Guild Wars 2

Mirta.5029:

plasmacutter.2709:

To the people defending the fact that anything visually striking would take over a year to get (if you can beat inflation), I present this to you:

how many weapons do warriors use?
how often do you swap weapons
how often does ANet nerf weapon skills forcing you to retrait and perhaps regear?
how long do typical MMOs last before they’re EOL (guild wars 1 was on the high-end of this scale in terms of operating life).

I did the math based on my current rate of personal gather for charged lodestones, and it will take me 16 years at the rate of 0.5 a month from “just playing the game” to gather 100. Infinite light requires a lot more than that. Of course, by that time, the relevance of this game will be long gone.

The main point:
anything that takes longer than 3 months in this MMO for the average person to acquire represents an unreasonable amount of time, as you still have other slots to fill. That’s 9 months for the typical 2 1-handers and 1 two-hander weapon setup, and then you have the armor to work on.

Then there’s the issue with most weapon skins that don’t share the same, rough-hewn, disorganized look are cash sinks only.

I’d like to see weapons that are a testiment to skill, or to what aspect of the game you play most.

Wheres the reward for 10-on-1 victory in wvw.
Where’s the reward for jumping puzzle meta-completion (and it’s cooler reward for timed).
Where’s the reward for soloing x group events.
Where’s the reward ONLY associated with reaching fractal 40, or 80.

In other games many of the coolest weapons are a testiment to skill.

how is your drop rate 0.5 a month? Go to dungeons time to time. 2-3 per dungeon run.

Welcome to the land of “DR Bug”.

I’m part of the 50% of the community consistently getting jacksquat from kill credits since 11/15 (heck, I often have mobs i SOLO not sparkle!).

Morrigan.2809:

My main is a mesmer and we have exactly one AoE I know of and use- chaos storm.
I do have an engi and a staff ele but I am fine with it.
I have learned too adapt having a mesmer for a main :P
seriously though, they are looking at all AoEacross all classes, it is not a train smash.-

There are many real issues in this game with class balance (LOLBACKSTAB), reward systems, depth of combat, etc.

AOE was not one of those issues

ANet is behaving like the freaking politicians have been with the economy since 2009:
D’s – “Don’t pay attention to that pink slip you just got – The real problem is healthcare”
R’s – “Don’t pay attention to the fact you can’t find a job – The real problem is the national debt”

ANet – “Don’t pay attention to your porous bones and getting backstab-gibbed by thieves – the real problem is AOE!”

Analsysis of all the above:
Stupid
Stupid
and…
Stupid.

ANet needs to fix what’s actually wrong rather than inventing problems.

DarksunG.9537:

Space Cow.2431:

-Legendaries should be difficult to acquire as a result of challenge, not how long it takes to gather materials (and perhaps creating quests giving them some flavor wouldn’t hurt).

I call Bogus. People have been saying this but they really don’t mean it. What they really mean is “Legendaries should be easier to acquire”.

If getting a precursor required something equality prohibitive as the current system (which, lets be honest, there are a lot of people with “Legendaries” so it’s really not all that exclusive) then it would be something like: vanquish (kill everything) all explorable mode dungeons solo without being downed. Then people would complain about how it’s unrealistic & how only certain classes could do it & how it required Ascended gear blah blah blah…

Making a “quest chain” would just make it 10x easier. The truth is “grind” is the only way to make the Legendaries accessible and prohibitive.

This is a classic example of poor argument:

Invent an absurdity, defeat the absurdity, baselessly claim victory over your opponent’s rational points.

Quest chains are easier? How many people in burning crusade achieved the title “hand of adal”?

Salacious.7358:

Arekai.5698:

Because the last time they nerfed my class, it got destroyed beyond repair.
Yes, it’s obviously Ranger.

why do you think that? wwhat kinds of builds did you experiment with to proove this?

I don’t play a ranger and think that.

Since the last major ranger nerf, I haven’t seen ONE in dungeons.

Minion of Vey.4398:

I’m in agreement regarding reward one gets from the game.

Your best bet seems to be just killing lots of mobs period, not bothering to do any particular more difficult task.

Seems like veteran mobs should have better drops and champion mobs should have MUCH better drops. Not something to make you serious bank, but just roughly in line with the extra effort it took to deal with them. I can kill 50 lev 80 mobs much faster than a champion mob, yet the 50 mobs will give me much more loot.

The champion also requires more skill to kill.

More skill = less reward.

More cash = best items in the game.

something smells here.

To the people defending the fact that anything visually striking would take over a year to get (if you can beat inflation), I present this to you:

how many weapons do warriors use?
how often do you swap weapons
how often does ANet nerf weapon skills forcing you to retrait and perhaps regear?
how long do typical MMOs last before they’re EOL (guild wars 1 was on the high-end of this scale in terms of operating life).

I did the math based on my current rate of personal gather for charged lodestones, and it will take me 16 years at the rate of 0.5 a month from “just playing the game” to gather 100. Infinite light requires a lot more than that. Of course, by that time, the relevance of this game will be long gone.

The main point:
anything that takes longer than 3 months in this MMO for the average person to acquire represents an unreasonable amount of time, as you still have other slots to fill. That’s 9 months for the typical 2 1-handers and 1 two-hander weapon setup, and then you have the armor to work on.

Then there’s the issue with most weapon skins that don’t share the same, rough-hewn, disorganized look are cash sinks only.

I’d like to see weapons that are a testiment to skill, or to what aspect of the game you play most.

Wheres the reward for 10-on-1 victory in wvw.
Where’s the reward for jumping puzzle meta-completion (and it’s cooler reward for timed).
Where’s the reward for soloing x group events.
Where’s the reward ONLY associated with reaching fractal 40, or 80.

In other games many of the coolest weapons are a testiment to skill.

Slan.5496:

Arheundel.6451:

That’s called a glass cannon ele with hit and run tactic, unless you want to show me a build with burst/bunker capabilities.
For burst I mean 7k+ hits, because for me 3-4k hit are not burst at all, those for me are the number of axe warrior auto-atatcks

This indicates a skewed perspective if you think it’s fine for a class to have the surviveability of the ele while reliably doing 3-4k hits. My power necro can do that kind of damage in lichform for about 20 seconds. That’s it. My glass cannon engi would maybe hit around 7k on a well executed jumpshot. Factoring in static discharge—maybe a few 3k hits as part of the burst. I kill a lot of people on both toons, but I have nowhere near the surviveability or mobility of the eles I commonly see in spvp.

Comparing the swiftness engis can get through speedy kits to an ele’s speed is a joke. I’ve been on a point, standing right next to an ele and fired my auto attack, which is traited for range. Then watched the ele haul kitten away—so fast that the next auto attack misses because it can’t reach.

I don’t particularly wish to see elementalists nerfed in any way. I would much rather see the classes that are struggling get buffed. But let’s keep it real—they are that strong.

“Reliably”? Churning earth is a half minute cooldown. Fire grab even longer. Those are the only ones that can get that high, if you max your boons AND land a lucky crit.

0/10/0/30/30 with nearly all soldier and cleric gear will land most auto-attacks for under 1k, and their sustained damage is closer to those burning fields in orr.

As for people complaining about the pluses of D/D, nobody has ever mentioned the downside:

D/D has no way to stop ranged attacks. They have gap closers, but the profession they close with could swap to harder-hitting melee weapons.

holding a D/D at ranged and pounding them will cause a great deal of pain.

if they limit the application of healing or regen to either your skill 6 or being in water, the build would be fine.

removing regen from cantrips (nerfing water trait 3) would fix this build in a much more targeted, measured way.

You use cantrips generally as “oh crap” buttons. I think it’s a little much to, when stunned, hit armor of earth, gain protection, break the stun, gain stability, AND gain regen while getting the opportunity to open a gap and kite.

It’s the regen on cantrips which pushes the build’s survivability “over the edge”

Svarty.8019:

Death Reincarnated.3570:

Those who have gotten hold of plenty are controlling the market since the influx is not high enough.

There appears to be a difference of opinion in this forum. People are split into two camps.

