Illconceived Was Na.9781

Open World PvE Builds - December 2017 From the introduction by Lady Elyssa:

Yep there is a limit of things. At some point old stuff starts to despawn when new is built. Limit has always been there ever since the first wintersday. It was even more noticeable actually at first wintersday because the whole thing was harder and needed some tactics how to build. Sorry, my question was slightly different. Yes, there is definitely a limit. My question is: are you sure it depend on what is built ? I strongly suspect it's affected by what resources are made available. As I said, scraps & snow have disappeared from my character without being used, right as someone destroyed more decorations. (And without nearby siege or other resources disappearing.) Separately, I wonder if this is related to the decoration limit we see in the guild hall, i.e. if the limit is of similar number for similar reasons. It might be the case that current Wintersday programmers were unaware of this limit and perhaps they might be able to update it to a new number (or perhaps it uses the same limit as we have in the GH).

If it's easy to add, sure. It's not that big a deal to me, though, so I'm not sure it's worth that much effort on ANet's part. Are you sure the limit is on how many are built? I suspect it might be a hard limit on how much scrap/snow there is, as I've had the resource disappear out of my hand. My little group has tried reducing how often we smashy-smashy. That is, instead of smashing lots of stuff and collecting over time, we just smash as we need stuff. We still run into the limit (because each of us is building our own little minecraft demo) but it happens more slowly.

The problem, of course, with a light switch, is that the Americans would leave it on all the time, acting as if power was cheap and eventually ANet would run out of energy. More seriously: it's a fun idea. Be nice to see it as a cheap guild upgrade with various levels of control.

It's pretty rare for threads to get necroed after long periods of time. When it has happened in the past the reasons have been... A troll re-opening threads (in each case, they were reported & warned or suspended, the necrotizing fasciitis removed, and the issue disappeared).A guild re-opening recruitment. (Seems like a fine reason to re-use a thread.)Someone offering updated info on an old issue (seems fine to offer new solutions or ask related questions)An egocentric player who thinks their issue should get priority over anyone else's (in each case, reported → warned → post removed → issue disappeared)And so on. I don't like when people necro posts for selfish or obscure reasons, but neither do I think it's anything close to a major problem for the forums. It's rare enough that the forum reporting tool is sufficient.

I've argued above that I think it's entirely okay that the Winter's Presence skin be expensive (it is, after all, a shiny with legendary-esque effects). So I can't agree that there's a "bad" design here, just design. However, I would say that it isn't all that much fun to use the TP or the Mystic Forge to acquire 50 of this or 50 of that to complete a festival-themed collection. Mind you, I don't think the old way was any better: opening lots of gifts or running pvp tracks wasn't more fun; it was just slightly more festival-oriented than the TP or the forge.

looks at how much he spent to make Kudzu... looks at how much he has to spend to make Shining Blade Yeah... I'll just say I disagree with you. A LOT. TP prices today: 2056 (buy offer) - 2600 (sell offer)June 2017 prices: 2600-3000December 2016: 2500-3200Other legendaries have dropped even more, primarily because precursor prices have been falling (not to mention T5-T6 basic mats and T5-6 fine mats). Are they cheap? Well, they are no longer close to the most expensive shinies in the game, but sure 2k is more than a lot of people manage to save up (and less than folks tend to earn). tl;dr Legendaries have become cheaper PS the prices of The Shining Blade and Kudzu aren't comparable for several reasons, especially the cost of the precursor. Underwater legendaries have always been cheaper than the rest. The price of TSB is also somewhat cheaper now, because the price of most of its constituent materials are also cheaper; it just takes a lot more math to compare.

Am I reading the SPDY graphs wrong? Mischiefs were listed as sell order for around 3.6g December 11th and lower, they shot up to 8.4g sell listing now. Snowfalls 1.2g to ~4g December 12th to now. I am only delaying my presence hoping they will be back lower around Feb+ but if they won't I"ll probably bite the bullet and just buy now. Sigils probably shot up after people figured out the recipe for the eggnog helmetBoth sigils and runes have consistently spiked for Wintersday since the introduction of Winter's Presence and the throttling of faucets for the superior variants. One interesting fact is that the number of Superior Runes of Snowfall available on the TP actually increased this year, even as the price went up. The price for both rune & sigil has consistently dropped after Wintersday, hitting its lowest point late summer. It might not drop down to as low as last year, but it will almost certainly drop far below the current prices. And, importantly, you can complete the sigil/rune requirements year-round. The only things that have to be done during Wintersday are the ones that require the Wintersday special instances, e.g. the JP. As a reminder, when the shoulder was first introduced, it cost well over 1k, because drinks alone cost 8-10s each. (That was even worse for a time last year, when the price was briefly closer to 11-13s/drink.)

