Guild Wars 2

The bags are probably a necessary evil because of the way that the player base (portions of it anyways) treats events. If the defense event mobs dropped loot, how long do you think it would have taken until people figured out which events were best to upscale and repeatedly fail to farm champ bags?

IMO the bags are a nice compromise to even out rewards and not turn events into a tag fest. In general, it should also encourage cooperation to succeed. Well done.

I like only one waypoint. Dying matters.

Multiple waypoints would just degrade it into the massive zergfest that is all of the rest of PvE. I like that you DON’T see:
Mapchat #1: X is up
#2: WP?
#1: [Loot Champ Camp]
Zerg follows, ensuring that whatever the event was is now degraded to:
a) can I tag it before it dies?
b) a video card melting array of effects spam

Make it so people who swap teams after (90 seconds in/one team has 100pts/whatever) always get the loser rewards. won’t 100% fix it, but removes some of the incentive. Plus it encourages people on the losing team to try to fight back to get winner points, rather than just teamswap.

I’d also love to see forced random teams at the start too…one can dream.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Gunlances. I want them.

Then buy one

Current guess: Eldricth scroll, mystic coin, Emerald Orb, (Item 4)

clinking & dull blade = mining? Hoping to get orb? Only fighting to not get eaten?
Zommoros = emerald?

Can’t log in myself to try at the moment.

lordkrall.7241:

Ankushp.7245:

These attempts to increase your revenues from the game are soo irritating……..first you (Anet) ended the key runs in the previous update……..and now this…….and all in the name of “simplifying”

Yes how dare a company (whose first and foremost purpose is to make money) dare try to make money?

Most are happy to pay money to an entertainment company in exchange for quality content.

The problem is, in this game, the recent content “additions” (which were more like subtractions with the NPE) this year have left much to be desired. Whether content comes in an expansion or killer LS content, people (myself included) are more likely to shell out $ if we feel that the company is delivering a good product. Where I think the rage comes is that the product has gotten a bit stale, the updates have not met expectations of many customers and then you throw on top of it the psychological manipulation garbage of the new exchange to try to milk money out of people without delivering anything.

tl;dr – get back to basics. deliver quality content = happy customers = paying customers. Leave the psychological manipulation garbage out of it.

Broken Flute could be cylindrical and kept in a case. No bay in sight near ebonhawke though…

Also sad how the gem to gold conversion is for oddball numbers like X gold for 769 gems, thereby guaranteeing weird leftover numbers that are effectively worthless. Even the people who do buy gems —> gold got (intentionally) screwed by this.

barefootstep.7026:

Next patch:

“The new Exchange Booster now available from the Gemstore. For only 201 gems, you gain a fabulous new booster that allows you flexible gold to gem exchange rates for 24 hours. It’s even accountbound! Use it with any of your characters!”

Close, but the price is 801.

Mystic Plunger mace skin?

I played my lvl 80 Necro and got nearly all leather armor drops.
Switched to mesmer alt and the light armor showed up again.

Definitely still bugged. Fix.

It’s not RNG itself that makes it unfun really, it is the crummy drop rates. Super low chances will naturally lead to more highly lucky and highly unlucky experiences. Couple that with the fact that it is virtually impossible to find a particular exotic weapon that you want by killing stuff and the best way to get it is to buy off of TP and you’re in for the current, very stale, unrewarding state of GW2. Wardrobes and collections could have been fun, but you can’t reasonably expect to collect say, mace skins, through normal gameplay. Diablo 3 got fun when it started trying to be a game and not an economy simulator/store and they super buffed drops while adding account binding.

Concept:
1. Make all non-craftable exotics account bound and buff exo drops, to the point where you find one a day on average assuming a 1-2 hour play session. Can probably leave precursor drops as they are and keep them sellable, because people will have more forge rolls for them. You now have many more chances to either loot what you want or toss into the forge to try to get what you want. Keep getting axes and you want to try for swords? Salvage the axes for ectos and either a)craft swords yourself or b) sell the ectos to buy craftable swords to forge.

2. Craftable exotics essentially become the “token” that can be tossed into the forge for a chance at what you want. The ecto —> pearl weapon path lets you change “failed” drops (i.e. tridents and spearguns) into a chance at what you want. Tweak ecto and ori/ancient salvage rates if you must to keep things in line.

This lets the player decide what a failed drop is and lets them turn it into a chance at what they want

I don’t really like the guaranteed token systems (get tokens —> buy item from vendor), because I think it devolves into a mentality of: “ok, now I need to farm X tokens” and that feels grindy and not fun IMO. In the context of fractals – Perhaps a system where 3-4 unwanted fractal weapons can be salvaged and turned into a box containing a new fractal weapon.

