Guild Wars 2

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Essence Snow.3194:

Obtena.7952:

All content does guarantee a Precursor. You just need to do enough content for that guarantee.

In no possible way is this factual.

Of course it is. You earn gold doing content, you buy precursors with gold. Therefore, you can get a precursor if you do enough content. Is your belief so unrelenting you won’t even acknowledge truth?

so you need to be earning enough gold to beat inflation,

So you don’t think the average person’s earning can beat inflation? Based on your only speculation of course …. I’m going to pull you back to reality.

Anet understands that the game’s success requires the TP to work for everyone. As we have already seen numerous times, we know they will step in when they have to make corrections and the sum of these things affects the factors that influence inflation.

So yes what I said is true because the success of the game depends on Anet having some oversight on the economy, and this includes inflation.

im not going to say things like average persons earning, because we dont have access to that data.

point is, its not a guarantee to eventually be able to afford a precursor. Its only a guarantee if you earn at a rate greater than inflation of the precursor, and noticeably greater if you want to get it within 2 years.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Essence Snow.3194:

Obtena.7952:

All content does guarantee a Precursor. You just need to do enough content for that guarantee.

In no possible way is this factual.

Of course it is. You earn gold doing content, you buy precursors with gold. Therefore, you can get a precursor if you do enough content. Is your belief so unrelenting you won’t even acknowledge truth?

so you need to be earning enough gold to beat inflation,

That would be a significant concern if inflation was so out of control that yuou couldn’t purchase things. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Inflation can be something that is controlled in this game and Anet understands that the game’s success requires the TP to work for everyone. As we have already seen numerous times, we know they will step in when they have to make corrections and the sum of these things affects the factors that influence inflation.

So yes what I said is true.

they have not to this day shown much desire to control precursors prices at all, so no what you said isnt true. I m basing what i say not on what i think, or what should be, its based on real data.
a person who made 1 gold a day from release is actually farther from a precursor today in days, than he was the 2nd day the bltc went live.

618 days since the game came out
dusk costs
1169 is cost of dusk

its real data, real math.
interestingly enough, last year at this time dusk costed 619 gold.
550 gold increase in one year time. so no they do not control inflation in this case

unless they make the vision crystal a requirement to be used after having a completed weapon, i am firmly against it.
also vision crystals should not require crafting of a high level to make.

however i guess they decided long ago to try to get everyone to craft.

silvermember.8941:

Wanderer.3248:

Some people don’t understand opportunity costs (the “mats I gathered are free” people).

The mats you gather are effectively free and that is because the nature of gathering allows you to do it while performing other task in RL.

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) but crafting them and selling them for less than the materials you found is still a bad idea.

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?

Stryder.9241:

So I have ran into several examples with this and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a flaw in the Black Lion trading post or if people just like to lose money. So here’s the long and short of the problem, the cost of numerous items is less than the cost of the materials. My best example of this is 20 slot bags. The superior rune of holding has a constant cost of 10 g. So how is it they only sell for 11 g 76 s 46 c, with the listing fee of 58 s 82 c. For those of you who don’t want to do the math your losing 1 c. This also assumes you have the rest of the materials that are worth roughly 3 s. So if you buy the materials your losing 3 s and change every time. This for an item last time I checked basically everyone wants and uses. Wouldn’t it be smarter if the Black Lion trading post assumed the costs and told you if you were selling an item at a loss or gain based on current market value/cost of the materials?

yes, it would be better, however, it would reduce the ability of people to take advantage of people for profit, which they really enjoy.

also for a lot of items, its caused by having alternate means of obtaining said items, or people who produced it to level crafting.

for crafting leveling they should have made the level up system not yield sellable items, or made a method that made it way more effecient to level up off non salable items.

Obtena.7952:

Essence Snow.3194:

Obtena.7952:

All content does guarantee a Precursor. You just need to do enough content for that guarantee.

In no possible way is this factual.

Of course it is. You earn gold doing content, you buy precursors with gold. Therefore, you can get a precursor if you do enough content. Is your belief so unrelenting you won’t even acknowledge truth?

thats not true due to inflation.
at the current rates of increase, earning 1 gold a day will never get you a precursor.

so you need to be earning enough gold to beat inflation, then you have to consider if you arent beating inflation by a decent amount, you wont achieve your goal for more years than the game will probably be out.
currently for dusk i think it was, if you are not earning 2.9 gold a day, you will never be able to buy a precursor. If you are earning something like 3.4. it will take you greater than 150 years.
things change, and may or may not level off, but saying precursor is guananteed by doing enough work is a lie. Its a competitive market, and inflation is high. earning money doesnt guarantee you a precursor any more than a 3rd world minimum wage factory worker is guaranteed to eventually get enough for new york city house.

Now if precursors were sold at a fixed price via npc, you might have a point, but they are not.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nope. Anet controls the Supply, and the player’s needs control the Demand. Things balance out in the end. Look at how cheap Silk is now compared to a few months ago.

that always struck me as a bad design. The pattern already happened earlier when the game was released. Cloth was expensive early because the sources were pretty small, but as everyone got their gear it began to become less and less valuable, especially silk because level 80 players create it without intent, and it doesnt have a sink like precursors (legendary armor causes silk spikes?)

It would have been better to come up with some recurring use for silk(that people actually desire) rather than tack it onto ascended crafting which will diminish over time, as people either get ascended or refuse to.
Also would need some more direct means of obtaining it, once they created a renewable demand

TheDaiBish.9735:

Arundo.5802:

This is why I always hope game have some sort of subscription model. All Arenanet is doing is create more skins, finishers and other crap for the cashshop. I dont want another fuzzy hat, bunny ears, lama finisher… I want to see a new expansion and new zones to explore.

But there is not room to create those because they need to create items for the cashshop to stay healthy on the cashflow.

You’re aware that the people who create the framework for the content (game designers, gameplay programmers ect) aren’t the people who create cash-shop stuff (modellers and animators)?

Playable content teams and gem-store teams are seperate.

Hmm, actually thats one of the issues, they could have modelers and animators working on new enemies, new skills, and new rewards for new content.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Essence Snow.3194:

Obtena.7952:

All content does guarantee a Precursor. You just need to do enough content for that guarantee.

In no possible way is this factual.

You can drop a precursor from random mob farming.
You can drop a precursor from champ farming.
You can drop a precursor from anything related to PvE.
You can drop a precursor from WvW karma train.
You can drop a precursor from player kills in WvW.
You can drop a precursor from Borderland kills.
You can drop a precursor from the Toilet.
You can drop a precursor from the Trade Post.
You can drop a precursor from Fractals (see 1-3).
You probably can drop a precursor from structured PvP, but that’s content I dont do, so not sure about it.

The only “content” you do not get a chance at a precursor from is strictly node farming.

The person said guarantee, chance is not guarantee. And with such low odds, its not even a likely chance

Kal Spiro.9745:

shadowspaul.6485:

Thanks guys You should all go work at Anet customer service. even after 4 tickets they couldn’t tell this to me ^^ happy to see that there are still people on these forums willing to help others with problems

Probably because your question didn’t make sense and they were trying to figure out what was going wrong.

more likely that customer service are usually not experts on the game/game mechanics, they are people who deal with customer issues

Behellagh.1468:

Prices rapidly rising after a major paradigm shift isn’t inflation. Neither is when an item written off as junk (silk scrap) suddenly acquires a purpose. That’s a spike. Measuring in any term shorter than a year isn’t a fair way to measure inflation.

