Hundreds of hours for a few equipment pack slots?!?

The Z-Coins aren't designed to have monetary value. The three big points of the Z-Coin system, in my opinion, are to:

1. reward people for gameplay, both their modalities of preference and modalities they might otherwise neglect
2. do so without negatively influencing the Guild Wars economy
3. give relatively unique rewards to further promote these comparatively unprofitable activities

The straight value of a copper z-coin for conventional items is roughly 5 to 10 gold depending on what you buy, using these figures:

Creme Brulee: ~300g
Firewater: ~300g
Lockpick: 1,200g to 1,500g
Small Equipment Pack: 2,500g
Tomes: 300g to 800g
Elite Tomes: 3,000g to 8,000g

Taking some of the values that I recently completed (although they are different from quest to quest), and some ballpark estimates for completion:

bounty: 35 zcoins, 175 to 350 gold, 5-10 minutes
mission: 70 zcoins, 350 to 700 gold, 15-30 minutes
pvp: 350 coins, 1,750 to 3,500 gold, 30 minutes

Obviously this comparison isn't relevant for the higher end items. But right now, the z-coin reward is so unbelievably low for the conventional items that amassing the coins for the more unique (and entirely cost-ineffective) items seems like a Sisyphean task. And presently, there isn't enough reward for doing it, period.

The obvious problems that stand out though are:

1) conventional z-coin rewards are ridiculously overpriced

While I understand they don't wish to adversely influence Guild Wars economy, it's pretty clear that the z-coin to conventional item conversion rate is bad. No one is going to buy anything except for the equipment packs and the crate at present rates. They should reduce prices by at least 50% for everything that's larger than a small equipment pack or the fireworks crate. This would adjust the value of a z-coin to roughly 20 gold each.

Alternatively, you could simply double the z-coin rewards, but you'd have to then adjust the prices of the larger equipment packs and the fireworks crate

This would mean:

bounty: 700 gold of zcoins, 5-10 minutes of work
mission: 1,400 gold of zcoins, 15-30 minutes of work
pvp: 7,000 gold of zcoins, 30 minutes of work

Combined with the quest gold rewards (which vary in terms of gold), this makes the potential hourly reward closer to 10,000 to 15,000 hr. This is obviously not an amazing number for anybody that does elite area speed clears or even raptor or vaettir solo farming, but it's much more favorable.

2) Light equipment packs are the only sensible z-coin exchange.

A small equipment pack is 5 silver coins, or you can simply buy it for 2,500 gold. A light equipment pack is 10 silver coins, which is exactly twice the z-coin cost of a small equipment pack. It's presently the only item that your typical person would ever buy with z-coins, because it's the only sensible option; it's the only thing that's reasonably cost-effective. All other conversions are done at a huge loss.

3) Small equipment packs have a bad storage to cost ratio, especially for the cost of z-coins.

5 slots for 2.5 platinum is kind of expensive for such a marginal extra; they should be more like 1k each. Under the present system, a small equipment pack should be closer 2 silver coins. A PvE player who does the bounty and mission quests daily on a single character will have a light equipment pack in about four or five days.

4) There aren't enough unique z-coin rewards.

Besides equipment packs, there's just no reason to spend z-coins on anything because it's not practical.

These adjustments also make a straight up (and easier to understand) comparison a bit more meaningful for the z-coin exclusive items (excepting the crate, which can be obtained from the Traveler). The adjusted rates would be:

Light Equipment Pack: 10,000 gold
Large Equipment Pack: 50,000 gold
Heavy Equipment Pack: 150,000 gold
Everlasting Fireworks Crate: 500,000 gold

The Everlasting Fireworks Crate looks pretty okay: 100 + 80Eish is reasonably comparable to most of the mid-level monthly everlastings, but obviously higher than the ugly ones and lower than the phantasmal or the non-monthlies. The Large and Heavy Equipment Packs are still very expensive though. You are obviously paying a rather hefty amount for the extra space. For me, that's exactly the point for a unique reward that is only purchasable using z-coins. You've always paid extra for space. Using merchant values:

