Guild Wars 2

maha.7902:

basically, all your saying, is it is the enemies job to be easily killed while you make minimal efforts.

What I’m saying is that if “fixing” stacking means making fights extremely tedious where mobs run around in circles, don’t do it. Bearbow rangers and GS mesmers knocking mobs out of stacks annoys people enough, now imagine if they just ran away themselves. The game would basically become CC wars 2 where pugs take a guardian using hammer/staff to perma-CC running mobs and organised groups just chain CC with their usual weapons or use a different utility. It honestly isn’t any more “interesting”.

dont throttle my dmg – so the enemy should not in any way try to avoid my dps

Do you not see that “reduce damage of one guy while everyone else does normal damage” is a completely dull mechanic? The boss has exactly the same mechanics, just one dude does less damage. How does that solve anything? Do you think the ferocity nerf made combat more interesting? They’re both throttles, and they both did/do nothing.

essentially your perfect boss was the target in lions arch, except with a low HP pool.

My perfect boss is a boss with multiple phases, each with their own mechanics which change dependent on whether people are at range or not and with multiple attack skills that can be blocked, reflected or dodged. It is a boss with no damage throttles, and doesn’t run away from you, in fact it chases you.

Who am I?

IMO, stacking is the reason why the DEVs don’t ever give us new dungeon content.
It trivializes all dungeon content. It also makes fights incredibly boring. Stack in that corner, burn down the boss.

Stack Alphard, don’t dodge, don’t use reflect.

Stacking does not trivialise content.

Running away and having to control the monster would be a good mechanic, for SOME bosses/enemies some of the time.
Yes its annoying, but the enemy is supposed to be trying not to get killed. A well executed running enemy, you get a thrill when you force them to take your burst. The thrill is catching them, and coordinating well enough that you get the best burst possible.
note this is not EVERY boss.
Also the game is actually supposed to be using CC to control the monsters, that was their initial plan, which apparently never happened. I dont think the boss tactics are better because CC is irrelevant, i think they are worse.

The reduced dmg from a certain side mechanic gives more depth, because it makes it so the players have to adapt to what the enemy is actually doing. If he is facing you, your goal is to survive, and keep him facing you, so other people can do more dmg, if he turns from you, your goal is to do as much dps as possible.

Mechanics that make you pay attention to the enemy, and try to manipulate and capitilize on what the enemy do are engaging. Mechanics that make you change your focus from offense to defense, or something else are engaging.

As far as multiphase fights, while i like the idea, i dont think it should always be tied to phases, for example, the facing you less dmg mechanic, would make people use different tactics multiple times, even during different phases.

Stacking is fine in theory, but the enemies play into it way to easily. Stacking can be the optimal condition, but if thats the case the enemies shouldnt ALWAYS allow you to easily maintain your optimal case.

Romo.3709:

phys.7689:

Romo.3709:

People seriously Over-exaggerate those numbers… It’s almost like reading how many rares/exotics people dumped in Mystic Forge… No wonder nobody takes those studies seriously, even though they’re as accurate as we can get.

lets see, if someone did 4 a day… from the first fractal day… it is possible to do 2000 runs.
547 × 4 =2188
of course thats if you got up to 50 in day one.
but even if it took them 40 days, they could still get up to 2000. So if the person is a hardcore fractal runner its entirely possible, heck before account bound a lot of people had more chests per day from other charachters.

Still, those hardcore players you’re referring to are 1 on a 100000. I know it’s possible. I used to do 6-7 runs a day back in the day. But then again, I’ve gotten every fractal skin from doing so. All I’m saying is that every other person that’s complaining about drop rate did 2000+ fractals with only 1 or 2 drops. It’s possible, yes, because of RNG, but not to every other person. 2000 runs is achievable number, but only a handful extremely dedicated fractal runners that been there since very beginning. And I mean extremely dedicated. If you look at the 2000 number, it’s being thrown by every other poster that “tries” to give high balled number of fractals they “feel” they’ve ran, since unfortunately there is no way of knowing the accurate number of runs.

well the original post has real archived data, and it suggests that the drop rate doesnt increase much for high levels, anymore. I would take that data more serious than the anecdotal data, however, the anecdotal data is usually the first sign something is wrong. Multiple times already devs have made a mistake with some similar thing, and it took quite some time, and data for anyone to even investigate it.

To be honest i think its highly likely that they screwed up the drops considering as far as the main dev knew, there were supposed to be fractal boxes, and when it came out apparently there werent. Data backs it up at this point. And we have never heard anet even claim they were going to look into the drop rates and see if they were performing as intended.

Arunisroon.7580:

Hey this is my first post on the forums and it’s for an issue that’s bugged for a long time now.

The main complaint about guild wars 2’s “failure”. Is it’s lack of endgame content.

I’d like to ask the question, what is endgame content. I believe gw2 has the most satisfying endgame content I’ve seen. Most other games have grinds endgame content, I.e. Getting mounts, raids etc.

Why are these supposedly better than gw2? We have tried to stray away from all grind and we are punished for it. After the community begged for endgame content a slight gear grind was released, yet there was huge backlash against it. If you want to grind for cosmetics, there are dungeons and minis to collect. If you want pvp content there are tons of it?

What do you want?

to me, endgame doesnt mean grind, it means a set of goals and things to achieve while playing at a high level. however people want to be rewarded for it. What that reward should be is debateable.

For example, in WoW people say the end game is chasing a carrot, but thats not really true, the carrot, is merely the guide, the endgame is a series of progressively harder dungeons. Essentially they use the carrot to incentivize you to do the classic beat a level and go to the next one game mechanic, which i honestly never had a problem with (main issue if the number of times you may have to beat the same level to proceed)

The point is, GW2 has few real goals/systems in place to encourage people to play once they have all their skills, and favorite builds, there are few challenges, and goals at that point.
mostly its FOTM, Arah path and… as far as goals, its legendary.

Romo.3709:

People seriously Over-exaggerate those numbers… It’s almost like reading how many rares/exotics people dumped in Mystic Forge… No wonder nobody takes those studies seriously, even though they’re as accurate as we can get.

lets see, if someone did 4 a day… from the first fractal day… it is possible to do 2000 runs.
547 × 4 =2188
of course thats if you got up to 50 in day one.
but even if it took them 40 days, they could still get up to 2000. So if the person is a hardcore fractal runner its entirely possible, heck before account bound a lot of people had more chests per day from other charachters.

maha.7902:

For example: If there is a mob that likes to attack at range, give this mob a flag where they will always try to be at least 600 units away from any player, and treat this as a hard line that mob will refuse to cross. That way, when they come upon enemies stacking in a corner, they will orbit at a distance to get in range, instead of just running up to the players.

Chasing a mob around in circles is not “interesting”, and if that’s “diverse mob AI” then I want my mob AI as boring as possible. That would turn dungeons in to even more of a chore. It would just mean removing a DPS utility and chaining immobilises.

Another idea: make a boss that has a directionally dependent damage reduction: all direct damage from the front is reduced by 90%, due to heavy armor or a big shield or whatever. Then, players will have to encircle the boss, so that only one player gets reduced damage while the other 4 get full damage.

Literally all that is is a damage throttle. Poor idea.

Another idea, give a boss an extremely dangerous and frequent melee cleave attack, but make it so he alternates targets after every use. That way, players will have to surround the boss, because otherwise his attacks will plow through nearly any defense.

Chain aegis/dodge, burst away. There are already bosses with powerful melee cleave attacks.

And now we’re back to square one. Once again, poor ideas offered to counter stacking and no reason besides aesthetics identified for stacking even being a problem.

basically, all your saying, is it is the enemies job to be easily killed while you make minimal efforts.

Chasing enemies suck! – so the mob should just stand there and take my dmg
dont throttle my dmg – so the enemy should not in any way try to avoid my dps

essentially your perfect boss was the target in lions arch, except with a low HP pool.

and lets be honest, thats why people stack
its easier when done properly and makes the fight extremely predictable.
Also they have no desire for a interesting fight, they just want the rewards faster.