I started a new asura yesterday to firsthand check out the leveling (am a vet, all classes 80, map complete, blah blah blah) and was just sad once I got out of the tutorial. Metrica, we hardly knew thee.

I bought and still play this game because of the world, the art and the races with their little quirks and types. Sure, loot is great, but theres Diablo 3 if I really need to scratch that itch. But D3 and many other generic fantasy RPG/mmo/whatever don’t have the “personality” that GW2 has (had?) IMO.

RC golem chess is no more than a 2 minute activity, but I still remembered the impression it left on me as a new player coming in from GW1 (and one who ran around in the cerebral or Vekk tonic form as often as possible). The golem chess represented part of the personality of the game and more importantly made me want to go out and see “what other cool asura stuff is in the zone?” "A nuclear reactor?!? " What does Rata Sum look like now? etc. It was a far bigger motivator to keep playing and exploring this game than a level popup ever will be.

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Except that the player retention they’re probably focused on is the player retention from free weekends, which has nothing to do with end game.

I’m sure that you’re right as far as people leaving the game when they run out of stuff to do. But that is a different retention rate then I think Anet was focused on.

I think they weren’t getting enough new players to stay from free weekends, which is possibly why they hardly run them.

i dont think the key to player retention is slowing down things, its creating a hook. Something fast and interesting to keep them wanting to go further.
the best part about gw2 is the combat/freedom, they have very poor hooks.

they need work on some hooks, not on gimping the leveling process. Having leveling process inspire you to continue works better when you have extravagant cool things people want to do, or reach. gw2 doesnt really have that type of stuff.

I think you’re spot on with the hook angle – however I am of the opinion that all of these changes are actually intended as more hooks (albeit very cheap ones). Many recent changes seem to play into the psychology of the whole “Hey- ding ding ding- you just got something!” reward feedback loop, similar to how a slot machine lights up and plays noises when you win. Consider the changes to heart rewards, the trait popups, the chests that pop up in the corner from world events, the new level-up screen, etc. – shiny lights and bouncing icons. Nothing that actually made these things more rewarding, just perpetuating the illusion of improved reward. Even worse is the implementation of artificial “rewards” by locking formerly unlocked stuff and then pretending that the unlock is now a reward.

All the while things that could be actual rewards are in a relatively sad state. The loot still sucks, challenging combat is rare and endgame is still wanting.

Ashadow.6874:

You ignore your own invalid assumptions.

Invalid assumptions:

Assuming the impossible 500g increase per month. (Impossible because that would be 10g at Launch at least. Compounded 500g per 6 month time frame.) Precursors would all be nearing 2,010g a piece right now.

Looking at the correct prices of the most expensive Precursors (roughly 1400g let’s say it is 1500g.) Adjusting for 2 year lifespan of price. Would indicate an amount of 375g per 6 months.

Re: Increase rate – 500g per 6 months is approximately the rate of increase since the implementation of wardrobe, which is the time period that we were speaking about. For much of the life of the game prior to this prices were relatively flat it was a goal that could be achieved at a measured pace.

Re: Earnings -I would wager a substantial sum that the median player earnings are far closer to 2 gold/day than 10 gold/day. You are free to assume a different number, but it does not make mine “invalid”. If you read around this and other forums you will find examples describing the exact situation that I was illustrating, i.e. the price moves up faster than the player earns gold.

I see you edited out the part of your reply where you made the usual (wrong) assumptions and accusations about me that, because I feel that the current system is sub-optimal, I:
-Don’t do dungeons (I do)
-Don’t know how to make gold or earn gold fairly quickly
-Am not willing to put in the time and haven’t made a leg (have 3 and have dawn in the bank for 4th)
-Can do all of these things and still hold the opinion that the status quo can, does and will negatively impact the entertainment factor and longevity of the game

Regardless, the whole precursor debate is no longer productive. The interview news yesterday indicates that crafting/scavenger hunt is effectively dead. I think I’ll spend my free internet time on my woodworking hobby and not gaming forums anymore. I’ll probably end up enjoying the game more.

Ashadow.6874:

thehipone.6812:

Ashadow.6874:

thehipone.6812:

Tree.3916:

thehipone.6812:

Does it make sense (i.e. is it fun?) that a player’s progress towards that goal can be blocked or even erased because timmy plays 8 hours a day or has mom’s credit card?

