The economy isn’t broken. So your plan is to break it, then fix the economy by taking back all the things you just did? Why?
How about a macro that presses the left mouse button multiple times? Opening stacks of champ bags and consuming stacks of essence goes by so much faster and not really affecting gameplay.
“Using AutoHotKey to map multiple key functions to a single keypress, regardless of the intended use or outcome, is a violation of the above rule.”
it never had any real effect on how we interacted with npcs or behaved in game.
New dialogue options appeared on certain npcs depending on your personality, however none of them were designed to restrict gameplay. They had their use, but they weren’t a big gameplay mechanic.
An MMO is a constantly evolving game, new things are introduced over time and old or unpopular things are phased out or abandoned altogether.
The personality system has effectively been abandoned, and probably was never fully activated in the first place. Plans change throughout development, it was probably dropped sometime before or during beta testing and the bits that were already in the game were left there because they don’t have any real effect on gameplay and removing them would be expensive and risk creating bugs.
Are you using the real Dusk or another sword transmuted with a Dusk skin? A transmuted weapon is not Dusk, even if it looks like Dusk.
You’re welcome to your opinion, but I grew up just before the “everyone’s a special snowflake” era of parenting, and sometimes you just have to find a tactful way to say “you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.” JS will explain and has explained concepts related to the TP and economy, but there are individuals such as Byron who constantly ignore these explanations and make the same accusations over and over because it gets more attention than saying “oh, you’re right, I didn’t think of that.”
If I were in JS’s place, I would have been fired or at least forbidden to so much as look at the forums months ago.
Most of the stuff I see on here is just “You suck this sucks everything sucks because I can’t make a fortune MY way” Etc.
You just summed up the entertaining half of the BLTC forum.
The other half is very informative and helpful, but less animated and humorous.
And JS is the rare individual who can be both at the same time.
The 5% listing fee is paid immediately and not refunded, whether you cancel the listing or if it sells. There is an additional 10% sales fee if it does sell, so a 100g listing costs 5g if you list it then cancel, or 15g if you list it and sell it.
I don’t have to be an economist to see this. Anyone with a little thinking and a little playtime in this game can see through this system. I also don’t think that an ANet employee should answer posts in a manner you usually do. Since you often recommend us that we should learn economics, I’d like to give you a personal advice: Maybe you should learn community realitions to avoid insulting customers.
I appreciate JS’s honesty and directness. Most of the complaints come from ignorance, along the lines of “fix this bug right now” and “I could make better armor models in an afternoon with an etch-a-sketch” kind of thing. The reality is that these things are much more complicated than people on the outside of the industry realize. If it were a matter of merely pushing a few buttons or tweaking some numbers, bug fixes and game changes would happen in hours or days, not weeks and months.
The devs should be more direct with their answers, and say something like “we’ll work on it when we have time,” or “maybe in the future but it’s not even being discussed right now.” Of course, this kind of thing is bad for business, most people don’t want honesty, they want to be told what they already think.
I honestly don’t know that much about economic or do I care.
All I know is I need to farm much more to get the things I want.
Many people probably felt the same way, that is why they are complaining.
Actually playing the game (aka moving from zone to zone, trying different content once in a while, doing things you enjoy) has the same effect (the accumulation of coin and items you can sell for coin) with two important benefits:
1: This is not subject to Anet’s diminishing returns because you are not doing the same thing or staying in the same place very long.
2: It’s a lot more fun.
I suggest trying it sometime.
I think I just witnessed a John Smith “cold burn” in real time. It was magnificent. AND a pdavis Oh snap! in real time. Amazing.
This is the kind of thing that makes me wish I had grandkids, so I can tell them about it.
Stop complaining about too much “XXX items”. Anet might actually listen and actually nerf it.
In before legendary armor need 1000 dragonite “brick”
They could have done this a few months ago, but at this point the mats are like karma – without a sink to throw the stuff into, many players have way too much stockpiled. So tying Legendary gear to dragonite etc. would just lead to a small number of players running around in Legendary armor within two days while the rest complain.
Actually, the funny thing is they continue to stockpile them anyway…
If you do not have a use for the account bound materials, just delete them. At this point, even if Anet makes them tradable, there are so many players with dozens of stacks of each mat that they would be virtually worthless on the open market.
Spiritwood plank, bolt of Damask, Elonial leather square, Deldrimor steel ingot are all tradable and many players make a good bit of coin selling them to those who don’t want to wait to make what they need.
Ascended crafting has been around a while and you’re not the first person to want to make something. Why should Anet change the method they’ve set up after thousands of players have followed it to make their own Ascended gear? They didn’t complain that it’s too much bother to go through.