• Camp #1, Capitalist Purists: The market is deciding the price of items and so therefore the prices are high due to there being low supply. This is fine because the market will decide the price for us.
• Camp #1, Skeptics: The market price is manipulated by manipulators/speculators whose interest is served in seeing the prices remain as high as possible.

Camp 1 has two sub camps:
The non-interventionists who believe high expenses on everything is good for the game – and want no intervention.

The interventionists who believe prices are too high, locking out too many players – and want intervention to allow more sellers to enter the market.

Syeria.4812:

plasmacutter.2709:

Syeria.4812:

plasmacutter.2709:

You are flat-out lying saying i’m wrong about the strength of german unions. Germany’s economic success and powerful labor protection and representation are a direct repudiation of conservative “pure capitalism uber alles” dogma.

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

German industrial relations are characterized by a high degree of employee participation up to co-determination in companies’ boards (“Aufsichtsrat”), where trade unionists and works councils elected by employees have full voting rights. Local trade union representants are democratically elected by union members and formally largely autonomous.

You obviously are extremely uninformed as to the economic structures in Germany. Much of Germany’s economic power is derived from their abuse of other members of the European Union. Germany’s economy is primarily based around their position as the third largest exporter in the world, despite a population of only 82 million people. Much of that trade is with other European Union members, and they’ve been a large political force behind much of the excessive government spending in nations like Greece. They allowed and encouraged the financial crises in Greece and Spain because it helped them increase their exports, and therefore provide for higher per capita incomes in Germany. Despite all of this, Germany still has a higher poverty rate than the United States.

All of this is ridiculously off topic, but suffice it to say that you’re not well informed about any of the economic realities in Germany, and you really shouldn’t be trying to explain to other people how things are there based solely upon a combination of your chosen political ideology and random Wikipedia articles.

It’s been testified to me by people I know from Germany.

I’ve also been alive, conscious, and kicking long before the EU came about, and germany was just as economically active and viable before that.

Also, please debate honestly rather than employing “genetic fallacy”.

I also don’t have a “political ideology”. I have a rational mind informed by one degree in economics and one in computer science – my ideology is based on rationally provable meritocracy and maximizing individual choices.

Because we all know that random claimed anecdotes by anonymous “people in Germany” are 100% fact, and are obviously the best and greatest proof anyone has ever presented…

But I noticed you didn’t actually present any evidence for why your anecdotes are right, merely stating anyone who disagrees with you is wrong because “you know someone in Germany” and “you’re more than 19 years old.” The only one using “genetic fallacy” here is you Mr “I talked to someone in Germany once.”

Also, you’re the one crying about “conservative pure capitalism uber alles dogma.” I guess I missed that class while I was getting my Economics degree.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2011/12/21/germany-builds-twice-as-many-cars-as-the-u-s-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/

Oh look, forbes backs wikipedia up on the facts, too – unions collaborate with management to set policies. (this extends to the boardrooms) I suppose three sources are not enough?

Pyroatheist.9031:

Treplos.5182:

Articluna.4509:

To point out someones err; Master is 25% for rarers.

Yeah you are right, sorry about the confusion.

So, what some are saying here is that “Crude SK” and “Master/Mystic SK” have the same chance of getting Ori/Goss, as those are not considered “rarer mats”? And that only Ectos are actually the “rarer mats” listed on the SKs?

Can we get any sort of clarification or confirmation from ANET please?

Clarification and confirmation from ANet is not really needed. There have been extensive tests done that demonstrated the lack of correlation between salvage kits and ecto rates to a very precise degree. There is absolutely no benefit to using a high level salvage kit to get an ecto unless you want a higher chance at gossamer/oric as well.

Intriguing. Care to link the subreddit?

Ensign.2189:

The market in this game is large enough that any one person cannot control it; I count roughly 8 Dusks selling in the past 24 hours, roughly 5-6 Dawns; it goes on and on. It’s not a stagnant market being choked off, it’s pretty active.

For the sake of argument assume those numbers are typical; that the market is putting out roughly a dozen greatsword precursors per day (conservatively). The cost of controlling that market, then, is upwards of 5000 gold per day.

Even if you could buy up all of a particular precursor, you’re not going to make any money unless the fundamentals really are off and the demand will support a higher price point; you will get undercut buying up a half dozen precursors and re-listing them, and quickly.

Most people who go to sell them won’t undercut by a ridiculous level.

This means that if there are 10 on at any one time, someone can buy them all up with 5k, immediately relist one for 30% more, then reap the higher buy orders for a massive profit. There are posts from people who do this on this forum.

The result is skyrocketing price as different employ this tactic again and again.

Oh so suddenly there’s not an issue with drop rates, but rather a temporary bug that’s affecting people? By all means, let’s permanently and completely change the structure and behavior of drops because of a temporary bug that will be fixed with high priority.

It’s being “looked into” only after nearly 10,000 total views and continued public beating ANet staff take over it, but it’s doubtful any resolution will be forthcoming. It might be worth it given the effort described to quantify this to simply re-do the drop calculator to take into account “bad/good luck streaks” and help even out the RNG factor.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Plasmacutter. I know you’re a smart guy, as you give compelling arguments. But take a step back and analyze your own posts from a 3rd person perspective. You are complaining that a “long term goal” is taking a “long time”. I believe that your desire to reach your goals quickly is clouding the fact that rare items are “rare” for a reason.

There are casual gamers, there are hardcore gamers, and everything in between for all types of games. For GW2, the hardcore players managed to get their Legendaries faster because they invested time. Let’s not talk about the exploits that Anet already banned people for. Focus on the players who know where to farm, are skilled at clearing Dungeons and Fractals (without shortcutting), and who know how to take advantage of the in-game market. By asking for more drops or easy mode to Legendary gear, you ignore the efforts of other players who took the time to get where they are.

Anet can make balance adjustments to certain things, like how they’ll be putting out a Precursor Hunt in the future. That gives more opportunity for players to start their quests. I like how a compromise on this issue is a good first step, but I will not agree with making high tier mats uber easy to farm. If they increased drop rates significantly, I would argue that they should make Clovers much harder to get than the currently assumed 33% rates. It would help to keep Legendaries as the ultimate end game, since they are supposed to be the rarest of the rare gear.

Note – yes I know you can purchase a Legendary weapon from the TP, but with the current prices, it’s still a legendary effort to get that much gold in the first place.

I agree, the time table for “long term” is subjective and up for debate here.

In a game built around switching weapons, not just in combat but based on trait build, a year for a single weapon is excessive, let alone 16 years. It may work for engineers perhaps, but the prospect of building a real “set” for a warrior is daunting, especially considering the way ANet targets weapons for “to the ground” nerfs.

As for “skill at the game”, you still present the argument in the frame that “skill” (this thread has already covered how this is debatable) at making money is the only skill worth rewarding.

There should always be a subset of weapons that say “yeah baby, i can afford THIS”, but right now that’s the only set.

Additionally, it would be tremendous proof of Anet’s ability to create challenging and deep gameplay if they provide rewards for skill over grind. I’ve seen other games where you could be awed by a piece of armor because they defeated something insanely difficult to get it, not because they swiped their visa, flunked their courses, or quit their job.

In games where the dev team made this effort, I had zero problem with people who capped their gold. They enjoyed their gold, and I enjoyed beating them with application of skill. I and many others simply object to this game’s experience being supplanted with the trading post frame if you want to see your character “grow”.

Syeria.4812:

plasmacutter.2709:

You are flat-out lying saying i’m wrong about the strength of german unions. Germany’s economic success and powerful labor protection and representation are a direct repudiation of conservative “pure capitalism uber alles” dogma.

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

German industrial relations are characterized by a high degree of employee participation up to co-determination in companies’ boards (“Aufsichtsrat”), where trade unionists and works councils elected by employees have full voting rights. Local trade union representants are democratically elected by union members and formally largely autonomous.

You obviously are extremely uninformed as to the economic structures in Germany. Much of Germany’s economic power is derived from their abuse of other members of the European Union. Germany’s economy is primarily based around their position as the third largest exporter in the world, despite a population of only 82 million people. Much of that trade is with other European Union members, and they’ve been a large political force behind much of the excessive government spending in nations like Greece. They allowed and encouraged the financial crises in Greece and Spain because it helped them increase their exports, and therefore provide for higher per capita incomes in Germany. Despite all of this, Germany still has a higher poverty rate than the United States.

