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.