Apr 15th 2013 to Apr 15th 2014, Dawn went from 568g to 758g or 33% I’m okay with calling that inflation. Calling the change in price from May 3rd to May 5th, from 781g to 1050g, inflation I’m not okay with. That’s a spike, plain and simple.

spike implies its going to go down. Officially inflation doesnt really care what the cause is, whether its an increase in demand, or lowering of the supply. The key here is whether its sustained.
If it maintains this price or grows, that not really a spike, if it falls just as quickly its a spike.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Punch.3507:

- Emphasis on coordinated team play (eliminating stacking)

Disconnect, here. If you’re talking against glitching at walls, say so. If you’re talking about mechanics (like Oozes in TA-AP), say so. Otherwise, stacking is the only meaningful coordinated team play available, because all team-play mechanics (buffs, defensive procs, combo fields) occur at short range. The antithesis to stacking is uncoordinated team play with everyone doing their own thing.

I think the overall intent was not to have a fully static stacked fight, but to have people grouping at key times and having fairly positional combat. Never really seen it happen though.

Karizee.8076:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Max Lexandre.6279:

I think ArenaNet is under development meltdown as they try to fix the core systems of the game to ready the game itself for new content, likely one expansion.

What i know is, one expansion with the game systems like this without new major improvements on it, would be a move risking failure.

One thing ASAP comes to mind when we speak about things that need to be done right, is the STORY MODE, on a new future expansion, they simply can’t do the same, GW2 story was a sad story itself.
It’s things like that they need to fix and get done right before anything DAT BIG.

You get that we’re probably not getting an expansion, right? That’s what the Living Story is supposed to fulfill. Expansion level content over an extended period of time, instead of one lump of content all at once with nothing in between.

I mean they’ve said no expansion enough times, you’d think people would actually catch on.

That’s not true.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“The thing that we haven’t decided yet,” he went on, "is what form that type of content will take. Is it right for Guild Wars 2 for that kind of boxed expansion? Is it right for that to be something we add, live, through storylines in the game? Is that something we want to sell through our in-game store? There are a lot of different options available to us.

“… but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”

notice it says, in the lifespan of guild wars ii, which implies its something that will happen at some point before gw2 dies.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

tigirius.9014:

Four things need to occur here. 1: DR and loot restrictions must go. 2: double RNG must be a thing of the past, no more buying crafting bags only to get the same things drop or having a second drop rate for bags from mobs than the drop rate of the items from the bags. 3: Precursors and ALL runes/sigils must become crafted items. 4: And finally, the rewards for completing maps/puzzles/finding hidden chests/completing major events should all be increased, that way players actually FEEL rewarded. Please no more of this “I completed a major map, got 5 silver!” nonsense.

And we’re right back at “Entitlement”. All the things you suggest are meant to only benefit your instant gratification. By implementing 3 of 4 of these, you actually destroy the game faster.

-What happens when you run out of carrots to gather? You quit playing.
-What happens when you take away the gates, and allow farmers to run rampant with loot drops? You create inflation.
-What happens when you increase loot drops from events that are farmed daily by thousands of players? You create more inflation.

Be prepared for Precursor crafting though. Once that comes out, you’ll get a feel for what a real grind is. I’ve already been speculating as to what components this will require, and have been farming them up in hopes to be one of the first to craft and sell them.

Carrot on a stick is supposed to be used to lead animals where you want them to go. Currently the carrot leads to degenerative gold grinds they constantly nerf (which end up effecting everyone) and playing merchant, not only that but its competitive grind, so your goal is either to become richer, make everyone poorer or both.

need the carrot, and need better destinations, and journey.

CrashTestAuto.9108:

I love the idea of unlocking new traits by doing content. I think that’s a fantastic move that should be extended to more traits, and to slot skills as well. I was even on board with unlocking the original set as a fun way to add to the character progression feeling

However, I’ve just started a new character and the implementation is simply not fun or rewarding. I am still completely baffled as to why the traits didn’t start out at level 15 and then one point every five levels. The period before you hit 80 and buy all your gear is when you are most free to experiment, and I can’t do that because I have nothing to experiment with.

Moreover, as has been said, having traits awarded for such time consuming and specific things that don’t relate to the traits themselves doesn’t make sense. Especially the ones way above the average level for that point (Fireheart completion).

Why not make traits unlock for doing things that actually relate to them? To unlock a fall damage reduction trait, survive a fall with less that 30% health five times. To unlock an extra burn time trait, burn 100 enemies. To unlock a trait that improves the cooldown on greatsword skills, kill ten champs with a greatsword. That way traits will unlock naturally according to what a player actually does in the game, and don’t force the player to go to a specific location to do them.

(I do like the idea of going to specific locations, as in GW1, but use that for the newer skills and traits, as these are designed as end game content, not for the original set.)

this actually makes a lot of sense.
I like the going around doing stuff to get traits, but as you say, tedious repetitive ones are going to suck (map completions) Also this is the type of system you generally apply to special things, not the normal run of the mill ones.

So yeah if your basic traits, unlocked in ways related to the traits, later on traits/skills can involve doing something like going into dungeons, mini dungeons, etc.

Another possibility was giving more options for unlocks.

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

doesnt really matter if inflation is caused by demand or supply or money, as long as it happens, its inflation.
It doesnt really apply to specific products, because it is a general term for prices overall in an economy, but since they qualified it with the word “precursor” I think you can get the meaning even if its not the correct semantics.

“The term “inflation” originally referred to increases in the amount of money in circulation, and some economists still use the word in this way. However, most economists today use the term “inflation” to refer to a rise in the price level."

since he is talking about a rise in price level of precursors, i think its apt.

ya but are you talking “only about” precursor or “everything”.

If I live in a country and gold price go up, I dont’ say inflation, I say the price of “that” item went up.

I think legendary make up a huge chunk of all the items on GW2 world. But not necessary everything.

yeah, but he didnt say inflation, he said precursor inflation. Like i said, i think you can understand what he is getting at, even though inflation is a general term.

Beldin.5498:

silvermember.8941:

A good system would not be ESO or DCUO. ESO especially has a horrible terrible worthless combat system, the fact that you are talking about it invalidates your opinion on good combat but I suppose there is nothign wrong with having bad taste in life. DCUO is kinda nice but still spamming and based on rock paper scissors.

A good combat system would be a game that takes TERA targeting system and combines it with Blade and soul or possibly gw2 but make it more deliberate and remove animation immunity.

I dislike all these MMOs with shooter interfaces. Yes, i am a mouseclicker, and i need the possibility to click on my hotbars. Any game with forced mouselook and unclickable hotbars like DCUO, Vindictus, Neverwinter and Tera were deinstalled after mostly 10-20 minutes of trying to play them.

And i really really feared that GW2 would maybe also go that way, and was very when i finally could play the beta and see that it had MMO and not shooter controls.

would be nice if they gave an option to choose from

Behellagh.1468:

phys.7689:

doesnt really matter if inflation is caused by demand or supply or money, as long as it happens, its inflation.
It doesnt really apply to specific products, because it is a general term for prices overall in an economy, but since they qualified it with the word “precursor” I think you can get the meaning even if its not the correct semantics.

