Why inscriptions are the worst thing that happened to GW.

Because of the lack of a better quote:

This would also apply to weapons I guess. So uncommon or scarce. Wanna make a close bet to how many Eternal Blades there are in game? Good, now make an approximate bet of how many q9 -5/20 +30hp Echovald Shields there are, or even, how many q7 15^50 Swamp Clubs.

And Eternal Blade is NOT RARE, it's at the most "uncommon" but it's incredibly popular: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

Now, I still know that you can't read, but I could always try.

Using your logic I could say that only items that exist once or twice in the game are rare...but no that is not the definition of rare in guild wars. Eternal Blade is rare because it has a limited way to obtain it...high-end chests and a limited chance to spawn from those high-end chests.

No, those are exaggerated examples, but I'm talking rare as in a couple thousand of them in game max. There are tens of thousands of Eternal Blades in the game, they are not rare in the actual sense of the word. They are rare in the sense of being gold. But then again, a gold Spiked Axe is rare according to that logic as well, and there are plenty of those. If you really can't understand this, it's pretty ridiculous. Or you're just purposely arguing with me, just to troll.

Your Statistics are laughable at best. Also, your definition of rare is an opinion at best. My point of view is an opinion also, as so can't be proven wrong but can be supported by wiki and the majority of the player base (think casual player). Dupers might think armbraces are more common than dust because they made storage chests full of them. Not agreeing with your opinion doesn't make them a troll, in fact by saying that it makes you a troll. Also, let me quote you "I guess I just like arguing too much" http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...1&postcount=40 so by your own definition you are a troll.

I'm not buying whatever it is your selling.

You just can't pick 'Rare' as in 'drops rarely' (Drop rate less than 1/1000 times you kill the enemy or open a chest) or 'rare' as in 'quality'(blue,purple,gold) whenever if fits you.
Everyone knows what people mean each and every time when they use the term based on context. So far it has been pretty clear.

To keep the level of rarity described in this quote(less than 200 items for more than... how many? 2 hundred thousand players? ), You'll have to make items STOP DROPPING altogether once a certain number of players have got them, because there's no sink for weapons that get added, so even in the outmoded system that you value so much, and along the increased rare drops from HM and the excessively effective farming builds that keep popping like fungi, the market would get filled eventually again.
That would mean that after a short while, a Dungeon chest would become 'depleted' of rare skins, and a guy that just bought the game will NEVER, EVER get them, unless they from those that got them.
Add more skins, and the same will happen eventually again. To the point that the best 200..1000 farmers (and a few lucky decent proper six-god-fearing players) are the only ones with those skins, and keep trading between each other in their exclusive powertrader VIP club, leaving out the rest of the players.
And so, even though everyone has paid for their conent, only a few would enjoy it to its full extent.
Removing inscriptions or reducing drop rates won't change that, only delay it. And 'delay' is the last thing GW1 will ever need.

Considering the time and resources it takes to add new items to the game, the number of players that can be at the same time in one instance, the way GW is heavily instanced, the impossibility of showing off weapons in outposts, the availability of PvP for PvE characters and the lack of market system, making GW have a more restricting drop system, or doing anything that would have similar restricting consequences would be pretty damn stupid, to say the least.

I can't talk for ANet, but I'm pretty sure they have better things to do than making weapons that 99.999...% of the players will never get to see but the Wiki or in a picture some guy posted in some forum that less than 0.001% of the players visit.


The thing is simple. You are not getting the same style of drops in GW as in other games, and you can't change your mindset to 'GW'. So you are still expecting Hack&Slash style of drops, and the inherent variable properties made weapon drops a bit closer to that.
But not all games are like that. Sometimes games have items with less properties, or fixed caps and maximums, and getting the 'maxed gear' is easier in those games.
In GW, items have 2 or 3 variable properties. And then 1 or 2 fixed ones.
Compare that with the more than 25 properties items can get in other games.

So what if 99% of the playerbase could never afford a certain weaponskin? You still see this as a bad thing. It would ONLY be a bad thing if 99% of the playerbase would not have access to those weapons, AND that those weapons have better properties than others. But they don't. You q9 15^50 Eternal Blade does exactly the same damage output as the q9 15^50 Longsword you get from a collector. So people QQ'ing that they could never get one would be redundant, because they could get the exact same properties for 1/1000000th of the price... But for some reason, you find that something to be below you.

