88 replies to this topic

[artemist]

From 100
karma (I guess, 50% used)
corrupted lode
about 20 obsidian shards
onyx lode
mini pet
and junk

Now the question.
Should I sell my all charged lodestones now or just w8 when price will stabilize?
What do you think? Im aiming now for The Moot, mainly becouse I can afford to buy a precursor.

[lmaonade]

Tellia, on 29 January 2013 - 08:08 AM, said:

yea, people whine about not having much to spend karma on. but all anet did to "solve" that problem was give us more of another thing we often complain about- rng. thats their answer to everything these days it seems. if something isnt good enough or doesnt take long enough...add rng to it. brilliant!

at least it's something better, you know what I did with my karma previously? converted it in to green weapons to throw into the mystic toilet, for hopefully a chance to get a few rares to sell. My RNG luck sucks, in about 50 boxes I've gotten some karma back and 1 Onyx Lodestone, but I appreciate that at least there's something to do with my karma now flushing it down the toilet, I may even get a mini if my luck decides to not be horrible one day.

and it's not just the boxes, temple karma vendors have had their rewards buffed with exotic accessories and other things. which is HUGE cause it'll actually give some incentive to do these chains and not just enter orr to farm materials, which will help both new players looking for an alternative to the ridiculous pricing of exotic gear, and old players looking for a cheap way to gear their alts.

Edited by lmaonade, 29 January 2013 - 10:24 PM.

[DarkGanni]

Not terribly excited about these boxes but they surely are a good karma sink when you don't have anywhere else to spend it on, Also Lyssa's temple karma vendor has Prec, Vit, Heal Power exotic gear which is cool for guardian.

From all the crap ANet has put in GW2 I actually like this.

[Darkobra]

Got a lot of stones, a lot of junk, no pets or potions. I used the money to buy a new character slot. If I had any interest in an engineer, that'd leave me with one more slot to go!

[AKGeo]

Lucas Ashrock, on 29 January 2013 - 01:01 PM, said:

So i guess you spent something like 400k+ karma points..

I got 50 from around 265k karma. I'm guessing he was around 900k karma.

[Perm Shadow Form]

Got one chest, opened it, got crap and decided that they're not worth it.

[Lucas Ashrock]

XPhiler, on 29 January 2013 - 03:48 PM, said:

They are already. how do you get lodestones? 3 ways right now, Farm them, buy them with gold, try your luck with this karma based lottery.

Who gets the most lodestones in any case? the farmer who has full MF set, ergo making the encounter harder for themselves by taking non power stats and persists at it compared with the player who has optimal stats and thus easier time tackling the particular mob. Thus farming rewards player merits (persistance) and skill (harder content)

Gold, you need to earn gold... true you could buy it, that case is an exception but for the rest, who earns the most gold? skilled players that know how to profit from the game, players who dont spend all their money repairing and waypointing (again skill and merit)

Karma how do you earn karma ? doing Dailies and Events daily. those too are merits and skills. More so if you zerg and farm events you'll hit DR and get less karma so if you're a player who's not taking a short cut to do events, thats again a merit and you're rewarded for that by getting more karma.

With the exception of people who just buy their gold the player who puts in the biggest effort and is skillful at the game will be rewarded the most rare stuff like lodestones. It might not be directly (nothing skillful about openining the box or buying it) but getting the currency to buy that box can be. so indirectly it is imho.

In my opinion rewards gated by "hard" content is a fallacy. There is no such thing.  didnt play PSO2 so maybe I am wrong I dont know, but in most MMOs I've played hard means nothing more then learning the pattern and having the right gear. Once you do that what was supposed to be hard becomes easy.

Path of Exile is an interesting example. Its really all just percieved different imho. in Path of Exile regular mobs drop useless loot most of the time with bosses sometimes dropping good loot that in many cases doesnt apply to your class or your build. in both cases you can sell that loot for orbs which then you can use to convert trash loot into hopefully good loot but again its random no guarantees. All of this is still random and still 99% of the time you get useless stuff. In Gw2 you have the same "bad" drops that you convert into gold instead of orbs / scrolls you also get karma from doing the events. Using karma and gold you can buy the best stuff you need quite easily (ascended items are a bit more long term but then again getting the best item possible in path of exile is probably impossible since I guess there can always be a better item since stats on items are also random).

is it really that different at the end of the day?