“The term “inflation” originally referred to increases in the amount of money in circulation, and some economists still use the word in this way. However, most economists today use the term “inflation” to refer to a rise in the price level."

since he is talking about a rise in price level of precursors, i think its apt.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Gewd.8125:

Why are they going up so much?

Because of demand. People insist on throwing around the term “inflation” and use it like that’s what’s happening. It’s not inflation if there’s a demand that drives up prices because supply is not keeping up.

In short, everyone else needs to stop throwing around the word inflation until they eventually get it right.

doesnt really matter if inflation is caused by demand or supply or money, as long as it happens, its inflation.
It doesnt really apply to specific products, because it is a general term for prices overall in an economy, but since they qualified it with the word “precursor” I think you can get the meaning even if its not the correct semantics.

If you dont think my math model is accurate, create a more accurate one i would love to see a more detailed analysis, but i think while the numbers may vary, i dont think the patterns will.

look at iron ore, pick a date august 13 (picked at random)
Zap= 422 gold
iron ore is =60 copper
orichalcum = 4.32 silver
hardened leather section =12 copper
berserker draconic = 3.9 gold

now look at today
Zap =1050 248%
iron ore = 1.09 silver 178%
orichalcum=5.89 silver 136%
hardened leather section 12 copper 100%
beserker draconic =5.3 gold 135%

far as direct drops they are the same. I dont think optimal dungeon running times have changed that much.

point is precursor growth is growing at a greater rate than inflation. Im not saying why or wherefore, im just looking at the data. for most products if you compare the growth precursor is eclipsing other growths.
you see the same things with gold>gems.

aug 13 gold > to gems, 3.14 gold for 100 gems
today gold >gems, 9.58 gold for 100 gems 305% old value

linuxotaku.4731:

phys.7689:

problem I guess i have is, i actually check the math.
70g in two weeks seems good at first glance for casual play.
But when you do the math it looks grim.
lets say you decide you want to get a precursor, ill try it out with two of em
spark.

now, im gonna simplify some things here, and make assumptions.

heres the assumed.
I will assume the rate of growth in cost for a precursor is linear,
I will take the data for nov1 up to today, approx 181 days. (about 6 months)
assuming you continue to make 70g in 18 days (about two and a half weeks)

so i will make a formula
e=earnings per day
x=number of days till you get enough
c=current price of precursor
i=rate of increase per day

so i get e*x=c+(i*x)
so lets figure out how much you earn per day at 70 gold every two weeks
70/18 days =3.88 gold per day
now lets use sparks data for the rest
current price 1150g
rate of increase in 184 days.
Nov1 price=615 gold
May 4 price=1150 gold
535gold increase in 184days or a rate of 2.90 gold per day

so our formula looks like
3.88*x=1150+2.90*x
solving for x you get 1173 days

My degree was in math, but it was theoretical math; and I do software instead now.

Your assumptions aren’t consistent — you’re assuming a linear increase (why linear rather than exponential?) in the cost of a precursor but not a linear increase in income; this seems based on the assumption that precursors’ prices will rise but other in-game rewards won’t. I don’t think either data or economic analysis justify that model. Look at http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29167 and see if you think a linear price increase explains the current rise.

I believe prices increased because legendaries’ value increased (now that they include a skin unlock and are account-bound), not because of monetary inflation (increased money supply). That doesn’t mean that prices can’t increase, but I wouldn’t speculate on precursors right now — I think it’d likely be a losing bet.

If you take away the assumption that precursor prices will rise faster than average income, you come up with a different conclusion.

as i said, its a simplification,
i even mentioned the factors you talked about, but the truth is earning has not gone up in conjunction with legendary costs. The biggest help to earning has been ascended crafting, which finally increased value for a lot of crafting materials who were actually going down in value.
orichalcum stable, ancient wood stable, iron stable, teir1-teir5 mostly same or gone down. Very few things have gone up, most regular items have gone down. some things have gone up. (im talking actual items here, tp is a different beast)

But overall, the earning isnt going up as much as precursors growth.

I used linear, even though its probably more of curve, because i want to give the benefit of the doubt in this case. Curved is actually a lot worse for this prediction, unless earning is the same curve, if earning does have the same curve, then you can factor out that part, and you end up getting a line again.

regardless, while the demand has increased, we really dont know how much real demand has been added.
If the changes have made 4 times as many people interested in getting one, i think that would probably outweigh the once in awhile case of someone who has two dawns for each charachter or some such.

As far as speculating? a lot is in flux, we dont know if we are at the start of the spike, or the end. But im just going off of the data we have.

Toolbox.9375:

Just got my first post-patch character to 80, and…

What a grind.

And it’s not over yet.

How in the blazes is this system change supposed to make it “simpler for new players”? That was their goal, right? The level chart for when you unlock each trait point is confusing, getting new traits in the first place is confusing, ASSIGNING traits is confusing… And if you try to skip the grind via buying traits from Class Trainers, you’re forced into a different grind due to the maddening Gold and Skill Point costs.

This system effectively DISALLOWS making alts, because it’s so horrifyingly expensive and time-consuming to dare to make a new character.

The ONE thing I approve of is the switch from 70 points to 14. Though, I like 70 for the fact that it’s a less “random” number than 14. Multiples of 10 are pretty.

One change that is “up in the air” for me is being able to change traits on a whim, not having to visit a Class Trainer. On one hand, this means more freedom, and more effectiveness in that you can change traits based on the situation given enough time to actually make the changes.
On the other hand, it also discourages using your own build, in my eyes, in dungeon runs and the like. Partially-elitist dungeon-goers now have the option to whine at each party member to change to certain traits regardless of build.

“You there, Ranger! Spotter or kick.”
“But I don’t have points in Marksmanship.”
“So PUT points in Marksmanship. Screw the build that makes you happy, I want a 3% faster clear time! Switch the trait NOW. It’s not like you have to leave and find a Class Trainer for it!”

I will say, though, that “thankfully”, the shoddy system behind unlocking traits in the first place means that most people will never HAVE the traits they haven’t explicitly hunted for given that it’s such a ridiculous hassle to get them.

hmmm, i think some of the unlocks are good and some are bad. Overall the system seems like it was thought out only considering a few factors.
I like the unlocks like go do
an environmental challenge
Certain dynamic events
mini dunegon

I dont think they should have any pvp traits. or rather, there should be alternate method for pvp to get the traits.

zone completion is really bad.
i mean for first time player it may be ok, but after that? long boring/same. The only advantage i would say is, it does round out the exp from progression in combination with story.

I think its bad that all the traits are the same for every class, Makes new charachters a lot less new. I know they did it to encourage people to play together, but i think its ok to have personal goals.
while i tried it out with one charachter, and got it up to 50? i dont think it will be as fun doing the same thing on charachter 10, especially the map completes

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

one thing I thought about recently: why do people spend so much thought on a part of the game-experience that makes up for a very little percentage of their playtime.

I mean: you spend a few days/weeks on leveling up a character and months/years for playing that character. I don’t want the excitement gone when I’ve reached 80, so in that spirit the new trait-system makes a lot of sense. It’s something to progress your character when he’s reached max level even further.

Sure, some players won’t like this since until now once you’d reached lv.80 your progression was mostly over and you were on an even playingfield – some consider this one of GW2’s strenghts but on the other hand others found GW2 becoming stale too fast because there’s nothing to work towards to.