Is that how you think it works? When Timmy logs in to play or uses mom’s credit card the game removes the gold from your inventory?

Or is your position that people who acquire gold faster than you are able to buy things faster than you is somehow a problem that requires fixing?

Understanding fail.

My point was that the gap never closes. You farmed 500g since the beginning of May. You started 1000g away from buying your pre. Meanwhile, timmy and his buddies have ground out 1500g and bid up the prices. You are still 1000g away from getting there = you made no progress.

^ Cleary not following the math which proves otherwise.

0g of 1000g = 0% on the way to said Precursor.
500g of 1500g = 33% on the way to said Precursor.

Clear and very well defined progress.

Conversation was in absolute terms.

At what point does progress equal 100% under the assumed scenario using your method?

Did you actually ask that? Of course you did.

Progress = 100% when you have the Precursor in your inventory.

Wrong. In the relative % terms that you tried to troll with, under the scenario that we were talking about (you farm 500g over 6 months but the price increases by the same amount) you are always 1000g away and it never reaches 100% using your relative measurement.

Vayne.8563:

kolompi.1287:

There’s nothing wrong with the rewards. Every activity you do in the game rewards you with something. Now if your gripe is with the fact that you won’t immediately get the item you want… well, aside from a few account bound things, you can actually buy things from the TP, thus reaching your goal.

Here is the actual problem: if those drops that you want (the exciting rewards) are more frequent for everyone, then they quickly become a boring “ah this thing again” experience for everyone and you’ll come back to the forums adding this same topic again.

I wouldn’t say there’s nothing wrong with the rewards. I’d say there needs to be more excitment surrounding rewards. Guild Wars 2 had things that could drop anywhere that gave you a bit of a chance of excitement. I mean yeah, you can get black lion keys from drops, but it’s too rare. I’m talking about stuff like the birthday weekends, where we got birthday cupcakes, or lunar tokens or whatever.

Right now, there’s very little excitement, and that’s not good for the game.

From the last sentence, I think you meant GW1. And IMO excitement comes from the reward, but it also comes from a “near miss”. Popping a locked chest and a q9 tactics Echovald shield falls on the ground and you id’d it to be +10 armor vs. earth. You didn’t really get any reward – the shield is merch food – but it still felt like you got something. Even if it was only a chance at a good skin + stats roll.

GW2 – rares don’t feel like a near miss, but rather just another ecto (or maybe 2 mithril ore) and exotics are so infrequent that if you do get one and it turns out to be a speargun it’s more like “oh great, my one weekly random exotic is a crappy speargun”

Barring a rework of weapon skills, condition vs. power and/or something to make underwater combat super interesting, there is no reason for the low end ones to rise. Most of the lower end ones are underwater (used infrequently) or are on weapons that are sub-optimal for classes that can use them (e.g. Torch).

I think there is also a something like a “white elephant” effect with the high price of might and magic gifts now and this acts to suppress demand for these inferior weapons. In order to unlock the full functionality of a cheap precursor and make the leg you still need to spend over 1k gold. Yes, it is cheaper than expensive pre plus gifts, but it is still a huge pile of coin.

Ashadow.6874:

thehipone.6812:

Tree.3916:

thehipone.6812:

Does it make sense (i.e. is it fun?) that a player’s progress towards that goal can be blocked or even erased because timmy plays 8 hours a day or has mom’s credit card?

Is that how you think it works? When Timmy logs in to play or uses mom’s credit card the game removes the gold from your inventory?

Or is your position that people who acquire gold faster than you are able to buy things faster than you is somehow a problem that requires fixing?

Understanding fail.

My point was that the gap never closes. You farmed 500g since the beginning of May. You started 1000g away from buying your pre. Meanwhile, timmy and his buddies have ground out 1500g and bid up the prices. You are still 1000g away from getting there = you made no progress.

^ Cleary not following the math which proves otherwise.

0g of 1000g = 0% on the way to said Precursor.
500g of 1500g = 33% on the way to said Precursor.

Clear and very well defined progress.

Conversation was in absolute terms.

At what point does progress equal 100% under the assumed scenario using your method?

Tree.3916:

No, I completely understood. You strike me as one of those people who assumes anyone who disagrees with them must not understand them because if they understood their point the sheer obviousness of it would cause instant agreement. What you fail to understand is that two people can look at the same data set and draw differing conclusions even if they agree on the underlying numbers.