Belt Pouch: 5 slots for 100g, or 20g per slot
Bag: 5 slots for 100g or 20g per slot
Rune of Holding: 5 slots for 500g, or 100g per slot
Small Equipment Pack: 5 slots for 2,500g, or 500g per slot

Under an adjusted system you would pay:

Light Equipment Pack: 10 slots for 10,000g, or 1,000g per slot
Large Equipment Pack: 15 slots for 50,000, or 3,333 g per slot
Heavy Equipment Pack: 20 slots for 150,000, or 7,500g per slot

Even under an adjusted system, the pricing is just slightly unreasonable. I understand that reducing their cost isn't something to be taken lightly with regard for the original points, and that A-Net wants the pack to be a somewhat unique and hard-to-earn reward, but right now it's just a bit silly. The average PvE player that only clears the bounty and the mission for a single character (and skips elite areas), will get a heavy pack in just over two months. That seems a bit slow to me, but isn't too bad. Obviously this can change pretty quickly by doing the quests on multiple characters, doing one of the PvP quests, or finishing one of the elite areas. I'm sure Arena-Net had this in mind.

The system actually (and probably intentionally) gives the most rewards to multi-modal PvP players with highly active f-list or guilds; the GvG / HA quests in particular give you the most z-coins (350 per completion w/ bonuses). I have probably 6 gold coins from the HA quest alone.

In my opinion though, the Large Equipment Pack is probably more reasonable at 3 gold coins (30,000g, or 2,000g per slot), and the Heavy Equipment Pack at 10 gold coins (100,000g, or 5,000g per slot).


The PvP quests were probably designed up front with greater faction and gold rewards to encourage inexperienced players into playing the various formats, and to reward successful PvP players who otherwise don't earn that much cash. The bonuses objectives are intended to reward those more experienced players with massive z-coinage.

The problem is that quests are often completed in the short term, and unless they provoke a greater interest in the format, just promote the already omnipresent farming mentality, which manifests in terms of playing dumb shit from which no one learns anything (e.g. mathway, b-spike, IWAY) to system abuse (red resigns, arena syncing, leeching competitive missions) to get a disproprotionately large basic reward.

Another problem is that players who don't care about the z-coins just farm certain quests over and over by re-rolling new PvP characters after they complete the basic requirements. I seriously doubt anyone is against such farming in terms of one's ability to farm them (honestly, rather than system abuse). But if people are deciding to farm the quests rather than engage in other profitable farming activities or finish the bonus objectives, it's pretty clear that the z-coin rewards are grossly inadequate or the basic rewards are too high.

I ground the math, and for the HA quest, with a good group and some dedication, you could easily get the quest, wipe the Zaishen, farm UW / Fetid, map out for the reward, transfer the rewards to storage, and re-roll in roughly 8 minutes. That's 9,000 faction and 1,500 gold per quest completion, plus the 1,000 or so from the first two maps. That makes for 11,250 gold and 67,500 faction per hour on average from the quest rewards. If you assume that you earn about 7,500 faction from UW / Fetid, that's 75,000 faction, or 15 z-keys. Sell your z-keys at 3.8k to 4k, and you're making 70,000 gold per hour.

I've been playing a ton of HA with a euro friend lately, and on the HA quest days, he would joke that he'd fake a D/C after Fetid, then conveniently re-roll for the quest. He re-rolled every time that we returned to the staging area. Unfortunately, he didn't make that much faction because we were disgustingly successful. On the other hand, we both made like 3,000 z-coins, which was in line with the original intention of the system.

Luckily an easy quick change is to just adjust the rate for transferring silver to gold. Especially because right now no one should have any gold coins yet, as it only takes 2 slots to store all current z-coins. That actually may not be enough, but would be a decent start. You could pretty much drop the rate to 1:1 (silver=gold) to be more in line, though it would make the system pretty goofy in the transition.[/QUOTE]

The Z-Coin system is nowhere near as broken as that; I honestly don't believe most people understand how stupid that shit was. Maybe if you got a tenth the z-coins you get now, you'd begin to approach that level of stupidity. Right now the system is actually reasonably good, and actually the conversion rates are reasonably good too.

