, but who can say.

the key fact here is that dusk is now selling since the 2k move, for 1500 and 1240, about 200 more than a week a ago to buy orders, and 350 more to sell orders, somebodies winning

but definately not the people who want dusk and havent made 200 more gold this week

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

you lose money farming silk, if you would have made more money farming something else.

No, you can’t lose money you never had from an activity you never did. What you want to say is that you make more money doing an activity that gives you more valuable mats. You don’t LOSE money farming, ever. Even the most worthless item can be sold for money, exceeding your cost of farming, which is a couple of WP costs. You might think that’s just arguing a pedantic point but that distinction is important because your being purposefully misleading by telling people they lose money even though farming is the least risky and cost free activity you can do to earn gold.

What you don’t realize is that if people who are farming go off and ‘not lose’ money doing other activities, that’s less mats in the market … I won’t go into how that would impact the price of those mats because you still don’t understand you can’t lose money farming.

What you consider worth farming or not isn’t relevant but the fact you seem to think farming is a waste of time sows you lack of understanding of the market, how players impact supply and demand, it’s affect on prices and finally, how farmers optimize their money-making opportunities.

The self-regulating aspect that players have on the market isn’t flawed because demand affects price. Farming is lucrative for those people paying attention to those signals. To suggest this is completely out of the control of players shows a significant lack of understanding for this aspect of the game. If I see linen is at 8s … I know EXACTLY where to go to farm it. Any good farmer does.

you are missing the point.
the point is that most materials are supplied unintentionally.
i already explained how this works, but you dont really understand so there is not much more i can tell you.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

you get silk drops from supply bags, you get while salvaging. If you decide you want to be a silk farmer, you will actually lose money as a farmer.

There is NO way I can ever lose money purposefully farming a specific item, even if I don’t get any of that specific item while attempting to farm it due to the fact that I’m highly likely to obtain other materials I can sell to recoup whatever costs (waypoint cost) I spend to make a farming attempt. Only in very specific scenarios where a person have to act stupidly where farming would result in losing money.

phys.7689:

people cannot meet supply intentionally, which means in the path of getting say valuable silk, you create a whole bunch of worthless leather.

People can and do create supply intentionally if they feel the price they will get for the items warrant the effort to do so. The fact a farmer generates leather while farming silk doesn’t prevent them from intentionally trying to farm silk and sell it to meet demand. It’s simply demonstrated every time someone buys silk from the TP. That is demand being filled by supply, regardless of what other mats were generated in the process for creating the materials being sold.

Supply and demand are most definitely the driving factors behind the market in GW2. It’s can’t possibly be any other way. Players are most definitely part of system that determines what items are supplied and demanded in the game through the activities they do. Saying they aren’t is just silly.

you lose money farming silk, if you would have made more money farming something else.
for example, lets say you target linen scraps, and you get 40 linen an hour, and a bunch of less valuable stuff. like leather, 15 silver, 20 silver in wood, 40 silver in iron. lets say lines scraps selling for 6 silver each.
you make 2.4+.4+.2+.15 gold per hour or, 3.15 gold. then you realize you could have gotten 6 gold doing dungeons, or 8 gold doing champ train, or 6-7 gold doing events, and you realize as a farmer, farming linen was directly was a losing proposition.

so why are these things not worth farming? because a decent portion of them are generated by accident. The price for silk isnt based on how much a player can make focusing on silk, The price for silk is based on how many people create silk while doing their general farming and daily activities.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

well the biggest flaw in the whole market self balance idea, is it depends on people creating supply purposefully, which by and large doesnt happen in this game.

WTF! OF course this happens … I can guarentee that if the demand on an item spikes, more people do go out of their way to supply it. Just because there are people that continue to supply and item when demand is less doesn’t mean the market behaves in a way that doesn’t balance itself. The market behaves in a classic ‘supply/demand’ manner, so clearly people are taking advantage of increasing supply with demand if they think it’s worth it.

most of the games items have a large part of their supply occur randomly. For example, silk, most silk comes into the game whether people want it to or not.
you get silk drops from supply bags, you get while salvaging. If you decide you want to be a silk farmer, you will actually lose money as a farmer. The most likely way to get silk is to kill colth dropping enemies who also drop bags repeatedly. However, you get more silk in a champ train, or dynamic event train killing the enemies who arent even mainly silk droppers, because you either kill more enemies, or get more drops via champion bags that salavge into silk.

lets say you want to farm powerful blood, you go to kill some harpies or minotaurs, the amount you kill doesnt equal enough that you wouldnt get more money in a dynamic event train in orr, or how much you would get in EOTM, in fact you will probably get as much powerful blood in a couple hours of EOTM as you would get targeting specific monsters, but you wont get all the other items.

people cannot meet supply intentionally, which means in the path of getting say valuable silk, you create a whole bunch of worthless leather.

So really the equations end up being more about how much of an item the devs designed to be generated and how much demand they designed the items to use. The market cannot correct itself because supply is not controlled by players in this game.

tolunart.2095:

Leamas.5803:

There is enough anecdotal evidence to show there are issues with the RNG.

