Guild Wars 2

John Smith.4610:

I feel like I’m getting trolled here. Good day sir.

That you would write off a question about the concern of prices rising around high quality materials that casual players (and even players with more committed time investments) and the amount of money generated staying the same as trolling is rather rude.

It seems like there is a communication error somewhere. So let me simplify it because all the discussions about inflation, price manipulation are not addressing what has been a core issue central to all of these.

Months ago (before the Karka event) it was said by Anet representatives, that they were looking into what was considered extremely high prices for materials for the legendary. A little while afterwards, the Karka event happened and precursors went down dramatically. Not even a month later the prices rose again to where they were and continued rising to the point that they are now.

Money making has not changed, in fact if anything the most profitable game play related methods of making money were nerfed. The only way to obtain enough money for the materials required for the path to a legendary is to put thousands of hours into farming and get lucky (RNG), or to play the Trading Post.

This seems contrary to the stance and comments made surrounding the Karka event. It has been months since now, is this situation (path to Legendary) where Anet wants it for the general player? I realize that commenting on what could come may influence the (oh so serious) gaming market, but saying nothing is beginning to become infuriating. It feels as if (in this area) Anet has changed their mind, and are encouraging a contrary direction they took in November.

So point blank, can we expect changes in favor of decreasing high material prices? (without having to rely on bots becoming smarter and driving down prices again)

John, your answers and conversation are appreciated as always, is there any chance you could direct a response to the initial inquiry of the thread though?

So my question is will there be something put in place to protect the tp from being abused like this in the future from trolly people who have too much money?

Yes, it’s obviously an open market, to a degree. There are levels that are controlled by the designers/developers/etc; I’m making about the same amount of money I’ve ever made, yet precursor prices are going from double to quadruple the prices they were when we had responses from you and other ANet reps that the high prices were being looked into.

Maybe I am missing information that has been stated in the past, but are we just supposed to deal with this and continue saving up hoping that those gaming the market aren’t making money at the same time to increase the prices even more?

I am looking forward to a system that allows us to switch tiers more fluidly. Sorrow’s Furnace is a heavily PvE based server. Every time a major world event takes place (e.g. Mad King, Karka, Wintersday) we drop hard in the number of players participating in WvW, every world event has lead to our rankings diminishing significantly. After this Wintersday event (which lasted way too long in my opinion) we lost a lot of ranking points, as soon as that was over, our WvW players came back in, and we have been wiping the floor with ET and Ferguson’s the last few weeks. It’s not fun at all tbh.

ET and Ferg have some great fights at times, but when our server actually plays, we are definitely not in the final tier, and I’m sure it’s not very fun for ET or Ferg either, though probably more so for them than it is for us.

Just compare the data for the final three servers on mos.millenium:
http://mos.millenium.org/matchups/evolution/na

I think most servers were negatively affected by the guilds that xferred to Kaineng a month and a half ago. It added a lot detrimental ranking values that have been hard to dig out of, and most servers have been stuck since trying to dig their way back to the tier they were at beforehand.

I actually prefer to be on the losing side of a weekly WvW match, it makes going into enemy territory that much more fun, holding keeps and towers that much more worthwhile and entertaining. I would not mind being steamrolled every now and then if it allows more fluidity with servers in general.

Astraea.6075:

The problem is that sometimes they just can’t give more information… e.g. they can’t talk much about the scavenger hunt for precursors because it’s still in the design stage, or in the case of Mr Smith, talking too much about specifics could trigger waves of speculation.

Even without an obvious reason for being vague, it’s not being rude or disrespectful if they don’t want to talk about specifics. It may be frustrating for those who want specific answers, but that’s not the same thing.

Rising Dusk.2408:

You need to realize that John cannot answer questions like “What do you think about the lodestone market?” The reason he cannot is because what he says has an extremely significant effect upon the market itself. If he says he thinks they are too expensive, people will sell-sell-sell before they are made more accessible and thus cheaper. If he says they are too cheap, people will buy-buy-buy before their drops get nerfed. See the dilemma? He is, almost assuredly, bound by a specialized NDA that totally disallows him from talking about that sort of thing with the community. It makes perfect sense to me why he doesn’t answer those questions.

Exactly, so he shouldn’t have said, “I’ll reply when you stop being rude”, if he isn’t going to answer the question regardless of how it’s asked. That was the point. Otherwise he’s just jerking the inquiree around.

Vol.5241:

Being vague isn’t rude or disrespectful.

It’s called being vague.

It’s like you saying being happy is being disrespectful.

When there are legitimate concerns and the continual response is just wait for months on end, it’s goes past just being vague, and the redundancy of the claim comes off as rude, and yes disrespectful to a player and their time.