Again, how does anyone but you benefit? Do the thousands of people who already did what you don’t want to do get their time and money back?
So you don’t want to do what thousands of other players have already done, and want the devs to make changes to the game that will benefit you. How does this benefit other players and/or makes for a better game?
P.S. No idea why your swear filter catches the word – A.c.k.n.o.w.l.e.d.g.e.m.e.n.t
It’s not the word, certain letter combinations trigger it, even when they are parts of different words. In this case, it’s the F in “of” followed by ack.
AFAIK, they are still planning to introduce a crafting/quest/something method for obtaining a precursor, and also announced last year there would eventually be non-weapon Legendary gear. When these are announced, T6 and maybe T5 crafting materials supplies are going to dry up faster than a mud puddle in hell.
If you’re looking for long term investments, keep an eye on prices and buy as much as you can of any crafting mat that could be used for Legendaries, including trinkets/jewelry/backpieces.
Rare skins speculation.
High upfront cost, low maintenance, decent profit potential, but low volume.
Basically, buy up some rare skins when they are dropping (i.e. cheap) then hold on to them until the price goes up.
The only real risk is ArenaNet dropping a new source of the skin, but that’s pretty infrequent and somewhat predictable going forward.
LS season two is going to be repeatable content, so you know some players are going to “farm” these events to get rare drops and such… as well as new players buying past events through the gem shop to get rewards they missed. This will probably have an effect on the rare skins market, similar to the recent reintroduction of past rewards. Your long term investments may not be so safe any more.
Thank you for your input.
Anybody with some usable piece of advice or in a similar situation as I am?
Send me your money and I’ll put it to work. When I’m rich, I’ll tell you what I did.
Creating more threads about this won’t make it go any faster. You opened the ticket on a weekend, while there are always CS staff available, I’m sure there are less working the weekend than during the weekday and if a senior CS agent needs to work on your ticket it won’t happen quickly.
Making threats isn’t going to get you what you want, either. Go ahead and play another game, if you’ve gone for so long without playing that you can’t even remember a character’s name, another few days won’t matter.
What if you play the game because, you know, you like playing it? Because you have fun or something, not because you get phat lootz or whatever.
Actually it’s a pretty elegant situation. The hardcore farmers are not going to pay real money unless you make them, I suspect most are disable, unemployed, or in school so they have more free time than money to spend in the first place. So if you make it too hard to get things through farming they will move on to a game that’s more to their liking.
Oh, I totally get it.
It’s just interesting that it’s one of the few businesses with “the more you consume, the less you have to pay” model.
Do you mean this game, specifically, or the F2P genre? Because there are tons of games out there you can play as much as you want without paying a cent.
I used to call up local computers that hosted BBS’s years ago and chat and play games for free, before the internet became popular, and if I look around long enough I’m sure I can find a box of floppy disks with some shareware games on it.
This isn’t really anything new. The quality varies, but generally speaking a small percentage of users paying for games will cover the costs, anything above that is profit.
Having said that, I do think it’s funny that this model means that the people who consume the service most have the least incentive to pay. If you look at it purely as “hours of service provided” by ArenaNet, the hardcore farmer who gets so much gold she’s never tempted to buy gold with gems pays nothing in spite of being in game forty or more hours a week, while the casual player who plays an hour or two on weekends has much more incentive to plunk down real cash to shortcut toward in-game rewards.
Actually it’s a pretty elegant situation. The hardcore farmers are not going to pay real money unless you make them, I suspect most are disable, unemployed, or in school so they have more free time than money to spend in the first place. So if you make it too hard to get things through farming they will move on to a game that’s more to their liking.
The activity that they provide fuels the economy, giving the TP the crafting mats and rare gear that more casual players will buy rather than farm themselves. So both sides are necessary to keeping the game going, Anet gives up a little cash in order to create an environment where casuals can get what they want quickly, and farmers can get what they want cheaply.
Players who spend gold instead of real money for gems are responsible for the rising rate. You spend gold for gems instead of real money. If you want to blame someone for your inconvenience, look in the mirror.
You cannot “wipe the slate clean” and start over. You will need a new serial # and a new email address.
I really like the token system but with a twist: You get to choose the precursor, but it’s account bound. This way it isn’t for money making but for the people who actually want a specific Legendary. The Legendary would be normal. If you want to sell it you have to go through the production of the Legendary.
This is likely to happen when new Legendaries are introduced, whether they are weapons or other kinds of gear. Ascended crafting already results in account bound items, so it’s a small step to "here’s an ascended quality precursor, it’s crafted the same way but requires an additional “Legendary” component and it’s account bound."