Argument fails right there. At any given moment there are tens of thousands of people, at least, playing this game. “Look at these twelve people, this proves RNG is broken,” doesn’t even begin to offer enough data to do anything.

actually random samples are a method of statistics as well, when your random sample shows info not consistent with what you expect you then begin a more detailed analysis, QC of many products work like this.
Anyhow even if one can claim anectdotal evidence may be invalid, its a lot more valid than 0 data.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Okay maybe I’m unclear here. If you don’t actively try for precursors, you likely won’t get them. As a mob drop I received 1: Storm. The rest were random forges of random rares or random exotics. If you don’t try you won’t get it. Simple. Doesn’t matter how long the game is out nor your playtime.

oh i thought you were talking about random drops, yes, getting it from the forge is i believe the main way, and only way anyone attempting to get one should really consider outside of gold.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

Leamas.5803:

tolunart.2095:

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I know I can wait and all that. I have 2 legendaries as it is and over the course of my playtime have had 6 precursors drop. I know. The issue is that in the same amount of playtime, I’m just not getting anything… My enjoyment of the game is somewhat contingent on whether I get some loot or not. If i don’t think I’m going to get anything I might as well stay in DR RPing. Which I do.

Congrats on the drops. Random distribution via computer is as close as anything gets to being fair, the computer doesn’t have friends or enemies to reward or punish. The way our minds work, however, looks for patterns even when there is no pattern to find. So many of those arguing against random precursor drops and such do so from the assumptions that it’s not “fair,” that they are “cursed” and will never see a precursor drop, etc.

Good to see you understand this is not the case.

There is enough anecdotal evidence to show there are issues with the RNG. Over time true RNG will ALWAYS balance in to a nice Gaussian bell curve. Now if you take Lilith here, with 6 precursor drops. WOW, that is truly extreme odds breaking and I’ve heard of those with even more, 12, 15, etc. Others who claim to consistently make 40g/hour in Cursed Shore or the FS train while some have problems make 1g for the same effort. Some people with 4 and 5 legendaries, though I somehow think they probably got those from TP flipping. Those getting consistently good drops vs those getting consistently bad drops. I think most people sit somewhere in the middle, but now we’re talking groups of people where the RNG is weighted for good or bad and it’s not unheard of.

Sure everyone might have lucky/unlucky streaks, but because of the nature of RNG, over time drop quality should be fairly even across everyone. That is not what we’ve seen from this game.

I don’t think the game has been around long enough for that distribution curve to actually exist. It’s like… I had a couple lucky breaks. Very spread out. Each precursor was approximately 2 months apart. Anyway there’s also a lack of reliable data on this because almost everyone who doesn’t get their precursor will whine here. Everyone who does will not necessarily brag here (the do that in map or guild).

0 from drops/chests
and i out of people i play with regularly, who kept playing from start

2/5 have got a drop

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

John Smith.4610:

People can put up sell orders for any value they want as long as they can afford the fee, that doesn’t mean the item is suddenly trading for that price.

edit: attempting to fix data image.

which essentially means dusks are going for more than they were before by a decent margin.
because last week the sell price was like 1160 and the buy price was like 1040, right now, over an average of the last 60 hours, which includes before the gangsta dusk move was made, the average price has surpassed the maximum price for last week. Not to mention that price was already on an upward swing since the last gangsta move.

what you have shown is that overall, someone has successfully pushed the price of dusk up, which continues to be at that trend right now the highest buy order is 1200. So for a dusk supplier, or seller/syndicate overall, the push has successfully increased the value of dusk, and we currently havent seen how high it will continue to push it.

Sigh. For that “gangsta” move to be successful, the person, who bought up all 3 dusks at 1200g, he needs to sell at 1412g to break even, which is far away from the average and median price of 1150g that JS has stated.

Actually, i would interpret the low difference of 5g between average and median sell prices as a good indicator that only the 3 dusks that the gangsta bought at 1200g have sold for significantly more than 1150g.

If we assume that from those 58 dusks 55 have sold at 1150g and 3 were bought up at 1200g, guess what average sale price we get?

55×1150=63250

Plus 3600 for 3/1200 adds up to 66850, divided by 58 we get an average sale price of:

1152.58g, just like JS stated.

The median?

from 58 dusks, the lower half of 29 have sold for an average of 1150 and from the upper half, 26 have also sold for 1150 and 3 for 1200. So the upper half cost 150 more gold overall than the lower half.

150g/29 equals 5g more for the median price compared to the average price.

So the Median is 1157g instead of 1152g, just like JS stated.

So unless the gangsta waits until the average price goes up to 1412g, he will make a loss, spreading some of his wealth to the 3 sellers at 1200g (who got great value for their dusks compared to actual market prices atm).

here is what you are not getting, last week
the max sell order was lower than the highest buy order is right now.

also the data that john smith chose to show you includes 49 hours BEFORE THE gangsta move was made. this means it is averaging in 2/3rd of data BEFORE the move was made.

even including that. the average price has gone up at least 100 gold

if 58 items were sold at 100 gold more, that means overall the dusk market has generated 5.8k more today than it did yesterday.

the cost of listing 4 dusks at 2k, is 5% of 2k x 4 = 400 gold, that is all he actually loses in gold for them not selling

So someone/group spent 400 gold, to increase the returns on the dusk market by 5.8k

you keep thinking small time, single seller, and not as someone/group who may provide a decent portion of the dusk markets value.

if they only control 1/3rd of the market, they still spent 400 gold, to make back 100-150×20 gold more than they normally would. 2000-3000 more gold than usuall.

and based on my observations, multiple dusks have been sold at 1500-1600 to sell listings, and buy orders are climbing, which suggests buy orders arent getting filled as fast as before.

They didnt spend only 400g, you keep forgetting the initial purchase of 1000g from last week, which would add up to another 40k gold. And what happened to the 168 dusks that got traded within a week? They surely cant be provided by the same group of people as they are holding on to their 40 dusks from last week, so how do they eliminate competition?