Your example is flawed for the following reasons…

1. At the most basic level, anyone who is so casual as to only be able to acquire 500g in 3 months (something like 5g per day) should consider whether their goals match their commitment. Perhaps it is reasonable, perhaps it isn’t I make no judgments. But if you do feel like you’re barely treading water to you goal perhaps some re-evaluation is in order. If my goal was to be in the top 1% of competitive PvP and I was only able to put in about 40 minutes per day of practice (roughly 5g worth of playtime) and I found I wasn’t really rising much on the leaderboard I would similarly reconsider if my goal was reasonable.

2. You cherry picked a time post feature patch when demand for Dusk skyrocketed. Just as similarly, I could say that if he had begin grinding January 1, and had 500g on April 1, he would only have been 300g away from his goal. If he had started May 1 2013 and had 500g by Aug 1 2013 he would only have been 100g away.

3. The gap closes. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29185 Does that look like inflationary spiral to you? That looks to me like a fairly stable price that had a demand shock in April 2014 and has already begun to level off. If you argue the gap never closes I would have to cite the specific rate of inflation you claim (i.e. the price of dusk is increasing 5g per day and that rate is unchanging) as well as prove that a player’s earnings cannot equal it.

1. Again, I am happy with people achieving their goals at different rates. I guess we fundamentally disagree on the point that two people should be able to progress towards their long term goal at a measured pace. If player A plays twice as much as B, I’m fine with player A finishing in half the time. It is bad IMO when the system is set up currently, and it actually takes player B 4x as long. (see below)

2. A player starting the grind any time from somewhere around last November until now would still be SoL and would not have caught up. The selection of an illustrative time period does not mean that it is the only period that could apply.

3. In stock parlance, that trendline is not broken. See these others and tell me that it is leveling off: Zap
Spark
legend

Drawing a trendline connecting the bottom buy price dips (e.g. Mar 19 = 562g, Jun 13 884 for legend) you get an increase of about 3.75 gold/day. The other three are also around 3.7g/day increase.

If earning 5g/day, fully 75% of your effort goes to just make up for the increase and only 25% of your effort is effective. This functions as a highly regressive tax that severely penalizes those happy to achieve their goal over time. I’m not surprised that the “I earn 50g/day” crowd doesn’t feel it, because they dont.

Call the inflation rate I, and earnings per day A, and price today P0. The point where the person will close the gap is (A-I)*# of days = P0.
If we take P0 = 750 gold, with I = 3.7 g/day and A =5 g/day as above, it will take 578 days for someone starting now to close the gap (at a price of ~2900g). At 10g/day it takes 120 days to catch up (price ~1200g). So the person playing half as much needs to farm over 2x the gold and “work” 2x harder in total.

Again, not an issue of not wanting to put in the work – IMO the core issue of being able to put in work at a reasonable pace and still make progress.

Tree.3916:

thehipone.6812:

Does it make sense (i.e. is it fun?) that a player’s progress towards that goal can be blocked or even erased because timmy plays 8 hours a day or has mom’s credit card?

Is that how you think it works? When Timmy logs in to play or uses mom’s credit card the game removes the gold from your inventory?

Or is your position that people who acquire gold faster than you are able to buy things faster than you is somehow a problem that requires fixing?

Understanding fail.

My point was that the gap never closes. You farmed 500g since the beginning of May. You started 1000g away from buying your pre. Meanwhile, timmy and his buddies have ground out 1500g and bid up the prices. You are still 1000g away from getting there = you made no progress.

mtpelion.4562:

I think the point has been lost on a lot of people Smooth, and I’m finding it hilarious.

The threads that say “precursors are too expensive” all have a common thread: They are all talking about the MOST DEMANDED weapons in the game, and complaining that they don’t have one. If they wanted a legendary, they have a cheap option available but they don’t want that, they want the same one that everyone else wants, which means that they can’t have it unless they are willing to spend a ton of gold on it (or create it themselves in the forge). Smooth is simply illustrating that there is a huge price range available and that suggests that the “problem” is high demand.

Whenever there is high demand and low supply, you have to offer more money than everyone else if you want to buy one. There are legendary options available for significantly less money because their demand is very, very low.

Is a legendary:

a) Merely a super-luxury item
or
b) The main long-term goal in a cosmetic-focused game

and if b) Does it make sense (i.e. is it fun?) that a player’s progress towards that goal can be blocked or even erased because timmy plays 8 hours a day or has mom’s credit card?

25g liquid, but I just finished Howler on Monday.

Much more if my bank and hoarding is taken into account… 250 of each cooking mat except chili peppers and lemongrass (getting there), 250 of kittens fine mats, gemstones used to be full, but I sold off a bunch of sunstones to the spike. The one side effect of this is that you get to learn exactly how often things drop, because they don’t disappear when you deposit collectibles… “Where did all these eggs come from?!?”

