Anets response to the celestial sig problem

Future Update

In order to combat the rising cost of Celestial Sigils and thus allow more people to buy guild halls and experience the guild warfare aspect of the game, we will be substantially increasing the number of Celestial Sigils entering the economy. Starting with this week's update, whenever a team wins a game in the Hall of Heroes, that team will receive three Celestial Sigils instead of one. We will also be making improvements to the trader to allow his prices to more accurately reflect supply and demand within the game.

thats what they are going to do. This might make prices go down or stay the same for a while so i wouldnt buy any for a while.

Oh, that's an awesome thing to do! Who ever said that intervention in economy was bad?

The prices on celestial sigils will plummet, you can be sure of that. Since no guild needs more than a sigil, those who accumulate them will be forced to sell them for a decent price or stick them wherever the sun doesn't shine. Yeah, the price might stay stable for a while, but I'm not buying while it stays stable.

Yeah, obviously I'm against the fat cats controlling whole markets, to many people's dismay. It's bad enough to have that happen in the real world...

I'm sure some people will start collecting them to reach 250.. like i am doing with forgotten seals for an unknow reason. That's if they stack togeter in inventory. I never had a sigil so i don't know.

Keep your political views to yourself when you post if you're not ready to defend them or expound upon them, in which case you'll be off topic.

I personally don't like the idea of 3 sigils, but certainly 2 would be a substantial increase. Each guild only needs one, I can see sigils going for 5000 gold in the not to distant future. Unlike items like Superior Runes that are random drops, a sigil is awarded for winning HoH. Winning at HoH is sometimes as easy as logging in at the right time.

They don't stack in inventory. This should cause a quick dip in the price of a sigil before it continues its climb back to 100k per. The sigil supply simply cannot keep up with the gold supply.

Peace,
-CxE

More Sigils being available is a good thing, but it's kind of like putting a fluffy pink ribbon on a troll. It looks better, but it's still hideous. I was never a fan of making Sigils an object that divides a 'have/have not' community, because it's not an item that provides some kind of superficial bonuses, and to the people that can get them, it's not even useful (like say, getting unID'ed armors to drop would be) all it's really doing is blocking a very large portion of the community from playing the title aspect of the game: Guild Wars. Because of this, it's going to take a very long time before the ladder has any real depth to its structure or meaning, which is unfortunate.

I've got no problem with there being rewards for the HoH, or any other kind of competitive aspect of the game, but to hand out and then hold out on such an important item for exorbitant prices not only limits the choice of gameplay styles other people have available to them, it also forces grind on people in order to afford them - no choice and grind, two things most people in the competitive community are very vocally against. So to have these kind of systems in place.. especially being self perpetuated.. is just hypocritical.

Spooky is my hero

Yeah how is it Guild Wars if its nearly impossible (due to the amount of people who fool around during matches) to win hoh and get a sigil? Why arent they making something for us pve people who want the hall for a meeting place?

Yeah... the better solution would have been to have the sigils available at the vendor ALL the time at 50K per unless the supply (incoming sales) were high and then the price would go down...

Then again the real question is what is the purpose of the Sigil... to make sure that only the uber elite guilds can be on the ladder?

I guess it would be better to give all guilds a generic guild hall - allows GvG play - and have the sigil get you one of the special ones.

Ah, but that is just me talking.

Ding, ding, ding another winner.

I humbly bow to the wise and beautiful Spooky, such words of wisdom are hard to come by in the forums sometimes.

I suppose three at a time may help, that is unless of course the guilds who are always winning just horde those also... Now. If the first place team got two, and the second place team got one as well. That may make a big difference.

The key here is that the Sigils don't stack in inventory so with 3 at a time inventories will fill up quickly and in theory at least the "hoarders" will be forced to either make space, drop or sell cheaper.

Either way its a good sign that Gaile and AN are listening and paying attention to what goes on in the game.

Well.. the thing is. Do you not think that these mega-"elite" guilds do not have plenty of mules, plenty of players with storage? I don't know, I guess im just pessimistic of the whole issue, 50 dollars isn't alot to some people for extra storage. (Especially when you can make 40+ dollars a sigil on ebay)

I disagree on sigils being the reason why the ladder has very little depth and meaning. That cannot be farther from the truth. The difficulty in obtaining skills (and to a lesser extent runes) is the foundation of all the pvp issues in guild wars right now. Guilds that can't win sigils on their own really don't add anything to gvg. 67% of the guild matches we have don't even have a full team of 8. It just gives us free wins and free points for about 5 mins of work.

