Anets response to the celestial sig problem

Sadye, I'm not in a guild that does PvP a lot. In fact, I don't PvP with my guild. I know PLENTY of pickup teams that have won the Hall of Heroes, and I assure you that the top guilds are NOT guaranteed to hold the Hall. I went through the agony of trying to get on a good team and work my build into their strategy, while spending lots of time hitting the Hall, hell, even remaking my character just so I could get more opportunities to PvP. It really miffs me that some of you are fixated on making excuses for yourselves not to win the Hall and then deeming yourselves worthy of a reward that many of us straight-up earned.

And as courteously as I can put this, your Chicken-Little rant about how the sky is falling in GW is nonsense. Since so much of the game is instanced, there is no such thing as spawn-camping, to name one of the MANY differences between whatever Everquest disaster you were citing as evidence of your argument.

I don't play GvG, so I won't comment on that, except that I don't consider it the end-game of Guild Wars. Those of you who think that PvPers suffer the disadvantage of less skills are wrong. We cap the same skills, go through the same missions, and we do all the stuff that PvE'rs do. Do we consider it an obstacle? Perhaps, but only because we've finished it all before. How many times can you do Borlis Pass or Frost Gate or the Ascension missions before it gets boring?

And the myth that you need to spend a full-time job's worth of playing on here to brawl down the top guilds: The attitude I witness here is indicative enough of why those who cop those attitudes don't win the HoH. They get psyched out easily by famous clan tags, or they're not willing to put forth the effort required, or they just don't want to win. Well, I want to win. I try harder, I learn more, and I play to win. Everyone is saying... lower the barriers, make sigils cheaper...

Why don't we make them free? Or just give everyone a sigil, a cape, and 100 fame to start with? Are those of you who complain about sigil shortage even willing to do the sort of things necessary to win the Hall? You're blocking yourselves but not opening yourself to opportunities to improve your play, and that's why you're here complaining about sigils, and not out in the Hall earning them.

econ 101: artificial floors or ceiling is the worst thing that can happen to an economy.

so any sort of dev implemented cap on sigil price actually hurts the economy more than help. but it seems that the sigil traders has unlimited sigils. so the pve crowd no longer has to deal with the pvp at all!

in any case, plz stop spamming me in game for sigils. i only trade sigils for unid'ed armor.

Wow, I just checked sigil trader, and she had one! For the low low price of 84k

Amazing, there are actually sigils

That's true - there is no spawn-camping but greed and laziness will always find their ways - in GW we have a phenomenon of HoH-camping, which in the end amounts to the same thing.

How can you camp HoH?

So are you saying guilds that hold the hall should voluntarily leave after winning a round to let other people have a chance too?

No - I'm not complaining about the guilds themselves, but about the system. Of course the good guilds should get rewards for their victories, but at the same time it blocks off other guilds - you see - I wouldn't even stress it, if it weren't for the fact, that in the rest of GW situations where the action of ONE player or party affects ANOTHER player or party were carefully avoided (instanced world etc.).
Why aren't there e.g. several parallel HoHs? Or sth. like a handicap system? Or a division between the Top10 of the ladder and the rest? I mean - in every ranking that makes sense (look at ESL, ClanBase) you aren't REWARDED for beating up much less skilled players - well, in GW you are, cause you get Sigils, now even un-IDed items - in ClanBase or the ESL you would be punished for playing against people much lower in the ranking in the first place (for losing points even after a perfect victory - in the HoH it doesn't matter WHO you beat - you always get your reward). I'm still speaking of the HoH and not of the GvG system - cause I think that the best GvG guilds are also the ones that win the HoH regularly and they should fight against worthy opponents, not against ANYBODY - or an even better idea - separate HoHs for guilds that already HAVE their Sigils and a separate one for the ones that don't. This way the good guilds would just fight for Sigil-Hoarding and the un-ranked guilds/groups or whatever would fight among themselves to get a GH.

Yeah, Blackace - I know your "Ruler of the Universe" attitude.

