438 replies to this topic

[MazingerZ]

raspberry jam, on 22 November 2012 - 11:52 AM, said:

If that's true then why doesn't ascended items have the same stats as exotics?

Oddly enough this is the one point I can't get anyone to explain to me logically.

I get "this is only going to happen once, they'll never do it again." If they associate the gear's introduction with increased cash for gold sales, you bet your ass they will.

Some people think that Legendaries have higher stats than Exotics.

Some at least admit its for the treadmill locusts, but still remain entirely convinced ArenaNet's not going to turn the game into a treadmill.

The issue is, even people get on board with this, if it generates revenue, then all it will do is shape future development of the game.

"Why are the cash shop sales so low?  What's this spike here in the data?"

"That's when we introduced the Ascended gear."

"Well, can't you do that again?  Numbers for next quarter have to look good."

[Alleji]

Why couldn't they have made ascended gear with same stats as exotics except + agony resistance? And fractals past lvl9 could drop +5, past lvl19 +10. More in future patches. Get rid of infusions, get rid of mystic forging cloaks, just make all ascended gear drops from fractals... since that's the only place you need ascended gear (same stats otherwise, ya know), people who don't do fractals wouldn't be bothered.

Or make infusions drop in fractals and go into a normal upgrade slot. That would force hardcore fractal-ers to just get another set of exotics and have it upgraded with infusions in addition to a normal set upgraded with normal runes.

Or if we must craft cloaks, why the hell did they made it so goddamn grindy? Oh yes, lets use stupid amounts of t6 fine mats and ectos, while in the meantime orichalcum dropped to 2 silver, ancient wood is almost worthless and hardened leather has always been worthless! Oh yeah, and what about t5 mats? Leather has been selling for vendor price since launch, while mithril, wood, and cloth have been heading there for the past couple weeks. Thriving economy! Lets create more demand for things already in demand and let the rest of them just sit there.

Edited by Alleji, 22 November 2012 - 03:51 PM.

[raspberry jam]

Alleji, on 22 November 2012 - 03:50 PM, said:

Why couldn't they have made ascended gear with same stats as exotics except + agony resistance? And fractals past lvl9 could drop +5, past lvl19 +10. More in future patches. Get rid of infusions, get rid of mystic forging cloaks, just make all ascended gear drops from fractals... since that's the only place you need ascended gear (same stats otherwise, ya know), people who don't do fractals wouldn't be bothered.

Or make infusions drop in fractals and go into a normal upgrade slot. That would force hardcore fractal-ers to just get another set of exotics and have it upgraded with infusions in addition to a normal set upgraded with normal runes.

Or if we must craft cloaks, why the hell did they made it so goddamn grindy? Oh yes, lets use stupid amounts of t6 fine mats and ectos, while in the meantime orichalcum dropped to 2 silver, ancient wood is almost worthless and hardened leather has always been worthless! Oh yeah, and what about t5 mats? Leather has been selling for vendor price since launch, while mithril, wood, and cloth have been heading there for the past couple weeks. Thriving economy! Lets create more demand for things already in demand and let the rest of them just sit there.

Because the update was aimed at making the game spend your time. They even said so themselves:

Chris Whiteside said:

Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two.

Ignoring the fact that the jump in reward was introduced in this update, take a moment to consider what that actually means... It means that legendaries are too far away, and that they want to throw you some carrot crumbs in the mean time so that you won't lose scent of the much bigger carrot. They need to string it out across a large expanse of time so that you won't run out of coming ascended rewards before you get your legendary.

Now when you considered that, please go ahead and also consider that ANet knew the price difference between exotics and legendaries since before release, because they set those prices (by setting drop chances and mystic forge RNG values). This means one out of two things:

• ANet are completely inept and threw legendaries out there without a plan B, or...
  
• ANet knew what was coming and planned ascended items right from the start, while letting legendaries have the same stats as exotics initially in order to trick people into buying the game.

IMO neither possibility seems very good... but in ANet's defense, many other things about GW2 makes me think that the first alternative is the correct one.