It’s probably bad communication from Anet’s side that they have turned the trait-system into a long-term progression system away from a leveling system.

except that they took away the basics.
Thats really the issue, they only added 5 new traits. they rebalanced the traits to act partially as endgame. But that sits poorly for people who already had them.

Im all for a more long term goal built around new traits and new skills, but i think its a bad idea to shuffle the starter set of traits/skills into endgame goals.

the old abilities were “vanilla” the new endgame ones can be extra.

Behellagh.1468:

maddoctor.2738:

Behellagh.1468:

But remember ANet wants players to spend real money on gems. They can’t give too many of them away without cutting into their sales.

Making gems available only by doing in-game activities and without any gem-gold conversion would mean Anet had more income than they have now. Also, gem income would be better managed (and tweaked on the fly) by Anet instead of the mess it is now, because of the varied ways of earning gold.

Sadly they can’t change the system now (obviously) but they can make some tweaks here and there so earning gems in-game is not something for the TP players only (and the lucky ones)

How would giving away gems in game based on activities be “better” for ANet’s income stream?

i didnt get what he was saying at first either.

I think hes saying people will buy more gems if you couldnt use gold to get them.

However i think he is
A underestimating the amount of money they get from gems>gold
B not realizing that without the gold>gems conversion, a lot of things in the shop would be considered f2p level gem shop.

So heres what happens once you target one of these big money endgame items.
You need to get your gold earning power up greatly, it saves on costs.

So unless you were already from normal play earning like 10 gold a day on average, you will probably need to alter your playstyle. (even 10 gold a guy days could beneft greatly from altering playstyle, but not as drastically as say a 3 gold a day guy)

So now, you end up doing whatever you are ok at, but you are doing it focused on money. Faster dungeon times, more dungeon paths, longer grinding times. Things that give suboptimal gold per hour (lets say you did jumping puzzles for kicks) are huge wastes, after all the jumping puzzles give you about 30 silver an hour, and you only got two hours a day 4 days a week. you could have made 6 gold an hour on the champ train!

And this is when the game turns into gold wars, its about getting as much gold as possible, as fast as possible, any way you can, Or else you will work way longer to achieve the same ends.

So yeah, i think not going for the endgame items is the best thing to do. It makes you play in ways you probably dont like, unless you were already gold focused.

Problem is, there is a lot less motivation to do things that you have already done once you have no game designed goals for it.

So yeah my problem is that i do some maths, so i have a better idea what goes on.
In order to get precursor, on the market it is TOTALLY relevant how fast you can make that money.

• The problem with this is since you cant work to it incrementally, you end up paying the full costs of inflation on that item. for example materials may go up in value, but every material you get along the way is a finite step towards your goal. To make it clear, yeah, powerful blood may have gone up from 31 silver to 50 silver, but you have some obtained at the lower prices, and can obtain some each day, instead of having to buy 250 at however much it costs 2 years from now.

so since you got to make the money as fast as possible, now you start to look at how you are playing. earning twice as much per hour doesnt just get you to your goal twice as fast, it gets you there almost 5 times faster

lets say wanze makes 10 gold an hour even while he sleeps, or 240 gold a day.
4.71 days versus 1183 days
what does that mean?
well even though he only earns 63 times more gold than you per day, he can get the item 251 times faster than you can.

One of the side issues, is that most of the things which are giving you money now, are needed for legendaries, so your earning tends to drop a bit from farming once you target a legendary.

Essentially, what doing the math has taught me is that large lump sum items favor the rich greatly on a normal market. Essentially for this system to work, you probably need a tyrian credit card or bank.

Behellagh.1468:

I’ve spent around 800g on gems since the Queen’s Jubilee. I don’t flip. Most of that is from selling ectos and T6 mats I get from Laurels.

Since the feature patch, with the bosses on a time table and the megaserver making sure there’s always players on a map, I’m seeing a doubling of my income. Since the patch dropped I’ve gotten 5 exotic weapons dropped on me in 30ish boss events (no precursors). I think I had 2 exotics drop in the previous 16 months of play. I use to get 2-3 rares a night to salvage, tonight I had 8. I say I conservatively made 70g in the last 2 1/2 weeks.

The point being if I hadn’t been buying gems I would easily have enough for the precursor I need for my legendary I’m making. No “TP Games”. No speed running dungeons. No champ or boss trains. Just two boss events a night and a handful of champs spawning outside of those events. And lots of events. That’s roughly 2 hours a night.

problem I guess i have is, i actually check the math.
70g in two weeks seems good at first glance for casual play.
But when you do the math it looks grim.
lets say you decide you want to get a precursor, ill try it out with two of em
spark.

now, im gonna simplify some things here, and make assumptions.

heres the assumed.
I will assume the rate of growth in cost for a precursor is linear,
I will take the data for nov1 up to today, approx 181 days. (about 6 months)
assuming you continue to make 70g in 18 days (about two and a half weeks)

so i will make a formula
e=earnings per day
x=number of days till you get enough
c=current price of precursor
i=rate of increase per day

so i get e*x=c+(i*x)
so lets figure out how much you earn per day at 70 gold every two weeks
70/18 days =3.88 gold per day
now lets use sparks data for the rest
current price 1150g
rate of increase in 184 days.
Nov1 price=615 gold
May 4 price=1150 gold
535gold increase in 184days or a rate of 2.90 gold per day

so our formula looks like
3.88*x=1150+2.90*x
solving for x you get 1173 days

essentially the main problem is the rate of growth of precursors, so essentially people on the lower end of the spectrum get crushed. you must first overcome the price change, then its about how much more you can make over that.
essentially if you dont make 2.9 gold a day on average (weekends off will lower your average)
you will never get enough for the legendary. It differs a bit based on the legendary
lets look at zap
1090-628=462/184=2.51gold per day
3.88x =1090+2.51*x
x=795.6 days.

once you overcome the rate of change, you can start making real progress.
And therin lies one of the issues. Normal play doesnt yeild that much gold compared to the growth in cost.
you actually need to earn gold as fast as possible to minimize the effects of the increase in price.

therefore, you need to get gold FAST, not just overtime, the faster you get it, the less you pay.
just look at this factor, at the current rate of growth, by the time you can afford spark it will cost. 4542 gold. (1183 days from now)

now these models are incredibly simplified, but it gives you an inkling of the issues. There are somethings that may help, like the rate of growth going down, and inflation in basic materials sale values. But its just as possible the rate of growth will increase, and truth is inflation of basic items isnt as great as the inflation in precursor/endgame item prices.

Aidan Savage.2078:

The TP doesnt kill my fun. If anything it enhances my fun because it allows me to purchase the items I need when doing the content I actually want to do.

I hate to say it, but this thread is just as pointless as the rest of it’s ilk.

What is the content that you like to do, and what does it allow you to get from content you dont like doing? Im actually curious

Wanze.8410:

laokoko.7403:

People only complain about flipping because “basically people get crap from adventure or farming” compare to flipping. If you can’t buy your way to “the ultimate rewards”, which is legendary etc, no one will be complaining.

And even if you can buy your way to the “ultimate rewards”, if the “price were stable”, no one will be complaining about flipping too.

And if flippers can’t take advantage of the buy order system from other player, or if there is an expire time on selling items, that’ll cut down the profit for flippers. Which in results might make adventure or farming more rewarding in comparison, no one will be complaining about flipping.