And yes, Kunt0r, the holding of the HoH by the very best guilds is for me a bit of a HoH-camping. You see - the only groups and/or guilds who could beat them are other good groups and/or guilds which already have their Sigils and stuff. So in fact it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to win in the HoH for any new guild. Pretty much the only way to do this is buying a Sigil ergo: doing the bidding of the high-ranked players... -.-

P.S. It's funny that almost all elitist-attitude-biased-comments SEEM to come from different people, but in fact are posted by different members of the "Idiot Savants" guild - is this elitist-attitude a general tendency of your guild? Maybe a guild-policy?

Lim. What does having a Sigil do to increase your effectiveness in PvP? I am curious.

Cause you can start playing GvG?

Well I'll tell you right now that won't work cause we're not even in the top 100. Also, if they do something like that the good guilds will just make smurf guilds that have no guild ranking to run in tombs.
Tombs isn't supposed to be rankings or ladder based since you can enter with a pick up group. How would you rank pick up groups? Just wouldn't work.
That sounds like a pretty horrible idea to me. You might as well just sell sigils for 100 gold at the trader and screw PvPers over entirely. Why would the good guilds fight to horde sigils? We don't care about sigils. We care about runes and skills. You basically get neither in the hall. Anet said that the HoH now drops rare armors but it happens very rarely. Maybe 1 in 5 wins you get a drop. Then there's a 1 in 4 chance you get a superior rune out of it. We only want sigils cause they sell for a good amount of gold which lets us buy runes that we need. The real solution is to do away with sigil drops entirely. Make it a difficult quest or something to get a sigil. Then have a bunch of rare armors drop when you win HoH. Better yet ... have an unlock all skills and runes button but I won't hold my breath for that one.

You can GvG without a sigil, as far as I know. Just make sure you opponent has a sigil. So.... What does it help as far as skills again?

I can pretty much assure you that opinions on this issue are pretty much the same across all of the top guilds. To sum up ... the whole system is totally broken. Anet should have seen it coming from a mile away. Instead of fixing the problem Anet applied a bandaid (3 sigil drops instead of 1) which makes life even more frustrating for PvP guilds like Idiot Savants and doesn't really help out the non PvP guilds that want a guild hall. If anything we should all be yelling at Anet and not each other. There are plenty of solutions to the problem as many people have brought up but Anet hasn't done a thing about it. Enough said.

Agree with you fully. Then everybody would get what he wants.

Well - if there were ENOUGH rare drops in the HoH or anywhere else, then this would get kind of obsolete, wouldn't it? In fact I also see the problem with this skill/rune unlocking - after a month of (regular and serious) playing EITHER PvE OR PvP every player deserves to have his skills/runes/upgrades unlocked.

Maybe the idea of the "unlock all button" isn't that bad (well - such a button DID exist in the past after all) but there should be period of time BEFORE you can do this. E.g. treat the first month of playing as a kind of training and then after a month this button would appear so that you are ready for PvP.

Yeah - I think the same. It's funny how we all argue about the system but in the end flame each other instead. ^^ But you know - instead of deeming somebody an idiot or sth. like your "Ruler of the Universe" friend over here (in fact I would be much better off skipping his posts entirely) for trying to find a solution we could think of a solution TOGETHER and submit the most realistic one to ANet. I mean - GW is for players and guilds, not for the programmers, they care about making money off the game and when so many people are unsatisfied with the PvP system as it is then they should listen to them - it's not hard to change the system, but it hurts to lose potential clients. GW boasted about its PvP system but now it turns out that the system is pretty much broken at its very base. It's punishing for everyone, cause no one gets what he wants and expects to get.

Blackace - I find it wonderful how you can make subtle changes to my wording "all of Anet's programmers are in for the money" - I didn't put it this way and in fact didn't even blame them for anything.
I'm sure ANet's programmers are nice people caring for the community - nevertheless money IS an important factor, nah, THE most important factor in the gaming industry (just like in any other industry) - this souldn't be seen as a disadvantage, but as a andvantage for us - GW has to appeal to ANet's customers and that's why the PvP system should be changed. Period.
The programmers might and probably will have other reasons for changing sth. (e.g. being simply nice and open-minded people), but in the end they, or their bosses, might realize that the broken PvP system makes them lose money and that will be always the last and most convincing argument - GW is not making money by monthly fees so it has to give people a reason to buy the game itself now and the expansion packs later.