John Smith.4610:

I find this post disrespectful and rude. Until you learn to stop and think about what you’re asking, take in the information you have and make a logical question I’ll not be replying.

To be quite fair, there are a lot of things that come off as disrespectful and rude to the player-base that is only addressed by continual vague statements about how it will be changed in the future, e.g. pre-cursors that dev’s continually pointed out when the high price was around 200G that they were too high, and not several have tripled, or even quadrupled in price and this was months ago. Lodestones, Etco’s and t6 mats follow the same venue UNTIL the bots come into play, which is hilarious.

The reality is, regardless of whether his post would have been kind and put in a thoughtful manner, we would not have received an actual answer to his question as opposed to more vaguery about something that could happen.

It’s really annoying and responding to someone who is being more aggressive than most posters puts those off who are responding kindly with equally legitimate concerns and questions.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

Traits are disabled during many transformations. (But not any skill based transforms, I believe.)

Yeah, wait, why?? This heavily nerfs my playstyle. It’s kind of a pain to completely swap traits and weapons every time I get transformed (which happens frequently in Fractals and AC), and it’s really annoying.

If this is intended, why is it not documented anywhere and what accommodates for your lost traits?

edit: Should we assume that the plethora of bugs that have gone unfixed for professions are also working as intended as well?

Also, clearly it’s not all traits that are disabled, as I still get benefits from quite a few of them, what determines what makes the cut and what doesn’t?

I actually haven’t noticed the sound lately at all, especially in the excess that it was originally. Which is awesome, because it was indeed very annoying.

Gaile Gray.6028:

However, I wanted to add that things can change, and the devs may make adjustments to the rewards if they feel that would be a good thing to do. But at the present time, they do not consider these runs exploitative.

That just encourages panic and a hoarding mentality. When you bring up similar events in the past that were introduced via a lack of ANet’s QA department, such as Black Lion Keys for Commendations, Commendations themselves now, Flawed recipes (which resulted in banned players), and other so-called exploits it illustrates how stressful this game has become when just playing it normally.

Nobody wants to lose thousands of hours of progression because of an internal decision that reverts on something originally pushed out by the same team. It honestly takes a lot of the fun from the game when you’re worried that you could lose everything so easily.

It probably would have been better to just leave it at John’s comment and call it good while leaving the community in a state of bliss (until the next internal change).

John Smith.4610:

When I released the blog post about pulling some of the surplus items like butter and soft wood logs out of the market with the Mystic Chest. How fast that took effect and burned those items really surprised me. 7 Million Items in 2 hours, never seen anything like it. It was really cool.

Speaking of butter, I recently maxed out cooking on an alt and was really surprised by the price. The supply has definitely decreased with the price being as high as it is now. Are we nearing a point of too little for such a core crafting material? Or is this where we would like things?

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/12138

John Smith.4610:

I post because I enjoy interacting with the community.

Wow, and you still didn’t address the inquiry, that comes off rather spiteful :/. I don’t even know if I should assume that it wasn’t intentional at this point.

+1. This would be very nice.

Boon Duration affects any boons you apply. That being said, there is no way to keep the actual regeneration buff up 100% with an Ele. You can get close with runes that affect duration, or runes that apply party regen, but you’ll never get to the point of regen stability that a Banner Warrior has.

John Smith.4610:

I cannot go too far into our process, but we often set goals; in an expanding market though there is a split between preventative and reactionary measures. If you read my last blog you may remember one of my favorite aphorisms, "Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.”

The problem with not being descriptive on goals with a large MMO, is losing out on an enormously profitable resource of information. The players.

And I’m not talking about the average player that has qualms with prices, but those that actually work with and follow the market frequently. There are most assuredly levels of exploitation (some of which have been bannable offenses in the past), that when met with an market system whose boundaries are unfounded on a high level (designers and development) instead by a controlling minority in the know (players who hopped on the original bandwagon, and now have excess control over the market) it degrades the system of working together that the rest of this game is built upon.

I entirely respect the decision to not disclose information for the sake of not causing contention in the future; I just don’t agree with it in this context. I think you lose out on a lot of information that could help get the market in the direction that you want it (assuming that it is not already in that state).

If it is in the state that’s wanted, then I question the purpose of upgrades that cost upwards of 100+ G for +5 to a single stat. (see high level Ascended infusions), although that may be a question more directed toward the other game devs/designers.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

You only take a sample when you can’t realistically acquire data for everything. ANET can take everything.

As for players, that’s a good question. I’d like to see ANET’s economist put out regular reports on the sats of the GW2 economy, just like CCP’s economist does for Eve Online.