I you want to keep making up wild theories of a couple of people having any significant impact on precursor prices, go ahead. Its simply supply and demand by the average player base, which regulates prices.

the initial purchase is irrelevant as long as the value goes up. the fact that i spend 1000 gold is irrelevant because the value of dusk is not going down. that 1000 has been changed from a liquid gold value to a commodity value, but its still there. The only thing THEY LOSE or cost they pay is the 5% fee.

its like saying if you buy a stock at 10 dollars, you lost 10 dollars, the only thing you lose is the fees. those 4 precursors are still there, and they have in fact gone up in value while they sat there.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

anyhow my numbers are rough estimates and assumptions, so ill give it a big variance, i would say i doubt more than 1/3rd of the dusks being sold each day are from random drops, if so that means 40 dusks sold by proffesional dusk sellers/creators. in which case raising the price by 100 -150 gold has gotten them 4k more gold then it would have last week. An increase of about 10% versus last week in the business of being a dusk provider.
the cost of sell listing of 2k that didnt sell is about 400 gold, for a turnaround of 4k gold in the last 60 hours alone.

if the people who made that initial move were stupid, its theoretically possible, but the dusk market as a whole has made out like a bandit for it, i tend to not think its coincidence, when someone makes a move that makes things a lot more valuable for specific group, and that person already happens to be fairly rich.

What you fail to see is that a 10% price increase simply wont pay out due to fees and taxes. Even if we consider that a group of professional traders/forgers is responsible for 40 of the 60 sales within the last 2 1/2 days. They got their 40 dusks at 1000g a week ago, either through buy order or through forging. If they sell now, they would make a 5% loss. You also totally disregard the forging costs of precursors and assume its the same as last week. Maybe the average price of the cheapest exotic or rare greatswords also bumped up by 10%. Crafted rare greatswords already jumped more tha n10% and that is only since patch day. The anticipated influx of new t5 fine mats from the pavilion didnt really materialize and the bazaar trader made mithril prices spike 50%.

1000/.85 is 1176. so any thing they sell over 1176 would be a profit(and at least 4 or 5 have sold in the 1500+ since the move), but i honestly doubt there are that many flippers involved, it would most likely be manufacturers, people who have a vested, and continued interest in the selling price of dusk.

As for their motivation? its possible it is cost, buuut its pretty tricky because a number of people can profit off this. For all we know its people who already profit off material sales as well.

I have a wild theory on the type of group that could get the most out of this at all levels, but its mostly wild speculation.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

John Smith.4610:

People can put up sell orders for any value they want as long as they can afford the fee, that doesn’t mean the item is suddenly trading for that price.

edit: attempting to fix data image.

which essentially means dusks are going for more than they were before by a decent margin.
because last week the sell price was like 1160 and the buy price was like 1040, right now, over an average of the last 60 hours, which includes before the gangsta dusk move was made, the average price has surpassed the maximum price for last week. Not to mention that price was already on an upward swing since the last gangsta move.

what you have shown is that overall, someone has successfully pushed the price of dusk up, which continues to be at that trend right now the highest buy order is 1200. So for a dusk supplier, or seller/syndicate overall, the push has successfully increased the value of dusk, and we currently havent seen how high it will continue to push it.

Sigh. For that “gangsta” move to be successful, the person, who bought up all 3 dusks at 1200g, he needs to sell at 1412g to break even, which is far away from the average and median price of 1150g that JS has stated.

Actually, i would interpret the low difference of 5g between average and median sell prices as a good indicator that only the 3 dusks that the gangsta bought at 1200g have sold for significantly more than 1150g.

If we assume that from those 58 dusks 55 have sold at 1150g and 3 were bought up at 1200g, guess what average sale price we get?

55×1150=63250

Plus 3600 for 3/1200 adds up to 66850, divided by 58 we get an average sale price of:

1152.58g, just like JS stated.

The median?

from 58 dusks, the lower half of 29 have sold for an average of 1150 and from the upper half, 26 have also sold for 1150 and 3 for 1200. So the upper half cost 150 more gold overall than the lower half.

150g/29 equals 5g more for the median price compared to the average price.

So the Median is 1157g instead of 1152g, just like JS stated.

So unless the gangsta waits until the average price goes up to 1412g, he will make a loss, spreading some of his wealth to the 3 sellers at 1200g (who got great value for their dusks compared to actual market prices atm).

here is what you are not getting, last week
the max sell order was lower than the highest buy order is right now.

also the data that john smith chose to show you includes 49 hours BEFORE THE gangsta move was made. this means it is averaging in 2/3rd of data BEFORE the move was made.

even including that. the average price has gone up at least 100 gold

if 58 items were sold at 100 gold more, that means overall the dusk market has generated 5.8k more today than it did yesterday.

the cost of listing 4 dusks at 2k, is 5% of 2k x 4 = 400 gold, that is all he actually loses in gold for them not selling

So someone/group spent 400 gold, to increase the returns on the dusk market by 5.8k

you keep thinking small time, single seller, and not as someone/group who may provide a decent portion of the dusk markets value.

if they only control 1/3rd of the market, they still spent 400 gold, to make back 100-150×20 gold more than they normally would. 2000-3000 more gold than usuall.

and based on my observations, multiple dusks have been sold at 1500-1600 to sell listings, and buy orders are climbing, which suggests buy orders arent getting filled as fast as before.

Wanze.8410:

Leamas.5803:

tolunart.2095:

The only solution is to keep getting more money until you’re the one throwing the biggest pile of money at it.