OK - so let's agree on putting it this way: "ANet has to care for the money and sales as well" or "ANets programmers aren't and can't be completly uncaring about money." Better?

Good - I got the point and I agree now. You may blame me for not accepting this argument in the first place (several pages ago) but that may have sth. to do with the fact, that this had to be put in some convincing speech, which, in my opinion, didn't happen up to this point. I don't like your attitude, pal - first you call me a troll or forum scrub for having a differen't opinion than you, and then, when I finally accept the arguments of the other side and try to do sth. constructive (which seldom happens in any discussion), you call me a forum scrub again. No way out for me, eh? "Ruler of the Universe" attitude anybody?

Let's gets something clear about Idiot Savants being elitist. We're not elitists at all. We're just able to defend a point properly and because you can't see the clarity of it see us as acting superior.

Sure we win and hold the HoH for streaks at a time. Is it our problem ? No. There are only four types of PvP; Arena (trash), Arranged Arena (might as well farm in PvE if we don't have 8 people for Tombs), GvG (we can't right now for grind and other issues) and Tombs (where we don't need GvG elites and superiors and it isn't ranked). It's not our fault if we're good at holding the HoH. We just developped a simple and effective strategy that many people know about and counter all the time. If you're not happy with it bring the counter to our build and take us out of there then trash talk us down for all you want.

Back on the elitist aspect of our guild I'd like to point out that alot of the contributors of this site are from Idiot Savants. See all those articles on combat mechanics, theme builds, skill spotlights ? Are you appreciating and using all the knowledge offered by the site. All this comes from Idiot Savants people who took their time to farm all this information. I for one am always glad to help out someone in need of help. Yes we become jerks when dimwits get out of their way to tell us we're wrong when in fact we're right. Want some more elitist attitude ? Last night we went in Ascalon and gave away, yes gave away, runes and gold items to beginner players. Why because we don't need it and of course we're evil. So before you accuse us of anything look around and inform yourself (you'll probably take that comment as elitist too but whatever) I take pride in the quality of our guild and for one will not allow turds like you to bring it down without concrete facts to back it up.

P.S.: when I trash talk in tombs it's just to get your team angry which results in them making mistakes. This is a common strategy that I adopted from poker

Again, I respect what you're saying here, though think perhaps you may be missing my point. True the *majority* of GW is built in such a way as to prevent many of the issues that allowed certain areas / spawns etc to be blocked by other players in most other online games based upon an rpg setting. I was refering here to the fact that , regardless of weather you consider gvg end game content, obviously there's alot of guilds out there that would like to experience this aspect of the game. And the only real route to get there is bottlenecked via the HoH which is something that *can* in theory ( and more often than not in actuality ) be held by a small number of the top ranked, preventing the majority of players from ever gaining access to a part of the game's content. I started a log of which specific guilds hold the HoH during the times I play, and I assure you my arguments here are based on factual information rather than assumptions. (However, in fairness I won't post that type of list here because I don't believe that it's fair to those people, nor helps anyone at all to do so. ) Add to this the idea that a player can spend a month searching every part of the rp map and never see a single superior rune ( thus no true spawn camping even in instances ) vs. the known fact that a win in the HoH = 3 sigil drops, it illustrates my point a bit further in the idea that there *is* in fact an area of GW that can and most certainly is the equivelant of a campable spawn / area of the game with a known loot table ~ this is exactly where the potential exists for the majority of guilds to never see game content they paid for, and more hardcore players to step in and help facilitate that.

If you've read through much of what I've posted at all , I do tend to put in disclaimers on most everything I write. In no way am I supporting the stance that you shouldn't have to work to get into / past the HoH. In no way am I saying that any one particualr group deserves something more than the other. What I *am* supporting via my posts, is the very very commonly agreed upon issues of where there's blatant imbalances built into the systems of the game itself. PvP guilds don't want so much dependance on going through pve / buying from guilds who spend more time within that content, just as the guilds with a more relaxed atmosphere don't feel they should have complete dependance upon the guilds who hold the HoH for long periods on a daily basis to have any opportunity to own a guild hall. Neither side is claiming they don't want to work for things, all it seems most want is a way within the very devided aspects of the game to be a bit more self-reliant as a means to enjoy the parts of the game you prefer.