Shockwave.1230:

Looking at that chart again, and it’s interesting how when you give people a cash shop they spend more money overall than they do on purely expansion games.

I guess that shows the more opportunities you provide for people to spend money, the more opportunities that are taken.

Even more interesting to me though, is how Guild Wars 2 revenue has never been less than Guild Wars revenue, even without having ever provided an expansion in the 21ish months it’s been released. It looks like it’s normally bringing in more than 2x the revenue that Guild Wars ever brought in at its peak, which is pretty astounding.

It’s interesting how the business model is more successful from a revenue perspective. I just really want to see the world expand and build upon itself, while allowing us to go back and experience everything we’ve experienced before so we can find these little nuggest/connections that we might have glossed over initially.

Its not really accurate to say that its a better model, GW2 is starting with a much larger base who were essentially told the cash shop would be somewhat minimal.

i would hazard to guess that even to this day, the vast amount of sales for gw2 is from the game itself. Not to say they havent made money from the cash shop.

if they basically could make the same for each expanison, they would in fact make more money than they have with the cash shop.

However its not really that cash shops arent profitable, it entirely depends on your audience, your product etc. if you have a product that a lot of people want to spend a box price on, the box is hard to beat.

The main trick to monetization, is coming up with a way that benefits the product and the company the most.
I believe the idea with gw2 going in could work, but if they dont add some new interesting and engaging content soon, they wont be getting any cash shop money from me, because i wont be engaged enough to want to spend for side goodies.

perfect example, i got salavage a tron, and oil pick, at the time i wanted the lumber and harvesting tool, but by the time it came back around, i wasnt too excited about the current game/direction, so i just passed on it.

Basically imo they waited a little too long before introducing meaty real content, and have no announcements to keep people interested in the interim.

right now i have no idea if they have any intention of adding anything i would be interested in, so im getting less and less engaged as time goes by.

And unfortunately, based on LS1, just not that hyped for ls2.

But hey im just one dude, they got many more in china now.

Ashen.2907:

Devata.6589:

Ashen.2907:

Pretty much everything else is supposition…

To get an idea how GW2 might have work with expansions

Exactly so. Thank you for demonstrating my point for me.

If are not going to apply logic/reason/analysis to facts, they are pretty useless.

Saylu.8271:

You are being overly optimistic, they wouldn’t dump that much time and money unless they are confidence GW2 expansion not only sell but make a good profit. Games nowadays take years to develop and millions of investments. There are game companies that went bankrupt because their game doesn’t sell, you don’t realize the huge risk involved.

It has happened in many MMO. Microtransaction & cashshop shift the focus of game developers on their games to selling their virtual property. Even though I don’t like it, If that is the direction that they want to go, there is little we could do about it.

Thing is the development costs for MMOs tend to go down, because most of the content is already there. Developing new content with known engines, tools, and frameworks is a lot less expensive.

and while many a MMO and game has failed, many have failed with all sorts of different monetization plans.

I think the cash shop focus is best for a struggling game, that doesnt have start up capital, and needs to re-adjust its development based on income constantly. But Gw2 doesnt really have these concerns.

Anyhow, they can do what they want, im just saying as it currently is, the game is not the engaging for people who have been playing it for awhile. Cash shop items will never make interested in GW2, they only work when i am already engaged. I think they need to work on making the game more engaging for people who have played it a bit, since more and more of their audience is falling into that bracket.

Xillllix.3485:

I dont want to sound pessimist, but besides a very small team I don’t think Anet is even working on GW2 anymore, all the modifications they’ve made to he game have been cosmetic. They are probably going to release the LS2 content they made 1-2 years ago while they are developing a new game.

Thus the mega server, to make sure as the population diminishes that they do not waste server bandwidth.

Anyway, they’ve been told about the drop problems since day 1 and never fixed it.

actually, i didnt really think this was likely, but it makes a lot of sense.
they have a lot of employees, but honestly most of the stuff that was released, wasnt worked on by many people.

They are always talking about priorities, and resources, but There is no way that they are using much UI, animator, modeller, charachter design, etc resources on what we have gotten to this date.

There are a few key developers who have disappeared, but are still as far as anyone knows still working for arenanet.

So yeah, it actually makes a lot of sense that a decent amount of arenanet resources are being spent on a new game. This would explain a lot. Still, they still have to keep this game making money/being interesting so maybe they need to hire more people if this is the case.

Stooperdale.3560:

This penalizes the casual players. If they run content at the same time as hardcore players then they should have the same chance of drops, no matter how many times any of them have run this content before. I know that a lot of people want to be rewarded with virtual rewards for sinking more and more time into a computer game but … just step back and think about it first.

The luck system does already give a loot advantage to experienced players.

The type of increasing returns systems they are talking about help casuals just as much, because they too get increasing returns the more they play.

Another method of increasing returns would be increasing drop rates the higher you get, Even though this is supposed to be in place, mathematically it is not true. Based on data, and time to complete higher level fractals you generally spend less time getting more results by playing lower levels.

vincecontix.1264:

phys.7689:

lordkrall.7241:

phys.7689:

your theory might be correct, if it wasnt proven wrong by almost every game made in the last 30 years, which built a product, and then sold it.

Now im not saying cash shop isnt an option, or not their chosen way to monetize, however to claim that one cant make money from selling a finished product is really unlikely since that is how most products are created.

I mean essentially the complaint is, the gem shop philosophy in its current incarnation, is effecting the games evolution in ways that dont appeal to the consumer.

And how many of those games were MMOs that got very frequent updates?

You can’t really compare lets say an single player RPG game that is released and then more or less done, with an MMO that constantly changes. The RPG studio can more or less shut down after their game is released because they no longer need to do any major work on it, whilst an MMO still need to maintain a rather large developer group in order to keep the game going.

I have never claimed they can’t make money.
I have claimed that they most likely can’t make ENOUGH money. That is a rather major difference.

You realize that after they sell a game,
they begin working on the next one. Heck even during. Game companies dont ever stop.
How do you think comic books are made? movies?
The idea behind MMOs, is instead of working on a lot of different titles, they work on the same one refining it.

anet made about 120 mil in the first two quarters, primarily from box sales, after that, they made about 110 mil in the next two quarters, probably mostly from gem store.

this suggests, that the revenue from releasing the game, is greater than the revenue from the cash shop. Hence, an expansion every year could actually be MORE profitable than the cash shop.

Call of duty comes out every year, and makes billions of dollars. are you saying billions of dollars is not enough money to run an mmo? because thats odd, since gw2 hasnt made even 1 billion dollars yet and it is fine.

The principle that you cant make enough money to pay for the interim costs, is just straight up incorrect, as proven by every successful game out there.

Now, they choose not to follow that path, maybe because it feels more risky, maybe cause they dont think they can make a hit every year, but dont claim there is not enough profit to be made from selling a box to support the company.

First starters the initial and ongoing cost are for fps, rpg, and mmorpgs are all different. The ongoing costs for a mmorpg is significantly higher than for a rpg.

Also how many mmorps have been successful from only gaining revenue through box sales?

and regardless, good games make massive money. Thats really the point.
Even if cod costs a lot less to make.
they make more money. COD could pay for 6 or 7 gw2s
GTA5 hit 1 billion in 3 days, GW2 at current rate will need to operate for 10 years to hit that.

As far as successful MMOs with b2p model, that would be guild wars 1

heres the point, if you make really good games, you will have more than enough profit to build new games, and pay ongoing costs. you will be able to constantly redevelop, and make even more money. People have very little problem burning up their money on things they like/want/enjoy.

Now problem with cash shop isnt its existence, or the stuff in the shop, so much as the fact that having the cash shop as your primary income tends to mess up the priorities. While it appears to the company that cash shop sales are what are paying the bills, what is really paying the bills is how engaged the players are in the game itself. Its like lets say movie makers got all the money from sales in the theaters, they start making movies free, but they sell food, special seats, 3d glasses.