Uhm. So farm DE (even a bot or a 7y old kid can do them) , and do a daily (and eventually a monthly) for karma is what you call merits, skilled player? A TP scammer/shark is what you call fantasy game' skilled player? Seriously? Erm.. persistance (grinder attitude wasting hours repeating the same task), and TP manipulation, yes agree. Skills, player's performance? Forget them.
Nothing on this game is rewarded based on skills or particular performance. Not even my precious arah fullset. I'm one of the rarest worldwide player who got  one at beginning not abusing of a single exploit (expecially chestfarm) or a single skiprun (noone knew them). This is skills. But those merits don't exists anymore. Now even a 7y old kid farming 1st boss chest is able to get his arah fullset. (Now they patched it making it a bit slower, but still perfectly doable , farming constantly).
Last thing still left i'm proud of, luckly, is dungeon master.
What i want to focus is how this game is not rewarding nothing at all. You want something cool? Gamble waits you. From a chest's minis to a precursor to legendary clovers.
You play path of exile. Tell me, playing hard content and going forward, makes you feel more powerful and well rewarded? Yes? Now guess why. Because it's a nongreedy nongamble noscam based game rewarding the player's skills. Same of pso2.
Let's not mention many other great mmo who made his name in the history. Noone of them was gamble-based opening a slotmachine box to get a damned T6 mat (most precious mat of a game, an example), be sure.   Ah true, you can grind them for 6 hours getting 2 or 3 killing the same mob playing like a bot until  stupid, right.

AKGeo, on 29 January 2013 - 08:58 PM, said:

And back to the minis. They're easily a 1 in 20 to 1 in 50 chance. Easily. The tonics are a little more rare, but also account bound. So unless you're a tonic junkie, there's no reason to be upset about not getting one.

As for the graphic of the mystic forge...are you seriously going to claim hypnotism? The forge is a damn Genie. Yeah it's going to have sparkly lights and such. That's the typical visual representation of magic at its highest form.

Gambler or not, what you also are is delusional.

Curious. Because i opened 64 chest not getting one single minis nor a tonic. I would be careful to throw out random numbers out of your ass, except if you're attempting to make us laugh
Thousand post on other forums and main forum confirm how far you are from the reality

Yes, the same kind of brain "hypnotism" , as you want to call it, created by slotmachines and lights inside a casino. I guess you have a huge lack of knowledge about the study besides lights and sparks, gambling. Casino managers can explain you a lot about it. Me too

MisterJaguar25, on 29 January 2013 - 02:30 PM, said:

You're so happily enjoying yourself playing PS02 that you come to a GW2 forum to bitch about GW2.

Nah, i just logged to check the new patch. God bless me to waste my time on this junk [ Much less deal with some peeps offending  other users on their childish attempt to stand on their feet. Go back one page , people quoting me (except xphiler who at least made a serious post) ]

Edited by Lucas Ashrock, 30 January 2013 - 07:24 AM.

[Falfyrel]

29 boxes opened total.

Bunches of karma stuff that I don't particularly care to recount, plus a ton of Unidentified Objects.
Two Charged Lodestones and one Crystal Lodestone.
Two Risen Priests of Balthazar.
Four Obsidian Shards.

Seems that the RNG gods were in my favor today.

[omar316]

Lol...

I haven't logged in about a month plus... Gotta try mah luck as well.

[Smallie]

Well, I bought 5. First one was the mini, rest was a lodestone, bit of karma and some crap.

[beadnbutter32]

Absolutely appalling examples out in broad daylight of gambling addiction.
What is going to be really funny is when Anet announces some new uber stuff that can only be bought with karma
in a few weeks.

[matsif]

beadnbutter32, on 30 January 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

Absolutely appalling examples out in broad daylight of gambling addiction.
What is going to be really funny is when Anet announces some new uber stuff that can only be bought with karma
in a few weeks.

I still have 3 characters with between 75-100k karma on them that I have never brought to orr yet, not to mention the bunch I've already made back from dungeons.  I'm not too worried about it.

[Meridya]

I had ~150,000 karma that I wasn't using.  Bought up a whole bunch of boxes and then used the karma items inside to buy more boxes.  I have no idea how many I went through in total.  I ended up getting:
1 Hard Potion
1 Crystal Lodestone
1 Onyx Lodestone
1 Molten Lodestone
1 Charged Lodestone
52 Obsidian Shards
3.5 Gold worth of Unidentifiable objects.

no mini

Still, I'm happy with my results.  The Obsidian Shards alone were almost worth the karma spent.  I wasn't going to use the karma for anything else anyway.