They cannot do this with existing precursors, however, because it’s too late to change existing ones and will cause massive confusion if some Dusks are account bound when they drop and some are not.
Goldseller says “I can pay $15 a month so my army of bots can make gold for me to sell 24/7? Sign me up! Lemme just grab my list of stolen cc#s…”
The idea falls apart in every direction. The game isn’t broke, don’t try to fix it by breaking it first.
I’m kinda surprised anyone is left who still thinks this is going to happen. When was the most recent mention of it by ArenaNet?
Somewhere in the announcements for the April patch, they mentioned this project was pushed back due to changes in the rewards system.
Basically, the addition of the wardrobe and the Festival upset the economy a bit, driving up the demand for unique skins and crafting materials, respectively. The announcement that precursor crafting/acquisition/hunt is coming in a matter of weeks will upset the economy a lot more. If the recent economic activity was a thunderstorm, this announcement will cause a hurricane.
I have a similar problem. After sitting at the local coffee shop sipping ice water and making use of their free wi-fi for half an hour, they tell me I have to buy something or leave! Why should I have to pay money just to use their services, I bought a coffee there once a couple years ago. Isn’t that enough?
Because without RNG, rewards would all become common as dirt. No prestige. No desire to have. So once you take away the desire to have the reward, you take away the desire to do the content that gives the reward.
Along with the desire to log in, the desire to buy things from the gem shop, and the desire to provide Anet employees with a paycheck. Then Anet loses the desire to keep the servers running.
Someone feel free to poke holes in this as I am sure I ignored something important.
Players will see only “MF guarantees a precursor if I keep throwing stuff in,” which leads to a rush to buy “stuff” that cleans out the cheaper options leaving only very expensive “stuff” for anyone whether they want a precursor or not.
Look at account bound Magic Find: millions of units of green and blue gear were sold on the TP for a loss because people didn’t need them. Then you could salvage them for Magic Find boosts and the listings at vendor price + 1c were bought out, then more expensive listings were bought out until the lowest prices were several times what they were.
Even though it takes thousands of them (hundreds of thousands?) to reach maximum MF, you can see the progress you make with each salvage so that drives players to keep salvaging them. This change increased demand for items that no one wanted.
The problem is that rares and exotics already sell for a lot more than vendor price + 1c. There is no oversupply sitting at rock-bottom prices to be used up, because they are already useful for salvage and MF fuel. So the reasonably priced items would sell out quickly, leaving the only available rares and exotics at very high prices, putting them out of reach to the average player. And since the average player cannot acquire MF fuel to forge P times and get his precursor, he’s still forced to grind gold and buy it from the TP.
This makes things worse, not better.
Alternative is the fun activity should be the most rewarding and efficient and the “farm gold and buy in TP” should be the less efficient thing.
Greetings.
Anet takes action when a single “farming” activity gives too much rewards by adjusting the activity or its rewards to fall in line with their intentions whenever possible. But they cannot determine what is fun for you, the players do that and make choices for themselves about what activities they want to concentrate on. Generally speaking “have fun” and “make gold” involve very different activities.
But in reality it turns out that it is often much easier to get stuff not as a direct drop or achievment but indirect by buying it in the TP with gold. And the most efficient way to farm gold is not (always) the way with the most fun. Because of this GW2 has some really “grindy taste”, sometimes even more than other games with less choice.
There is always going to be a most efficient and/or fastest method to get what you want. If you don’t care about speed and efficiency, it’s good that there are other, more fun options you can investigate. For a while, everyone interested in fast money ran COF path 1, but that doesn’t mean the other dungeons disappeared, just that that one was the easiest and fastest way to get to the loot at the end.
So this doesn’t solve the your problem, it just creates new ones by pricing rares, exotics, and crafting mats out of the reach of average players. So not only can they not make progress towards the Legendary, now they can’t even gear up their characters unless they grind karma for exotic gear.
This idea still ties the acquisition of a precursor to the market, and is driven by the amount of gold you have available to spend. Since most players don’t have enough gold on hand to buy thousands of rares, they still won’t be able to obtain a precursor any faster than before. And by directly tying it to other markets you’re just pulling those other markets into the hole.
If you’re going to create a new method of acquisition, you need to tie it to in-game activities that don’t involve gold. That’s why they use time-gated activities like the daily/monthly Laurel reward, they can control how long it takes to acquire ascended trinkets because a price of 25 Laurels, for example, requires a minimum of 15 days (1 per day plus the 10 Laurels for the montly reward) and having a lot of money in your bank account doesn’t change that.