There is nothing wrong with flipping. It’s just flipping shouldn’t be so much more rewarding than the actual dungeon, pvp, or world events.

Just take your reward loot drops and sell them at the same value the flipper would and , BOOM, you make as much profit as the flipper.
What is so hard about it?

Stop saying this, I dont know if you are joking or what.
You will not make as much profit as the flipper, because the flipper doesnt need to gather anything. The limit on how much loot you can get based on time is real.

Flipper buys 5000 iron ore for 95 copper he sells them for 1.2 silver. he makes 7 copper X 5000 he makes 3.5 gold. actual work time put in would be hmm maybe 6 minutes?
he makes 7% profit.
in order to make 3.5 gold off of silver farmer has to gather 343.1 iron ore. At 3 ore per node, thats 114 nodes, if it takes him 2 minutes to find and farm a node, that means he takes 228 minutes, or 3.8 hours to make the same money, oh and i forgot to count the mining pick cost.

So yeah stop acting like flipping/merchanting is just profitable because they list higher. Its profitable because you dont have to actually spend time gathering anything. Flippers make money off of playing with numbers. Farmers make money off of grinding items.

not only that, but the farmer cant do anything else while he is farming, he is spending every moment doing his farm. His output is a direct equation that is based on how much he can gather in a specific time frame, and how much its worth.

The flipper can make as much as he can find ineffeciencies, and his capital allows him too. Just dont even compare them, or tell people to simply price higher, they wont get their hands on enough merchandise to increase their wealth, and their wealth growth potential doesnt improve as they get more money.

Behellagh.1468:

ANet decided that the world of Tyria is dynamic. Stuff happens and then it’s over. There may be stuff left over but the events that led to the creation of that stuff is now in the past. I just don’t understand why players can’t grasp that and accept it’s gone.

It’s like your first kiss or holding your first born for the very first time. The event is ephemeral, you can never every relive it.

Its not that its horrible to have things that go away, its more that you do this stuff, and you are left with nothing new. Normally, yes you hold a baby in your hand, and you never get it back, after that your life is now actually changed, you have a baby to deal with. Yes you never get back your first ride in a car, but now you have a car and can go farther than before, more often.

Problem is living story hasnt really added much to the world, people would be just as unsatisfied irl if ALL they had was memories, and nothing really expanded or changed.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

So yeah if the endgame is supposed to be pvp based, then they are going to lose a lot of players when endgame comes around. Which honestly seems to be somewhat true. The amount of people who have left and yet to return is not small.

but lets not get it twisted, this isnt just about casual, many midcore and hardcore people also dislike the Gold wars style and reward structures.

Midcore? I’ve always seen the discussion based on casual/hardcore divisions, now you’re subdividing casuals to support your argument?

Anyway, the game is approaching two years old now, and I’m sure that Anet has plenty of data on how many players have reached “endgame” and whether they still log in and how often. Perhaps if they do see interest waning, they will stir things up a bit by revisiting the original design and looking for things they can improve or new features to add to the game to bring players back to check it out. Perhaps they may even introduce this in one big release, almost like an expansion but without charging anything for it…

Anyway, I’ve been following the discussion more or less, but your statements are so random that I don’t even know what it is you want. Many people have claimed they complain because they love the game and want it to improve, and I think (?) you are among them, but it seems like there is nothing about the game you really like.

If you don’t like the core design of the game, why aren’t you playing one of the dozens of other MMOs out there (most of them are free to play so there’s not a lot of commitment tied to playing them for a few weeks) to see what game suits you better? I did that, in the year and a half between buying Rift and GW2 I tried many different games and if one wasn’t a good match for me I moved on, I didn’t go badmouthing it on the forums for six months.

hardcore/softcore
First of all, i probably shouldnt use softcore/hardcore as words because no two people seem to have the same definition of what they mean. To be clear, in that case i was talking about players who are lightly invested = softcore, heavily invested = hardcore, and midcore would thus be someone who is the middle. Midcore was brought up not to support any argument, but to say that the issues effect players of ALL levels of investment.

I dont have a side:
you dont understand me, because I havent picked a side. I dont say i hate GW2 so everything sucks, I dont say i like GW2 so everythings ok. To make it clear i actually generally like GW2, but there are big disconnects on certain things. Its not really living up to the potential that it could. And its changing anyhow, so i would like to put my voice into the wind, before it reaches the point that im no longer playing at all.

The game is decided, dont try to change it:

This game is not static, its an MMO and everything is evolving and changing. The game on release is not really the same as the game is now. And also some problems that werent big on release, are moving towards points where they are starting to be problematic. So no the game isnt set in stone, it has in fact changed many times since release, and will change again. So essentially i give them feedback so that it changes in ways i think are good for the game. I could be wrong, i could be right, but ill put it out there so that i know, i tried my best, to the best of my ability, to keep the game good/improve it.

Play other games
yeah I do that, but really it doesnt change anything. People quitting the game doesnt help anet at all. Especially people who have spent money in the past and may in the future. Even if anets plan is to have people come back eventually, and take breaks, they have to develop something people want to come back to, so they should eventually consider even the guys who left, and what types of things caused them to leave, or would bring them back.

PS
I recently spent money on dark souls II and diablo expansion, If i was more invested in the game right now, that could have been anet money.

linuxotaku.4731:

phys.7689:

linuxotaku.4731:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

You got a precursor drop or you play a ridiculous number of hours every week? Do you have a job?

If you’re playing casually, does it make sense that you’d get the most expensive end-game items in a few months?

Conversely — it’s fairly easy to make 5-10g/day in 1-2h. (Is that casual? I dunno, apparently I’ve been much less casual than I’d intended when I got the game.) If you make 5g/day, you’ll have 2k gold in 1y … if you’ve been doing that since launch, you’d be able to buy a legendary other than Eternity right now.

5-10 g is close to optimal farming, not casual play.

10g is close to optimal; I wouldn’t expect someone who wants to play casually to achieve that. 5g is very achievable. 1g / hour is someone who is determined not to take advice on how to optimize for rewards; that’s fine, but in that case the fun they had is the reward. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with offering a carrot which you won’t get unless you change how you play somewhat — there are multiple ways you can get decent rewards in the game, so it’s not like there’s only one path.

The one thing I would say is that optimal design would leave casual players believing that if they spent a bit more time on it, they could get the end game reward that they decide on … precursors give no sense of progression, and the barrier seems high.

But if you move even somewhat towards optimal play, it’s not hard to make 5g a day — and if you do this consistently, you will make progress if a legendary is your goal. But it’ll take a while … like it or not, that’s the intent.

carrot for changing play is good. But a lot of the best farms arent really good playstyles.
Picking the shortest dungeon paths, running past every mob, and using terrain to make fights super facile. I mean its cool figuring out some of the stuff, but its not really deep gameplay.
Dynamic event spam, wouldnt be bad, except its only usually 2 or 3 events in the same zone, and to be profitable you need enough people to make it more about getting a tag than fighting a horde
Champion train, not as bad now, but still pretty much warp rotation tag gaming.

Then the TP, which works outside of most content.

If gold is going to be the carrot thats fine but you use the carrot to lead the horse to where yall need to go. If you want to make it enjoyable horse you use it to lead it to the best places for the horse.

I personally think gold should be a side option, and way for players to exchange goods and services, not an end in and of itself. Because whatever the carrot is, has to be strictly controlled, monitored, etc. And i dont think most people here really want a heavy handed system where gold is controlled.