Edited by raspberry jam, 22 November 2012 - 04:53 PM.

[legioniu]

Krazzar, on 22 November 2012 - 07:06 AM, said:

It has nothing to do with stats, progression does not mean stats. It's quite odd you would ignore that point since it's usually on regular rotation in your anti-structure rants. If you didn't know, legendary weapons are far more difficult and time consuming to obtain than exotics, Anet aims to add more tiers of items in the middle of "easy to get" exotic items and legendary items. That means you will be continually progressing through different tiers up to legendary items. The obvious problem is once players get exotic items their next step is to grind for legendary items, with new tiers there are more steps in between that are more easily obtained, that is goals that can actually be achieved and help people feel their characters are progressing through playing the game.

This doesn't make much sense to me. If they add steps and you don't skip as many as possible, it slows down that progression rather drastically. How does this bridge ANY gap? It adds extra steps and widens the actual overall gap unless you bypass it entirely.

As for the increasing stats issue:
There really is no logical arguement for it. I haven't seen one here or throughout GW1. It doesn't matter if it's skins or numbers to make people feel like they are better than others. Anyone who played GW1 has seen that a pure skins model can work just fine. The strongest advocates for this at the moment want both as a way of feeling even more above the general playerbase than just having one or the other.

There was NO stat gap. In order to impliment this new tier they are intentionally adding two. If they were adding one to bridge as they have implied, I wouldn't bother posting/reading/trying at all. It's not one though. It's Exotic -> Ascended -> Legendary.  It was Exotic = Legendary.

[DuskWolf]

It's interesting to see that this thread hasn't changed.

We haven't yet gotten a good argument for:

- Why travel/armour needs a tax.
- Why ascended gear needs better stats than exotics.
- Why ascended gear exists at all instead of infusion slots on all armour types.
- Why gated content linked to armour tiers is suddenly okay.

What we continue to get is lots of fallacious arguments and intellectual dishonesty. Man, this site has become a textbook case on how to not have an argument as almost every fallacy from my big list of fallacies here has been used. But we can't sit down and have a reasonable discussion. Why? Because our opponents would have to concede that we're right.

But they'd actually have to be mature enough to do that.

---Edit---

What I want to see?

A rational, reasonable counter for all of my above points. Put in a non-obfuscated way, not relying on a single fallacy, also not relying on misleading people. With no snark, no character assassination of persons involved in the argument, no insinuations, and no red herrings and wildly irrelevant tangents. Just a logical counter to each point.

Is anyone able to do it? Try. One fallacy or insult, and it's a failure. Be logical, clear, and concise.

This is where it breaks down, because if you're not using misdirection or insults, and you have to be logical and reasonable, then the only recourse is to concede that there is really no true counter to these points. That it all comes down to personal preference. That one may want taxes and grinds, but the game does not need taxes and grinds.

Go on, then.

Edited by DuskWolf, 23 November 2012 - 06:22 AM.

[Minu]

raspberry jam, on 19 November 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

There are people who still walk around in their starter gear at level 50. And there are people who right now play nothing but FotM. Your point?

Every time I see FoTM, all I see is Flavour of the Month.   What they should of done, to keep me happy, is improve the things in the game which added to its uniqueness....WvW for example.   What is the point pandering to a minority of the PVE elements of the population, who will, sooner or later leave anyway.  There are far, far better and more polished MMOs out there, offerering a better PVE experience, with all the gear treadmill your heart can desire, if that's your idea of fun of course.

[Obscure One]

DuskWolf, on 23 November 2012 - 06:17 AM, said:

It's interesting to see that this thread hasn't changed.

We haven't yet gotten a good argument for:

- Why travel/armour needs a tax.
- Why ascended gear needs better stats than exotics.
- Why ascended gear exists at all instead of infusion slots on all armour types.
- Why gated content linked to armour tiers is suddenly okay.

In order:

• Travel/Armor repair costs form the basis for the gold sinks put in place to penalize players who frequently die in combat, use PvE way-points and especially penalize those players that do a fair amount of both. Fix: Create titles for both traveling and armor repairs, tracking total amount spent on each respective gold sink so at least the tax payer has something to show for their money.
  