Underground…mining…lava…elemental.. GAH! No more dredge fractal!

(Volcanic probably generally fits the OP theme as well, although I hate it a little bit less)

Beldin.5498:

Morsus.5106:

thehipone.6812:

Going the Diablo III method and nuking the TP while simultaneously super-buffing drops? It seemed to work in that game.

They would have to super, super buff drops IMO. Rares drop like greens, precursor’s have a 10% chance, each time you run a dungeon you get one more lodestone than last time (1 the first time, 2 the second time, 3 the third time, etc.). Something tells me ANet won’t do that though.

They also would totally change the stat system on items … so that they have random
stats and we would endless farm to find the “perfect” stats .. since thats what Diablo
is all about. Its just an endless grind to get some statpoints more.

Played D1 and D2 for long years .. but in D3 i was already bored after 1 week since
i personally now need some optical character customization .. else its no fun
any longer just to grind for gear to have better stats on a generic looking toon.

No, I would also be completely against variable stats and most definitely do not want a stat gear grind in GW2. I’m also interested in more visual customization options.

Now that we have the wardrobe though, it would be nice if there was a way to collect/acquire the various “named” skins in a path that is not grind/buy gold —> buy off of TP. Let’s say I want the skin of Al’ir’aska because voltaic spears are awesome. The chances of me actually looting it are, for practical purposes, zero. Exotic drops are infrequent enough, plus needing to be a specific weapon, then a specific skin. Sure, I could try to forge for it, but then I need to acquire a pile of exotic spears and if I need to buy them to toss into the forge, I might as well just buy the one I want.

I’d take skin unlocks as drops, separated from the actual weapon. i.e. Al’ir’aska the exotic spear still drops with the usual frequency and can be salvaged, forged, used, etc. However there could also be more frequent account bound drops of skin unlocks that are sort of like recipe sheets – double click to unlock the skin in the wardrobe and that’s it. Heck, group them by region so I know where to target if I want a specific one. Can’t forge, salvage and you actually need another spear to transmute it onto. It is my hypothesis that nearly all of the demand for exotic weapons is to flush in the forge and the demand for the skins is relatively low, save a few exceptions like Crystal Guardian or Cobalt, so this wouldn’t tank the exotic market. Might actually goose sales of trans charges too.

Anything to make loot more interesting. I can remember exactly two exciting drops in my 2k hours – Dawn and Jormag’s Breath. Anything else was only exciting because it could be sold for a decent chunk of gold.

Going the Diablo III method and nuking the TP while simultaneously super-buffing drops? It seemed to work in that game.

Might be more fun to remove weapons and armor from the TP and turn it into a commodity exchange for crafting materials and the like. Minis, skins, consumables and other stuff can probably stay too. I like to be able to find my own stuff, as long as the chance is reasonable to find it.

See data on kit and yield in previous thread here

Sure wish forum search worked…at least google is functional.

Always eat Food and use a sharpening stone/Oil/crystal

Gives a % boost to XP and also helps kill a little faster. You can make your own if you are into crafting or the cheapest ones only cost a few copper on the TP.

There was a rumor of them dropping from basilisks. I don’t really want to give fuel to that if untrue, but I noticed that there are lvl 80 basilisks in Dry Top on the cliffs east of the oasis. Has anyone ever gotten an eye to drop from them?

mtpelion.4562:

Essence Snow.3194:

mtpelion.4562:

I mean, you’re a farmer, right? That means that you DIRECTLY BENEFIT from flippers EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Why would you want to cut your own hands off?

Please elaborate on this further.

Flippers place buy orders. Other Flippers place higher buy orders in order to be “first in line” to buy.

Farmers get items that have buy orders out for them. Farmers fill buy orders.

Ergo, Flippers compete with each other for the highest buy order which means that they are increasing the amount that Farmers get when filling buy orders.

Flippers place sell orders to move their goods that they bought with buy orders. Other Flippers place lower sell orders in order to be “first in line” to sell.

Farmers get items that can be listed to sell. Patient farmers place sell orders.

Ergo, Flippers compete with each other for the lowest sell order which means that they are decreasing the amount that Farmers get when they sell their things.

I’m not against flipping at all, but just pointing out that what flippers do is more to move prices closer to the 15% spread (or less). They are selling liquidity to impatient people who want to buy/sell now. “Pure” flipping won’t really shift the market to overall higher prices.

dlonie.6547:

Silberfisch.3046:

Cormac.3871:

If the gold reward was removed from dungeons the lfg tool would die. This is why I am confident it will stay.