I'm not saying these guilds shouldn't be able to compete at all, but I also wouldn't call it competition either if one side has absolutely no chance against another. A possible solution would be to have tiers and other sort of divisions. A singular, global ladder where the best in the world can shine seems like a great idea in theory, but has proven to cause more problems in practice. As it stands, Negative Zero has three guilds in the top 10, n0, p0, and w0. The stagnation in the top 20 isn't because these guilds are trying to fill up spots, but because it's rather difficult to coordinate matches with 8 real people against another group of 8 real people spread around 24 time zones.

However, you're right that it's basically going to be the same people winning the HoH and thus hoard/sell sigils. So I don't see how this really helps the lack of sigil issue. But in my case, i already have more gold than i can hold. I trade sigils for unidentified rare items instead.

I'm at least glad that Anet has taken notice of something that's been a frequent topic of debate, and obviously has a large number of players concerned / upset seeing how the point of GW in the first place is to engage in GvG competition.

Unfortunately though, I'm not quite so sure that simply upping the number of drops will necessarily change things, at least not in the near future. In theory, a guild works its way to the HoH, wins a Sigil, then shifts focus to climbing the guild ladder ... but in practice that's obviously not been the way things have worked out at all. Anyone who *doesn't* think that guilds have hoarded sigils is either simply fooling themselves, or never pays attention to the names of the guilds winning HoH on a daily basis. When you repetedly see wins from the same team / guild with names like *I Sell Sigils PM Me* etc, obviously there are people ignoring the point of moving beyond the HoH and simply using it as the preferred PvP farming method. All the increase in drops will do is make that farming much easier for those already doing so.

Imo, if they want to truely add some sort of fix to this while retaining the HoH drop as the method of gaining sigils, there needs to be a reward system in place in GvG battles that encourages guilds to focus their efforts there, something other than simply bragging rights which is about all GvG awards currently.

Agreed, that is why I added my "in theory" statement

I wish they would just let the Sigil Trader NPC sell them for some arbitrary price, like 30k. That would allow PvE'ers to get their hall AND put a major roadbloack to people attempting to corner the Sigil Market and exploit those in need of Sigils.

I would think that, that would be the next step, I think this intervention is the slap on the wrist but if the hoarding and gouging continues that might be the next step.

I personally think that having more guilds capable of having a hall would increase competition. My guild has 35+ people and usually have 6-8 on at any one time. Getting together for a scheduled event would be easy... but until I get a hall it doesn't matter. Personally if my team starts to win and I have more gold than I can use I will give sigils away.

One piece of the new item that I have not seen comments on is that the traders now will more accurately reflect the supply and demand. I believe this might mean that the npc trader when now actually have a sig to sell. Many times the npc would just no have any avaiable. Black dye would be a good example--everyone sells these to players as opposed to the trader because you can always make a profit yet the trader always has some available even if they have a high price tag. If the NPC trader always had an available supply that would regulate the supply side at least to the point of being a fairly reasonable amount.

yea, see...increasing quanity of guilds doesn't increase the quality of the ladder. There's still fundamental flaws with the ladder system as it is. Like, scheduling matches, not every guild has 35 members to always have 8 people on. And why do matches have to be scheduled? If you have 8 people on you should be able to gvg if you wish. That isn't the case for the high rank guilds. Hence the starting of multiple guilds. The competition in tombs in pretty weak compared to BWEs and the competition on ladder is weaker.

And if you have 35 ppl, how hard is it for each member to give 3k? How long does it take to get 3k? 10 mins or less...

Also, I don't see how it's my responsibility or the responsibility of sigil winners to give out sigils to the needy. Right now, I need weapon modifer and runes, so I trade my sigils for 3-5 pieces of yellow unidentified rare items.

I liked the sigil mechanic as a form of PvP rewards - a PvE guild should be pharming massive amounts of loot anyway, and the PvP guilds just have a bunch of sigils from their wins, and there's your basis for an economy between the two groups.