• Ascended gear needs better stats because it is a goal for players who already have an exotic set of gear they have already spent time grinding for. These players are not otherwise encouraged to grind for something that isn't in anyway better than what they already have. Fix: discontinue using the grinding elements of the Dungeons (I.E. use the original design philosophy of Dungeons when they were first announced; one run = one piece of armor) to mask the fact the game is lacking content, and add more content.
  
• Ascended gear exists because of the game is lacking in content and design to facilitate progression for the player that has already done it all, which are only growing in numbers as time goes on. Creating a gear-treadmill is the first step in creating a more permanent end-game grind for these players. Fix: allow players to trade up towards more advanced gear sets, essentially allowing a player to transmute their Exotic set of armor into an Ascended set of armor or Ascended set of armor into a Legendary set of armor by spending an appropriate amount of Karma. This not only recycles content, but allows the player a sense of actual gear progression by doing content they want to do which all has a Karma reward.
  
• Gated content linked to tiered armor is in place for the most infamous and notorious group of all players, "The Entitled" caste. These are the people who feel that because they play a game more they deserve to be better than those who play less than them by default, with skill being at best a secondary concept. The reason this is "okay" is strictly business. These entitled players are also the games best customers. They will buy anything and everything that the game sells them even if only to lord it over those who do not have it. Think of it as a Membership Card at a store which gives you points; the people who frequent a store more often get more favoritism than those who are there less often. Win for the store, win for the customer. Fix: this would be remedied by implementing the fix for #3, but further more would require new content. Put in place a Nobility system not all that dissimilar to the Commander system, allowing the elitists of the game to pit their e-peens against other elitists. Noble's would get their own custom icon, be addressed as noble by NPC's and be able to claim PvE areas much like fortresses can be claimed by guilds in WvW, fully adorned with their own personal crest. These areas could be contested by other Nobles by issuing challenges and dueling (best out of three style) rendering the victor the new owner of the Area, gifting him with an upkeep of coins for as long as they hold it. Naturally this would all require volumes of gold to do.

All that being said, the notions that a gear-treadmill exists, there is a major dungeon grind, crafting requires a massive amount of useless item creation to level, and the game all around wasn't released "When It's Ready" but apparently WAY early are blatantly against the Guild Wars 2 design philosophy that was preached to me since I started listening to it years ago. The kindest way I can put it is that this was a series of significant design oversights that have now created an irreparable rift in a fan base that took the better part of a decade to build...the way I say it to folks off-line would serve only to get me banned from this forum...

[Resolve]

DuskWolf, on 23 November 2012 - 06:17 AM, said:

It's interesting to see that this thread hasn't changed.

We haven't yet gotten a good argument for:

- Why ascended gear needs better stats than exotics.
- Why ascended gear exists at all instead of infusion slots on all armour types.
- Why gated content linked to armour tiers is suddenly okay.

It needs better stats because Anet want to regain all the people that left due to no treadmill or stats to gain. That's the answer.

It's shit but what can you do? Anet are clearly going down this path.

[Gli]

I really didn't care at all about the new gear tier, but I'm getting pretty annoyed at not being able to get my hands on a vial of condensed mist. I want a quiver for my ranger, and there's no way to get one without having a lucky drop. 60 completed fractals and still no purple mist. What the hell?

[Lordkrall]

Are you looting all mobs?
It is a mob drop after all and not a chest drop.

[Alex Dimitri]

Gli, on 24 November 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

I really didn't care at all about the new gear tier, but I'm getting pretty annoyed at not being able to get my hands on a vial of condensed mist. I want a quiver for my ranger, and there's no way to get one without having a lucky drop. 60 completed fractals and still no purple mist. What the hell?

This is the biggest problem we have, drops (meaningful ones) have such a low drop rate that is ridiculous !
Basic mindset here is if you want something above exotic tier, things get so rare that you get only two solutions BUY (use real cash) or GRIND (get yourself numb to oblivion) and play till your fingers start to bleed !