Giving out account-bound tokens for World Boss kills, jumping puzzle completions, PS completion, etc. is a viable way to obtain a precursor that can only be done by playing the game, and there is no shortcut for players with fat wallets. They could utilize a system already in place by crafting a precursor from bloodstone bricks, empyreal stars, dark matter etc. because these are already in the game and account bound. But at this point, so many players have hoards of these materials that there would be an immediate flood of precursors so they would probably need to introduce an entirely new token system if they went this route.
And, given the complaints about ascended crafting and the bound materials already, it would just create more problems.
While I like the token idea, I somehow think that there is no extra currency needed. Just make the equivalent of an increased chance working in the background. As soon as you get a precursor it goes back to zero.
.
The main flaw I see with this and the tokens idea is that a precursor is guaranteed after “P” number of attempts. That sets the value of the precursor at roughly 4P x the cheapest rare/exotic that can be used. So if it takes a maximum of 1000 attempts, and the cheapest item that can be used is 30 silver, precursors are valued at 1200g minimum.
Now the problem is, the price of the rare/exotics to forge is not absolute. Within hours the cheapest rares and exotics will be bought out, making later attempts cost 1g per rare minimum, more than tripling the price of precursors. The price will continue to be tied directly to the cost of MF fuel, because it’s inefficient to run dungeons until you have enough tokens for 1000 weapons and such. So anyone with enough gold to make the initial investment of 1200g for enough rares can guarantee a precursor, while those who are late to the party pay an ever increasing price just for the rares and exotics whether they want to forge them or not.
The prices of the materials to make them also go up, because with a precursor guaranteed after P attempts, anyone who wants one will keep trying until they get it. When there is no more affordable MF fuel on the TP, and they can’t afford crafting mats to make them, they’ll complain that it’s still impossible to get a precursor because you have to be rich to buy one from the TP or super rich to buy the MF fuel to forge one yourself.
So this doesn’t solve the your problem, it just creates new ones by pricing rares, exotics, and crafting mats out of the reach of average players. So not only can they not make progress towards the Legendary, now they can’t even gear up their characters unless they grind karma for exotic gear.
Measure the tide at the high mark, not the low.
Some people feel like grinding one activity for each item is better (heaven knows why). Other people realize that GW2 gives you MORE options for getting your gear and appreciate that they can do the stuff they like doing to get the stuff they like having.
It’s mostly a matter of new/different compared to known/comfortable. People find comfort in familiar situations, even if they are worse off than they would be doing something new and different. It’s the reason why some people have demanded vertical progression, raids, the Trinity and so on since GW2 launched. The devs tried to create something new and different, but (some) players want old and familiar instead, even if it’s inferior to the new and different game.
The economy and TP here work completely different from the single-server auction house you find in most MMOs, and it makes people uncomfortable. The ability to buy most gear instead of “earning” it by throwing yourself at content you don’t like week after week and fighting your party members for rare drops is unfamiliar, and therefore it must be wrong.
I’m sure the same sort of arguments were once made about automobiles, by those who didn’t want to give up their horses.
I have a feeling that after this “scavenger hunt” is added to the game, players will prefer grinding the gold to buy a precursor instead.
Probably, because it’s not like everything else you need to forge a legendary isn’t one massive (and repetitive) scavenger hunt. We need another one to complete the insanity. :p
It’s not actually going to be a scavenger hunt. About a year and a half ago, when the concept was first mentioned of a non-rng method of creating a new precursor (rather than just buying one from the TP that was randomly created by someone else) there was talk about it being some kind of scavenger hunt. Later discussions hinted that it would be crafted, like ascended gear, but some people still insist that it will be a scavenger hunt.
As you said, some of the gifts that are also used to forge a Legendary weapon are already created through collecting items, so either the precursor will be a new kind of gift or a scavenger hunt is unlikely.
Since we done gone & necro’d this. I think the main issue for many, many players is that RNG isn’t very legendary nor is it any actual achievement of accomplishment. I totally would support a scavenger hunt that, in the course of your map completion & Explorer achievements, you collected certain bits that Miyani accepted to craft your precursor. It would need to be much more comprehensive than the Black Moa chick though.
I have a feeling that after this “scavenger hunt” is added to the game, players will prefer grinding the gold to buy a precursor instead.
‘Working hard’ is only a solution as long as not a lot of people are doing it, so telling people to go and do it wouldn’t help at all if too many took up that advice. The ‘path’ isn’t to work hard, it’s to work harder than the people you’re competing with for a resource, and that obviously can’t turn out succesfully for everyone.
You’re in luck, I guarantee that most of the people reading this won’t take my advice.
However, that doesn’t change anything. The devs set up the Legendary process the way they did for a reason, and whining about it on the forums won’t change that.