The problem comes when they start pouring more and more money into these things because they look it as the thing that makes them money, and stop putting money/time/etc into the movie itself. When they start designing the Movies in ways they think will improve the sales of amenities and movie foods, etc.

If the GW2 itself was very fulfilling and strong no one would be complaining about the cash shop. The problem is it is not. The initial game was strong, but over time that is waning and any energy anet spends in the shop seems like a waste to players because they arent as interested in the actual game anymore.

Thereon.3495:

Moderator.6840:

Hi everyone,

We understand that the purpose of this thread is to offer constructive ideas. However, as it could quickly turn into a discussion about other games, we will ask you to please focus your feedback around Guild Wars 2. All off topic posts will be removed.
Thank you!

Completely agree. This isnt a thread to compare games but more a thread to ask those that are complaining what exactly they have an issue with and how they would change GW2 going forward based on the post-launch models of other games.

In response to you Phys, can I assume that the main grievance you have is the lack of permanent content? I seem to remember reading that ANET were looking to make more LS content permanently available. Would this change your views on the LS model if this was the case?

its not just wether it stays around, its also the goal and aim of the content.
most of the living story content is fairly shallow, which makes a type of sense, because it is short term.
Even if living story content stayed around, it would still be fairly shallow and forgotten. The key here is to make the type of content that players who have played the game a bit, may be looking for.

They need to expand and deepen the game. While they could do that with living story, they probably wont, because living story is meant to be something that in general everyone can get into even if they are new, this generally makes it fairly shallow for older players.
living story isnt based on deep lore, or story
because they cant be sure anyone has experienced any of it
living story isnt based on high level content
because they dont want it to be just for high levels
Living story cant be too long
because people have a limited time to be able to digest it
Living story tries not to be progressive
because they cant be sure people have played any of the previous parts.

They could break these rules if they wanted to, in fact for living story to work, i think they will have to. But i dont think they see it that way.

Permanent content, i think they feel more comfortable not following those rules, because people can deal with it at their own pace. But truth is, even within the permanent content, they generally havent gone too deep.

Even on their major additions that have stayed, or even the ones they started with, they have not gotten any deeper.
Personal story, hasnt gotten deeper, and probably has been abandoned
Dungeon progression, has not happened,
Exploration progression doesnt really have any reinforcing systems other than experience. and possibly guild trek
Guild Missions have been fairly static, and not sought to get any deeper than initial release.
fractals, actually did get somewhat deeper with instabilities, but the method of reward and progression didnt reinforce the system at all.
Dynamic Events, probably the deepest system on release has not expanded, or gotten deeper, the reward systems in place for them are also not properly designed to encourage their strengths.

The game is full of a lot very good ideas shallowly implemented. In a normal MMO this is fine and even good, because it has room to grow. But after two years, GW2 isnt getting any deeper, and it isnt getting more expansive. In fact the meta is generally making the game shallower.

sternenstaub.8763:

“Endgame beeing gemstore isn’t good!”

No it’s not.

But well, I bet ANET developers think the same!

But well, NCSOFT get’s the money and makes the calls, so the developers can either implement it or leave.

And you know what, NCSOFT Managers most likely know GW2 just as a Product Name and when you tell them the game sucks and stuff should be in game and not in a store they might even agree!

But well, they just do what their shareholders tell them to do and that is increase revenue.

And you know what, if you tell those shareholders that they should not look so much at the revenue but more at a good product, they will tell you the following:

“Last week you gave me your money and said I should put it somewhere, where it get’s the most interest rate and now you tell me the opposite! So what do you want?”

Do you get the irony?

thing is, in GW2 in NA/EU i dont think a cash shop focus with the current implementation is going to work out. profits are going down, and only supplemented by new players, problem is every new player eventually becomes an old player.

what it boils down to is, their game design focus is on new players, old players havent really gotten much that fits into what you could sell an old player. The game has not expanded much, and definately hasnt gotten deeper. Which means, for an old player there is little reason to play.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Yeah, I’m not about to start associating any sort of collection or completionist tendencies certain player have to END GAME content. That is NOT a thing.

I think the point they are making is normally the game would take those new skins and create a story around it, or enemies that drop it.
lets take zodiac, you might find it in a new area, with new enemies, who are harder. You might have to do some interesting dynamic event chain and fight a celestial boss. Instead, you go to the cash shop.

Believe it or not endgame is mostly about picking some goal and striving to achieve it. Endgame for baseball players is playing in world series
Endgame for movie producers is making huge hit movies everyone talks about and sees.

In games, these big goals are usually tied to loot, and some grand adventure. Of course you are right, they havent added any new grand adventure to go with the loot. simply putting the loot as random drops in the game would not be any more entertaining. however, if they put the loot in a grand adventure, that would be pretty good.

Thereon.3495:

Okay so im hoping this topic will encourage some talk regarding the content GW2 has released post-launch as well as answering a question that has been on my mind for a while. Try to keep this constructive please! The more level headed we keep this thread, the more chance ANET have of taking note of it.

So it has been mentioned many, MANY times on the forums that a great number of GW2 players are disillusioned at the state of the game post-launch. Specifically mentioned has been the lack of content released. I will state now that I do not feel this is the case, having witnessed a lot of living story content both permanent and not. The issue here is that I do not have any guide to go by. I have never played another ‘AAA MMO’, instead focusing on smaller (more grindy) Korean titles.

So my question to you is this- In your personal opinion, when directly compared to other MMOs, what is GW2 doing wrong and how would you rectify this?

The big mistake is not expanding the game. They have focused mostly on evolution over expansion. They are refining the basic game, but they havent added much to it. Not only that, but they have no promoted plans to do so.

In a normal MMO even once they announce something big like an expansion, it brings people back, they get excited to play the new stuff, and start playing the old stuff to recconect, re experience, etc.

The living story fails in one big way.
it doesnt really bring people back. It slows hemoraging, But it doesnt re engage the customer. Perhaps this isnt just about the model, some of it is definately the execution, but to be honest, you need a special set of skills/abilities/style/management to handle serialization, and based on living story 1 they dont have that yet.

So really the big difference is by and large there is nothing new to re engae old customers.
an example of what type of things re engage the customers, look at guild wars 1, FFXI
new professions
*assassin,ritualist
*samurai, ninja, dragoon, summoner
new main plotlines
*gw1 an entire new plotline with new bosses, new enemies, new skills
*ffxi an entire new plotline bigger than the initial story, new bosses, enemies, skills
new areas
*gw1 as big a map added as the initial game release
*ffxi about double the map size
new enemies
new mechanics
*gw1 new pvp systems, new pve skills alliance based skills, hero system
ffxi dynamis, zilart gods boss system

essentially what they generally do in an expansion, is give you a new game that connects to the old one (for AAA games) The costs tend to be lower because they are building on old systems, with an old engine. returning players get to re experience the things they loved, with enough new and changed/evolved things to keep them going.

Many people say in two weeks they are bored, but in general an expansion is rolled out in phases, and the amount of content they add generally lasts way longer than two weeks. Also since it is expanding the game, not replacing it, each expansion gives more options to new players, which keeps them engaged for longer.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Cloudwalkernz.1328:

In the defense of the OP, he(or she) is only pointing out the facts.

However, what happened in the parent company (NcSoft) does not mean Anet is not performing well. First of all the a/c is consolidated and did not show how Anet is doing separately.

Further more according to this Asian financial article http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2014/05/123_157346.html, the lower than expected profit is largely due to poor result from the Lineage series.

Given NcSoft has a strong line-up for the second half of the year (Wildstar, Sword & Soul, etc), the revenue should pick up for the final quarter of the year.

Yes, but what is the point of the thread? Why even bother to bring this up at all? What conclusions are we expected to garner from this information?