[Illein]

Alex Dimitri, on 24 November 2012 - 05:20 PM, said:

This is the biggest problem we have, drops (meaningful ones) have such a low drop rate that is ridiculous !
Basic mindset here is if you want something above exotic tier, things get so rare that you get only two solutions BUY (use real cash) or GRIND (get yourself numb to oblivion) and play till your fingers start to bleed !

Or you are just being unlucky... Wish they wouldn't have made them Accountbound, I found 5 of them so far ~80 Fractals, which I have no use for. Just like the 4 globs I got

legioniu, on 22 November 2012 - 07:39 PM, said:

This doesn't make much sense to me. If they add steps and you don't skip as many as possible, it slows down that progression rather drastically. How does this bridge ANY gap? It adds extra steps and widens the actual overall gap unless you bypass it entirely.

As for the increasing stats issue:
There really is no logical arguement for it. I haven't seen one here or throughout GW1. It doesn't matter if it's skins or numbers to make people feel like they are better than others. Anyone who played GW1 has seen that a pure skins model can work just fine. The strongest advocates for this at the moment want both as a way of feeling even more above the general playerbase than just having one or the other.

There was NO stat gap. In order to impliment this new tier they are intentionally adding two. If they were adding one to bridge as they have implied, I wouldn't bother posting/reading/trying at all. It's not one though. It's Exotic -> Ascended -> Legendary.  It was Exotic = Legendary.

Seems you can stop bothering because they really only added one: Exotic < Ascended = Legendary.

[AiponGkooja]

Gli, on 24 November 2012 - 04:47 PM, said:

I really didn't care at all about the new gear tier, but I'm getting pretty annoyed at not being able to get my hands on a vial of condensed mist. I want a quiver for my ranger, and there's no way to get one without having a lucky drop. 60 completed fractals and still no purple mist. What the hell?

Illein, on 24 November 2012 - 05:26 PM, said:

Or you are just being unlucky... Wish they wouldn't have made them Accountbound, I found 5 of them so far ~80 Fractals, which I have no use for. Just like the 4 globs I got

...

May I ask what max fractal level you each got to?

[Illein]

AiponGkooja, on 24 November 2012 - 05:35 PM, said:

May I ask what max fractal level you each got to?

Sure, played to 15 on Thursday, didn't get to play much since then.

[Ghostwing]

DuskWolf, on 23 November 2012 - 06:17 AM, said:

It's interesting to see that this thread hasn't changed.

We haven't yet gotten a good argument for:

- Why travel/armour needs a tax.

Besides being a goldsink, it adds another layer of difficulty. Think of the Balthazar DE in Straits. It's almost never completed because people are too lazy to waypoint after being defeated, they don't want to pay for the waypoint costs, and they don't want to continuously pay for the armor repair. So they just lay there while the event fails. Now, the failing of an event is a feature of the game. The game doesn't want every event to be easily completable, so they want some sort of penalty for the player dying. If there were no waypoint or penalty costs, the Balth DE would be zerged even more easily.

Or think of the dungeon boss waypoint zergs. Same thing, except with armor repair costs. By having players able to waypoint after a defeat while keeping the fight ongoing, the repair cost becomes the penalty instead of the timesink penalty of "we wiped, everyone run back from waypoint, we start over." It's a trade-off.

I don't know whether any of these timesinks (they all boil down to being timesinks) are "needed, but most good games I can think of has timesink penalties for failing, whether from starting at some arbitrary checkpoint near the beginning of map when you were near the end of it, subtracting a limited set of lives, etc. It's not a technical limitation, they could just reset the dungeon boss to full health and reset you right there on the spot with full health after a wipe. I can tell you, however, games that have infinite lives and pit you at full health right where you died with all of the enemies at the same lowered health you left them--those games became boring real fast.