Not to mention there are actually people who do dungeons because they a) are interested in the story and b) simply like doing dungeons.

True, but these reasons aren’t enough to keep most players coming back to run the same paths for two years….. ;-)

I’d love to see a dynamically adjusting gold reward by path based on how many times a particular path is done vs. the others in the same dungeon. example: If 99% of people run P1 and only 1% do p 2 or 3 then the next day the reward for p1 drops from 1g to 75s and p2 &3 moves up from 1g to 1.25g. If the imbalance continues, the price will move again the next day until more balanced distribution is achieved. Update the rewards once a day at reset and maybe put a floor of 50s/path or something. At least the longer paths could move to a reward ratio that is more attractive.

Sort of how this beer exchange bar works.

thehipone.6812:

Venom, less than 10 gold off the TP after the karka attack living story event.
Tooth of Frostfang, TP buy order ~500gold maybe 4-5 months ago

Too many hours, probably closing in on 2k.

Happy update to add:

Dawn from a random Risen in the south of Cursed Shore.

Hard to explain, but this one feels different because I acquired it myself and didn’t just grind gold to buy it like Tooth. Funny enough, I had just bought Howl a few days before getting the Dawn…choices choices.

I’ll add a couple, might be related to previous points. Basically you need to develop a deep understanding of a particular market:

1. Try to understand how many of a particular item move in a day (this will likely vary weeekday vs. weekend). Whether crafting or flipping – start by making/buying then listing 5, then 25, and increase as the market will bear.

2. The websites are great tools, but the single time point calculations of profit that they are rarely useful for long. Look at weekly and longer trends, cycles, etc. In many cases it makes sense to buy on tues, wed or thurs and sell on the weekend.

3. Sometimes you need to just eat the loss and move on. If the market is “broken” – i.e. an update or something completely nuked the market, just relist/dump and put the money to work elsewhere. No sense tying up 50g in capital for 4 months to avoid a 2g loss when you can make much more by having that money liquid again.

Max your kills per hour and get your account MF up, shoot for 200% at least. Find places with reasonably high density of mobs that drop the mat that you want and find a build/strategy that gets you 400+ kills/hour. Depending on the mob and area this might be a zerk build that kills one at a time or it might be a condi necro with epidemic in which you pull 3-8 enemies at a time and then kill all at once. The big factor is how far apart the enemies are and how much time is spent running between kills. You’ll be looking at about 20 t6 and nearly 100 t5 /hour on average if you achieve the high kill/hour rate. I also never set out to farm venoms, dust and totems specifically, as these tend to be cheaper than the other t6. Better for farm 3 bloods and sell to buy 5 venoms.

The dungeon —> buy t6 advice is getting to be worse due to the price rise because everyone thinks that these things can’t be farmed and is chasing the mats with gold instead of farming them.

Ayrilana.1396:

thehipone.6812:

mtpelion.4562:

….snip…

The current rise in precursor prices is the result of the wardrobe feature. LOTS of players are going for legendaries right now which has increased demand for the precursors. This demand is temporary as you only need to unlock the skin once (twice if you want the title). Once the people who have been playing for 2 years and have a lot more assets have acquired their legendaries, the prices will fall to meet the offers being made by those with less assets.

So, I reiterate, he doesn’t know how to use buy orders.

I know what caused the rise. So at the 50g/week rate, how much longer would my mr. hypothetical have to farm to go from 900g to the point where he is top buy order? 1 more month? 6 more months? Another year?

And I reiterate, the unknown path is the heart of the problem. Buy orders really don’t have much to do with it except saving you a bit once you’ve finally caught up, if ever.

I also can’t believe people defend a system where one player’s long term goal can be effectively blocked or at the very least obstructed by those with a credit card.

Prove that people are buying precursors with their credit cards and it’s having a negative impact on everyone else.

I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you were new to modern games….but yes, people spend dumb amounts of $$. Even on legendaries

Demand >> supply. Buying a pre with $ chews up supply that would otherwise be available for those players bidding on a pre using in-game acquired gold. The $ purchased gold comes from other players who buy gems for gold and can therefore be assumed to want gem shop items (i.e. the $ purchased gold was not previously chasing a precursor). Therefore, purchases of gold for $ adds to the total amount of gold chasing a pre and, when the pre is bought it reduces the supply. Both factors that would drive prices up.

mtpelion.4562:

….snip…

The current rise in precursor prices is the result of the wardrobe feature. LOTS of players are going for legendaries right now which has increased demand for the precursors. This demand is temporary as you only need to unlock the skin once (twice if you want the title). Once the people who have been playing for 2 years and have a lot more assets have acquired their legendaries, the prices will fall to meet the offers being made by those with less assets.