+1. I love how CCP does this with EVE. It adds a whole level of transparency and communication to the game which helps alleviate confusion on several levels.

I’d rather this thread not derail if it can be helped, and focus on the original points to help encourage discussion and maybe get more specific dev feedback. So if you two could let it go, it would be appreciated.

Yeah, I reported that as a bug awhile back. They should sort food XD.

I think they are making some significant BLTC changes, or at least I have seen a few dev posts saying for us to wait for a revamp, so I’m hoping little things like and more functionality regarding other methods of sorting are introduced.

e.g.:
- I don’t need to see light and medium gear when searching for heavy.
- Upgrade Components sub-categories do not filter correctly
- I believe Legendary is still a red category. (No ascended, should either of these be here tho?)
- Searching for skins!!! <— most important to me baha.

Ryuujin.8236:

On the contrary, you made a blanket statement that there IS a growth in the money supply on the basis gold is coming into the system.

But as I pointed out, the system has both an input and output, and unless we have data for both in and out, we can’t know for a fact whether the value of gold is rising or falling.

I disproved your statement mathematically

It was more inferred than mathematical, but this is besides the point. The point of this post being how/if devs are going to address the rise in prices. The preceeding quote about precursors has fallen short, with the Lost Shores influx gone and the mats themselves for the legendaries increasing 200%-600% more.

That much is seperate from the influx/outflux of total sum of gold. Especially when they average user is not earning much more. (Yes, fractals help, but they are not that significant to the sum of all income/hour)

Which is what I was aiming for a response on with this post.

As far as ecto’s droprate, I’ve actually noticed a vast increase in my own farming/supply because of fractals. Yet prices still rise, which indicates that there is clearly far more demand. Which I guess makes sense, with requirements for Legendaries, rare Exotics, infusing Rings, new Backpieces, infusing Backpieces, and infusions themselves.

After going back through about 6 pages of posts, I found several related threads with no dev comments on the situation.

Tier 6 thread
Ecto thread
Ecto thread
Inflation thread
Ecto thread
Ecto thread

Shortly after the banwave, John posted the following:

We’ve received a large amount of feedback about Legendaries becoming unreachable. This is actually a topic we’ve been tracking for quite some time. To ease your minds I am here to say that it’s something we’ve been watching and we’ve been listening to your feedback. You can expect to begin to see changes addressing the issue starting with our next build.

There was a temporary influx on precursors because of the Lost Shores event, but most of these have already returned to the leveling off price they were before the event.

Has anything else come of this? Or are we just screwed if we didn’t have enough money to pick them up at the time?

Most people that are paying attention to crafting materials for high-end gear (mainly t6 mats, and ectos) have noticed a substantial increase.

Globs are nearing doubling their price almost a month ago, and as Ulion pointed out the supply is decreasing and every time it appears that it may level out, it begins to jump again.

Prices for pretty much all tier 6 mats are all now between 400%-600% from a month ago, all continue to show rises (except for Ancient Bone) -source.

I want to say that it appears like things are leveling off but it’s still a bit too early. With these increases the time/cost spent on obtaining mats not just for legendaries, but crafted exotics, and even leveling crafting itself has dramatically increased. It was already not profitable to craft, leveling itself is a massive gold-sink, and most exotics (barring rare skins) are selling for a substantial loss.

Disclaimer: I have fared well with getting to 400 crafting on several alts mostly by using existing mats I gathered, but I have put around ~900 hours into the game and leveled up four 80’s, I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume that the majority of the playerbase can meet that commitment. My advice on crafting is relatively invalidated anymore because of the costs now.

I tried searching for dev posts, or anything that would indicate that this in fact is where they want the market headed. Or that they are working on balancing (what now seems extreme to most of us that played during the first few months). Does anyone have anything I may have missed? Do they have plans to increase drop-rates on high-end items?

If not, I (and I’m sure many others) would appreciate an official dev comment on the current state of the market, what the end-goal is as far as the time:gold ratio, and what’s considered reasonable for the majority of the playerbase.

edit: Yes, I realize bot’s banned were a substantial part of this, but it’s now encroaching near a month since the big wave, and as stipulated above, prices are continuing to rise.

+1. This is the first time I tired it an couldn’t get it to work. I even coordinated with the other team to try and test interceptions and stuff, nothing increments.

I don’t usually post on petition threads, but this is something I’ve wanted from day one. I have so many skins cluttering up my bank space that I just might use one day. It would be nice to clear that up so I have room for other stuff.

This is till a problem now on Sorrow’s Furnace. I submitted an in-game bug as well, but it’s really annoying. 3+ weeks of waiting to do the final story quest is yeah … annoying.