As for gold sinks, think of a game without ways of taking gold out of the economy. Think of a new player coming in after gold has spiraled out of control. When every other player has a million gold, player-traded items are going to be sold for a large amount of gold, and new players will have an even harder time of participating. There's a higher barrier to entry. Gold sinks aren't a perfect all-encompassing solution, there will always be inflation in this game, but it serves as a dampener. They need some form of gold sink to continuously take gold out of the economy.

And a little advice--if you want people to respond to you respectfully, you might want to drop the confirmation bias. If that's not possible, drop the arrogant condescending behavior. Not everyone who disagrees with you is "wrong". There is no "right" way to appeal to a mass audience perfectly. At this point I'm not even sure why I'm even replying to you; you're already dead set in believing there are no good arguments to your questions and preface your posts as such.

Edited by Ghostwing, 24 November 2012 - 07:49 PM.

[Gli]

Lordkrall, on 24 November 2012 - 04:49 PM, said:

Are you looting all mobs?
It is a mob drop after all and not a chest drop.

I loot everything that sparkles, everytime, all the time. Have done so since day one of the prelaunch, much to the chagrin of some of the people I play with, who sometimes accuse me of making them wait.

AiponGkooja, on 24 November 2012 - 05:35 PM, said:

May I ask what max fractal level you each got to?

I've been to 10. Haven't completed that yet, haven't even tried, in fact. I've spent the week helping multiple guildies work their way through the first 9 levels. I probably played every level below 10 roughly the same amount of times.

I'm actually the only one in my guild who hasn't found one yet, and ironically, the only one who can afford to make a quiver.

Edited by Gli, 24 November 2012 - 08:45 PM.

[Darkobra]

Gli, on 24 November 2012 - 08:43 PM, said:

I've been to 10. Haven't completed that yet, haven't even tried, in fact. I've spent the week helping multiple guildies work their way through the first 9 levels. I probably played every level below 10 roughly the same amount of times.

I'm actually the only one in my guild who hasn't found one yet, and ironically, the only one who can afford to make a quiver.

I actually found mine in 10. Technically can afford it but I can't really justify splashing out that kind of money. Especially since I got the ring. I do want a certain back-piece but I don't want to throw money away to get it right now when MAYBE it will drop in price.

[RedStar]

DuskWolf, on 23 November 2012 - 06:17 AM, said:

- Why gated content linked to armour tiers is suddenly okay.

You can do the first 10 levels of FotM without being infused or having ascended armor (well rings, since Ascended armor/weapons aren't in the game yet). So which kind of content are you being gated out from ? Because by level 10 you should have seen every Fractal and their variation, so really, which kind of content aren't you able to play (Hell, you don't even play the game, so what do you even know about if you actually need those armors or not. For all you know it could be like PvE skills in GW1 : give a helping hand to players but are far from required to complete something in a reasonable amount of time).

[Tetan0]

Kymeric, on 15 November 2012 - 10:14 PM, said:

ANet said Ascended are supposed to fill the gape between Exotic and Legendary.

This is the problem with trying to satisfy people with endgame carrots to chase.

yeah right fill the gape but Legendaries are ONLY weapons so i don't buy it they just added it as carrot so people mindless grind what they also said were against.

[Wordsworth]

RedStar, on 24 November 2012 - 11:37 PM, said:

You can do the first 10 levels of FotM without being infused or having ascended armor (well rings, since Ascended armor/weapons aren't in the game yet). So which kind of content are you being gated out from ? Because by level 10 you should have seen every Fractal and their variation, so really, which kind of content aren't you able to play (Hell, you don't even play the game, so what do you even know about if you actually need those armors or not. For all you know it could be like PvE skills in GW1 : give a helping hand to players but are far from required to complete something in a reasonable amount of time).

The entire point of Fractals is the scaling difficulty. So he's being gated from the virtually infinite amount of ever increasing challenge that dungeon was designed for.

[Zippor]

Wordsworth, on 25 November 2012 - 03:39 AM, said:

The entire point of Fractals is the scaling difficulty. So he's being gated from the virtually infinite amount of ever increasing challenge that dungeon was designed for.