Why are the restricting consequences bad? Because then there wouldn't be enough perfect weapons to feed the playerbase, thus creating a too large demand for a too small supply? False, again, almost every mod on a weapon is available from collectors, greens and weaponsmiths. Thus removing the need for that demand. But you seem to ignore collectors, greens and weaponsmiths deliberately, or at least you've never mentioned them in any of your arguments. All the arguments you have brought up so far are pretending that there are no weaponsmiths and collectors; thus making it impossible for poor players to get perfect gear.

Who cares if some guy that payed 1000e for a sword that looks only slightly better than yours, if your sword does the EXACT same thing as his, but you only payed 50g for it? Who's the smarter one then, him or you? Vanity SHOULD be something you pay for. But again you seem to think that's below you...


Indeed, but in other games, the cooler gear also has better properties than the normal gear. In those games your Eternal Blade would not only look cooler, but it would also do 20-33 damage or something like that. If this was the case, then I wouldn't have any ground to stand upon. Because then you could say "but it's not fair towards a poor player that he can't get that sword, and has to run around with a longsword only going 15-22". But that is not the case, his Longsword is just as good as your eternal blade, so all he's QQ'ing about is that he's poor and can't afford one. But that was actually the entire idea behind the weapon system at first. Easy accessibility to perfect gear, but if you wanted pretty weapons with good stats, you'd have to pay for them.

Technically, no. If there's a 1 in 10 chance of getting a drop when you kill something, it doesn't mean that killing 10 things guarantees 1 drop. Same applies to things like opening suprises -- if there's a 1 in N chance of getting a particular item it doesn't mean that opening N surprises guarantess you'll get one of those items. You could get any number between 0 and N.

The probability of each event is isolated from the others. You start each game of chance fresh.

Humans are wired to look for patterns in everything, that's why we tend to think we can find patterns in a series of games of chance, but there isn't any. Lucky or unlucky streaks, patterns, none of it has any basis. Random is random.

What you probably mean is that if you farm very very much, the number of drops (and the particular items you get) are theoretically supposed to start approaching their probability. Ie. if you kill 100.000 foes you will tend to that 1 in 10 "foe drops something" rate, and if you open 100.000 gifts you will approach the ideal 1 in N "got the item I wanted". But the key word is "theoretically". The reality may be nothing like the theory. Because it's random.

Probability is a bitch and that's why I sell Traveler gifts -- I like the 1:1 probability I'll get 4k for each better than the 1:3000 chance I'll a green mini.

Unfortunately, luxury items are a necessity for any market. They're the means for taking money from the super-rich and putting it back in circulation. Without them, the money would simply sit unused.

Let X denote the probability of a drop from a single event.
Assume this is constant over repeated events.
So 1-X is the probability of not getting a drop.
Then the probability of getting no drops over the course of N events is:
(1-X)^N - for 1>X>0 this tends to zero as N tends to infinity.
And so the probability of getting at least one drop is 1-(1-X)^N.
We note that the sequence (1-(1-X)^N) is a strictly increasing sequence (subsequent terms are always strictly greater than previous terms).

So by performing more trials you are more likely to get a drop. This of course is only a prediction mechanism; once those trials are performed then you have to reset everything.

A 1/N probability of something happening per trial doesn't mean it will happen once in N trials, it just means that it will happen once on average in N trials.

You'll be closer to be right if the 'trading' factor was strong enough.

But I'm afraid is not. Paying 1000e is not the usually way to get things. And someone had to get them in the first place.

Not much people bother to trade.
From all those posts in Spamadan, many people just give up after waiting for a long time, and some never bother to trade again, and even more never bother to trade at all in the first place.

- For a single sole player that does not trade or farm, getting everything by themselves is not easy, yet possible. They'll see things from their particual 'player' point of view.
- For someone that 'powertrades', and 'powerfarms', getting the same things is way easier. They see things a more general 'market' point of view.

Making things harder to the second kind of guy would make things nearly impossible for the first kind of guy, forcing them to play more like the second kind of guy.
Powertrading is not a 'high end' gameplay, but a separate playstyle.

GW was clearly made with the first kind of guy in mind, so the second kind of guy may get bored of GW's drops quite faster and fail to understand why are they like that.

I assume that's what may be happening to you.