Why these PvE guilds, which I have to imagine have sizable memberships, cannot afford a sigil, I cannot understand. If your guild collectively cannot come up with 100k for a sigil after a month of playing the game...well, do I even have to finish that sentence?

I agree with sama that the lack of sigils has not influenced the ladder at all. Guilds that cannot win a sigil have zero business competing for a top spot on the ladder. All that adding sigils will do is add more gunk to an already crowded middle/bottom of the ladder.


GvG is seriously lacking at the moment. As it keeps a running record and goes onto a global ranking it's something that I want to take seriously and put a best effort towards - but once we have put in that effort, we end up waiting 20 minutes to fight some terrible guild with 3 henchies. Plus what's the reward for doing well in GvG? A high ladder ranking a webpage the vast majority of the playing population doesn't know about?

Tombs may be a bit more random, but you at least get games. Plus, when you're winning, you actually accumulate wealth and, more importantly, broadcast your winning across the entire Guild Wars universe. Stand around to win a GvG match, and no one notices. Go on a tear in the hall, and people start messaging you with congratulations and asking what you're running.

The level of competition argument applies only to guild challenges. There are maybe half a dozen guilds worth fighting one on one right now, and again unless you're going to organize a game with one of them in GvG you're not going to accomplish much more than milling about in the guild hall. If you want a bit more than that, like, oh, fame and fortune, go play Tombs until the ladder has some incentive to climb.

Peace,
-CxE

Ensign not all of us pve players are in guilds that farm. Some of us just play and if we find something we keep it. I dont waste my time searching for items and runes. I have better things to do. But if i have a guild and we want meetings why should we be forced to farm for that? We should have to complete something like a quest which is pve styled to get it. Farming isnt pve questing/missions are.

Look, there is no right or wrong on this issue and we rehash it over and over again, PvE and PvP are 50% partners in this game and YES you can cry foul and say its not 50% but bottom line is that AN's intentions are that it is, so it is. If you have YOUR personal views that its something else or your tunnel vision from your side clouds the big picture then thats too bad.

This topic is an insight to the problems we face in the world, everybody wants it the easiest, quickest, no work involved in getting it, give it to me for nothing way they can something.

They need to be scheduled because there aren't enough GvG capable guilds. Breaking it into divisions would only make it worse by making the pool of people you can play against even smaller.

If you want higher quality GvG, you have to have more people actually doing it. People aren't going to get better at it by waiting on the sidelines; most people learn best by doing. The longer you prevent a large quantity of people from engaging in GvG, the longer it's going to take for the quality of GvG to improve.

I don't mean to bring this up again but part of the reason there is no much competition right now is that you need to PvE if you want to PvP. I have some RL friends (and I'm sure the same thing is happening all over the place) that are very good players and would probably become fierce GW players in short-time. But how am I going to talk them out of Counter-Strike to come kill sand worms?

I see a common weakness in the arguement about the prices of sigils. There is a simple aspect that many overlook:

Making a guild is hard. It costs 2k and you need to actually have some people to join otherwise you're just wasting your time.

Sigils are needed for a guild hall. Sigils cannot be obtained until you're at the end of the Ascension.

Ergo, being a guild leader requires that you have experience not only with the game but also with dealing with people.

Making sigils rare seems like a good idea to me. It promotes teamwork among players and often reveals who is actually mentally strong enough to be a leader.

Everyone whines and complains and moans about "But I want a guild hall now!" Why? Why do you need it so badly? Why do you care so much? Deal with it, become a better player, actually get a character to lvl20 and the ascension.

Edit: You know, you can always fight in the arenas before lvl20 and gain experience that way. You don't really have to do all that much fighting npcs if you really didn't want to.

What does Ascending have to do with Sigils?

Where did i say I want it handed to me? I said id rather have a quest that guild members must complete together in order to get the sigil. It would be much more effective. Of course the quest must be redoable if you join another guild.

That sounds awesome... have some ass-kickin, 5-hour long quest in the Underworld that can get you a Sigil.

hmm, the topic of this post is about whether or not anet's response to the sigil issue is going to resolve anything. Personally, I don't think it will help alleviate much, and certainly won't improve the quality of the ladder. Why? Because lack of sigils isn't the main problem or even a top 10 problem of why the ladder is so broke.