So, I reiterate, he doesn’t know how to use buy orders.

I know what caused the rise. So at the 50g/week rate, how much longer would my mr. hypothetical have to farm to go from 900g to the point where he is top buy order? 1 more month? 6 more months? Another year?

And I reiterate, the unknown path is the heart of the problem. Buy orders really don’t have much to do with it except saving you a bit once you’ve finally caught up, if ever.

I also can’t believe people defend a system where one player’s long term goal can be effectively blocked or at the very least obstructed by those with a credit card.

mtpelion.4562:

thehipone.6812:

Do you see the problem yet?

Yes. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to use buy orders.

Nice attempted troll, but at no point would he have had enough to place a buy order that was even close.

Sauzo.6821:

I find it kind of funny that probably most of the people crying about precursor crafting are the ones who REALLY want a precursor. If you REALLY want a precursor, then work for it and start grinding. I mean I started playing the game at head start and in that amount of time I managed to buy 6 precursors and craft 6 legendaries. Now granted I do play a lot but I have also made 6 legendaries. You need to prioritize your wants. You cant buy all that shiny armor and skins and toys if you want a precursor. You need to turn into Scrouge Mcduck and sell everything you get and hoard every copper you get. You will probably also have to play through some times you would rather not. Getting a precursor fast is not an easy or necessarily fun thing. If you want to make it fun, then casually play and after about a year you will have one. Even casually, you should not have a problem making 10g a day. That’s 300g a month not counting anything really good dropping. So in about 90 days, you could throw in a buy order for a precursor and probably get it. Only 90 days. But again, it boils down to how bad do you want it and how much willpower do you have.

Ok, let’s run with this…let’s say a new player got the game last Christmas and spent 3 months leveling up and whatever and at the end of March decided that he wanted to go for twilight. He plays 5 days a week and can make the 10g/day that you cited. The other 2 days he plays sports or works or something and basically only logs on to do the dailies. He is sitting there at the end of march and says “ok, 850g for Dusk, I can make 10g a day so I’ll start grinding away at it and I’ll have it in 4 months or so. No biggie, I’m happy to work for it”.

So, on April 1 he sits 850g away from his precursor and starts plugging away on the champ/karka/world boss train or whatever for an hour a day to hit his 10g (yes, even when it isn’t fun or he would rather do something else in game). For 18 weeks from April 1 to July 31 he grinds away, 5 days/week, 10g/day = 50g/week. Sells everything, buys nothing. And on July 31 he sits with 900g in the bank ready to buy his weapon. So he clicks on the TP to buy it and… it is 1600g (today it is 1500). He started April 850g away and even after 4 months of unfun grinding, he is still 700g (600g in todays price) away.

Do you see the problem yet?

I think the heart of the problem is that people just want a known path to getting it. And “buy it on the TP” used to be a reasonable solution to this. For a good chunk of this game’s history you knew, “ok, if I save up 750gold in 4 months, I can buy Dusk”. Have a look at the price history of some of the precursors. Examples here (click on All on the graph to see full history): Dusk Legend

Note the big, flat, stable periods of time after Jan 2013. August 6, 2013 introduced dungeon gold rewards, champ bags and the pavilion so the bump is not unexpected in hindsight given the new gold supply. But prices leveled off pretty quickly after that, and you could earn gold faster, so catching up wasn’t such an issue.

Compare it all to the recent behavior – up up and away with no sign of stopping. Uncertainty, coupled with the inability to farm gold fast enough to keep up with the rise should naturally cause people to want to quit. It feels even worse when you wonder if it is all designed to intentionally be so inconvenient that people are basically given the choice of pay $ or give up.

My condi-farm build

Fine in general open world PvE, great solo farming, tough as nails. To avoid the downside of condition ramp-up time, I basically always aim to fight as many enemies at a time as possible. Pull as much as possible, epidemic, collect loot. I farm a lot underwater with trident (Kraitkin!). Hence, Spite VI because of the liberal use of plague blast to transfer BiP self-bleeds and inflict dumbfire.

I don’t claim it to be terribly original. I run the vampiric stuff for flavor mostly (I also hate staff, so I don’t use the usual staff condimancer traits). Siphon adds a touch of extra damage and sustain when facing packs and also keeps your health topped up so you can run directly into the next fight without waiting to be out-of-combat to heal up. The vamp numbers and heal can be pretty funny with trident #5 though.