The problem right now is exactly as above: conventional crap is roughly twice as expensive as it should be, and the unique things have to priced somewhat independently of the conventional stuff. Which is not to say that some comparison isn't helpful (as above) but the heavy pack definitely isn't supposed to be something easy to get.

With all the bonus objectives completed, the ratios are more favorable. For the Heroes' Ascent quest, you get 7,020g in faction (faction -> z-key @ 3.9), 1,500 in gold, and 3,500 in z-coins, which works out to 58.3%, 12.5% and 29.2% respectively.

Without the bonus objectives, you're absolutely right. You'd only make about 500 gold in z-coins, which is ~77.8%, ~16.7%, and ~5.5% respectively. Which leads back to all of the original points.

While the rest of your post looks pretty good, this is just not true. If you have a good group in HA you can complete the quest in an hour, in one run. However, if you have a good group you're not gonna quit out the moment you get in HoH so you can start again on another char.

A similar situation occurs in GvG, you can complete the whole quest in one at of 3 rounds (if you win all), which will take about 90 minutes (possible longer). Or you could use 3 chars, win 6 ladder matches and win an AT match on each of them, which might be slighly faster.

So basicly, change the estimated time to atleast one hour (for the 350 coin quests that is, which seem to be most time efficient for zcoin farming)...

The problem is that in almost every pvp format, completing the bonus objectives is largely inefficient. For the hero battle example (imo the most easily farmed due to semi-consistent collusion), even if you maximized your z-coin haul by winning 6 matches before turning in the quest, won 360 games, and sold the heavy equipment pack for 50 ecto (a rough price noted earlier this thread), you would still have made less money per game than those turning in the reward as early as possible and selling keys for 4k. This may not matter when the heavy packs are still rare, but once gold can more easily translate to obtaining one on the market, then that gold translation does matter.

My original point was that I honestly think they just overvalued the coins and didn't intend for the z-quest rewards to be so skewed. Any new form of currency can be hard to value before you're comfortable doling it out, and I suspect that their comfort with faction & gold make a 6k faction, 1k gold, 25 copper coin non-bonus reward seem somewhat reasonable without taking a closer look.

You could argue that the hefty faction rewards are intentionally generous in the case of the combat quests, but I suspect that the pve quest rewards are just awfully undersized, and the pvp rewards put a magnifying glass up to their value.

So in this you and I are different.

I play the Zquests with my Guildmates/Allies/PUG's, because I like to do those Quests, the rewards are an added bonus.

You play the Zquests for the reward only, to amass Coins for the Equipment Pack.

From your point, I can understand why it feels like a grind, and why you want new content. If there was a Quest, with an abnormal reward (say 3k Zcoins), you'd probably farm that quests over and over because it gave you so much Coins, but at the same time hating what you were doing.

Ask yourself, what are you going to do after all your toons got an adequate Pack? It seems to me you are pretty much burned out of the game, only playing for an artifical and sometimes unneeded reward. I'm not the person to alter your gaming style, but shouldn't you just take a break, however short?

We all know Anet isn't goint to release any massive new content until GW2 launches (2 years), but in this manner you'll only grow increaslingly bitter.

---------------

I've posted earlier I think the ZCoins prices are okay, at least for the prestige items as the Moss Egg, the Everlasting Crate and the Packs. Yet there is clearly some discrepancy between the time invested completing a quest and the reward. Killing a hard to reach Boss in HM, and only earn the equivalent off a Champagne Popper is indeed kinda lame.

learn to pvp, its not that hard

Some people (not including myself, I pvp from time to time) just hate the competitive nature of PvP. I'd also like to see you find the perfect PUG (not guildies or allies) HA group, no rank, for PvP and get the both bonuses done.

Agreed.

PvE is great because i can just do things with heroes and use unique consumables and summoning stones or PvE skills. In PvP i get super competitive people who call people noob every few seconds. At the same time, in PvP, someone has to lose which makes it terribly unfair as half the people will be leaving very happy and the other half not so much.