My only aim is to at least attempt to help people see things from broader perspectives other than just from their own singualr views on how the game could be improved upon.

huh? who? what? I hope you're not referring to members of iQ...

Members of that guild are the site admins and contributors for this site and they do so freely and volunteerily. Without such generousity, thousands of people, including yourself, would not be able to communicate useful information and most importanly have civilized debates.

Having played with and against various iQ members and spent time on vent with them, they're aces in my book. It was entirely unfair of you to put them in same light as Hitler. They have done nothing that even closely resembles the atrocities that Hitler committed. For you to even try to use such a mean-spritied analogy, suggests that you personally have a serious problem.

Perhaps it's time to lock this thread?

Just because it's a common and effective strategy doesn't mean it's not very poor sportsmanship. Remind me never to play poker with you...

That aside, I don't think there's anything wrong with Idiot Savants or anyone else holding the HoH as long as they can. That's the whole point of competition. As others have said, this problem isn't a problem with the players, it's a problem with the game, and it's rather sad that ArenaNet is obviously aware of it (or they wouldn't have increased the sigil drops) but doesn't really appear to be interested in fixing it (since this does nothing to address the fundamental problem [cf. Ensign]). Other than causing the temporary dip in prices as the system adjusts to the new drop rate, how is this supposed to address the fundamental issue and actually bring a halt to the runaway inflation? The 100p carry limit won't stop it, we'll just move to a new currency (gold items, the SoJ's of GW). [For those who didn't play Diablo II, an SoJ was a Stone of Jordan, an ultra-rare ring that became the coin of the realm at one point.]

My guild finally did get a sigil last night, but I don't see how future guilds like ours that didn't start a day before release will ever catch up to the inflation rate, and moving to a non-cash economy will just make it worse.

In the real world, if something is in great demand, people make more of them. New factories are built, more people enter that profession, etc. This real world economics model is close to the situation with materials and dye: the more demand there is, the most people create it (by farming) and sell it. The amount of product available increases to meet the demand. But there's no mechanism for this with sigils. No matter how high demand rises, there's no way to increase the production of sigils. Just tripling the drop rate won't fix this problem, the problem remains that the production rate is fixed, regardless of demand, which leads to runaway inflation and a broken economy.

There needs to be some other source of sigils, such that as demand increases, more people will put effort into "manufacturing" more of them to meet it. If such a mechanism existed, this problem would fix itself. Make it difficult or time-consuming to do, and the prices will remain high, but you won't have runaway inflation as long as production isn't limited to a fixed number per hour no matter how many people are working on getting them.

Either that, or just have the sigil trader sell as many as desired at a fixed price. It works for armor (as well it should, I'd be pissed if I got to Droknar's Forge and went to buy armor only to receive an "out of stock" message, even more pissed than I was when I went to buy a sigil). In a game where death isn't permanent, damage leaves no scars, you can teleport from place to place instantly, etc., what is with the bizarre fixation some people have on trying to create a realistic economy? Just so you can deal with all problems major governments struggle with trying to keep economies stable? What's the point? That's one of the worst ideas you could possibly try to emulate from MMORPG's.

For those of us who are casual players and PVE only, pricing sigil's by supply and demand and giving an advantage to PVP players is just wrong. When after a month of casual playing you find your goal of getting a sigil is taken away by a PVE unfriendly system of allowing PVP players nearly complete control of sigil prices, it make one doubt the long-term viability of this game.

Those who play this game every waking hour and horde sigil's to manipulate pricing will quickly find out that the ranks of those who wish to buy a sigil will be small and stubborn and maybe by the end of the year, the system will be made fair for PVE players too.


Many of us will not wait till then.

I think you need to get your panties unbunched. It was merely an example that it doesn't matter what good deeds you claim you're doing, you can still be a bad person or guild...mmm'kay? I didn't claim iQ is anything.

I'm a casual PvE guy. I'm also relatively new to MMO's so my thinking may very well be newbish or naive.