So many bearbows exist because so many people who want to “help” you kill by using longbow #4 on the mob that you are meleeing.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

Goatjugsoup.8637:

do the daily every day and the monthly every month and you can buy unidentified dye to sell for 25-35s with your laurels (not sure if thats the best way to monetise laurels or not), certain event items you can get will become more valuable the further away from the event we get (ellen kiel representation button is selling for 2g+ these days).

make sure when you are farming to use a food item that gives magic find

It is not, you can buy a heavy crafting bag for 1 laurel and that will always give you 3 random t6 mats, so you will get ~1g-1.5g per laurel depending on what mats drop.

I don’t think that it is best to advise a new player to monetize laurels. Sure, someone who has1k hours and has already geared up may have 100 laurels that they don’t need. A new player should save laurels for ascended gear and ascended recipes. At the very least, they should save them until they have played enough to decide that they do not want to go for ascended gear.

tl:dr – laurels are more valuable than their gold equivalent for a new player.

As for a quick money maker – go to southsun cove from LA. Do the Under new Management jumping puzzle and then run north to Dappled shores looking for blooming passiflora. There are usually 2 in dappled shores. Harvest and sell the passion flowers for 20s/ea. Takes a couple of minutes for 40-50 silver.

Eulolia.2467:

Why ranged? If you melee this guy you hit him twice. Goes from 100% to about 80% from casting hundred blades once, and there’s like 1 thing to dodge which he takes about 20 seconds to cast.

… snip…

^ this. Just like a couple of the dragon toes, close range seemed to hit multiple times. I was on Necro with traited warhorn #5 and the lifesteal on hit trait. The fountain of numbers was hilarious and melted 20-30% of health in about 5 seconds.

Venom, less than 10 gold off the TP after the karka attack living story event.
Tooth of Frostfang, TP buy order ~500gold maybe 4-5 months ago

Too many hours, probably closing in on 2k.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

- A great evil noone has seen since forever is getting stronger and with his power spreads his threat all over the world.
- This great evil send out his minions to cast fear and destruction all over the place.
- A fellowship.
- Freeing a big bunch of trapped ghosts.

Am I the only one who is curious what will be the one ring and where we will find mount doom in GW2?

Release of Legendary Jewelry confirmed!

There are special explorer things that are out of the way and do give you a small, unique reward. Riff Sootclaw is the one I’m thinking of at the moment (Made an appreciation thread a while back). Perfectly done IMO – the “garage” is out of the way, not next to a POI. There is a little mini activity with dialogue. The reward is not worth any gold, but is specific and neat.

Still want MOAR! of these.

When you have a dream that Dawn dropped for you, but it was a crappy blue, level 80 version instead of the exotic. (Like those trololol trinkets from the various world events e.g. Signet of Grenth)

Depends if you count Southsun Settler’s trinkets. My usual farming there got 0.5333/hour based on drop stats that I kept. Probably your best bet for cheap dark matter. (~250% MF)

Other exotics – I’m lucky to find one a month. Usually from a jumping puzzle chest .

Cyrill Faust.9340:

thehipone.6812:

For science! Just brutally murdered 100 lvl 80 moas in frostgorge over 20 minutes. Results:

5 slabs of poultry meat
18 eggs
12 t5 claw
3 t6 claw
4 green items
1 blue
1 white
11 junk sharp talons

Honestly expected more meat. Raptors may indeed be better.

Thank you for the research I never have the patience to document this kind of stuff, but 100 is still a relatively small sample size. I’m also unsure of the effect of magic find on food item drops.

yeah, I knew that 100 is not tons, but it’s a start. I was rather shocked that I got almost as many t6 claws as meat. I wanted to try to be sure to avoid DR from nuking the same 20 critters in a loop. For the record, my MF was 249%.

For science! Just brutally murdered 100 lvl 80 moas in frostgorge over 20 minutes. Results:

5 slabs of poultry meat
18 eggs
12 t5 claw
3 t6 claw
4 green items
1 blue
1 white
11 junk sharp talons

Honestly expected more meat. Raptors may indeed be better.

pdavis.8031:

Obtena.7952:

thehipone.6812:

While you 3 or 4 duke it out, I’m just going to leave this here:

http://thelittlebluebook.co.uk/

Do they have one debunking the ‘round’ Earth theory as well?

No, just the one about the sky being “blue” and of course the heresy that is “gravity”

Wow, my joke must have hit a little close to home to bring out the knives like that.