Pointless thread is pointless, moving on.

if you read the earnings report, you see that gw2 profits/sales have gone down like 33% in this quarter, Its basically a few thousand from aion right now.

That said, next quarter they will probably report a lot of gains, because they are hitting a whole new market. Selling new boxes, and selling in a market which is much more connected with the f2p model that gw2 currently uses (notice the box costs drastically reduced in china)
However;
that doesnt change the fact that among the initial release areas, they are losing customer interest/spending.

lordkrall.7241:

phys.7689:

your theory might be correct, if it wasnt proven wrong by almost every game made in the last 30 years, which built a product, and then sold it.

Now im not saying cash shop isnt an option, or not their chosen way to monetize, however to claim that one cant make money from selling a finished product is really unlikely since that is how most products are created.

I mean essentially the complaint is, the gem shop philosophy in its current incarnation, is effecting the games evolution in ways that dont appeal to the consumer.

And how many of those games were MMOs that got very frequent updates?

You can’t really compare lets say an single player RPG game that is released and then more or less done, with an MMO that constantly changes. The RPG studio can more or less shut down after their game is released because they no longer need to do any major work on it, whilst an MMO still need to maintain a rather large developer group in order to keep the game going.

I have never claimed they can’t make money.
I have claimed that they most likely can’t make ENOUGH money. That is a rather major difference.

You realize that after they sell a game,
they begin working on the next one. Heck even during. Game companies dont ever stop.
How do you think comic books are made? movies?
The idea behind MMOs, is instead of working on a lot of different titles, they work on the same one refining it.

anet made about 120 mil in the first two quarters, primarily from box sales, after that, they made about 110 mil in the next two quarters, probably mostly from gem store.

this suggests, that the revenue from releasing the game, is greater than the revenue from the cash shop. Hence, an expansion every year could actually be MORE profitable than the cash shop.

Call of duty comes out every year, and makes billions of dollars. are you saying billions of dollars is not enough money to run an mmo? because thats odd, since gw2 hasnt made even 1 billion dollars yet and it is fine.

The principle that you cant make enough money to pay for the interim costs, is just straight up incorrect, as proven by every successful game out there.

Now, they choose not to follow that path, maybe because it feels more risky, maybe cause they dont think they can make a hit every year, but dont claim there is not enough profit to be made from selling a box to support the company.

Any how, its their business, they can do what they want, all i can say is, whatever they are doing now, is not keeping me engaged with the game, i havent spent any money in gem store in some time, and i dont really play that much. I cant see myself being enticed to come back or spend more like i did in GW1 many times, with the past and current content models.

Essentially if they want more money from me, they will probably need some substantial content that i want to experience. living story 1 rarely made me feel more interested in playing it.

lordkrall.7241:

I will be satisfied when someone comes with an actual working suggestion.
Relying on expansions alone is simply not realistic for GW2.

Microtransactions is more or less the only way to get money, when sales of the game itself drops, which it always does for all products.

The fact that people have claimed that the cash shop won’t work for long since release would suggest that it clearly works much better than people keep claiming.

IF they release expansions, that will be a large ball of income, but they still need another primary source between those releases, seeing as the time it takes to develop expansions still costs money.

your theory might be correct, if it wasnt proven wrong by almost every game made in the last 30 years, which built a product, and then sold it.

Now im not saying cash shop isnt an option, or not their chosen way to monetize, however to claim that one cant make money from selling a finished product is really unlikely since that is how most products are created.

I mean essentially the complaint is, the gem shop philosophy in its current incarnation, is effecting the games evolution in ways that dont appeal to the consumer.

yeah, one of the big issues i have with these things, is when they are broken, nobody checks, until there is a public outcry. One would think they were keeping some of their own actual data, and could see when trends werent occuring as planned.

Point is, someone from anet should go check the data and see if its performing as planned, then they should also think whether as planned is good.
IE there should definately be a noticeably better drop rate at high levels.

Lankybrit.4598:

Vol.7601:

I didn’t know Dawn went that high, now I feel robbed ;’(

Why do you feel robbed? At the time you listed them, they weren’t that high. That’s all that mattered. You still presumably made a pretty penny.

well based on the what i know from the forums, he basically probably invested in them some time ago and was waiting for the right time to sell, he stepped away from the game i guess, so he missed dawns current peak.

That said he probably isnt that upset he made some sort of smiley after he said it

Desthin Sinkropht.4123:

phys.7689:

Thanks for taking time to speak your mind, but i think it kind of shows the problem, you guys arent sure what you are going to end up with. I mean its consistent with an iterative process, but, I think you need to narrow your focus, and start with a more defined vision. You also need to commit to a course, and make it the best course possible, you can add to it, or create other things later, but you need to be able to follow through.

i think you guys have a lot of talent, and are fairly adaptable, but you also need a creative vision to focus that adaptability around providing the best solutions/design to fit the specifications of the situation.

TLDR, come up with a good idea, commit to it, follow through. oh, and tell people something to let them know whats on the horizon.

Fail Faster

Transparency is a good thing, but sticking with a design even if it turns out to be suboptimal isn’t always good. They are still trying to find the right balance on that.

Never commiting to a goal doesnt always lead to a better solution, it generally leads to a different solution, that is not as well fleshed out as it could be.

Im saying this from experience in problem solving, and creative fields, you arent really helping yourself, or the customers by not following through that often. I mean sometimes your idea is so bad it should never reach completion, but that is a lot rarer.

When you have a better visionary, you need to do less iteration.
At the end of the day if it was creating great new content, and was constantly surprising me with deep high quality engaging stuff, i would say if it aint broke dont fix it. But imo, the things we have been getting have been on par with what i expect(based on quality of the game on release) or lower(a lot is lower), so taking a lot of time to make and remake it doesnt seem to be having the proper effect

Put simply: doesnt seem like they can meet or exceed the standards that the game set when it came out with most of the things they have done, with this current design philosophy.

Behellagh.1468:

Again, it doesn’t take a team of 300 to crank out an item a week, bring back something popular or put something on sale. Real content takes months to create. What we are seeing is the work of a couple of artists and in the case of the armor they are releasing it slowly over weeks at two items at a time and we knew that 4 minis were coming over four weeks.

And for those who aren’t enticed by items may be enticed by gold for gems.

Don’t forget the game depends on cash sales of gems for it’s continued development. So we will see announcements twice a week, Tuesday and Friday, every week and you all should not be surprised and shocked any more.

welll this is the issue arenanet said they some how thought they were going to avoid. Since cash shop determines their wealth, they have to design and develop based on that.
This is why honestly, id prefer an expansion model, because then the incentive is to create new content that people want to play. Right now, the incentive is to have a gold heavy progression, (so gems to gold is valuable) and constant cash shop offerings.

I dont really mind the cash shop offerings, but my main problem is i havent seen that much really good new stuff to keep me interested, delivered in the actual game.

I think anet needs to focus on creating interesting new content, not to say they havent added anything at all, but a lot of what they did add wasnt very interesting or engaging. For me the most interesting things they have added since release were fractals, sab, and guild missions.
while i did think guild missions was an interesting progression, i dont think it ended up being fleshed out as well as it could have been, and its more suited to larger guilds, so while its interesting, my small guild basically stopped around guild rushes.

some side contents that were pretty decent were tequatl and marrionette boss fights, however, marrionete is gone, and tequatl didnt really develop a strong incentive for me specifically to do it. Also, while the fight is interesting from a large group standpoint, on an individual level, its not nearly that exciting.

but yeah, the gem store is their revenue, so it will be the focus. Until they come up with some really deep new content, that is pretty interesting, my playtime will probably be pretty low. I ve used the gemstore in the past, but since im barely playing, and have few goals, im not really too engaged with it now.

Branden Gee.2150:

Elrey.5472:

Call me crazy, but I do believe some info about the next update, even if it’s just “hey, we’ll give you a potato in 4 weeks” would calm down the people impatience… such is the gw2 community hunger.