The problem is that prices are rising faster than most people can make money. Unless you buy gems (ANet’s preferred method, of course), which is bad for the economy, grind your life away, which ANet says they don’t want you to do, or play the TP, which is also bad for the economy and just another form of grind…just more boring.

Only grinding creates in game gold and contributes to inflation. The gem/gold exchange doesnt create gold, if you exchange gems for gold, that gold was earned by someone else in game. And as the gem buyer has to pay 10 gold for your 100 gems and you only get 7g back for your 100 gems, it actually counters inflation, just like the tp, which sinks gold through fees and taxes.

this is not actually true, it could be true, but we really dont know. They said the system is not a direct system, it is a weighted algorithm, which they at time alter. Essentially they generate gold out of no where if the need arises. This was discussed when the game was new, and it was actually impossible for people to buy gold if it was truely a direct system.

So yes gems to gold creates money. Golds to gems takes it out, its possible more is going out than coming in but the opposite is also possible.

my guess is that right now, more is going out that coming in, especially with the tax they put on it. But it is actually withing the framework of the gold/gem device to create gold out of nothing

tolunart.2095:

KOPPER.1458:

Just out of curiosity: Are you saying that you think a median transaction price of 1157g for dusk is acceptable?

Yes. That is the short answer. It isn’t about being acceptable or not sadly. It’s about what players will pay. According to his charts shown here players are buying them just fine. While I don’t agree with it many apparently think it’s acceptable.

The purpose of the TP is to allow players to trade items and gold with each other in a safe and efficient fashion. Would you rather that new players who don’t understand how valuable this “Dusk” that dropped from a random mob is get conned by players who trade them a crafted rare greatsword for it?

The other side of the coin, there were 54 unique sellers, some of them are surely “flipping” but the majority are just your average player who got a lucky drop and suddenly is over a thousand gold richer. It’s not one or two or even ten TP Barons sitting on thrones made of gold laughing as they manipulate the price for their own benefit.

i highly doubt the maority of dusks are created by accident. Based on the fact that you are talking about from what i have seen, players averaging 5k hours have gotten 1 precursor drop. then you figure that could be any precursor, so you figure 20×5k hours is how many player hours it takes to generate a random dusk or 100k player hours to generate one dusk. then you figure probably half of those people wont sell it.
200k player hours for 1 dusk to appear on the TP from random drop. lets say they have 200k people playing per day for an average of 2 hours.
that would mean only two dusks generated in this way per day, but apparently 1 sells per hour.

anyhow my numbers are rough estimates and assumptions, so ill give it a big variance, i would say i doubt more than 1/3rd of the dusks being sold each day are from random drops, if so that means 40 dusks sold by proffesional dusk sellers/creators. in which case raising the price by 100 -150 gold has gotten them 4k more gold then it would have last week. An increase of about 10% versus last week in the business of being a dusk provider.
the cost of sell listing of 2k that didnt sell is about 400 gold, for a turnaround of 4k gold in the last 60 hours alone.

if the people who made that initial move were stupid, its theoretically possible, but the dusk market as a whole has made out like a bandit for it, i tend to not think its coincidence, when someone makes a move that makes things a lot more valuable for specific group, and that person already happens to be fairly rich.

KOPPER.1458:

Just out of curiosity: Are you saying that you think a median transaction price of 1157g for dusk is acceptable?

Yes. That is the short answer. It isn’t about being acceptable or not sadly. It’s about what players will pay. According to his charts shown here players are buying them just fine. While I don’t agree with it many apparently think it’s acceptable.

its what a small subsection of the game total will pay based on the amount generated.

If the supply is small enough, you can get even more for items. even in a perfect economic system, the 1157 price is still a reflection of their design, due to rarity, and means of obtaining it.

John Smith.4610:

People can put up sell orders for any value they want as long as they can afford the fee, that doesn’t mean the item is suddenly trading for that price.

edit: attempting to fix data image.

which essentially means dusks are going for more than they were before by a decent margin.
because last week the sell price was like 1160 and the buy price was like 1040, right now, over an average of the last 60 hours, which includes before the gangsta dusk move was made, the average price has surpassed the maximum price for last week. Not to mention that price was already on an upward swing since the last gangsta move.

what you have shown is that overall, someone has successfully pushed the price of dusk up, which continues to be at that trend right now the highest buy order is 1200. So for a dusk supplier, or seller/syndicate overall, the push has successfully increased the value of dusk, and we currently havent seen how high it will continue to push it.

irk.2047:

mind set of these threads

1: “help I beat the game to my hearts content, why is there no game left to play? I demand more game”
2: “I’m moving to another game that is better”
3: repeat steps 1-2

the goal of developers is to keep these guys coming back and spending money periodically. So yeah, they have to either create a content someone loves to play again and again, or keep creating new content, or both. Thats the business they are in. If they cant do it, and were only good for one release, well i guess they can just keep trying to release in new markets. that could last a decent amount of years. I mean they have already made profit and continue to profit, the only question is if they are maximizing profit, who knows, who cares, as a player my main goal is to have an entertaining game to play. Right now, i havent played GW2 much, in last few weeks, and not feeling much need to. So ehh

Kasima.8143:

(See the chat in the screenshot)
Opening 9 Gold Boss Blitz Chests gave me a bunch of exotic containers.
Opening all the containers gave me about 1 or 2 rares, a few rare crafting mats, T4+ mats and the rest was greens and skill scrolls.