About your last statement, well it would seem that your opinion is different from mine. I know how little there is to gain in trying to change the opinions of another (especially an individual over the internet).

It does seem fairly clear that it was intended that sigils would be traded with / sold to other guilds who may have taken a less direct route to the HoH via spending time in pve.

The issue is though, most guilds that I know of are of a moderate size, having players ranging in levels etc. My guild [KaW] purposefuly keeps it's membership at or around 20 members, mainly because we want our pvp abilities to be focused, and have the ability to know one another's strengths / weaknesses and have a more solid basis for our pvp / gvg teams.

I think it's somehow assumed though, that pve players are running around with tons and tons of gold to put into buying a sigil, and quite mistakenly so or else there'd not be an issue with the current prices to begin with.

When the average ( doesn't create a w/mo alt to specifically farm for hours on end ) pve player reaches ascension / tombs, more often than not they barely have enough gold to purchase their level 20 armor set. You have to take into account that unless you *do* spend hours farming, most pve players also have to buy weapons / upgrade components / runes along the way as well. As a nec at level 20, I can tell you from experience that there's simply no way for the majority of class combos to make 3 plat in 10 minutes. The only time I ever made that much in that little time was by selling steel ~ steel that it took me nearly a week of exploring to gather

Again, it's common knowledge that prices of sigils are simply getting far out of hand. You want a more developed gvg ladder ? How about allowing more than a handful of guilds actually be a part of the game's primary focus ? And you can make all the comments about guilds winning the HoH deserving all the sigils they can farm ... but don't forget that it takes just as much skill / teamwork for a guild to start from lvl 0, do all the missions and work their way to the HoH without creating farming w/mo alts to buy items etc.

All guilds deserve the chance to compete in gvg ... and until they can the only ones you can blame for a *stagnant* ladder are the ones who keep them from doing so.

The way I see it, the only way this is going to make any difference is if some of the smaller guilds that had to bust their asses to get that 100k together to buy a sigil in the current market, win in HoH and sell off their winnings to the trader or at FAIR prices out of a sense of indignation. The people currently being greedy will remain that way.

Otherwise all its is really going to do is give the weenies selling sigils on Ebay in quantity even more to sell for real cash. It'll also give the larger guilds that win a lot of them now the ability to spread out the winnings among themselves for a while and keep an in-game stranglehold on the market.

The best way to deal with this is make sigils be untradeable to other players. Either the winners of a sigil would have to use it themselves, sell it it off to the trader for a good price (like 15k or so), or trash it.

This simple step would do several things all at once. It would stop any of the situations like I saw in another thread where a team with the majority of the players wanted to roll for the sigil when the random drop didn't go in their favor. It would completely put a halt to selling them on EBay. It would stop the damned price gouging and hoarding now taking place. And finally it would make either winning HoH or buying from a trader the only options to get a sigil.

WHile I'm sure someone would find a way to get around all of this, it would in effect put all of the current problems to rest.

Great, PvEer start whining and ArenaNet does something.
PvPers have to grind the whole game several times over, and they do nothing.

I'm not selling my sigils, I just want to collect them so they're out of the market, let the PvEers come to Hall and get 'em, make them play PvP and see how fun it is to play a part of the game you don't like just to get stuff.

It sounds to me like perhaps you're misunderstanding the issue here.

Currently, the gvg ladder and the majority of HoH wins are held by guilds who's obvious focus is that part of the game which of course makes sense. But the vast majority of those players are *also* no doubt hardcore players, spending far more than twice the amount of time than the average player, as well as having what you might call a *head start* on things via playing all the beta events and thus having a better understanding of the game mechanics etc than the majority of players as well.

Most guilds do indeed want a sigil for the express purpose of experiencing GvG ~ the main purpose of the game in the first place. They might also happen to enjoy going through the explorable areas / missions etc to get there, but don't see the need to turn what should be a fun ( it *is* a game afterall ) experience into one of monoteny and boredom via spending countless hours of farming etc. along the way to the HoH.

True people *only* interrested in pvp do need to spend some time in pve to gain skills / items / runes ... but are you saying that otherwise you want an *out of the box* no work involved pvp experience / enviroment ? And that would be fair to people / guilds who *want* to go through pve to earn their way to the HoH / obtaining a guild hall how ?