I do PvE rewards because it is somewhat fun and I can do them quickly. As to Sun Fired Blank's analysis of the zcoins I have to disagree on some of the timings. PvP rewards take at least an hour to do. PvE bounties range greatly depending on where the boss is. 35 zcoin worth bounties take around 5-10 minutes, while high end area bosses take more than an hour to do(sometime even more with inexperienced members). PvE missions probably take a little more than an half hour to do - including setting up a team. In harder mission (or longer ones) like TH keep, you spend an absurd amount of time for very little reward.

I will be aiming for the large bag, but even with 3 gold coins, it will still probably take me another week or two.

Which is, of course, why the Zaishen Bounty and Mission are worth so little compared to the the Zaishen Combat.

Cost of all equipment packs - from 5 to 20 slots is allright. They're all obtainable through normal play, just don't expect to max out all characters in a couple days. It's meant to last months.

I enjoy upgrading my storage *every day*.
I'm still at the stage of getting the 10-slot bag for all my characters and mules, right now some mules don't even have the 2.5k bag but every time I get a new one I move a 5-slot pack to that mule. That +5-10 new slots per day is a lot of space and a great incentive to play.

Don't nerf that - pack prices are all perfect.

If something's overcosted it's only all the other items you can get for ZCoins - all of them can be obtained MUCH easier and cheaper, for example simply bought for gold. Even after 6 months from now, getting the 10 or 15 slot bags will still be the best option by far.

I think people are being to short sighted about this. 2 years from now, when you have more zoins then you know what to do with, you'll be singing a different tune about how they destroyed the value of sweets/booze/ and fireworks (which is what people will buy once they get all the bags they need/want).
You gotta have a long view if you are going to look at this update from a game economics point of view.

Look what happened in FA and those that were exploiting the bug using /resign and some groups were actually /reporting those that wouldn't resign and getting them dishonored out of playing!!! Yeah that happened I sawed it.

The only problem I have with the zcoin system is PVP players getting a LOT MORE zcoins for completing their missions than PVE players. A PVP player can get those bags in half or 1/4 the time of a PVE player and that is just not right. Balance it out in time and reward and type of play. PVP have gotten way too much in this game and it's the PVE players who have paid out the most money to keep Anet/NCsoft afloat with this game.

2 years? People are going to start complaining about that in a few months

The prices on bags are fine and you are correct at saying that 10-slotters are the most reasonable item to buy. Bigger bags are meant to be luxury items and they are meant to be overpriced. Leave it the way it is.

However, I kinda agree on making common items cheaper. Either that or they need to add something else that's unique to zcoins... because I don't really know what I'm gonna do with my coins after I get 10-slotters for every char. Probably just stockpile them and sell a crate of fireworks or a large bag when I get enough for that...

I've been thinking about this, too. I got three 10-slots this weekend from doing various Z-quests. The norn bear one was the most profitable since I can do that one in about 7 minutes in hard mode.

My plan is to get about half my characters with 10 slots and then start to get 15's. I figure by then, other people will start to sell their 10's as they upgrade to bigger ones. I can buy the rest 10's and work on 15's. Once half have 15's, I'll switch to getting a 20 slotter, and repeat the process.

My playing style is such:

1. click
2. drink

repeat.

PvP has no place in my world. I have a real job to make money.

I really wish there was a way to upgrade bags (large + 10 gold coins + 100g = heavy or a rune to apply to the large pack).

I don't have enough freetime to read every post of every thread related to the equipment packs/z coins, so I must ask why.

Why can I get 45 slots [three Large Equipment Pack] for the same price as 20 slots [one Heavy Equipment Pack]? Why didn't they make the Heavy Pack x1.33 the price of the Large? It just doesn't make sense. If I ever get 15 gold coins, I'll definitely get three Large packs.

In all seriousness, it all comes down to elitism.

No matter what, a Large Equipment Pack is always going to be viewed as "one less" than a Heavy Equipment Pack. There's going to be people that will demand it, and ArenaNet knows it. Even though the price for the Heavy Equipment Pack is totally ridiculous, it will become a goal for many and they will rack up a huge amount of play time to earn one. The goal is to keep fans crazed and playing, so it's working for the most part.

=====

I will say that Equipment Packs are not the greatest things that I originally thought. Once I saw how limited they were, then it began to disappoint me a little.