So yes, it’s pretty kittenty loot for the organization and effort.

seeing as how champ farming at its peak was giving about 6 bags in 12 minutes, its probably ok loot.

Of course you didnt have to think at all, or have any chance of failure for champ train, but in truth that was probably a poor design

jazzllanna.1278:

Not the Pavilion guys- The gauntlet. The thing no one is doing because it is a huge waste of time- even more so than the boss fights below.

question, how do the tokens you can earn compare with the getting tokens elsewhere? is it the main way to get gauntlet tickets?

Carighan.6758:

It’s funny that it seems all players cared about in regards to the Pavillion is the loot grinding.
I guess it might have been an experiment, see what the community notice more to judge their disposition. The changed and upgraded boss mechanics, or the lack of loot if you don’t organize.

I suppose the message the devs is clear, don’t do content, give us more loot instead? :P

Because really, ignore all loot for a moment. From all situations. In that scenario, the Boss Blitz is ok. The HP scales freely, which means that players have the difficult in their own control, can last anything from 5 minutes to 25 minutes but hey, we managed that with the Marionette, too!
So really, all that is “missing” is “more loot”, apparently. Because 8 champ bags + chest roll for 5 minutes isn’t enough, despite being more than what you get from champ train farming. But I understand that the amount of organization needed is what’s actually annoying people and causing these complaints, not the lack of loot. :P

And even then, that’s a very minor downside against much better boss mechanics compared to last year. If I had to pick between the two, I’d rather have no loot, because really if you need more cash in this game you’re doing something wrong. :P

you cannot divorce reward from game design, If you do, you will make a bad game.

its not a one or the other thing, reward design is part of game design, an INTEGRAL PART.

If the only way to enjoy a game, is to ignore the rules/rewards the people set up, it means they made a bad game. and by taking their basic gameplay and altering the rules/rewards you could make a superior game.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

anyhow precursor/legendaries are becoming more and more of a rich mans game only. and even through all the nerfs to gold that have happened recently, the prices continue to rise.

With the recent change to the wardrobe system, the wealthy should have legendary saturation soon and will have no interest in acquiring multiple copies of legendaries. When this happens, the prices should fall to match the offers made by those who still want a legendary.

i think the wealthy is a lot larger subset than you think it is, keep in mind even amongst the wealthy, there werent too many duplicates. And that class has been sustaining a steady increase in precursor value for 18 months.

but, anet has been working on a precursor hunt, but they really would have to get it right. Which i honestly doubt, because its a pretty complex issue.

anyhow precursor/legendaries are becoming more and more of a rich mans game only. and even through all the nerfs to gold that have happened recently, the prices continue to rise.

Romek.4201:

lol – i dont think this has anything to do with eternity
someone who would spend 2k for an precursor could just spend 3,5k for complete eternity on tradepost^^

people stopped crafting precursors in mystic forge cause they thought soon will be cheap t5 mats from crown pavilion – thats all

eternity has gone up 1000 gold since the patch. i wouldnt expect to be getting eternities at that price much longer. eternity has always been an undervalued item. it should have always costed somewhere in the family of sunrise+twilight. I hear the main reason was poor effects, but that has changed, and the value is bound to go up.

tolunart.2095:

Master of Timespace.2548:

tolunart.2095:

All this means is that someone got greedy and will likely waste a lot of money on listing fees. New Dusks will drop and provide an opportunity for those who are lucky (or persistent with respect to the MF) who can then undercut the greedy seller and bring the prices back in line with the rest of the precursors.

If these guys would always just “lose lots of money on listing fees”, then they wouldn’t be able to buy ’cursors in the first place D;

That’s where the “greedy” part comes in. For example, this morning a buy order for Dusk at 1250 was filled and immediately after the current lowest sell order was placed for 1625. After TP fees the seller will get about 1381, if that is someone “flipping” Dusk they will make a little over 130g for very little effort.

If that seller was greedy and listed for 1900 instead, he would get 1615 and make a bigger profit (365), but it’s more likely that the item would sit there while others came along and undercut him, like the sellers asking 2k for their Dusks. There are several more buy orders and someone selling Dusk today can instantly make what they would have gotten for a sell order yesterday by filling these buy orders, and flippers can make a quick hundred or two gold by taking the buy orders and listing way below the 2k asking prices of the greedy sellers.

The smart TP traders make several smaller trades and watch the gold add up, while the greedy ones want more than the market will allow and sit there watching the prices drop, and end up losing some of their profits by cancelling and relisting.

This is the way the TP is supposed to work, there is no crisis here. Eventually those in a rush to turn Twilight into the upgraded Eternity will drop out and demand will return to normal, and so will prices.

the thing you are forgetting is, if you are in the business of selling dusks, whoever made the gangster move of pushing the price higher has currently succeeded, before his move dusk was 1100 sell order and 1049 buy order. now dusks are selling for 1250 buy orders and 1650 sell orders (since now the lowest is 1700.

If your goal is to raise the value of dusk you have to push the price higher than you need it to be. if you set it at 1600, people will drop it down to 1200, if you set it at 2000 people apparently drop it down to 1500+

many people here are again thinking just of the highest selling item, these type of moves are made by people with a high enough supply to profit off the increase in price overall, the 2k item is just the bait.

What it boils down to is they believe eternity is undervalued, and they want dusk to jump in the middle and get the profit. Essentially they want dusk to be the item that benfits from the increase in demand of eternity, because actually making eternity is not a step a middleman/manufacturer can profit from.