I was implying probability. One pass at trying to get an item from a chest has almost no chance of succeeding. One hundred will be higher probability. If it wasn't so fast to make runs (*cough*) there would be a bit more rarity to many skins, even greens.

Well, this is how the game works right now, to be without inscriptions just takes it to an extreme. You say a lot, so I may have missed it, but I'm curious to know if you feel as strongly about power creep and drop rates, which toward your complaint only compound the problem.

I'd like to refer you to Collectors, Green weapons and Weaponsmiths once more.

Power creep is ridiculous, Proph is retardedly easy, same goes for Factions, although at least there you got some semi-strong mobs, who can get your party below 70% health before dieing. You get the point..
I don't know enough about droprates to have a firm opinion about it. I don't do an awful lot of Dungeon runs (occasionally froggies Raven's or SoO with some guildies, mainly John/Revrac, you might have heard of him) because I don't like the gamble on chests. I've had good drops before, but I've had at least 2000x the amount of shite that I've had goodies.. I just like it every now and then, to do it with some friends.

That seems to imply that you expect all those players to limit themselves to that, and keep all the other skins for the "trading minority".

Again, that's not going to happen, this is GW. You don't understand it. You probably never will.



Greens are still used. Many of my heroes and players have greens. Many players use them. They are a nice way to get some extra relatively-quick weapons in exchange for the ability of customizing them. Many players eventually replace them with items they can customize. That doesn't happen in a day for most players, but it's done over the course of several months.

Collector weapons are used less when you finally get the 5 or so needed for a weapon, the item is never anything special and you probably got something better while playing.
If their skins were non-rare skins that change depending o the region, or if they were inscribed more often (most of my paragon and dervish heroes started with collector weapons, since scythes and spears are inscribed in collectors) or if you could salvage mods from more of them, collectors would be used much more.

Crafted weapons are just too expensive compared with how easy other items are to get.

And people that has /bonus weapons will probably use those instead collector weapons anyways.


You may think that's inscriptions fault. But it's not.

It's just that they are as outdated as the outmoded drop system. They could use some revamping.
Look at Prophecies item rewards and all collector armors. Changes in the game made them lose most of their usefulness, if not all of it. What do you do with all Prophecies item rewards? Merchant or Trash. None is useful, with a couple of exceptions like the -50Grin cesta.


That doesn't mean the changes that made those parts of the game pointless or outdated are bad. It means that those parts need some updating to match those changes.

I'm also not asking for it to happen. If I was, this thread would've been in Sardelac. This thread was made to state the flaws of inscriptions, not ask for a reroll of 5 years of playtime.

Also, there are plenty of skins available from collectors, there are even skins available from them that are not from drops, and some of those are pretty damn cool. Gemstone Staff and Lotus Staff say hi. I use them on my mesmer cause I like them that much. You just never looked into it, you keep thinking that the only things available from them are Longsword, Crude shield... Only crappy skins. There are even q9 15^50 Dadao Swords available, skins with mods you pay 30-50k for to get in a gold version. Hell a Crude Shield with -5/20 +30hp you'd pay 20e for in a gold version.

You're just too ignorant to look at the alternatives, and keep looking at what you find best. I know inscriptions do a lot of good to a lot of people, but that still doesn't justify their existence.

There are some, but they are a minority, most collector skins change only depending on region like crafter skins.
Seen one Prophecies maxed collector hammer? Saw them all.

Practically only Eye of the North collectors have actual variety in skins, but that doesn't matter, since their items are not inscribed, and by the time you get the 5 items they ask for, you'll probably find one or two common items that may not have the same stats, but have an inscription slot so you'll be eventually able to turn give them the same stats, and the drops will probably have skins that you'll like more.


All of my Sousukes had Lotus staves right after Nightfall came out, because I played A LOT of time in Echovald and my storage was mostly empty, so I saved lots of trophies. Although I never found any decent drops, I still loved the place and playing there a lot.
By the time I finished Nightfall with all of my characters, each Sousuke had a different weapon skin.
If I have to choose between sticking to one skin and seen most players go around with a few different skins while a few players hoard the variety, and being able to equip my heroes with whatever I find along the way and seeing a lot of variety when I join a PUG, I'll go always with the second choice.

Now we've deteriorated into arguing semantics, I think it's safe to say we're done here.