All of this is ridiculously off topic, but suffice it to say that you’re not well informed about any of the economic realities in Germany, and you really shouldn’t be trying to explain to other people how things are there based solely upon a combination of your chosen political ideology and random Wikipedia articles.

It’s been testified to me by people I know from Germany.

I’ve also been alive, conscious, and kicking long before the EU came about, and germany was just as economically active and viable before that.

Also, please debate honestly rather than employing “genetic fallacy”.

I also don’t have a “political ideology”. I have a rational mind informed by one degree in economics and one in computer science – my ideology is based on rationally provable meritocracy and maximizing individual choices, and you would be one to talk not backing up your anti-EU assertions with quantifiable plots that pass chow break tests to show the rise of the EU actually corresponds with the economic indicators you’re mentioning.

Syeria.4812:

plasmacutter.2709:

To John Smith, if you are still reading, and anyone else on this thread claiming people who can do math and want to be able to advance are after “easy-mode”

In my personal normal play, I have received 2 corrupted lodestones and one charged, and an equally small handful of cores. If I am to advance through my own drops, that would mean, at an average of 0.5 lodestones per month, it will take me 16 years to craft any recipe which requires just 100 of these.

That, in terms of MMO expected lifetimes, is what we term ‘unobtainable’.

You want to get rich in the game and flaunt it it’s fine with me, but the in-game rewards for showing it should not be the only in-game rewards worth having. I guarantee nobody would care how rich someone got in-game if it was not at the expense of the majority’s progression (just as most small-town americans don’t care if your postage-stamp sized SF condo is worth a cool 10 million). This is as much a fault of the game’s designers as it is with the people who cynically manipulate the market to make others poorer.

Then you’re “doing it wrong.” Without any deliberate farming, just absolute normal play, I have received (counting promotion of core drops) 2 Charged Lodestones, 5 Destroyer Lodestones, 7 Molten Lodestones, 2 Corrupted Lodestones, 4 Onyx Lodestones, and a ridiculous number of Crystal and Glacial Lodestones in the month of January alone. At those rates, it would take me between 1 and 4 years to accidentally accumulate the lodestones for one of those recipes.

That is to say, without actually attempting to get these items, and without purchasing anything from the trading post, I would be able to attain any of those items within a reasonable amount of time considering the scope of the game. Again, EVEN WITHOUT PUTTING IN EFFORT, I would be able to have those items. What you’re describing is either a demand for “easy mode” or simply a personal problem.

Congratulations on not being a victim of the “permanent dr bug”.

The rest of us deal with my drop rates, poll your guildies after doing a DE as a group, the difference will be stark.

However, you are not making that argument, and judging from your constant pigheaded comments, outright refusal to consider any statements contrary to your beliefs, and constant personal demands of Anet, I don’t believe you are capable of making such an argument.

• You mock people for not wanting to “work” in a game (what is this i don’t even..)
• You mock a 3 month period or a requirement for actual exploring or display of skill for a single item in a game where you switch weapons often as “easy-mode”, when the grind to find these is not difficult, just tedious and unrewarding.
• You call anyone who wants to feel like they’re advancing meaningfully without working the game as a second job to pay a tax to people who thwart developer intent by exploiting or ignoring the game’s content to play stock-market “communists”, or make veiled statements to this regard.

Clearly it’s me who is pigheaded, yeah…

marnick.4305:

plasmacutter.2709:

Typical socialist nonsense. If you can’t distribute wealth (which is a code word for stealing), you’d much rather destroy it

Please drop the black&white ideology.

The goal is to stop people who have power enough to fully manipulate the market to the deficit of the entire playerbase, or do you call antitrust actions to break up monopolies “socialism”?

Quite the contrary. Breaking up antitrusts is called capitalism, more specifically, it is a part of liberal capitalism. But you have no proof of any trusts or monopolies so please don’t accuse without evidence.

Do you not consider it mass theft of player effort when TP manipulators jack up the price of items needed for personal progression?

It is not theft. Someone is giving them more out of their free will. Theft involves taking money by force. You got your definition wrong. If you don’t want those “manipulators” have your money, don’t give it to them. But I wouldn’t call it theft.

Making precursors account bound would pave the way for either higher drop rates, or the establishment of other methods to gain precursors which reflect player skill or experience rather than gold gain.

You didn’t mention that. The only thing you claimed was destroying wealth. Why not do both… allow precursors to be sold AND to have a set path to get them? That’s what a capitalist would do to fix an oligopolist market.

The end effect is the only thing socialism ever manages to accomplish … equal distribution of poverty.

I hear Germany, where healthcare is free and unions have veto power over executive pay, is such a horrible economic mess that they’re propping up the EU solo.. oh wait, they have higher per capita median income than the US working half the hours.

As a matter of fact, I am Belgian yet I live and work in Germany. Let me give you the biggest errors in your statement:
- there is no minimum wage in Germany. If you want to work full time at 1€ per month, that’s totally possible.
- healthcare is not free and you won’t have any, unless someone pays for it. I pay my dues and because of that, I have “free” healthcare. People who don’t pay taxes don’t get healthcare. I know because I have to pay healthcare for my girlfriend until she can find a job.
- Labor Unions don’t have veto power. I don’t know who told you that but it’s just wrong. Labor Unions and Employer Unions have to work together and if either sets vetoes…. nothing is accomplished but equal sharing of poverty.

In Europe, Germany is seen as a heartless capitalist country by many socialists, and Germany is actively hated by many Greeks and Belgians because they are such a strong economy. Not good for socialists to see a capitalist nation does far better than socialist Belgium.
The statements you made (veto, higher average wage, free healthcare) are actually true for Belgium. Guess why I left Belgium to work in Germany and guess why Belgium is in such an economic mess?

With an economy based on social-liberal ideas, I can see how the US looks at is as a socialist nation, while socialist countries like Belgium believe it to be capitalist. It is neither, it is at an optimum between both ideas. And that’s why I don’t think in Black/White and you do. I don’t like capitalism nor socialism. I personally prefer the best of both, which is called social-liberalism.

Says the person hyperbolically throwing the word socialism around and claiming any effort to free people from the shackles of a permanent, predatory “lender class” will lead to complete and utter ruin.

You are flat-out lying saying i’m wrong about the strength of german unions. Germany’s economic success and powerful labor protection and representation are a direct repudiation of conservative “pure capitalism uber alles” dogma.

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

German industrial relations are characterized by a high degree of employee participation up to co-determination in companies’ boards (“Aufsichtsrat”), where trade unionists and works councils elected by employees have full voting rights. Local trade union representants are democratically elected by union members and formally largely autonomous.

Check the number of precursors on the TP at any one time.

It’s in double-digits at most, generally low double-digits.

Power-traders have demonstrated capacity to craft and sell legendaries, easily eating the listing fees for 9k sell prices.

At an average price of 400 and a number listed of 10, this means the price of controlling the entire market is 4000. The idea people are not controlling it is ludicrous.

demonwing.5843:

plasmacutter.2709:

As for the crying about “everyone getting it”, again, it’s psychologically unhealthy to be proud of something only because you know it is denied to others, but many people seem to have bounded rationality in this way, hence what I am clarifying above.

Are you an elementary school teacher? This statement is completely and utterly wrong. If you enter a state or national competition, are you not proud when you win a 1st place medal? You earned it over the other 1000 competitors. According to your logic, this is a ridiculous way to go about things. Everyone should have medals! It’s unhealthy to be proud of the fact that everyone else is denied a medal except yourself.

People already get their participation certificate: Full exotics are very easy to obtain with the money from a single 100% map completion. Legendaries give no additional stats, no additional game features, no additional anything. They are purely cosmetic. They can be thought of analogously to the first place trophy described above.

So no: legendaries should be exclusive only to the tip-top skilled and/or dedicated percentile of players who really “deserve” a weapon with the status of LEGENDARY. I know this grinds against your carebear elementary school mentality, but you have to accept that there is something in GW2 that can’t be obtained by your average no-lifer just ’cause he played ’lots.

edit: Working on my first legendary

The “elementary school teacher” comment is not conducive to a civil discussion.