While we’d love to give you a time and date of when we’re sending out the potato, remember that during the development process we may discover that a baked potato would be even better. So instead of getting the potato of your dreams you end up with something completely unexpected.

It often happens that a mashed potato with gravy is even better still, unfortunately gravy requires more dev time. So we end up shipping a mashed potato without gravy to meet our promise of ship time or we push back the time and date of when we are shipping again and again. You get your mashed potato with gravy but it is delivered much later than it was expected.

Worst of all that is when we realize that potatoes are way too mainstream and that yams are where it’s at now. And I think we all know how reactions seem to go when we ship yams instead of potatoes.

So in a lot of cases the best we can do is tell you that we are still in the kitchen cooking things up, we’re reading your feedback, and that we’re excited to get the meal out to you soon™.

Thanks for taking time to speak your mind, but i think it kind of shows the problem, you guys arent sure what you are going to end up with. I mean its consistent with an iterative process, but, I think you need to narrow your focus, and start with a more defined vision. You also need to commit to a course, and make it the best course possible, you can add to it, or create other things later, but you need to be able to follow through.

i think you guys have a lot of talent, and are fairly adaptable, but you also need a creative vision to focus that adaptability around providing the best solutions/design to fit the specifications of the situation.

TLDR, come up with a good idea, commit to it, follow through. oh, and tell people something to let them know whats on the horizon.

She has always been one of the writers for gw2, i dont know which parts she was writing though.

Its obvious reward/lack of reward can increase engagement and fun. Its not the only thing, but it is one of the issues. While reward cant make a horrible task fun, it can make an ok task fun, or a fun task super exciting.

Also you can use rewards to set various goals, so as to guide people. But yeah, if people think reward is irrelevant to fun, they ve missed out on some very fun things.

Obtena.7952:

Some people just don’t care … and the game shouldn’t be putting safety nets in place for them either. TP is not the cause of this.

the tp has to be more creative because there are not real world forces.

all they really have to do, is let people know they are losing, If they want to make this a stock game, they really need to get some portfolio type things, so people can see they are in the red,

a lot of people who dont know, nor care about doing business actually is pretty bad for this type of market, since most people just follow the posted prices.

Personally i think making the main means of crafting exp, be to create useless items is a mistake. Items should be brought to market because people want to sell them, not because its what they had to do to level up their warrior.

laokoko.7403:

I think what people are trying to say is flipping precursor don’t “stand out” as a great flipping item.

I bought a few sclerite weapon and I double my profit instantly.

I think the last patch does have an influence on legendary price both in supply(lowering the overall supply of tier5 and tier6 material) and demand(wardrobe).

I doubt that many people is flipping precursor. Those people are manufacturing them for a living already are making a really good profit. And they need to keep selling them fast so they can keep doing them.

I don’t think you realize how much money those big time mystic forge maker are making from making precursor. I doubt they care about flipping 20 precursor and making 3800 gold.

you really need to have a lot of money and faith to throw money in to the forge. I have neither. But there is a few that do, and they are really rich now.

really you just have to not hate gambling. I personally would rather throw my money into the forge/air than give it to some other guy, but im stingy, and spiteful.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

That is on par with many other TP profits. thats comparable to many peoples best hustles.

Then what is the problem here? If profits flipping a ‘ANYTHING’ is comparable to a precursor flip, then why should anyone be concerned about flipping precursors but not other things? Why is the focus of a much larger concern being limited to precursors … The reason is that people are just jealous and feel entitled. No one complains when iron ore is flipped for 200% but …….. a precursor at 27%!!!! OMG!!!!! WTHBBQ!!!

There is a consistent theme with the con-TP posts: EQUALITY. That’s why the con-TP position is a failing one … it’s based on the premise that something is unfair because it’s unequal. The reality is that the fairness is based on access, which everyone has.

strictly speaking, this thread is neither pro no con tp, its actually more about precursor prices, and the fact they seem to go up to the point of seeming unattainable. I got caught in a side debate about whether there would be any point in trying to raise precursor prices, some people disagree, thats fine.

Getting back on topic, precursors are expensive because they are rare items, with methods of obtaining them that are fairly random, so most people who dont like gambling have to buy them. They inflate fast, because they are the goal people aim for. No price is too high to achieve your goal (in a game) for many people. And people in the precursor market know this.

It will continue to get farther out of reach, as long as people make/save more money, or until some big changes happen.

mtpelion.4562:

Considering that the default is to sell to the highest buyer, I have to imagine that the majority of Precursors are sold to a buy offer, not listed on the market. This means that the ones that are listed do not accurately reflect the price of a Precursor and are mainly a trap for people with more gold than brains. Anyone who understands the basics of how the TP works will always buy their Precursor via a buy order, saving a king’s ransom in gold.

So then the question becomes, are there enough wealthy, non-thinking buyers to sustain a price push?

I think the answer is “no”. You can push the price if you have the capital, but due to the way most Precursor buyers operate, your push won’t last long and you will lose money.

once again, you have to realize, the buy order is relative to the sell order, by pushing sell order up, its even better when no one tries to sell that way, now you sell to buy orders, instantly and with no added risk.
so essentially raising the price of the sell order, is really just a ploy to increase buy order costs, at which point you sell to the buy orders fairly regularly.

this only applies if you have a decent supply that you want to sell, as you say, most sales are buy orders, they know who the customers are.

as for the push, the push lasts long enough, because as you say, people dont really sell via sell order too often, even if they do, they may undercut you by 50 or 100 gold, if you pushed it to 1400, then they undercut to 1200, and that one just sits there forever, its still achieving the goal of elevating the buy orders.

Just like when people inflate the price of an item, right before posting a sale.

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

if someone manufactured, or bought the precursors at 500-700 gold and sell to buy order for 1050, they make 392-192 gold per sale or 78% -27% profit. even spending some money to raise the price, if they got 10-20 precursors to sell you are still looking at 50-15% profits per transaction. That is on par with many other TP profits.

thats comparable to many peoples best hustles.

ok 700 going up to 1050, you make like 192 profit. Seems alot. That’s 27% profit. But honestly you can buy just about anything and make those profit.

Heck someone flipped grinn shiled, and sun/wind catcher and make 60k gold. Just flipping 3 item.

27% isn’t alot, especially if you need to stock it for like 8 month. If you just flip tier 6 material, for example tier 6 totem you can make like double profit in a few month. Anet is spaming precursor crafting forever, I honestly wouldn’t invest in precursor.

heck invest in unidentified dyes, that is already 30% profit in a few weeks. Quite honestly “anything” I invested for over 8 month went up over 30%. Which isn’t even good, since the CPI is probably over 30% anyway.

thing you are forgeting is it wasnt an 8 month plan, as recently as march it was 650 gold buy orders. If you were manufacturing them, carrion krait slayer was as low as 34 silver. intricate totems were 1.76

let say since two months ago, they been stacking or plotting, say they got 20 at a sub 700 price, by selling at 250 they made 3820, this is most likely WHILE they were doing other investments.
also keep in mind history shows that precursors tend to rise in value at a higher rate than inflation, you guys are thinking of this in terms of repeat performances, this is the final hustle before cashing out.

If you are going to sell your company, you are going to make it look as good, and as valuable on paper as possible, what happens after that is irrelvant. your goal is to get as much as you can for it.

perhaps someone knows new legendaries, or precursor quests are nearing completion (unlikely but who knows) and is looking to liquidate before a crash

regardless, point is, there are definately reasons to invest in pushing prices up before you sell stock.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

and they dont really have higher risk/reward.
if someone manufactured, or bought the precursors at 500-700 gold and sell to buy order for 1050, they make 392-192 gold per sale or 78% -27% profit. even spending some money to raise the price, if they got 10-20 precursors to sell you are still looking at 50-15% profits per transaction. That is on par with many other TP profits.

thats comparable to many peoples best hustles.