MrPersons.1560:

The reason why I liked the QD train was because it was easy to train alt characters there. I find map completion boring, I dislike PVP and WVW, so the best way to train new characters was in QD. that is no longer possible and now in order to level them you have to “play the way it was intended” and do map completion and all that. That gets boring and tedious really quick, not to mention it takes multiple times longer than the train did.

I didn’t really do QD train for loot, but its always a nice bonus.

QD train wasnt really that good for exp compared to other options, i suggest you do eotm, make sure you wait till the commander comes around, because trying to get to the zerg is the worst part.

Leo Paul.1659:

My issue with this one is that their idea of an anti-zerging fix goes against their manifesto. Surely there could be other ways to dissuade players from mindless zerging aside from asking/praying that other players to/would go away because they will just scale the event and ruin it for everyone else?

To quote them:

If I’m out hunting and another player walks by, shouldn’t I welcome his help, rather than worrying that he’s going to steal my kills or consume all the mobs I wanted to kill? Or if I want to play with someone, shouldn’t we naturally have the same goals and objectives, rather than discovering that we’re in the same area but working on a different set of quests?

you are still working with the other player, you just want him to work with you, not against you.

as long as the people are spread out well, and actually playing well, the scaling shouldnt be a problem, the problem is, well to be honest, they have made most world events so easy at high scales that none of the skills they wanted people to use were present.

people have pages of talk of how they AFK 1 for content, and its true, but that wasnt playing well, it was playing poorly.

Even in a zerg, if i AA on my engineer, my dmg and contribution is crappy, if i out out a fire field, and perform 2 blast finishers, i give like 20 seconds of +6 might to 5 people, and increase my own dps. point is, people been playing crappy and getting rewards for it for a lonnnng time. Problem is expecting people to actually try to play well.

linuxotaku.4731:

phys.7689:

linuxotaku.4731:

Essence Snow.3194:

Unless ofc Anet modified drop rates and or item requirements to suit supply and demand levels to maintain a healthy economy w/o flippers and speculators.

You mean if they made snowflakes drop throughout the year? Yeah, good luck with that.

And you have a lot of faith in anyone’s ability to manage supply and demand for non-seasonal items … ANet has done a great job of that, I guess? In general, having a market with supply & demand appears to do a much better job smoothing prices than attempts to manage this with central control.

Just saying.

I don’t think your version is plausible, and I think things would be worse without trading.

actually the thing most of you people forget is anet already does manipulate the economy, its kind of their job. Most of the things Wanze mentions, are things anet created to manipulate the economy, like ascended crafts, current materials for LS etc. The whole, “only the market can regulate itself” doesnt really make sense with a market that is 100% totally synthetic and created.

I don’t believe markets act without a good framework; IRL, I think government rules are necessary for markets to be a positive force. Markets encourage participants to optimize for their own benefit; with appropriate rules, this can be channeled into activities which benefit everyone.

I’m aware that ANet manipulates the market by changing the value and requirements of various materials. I’ve heard far more complaints about these efforts than praise of them; I think ANet has done a decent job, but adjusting the rules of the game require a new build and raise the risk of serious mistakes affecting markets much more than they’d intended.

Allowing a market where supply and demand determines prices encourage splayers to fill in gaps where possible. This smooths out prices more than (relatively heavy-handed) intervention by changing drop rates or material requirements would.

well the biggest flaw in the whole market self balance idea, is it depends on people creating supply purposefully, which by and large doesnt happen in this game.

normally an excess of a certain material would cause a decrease in its production, this is not the case here. Normally an increase in demand would lead to more people trying to provide said item, however, items a generated unintentionally, so it isnt very easy to fill demand either.

i think in this game we are extremely at the whim of the designers for value, the only facet we control somehwhat is demand, but even that is generally created by them in some respect. (like silk, or recent leather recipes)

linuxotaku.4731:

Essence Snow.3194:

Unless ofc Anet modified drop rates and or item requirements to suit supply and demand levels to maintain a healthy economy w/o flippers and speculators.

You mean if they made snowflakes drop throughout the year? Yeah, good luck with that.

And you have a lot of faith in anyone’s ability to manage supply and demand for non-seasonal items … ANet has done a great job of that, I guess? In general, having a market with supply & demand appears to do a much better job smoothing prices than attempts to manage this with central control.

Just saying.

I don’t think your version is plausible, and I think things would be worse without trading.

actually the thing most of you people forget is anet already does manipulate the economy, its kind of their job. Most of the things Wanze mentions, are things anet created to manipulate the economy, like ascended crafts, current materials for LS etc. The whole, “only the market can regulate itself” doesnt really make sense with a market that is 100% totally synthetic and created.

it didnt need a large guild, it needs people to play focused on group coordination. However that is much more likely to happen with a guild.

Thereon.3495:

phys.7689:

the main problem with your theory, is far as i have seen, it doesnt appear to be any easier to get them now than it was before. Many people are saying it is actually harder, So if you wanted less casual content and rewards, wouldnt this be in line with what you wanted?

now if i am mistaken and it is easier to get them now then sure, but from what i hear its not.

also note, progression is not competition, sometimes they are connected, but not always.
how hard something is has nothing to do with how competitive it is.

First person to scream bingo in a a room of 1000 people is very competitive, but its not very difficult, and has no progression tied to it

being able to shoot 30 3 pointers in a row, is fairly difficult, and has 30 degrees of progression, but it isnt very competitive, you can do it alone, with no opponents, and everyone can win eventually.