Repeat after me please:

This Is A Game

Say it three times.

1game noun \?g?m\

Definition of GAME

1
a (1) : activity engaged in for diversion or amusement

Life in most of the world is typified by forced competition to survive, and this game is supposed to provide diversion from an increasingly harsh reality.

In the real world, only one person can be “on top”, and those who evaluate their self-worth entirely based on their position relative to others are in for a very unhealthy, miserable existence no matter how wealthy they are.

It’s much better to develop early on a concept of self-advancement through personal excellence and pursuing one’s own interests rather than worrying about what others have or want. This approach to life generally works in the real world, even if it does not result in massive material wealth, though due to harsh realities, there are some who are denied the ability to advance themselves in this mindset as well.

In a game, however, there is Zero Reason Period to deny people the capacity to advance along their personal agenda.

ANet has made a mistake here in that every weapon with truly unique visual qualities is tied to lodestones that break 1k per stack. It’s one thing to have a few for those whose personal ambition is to flaunt wealth, but for the rest with healthier outlooks on life and just want to feel like they’re getting somewhere it’s simply unrewarding at all.

“So no: legendaries should be exclusive only to the tip-top skilled and/or dedicated percentile of players who really “deserve” a weapon with the status of LEGENDARY"

On that note, where are the weapons tied to only very large, epic events.? Where are the weapons tied to being the last one standing in a 10 v 1 wvw encounter? Where are the weapons tied to completing every jumping puzzle in the game (and where is it’s cooler brother for doing them timed)?

The only thing “legendary” about these weapons is the size of their carriers’ wallets, which is highly underwhelming.

To John Smith, if you are still reading, and anyone else on this thread claiming people who can do math and want to be able to advance are after “easy-mode”

In my personal normal play, I have received 2 corrupted lodestones and one charged, and an equally small handful of cores. If I am to advance through my own drops, that would mean, at an average of 0.5 lodestones per month, it will take me 16 years to craft any recipe which requires just 100 of these.

That, in terms of MMO expected lifetimes, is what we term ‘unobtainable’.

You want to get rich in the game and flaunt it it’s fine with me, but the in-game rewards for showing it should not be the only in-game rewards worth having. I guarantee nobody would care how rich someone got in-game if it was not at the expense of the majority’s progression (just as most small-town americans don’t care if your postage-stamp sized SF condo is worth a cool 10 million). This is as much a fault of the game’s designers as it is with the people who cynically manipulate the market to make others poorer.

insanemaniac.2456:

in caledon forest, i cannot defeat Meztli in a crab battle (solo).. he uses block on cd and gains regen, which heals all the damage i can put on him in the time between blocks. event isnt tagged as group.

I remember fighting that when leveling my ele.

I had 10 air 10 arcana and was filling in water. it took me 35 minutes but was fun.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

plasmacutter.2709:

And yet iPhone is considered superior because of the price point alone. If there were other flaming weapons in the game, they’d just be considered “cheap” volcanic swords.

Not everyone is motivated by exclusivity, though many are. The point is to introduce other options to people that may be after the theme but not the specific item.

Not to mention there ARE alternatives to volcanic swords. They may not flame, but they have other effects that are just as cool.

Nothing underlies the menace of a necro than a full abyss arah light set paired with the horrifying.. the MENACING… bifrost : P ( a cool effect does not guarantee the unity of a wardrobe)

Making volcanic easier to get would just mean you won’t go for it.

So if someone rolled up to you in a brand new m5 and handed you the keys you’d refuse it because it’s “cheap”?

Woha, I can’t see what you don’t understand Plasma.
What they seem to be saying:
Cosmetics costs, rarity costs.
A car and an Iphone, smartphone none the less are expensive, so by saying no to a gift like that would be stupid, though you would be very suspicous over this charity.
However, what you seem to miss is that majority of the people would buy or accept an item wich have been spoken about alot in media and is very rare for someone to have rather than having a so called cheap clone of the item that is easy to get and almost everyone have.

This clone item is as good as the original looks more or less just like it but still majority would want the original, hence the price on the original will be higher than the clone and less people will own it.
If the price of the original item would plumit to the bottom everyone would get it and suddenly it’s not as important to have anymore.
Not many people would like to go around with the same stuff as everyone else have.

Some people want’s the so called end game stuff so show of since it’s hard to get, if this end game stuff was to be easy to get so some of those people would surely go ‘Waaah!! The stuff is to easy to get and everyone else have it, even the noob’s can get it it’s not fun anymore!’.

What was this thread about again?

This thread was about TP manipulation, and quickly focused in on lodestones, as those are the most egregious material costs in the game.

Your post is missing my point entirely on this topic, just as John did. If you produce enough competing models from disperate sources for a given “theme”, you will be able to maintain the signature characteristic of “this is expensive” on volcanus without locking the vast majority of the playerbase out of unity in their desired “look”. I’m not calling for “clones” either. I’d love to see other designs incorporating the general mood of given weapons while being otherwise as different as possible.

As for the crying about “everyone getting it”, again, it’s psychologically unhealthy to be proud of something only because you know it is denied to others, but many people seem to have bounded rationality in this way, hence what I am clarifying above.

As for me, I have no personal stake in volcanus. I think the thing his horrid. It is the best example though, as there are no other models which carry its underlying mood to act as alternatives.

Typical socialist nonsense. If you can’t distribute wealth (which is a code word for stealing), you’d much rather destroy it

Please drop the black&white ideology.

The goal is to stop people who have power enough to fully manipulate the market to the deficit of the entire playerbase, or do you call antitrust actions to break up monopolies “socialism”?

Do you not consider it mass theft of player effort when TP manipulators jack up the price of items needed for personal progression?

Just think of the repercussions of your extremely silly ideas…
1/ Making precursors account bound would absolutely destroy any possibility to get a specific legendary unless you’re extremely wealthy. You would have to start gambling yourself which costs ungodly amounts of gold.
2/ Crafting materials bound to karma would completely destroy the trading post because there would be no reason at all to trade. But you’re right … no market means no wealth.

Making precursors account bound would pave the way for either higher drop rates, or the establishment of other methods to gain precursors which reflect player skill or experience rather than gold gain.

Gathering professions in wow were still incredibly profitable, despite trade materials being available for dungeon and pvp currency. The idea that “the trading post would be destroyed” is ludicrous. It would just stop being an unnecessary barrier to fun, and instead, augment the fun of the game.

The end effect is the only thing socialism ever manages to accomplish … equal distribution of poverty.

I hear Germany, where healthcare is free and unions have veto power over executive pay, is such a horrible economic mess that they’re propping up the EU solo.. oh wait, they have higher per capita median income than the US working half the hours.

John Smith.4610:

The general consensus of the community is you cannot personally go out and enter the market as a supplier of anything due to DR mechanics.

I literally just asked people to stop doing this.

If you want a “flaming sword” look, you either multibox an ele or you have one choice: volcanus

This is an invalid argument. This is equivalent to saying if you want one specific item, and only that item, there are no substitutes. In the end, that may be true relative to the person, since the aesthetics are subjective. The equivalent comparison is someone wants an iphone and no other phone, then there are no substitutes, except in the case of GW2 the functionality is exactly the same.

consider it not mentioned again, but that unconfirmed bug is the elephant in the room.(for the record, the unbugged mechanic is the right thing to do, certainly better than lockouts)

As for the flaming sword: There could be other “flaming sword” models in the game.

I remember when they introduced transmog into wow there were at least 5 different alternative weapons to achieve the same general “theme”. They had some of xyz glow effect, but were very different weapons which all served the same “mood”.

I bet volcanus would be less vehemently demanded if there were a fiery version of that jotun greatsword (forgot the name, but it looks like what jotun’s carry and has swirling water).

I believe my point stands here in this regard.

You certainly don’t get an iphone when you get a 4s, but it still has similar characteristics. It’s sleek, white, and is almost all touchscreen.

Some themes, like the classic “soldier of light” theme, have plenty of options, for other themes there’s only one. Expansion on this regard would really help stem complaints on this front. We simply need more than one option for a given “theme”.