You could spin your data even more by saying that if someone purchased Dusk for 25 Gold two years ago, and sold it recently for 1200 Gold, they just made 4,700% profit (not including TP tax). But if I used more current data, I could show you that a little while ago, I could buy Spark for 1100 Gold, but now no one is willing to pay over 1k for it.

Luxury item speculating will always have higher risk.

looking at the current data defeats the purpose. Thats like saying its impossible to make money flipping real estate, because once you sell the house for 400k, you can only buy it back for 400k. Or saying it would be pointless to try to raise the property values of a neighborhood, spending money paying off politicians, and buy run down houses, when you bought up all the other houses months ago.

The whole point is, first you get a whole bunch of them cheap, whether through being a precursor gambler, or through buying them over time. Now, when you are ready to sell you stash, it behooves you to increase the value of the market.

Because you have already bought them, and you are ready to sell, now your best way to maximize that return, is to try to increase the value.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

It’s just as, and more, stupid than I depict it. If you have that much money to throw around, there are far more profitable things to waste it on than some notion of controlling precursor prices. It’s as idiotic and stupid as the idea someone’s controlling the prices of legendaries, or iron ore.

what about it is idiotic? As long as you make money, its worthwhile. if you give up 500 gold, and make 4000 gold, over the course of two weeks, thats 250 gold extra a day. You also have to realize that the theoretical player wouldnt just be doing this, they would be doing other things as well, since the market has limits on what you can do within a specific market, the way to make more money is to hit other markets.

I see that you think its foolish on general principle, but i see no actual reasoning or data that says why its foolish. Its actually pretty common business strategy to buy out your competition to control more of the market.

now, i could see someone saying they dont think it would be easy to pull off, or that if they do pull it off, it means that the precursor prices were undervalued, but that doesnt mean it doesnt make sense.

It was explained quite clearly what it was idiotic …. speculating on precursors has a higher risk/reward ratio than other items on the TP. See here …

Wanze.8410:

Aidan Savage.2078:

It’s just as, and more, stupid than I depict it. If you have that much money to throw around, there are far more profitable things to waste it on than some notion of controlling precursor prices. It’s as idiotic and stupid as the idea someone’s controlling the prices of legendaries, or iron ore.

^^

There are many other ways to make 400g with 200g initial investment within 3 weeks, so why spend your gold on precursors? It just makes no sense at all.

in my post that you quoted i explained why the other markets are not relevant. no market is infinite, if you have enough money and you want to make more, you have to hit more markets.

and they dont really have higher risk/reward.
if someone manufactured, or bought the precursors at 500-700 gold and sell to buy order for 1050, they make 392-192 gold per sale or 78% -27% profit. even spending some money to raise the price, if they got 10-20 precursors to sell you are still looking at 50-15% profits per transaction. That is on par with many other TP profits.

thats comparable to many peoples best hustles.

Daggos Skelito.2910:

So being traitless at lvl 42, decided to go get one. This one sounded good because I was in the next map “Help Shining Blade Kimber defeat Kol Skullsmasher”. WHAT ARE YOU GUYS THINKING?

“Kol is a champion giant having a great deal of health and can take over 20 minutes for a large group to kill”

Buying the trait isn’t an option because….uhm…I need the skill points to BUY SKILLS!
Please look up EPIC FAIL!

ehh i ve never seen it take that long, he also scales to the group, you dont need 20 people at all, i think i did it with like 4 before, but not sure, that was a long time ago.
Honestly i prefer these ones to the map complete ones, though i will say that it wouldnt be a bad idea if the challenges, especially the adept teir werent something that scales well from 1 player and higher.
This is personal growth, only support/group traits really make sense to have events that require a group. (note its fine if you can use a group, or it scales to a group)

Blazing Liger.1236:

So….basically, instead of exploring on your own and finding things out within the game, you want Anet to puke out pre-digested lore ‘books’ for you to read because you’re too lazy to go out and look for it yourself?

i think he is saying, in addition to what exists in the game, they could have a better system for cataloging lore, as well there will always be more lore than they can show with events.
I think it would be a good system, especially if you may be able to hunt it down. Lets say the durmond priory gave you hints where to find lore books that you were missing.

However, i dont know if arena net would bother, since its probably a small amount of players who would be interested, and would probably require work.

Wish they would do it, but i doubt they will.

Killface.1896:

Bags never get soulbound so there can just be to much supply of them,people just getting the fractals bags and selling the old bags or somthink.

why get a fractal bag if your old bag is already 20? only thing i can think of is if you decide you want to change one of the bags to hold exotics, or something. But that seems like it would be a pretty rare case. I doubt it could explain the standard prices.

Wanze.8410:

Aidan Savage.2078:

It’s just as, and more, stupid than I depict it. If you have that much money to throw around, there are far more profitable things to waste it on than some notion of controlling precursor prices. It’s as idiotic and stupid as the idea someone’s controlling the prices of legendaries, or iron ore.

^^

There are many other ways to make 400g with 200g initial investment within 3 weeks, so why spend your gold on precursors? It just makes no sense at all.

because every market has a limit of what you can do with it. If you are already in those markets, and you want to make more money, you have to hit a new market.
Also if your chosen market is precursors, or you have a stockpile, then its what you do because you are already invested. If you find a new better hustle, then you would still have to try to liquidate your precursor stash at the best rates possible.

Aidan Savage.2078:

It’s just as, and more, stupid than I depict it. If you have that much money to throw around, there are far more profitable things to waste it on than some notion of controlling precursor prices. It’s as idiotic and stupid as the idea someone’s controlling the prices of legendaries, or iron ore.

what about it is idiotic? As long as you make money, its worthwhile. if you give up 500 gold, and make 4000 gold, over the course of two weeks, thats 250 gold extra a day. You also have to realize that the theoretical player wouldnt just be doing this, they would be doing other things as well, since the market has limits on what you can do within a specific market, the way to make more money is to hit other markets.

I see that you think its foolish on general principle, but i see no actual reasoning or data that says why its foolish. Its actually pretty common business strategy to buy out your competition to control more of the market.

now, i could see someone saying they dont think it would be easy to pull off, or that if they do pull it off, it means that the precursor prices were undervalued, but that doesnt mean it doesnt make sense.

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

PowerCat.5738:

This thread looks like it has derailed a lot, but the reason why precursors are so expensive is because a few people are manipulating the market.

It’s no secret that many people have thousands and thousands over thousands of gold.

They see a precursor on the TP? Buy right away and hoard. They’re controlling the supply and set the price they want.

Or people are selling to the Buy Orders and thus never show up on the trade post. I seriously doubt any legitimacy to the tinfoil hat theory of “someone” controlling the supply of precursors. The only people that would attempt to do so would be those who are completely dumb and/or have several tens of thousands gold sitting in their inventory waiting to be used on something.

the people who have several tens of thousands of gold, or the conglomerates who do, are they people who do these type of things. They dont have sole control, but in a small market they can have an effect. Especially if they feel the price point isnt representing the value.

Also the type of people who might try to effect the price, or push the price point, are basically doing it, to increase the buy orders most likely.

If buy taking a 400 gold loss, you can push the buy orders up by 100ish gold, and you have 10-20 precursors to sell, you would be increasing your profit selling to buy orders.

Now this is just conjecture, on possibilities, and when it might make business sense to try these type of manuevers, i have no idea if any one is trying. But there are definately people with the resources to do so.

Precursors sell much more to buy orders than sell listings. Even if you have 100k gold, you might be able to keep the highest offer to yourself but after a couple of days, you will have 100 precursors, which you still need to sell. and you wont have any more gold to inflate buy orders. Anybody who is witty enough to earn 50-100k gold quite surely wont be throwing it all into precursors.

you should know it doesnt really matter if you have the buy orders to yourself, as long as they sell.
if 40-60 precursors are sold a day, and you have 20-30 to sell, it doesnt really matter if some other people get some of the buy orders, as long as you can get yours as well.

since april 14th dusk buy orders are up about 200 gold, The only people this type of thing would be worthwhile for, are people who can afford it, and have the resources to expend, IE essentially they are precursor marketers, they either manufacture precursors regularly, or have been buying them up at deal prices for awhile and feel the time is right to liquidate.