I hesitate to speak for anyone else, but I think us PVE's might be having a hard time understanding the perspective of the PvP's postings. I will admit that for the first 5 or so pages of this thread I considered you evil as well . (when in actuality it's likely just more of being tired trying to explain a position no one seems to get)

PvP's want skills/runes unlocked as bad as you want a sigil. We're all screwed. PvP's don't lord over PvE's. We are all equally screwed. There are barriers to being able to play the game as we want to on both sides of the equation, whether it be unobtainable sigils, or unlockable skills.

I can see why initially the unlock system seemed attractive on the surface, providing some sort of carrot gives a sense of reward and accomplishment when it's finally obtained. But it's kind of gotten out of hand. We're letting the cart lead the horse a little here. What good reasons are there not to unlock everything for a PvP character?

True PvP ought to be a completely level playing field where nothing matters but skill. It's kind of the definition of true competition isn't it? Why should one competitor hold any sort of unfair advantage over another in terms of more unlocked options for character generation? Seriously, name a good competitive reason why one person ought to have more unlocked options than another. To reward time spent playing PvE? That just doesn't seem logical. Maybe I'm missing something.

Sorry if this is an old argument, I'm just having a hard time understanding all sides of ths discussion.
Cheers.

I say its better 2 just do both thats what i do

wow, someone without preconcieved notions. what a refreshing breath of air from all the other funk out there.

It just seems like the whole concept of unlocking is much more suited to a PvE type of game where there's a definite quest / mission / goal that you are questing towards accomplishing. Along the way you unlock things and earn better and better equipment and give yourself a warm fuzzy feeling that you're getting stronger by the minute
*Rocky music plays in the background*
Unlocking really stems from single player games where unlocking items or material gave the game replayability.
Using it as a barrier to pure competition seems ill conceived.

But you see the rub right? ANet isn't out to get anyone, that would be comical considering the fact that we buy their products. I think they just haven't figured it out yet.

They want to encourage people, in a game that has both PvP and PvE content, for people to experiment and attempt both. They force PvEs to fight in the Arena once, and they force PvP to farm for hours and hours (months?). (perhaps a bit imbalanced )

I think the unlock system was conceived with the best of intentions. 'Get out there and see the world huh kid?'
But that's just not what it is in practice.

A much more suitable substitute would be, on the completion of any quest / mission, in addition to getting loot / exp. to allow the player to pick a specific skill / rune to unlock. Your choice, pick one. Suddenly the amount of time you have to spend grinding, (you're not really farming anymore) is reduced by an order of magnitude. Would more than likely be extremely palatable to PvPs, since if you really want throw dirt for that build you want to try you don't have to do all the missions, just one, so you can take PvE at your own pace and come back to it as needed / desired. (incidentally like PvE's can do with the various arenas while completing the game) Also, ANet gets their desire by forcing you to at least attempt a little of the PvE environment.

How many skills / runes are there? How many missions? The ratio of unlocks per mission could be balanced, that's a trivial detail.

It came true

If you can't win a sigil than your guild really doesn't belong on the ladder.

With the amount of both personal and guild bashing going on in this thread, I'm tempted to close it. However, since there is still a semblance of discussion, there's still hope..

Please keep all personal attacks off the forums. This includes attacks on specific guilds. Disagreement doesn't necessarily need to drag in his sister, Insult.

Why does Insult have to be female?



Seriously though, I am just really glad that Anet did do something towards resolving the scarcity of sigils. I know that their current solution isn't perfect. I know that there are still "grind" issues that the hardcore PvP-only folks are still waiting for resolution. Guys, as heated as we get about this stuff, it still is just a game. It should be fun and enjoyable. If it's not, then you need to figure out what's making it "not fun" for you, and let Anet know. Maybe they'll utilize your suggestions, maybe they won't, but don't be silent about it.

http://www.guildwars.com/news/gameupdates.html

"Salvaged runes will display their profession and whether they are minor, major, or superior before being identified. Identifying will continue to be required to show the rune's attribute and to unlock the rune. This change will only impact newly salvaged runes; it will not be retroactive to existing unidentified salvaged runes."

A.Net is listening to us.

They've facilitated the complete eradication of gold as a tradeable commodity, yay.

rofl that was the first thing I thought too. =)