1. MMOs are fantastic for this, especially GW2. There is nothing I can think of in the game that players can’t decide to enter into the market for because everything in the game you can just go get, there’s no stopping you.

Since the nov 15th patch, my account and the accounts of many, but not all, friends have been consistently receiving horrific drop rates from everything. (and I don’t even actively ‘farm’, I just try to play how I want)

The general consensus of the community is you cannot personally go out and enter the market as a supplier of anything due to DR mechanics.

2. There is imperfect information, but there is significantly less imperfect information than the real world.

Absolutely, This particular aspect does favor on GW2’s side vs the mess that is market research.

3. This isn’t unique to MMOs or the real world, neither are the actions associated with it. It’s possible I’m missing the point on this one.

Elasticity of demand in goods generally stems from divergent buyer motivations and from the capacity to substitute.

If you like the general “high tech clean white” look in your smartphones, you can get a galaxy series, an iphone, or certain razr series.

If you want a “flaming sword” look, you either multibox an ele or you have one choice: volcanus

This ties into point 4:

4. For this I would argue the opposite. MMOs are notorious for substitute goods. Especially when it comes to stats, I can change rarity, type, order of stats in a myriad of combinations with less than a 1% change in my total effectiveness. Switching to corn syrup causes significantly more than a 1% change in a product.

There are two points here, the impact of stats and the ability to substitute goods, but the counterpoint you are trying to make here is pointed at finished goods rather than ingredients.

There are answers for each of these:

First, there are plenty of substitutes for stats, but the point driven home with the nearly horizontal gear differential as that the real progression in this game is in building your character’s signature “look”.

Almost everything with a truly unique and striking look in this game is tied to a certain subset of lodestone types, which have rocketed into the stratosphere.

If people could substitute crystal lodestones for charged, it would be an example of the ingredient substitution I mentioned allowing more efficient production methods and lower prices to end consumers.

In keeping with my point about divergent consumer motivations, even if substitution were not put into crafting(150 of x or y or z), you could simply re-split the lodestone differential on these recipes to better distribute the popularity and close the massive price differential. From there the price could be targeted evenly.

In time, with enough different models with sufficient visual “pop”, the price of any individual skin like this will reduce, which will help with weapons like foefire’s essence, so long as lodestones can be kept stable and at target prices that are sane.

My Point Here, which is probably lost to all but the most attentive of readers:

At the end of the day, My target here is the assumption that anything resulting from “the free market” is, by nature of participation, “Just”. The problem is, in the majority of cases, there are spoilers to the “perfect market” and “free market” hypotheses, and then there’s the simple fact that economics itself is a tool to shape markets for outcomes we desire. It really ticks me off when people make that assertion of justice and act as apologists for human misery which can be alleviated with properly targeted intervention.
Imagine if the makers of the hindenberg did this: “It blew up, it’s made of hydrogen, yeah it’ll do that”. You could.. you know.. apply the science of chemistry.. fill it with helium instead to stop that from happening.

At the end of the day, the argument over the availability of these goods is a subjective one.

I and many others in this game do not find it “fun” that, thanks to lodestone prices being out of whack, the vast majority of exotics that are “visually striking” are mat-priced well above precursors and even approaching the sell price of legendaries, and other players calling us “entitled” for wanting to see an end in sight for acquiring one weapon skin out of a set of several which will be used on a given toon is also not helpful.

Ragnarawk.8697:

I think the reason for this happening is that the MMO dynamic has changed in general. Back in the day, when a graphical online RPG was new, people took notice of other players. A live person in pixel form was something completely new. There was a tighter sense of community because there were far, far, fewer of us playing back then. Most people I knew in real life had only vaguely heard of EQ, if they had at all. Fast forward to WoW; everyone watching Shatner, Mr. T, and Chuck Norris in prime time commercials. It’s commonplace to see another player running around. In fact, other players are often viewed more as competition, than an ally against a harsh game world. Guilds are not a coalition of like-minded players, carving a prestigious or infamous rep for themselves, but a means to an end. You want this? Join that guild. You want that? Join this guild. It will be rarer and rarer to find people who clan up for the enjoyment of others alone. Sign of the times, I guess.

This.

Back in the day, there was a huge emphasis on group combat.

I guarantee if vets were the weakest mobs in this game, you would have a tighter community and a higher skill level.

CrassBippy.4619:

roostapro.9827:

Learn to play better.

Do you honestly think I am having fun playing the nerf game?
NO.

so i enjoy my ele that is full of bugs?
No.

Do i enjoy having my class nerfed every time someone has a l2p issue?
NO.

do i enjoy my class minus all the bugs?
Yes.

Why?

Because it gives me a challenge and lets me develop my skills so i can crush my opponent to make them cry for a nerf.

Class spells is not the thing that is “OP”.

Player Skill is “OP”.

I hope arena net care not to cater for those who don’t know what it takes to play an ele.

FYI, gear stats & Runes, those 2 words.

I’m gonna burst your bubble here. Eles do need a rework, not a big nerf, but d/d eles at the moment have 0 cons. they have mobility, cond removal, heals, boons, aoe, knockdowns. They’re negatives? Uhhhh if someone has a boon strip necro?

So no, they aren’t “OP” but they need a re-work. I see a lot of people say they are a “high skill” class. They’re the same as any other class, they just spam more skills. You want to have high skill? Play a engineer or ranger and dominate large groups with them. or a cond dmg warrior. Then well talk

The negatives?

how about having to set up and wait 45 seconds to do the damage a thief can do with auto attacks in 4. (and i’m not even talking backstabs here)

D/D bunker builds do almost as little damage as burning does in those corruption fields in orr.

BTW, go check the engi forums regarding the new bunker build. People stand in breaches in WVWVW walls with that build and can hold back whole zergs while doing aoe condie damage.

Warriors can be specced to be similar to D/D in the way they operate and have 30k hp and heavy armor in addition to the other perks. They don’t because they can actually provide viable offense, while eles that go glass cannon have 10k hp and die from cleave damage before they reach their targets.

Febrizzio.8024:

Arheundel.6451:

Febrizzio.8024:

I realy hate ele dagger lately,
thats not because i cant kill ele dagger…
my ranger realy easy to kill some ele dagger… with my condition build and my trait…

the problem is, how can some robe proffesion realy hard to kill? i mean this proffesion just stand and tanking the damage… not evade it?

I have ele d/d friend, he can win against 3 heavy armor and melee profession. 2 warior and 1 guardian… (please note: my friend (ele d/d) just stand and tanking the damage without run away and without use healing regen)

thats not normally robe profesion…
robe profesion should be easy to kill with melee demege… especially againts 3 melee demage… but this proffesion should be have most damage especially AoE damage…

So to summarize:

-Ele vs 2 warrior and a guardian
-Ele doesn’t dodge or anything
-Ele doesn’t heal
-Ele tank all the dmg and beat 2 warriors and guardian

..And this is your story…right……………..
…………………………..[img]http://i.imgur.com/1eoUMJ7.jpg[/img]

lol, yeah thats right.. it dosent matter you believe or not… but my friend ele have trait/build like that… thats why i said “I hate ele”… seem OP now…

I certainly don’t believe that story.

two guardians and a warrior seem like a dream-team against a D/D ele.

all the immobilize, stun, knockdown, they outnumber the breakers D/D has, then there’s kill shot for 14k when they run… GG ele.

Properly played warrior + 2 guardian vs D/D would be a 15 second match.

Smack ele hard enough to push it into cantripping and then going into water, use corrupt boon or boon stripping on it, finish it off, profit.

It’s not hard. Either turn the boons the ele has against it (the build relies on TONS of them, so corrupt boon would turn them into a nightmarish amount of conditions even 30 water builds can’t remove on time), or remove the boons and look, it’s just a squishie clothie running around at normal speed!

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Most of the complaints here can be summed up by one of the following:

1) Player has little to no understanding of how markets or Supply vs. Demand work.

2) Player feels entitled to the best items in game, and complains when they can’t purchase high demand materials for cheap.