If you are selling a plurality of the cars that are sold each day, its in your best interest for car prices to go up, even if not everyone is buying your car. if you sell 5 cars a day, doesnt matter if 20 other guys sell them, as long as the overall price goes up, its profitable for you.

also, the sell order market is a lot less volatile, you dont have to buy a whole bunch, as you say, most are selling to buy orders. you can let the other dude undercut you for 1149 gold, because your real goal was to be able to sell 5 dusks for 200 gold more per day.

as i said, even if he loses 400-500 gold when he sells the high one cheaper later, he made 200 more gold per dusk and maybe sold 20 in a couple weeks, 4000 gold increase in profits with a 400-500 gold loss for marketing costs of making it seem more valuable.

But then its mere speculation for profit, not manipulation.

“manipulation” is a hot word that means 100 different things to 100 different people.
All i was pointing out is that for people with enough money/in the right market, it may be worthwhile, to try to buy out, and reprice precursors, with the intent of trying to push the price up so they could make a profit.

Whether one calls that “manipulation” or not isnt really the issue. Just saying i can see how in certain situations, buying up the supply and trying to reprice the market value would be a worthwhile endeavor. IE its not stupid as aidan savage claimed

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Aidan Savage.2078:

PowerCat.5738:

This thread looks like it has derailed a lot, but the reason why precursors are so expensive is because a few people are manipulating the market.

It’s no secret that many people have thousands and thousands over thousands of gold.

They see a precursor on the TP? Buy right away and hoard. They’re controlling the supply and set the price they want.

Or people are selling to the Buy Orders and thus never show up on the trade post. I seriously doubt any legitimacy to the tinfoil hat theory of “someone” controlling the supply of precursors. The only people that would attempt to do so would be those who are completely dumb and/or have several tens of thousands gold sitting in their inventory waiting to be used on something.

the people who have several tens of thousands of gold, or the conglomerates who do, are they people who do these type of things. They dont have sole control, but in a small market they can have an effect. Especially if they feel the price point isnt representing the value.

Also the type of people who might try to effect the price, or push the price point, are basically doing it, to increase the buy orders most likely.

If buy taking a 400 gold loss, you can push the buy orders up by 100ish gold, and you have 10-20 precursors to sell, you would be increasing your profit selling to buy orders.

Now this is just conjecture, on possibilities, and when it might make business sense to try these type of manuevers, i have no idea if any one is trying. But there are definately people with the resources to do so.

Precursors sell much more to buy orders than sell listings. Even if you have 100k gold, you might be able to keep the highest offer to yourself but after a couple of days, you will have 100 precursors, which you still need to sell. and you wont have any more gold to inflate buy orders. Anybody who is witty enough to earn 50-100k gold quite surely wont be throwing it all into precursors.

you should know it doesnt really matter if you have the buy orders to yourself, as long as they sell.
if 40-60 precursors are sold a day, and you have 20-30 to sell, it doesnt really matter if some other people get some of the buy orders, as long as you can get yours as well.

since april 14th dusk buy orders are up about 200 gold, The only people this type of thing would be worthwhile for, are people who can afford it, and have the resources to expend, IE essentially they are precursor marketers, they either manufacture precursors regularly, or have been buying them up at deal prices for awhile and feel the time is right to liquidate.

If you are selling a plurality of the cars that are sold each day, its in your best interest for car prices to go up, even if not everyone is buying your car. if you sell 5 cars a day, doesnt matter if 20 other guys sell them, as long as the overall price goes up, its profitable for you.

also, the sell order market is a lot less volatile, you dont have to buy a whole bunch, as you say, most are selling to buy orders. you can let the other dude undercut you for 1149 gold, because your real goal was to be able to sell 5 dusks for 200 gold more per day.

as i said, even if he loses 400-500 gold when he sells the high one cheaper later, he made 200 more gold per dusk and maybe sold 20 in a couple weeks, 4000 gold increase in profits with a 400-500 gold loss for marketing costs of making it seem more valuable.

Aidan Savage.2078:

PowerCat.5738:

This thread looks like it has derailed a lot, but the reason why precursors are so expensive is because a few people are manipulating the market.

It’s no secret that many people have thousands and thousands over thousands of gold.

They see a precursor on the TP? Buy right away and hoard. They’re controlling the supply and set the price they want.

Or people are selling to the Buy Orders and thus never show up on the trade post. I seriously doubt any legitimacy to the tinfoil hat theory of “someone” controlling the supply of precursors. The only people that would attempt to do so would be those who are completely dumb and/or have several tens of thousands gold sitting in their inventory waiting to be used on something.

the people who have several tens of thousands of gold, or the conglomerates who do, are they people who do these type of things. They dont have sole control, but in a small market they can have an effect. Especially if they feel the price point isnt representing the value.

Also the type of people who might try to effect the price, or push the price point, are basically doing it, to increase the buy orders most likely.

If buy taking a 400 gold loss, you can push the buy orders up by 100ish gold, and you have 10-20 precursors to sell, you would be increasing your profit selling to buy orders.

Now this is just conjecture, on possibilities, and when it might make business sense to try these type of manuevers, i have no idea if any one is trying. But there are definately people with the resources to do so.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

phys.7689:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

juno.1840:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Bread.7516:

So people are now complaining to anet why they cant afford a luxury item.

Why not complain to your government why you can’t afford to buy a helicopter?

When it comes to “Entitlement”, anything can turn into a legitimate complaint.

Except when you buy a game there is some legitimate entitlement to actually experience the entire game. MMOs break that mold a bit, but it’s not entirely unexpected.

Real cash has traded hands, and although the EULA gives no guarantees of any sort, it should not be surprising that Customers perceive a diminished sense of fairness when aspects of the game are out of reach.

Using lame RL “entitlement” arguments just shows your lack of understanding of the situation. But if it makes you happy tossing out catchy slogans and sharp comments, knock yourself out — don’t expect a pat on the back tho.

Real cash transactions after the initial purchase of the game are not required. One can enjoy this game without ever having to spend a cent beyond that. I choose to support Anet by spending money beyond the box. Where is the sense of “fairness” to players like me who spend lots of money on microtransactions, and players who want everything for free or easy don’t spend anything?

That is where the “Entitlement” comes in. I fully understand the situation. Perhaps the lack of understanding comes from your end?

dont get how you are connecting money spent in the gem store to any of these issues, their are plenty of people who spent money in the gem store and have no precursors, and plenty of people who may be upset with large inflation.

not to mention as people said, everyone here bought the game, every one feels entitled to get some enjoyment. I mean you could say people who go to six flags and complain about crappy food, or long lines are entitled, but they payed for it, i think they have a right to complain. One could say they earned it.

That post was purely in response to the quoted player.

I do agree that everyone is entitled to some enjoyment, and that everyone is entitled to complaining as well. I can understand if someone complains if their personal preferences aren’t met. To that end, I’ll argue against making game wide changes due to same personal preferences that the complainers pass as fictitious game wide problems.

well its up to the business men, and the customers to decide what are big problems. People giving their opinions are not necessarily wrong, and not necessarily right. But that doesnt mean you should ignore/dismiss them. The best bet is to probably investigate, or think on what type of improvements you as a business can make while still keeping the integrity, function, aethetic, economics, and structure of your product strong, or improving it.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

juno.1840:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Bread.7516:

So people are now complaining to anet why they cant afford a luxury item.

Why not complain to your government why you can’t afford to buy a helicopter?

When it comes to “Entitlement”, anything can turn into a legitimate complaint.

Except when you buy a game there is some legitimate entitlement to actually experience the entire game. MMOs break that mold a bit, but it’s not entirely unexpected.