Wanze.8410:

End game goals are integral game design. Thats why they designed different goals for different players. Casual players that dont intend to spend any money on the gem store, can aim to earn meta LS achievements, earn titels, complete reward tracks in pvp or Tourney Achievements in wvw. They dont need to spend any gold on ascended armor, legendaries or rare skins. Those were introduced as long term goals for hardcore players (to keep them in the game) and casuals that spend money on the gem store. If casual players want to obtain these rewards they can either go hardcore or spend money in the gem store.

Actually achievements arent really very casual, and most of the titles require extreme grinding. Also recognize a large amount of casuals dont play pvp. just look at WvW it houses about 600 for every 4200 people in PVE (based on max pop caps of 150+instances) wvw is 1/7th at BEST

if we look at the max concurrent we got 460k users being thier highest, if we take 500 in WvW * 51 servers. you get 25500, which is only 5%.

So yeah if the endgame is supposed to be pvp based, then they are going to lose a lot of players when endgame comes around. Which honestly seems to be somewhat true. The amount of people who have left and yet to return is not small.

but lets not get it twisted, this isnt just about casual, many midcore and hardcore people also dislike the Gold wars style and reward structures.

Obtena.7952:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

You got a precursor drop or you play a ridiculous number of hours every week? Do you have a job?

Earning 1G per hour can be done easily … do the math on how long it would take you to get a precursor. If you feel that’s a ‘ridiculous’ number of hours, implying I would have to quit my job in order to earn this amount of money, then you aren’t even in qualified to have a discussion about owning a Legendary, much less qualified to complain about how TP-centric the endgame is.

Id say 1ooo hours for 1 part of a legendary is too much.
Also from your posts I gather you enjoy farming. While you could have saved 1g for 1000 hours, what is the actual case?

That’s a matter of opinion. Clearly a Legendary isn’t targeting casual players, even though I don’t feel it’s out of the casual players reach either if you make it a goal. That’s why Ascended weapons exist. It’s an out for people that don’t feel the time and effort getting a Legendary is worth it. And it’s a favourable one because the performance is the same.

The irony is that while you QQ about the TP, you post indicates you aren’t willing to farm the necessary gold/mats to make a Legendary either. Do you just want it mailed to you from Anet?

phys.7689:

Do you really think endgame goals is not an integral part of game design? Especially in a game type based on replayability and long term play?

That’s why there is a large variety of endgame goals for you to pick from appropriate for your commitment to the game and choosing a lower commitment goal has a relatively insignificant impact on your performance. There is no argument against the TP to be made by casual players … it helps them if they set goals that are appropriate to them. It’s also why the game isn’t balanced around full endgame setups like many other fail MMO’s out there.

There really isnt a variety of endgame goals/rewards in pve, and the best method for most of them is gold earning.

endgame to me doesnt necessarilly mean dungeons and raids, it means things for you to do as you reach player maturity. Often developers use items because they are the easiest things to design usually. As you mature as a player the only thing to really do in GW2 is to obtain/ascended/legendaries/elite skins. The best way of doing any of those is to earn gold. The endgame reward system is based around earning gold. Yes, even if your goal is ascended it is less time consuming to grind gold, then to craft it. In fact, its sometimes actually cheaper to buy your ascended parts than to craft it.

you also mistake me, i have already explained, i am not incapable of TP merchanting, and i can grind farm as well. I just recognize it is very poor game design that doing what anet considers to be degenerative gameplay(farming/grinding) and playing a totally different type of game than the game is sold/marketed as (tp merchanting) is a bad way to keep most people playing/interested/enjoying the game. I’m not saying no one enjoys these things, i am saying they sold the game to people telling them it was an adventure game, so a lot of the people playing it want to go on adventures, and get rewarded for it.

I will make it clear to you, I have two legendaries, i mystic forged both of them, i was neither extremely lucky, nor extremely unlucky doing so. In order to get that money, i basically had to alter my gameplay, and grind, in combination with merchanting. So no, i am not a jealous hater, who wants something for nothing.

I am a guy who recognizes, that in order to achieve these goals i had to play in ways the developers either did not want, or expected to be a side way of obtaining. While i was pursuing these goals, dungeons, guild events, 90% of the open world, living story, exploration, alts, fractals, wvw, spvp were all impediments to my goal. (well after getting the mastery taken care of which i had mostly done within 2 weeks of hitting 80 back in the first month of play or so.)

Thats my problem, end game goals for which the best way to acheive them is to buy them, dont encourage you to play the game in ways that most people expect to be playing an adventure game Since the purpose of end game goals is to keep you doing the things you enjoy doing, these endgame goals actually are only doing their job for people who like to farm/play the tp.

Hence the title, TP killing real MMO fun, while probably Gold wars killing real MMO fun is probably more apt.

So i told you how i got my legendary/precursors, how did you get yours?

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

linuxotaku.4731:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

You got a precursor drop or you play a ridiculous number of hours every week? Do you have a job?

If you’re playing casually, does it make sense that you’d get the most expensive end-game items in a few months?

Conversely — it’s fairly easy to make 5-10g/day in 1-2h. (Is that casual? I dunno, apparently I’ve been much less casual than I’d intended when I got the game.) If you make 5g/day, you’ll have 2k gold in 1y … if you’ve been doing that since launch, you’d be able to buy a legendary other than Eternity right now.

5-10 g is close to optimal farming, not casual play.

Those rewards are just not meant for casual players to be earned through casual gameplay. They are aimed at casual players that buy gold with gems and gems with real cash. Or for hardcore players that can earn them through extended gameplay.
The casual player that never buys gems brings very little to the table for Anet except the initial box sale, so why cater to their desires? The game is so designed that you can enjoy every aspect of gameplay in casual gameplay, with exotic gear and the occasional ascended drop and unique skins from achievements. Legendaries, Ascended Armour and rare skins are meant to be only obtainable by players who pay for it with real cash or hardcore players. What does the hardcore player bring to the table that the casual doesnt? He is basically the backbone of the games population, guild leaders etc. They make the game interesting for casuals that dont mind to spend money on the gem exchange.

There are many casuals that support the game through gems, but don’t like the idea of buying gold, or would prefer to achieve high end rewards through non gold based gameplay. People who buy dyes charachter slots, costumes.

Also anet said they weren’t going to design gameplay based on a cash/gem shop premise. So whatever an items means of aquisition, itbshould be able to stand on its own game design wise.

But I do agree that the current implementation suggests a casual buy gems, which I personally think isn’t good from a game design standpoint

Well, they didnt design gameplay based on microtransactions because you dont need those expensive items to play every aspect of the game.

Do you really think endgame goals is not an integral part of game design? Especially in a game type based on replayability and long term play?

See my belief is you get more money keeping people loving and engaged with your product than when they are not engaged.

By your standards fighting games should be set to max difficulty in arcades and dmg should be incressed because you only get money if they lose

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

linuxotaku.4731:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

You got a precursor drop or you play a ridiculous number of hours every week? Do you have a job?

If you’re playing casually, does it make sense that you’d get the most expensive end-game items in a few months?

Conversely — it’s fairly easy to make 5-10g/day in 1-2h. (Is that casual? I dunno, apparently I’ve been much less casual than I’d intended when I got the game.) If you make 5g/day, you’ll have 2k gold in 1y … if you’ve been doing that since launch, you’d be able to buy a legendary other than Eternity right now.