I wonder that if there was no gating with the dungeon, how would people perceive it? One case would be that players go in and choose a level way above their skill level and after complain about it. Another case might be more optimistic, where players start by the bottom and regulate certain level jumps if the current level feels too easy. Most likely it would be a bit of both, but I think it would be a lot better than the current system.

With people being able to jump into higher levels, we could more easily get people to achieve the new gear by having veterans run the dungeon with new ones. I think the first ten levels are a joke and I feel so bad for people that still need to go through all those levels just to get near the good stuff. I wish I could just take some people in and run the 10-16 levels so they could have a chance with a ring. Taking people to level 20+ would be a no-no before they can get at least 10 agony resistance, of course this wouldn't be needed either if there was no infusions and the difficulty would be handled in another way. A dungeon with an endless scaling difficulty without a system imposed restriction sounds a bit hard to come up with though. They already add new mechanics to the encounters in addition to the infusions, but I don't think they have an endless library of different mechanics for each encounter.

[Corvindi]

MazingerZ, on 22 November 2012 - 03:38 PM, said:

Oddly enough this is the one point I can't get anyone to explain to me logically.

I get "this is only going to happen once, they'll never do it again." If they associate the gear's introduction with increased cash for gold sales, you bet your ass they will.

Some people think that Legendaries have higher stats than Exotics.

Some at least admit its for the treadmill locusts, but still remain entirely convinced ArenaNet's not going to turn the game into a treadmill.

The issue is, even people get on board with this, if it generates revenue, then all it will do is shape future development of the game.

"Why are the cash shop sales so low?  What's this spike here in the data?"

"That's when we introduced the Ascended gear."

"Well, can't you do that again?  Numbers for next quarter have to look good."

Of course they're going to do it again.  They even hinted at when.  After they dribble out all of this current gear in the next few months, it's expansion time.  And they already said something along the lines of, 'normally new gear is released with an expansion'.

So instead of housing, guild halls, a new profession or a new race, what do we get to look forward to?  More dungeon with gear treadmill attached.  Cheap, easy, no balance required in their sad excuse for an esport, and utterly boring.

Edited by Corvindi, 25 November 2012 - 04:18 AM.

[RedStar]

Corvindi, on 25 November 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

So instead of housing, guild halls, a new profession or a new race, what do we get to look forward to?  More dungeon with gear treadmill attached.  Cheap, easy, no balance required in their sad excuse for an esport, and utterly boring.

They already said that new professions are something that they do not plan on adding (but who knows, maybe they will in the end) and I don't see how a new tier prevents them from working on other features...

[Var]

Wordsworth, on 25 November 2012 - 03:39 AM, said:

The entire point of Fractals is the scaling difficulty. So he's being gated from the virtually infinite amount of ever increasing challenge that dungeon was designed for.

Technically, no, he's not. There is only one agony application in the entire dungeon of as of so far that cannot be dodged but you can get around it through various skill uses: healing, invulnerability, or just getting up after you're downed because the agony stack will fall off when you drop and won't be reapplied.

Agony is a mechanic from 10-20 (ie. knowing when and how to dodge; I say this because mobs and bosses gain some new things from 10-20, that they did not have 1-10), it becomes a scaling "fail" check after, as in, it punishes failure more and more brutally (and eventually just outright killing you for failing). If you don't have infused gear, at some point you simply will be unable to progress unless you have clairvoyance, or to put it another way, you are not skilled enough to find way to mitigate or dodge all of the ways that agony is applied. Consider 20+ with no infused gear akin to "I Want To Be The Guy", you're free to try and you'll probably succeed on most cases (some fights are trivial even with Agony on) and, heck, you might go deeper and deeper. So the game never says "You cannot enter unless you have X." it will actually allow you to try without having X, and if you're up to the challenge you'll succeed without having X. If you're not, there's a crutch called agony infusion.

Tip: Jade Maw needs only one phase transition, you don't ever need to reach phase 2 if you stagger out your shards and the rate at which you kill the collosi. In fact, I'm pretty sure that phase 2 is actually you failing to kill the thing in phase 1.