I found out that a lot of stuff that is filling up storage still can't go into equipment packs. A partial list of items that you can't put into any weapon pack include: Dyes, consumables, lockpicks, keys, runes, insignia, inscriptions, weapon mods, monster trophies, various reward tokens (e.g., Zaishen coins, Vabbian trade contracts), miniatures, quest items, and unopened presents. To me, this is a lot of items and it is going to make me rethink on how many equipment pack slots that I really need.

Yes I admit that. Although I am sure I am not the only player that is doing the zquests for the coins, many people do. I think they should have a title attached to this grind and call it "Slave of ZaiShen".

Then I would be free to do whatever I want in the game. And I suspect that we will see a decrease in interest, in the zquests when most people have all the packs that they need. The prices of these packs would also drop.

I have just reached my equipment pack goal tonight. All my 16 characters have all the packs that they need now.

Yes, and that is why they have to add unique rewards into the zquest grind, rewards that can't be bought using normal gold, unless sold by another player.

got my 5 gold coins Saturday and got a large bag for it. Didn't take that long and 15 slots are enough when you have eight chars to feed. I did mainly the PvP quests aka GvG, HA, TA & AB ... and never felt the boredom that comes with 'grind'. Just switch your toons and team rolls a bit around, was actually good fun.

Keep it like it is.

Well theres currently 2 players attempting to sell the large 15 slot bags in Kamadan EU D1. The price? 50 ecto....

I just ask myself why the Coins are account-based, if everything you can exchange for them is not..... makes no sense to me.

So those that play 8 hours a day can do this:
XDDD

Which just makes the excessive price on these very limited storage packs even more foolish.

Not me. I just need the storage to store all my farming armor and alternate weapons.

The bigger 15/20 slots packs are designed for characters with multiple sets of armor. Otherwise, the 5/10 slots should be sufficient.

Not enough space for general storage? The idea is to make you buy a storage pane.

This is getting insufferably boring as I thought it would eventually. I'm way behind in quests now... It's just not that entertaining and the bag sell prices seem to be poor for the work involved...

Ye, same here. Way behind. My quests lists are full, so every day I check if there is something better that grabs my eye and I then remove a quest I don't like or don't want to do.

Not actually too bothered by it tbh. All the same old quests and missions. If it looks like something remotely interesting, then I do it, but I actually cannot be assed.
See it as a Big FU ANet.

I bet they though this would be a novel way of acquiring a STORAGE pack.

ridiculous price for a large bag rofl... wait... I'm rich !!!!!!!


probably something Anet couldn't do, that's the only possible reason I see

bags should have been upgradeable and personalized, but let's just be happy with what we have, as Anet won't change anything soon

If they are personalized then they should be upgradeable, but since they are not upgradeable, I am glad they are not personalized.

If your storage demand goes up in the future, you can buy a bigger pack and give your smaller pack to your mule since they are not personalized. If they are personalized then you just wasted money/effort in getting the smaller pack now that you have a bigger one.

It ain't worth the effort. Just wait and let some other crazy fool grind their brain to mush doing this, then buy the pack off them for plat+ectos.

Buying it:

Standing in spamadam/LA power trading, which is boring as shit
Grinding a farm area to get enough gold
Spending the gold you earned

Questing it:

Doing different quests every day
Getting gold
Getting balthazar faction
Getting reputation for titles
Spending a couple of hundred gold for the coins

If you ask me, it's more worth it to quest for the bags than to get the money and buy them.


Also, when will you people realize that doing the quests is not grind unless you do every quest multiple times? Seems that people like throwing around words these days.

<SARCASM>Well, remember, they have absolutely no choice but to get the 20 slot bag on every single character they have.</SARCASM>

Well joo have to understand that 5-10-15 bags; are sooooo Dolce & Gabana Spring 2005 season. Seriously, if you want chique, you need to go for the armani of ze bag catalog, ze 20 slot ultra contemporary heavy bag. I mean seriously...if you can't have the best, how do you expect to frap your epeen 24/7?

Yeah you, random epeen frapper person, as seen by your habits of buying the biggest/most expensive items in GW, how could you live with yourself by not buying the biggest/most expensive bag in GW? /endscarcasm

Powertrading? How long does it take to buy a bag? I already have more than enough money.