Jack, please read my earlier post. It will address how to resolve that. GIGO, to open the final door you need to wait for all the NPC’s to catch up with you. Make sure they are alive.

I think the majority of the arguments are related to horizontal FoV, the funny thing about that reddit post that not only shows how the game is not 75 for horizontal, but the atrocious FoV associated with the vertical FoV. The fact that a wider screen ratio DECREASES the vertical FoV is highly irritating, this becomes extremely noticeable if you try and just take in the scenery, or look up and down in a 16:9/16:10 monitor resolution.

I don’t get sick or nauseous playing this game, but I definitely feel like I am missing out on the art and ambiance of the world because of the FoV. I used to run around in WoW or LotRo and just do whatever, enjoying the scenery. I cannot get over how much I enjoyed farming in LotRo despite how boring the actual act was because I could spend the time looking around at the world.

GW2 is graphically impressive in a LOT of ways, especially for an MMO. But there are some rather large kinks (FXAA being one), and FoV tops that list. I just feel so limited in what I can see as I run around the world, and it feels detrimental to the time spent into making the game look good.

edit: I am finding largely that my complaints with this game, are significantly due to a lack of immersion possibilities, and stuff like FoV just compounds the issue.

The problem is the trigger range. Something changed, I completed this just fine on my first character, but on this new one I was having problems. To resolve it I set auto-run and kept running into the concave area of the door and mashed F repeatedly, finally I got a prompt to appear which triggered the next sequence. You will have to do the same thing again once you get past the first wave of zombies.

(Again, basically what needs to be fixed is the range at which you can actually get the door events to trigger)

Hopefully this helps anyone currently trying the quest.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/ANet-Why-have-DR-for-Karma-and-Rewards/first#post333850

There is a post directing people to another thread, albeit for Karma Diminishing Returns, but I guess they are at least paying attention to more than Dungeons now.

When I am not Longbow/Shortbow’ing it up. I use Longbow/Sword-Warhorn. I love the combination, maneuverability like a theif, quick attacks, range damage, and buffs. Pretty win all around, and it supplements my Longbow when stuff is on cooldown.

Edit: It’s also great for speed-tanking temporarily, when you need extra control over a situation when the rest of your group needs to recover a bit.

… Also to address/make an inquiry about inflation, which has been brought up several times. How does DR on dungeon loot/karma affect inflation? I mean, karma items you can’t resell, nor salvage, it’s just per character/account that has zero influence on the economy (unless the reasoning is that karma gear becomes too easy to obtain to prices on crafted goes down? iono); and I haven’t got too heavy into dungeon running yet, but I assume its the same as karma, correct me if I am wrong.

Yeah, I saw that too, but it was specifically for Dungeon DR, which is why I started this thread so we could have DR clarifications on all aspects.

I believe you were referring to this post.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeon-Patch-Discussion-10-1/first#post324264

It’s inhibiting players far more than it is bots. If anything I’ve noticed an increase in bots than a decrease, and just an inconvenience to players.

That argument is essentially invalid in any case, obfuscation will not prevent bots from finding loopholes in the system, it’s like piracy in a sense, you will not be able to stop it. You will make it harder for players to have a reliable good experience with the game though.

Which brings up a point I haven’t thought about before. DR is becoming comparable to how other larger companies utilize DRM. I really hope the game doesn’t go down that avenue.

While this isn’t necessarily something that can exactly be implemented in game. I am suggesting that we receive a response for how Diminishing Returns are handled, on everything from Dungeons, Karma, Dynamic Events, Loot in general, etc.

The plethora of complaints/inquiries about Diminishing Returns are clearly affecting a lot of people, whether you consider them a vocal minority or not, it is a significant chuck of threads among the official forums, and other associated sites like the dedicated subreddits and unofficial forums.

I recently posted on one of the several threads about an experience I’ve had recently had with DR, and I’m not sure if it’s a bug, intentional behavior, or what.

To paraphrase, I have been trying to obtain 100% world map completion with one of my 80s with every piece of gear (armor/weapons) with multiple levels of MF (e.g. travelers set with pirate runes, trinkets boosted for MF, sigil of luck on MF weapons).

With the last three zones I have completed, I only received 3 pieces of gear over level 70; and the only masterwork/rare loot I received was from the 100% zone completion chests. I am not farming, nor going out of my way to obtain loot, just an observation of world completion so far, however it does make me feel like I am wasting my time in that sense.

With my anecdotal evidence for world loot, there are plenty of examples with concerns regarding Dungeons and Karma throughout all the other forums, they are not hard to find at all, and usually topping the thread lists.

If Anet wants to set up a DR system to essentially set up guidelines on how we should play (assuming loot is a goal), then I think it would be courteous of them to announce what those guidelines actually are.