All right, let me put it another way. Why should someone be able to acquire a previously ‘unique’ skin (in the sense that it was available during a LS update only) that was themed to a particular LS update, in the festival update? Why have ANET made this possible? Its because people have moaned on the forums saying that they didnt have a chance at getting said skin at that given time. If you dont complete content you are not entitled to that contents reward, whether its time based or a permanent feature in the game (dungeon armour for instance).

As for the topic of progression…. is that something I spoke about previously? I dont think so but in reply youre right. Sometimes its linked to competition, sometimes not. In the case of skins I feel like my progression has been lost because more players have the things that I have. Staying loyal to GW2 for this long and participating in all the LS story events has got me where? To the same place as those that logged in a few weeks ago. End-game is based around character customisation and so for the case of skins progression is definitely involved.

my fault, you said the sole goal of the game is to get more cosmetic options. and what you are saying is that the key deciding factor should be how consistently you have played?
Well i suppose that makes some sort of sense, much like many hobbyist like limited edition limited time items. Hmmm its an interesting perspective, but my assumption is this is the last hurrah for season one items release. Much like in hobbies when they say this is the last chance to get X item.

Overall though, for me, i dont think the hobby angle is something they should base too much of their item/reward structure on. But i see what your angle is, its something to think about

Thereon.3495:

Im sorry but in a game where the sole purpose of end-game is character customisation, why give everyone the ability to get everything?

For those talking about ‘getting months of enjoyment first’ this is besides the point. I played certain content to EARN that skin. Certain skins were easy to acquire yes but again thats besides the point. I participated in certain events in order to use that skin and others should kitten well have to also. Hell, I think its laughable you can get dungeon skins from PvP now…. because dungeons are so hard and time consuming to complete (sarcasm BTW). Players should be forced to EARN rewards, not be given them for not playing the game.

Ive played this game since headstart. Over 4000k hours spent playing and i’ll admit ive had fun. But to see this sickens me… its a cheap way of saying “Stay with us and we’ll give you things for free”. If this is a sign of whats to come from ANET… no fuss, i’ll just wish them luck and be on my merry way.

the main problem with your theory, is far as i have seen, it doesnt appear to be any easier to get them now than it was before. Many people are saying it is actually harder, So if you wanted less casual content and rewards, wouldnt this be in line with what you wanted?

now if i am mistaken and it is easier to get them now then sure, but from what i hear its not.

also note, progression is not competition, sometimes they are connected, but not always.
how hard something is has nothing to do with how competitive it is.

First person to scream bingo in a a room of 1000 people is very competitive, but its not very difficult, and has no progression tied to it

being able to shoot 30 3 pointers in a row, is fairly difficult, and has 30 degrees of progression, but it isnt very competitive, you can do it alone, with no opponents, and everyone can win eventually.

Omg Im Target.3095:

phys.7689:

Jornophelanthas.1475:

Last year, the Pavillion awarded far too much loot (because it coincided with the introduction of champion loot bags). This was a BAD THING, because it caused severe inflation in the game economy.
ArenaNet is currently preventing that from happening again by regulating the loot from the Pavillion’s frequently-spawning champions.

Last year, the Pavillion champions were most efficiently defeated with a single massive group of players that took down the bosses one at a time, and never had to pause in between. This is a BAD THING, because killing the same series of pushover bosses over and over again with 150 players at once was not challenging, and gave out too many rewards. It actually discouraged play skill.
ArenaNet is currently preventing that from happening again by encouraging players to split up during the Boss Blitz. Yes, a single zerg will spend 30 minutes killing all bosses one at a time. If players split up, the event can be won in a shorter time (because the bosses don’t scale up as far), and the reward will be bigger. In other words, it rewards smart play rather than follow-the-other-lemmings.

So in short, the REAL PROBLEM was last year’s event for being too easy and too generous.

the real problem is this years event doesnt compete with most other means of playing the game in terms of reasons to do it, however it is a lot more difficult and risky in order to get less actual results.

lets take a look at marrionette, it also had very few drops from enemies, but, you got exp, you drops which allowed you to open chests which usually had rares and special chances for special recipes, the further you got, the more guanteed look you got at the end. for spending 15-30 minutes, you got rares, loot, chances at special items. If you beat the full event, you got much better loot for that same time frame, and more chances to open more chests.

the reward design encouraged winning, and at the same time encouraged participation, the minimal reward wasnt horrible, and the maximum reward was pretty good.

this time the minimal reward is a loss, the maximum reward appears to be 2 champion bags and some greens. thats pretty bad for 20-30 minutes of organized gameplay where the minimal reward is a loss.

its essentially a problem with reward structures. Reward structure is a major part of designing a game, you cant divorce the two.

I wouldn’t really call it organized if it takes 20-30min with only 1 zerg. If 6 groups participate, it’ll take only more than 5min with gold, which is acctually fair. So the crown pavillion rewards the players if they play organized.

yeah if new information is correct, and organized groups can do it in 6 minutes, and eventually pugs get to 10-15 minutes, then the reward is decent and encourages playing better

MasterYoda.8563:

MatthewMedina.5419:

Upscaling now does add significant complexity to China players, as their leveling curve and the points at which they unlock features and systems is completely different from the experience in NA/EU. The Labyrinthine Cliffs was absolutely designed with both territories in mind, and with those considerations, everything from the decorations to the content was geared towards providing a fun festival for everyone to enjoy.