For point #1, that can be fixed by people reading posts like Death Reincarnated made. I do believe that over time, the more people that come to understanding the GW2 market, the less complaints there will be overall.

And unfortunately, there’s no fix for point #2…

I believe most of the condescending sanctimony in this thread can be summed up in one of the following:

1 ) Player has little understanding that most markets are imperfect without intervention, and supply and demand in a market only produce a healthy one for consumers when anyone can enter the market.
(MMOs make both of these factors much worse, because the “markets” as they can be laughably referred to are entirely artificial)

2 ) Player “has his” and feels entitled to defend the misery of the vast majority of players who just want to be able to advance at a reasonable pace in a game (without their experience held hostage to insufferable people who are psychologically dependent upon the deprivation of others)

For point #1, a competent economics curriculum going beyond the 211 level along with accompanying courses in logic are sufficient.

There are fixes to #2, but not ones ANet can provide.

As a reminder from intermedate levels, many assumptions about what make “pure free markets” healthy break down under scrutiny (both in mmos and often in the real world, but MORE often in mms), including but not limited to:
1 – ease of entry for competition (both direct and indirect substitution)
2 – perfect distribution of information
3 – high elasticity of demand for any one product
4 – perfect liberty to bring goods to market (in the real world, when sugar gets too high, companies can sub in corn syrup. Not in any MMO i’ve seen)

points 1 through 3 also apply to drag down capitalism in the real world and create market imperfections which must be corrected through intervention to restore competition (though many are also CAUSED by intervention, but evaluation of this is on a case by case basis).

point 4 is unique to MMOs. Recipes are fixed, no matter how logical it would be to allow such substitutions.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Thanks, I’ll check it out Monday, though most of the replies I saw were about champions (which are used in [Group] events), so they aren’t intended to be soloable.

please just upgrade that spider to champion. don’t nerf it!

Guns and bows: Your toon simply hides the reloading action. Slight of hand, just like pulling a quarter out of your ear.

For spears and axes, it’s quite clear their wielders are exploiting godskull.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

I feel like this entire problem boils down to two entirely different problems that have nothing to do with AoE itself.

Loot tagging is an issue and needs to be fixed but not by lowering any AoE to damage thresholds so low they can’t tag enemies. Support and the myriad of other build designs need to be accounted for in loot drops instead of just damage. I am always taken aback when I think about this. How did the game release with this kind of loot tagging system? This game focuses on everyone being able to do damage to some degree but as a group based game (most of the time) it requires support players but they don’t get the proper rewards from pve events.

The other problem is WvW. Something most who agree with this change don’t see is that AoE is the only reason zergs aren’t the absolute ONLY strategy currently. A lot of bad players might complain that they can’t destroy gates fast enough because of the AoEs. This is truly foolish. I don’t consider myself any Sun Tzu, and in fact I’m a terrible strategist and overall war games person, but even I know that a frontal assault will always be defended, when facing off against any intelligent foe, by a funnel. Other strategies for taking down keeps (or w/e) include siege weapons from a distance, luring defenders out via any means, and even a slow method of any one of those mixed with a cut off from supply… in fact that should always be considered. I’m sure there are many other methods that people smarter than I have come up with or are trying too, but as it is these methods are in general inferior to zerging because it is so effective when you have a large group facing a smaller group. AoE is the only defense to these zergs thanks to funnels and I can honestly say that when AoE is weakened to keep this from happening zergs will become even more potent.

If you disagree please say so but those seem to be the only issues in the game where AoE are involved and it is my personal opinion that AoE is not only a non-issue in those regards but in fact a necessary and beneficial tool in WvW to counteract the only prominent strategy right now.

ANet listen to this guy, he gets it.

Leablo.2651:

*SNIP*pretty much everyone gets them for free and the item subsequently isn’t even worth having.

You know, some people want things not because they want to lord it over those who don’t, but because they actually like it themselves.

I don’t think it’s psychologically healthy for ANet to be feeding the kind of people who only feel good when they’re flaunting what they have over people who don’t have it. (crass bullies)

" All that matters it that the price needs to go down or the supply needs to go up."

These are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, for it to be economically feasible the supply must go up drastically for the price to go down.

The supply must produce more sales than currently fabulously wealthy market manipulators can keep up with.

Kozai.8269:

plasmacutter.2709:

Just because the houses sell, does not mean the market is not dysfunctional.

Every month it seems there are articles lamenting that the vast majority of bay-area 20-somethings that should be settling down in their homes to raise families are still with their parents, because they can’t afford a home, or are struggling to pay 2k rents, because the prevailing mortgage rate, credit requirements, and required down payments are that frekin’ high, allowing renters to utterly gouge.

Just because some people are paying the obscene prices does not make a price-fixed economy justified, and does not change the fact that the victims of such manipulation are not just those who can and do end up paying more, but those who go unserved because they simply can’t afford the gouged price.

Those 20-somethings could move elsewhere with cheaper houses, right? Except that they want to live in the Bay area, many I’m sure for excellent reasons. Unfortunately, there are more people that want to live in the Bay area then there are houses for them, I’ve known several people on the East Coast who would move there if they could afford it. Which sounds like a classic problem of demand being higher then supply, so price rises to the point where demand (people who want a house AND can afford it at its outrageous CA price) meets supply. Same with buying Ferrari’s, which are probably a better analogy to cosmetic game gear, demand = people who want it AND can afford it, not just people who want it.

A functional market doesn’t necessarily make all its participants happy, it just matches supply with demand.

The bay is where these 20-somethings can get a job, the rest of the country treats new college grads like lepers. They have nowhere to go, and are certainly not staying where 80k/yr marks the poverty line out of “choice”.

The (dry and neutral) economic definition of “functional” is the fact that it exists and people trade in it. Indeed, economies in the middle ages based on slave-trades and serfs were classified as “functional” despite utterly crushing any modicum of human rights and dignity.

Economics is a tool to be utilized (for good or ill), but many people, like yourself, seems to think it has a “goal” of perpetuating unregulated markets or “efficiency”.

What it actually does is provide the mathematical and behavioral modeling tools to produce effective policy to meet a desired effect.

That effect can be to:
A – foster domestic industrial growth and independence (Hamilton’s trade policies against britain after the US revolution)

B – increase competition, consumer, and labor rights (Anti-trust law breaking up too-big-to-fail companies)

D – crush the middle class and hourly wages (Reversing hamiltonian policies and adopting free trade agreements with nations that don’t respect human rights or the environment)

E – Destroy Inner Cities (game states against one another by threatening mass layoffs against the populace to force corporate taxes to zero)

Economics was leveraged as a science in each of these cases.

I’m including this to show that the question is not “is the market ’functioning”, it’s “is the market functioning in the desired manner”. In the same way most people (well, those with a soul and any sense of decency, anyway) don’t think the current situation with “the lost generation” in the bay area is the desired outcome, I don’t think a game promised to reward people for just playing is meeting this goal if the majority of the playerbase can’t access anything more interesting than the same generic skin they’ve seen for 80 prevous levels

Back to what John was not wanting to answer:

John, we have ANet saying precursors are too expensive, but we have the lodestone prices pushing the mat-price of some exotics, which don’t have the relevancy advantages ANet promised to legendaries, into the quad-digits.

The issue with certain mat price inflation is not just related to the lodestone recipes. The scaling of loot with character rather than zone level is causing T2-T4 to rapidly rise as the population becomes top-heavy.

I’d love to see an in-depth blog post examining these phenomena and ANet’s actual targets for these. It seems more than a bit off to have ANet’s stated “end all be all” be less expensive than some crafted exotics.

Death Reincarnated.3570:

My 2c.

We have three varaibles – demand, supply and quality (the last one is based on what you can do with the item, i.e. for how many things you can use it). Now using the TP picture of the lodestone provided by The Blue Ace.2850, one can draw a relationship between demand/supply and presume that the higher the demand, whilst lower supply, price will increase. This “hypothesis” breaks down when we introduce another variable, quality, to the equation. This can be clearly observed by taking into account how many recipies can be made using the two lodestones below:

Crystal Ldestone – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crystal_Lodestone
Corrupted Lodestone – http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrupted_Lodestone

One can clearly see that due to more options available for using the ‘Corrupted Lodestone’ the price will be higher. This quality factor is then echoed further on as a particualr product of utilising a lodestone may be more valuable and more demanded, whilst taking into account supply of other co-products to produce the next item, and so forth.