Corvindi, on 25 November 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

So instead of housing, guild halls, a new profession or a new race, what do we get to look forward to?  More dungeon with gear treadmill attached.  Cheap, easy, no balance required in their sad excuse for an esport, and utterly boring.

Lotto numbers please.

Edited by Var, 25 November 2012 - 08:33 AM.

[Illein]

Wordsworth, on 25 November 2012 - 03:39 AM, said:

The entire point of Fractals is the scaling difficulty. So he's being gated from the virtually infinite amount of ever increasing challenge that dungeon was designed for.

I am not even sure that's true. As far as I understood, the dungeon itself is INFINITE - because you can run 3/4 fractals after 3/4 fractals for as long as you desire. But I don't think the difficulty scales infinitely... then again, I am far from hitting the level-ceiling, so there is one, but from what I read when they introduced it - the infinity applied to the dungeon design, not the difficulty per se.

[Illein]

MazingerZ, on 22 November 2012 - 03:38 PM, said:

Oddly enough this is the one point I can't get anyone to explain to me logically.

I get "this is only going to happen once, they'll never do it again." If they associate the gear's introduction with increased cash for gold sales, you bet your ass they will.

Some people think that Legendaries have higher stats than Exotics.

Some at least admit its for the treadmill locusts, but still remain entirely convinced ArenaNet's not going to turn the game into a treadmill.

The issue is, even people get on board with this, if it generates revenue, then all it will do is shape future development of the game.

"Why are the cash shop sales so low?  What's this spike here in the data?"

"That's when we introduced the Ascended gear."

"Well, can't you do that again?  Numbers for next quarter have to look good."

Problem with this is - what makes you think it SPIKED? I mean..I don't know anyone in our ~500 people guild who bought gold for very high prices for a back piece he/she doesn't even need so far AND can be gotten for free if you run enough fractals...

The rings can't be bought, so buying gold for that, wouldn't make any sense. So yeah - explain to me what a sane person would rather buy gold for a lot of RL currency if they can get it relatively quickly through just playing new content anyway?

I am sure there are some people out there, don't get me wrong - that die-hard WvW player who doesn't want to get out of his little bubble to run dungeons and instead makes such a purchase, but that can HARDLY be a number that would be responsible for a SPIKE in gem-sales as you put it.

[Wordsworth]

Var, on 25 November 2012 - 08:32 AM, said:

Technically, no, he's not.

Yeah, that's one way to get around the gating.

"L2P" - ANet.

[Snowulf]

Illein, on 25 November 2012 - 10:00 AM, said:

Problem with this is - what makes you think it SPIKED? I mean..I don't know anyone in our ~500 people guild who bought gold for very high prices for a back piece he/she doesn't even need so far AND can be gotten for free if you run enough fractals...

The rings can't be bought, so buying gold for that, wouldn't make any sense. So yeah - explain to me what a sane person would rather buy gold for a lot of RL currency if they can get it relatively quickly through just playing new content anyway?

I am sure there are some people out there, don't get me wrong - that die-hard WvW player who doesn't want to get out of his little bubble to run dungeons and instead makes such a purchase, but that can HARDLY be a number that would be responsible for a SPIKE in gem-sales as you put it.

Ecto's are required to infuse the ascended gear, that is what he was referring to.
The people that will buy gold are the same people that wanted a gear treadmill and raids put in the game.

[RedStar]

Wordsworth, on 25 November 2012 - 10:10 AM, said:

Yeah, that's one way to get around the gating.

"L2P" - ANet.

They give you 10 levels to learn how to play.  By giving players the choice to take a lower difficulty, they allow them to learn the mechanisms one at a time.

[Illein]

Snowulf, on 25 November 2012 - 10:54 AM, said:

Ecto's are required to infuse the ascended gear, that is what he was referring to.
The people that will buy gold are the same people that wanted a gear treadmill and raids put in the game.

Right, now that you have almost guaranteed rare drops in dungeons and especially the fractals - everyone will buy Gem-gold to buy ectos...


Now I see it too....

not