Fun is what the pavilion event was before this over the top uncalled for drastic nerf. These nerfs go too far to the left or too far to the right while never enough compromise in the middle. China’s TP and players are separate servers than NA/EU player so your post doesn’t make any sense at all. We shouldn’t get dumb down/nerfed content because they got the game 18 months after we did. I see no reason why they can’t get the LS or event content off set from the rest us since they just got the game and not dump content like this on their laps so soon.

When is NA/EU servers going to get all 40 backpack skins Anet China players on release? I bet we don’t but never hurts to ask anyways right? http://i.imgur.com/rIFD8zE.jpg Link so I wont get infracted for not linking a source like I did before.

no offense but if you are going to site a source, i dont think it should be a random player saying something in say. that doesnt really confirm you re info. Though i suppose it does give us the context from which you got the information, which as far as i can see is not a reliable source.

not saying they did or didnt get 40 backpacks, but thats not a good source to figure out if they did or didnt

mtpelion.4562:

Aberrant.6749:

MatthewMedina.5419:

mtpelion is correct. There are only the two events that were cut this time around, and two of the events from that original chain that were reworked. The two events that were cut were unfortunate, but due to the nature of this release’s development cycle, we just didn’t have the resources to go through and overhaul all of the events.

The level drop on the map from 80 to 15 was definitely done so as to not throw our new players from China into the “deep end of the pool” just a few days after the game opened to all on 5/15.

I find it very hard to believe that setting the level of creatures for the US version to 80 and the chinese version to 15 would take that much time… but I could be wrong I guess?

It would require two separate instances, which would require twice as much work to make changes to (for bugs/updates/etc.).

From a programming perspective, you want to prevent unnecessary data segregation.

the problem with your perspective, is you have already decided its uneccesary. What people are saying is they do think its necessary.

While i dont think the answer is black and white, this is a question anet has to ask themselves now with every content update, and if people dont like the answers they come up with, people may feel alienated.

mtpelion.4562:

I like the changes. It rewards you quite appropriately for doing the fights correctly and appropriately denies rewards if you attempt to ignore the correct method of tackling the event.

The only problem is that it is not clearly telegraphed that zerging will prevent success. Perhaps a return of the “only the X players with the Y buff can hurt the boss” concept would help?

too hamfisted, this one is adaptable, in that people can come help, or whatever. the key here is making it clear that the goal is to kill the bosses as fast as possible, and that splitting up is one of the best ways to do that.

it is true that they have been training people to ball up, and kill weak enemies for the best rewards. So people naturally dont understand when that doesnt work, they need to change the messaging of various events. But people will adapt even without such things, its just a rocky transition.
probably by tonight or tommorow, most people will be attempting to do it in the proper way, which will probably be more fun anyhow

Pifil.5193:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

You’re right, it’s perfectly reasonable to blame people who play the content A) the way they did last year and the way Anet built most of their content for 18 months C) introducing mega server before people became acclimated to their new philosophy!

Yep, it’s always the players fault, never ArenaNet’s for not actually communicating the change in direction or putting any effort into “retraining” the players in those changes or giving them tools to better organise themselves in the multi-lingual, multi-server mush that the megaserver system created.

i agree they should have messaged the change here. But i think arenanet to this point has been training players poorly to play the game.

I think on entrance, or signing up, or while the event is going on, they should have an npc that tells you clearly, the goal is to kill all the bosses as fast as possible! you wont get much from just killing random monsters.

perhaps an announcer who says things like Kill those bosses! faster! regular monsters just get in the way.

regardless, if you get that much loot for a good win, it seems more like its not a problem with rewards, just people not knowing what the goal of the game is. Truth is, with such a heavy difference in playing well versus not, people will probably learn the event soon enough

Nokaru.7831:

Gold tier reward grants around 50-55 tokens, 3-5 greens, 8 Champion Bags, 1 rare, 20’ish Queen’s Gauntlet Ticket, 70,000 experience and 1,500 (?) Karma. Seems like they put the experience of the event backloaded into the final event reward.

It takes 4-7 minutes to achieve this. With a good group, you can win 6 per hour.

As for how hard it is, the bosses are very easy when your group is split up into six. Hell, you can 3 man Kuraii before the gold reward timer is over. Undermanned, they die 10 times quicker than they do with 30+ players. I can solo the turret on Boom-Boom Baines in 5 seconds, whereas it takes a minute to die to a zerg.

The issue isn’t the reward, it’s mostly the lazy players refusing to put forth any effort into earning it. If they want to buff it, by all means they can; the players winning would appreciate it the boost. If you want a mindless farm, just go back to Queensd— err I mean Frostgorge Sound.

well if this is the case, seems to be worth it, so ehh seems fine, possibly even entertaining.

the only way they currently believe you should be able to make uncapped money is via trading.
and the cap on earning is not meant to be high

mtpelion.4562:

Rouven.7409:

I’m not sure what you are on about with separate instances, as far as I am aware we are totally separate from the chinese players in the first place. I will never interact in any way with anyone playing on a chinese server. As such there are no different instances necessary. The only thing would be NOT to make the change that HAS been done on the EU/NA server and only apply that change to the chinese server.

Other than that I would recommend kickstarter, seems like that is used for these things nowadays.

ArenaNet creates the instance. For EU/NA they then simply make that instance live on their servers. For China they send that instance to the company that runs the game there.

So yes, we are totally separate once live, but the content must still be designed by ArenaNet and they are not going to spend any more time than is necessary designing separate instances.

well i think what people are saying here, is that they want them to classify more things as necessary. Which is not unreasonable, as i said, they are supposed to be making money from china to offset the increased costs/development time it requires.