Therefore, it is because of the quality factor that there lies a disparity between the costs in lodestones, not just due to supply/demand. If something has high quality and low demand then the price would be much higher than that same item were to have low quality.

All of this is taken into account when managing how (often) the items can be obtained. Looking into the cost of Charged Lodestone, IMO, making it more acquirable would not drive the cost down much because players know that it is a high quality item. What it would do, however, is allow more players to obtain particular items down the track.

Hope this makes sense

There are two ways to alleviate this:

The most obvious is to increase the supply of the more heavily used item. The more recipes call for it, the higher the drop rate should be in proportion to others.

The second would be to reduce the recipe requirements for these to lower the demand.

Increasing the drop rate to be proportional to the difference in demand would most certainly lower the price.

Leablo.2651:

This proves that gold sellers will also sell items that are worth a significant amount of real money. (Surprise?)

It doesn’t prove that they have control of the market.

When was the last time anyone got anything decent from “just playing the game normally”.

The majority of players are now on perma-dr.

Meanwhile, bots go un-inhibited because they don’t get bored or frustrated when drops are smaller.

It makes perfect sense for a company that runs the bots to use their copious reserves to corner the precursor market, drive up the price faster than inflation.

It accomplishes their goals in two ways:

1 – it increases the likelihood people will give in and buy gold.

2 – it exacts massive monopoly rents from the infinitesimally tiny minority who have managed to accrue that much gold.

Gisei.5749:

Many items should be unobtainable by the vast majority of players.

If you make them unobtainable by the vast majority of players, they will become the vast majority of players in a different game that won’t import the worst aspects of real life, namely:

Insurmountable wealth gaps
inflation rising faster than the cost of living
the vast majority unable to obtain anything actually worth obtaining.

This is supposed to be a fantasy game, an escape from reality, not some microcosmic reinforcement of reality (At That, the most heavily dystopic and corrupt reality since the gilded age and tammany hall).

3. Drop down menus for selling buying etc. Overall TP working as a static HTML just like the one you made in highschool, rather then being a complex site with good and userfriendly functionalities.

This is a value judgement.

Most sites that go beyond the basics are bloated needlessly.

You want them to drop your FPS by running html5 in addition to the game, tanking your performance?

Svarty.8019:

Firegoth.6427:

Good job getting out of that one dev, dig a deeper hole will ya.

It’s not wide, but it is goes all the way to the bottom!

Stop using youtube, they’re hollywood stooges and are now applying region restrictions to videos.

I’m happy to see someone reading keynes.

If you’re studying economics, be very careful to consider theory for yourself, as many idealogues have been active in corrupting and discrediting the field.

Keep in mind the nobel prize for economics is not awarded based on review of the academic community but based on central banks which have their own bias.

You should look forward to multipart game theory.

You should avoid the news at this point, as it will continually kitten you off.

Otaur.9268:

Played since BWE1, just recently started getting the WvWvW Bonuses, never seen an Exotic drop. Get loot from normal mobs my level about 1 in 15 kills. Always junk. Rarely get loot from champions or vets, when I do it is crap Trophy / White / Blue. Went on several dungeon runs, all my grp mates got Rares / Exotics from chests. I got White / Blue / 1 or 2 Green. Went into fractals even though I have been avoiding it. Recieved 1 green, all blues. While groupmates got rares and exotics again. They were not running MF and this was from chests, so MF doesn’t effect it.

I feel like my account is flagged for Permanent DR. As everything I try to farm = low loot / low gold. Taken me a week to farm about 6 – 8g playing hours a day now.

Tried getting MF gear, but it made no difference and only gimped my character. Leveling my 3rd char now, and finding the same situation.

This mirrors my experiences.

The guy above citing worse drops making roughly 1g per AC path is making 3 times what I make per AC peth.

If I play a lot in a week, i’ll be lucky to see 6g in revenues, and I sell EVERYTHING.

Rogacz.9865:

Tarvok.4206:

Hey, I’m curious about something. For those of you who feel the activities of active traders is negatively impacting your game… what exactly is it that you’re doing that is being impacted by this activity? I only ask because I honestly can’t figure out what the TP is for for those of us who’d rather avoid that sort of thing, given there are supplies of very good items that have nothing to do with it (karma, tokens, etc).

While I dont feel bad about traders, with the exception of those who attempt to monopolize some markets within TP, but I can tell you what the problem is. Low drop rates for commonly required materials, like precursors or lodestones.

Say what you want about them being only skins/having same stats as other weapons. The problem is not that some few unique items are rare, but the fact that whole tier of side-grades is artificially unobtainable through normal gameplay. Nobody is going to farm 250 charged lodestones for infinite light, especially with scarcity of mobs that drop it, the fact that those mobs are gated, extremely low drop rate and stupid DR.

And since they cannot be obtained through normal gameplay, they have to be obtained through TP. Which vast majority of players do not want to do. Your average Joe wants to touch TP only to get some consumables fast, and some odd item occasionally. But for that whole tier of side-grades he is forced to do something he doesnt want to (TP), and by association he feels bad about traders.

Exactly.

Markets become competitive and serve consumers only when they allow easy entry of new suppliers of a good.

If you add new and more predictable sources of the items currently overpriced and arguably manipulated, by either increasing drop rates significantly, puttting them on token/karma vendors, or both, you introduce those new suppliers, and the price will reach more accessible levels.

There are two sides of the coins. People who selling precursors at 550ish gold and people who are willing to pay that amount to get one. If “the manipulators” are getting
their stuff sold for the asking price they will keep selling for that price. Simple like that.

The average price of a house in the bay area is approximately 700,000 dollars (7 times that of the equivalent in the rest of middle-america.. if you don’t want to live in a demilitarized zone resembling the dystopian future in freejack).

The average income of a person in the bay area is NOT 7 times the median income of middle-america.

Just because the houses sell, does not mean the market is not dysfunctional.

Every month it seems there are articles lamenting that the vast majority of bay-area 20-somethings that should be settling down in their homes to raise families are still with their parents, because they can’t afford a home, or are struggling to pay 2k rents, because the prevailing mortgage rate, credit requirements, and required down payments are that frekin’ high, allowing renters to utterly gouge.

Just because some people are paying the obscene prices does not make a price-fixed economy justified, and does not change the fact that the victims of such manipulation are not just those who can and do end up paying more, but those who go unserved because they simply can’t afford the gouged price.

marnick.4305:

plasmacutter.2709:

So you’re comparing 2013 GW2 economy to 2005 vanilla wow economy, conveniently ignoring the economic improvements I detailed which came in ensuing expansions.

In Vanilla there was an active crafting market with unique recipes that could craft interesting stuff outside dungeons. Crafting was at its best in Vanilla which is why I took it as an example.
Crafting in TBC and WotLK revolved around BOP recipes. The markets were a disaster because not a single recipe was profitable. There were far less unique or rare recipes compared to Vanilla.

AFTER vanilla (burning crusade), they increased the sources in the way I mentioned in my post (and adjustments were made in minor cycles going beyond that as well — endgame crafting mats were made available for badges, and then even honor, to cap how high they could be manipulated), but do conveniently and intellectually-dishonestly ignore that fact.

After Vanilla they destroyed all the flavor crafting had and took away the cool and fun recipes. They might as well have removed all crafting from the game. Even the Engineering chopper was mostly based on vendor items so there wasn’t even any profit margin …

So, please explain to me why ANet in 2013 is choosing to make mistakes rectified by blizzard, the least imaginative gaming house, 7 years earlier?

Quite the opposite. I don’t want A.net to make the same mistakes Blizzard made in the last 7 years. Crafting in Vanilla WoW was interesting and profitable with several recipes that couldn’t be found in dungeons. For the sake of comparison, I take the best moment of crafting in WoW which is Vanilla.