Real cash has traded hands, and although the EULA gives no guarantees of any sort, it should not be surprising that Customers perceive a diminished sense of fairness when aspects of the game are out of reach.

Using lame RL “entitlement” arguments just shows your lack of understanding of the situation. But if it makes you happy tossing out catchy slogans and sharp comments, knock yourself out — don’t expect a pat on the back tho.

Real cash transactions after the initial purchase of the game are not required. One can enjoy this game without ever having to spend a cent beyond that. I choose to support Anet by spending money beyond the box. Where is the sense of “fairness” to players like me who spend lots of money on microtransactions, and players who want everything for free or easy don’t spend anything?

That is where the “Entitlement” comes in. I fully understand the situation. Perhaps the lack of understanding comes from your end?

dont get how you are connecting money spent in the gem store to any of these issues, their are plenty of people who spent money in the gem store and have no precursors, and plenty of people who may be upset with large inflation.

not to mention as people said, everyone here bought the game, every one feels entitled to get some enjoyment. I mean you could say people who go to six flags and complain about crappy food, or long lines are entitled, but they payed for it, i think they have a right to complain. One could say they earned it.

mtpelion.4562:

Cormac.3871:

So yeah, making a legendary contingent on a single very rare drop is a terrible system. On the other hand chances are good that you will do more than the amount expected to get a precursor and still not get it without the RNG being broken.

On the flip side, making Precursors more available would increase the number of people working on a Legendary which will increase demand for the parts. If we increase the demand of already rare parts (the t6 fine materials), the price will rise.

Basically, right now it costs a lot of gold to complete step 1 (“get a precursor”). If we make step 1 cheaper, then you’ll have a lot of people who have completed step 1 and now need to complete step 2 (“get T6 fine materials”). All we’ve done is shifted the cost to step 2, so you’re really no closer to your goal at all, you just feel a bit better about your progress because you were able to check off a cheap step 1.

a lot of people wouldnt mind increased cost of parts, because those are shorter term goals, you can target, or they have known ways of obtaining them.

T6, drops from high level zones/bags and you can upgrade t5 to get, as well you can use laurels
Orichalcum mineable, salavageable
stones is the hardest part, but you can hunt elementals, or you can hunt specific bags, also different dungeons generally have some means, and champion bags also give it.

point is, what people dont like, is not being able to work towards it in any non super rng way. As far as saving gold, doesnt really work out due to inflation. While every charged lodestone you get gets you 1/100 closer to your goal no matter what, Every gold you earn does not necessarily get you closer to a precursor. You can use random number generators in games, but if you are going to go to like 1/1000 levels, you create a large variation in attainability.
since legendaries a currently the main elder game goals, this becomes a problem

Cormac.3871:

Just a quick note about probability. As a general rule of thumb if something happens on average every x times and you make x attempts, there is still a greater than one in three chance that you will not have had a success. The upshot of this is that placing items in the forge for your own precursor it is a huge gamble. The more you craft though the more the odds even out so if you are putting in huge numbers for profit then you can start to feel more comfortable about your outcomes.

So yeah, making a legendary contingent on a single very rare drop is a terrible system. On the other hand chances are good that you will do more than the amount expected to get a precursor and still not get it without the RNG being broken.

yeah a lot of people dont get this, if its 1/1000, that doesnt mean you get it in 1000 tries, 1/3rd of the people wont get it in 1000 tries.
for every dude who got it on his first try there is a dude who gets it on the 6904th try(probability wise)

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

phys.7689:

the mats you gathered may be free, (even though it takes time, and you arent actually supposed to be able to play while doing other tasks irl without using a bot)

Gathering doesn’t take time. Unless you value every second you play. I gather while playing. So, I’m following this event around, see a node, stop for a sec, gather, and then move on with the event.

So, in that respect, they are very much “free” (or virtually so, as a gathering tool use will cost a copper or less…)

you arent getting my meaning here. whether its free or not, it has a certain value. If you are going to sell them on the market you should do it at least the value of the item.
So if you get iron ore, worth 1 silver each
and you turn 30 iron ore into 1 iron sword which costs 3 silver
you have lost 27 silver by making the iron sword.

It would be better to just sell the iron ore.
The only viable reason is if you have to make that particular recipe in order to level up crafting. Then you are paying 27 silver, for however much crafting exp you got.

Its fine if you dont care about numbers and whatnot, but i think its bad design that the TP encourages people to sell at a loss. Many people arent going to do the research and see what every single item they are crafting is worth, multiply it, and figure it out.

tolunart.2095:

So? Over 3 million box sales in 2012, at full price or more for collectors edition. That’s at least $60 per account. After the rush to buy the game dies down, the next year is mostly gem store sales.

It’s well known that most players aren’t going to spend money on the game beyond the initial box sale, so $100+ million annual in gem store sales is a big deal.

you are entirely too combative, i said nothing but translated the amounts into US dollars since many people dont have an idea how korean money translates.
Its just an informational post, i am not your adversary.

Behellagh.1468:

It’s tough to say because the game transitioned from box sales being the primary source of income to gem sales. Next week (I’m guessing) will reveal 1Q14 numbers which shouldn’t really have much if any China numbers folded in. All I can be sure of is the number will be lower than 1Q13 considering the sales strength of 4Q13, being a holiday quarter.

GW2 Sales as reported by NCSOFT

3Q12 – 45,841 million KrW (roughly one month plus pre-orders)
4Q12 – 119,013
1Q13 – 36,382
2Q13 – 28,889
3Q13 – 24,481
4Q13 – 33,555

just to give some perspective
the amount in US dollars according to current conversion rates:
3Q12=44.76million
4Q12=116.20 million
1Q13=35.52 million
2Q13=28.21million
3Q13=23.9million
4Q13=32.76million

160 million in 2012
120 million in 2013

martial artist hand 2 hand bo staff etc, focus on reactive gameplay, advantageous skill sequence usage(combo-ish) movement, but in an aggressive way.

for the people who say they need to balance current, never gonna happen.
those who say they have a diverse playstyle set, ehhh, theif would probably be the closest, but it doesnt really focus on skill sequences, more of using one attack repeatedly, it also is primarily an escape type class, its class mechanics revolve around stealth.

anyhow, i think there are probably some other ideas out there, but i definately want new classes, races, etc. Game needs some new

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Mystic.5934:

Wikie.2610:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Whose fault is it that they didn’t watch the interviews and get some information on upcoming changes?

In my opinion arenanet should not constantly release information that affects the economy before the patches hit, it will be implemented anyway so why the hell telling people what will change beforehand, it accomplishes nothing as most of the player base doesnt watch livestreams and they dont read forums and fansites they just play the game as it is…but some few % of the playerbase still profit of that information

ahh ill remember this post the next time you guys talk about how flipping truely helps players, and makes things more affordable for them.
+1
the only info about a patch should be in the patch notes, which are released 2 seconds after everyone is kicked from the game and forced to download the patch.
also, the patch notes should be on the download screen.

Even simple posts like “New Legendaries coming soon!” will cause the market to tremble. 2 days or 2 seconds before releasing a patch doesn’t matter. As soon as I’m in game, I’m buying out all existing stockpiles of T6 mats, and then flipping them when prices shoot up 30%.

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

i got 100 iron ore “for free”! let me make it into iron swords and sell it!
100 iron ore makes 3 swords which sell for 2 silver
100 iron ore sells for 1 silver each
which option do you pick as a business man?

Depends if I’m leveling up my crafting.

Well not like many games dont mess this up, but its a bad idea to make leveling crafting an opportunity cost to get to point B. You end up with a lot of these bad situations where people are selling things at a loss, because they just wanted to level up.

But its not just a level up issue, max level crafting items also used to end being sold at a loss.

If i were designing a crafting system, i would make it so you dont create items by accident on your path to leveling up, it creates an item glut. Especially with the buy order system, it is really uneccessary to create that type of structure.