5-10 g is close to optimal farming, not casual play.

Those rewards are just not meant for casual players to be earned through casual gameplay. They are aimed at casual players that buy gold with gems and gems with real cash. Or for hardcore players that can earn them through extended gameplay.
The casual player that never buys gems brings very little to the table for Anet except the initial box sale, so why cater to their desires? The game is so designed that you can enjoy every aspect of gameplay in casual gameplay, with exotic gear and the occasional ascended drop and unique skins from achievements. Legendaries, Ascended Armour and rare skins are meant to be only obtainable by players who pay for it with real cash or hardcore players. What does the hardcore player bring to the table that the casual doesnt? He is basically the backbone of the games population, guild leaders etc. They make the game interesting for casuals that dont mind to spend money on the gem exchange.

There are many casuals that support the game through gems, but don’t like the idea of buying gold, or would prefer to achieve high end rewards through non gold based gameplay. People who buy dyes charachter slots, costumes.

Also anet said they weren’t going to design gameplay based on a cash/gem shop premise. So whatever an items means of aquisition, itbshould be able to stand on its own game design wise.

But I do agree that the current implementation suggests a casual buy gems, which I personally think isn’t good from a game design standpoint

Obtena.7952:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

You got a precursor drop or you play a ridiculous number of hours every week? Do you have a job?

Earning 1G per hour can be done easily … do the math on how long it would take you to get a precursor. If you feel that’s a ‘ridiculous’ number of hours, implying I would have to quit my job in order to earn this amount of money, then you aren’t even in qualified to have a discussion about owning a Legendary, much less qualified to complain about how TP-centric the endgame is.

Id say 1ooo hours for 1 part of a legendary is too much.
Also from your posts I gather you enjoy farming. While you could have saved 1g for 1000 hours, what is the actual case?

linuxotaku.4731:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

You got a precursor drop or you play a ridiculous number of hours every week? Do you have a job?

If you’re playing casually, does it make sense that you’d get the most expensive end-game items in a few months?

Conversely — it’s fairly easy to make 5-10g/day in 1-2h. (Is that casual? I dunno, apparently I’ve been much less casual than I’d intended when I got the game.) If you make 5g/day, you’ll have 2k gold in 1y … if you’ve been doing that since launch, you’d be able to buy a legendary other than Eternity right now.

5-10 g is close to optimal farming, not casual play.

mtpelion.4562:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

That’s not what I am asking. Clearly you will buy some of your ingredients, and sell your unneeded drops, but I am talking about flipping for profit. Buying things you don’t need just for speculation. When I was crafting, I was making on average 50g a day. Now, I have less than 20g in my wallet. Ascended bankrupted me in many ways.

Margin trading, speculating, buying bags to sell the contents, buying and salvaging to sell the results, and buying materials and selling the crafted results are all forms of flipping. So if you want to exclude those sources of income, then you are left with people who purely farm items/gold.

In this scenario, I feel pretty safe saying that those people make up less than 10% of the Legendary owners, mostly because there aren’t many people who never engage in flipping of some kind.

Some of those shouldnt be considered “flipping” because of the gambling element.
Since flipping is a new term in the GW2 context, you can define it how you wish, but i think crafting is closer to manufacturing, mostly because you have to actually make the item. You are not simply buying and reselling, you are buying, then transforming the item into something else, then selling it.

Generally one wouldnt consider a car manufacturer as a middleman. Car salesman, yeah.
Essentially i would define a flipper as the type of merchant who buys items from some people and sells the same items to other people. IRL these people provide services like convenience, knowledge, bulk purchasing, or keeping aware for deals. In game, i guess their main service is liquidity, and velocity of transaction.

Fror.2163:

Yesterday, I was roaming in Cursed Shores to level up my level 50 thief (awesome levelling in Orr, btw) when someone shouts “Grenth up”.

I wanted the trait on my ele so I take her (I was in a party, so it was easy to find the server back) and we fail. Miserably.

At this moment, Arah is opening so I take on that event and go there, we succeed. Good.

Right at that moment, Grenth is up again. Yeah, that was fast, but I’m not complaining. So I park my ele next to the entrance and switch to my guardian with the blue dorito to give some directions and some orders to have it succeed (including the infamous “if u r dead, respawn, u noob”). We succeed the priest event. Great, loot time. I switch back to my ele (yay megaserver you put me again on a wrong map), I join when there are still 2 minutes left. And we succeed the event.

I got a chest with the dragonite. But anything about a trait? no. Did I have that trait before? No, and I still don’t have it.

So, I guess this is one more bug.

you get the trait for killing the risen priest, not cleansing the shrine. Your ele would came for the wrong event

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

You really shouldn’t have to apologize for being too busy with the primary aspects of your job, to post in Forums/on Social Media. In all honesty, people need to grow up and realize that people like Danicia are the ones that supposed to be (and are) posting here and stop demonizing the rest of you for being to bust to do so.

Your interaction with us is definitely appreciated by the majority of us, but said majority also understands that you go out of your way to be here and chat with us, in addition to your actual responsibilities. =)

no offense to danica, but she is a cop.
Her primary purpose and skill set is policing the forum. She isnt actually (or at at least doesnt seem to be) someone who can lead discussions and act as an inbetween for the devs and the players various issues and questions.

Its a hard job to fill, but i think it would be worthwhile to get someone whose job it is to serve that purpose

mtpelion.4562:

Malediktus.9250:

Face to face trading and mailing should be the only trading like in TESO. It is perfect there.

Then go play there? At least until it closes down in the next 8-10 months.

That kind of horrifically bad economy will strangle the game to death. It is inefficient and, quite bluntly, stupid.

EDIT: I should add that if there are only a few things that CAN drop (like say, no more than 100 different items or so), player to player trading could work. It would still be inefficient (see Spamadan), but you could limp along with it for a good while.

ehhh TESO may rise or fall, but economic systems dont make or break a video game, unless its an economic video game.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Simon.3106:

I don’t know if you know, but you can right click on the player in your party and join their instance. Just an FYI. I do it all the time when I’m roaming with my guildies

That has nothing to do with what I was talking about unfortunately, or it would have been really simple. I’m talking about the effect the megaserver system has on allowing hundreds of other players to join in on community events. It takes ages to get everyone in the same overflow this way. And our party doesn’t exactly allow hundreds of players.

We want it to be easy for players to join a community event. We just want to tell them where it is, and on what server. And then when they show up, they should be in the right overflow automatically to join the event. If that isn’t possible… then how is the megaserver system an improvement? This seems worse than what we had before.

You have to re adapt your mind here. The megaserver has essentially done away with servers, but not necessarily with communities. Anet will probably have to build some new tech to support communities now that they have broke down server walls. So what yall community people should start thinking of, lets say servers dont exist, but communities do, what would you need to make your community work?

Anet kind of blew up the world a bit here, so i think the community is going to have to guide them a bit on what communities will become, and how they will go about doing it.

Skan.5301:

Dusty Moon.4382:

They are also still supporting GW1, also. So, I do think they are spread a little thin but that is how business is now.

GW is actually all automated now. Even bans are automated, though there are some stories of false bans getting reversed days into the ban.