The spoiler factor here which you are not mentioning, and which led to crafting in WoW becoming unprofitable was not the cost of mats, or the corrective actions I detailed above to fix the horrendous supply, it was the fact that crafting ceased to be about producing competitive gear (though it still did produce it), and became focused on stat boosts only attainable by becoming a max-level crafter (people were no longer crafting on profit margins, but buying skill points to get the crafting stat bonuses – this turned the merchants into the customers).

This stat bonus factor for crafting is not there in gw2

Before the introduction of stat bonuses for crafting (first the BoP gear, then straight-up stat bonuses), crafting remained profitable because anything that became more expensive to craft than to sell was simply not crafted.

Thus, Stopping market manipulation of materials (a precursor is also a material as much as an elaborate totem or lodestone) by adding different and more predictable supply points to keep their prices capped does not do anything to prevent crafting from being profitable, in fact it does quite the opposite.

Making competitive items less expensive to craft is not the death of crafting in GW2.

Dreamslayer.7659:

The Blue Ace.2850:

Astraea.6075:

vido.2706:

I am positive a lot of power-traders will not agree with this matter since they are the “smart” ones that control the market and buy stacks and dictate prices on a regular basis (also the high demand vs availability increases the price so much to a unfordable level for casual and also for players that stay up to 4 hours a day playing this game.)

I don’t think there’d be many “power traders” in the lodestone market, as there really doesn’t seem to be a clear margin for them to make profit from. There may be some cyclical movement (daily, weekly) that some traders may be taking advantage of, but given the amount of capital this would tie up, I suspect that most would steer clear of this as well.

On the few occasions I’ve bought lodestones (for crafting purposes, not for trading) I’ve found that if I make sure to keep my buy offer on the top, I get the lodestones I want after a small wait (around 5 mins to buy half a dozen usually). This is slow compared to a lot of other crafting materials I buy, but I understand that lodestones aren’t as common.

It seems to me that people forget that there are two sides to the Trading Post, both sellers and buyers. Prices are determined by a combination of what sellers are willing to sell for and what buyers are prepared to pay. In the case of lodestones, the difficulty in obtaining them through normal play or farming, means that a lot of people are prepared to pay more them.

Which is why we need more places to get them from.

This is an understandable position when you want something that is incredibly rare. It carries the assumption that the rare item is rare by accident or oversight.

I don’t think this is the case at all. These lodestones are rare by design.

It may be frustrating for those who want to make something that requires them, because it may seem that without significant wealth or time, the goal is not attainable.

The corollary to this is that Anet needs to have some items and materials that are exceedingly difficult to obtain – even if just through rarity. It gives the hard core players and the hard core traders something to go after.

If you make every lodestone or rare item obtainable in a measured, consistent way, then you break a lot of the aspirational appeal of the game and chase off a significant number of players.

A significant number of recipes that are not utterly generic have these lodestone requirements.

A unique look or style shouldn’t come at the expense of the vast majority of the player base, it should come from enough variety in desirable models to make the likelihood of the same “look” infinitesimal.

It’s one thing to have a couple hard to obtain models. (this is what legendaries are supposed to be about), but when every model worth having is this way, you may as well just give up and go home now rather than waste your time chasing something that rises faster than inflation.

Add to that the loot bugs that put roughly 50% of the playerbase on perma-dr, and you have a recipe for serious bitterness.

I hate to say it, but I will definitely be looking to ESO if I don’t see an ANet announcement that DR is going away and these crafting mats are going to be adjusted in supply relative to popularity to stabilize their price to something attainable.

Anything that takes more than 3 months of casual play to attain is ludicrous, and I have a job that pays for the roof and the car to worry about.

It’s time for ANet to realign its loyalties from kids with too much time on their hands to people with paychecks who can actually monetize their game, before they skip town for being ignored.

too bad I don’t have a stockpile to “short” these things.

marnick.4305:

plasmacutter.2709:

John Smith.4610:

GW2’s TP is by a wide margin less effectively manipulated than the other games mentioned in this thread.

In WoW you can raid to get something equivalent to the best on the trading post (in a predictable way – double-digit% drop rate off a specific raid boss, or tokens that took approximately 2 weeks to acquire), and their legendaries are associated with actual player experience.

Thus, the price of endgame materials on their auction houses seldomly exceeds about 2x the average newly capped toon’s wallet. (and that’s only for exceedingly high demand items — like weapons or armor universally useful to at least half the specs in the game, and with capped stats in combinations not found on boss loot tables)

Compare this to precursors.

I believe I’ve proven this very wrong.

Reminds me of the “mission accomplished” sign back in 2003.

Vanilla WoW: Pristine hide of the beast and Foror’s compendium on Dragon Slaying beg to differ. These were prohibitively expensive to players without a guild to back them. Crafting materials weren’t better, for example Water Essences, Arcanite Bars and Nexus Crystals.

Some of that stuff was almost required as a precursor to raiding, Arcanite reaper for warriors, pristine hide for crit mages/locks and Foror’s for every single tank.

Not to mention a newly capped toon was looking towards a 900g grind for his epic mount….

Compared to precursors which are entirely optional …
Your post is factually incorrect.

So you’re comparing 2013 GW2 economy to 2005 vanilla wow economy, conveniently ignoring the economic improvements I detailed which came in ensuing expansions.

AFTER vanilla (burning crusade), they increased the sources in the way I mentioned in my post (and adjustments were made in minor cycles going beyond that as well — endgame crafting mats were made available for badges, and then even honor, to cap how high they could be manipulated), but do conveniently and intellectually-dishonestly ignore that fact.

So, please explain to me why ANet in 2013 is choosing to make mistakes rectified by blizzard, the least imaginative gaming house, 7 years earlier?

Astraea.6075:

plasmacutter.2709:

John Smith.4610:

GW2’s TP is by a wide margin less effectively manipulated than the other games mentioned in this thread.

In WoW you can raid to get something equivalent to the best on the trading post (in a predictable way – double-digit% drop rate off a specific raid boss, or tokens that took approximately 2 weeks to acquire), and their legendaries are associated with actual player experience.

Thus, the price of endgame materials on their auction houses seldomly exceeds about 2x the average newly capped toon’s wallet. (and that’s only for exceedingly high demand items — like weapons or armor universally useful to at least half the specs in the game, and with capped stats in combinations not found on boss loot tables)

Compare this to precursors.

I believe I’ve proven this very wrong.

Reminds me of the “mission accomplished” sign back in 2003.

In WoW, some servers had cartels running sections of the market in consumables. I know of one such cartel that was running the AH market for gems on their server. You could argue that this sort of activity was detrimental to a larger proportion of the player base than the cost of what is essentially a part of the “ulimate” cosmetic items in the game.

I’m not sure you have proven him wrong…

Any server where the gem market can be manipulated by a cartel was a dead server.

Gems in wow had an obscenely high supply (you could buy them with badges), and any market manipulation would immediately be spoiled on even a modestly populated realm by people posting at a lower price.

when I played on a moderately populated realm, cut gems were always selling at near-zero-margin profits, sometimes negative-margin, which would be expected in a “perfectly competitive” to “hyper-perfectly-competitive”(only possible in a game) market.

You can’t cite anomalies associated with a dying server’s economy as “the norm”.

Other games stop TP manipulation by giving you multiple, predictable, skill-based ways of obtaining extremely in-demand items.

This reduces gold-trade systems between players to a matter of convenience rather than monopoly-supply.

It could be done in this way in this game as well.

Another way which absolutely would “stick-it” to fun-killing TP manipulators (which likely also run the farming-bots) would be to modify annoucements to prompt speculation on a given exotic or trade item, then surprise-patch that item as account bound and attainable cheaply through karma.

That would instantly destroy vast swaths of speculator wealth.

(for instance, a sudden patch that made precursors account-bound and placed a low karma-cap on t6 mats would utterly DESTROY the manipulation being conducted by gold-sale companies)

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

I won’t be at the office until Monday, but I’ll check it out.

crap!

hopefully it doesn’t get nerfed. I like that champ spider. It IS soloable, did it on my mesmer and ele. Just requires excellent kiting skills and a lot of patience.

Nothing to do with farming.

I hate farming, and don’t generally go out of my way looking for in-game wealth, but still receive so little I don’t bother paying to waypoint to dragon calls anymore.