Already doing that. It's what people who play characters through the game do anyway.
Already have some, have better ways of making it than 500-1,000 at a time per quest.
Don't need it.
Don't need it on the characters that could jump all about the map doing the Z-Quests.

And if you ask me, it isn't. Maybe it is if getting the money involves more than just clicking the Xunlai chest, where I keep it.

I have no issue with the grind aspect. I just hate how slavishly doing these Z-quests every day, even if only the 2 PvE ones just once, my existing goals and ambitions in the game would grind to a halt. (Oh wow, I managed to use the word grind in my complaint. ) So, questing for packs seems out of the question for me. I won't be getting any coins except on the rare occasion that the quests coincide with what I log on to accomplish.

So, grind away you Zaishen slaves, and sell me your bags! Meanwhile, I'll be playing Guild Wars.

I'd like to add something on the PvP quests.

It gives people the possibility to try them.
Sure, they probably won't get far in HA, GvG or TA. But getting better at the easier forms is very possible.
There might be some 'competitive' players who call names. I've seen plenty of them in PvE so it's not limited to PvP. More over, while I know some good competitive players can give harsh comments but most of the time they won't be rude or call names. It's the not-so-very-good-pretending-to-be-good that act that way.

Sticking with PvE is absolutely ok, a guildie of mine decided to take only the AB quests because she can play that with guildies.
But don't forget that jumping into the PvP quests can learn people something new and you can take that experience with you in PvE. I know I'm monking PvE a lot more efficient since I learned to play a decent PvP monk.

So zquests aren't playing the game?

You would rather do whatever you do repeatedly over and over again to get more money than you ever need (unless you have a minipet fetish)?

I highly doubt that whatever you're doing is less of a grind.

They are a very limited way of playing the game. There is much much more to do than Z-missions and a Z-bounties. Also, I prefer to play content in the order I chose, the order that makes sense for the character I'm working on.

The way I play, by the time I start replaying content, many months have passed.

You can doubt all you like. Don't blame me though if I don't give a rodent's rectum about the suspicions regarding my playstyle of someone who never watched me play.

It only takes 1 day to farm up the required ecto to buy a bag. In some cases we already have the money. You go ahead and collect your coins. Since there are a lot of individuals who think like you, it shouldn't be too difficult to find 20 slot bags in the near future.

You answered your own question, albeit indirectly.

If you want the 15 or 20-slot pack, you have to do the quests on several characters. This is to get the pack in a fair (this fairness-meter will be different between people) amount of time. Waiting several weeks (for the 15 slot) and months (for the 20 slot) in doing these quests, is just ridiculous (imo ofc).

I am close to getting my 15 slot pack (since the time-cost for the 20 slot is just stupid!). I will probably get it tonight when completing the last few missions. This is more than a week that it took me of virtually doing just the ZQuests. No other 'normal' GW play for me due to this.
I am doing the ZQuests NOW, since I have a STORAGE problem NOW, which was supposed to be sorted out by this update. (Little did we know, heh.)

And yes, I have already purchased the 5 slotters on all my chars, this is merely a short-term fix. (Which cannot even be upgraded? Yes, very well thought-through, i.e. 'smart'.)

Like Gli said, it has taken me away from my usual playing of GW, the way I want to do it. That is a BIG plus GW has, the freedom you have of how to play their game.

This is what I don't appreciate. I don't have hours on end to spend on doing these ZQuests and to do what I normally do - Which is taking my characters through all the different campaigns missions and quests THE WAY I WANT TO DO IT and not hap-hazard like ANet wants us to do it with the ZQuests.

Other than this and getting a few 15 slot packs for my biggest / main chars, I will wait for the 20 slot packs prices to drop and just buy it from players.

OR... like I said, just take your time. You gotta think long term. Sure, if you want storage NOW!! you'll be grinding your butt off (for either money to buy the bag or the coins to get it, ps, the difficulty will be finding someone who will sell the bag and beating out the other people who will bid on this indemand item, the money itself is easy to get) .

If you just do the quests gradually over the course of a year, you'll get it with minimal grind.