Edited by Meridya, 30 January 2013 - 06:20 PM.

[AKGeo]

Meridya, on 30 January 2013 - 06:14 PM, said:

I had ~150,000 karma that I wasn't using.  Bought up a whole bunch of boxes and then used the karma items inside to buy more boxes.  I have no idea how many I went through in total.  I ended up getting:
1 Hard Potion
1 Crystal Lodestone
1 Onyx Lodestone
1 Molten Lodestone
1 Charged Lodestone
52 Obsidian Shards
3.5 Gold worth of Unidentifiable objects.

no mini

Still, I'm happy with my results.  The Obsidian Shards alone were almost worth the karma spent.  I wasn't going to use the karma for anything else anyway.

With that pull you're probably missing a zero on your initial karma investment.

Lucas Ashrock, on 30 January 2013 - 05:34 AM, said:

Uhm. So farm DE (even a bot or a 7y old kid can do them) , and do a daily (and eventually a monthly) for karma is what you call merits, skilled player?

You get more karma by completing dailies and monthlies, running dungeons and exploring the map now than you get farming DEs. And at least they're PLAYING THE GAME. And now that dailies have new requirements, and monthlies will as well, it's even less of a "grind". There's not ONE thing anyone can say to you that will make you stop complaining about this game, is there? You complain, you whinge and you try to convince other players to stop playing, but you offer no options, no alternatives. They give alternatives to the RNG and you ignore it.

Edited by Leyana, 30 January 2013 - 11:30 PM.
No

[Dark]

thinking about whether i should spend my 550k of karma on this... Im not exactly the luckiest person.

[AKGeo]

Peruse the temple karma vendors' goods to see if there's anything there you want. They have new exotic trinkets. Then if they have nothing you like, what else are you going to spend it on? Karma is plentiful regardless, and if you have crap returns after the first round of boxes, at least the massive amounts of karma items that come from them will recoup much of your investment. It's a no-lose endeavor.

[Shiren]

Dark, on 30 January 2013 - 08:06 PM, said:

thinking about whether i should spend my 550k of karma on this... Im not exactly the luckiest person.

Wait until the February/March updates are known. It's possible they will bring in some better uses for karma there, ones will less RNG. You can always change your mind later and gamble on this garbage once you know what is in those updates, until then I'm holding out hope that they add something of real value to buy with karma.

[Lucas Ashrock]

AKGeo, on 30 January 2013 - 07:24 PM, said:

You get more karma by completing dailies and monthlies, running dungeons and exploring the map now than you get farming DEs. And at least they're PLAYING THE GAME. And now that dailies have new requirements, and monthlies will as well, it's even less of a "grind". There's not ONE thing anyone can say to you that will make you stop complaining about this game, is there? You complain, you whinge and you try to convince other players to stop playing, but you offer no options, no alternatives. They give alternatives to the RNG and you ignore it.

No doubt you lost the part "my point is.." Go read again my post.

Also, i offer alternatives, way better ones: pso2 (hey, eng patch for story and matterboard works perfectly too with the usual client eng patch!) and Path of exiles. Confirmed even by other users here as cool. Quite cool actually, i have to play one of them per day , i cannot manage both. Go figure the amount of fun and rewarding gameplay. You, well, keep playing this gamble junk , have fun with slotmachine boxes bough with your wasted lifetime  accumulating karma poofing away for useless crap If you call this play an online mmo videogame, son, you truly need to put your head out of the sand. Google my alternatives now

Edited by Leyana, 30 January 2013 - 11:31 PM.
No

[Kor]

Went through ~800k karma, so something like 180 boxes w/o using any karma I received from the boxes:

2 Piles of Putrid Essence
1 Molten Lodestone
1 Crystal Lodestone
275 Drops of Liquid Karma
33 Tastes of Liquid Karma
51 Vials of Liquid Karma
47 Swigs of Liquid Karma
571 Unidentified Objects
27 Obi Shards

Base Karma I received back ~420k Karma.  Assuming I get every +% buff to Karma when I do use the items, I'll get back nearly 90% of Karma used.

[Falfyrel]

Kor, on 31 January 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

Went through ~800k karma, so something like 180 boxes w/o using any karma I received from the boxes:

2 Piles of Putrid Essence
1 Molten Lodestone
1 Crystal Lodestone
275 Drops of Liquid Karma
33 Tastes of Liquid Karma
51 Vials of Liquid Karma
47 Swigs of Liquid Karma
571 Unidentified Objects
27 Obi Shards

Base Karma I received back ~420k Karma.  Assuming I get every +% buff to Karma when I do use the items, I'll get back nearly 90% of Karma used.