Presumably you mean semi-monthly (2x/month). "Biweekly" is one of those ambiguous words in English that (today) means either "2x per week" or "every two weeks". Given the community's tendency to obsess over phrasing, perhaps it would be good to clarify that y'all mean the latter. Is this initiative planned to go for the entire year? We all (including Mike O'Brien) know that it's really difficult to maintain an aggressive schedule and twice a month is about 20 extra sessions per year compared to 2017, even if it's just 1-2 devs versus a cast of dozen(s). This seems like another opportunity to set expectations, e.g. "we plan to do this for at least 3 months at which point we'll review the level of engagement" versus "we plan to do at least 20 sessions in 2018" versus "we plan to stick to twice a month except during major holidays or emergencies" etc.

I'd love to see someone from the design team prepared to walk us through their process. Right now, it's a black box to us, and so people keep insisting that it's easy to convert outfits into armor pieces or that "clipping is already bad, so spend little time worrying about it and let us decide" or "armor shouldn't take 9 months". It seems to me that someone at ANet can do better explaining than "because it just does."

If there's an individual folder for each session, then one thread per question is probably going to work out well. People can easily see the question in the title and whether ANet has responded or not. However, it seems likely to me that some questions could use clarification and/or brainstorming, so "debate" is sometimes important, too.

People forget that the supply on the TP isn't all the supply there is. And that folks only need to complete this once. The supply for the runes has actually increased since last month (below 9k in October, 14k today). The primary reason for the spike in prices is the same as every year: enough people are impatient about getting their shiny now that they are willing to pay extra. The price has always dropped each year after the holidays. The situation is more complex with the mischief sigils since some supply drops from Wintersday gifts and the TP supply is relatively low by comparison. On the other hand, people open a ton of W-Gifts, which is why drinks are less than 20% compared to the first year (and less than 15% compared to peak).

And investors! Quite a few folks 'buy' gifts of exploration from other players (going rate: 400 gold, buyer pays for all the mats, including icy runes and stuff needed to make clover).

I have a "mule" that stores them. I might never need them, but I'd hate to delete them and then change my mind later.

You're glossing over the reason that different tiers of difficulty takes longer: designing niche content is quicker, because you can assume a minimum level of player skill. To create an "everyone mode" means worrying about lots of different levels of skill, plus figuring out what amounts to prestige-level rewards vs non-prestige. Adding a challenge mode increases the work of the devs, but not by nearly as much, because they can assume an even greater level of player skill. Again, you've glossed over the reasoning. It's worth it for ANet to design content that was originally intended to appeal to 10-15% (although there's evidence that more people do some raiding). Designing only for the 1% would be too little to make it worth their time. Given that the 10-15% content exists, it's some extra work to add 1%-content on top of that. Further, you've glossed over the fact that CM doesn't exist for raids generally; just for specific encounters. Raids are generally designed for the 10-15%; a small fraction of that also includes a CM option. Similarly, out of 100 fractals variations, CM only exists for 2 (or if you want to narrow the focus to maps, only 2 of the 18). In effect, the game already includes an "anyone can do it" raid encounter: escort just takes 10 people who can work together effectively. (And it's really anyone because we've seen it done with non-raid players running non-meta builds with non-optimized comps.) In summary: Niche content takes fewer resources to manage because it can make more assumptions about player abilities.Adding CM to a few of the encounters adds work, but nominally, especially compared to widening the niche (which removes the advantage of designing for the niche).There's already a wide variety of difficulty levels in the existing encounters, excluding CM.None of which is directly related to the OP's question of "do raids need an easy mode?" — that's been answered by ANet: it's moot. The point of raids is to be challenging content; easy mode makes them something other than 'raids'."

Sure, so this particular item won't be worth the trouble for everyone. And I think it's good that the game has a few items like that. PS historically, the prices for the sigil/rune goes down some time after Wintersday is over. Sellers are willing to accept less (particularly those who waited til later to open their Wintersday Gifts. The TP supply of the rune has increased to over 12k, whereas a month ago, it was 8.5k. The price spiked from ~0.7g to 6g and has fallen since to 4gFor the sigil, the November supply was ~6k and now it's 2.3k, with prices spiking from 2g to the current 8g.Last year Rune: November 2016 price was 18 silver, January 2017 it was 1g, and by August, prices dropped below 0.5gSigil: November 2016 price was 20 silver, January 2017 price was 8g, and then by August, prices had dropped to below 2gIn other words, if the current price is too high, wait.