The problem is created by those who want a precursor or other rare items handed to them, and throw a tantrum when they don’t get their way. It’s not a strawman argument, it’s what is really happening. If you want something, go get it. I’m not interested in hearing how hard it is to get anything in this game, because I know that it’s not, it just requires a certain time commitment. Luck is a shortcut, not the path.
So everyone should just get on with the gold farming eh? Fun game.
Welcome to MMOs, obviously you’ve never played one before. Long term goals are set up by the devs to give players a reason to keep logging in. Otherwise, you log in, pay $250 and stand around in your Armor of Awesomeness and chat about how great you are.
The fact that long term goals require a long term commitment is not a problem, it’s a design decision. If you don’t want to do that, convert some gold to gems and buy a weapon skin from the TP.
The problem is created by those who want a precursor or other rare items handed to them
Again, strawman. Not “want the items handed to them” but “want a reliable (and stable) way of obtaining them”. As i said before, which you ignored, legendaries in general are perfectly okay as they are – except for precursors, that are a lottery game. The effort and commitment are understandable. The effort and commitment that resut in nothing gained are not.
I disagree. That is my opinion, which doesn’t happen to be yours. That doesn’t make either of us correct or incorrect.
It’s a paradox – the average player wants the rare gear that only a few players have, but if the average player has it, then by definition it is not “the rare gear that only a few players have” and so he doesn’t want it.
If the gear is truly rare, then an “average” person has no chance of ever obtaining one, and thus them wanting is soon becomes a moot point. They won’t be working towards it anyway.
Good, you do understand. My wife, who is about as casual as you can get, didn’t even know what Legendaries were until I told her why that one toon was running around leaving black trails in the air. I don’t think the average player seriously considers creating a Legendary weapon to be a realistic goal.
But there are many players who would do so, given the opportunity. A relatively small number of players are able to make the commitment to playing that is necessary to obtain rare items like precursors or other expensive and rare items. This is absolutely intentional, and when the devs want something to be rare, it will indeed be rare, and therefore beyond the reach of most players.
It’s only a problem if one makes it a problem for himself. I don’t want rare items simply because they are rare, so it’s not a problem for me. If I want to buy something for other reasons (it’s useful to me or I like the way it looks) then I can make a commitment to playing in a way that will allow me to afford it.
Take character slots, for example. They cost a fair amount of gold/gems even though you cannot display them and make other people jealous. I wanted more than the original five slots because I like to have more options, and over the course of a little over a year I bought twelve slots, most of them through in-game gold conversion. If you add up all the gold I spent on them, I could probably have bought a precursor if that was my goal instead.
The problem is created by those who want a precursor or other rare items handed to them, and throw a tantrum when they don’t get their way. It’s not a strawman argument, it’s what is really happening. If you want something, go get it. I’m not interested in hearing how hard it is to get anything in this game, because I know that it’s not, it just requires a certain time commitment. Luck is a shortcut, not the path.
You could have easily avoided all this drama with a 20 secs of work. You chose not to.
What drama? No one cares except the people posting on the forums. The devs don’t take orders from us, so no, they aren’t going to post an explanation just because someone threw a tantrum about it. You new here?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Watchwork-Pick-Why-No-Response/first
Buy orders were all suddenly dropped to the highest being 80g :P
That sound you hear are all the speculators who bought recipes sighing in relief because they were able to fill those buy orders before the other speculators who placed them were able to cancel the orders.
In a few hours, the speculators who paid 500g+ for each recipe that has lost 90% of its value will realize how much money they lost, and the river or tears will flow…
I’m saying you’re predicting the apple harvest by looking at orange trees.
TP isn’t high risk? Well I just completed the most high risk flip of all time.
OF ALL TIME
I bought a chaos recipe for 1500g (luck enough to get a buy order in the first place)
I then was able to flip it 10 hours later at 2550g.That’s a grand profit of 668G.
So, the kerfluffle over precursor prices was a smokescreen to get people to dump all their gold into Dusks and such so the TP barons could buy all the Lyssa recipes. Then after selling to clueless speculators for incredibly inflated prices, they finish nailing the coffin by selling their hoarded recipes to the smarter speculators who couldn’t cancel their buy orders in time, also for incredibly inflated prices.
Thank you for playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Tyria Edition.
This looks like the work of Tinfoil [HATS].
(edited by tolunart.2095)
And just like that, the buy orders of Chaos of Lyssa has dropped by 2000g.
I must wonder if there are a few of these buyers who did not get a chance to remove their buy orders.
And people say GW2 TP has no risk?
Oh! TP Stealth Attack, critical hit to bank account!