Is that including the newly-released +20% Karma infusion?

[AKGeo]

Lucas Ashrock, on 30 January 2013 - 09:56 PM, said:

No doubt you lost the part "my point is.." Go read again my post.

Also, i offer alternatives, way better ones: pso2 (hey, eng patch for story and matterboard works perfectly too with the usual client eng patch!) and Path of exiles. Confirmed even by other users here as cool. Quite cool actually, i have to play one of them per day , i cannot manage both. Go figure the amount of fun and rewarding gameplay. You, well, keep playing this gamble junk , have fun with slotmachine boxes bough with your wasted lifetime  accumulating karma poofing away for useless crap If you call this play an online mmo videogame, son, you truly need to put your head out of the sand. Google my alternatives now

Your alternatives are other games? Not proposed fixes to this one? Do you work for the producers of those other games?

Also:

Kor, on 31 January 2013 - 06:37 AM, said:

Base Karma I received back ~420k Karma.  Assuming I get every +% buff to Karma when I do use the items, I'll get back nearly 90% of Karma used.

[Kor]

Falfyrel, on 31 January 2013 - 07:48 AM, said:

Is that including the newly-released +20% Karma infusion?

No.

[Bryant Again]

Karma and an obsidian shard after 20. No thanks.

[AKGeo]

Bryant Again, on 31 January 2013 - 08:43 AM, said:

Karma and an obsidian shard after 20. No thanks.

So a cheap (maybe free) shard after karma boosters. O.o

Edited by AKGeo, 31 January 2013 - 10:52 AM.

[Hex65000]

I burned a ball of karma (about 250k) and got very little of interest.

I got another 10 or so Obsidian shards
various karma bottles that were recycled into more boxes
lots of junk trophies -- I'm holding onto what I have currently to see if they are useful in the future.
One Risen Minipet -- OK, I wanted this.

While lodestones are useful, I never saw them. I'm likely to stop buying these for a while since they seem unlikely to reliably offer me anything I want.

Hex.
[ Does not know 'where it is at'... ]

[AKGeo]

297 boxes opened after washing the karma returns, started at 22k karma ended up with 2200 karma after it all(I had a bunch of karma from the last 53 boxes and my daily/monthly jugs and dungeon drops). karma banner and booster with guild bonus.

37 Obsidian shards
1080 unidentifiable objects worth 5g40s
4 molten lodestone
1 corrupted lodestone
1 charged lodestone
2 mini priests of balthazar.

The corrupted, charged and two molten, and the two priests were from the first 50 of my first round of 83 boxes. It seems DR hits pretty quickly, because I started getting only karma and unids with the odd molten lode and obsi shard after that.


And honestly, I wouldn't expect any use to come of the unidentifiable objects...their value and frequency fairly obviously explains their purpose as a method of turning karma into gold. MAYBE if Anet sees that this input of gold into the economy will adversely affect it and cause inflation, they might cut back their value OR give us a use for them other than merching.

Edited by AKGeo, 31 January 2013 - 09:50 PM.

[Cr0w]

I bought 5 boxes and I got a mini priest and karma & unidentified junk. I ended up with more karma than I started + a nice mini & some silver coin

[lomi]

OK so I made an experiment with boxes. here are the results!

I started with around 1.35mil karma and +60% karma boost.
All together I bought 746 lost orrian jewelry boxes what means that I spended 3.394.300 karma all together. The thing is that boxes drop karma so with buying and opening them u start freerolling soon as we can see.

Drops from boxes are:
- 7 mini risen priests of balthazar (LOL)
- 3 corrupted lodestones - 4g
- 3 destroyer lodestones - 2.7g
- 3 crystal lodestones - 1.1g
- 5 molten lodestones - 3.4g
- 3 glacial lodestones - 2.2g
- 1 charged lodestone - 3g
- 3 piles of putrid essence- 1.5s
- 107 obsidian shards
- 2380 uniditified objects - worth 12g at vendor

TOGETHER PROFIT: (around) 28.4g

[nerfandderf]

charged lodestones the best for me. I dont have a use for karma right now since I am not bothering with a legendary and dont like any armour so I burn it in hopes of striking it rich. Would be nice if they added a precursor to the mix lol. Might get people out doing more.