And for anyone who questions weather or not sigils are being hoarded ... well here's your proof

I see no indication that this is not the case. The only indication that I have is that their game is much more popular and thus sigils are more relatively scarce than anticipated.


Sure, but there are still half a dozen missions to complete *after* buying that level 20 armor, in addition to the EAs. Half a dozen missions and EAs and capture runs worth of loot as well.

If you're a PvE guild that's completed all the Fire Islands missions but still doesn't have a guild hall, I can sympathize. But if you're like most of these guilds, having just reached Lion's Arch or Denravi with their level 17 characters or whatever, bitching about the price of a Guild Hall when halfway through the game is going to fall on deaf ears.


Sure, but can you make 3 plat in an hour? If you've got a 20 person guild, that's two hours on a Monday night to get a guild hall, with change to furnish the place and throw a party. You can make 2-3 plat in an hour just running around the South Shiverpeaks / Fire Islands in a full team doing whatever you want, even without getting any good drops.

If a guild cannot collectively accumulate 100 platinum and buy a guild hall, they simply are not big enough, tight enough, far enough along in the game, or just plain not significant enough to deserve a guild hall.


Again, any guild that has been unable to win the Hall of Heroes at least once in the last month is unlikely to make any significant impact on the GvG ladder.

The only significant effect that adding all those guilds to GvG would add to the top of the ladder is the ripple in points that comes from adding a bunch of 1000-rating teams for the minimally competent to feast upon.


Have you checked the PvP character system recently? Players have to unlock all of their skills. You have to find your upgrades before you can use them. All the teams you see winning in the Hall of Heroes have had to fight through all of that PvE content just as you have, plus run through the explorable areas and likely complete the game to get all the skills they wanted.

The big difference, it seems, is that PvE players seem to think that completing PvE missions is an accomplishment, while PvP teams see it as something mindless to do while drunk at night.


Arena.net? It certainly isn't the PvP teams selling their sigils to the highest bidder. The guilds with the most money are likely to be those furthest along in the game, the more organized guilds, or generally the guilds that rate highly in the 'getting their act together to buy a sigil' department. Or, in even more blatant terms, those guilds who are most likely to actually make an impact on the ladder.

You are not unable to buy a sigil because those evil top PvP guilds are all hoarding sigils. You are unable to buy a sigil because there are *other* PvE guilds that don't yet have a guild hall that are outbidding you. People are snapping up sigils at 100k to purchase a guild hall for their guild. Until those guilds that have their act together have their halls, the roleplaying guilds, the weekend warriors, the level 17s screaming about the price of sigils in Lion's Arch are not going to have guild halls, and no increase in supply is going to change that.

Peace,
-CxE

PvEers are not so smart in some cases.

example, Kara the annoying carebear at Guild-hall.

she cried on end "OMG PvEer's shouldnt have to go through PvP to get a home!"

LOL is all I can say.

*goes back to not playing grindwars the epic Dissapointment*

uhm prices won't drop at all.. just make certain guilds even more rich. they should make it so sigil's can't be sold.then all those lame teams using the 5+ monk tactic to win nonstop will actually have to learn how to play the game.

Wow last time I checked the cash I spent for my game was worth as much as yours. Who are you to dictate what I do or do not deserve in a piece of entertainment that I have purchased?

And this is a problem for you how? Seems to be it would only serve to feed your ego and since they would seem to find it fun where's the harm?

Well I can't speak for other players but completing a mission is not an accomplishment for me, it's fun. You know that nice feeling that doesn't come solely from being teh uber-leet pvper and stroking your ego while lording over the little plebs who don't spend half their time working on the best builds.

The problem here is you seem to be unable to grasp the concept of fun or entertainment, at least the kind which doesn't involve hyper-competitiveness. I know if I PvPed I'm never going to be at the top of the ladder but so what? You seem to think that someone who isn't the best has no place playing the game. Try suggesting to your local amateur sports team that because they'll never be the best in the world or even the country that they should just quit now.

Why is this concept so difficult for some people. Just because you play a game for X reason someone who plays the game for reason Y is wrong? Have you heard of an opinion? You have yours and I have mine, only the most childish of egotists assume that thiers is the only possible or only right opinion and when it comes to enjoying entertainment opinion is the only relevant issue.