Even with 350 employees, they could send a team, say 20, to handle GW2 EU/NA and provide quality customer support by replying on the forums. Not the PR ’We’re reading your feedback! Don’t worry as we’ll fix it as soon as China is stable!’ I mean legit ‘We see many of you are having problems with the Megaserver so we’ll take a look and we’ll keep you updated!’

None of you can tell me that the former is kind of feinting on ANet’s part.

Really what i think they need to get, is some people who can act as inbetweens. Who know how to steer the converstations in directions the devs need feedback for, as well as give players feedback from the devs, and the directions they are looking at. Not so much about policing. Chris does a pretty good job of it when he is doing cdi’s but thats not really his main job. Not that it would be easy to get, it would need to be somebody familiar with a lot of the systems at play for players, and able to communicate get to the heart of what devs are looking at/aiming for/need to hear.

But even though its not easy shoes to fill, it probably still needs to be filled.

timmyf.1490:

Kalarchis.8635:

As for developer involvement in the forums….make a post about not being able to buy gems, or ask how to put in custom music. The devs have no problem responding to those right away.

I don’t mean this in an insulting way, but how old are you? Have you held a job in a corporate environment before?

I’ll give you an example. My company has a big message board where people can ask questions. We’re an enterprise software company. I work within my company’s Education group, so if people have questions related to training, I’ll pop in and answer. I’ll occasionally also answer questions about the product when I know the answer.

Sometimes people have questions about the next version of our product. I might know the answer. Or at least think I know it. But it could have changed. I’m not directly involved in those talks. Or the meetings they have about how to communicate the changes. etc.

So yeah, somebody came in and gave the link for the playlists. What makes you think he is in ANY way knowledgeable or authorized to respond on behalf of the company on THIS thread?

He isn’t.

You guys keep acting like every single human being at ArenaNet is equally capable of answering your demands here. They are not. And the guys who are? They’re busy with China.

You don’t have to like it, but you should at least understand what’s happening.

i agree that its pointless to demonize people commenting on other things, that they are relevant to.

But really, they made this big world altering patch, likely to create a lot of issues, and in strong need of feedback and fairly quick iteration. And they scheduled it right before they all have to leave to do something else?

You work in software, you know that a lot of times when its time to go live its time to go live, but you generally have MORE people on hand to respond to new issues, and have quick turn around on solutions and issues. And you got some people whose job it is to listen to the customers complaints and assure them what issues you can solve and when you expect to solve it by.

If you dont, they are likely to be calling you every day harrassing you.

So really, Id say it may have been a better idea not to do this a couple weeks before china if thats a problem… Well except for the possibility that they did it as a beta for china.
Which honestly i aint that mad at, but if this is a beta, then they need to get on a beta update schedule and response to feedback.

munkiman.3068:

phys.7689:

timmyf.1490:

Kalarchis.8635:

You really screwed the pooch on this one guys. You’re going to have to really work to win back the good will you’ve lost with this fiasco.

Or you’ll have to downgrade your expectations for developer involvement on the forums.

It is nice to see that the predictions made by myself and others that a simple “we are reading this” confirmation would be considered insufficient turned out to be true, though.

when did they say they were reading it? you mean chris whiteside? he dropped in to say the cdi isnt dead. Which is actually something with respect to the cdi, but has little to do with any of the massive feedback they have gotten.

I mean i assume someone is reading it, then again a community mod mentioned that that the threads are so long even they cant actually read it, to properly moderate it, so please report problems.

point is I wouldnt assume anything about this process. We can write our own stories about the caring anet who is trying their kitten dest but are totally flustered by massive amounts of work on china, or work on mega servers. But we would just be writing our own stories, we really have no clue whats going on, or what their intents are.

Just like when you really like that person, and they havent called, they must be busy, or maybe something happened to them, or they really want to call you but they cant. Or
maybe….., they just dont want to call you.

I posted this earlier…

https://twitter.com/TemplarCW

@hurradurra Sorry just read this,been a little busy. We are reading and discussing all the feedback and will evolve the system

There is you’re feedback

Looks like some of them are in China…

ahhh twitter, the devil. Would have thought they would post that in one of these threads, but ehh whatever its more than i thought id see at this point actually so kudos to that.

timmyf.1490:

Kalarchis.8635:

You really screwed the pooch on this one guys. You’re going to have to really work to win back the good will you’ve lost with this fiasco.

Or you’ll have to downgrade your expectations for developer involvement on the forums.

It is nice to see that the predictions made by myself and others that a simple “we are reading this” confirmation would be considered insufficient turned out to be true, though.

when did they say they were reading it? you mean chris whiteside? he dropped in to say the cdi isnt dead. Which is actually something with respect to the cdi, but has little to do with any of the massive feedback they have gotten.

I mean i assume someone is reading it, then again a community mod mentioned that that the threads are so long even they cant actually read it, to properly moderate it, so please report problems.

point is I wouldnt assume anything about this process. We can write our own stories about the caring anet who is trying their kitten dest but are totally flustered by massive amounts of work on china, or work on mega servers. But we would just be writing our own stories, we really have no clue whats going on, or what their intents are.

Just like when you really like that person, and they havent called, they must be busy, or maybe something happened to them, or they really want to call you but they cant. Or
maybe….., they just dont want to call you.

lordkrall.7241:

Lheimroo.2947:

Actually, many of the adept traits have higher/more time-intensive requirements than the master or grandmaster traits. In general, there’s a sense in the trait feedback thread that the reward/effort ratio is significantly borked, in addition to the changes hampering experimentation while leveling.

Wasn’t the issue that they were obtainable in very high-leveled content? Feels like you are changing the issues here. What is the actual issue? Is it an issue for the sake of being and issue or is it actual issues?

People have been shouting for GW1-ish skill-hunting since release more or less. This is basically that. And now people don’t won’t that either for some reason.

what he is saying, is from a balance perspective, its actually easier to get the level 80+ traits, than it is to get the lower level(level 36) traits. Which is counter intuitive. He also said that maybe that is as planned, but we really have no clue as to why they did what they did. A lot of it doesnt make conventional sense to people playing the system.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Lheimroo.2947:

lordkrall.7241:

Are people actually thinking that they are not going to do anything at all? Seriously?

Perhaps so.

It’s not such a leap to think that when there are issues that people have been bringing up that haven’t been addressed since launch. And other issues about things introduced that haven’t been changed except in token ways.

Until we have a clearer idea of Arenanet’s actual intentions with some of the stuff they’re putting out, we can’t really say what they’re likely to do.

Take the issue with adept traits being mostly attainable in very high-level content. Is that intentional? Is there some rationale about providing long term goals? Don’t know.

Until I do know, I can’t know if they’re going to address the idea of an adept trait forcing you to complete a level 70-80 zone in a way that would solve the conceptual mis-match on my side.

Have you played GW1? Elite Skills were normally found in hard areas (max level areas) of the game. I can see why A.Net has done this as an achievement to player who actually played through the game and not doing the constant, mindless ‘champ trains’.

they arent elite skills though, they are random traits from your trait pool. Whatever your 5th lines number 6 trait is in frost gorge sound. Doesnt matter if it sucks or is awesome.
Its also the traits you are supposed to have access too in the range of level 36-60. The game has level difference modifiers, its not really feasible to do map completion in frost gorge at 60.

but hey, maybe you are right, and its supposed to be an end game trait, we really dont know because arenanet hasnt made a comment one way or the other on it at all.