It's not "my story" — it's a genral truism that there are other ways to look at the world than our own. Ok .. let me see if I have this right. I try to be understanding that changing raids would be a fiscal loss to those that sell them.. which would explain the outcry and adamant continual and in some cases downright irrational fighting on this subject matter by the raid community.. And you (and apparently others) turn around.. tell me I am wrong and that No, they are really just that petty, childish and greedy, that they can't have fun unless they have something that makes them feel better then other people. (hence being so against making raids accessible to a larger audience) Well.. I don't have a dog in that fight... so.. Ok then I guess. The very point of raids is that they are geared to a narrow audience. Making them accessible to a larger audience means denying their purpose (and also would mean taking resources away from other parts of the PvE game, since it would take more people to make that happen and maintain it, through other changes to the game). It's reasonable to disagree about whether GW2 should have exclusive content. Since there is exclusive content, I hope you can see that it's important that it also have exclusive rewards. That's not a matter of pettiness, greed, or childishness... unless you also think it's petty, greedy, or childish to want the same rewards without participating in that challenging content.

It's not "my story" — it's a genral truism that there are other ways to look at the world than our own.I don't raid, I can't possibly earn any gold from raids. And I still don't think that there needs to be a way to get stat-changing armor from open world PvE.(I'm not against it either; I just don't think it's worth ANet's time to figure out how to implement it.)

The fact that you don't accept the reasons doesn't change things: people have other reasons for being against rewards being 'equal' across different levels of challenges. If I were in charge, I might not have made the same choices as ANet has, but I agree with them that it's critical that the most challenging mode in their game should have rewards that are notable and exclusive to the mode. One could argue that it's just as irrational to insist that raids be watered down so that that they appeal to everyone or to insist that everything in the game has 'equal' rewards. The point is that the mode is designed for a narrow niche: that's why the raid team needs so few people; it's a lot easier to develop the mode if they can assume a certain type of interest and certain minimum levels of skill; it's much more difficult to setup things to appeal among wide cross-sections of the entire community. (Just look at how difficult it is for ANet to get story instances at a level of difficulty that is fun for everyone: skilled players complain things are too easy or too artificially long; more lackadaisical players complain that they are far too hard to solo, without changing their build or tactics past their comfort levels.)

It would be a huge mistake to assume that most, let alone, all raiders spend any time at all selling raids. (Just as it's a mistake for raiders to assume that all non-raiders who ask for story/easy modes just want easier rewards.) Regardless of what anyone here is saying, the fact is that ANet has said that they intend for raids to be the most challenging small-group content in the game. It would undermine their goals (and increase costs significantly) to add additional modes to raids. They also intend that some rewards remain exclusive to raids. That doesn't preclude giving people other ways to experience any lore. It doesn't mean that they won't add another way to get stat-swappable armor or legendary rings. Just unlikely.

We don't need a new race. You want a new race. And of course, you're not alone, so this thread will get plenty of attention. Heck, even I'd love to play a new race. But... ANet has explained more than once why this isn't going to happen with Expac #3 or #4 & probably not with the game for years to come: it's as much work (if not more) for the story elements as Expac + LS stories. It requires rework of armor pieces, outfits, and possible weapons & gliders & mounts. And most people still end up playing mostly humans, so it's appeal isn't as wide as for more content without a new race. If you don't have any of those things, what's the point of having a new race? You really think that it would be good for the game to add "new race LITE" rather than doing it well? Do you really think that the vast majority of players who want new races would be satisfied with a minor reskin of an existing race? Even if old armor isn't retrofitted, do you think anyone would be okay with new armor that doesn't work on a sixth race? In which case, adding a new race increases the time to develop each new armor skin. And of course, you failed to mention adding new dialogue options for the new race and hiring 10 new actors (to cover basic dialogue plus LS dialogue). New races aren't being dismissed just because of any one of these things, but because any decent effort at a new race adds not only the work of creating that race, but takes similar effort that could otherwise be devoted to other, non-race-specific projects. And it will always increase the design|implementation|maintenance of everything else. So while I want a new race, too, I also want more of all the other things that we can have if we don't get a new race. PS there are plenty of "new race" threads. Why not post in one of those rather than starting a new one.

Ending in ~6 Days Heroes Dye Pack (one vial each of: Glint's Winter, Taimi, LA Commemorative, LA Survivor, & LA Rebuild) Royal Terrace Pass Resplendent Avialan (Raptor Mountfit) Path of Fire Survival Package

(removed; questions answered in private messages)

Sigh, it doesn't mean anything of the sort. It means: I don't want to waste their time on something for which I already have a work-around. Someone invisible whispers me? I can /block or mail them today, without any help from ANet. There are tons of other QoL improvements that don't have work-arounds that simple. Further, in this particular case, I'm asking for a much bigger QoL change: an overhaul to the friends/block/status mechanics; I don't want them to get so lost in the details that they don't have the attention for the bigger picture.

And I'm saying: I disagree; that's not a good use of their limited resources. Fixing a series of small problems with "minimal coding" is harmful to the game's longterm health, in a sort of death-by-1000-cuts sort of way. It's far more efficient to collect feedback and thoughtfully review the entire system instead of making changes to each problem as they come up. And that is, in my opinion, especially true in this case, because there's already an easy work-around for us as players.