I’m not sure that screenshot of TP availability proves what you seem to be implying. For one thing, the quantities on sale are miniscule. 178 Favors of the Bazaar on sale in a global auction house for a game that has sold in excess of three and a half million copies would seem to indicate extreme scarcity. For another, I got that Favor on my very first kill. Not sure how common that is but I also got the Bazaar favor on my very first completed event there. I was wondering if it automatically grants one on first participation?
IN the end, though, as I posted yesterday, in the end it all comes down to “risk” vs reward. The first set of rewards were seen not just as inadequate but as downright rude. Now they are seen as fair people are willing to put in the time and effort. The event was never going to be difficult to complete – the strats were known within hours (minutes) of the patch landing. People just thought it was a waste of their time for what they got. Had the rewards not been improved the Boss Blitz would still be empty.
That said, I still think its hideously badly designed. Any MMO content that encourages out-of-game metagaming, which includes the entire concept of cross-server guilds, organizing via social media, external voice chat and the rest stinks like a sewer. Moreover it’s a sewer that only exists because of ANet’s terrible judgment and thoughtless design choices.
If players need to organize in this way to do content in the game then ALL the tools to do it should be inside the game. Period. If we end up with a genre where external media are required to play then I won’t be playing any more.
I left out the original prices, which may be relevant.
On the first day, both favors started at around 12g each.
I know, because I couldn’t decide between a tiny panda and a tiny dolyak, caved in and decided to buy one each to give myself peace of mind.
On the second day, when the Pavilion negativity was at its greatest and many were despairing of ever seeing success, Bazaar favors held at 11-12g, and Pavilion favors went as high as 24g.
I’d gotten one to pop from a Gauntlet Chance and immediately got lucky enough to sell it, recouping my original expenditure.
Six days later, well, the prices are as you see in the picture.
There are people organizing through the in-game LFG tool, but most of the ones I’ve seen were only looking for commanders. I did find one that wasn’t, so I got my chance at the organized group experience of spamming right click+Join In.
When people talk about better tools for organization, I sometimes wonder if they’re talking about the problem of “How do I help this team succeed?” or “How do I get on a better team?” And the tools don’t matter for the second problem as long as the follower/leader ratio is higher than the content can support. I was on a random instance once that tried to do it without any commander tags since it didn’t have six. It seemed to be going all right… until we realized with two minutes left on Gold time that nobody was fighting Pyroxis.
(And I think you’ve been lucky on the Favors. I’ve done both about a half a dozen times, with varying levels of success on Boss Blitz, and not seen any. There is a guaranteed drop of one of each when you complete the meta, and only two rewards that require them, so you only to drop/buy one of each to be set. I think that’s why the TP quantities are so low.)
You can use them for Sovereign weapon skins too! Pretty sure that’s where mine will be going, since I missed the living story event that rewarded them.
I’d like to mention that the amount of any item on the trading post is a red herring. It’s just a snapshot of something like a millisecond in time. Volume on the trading post moves very, very fast. It moves especially faster for any item a lot of people are interested in trying to farm them, farm for them, or flip them. You can look on the official forums how there’s always a post about people cornering a market and then posts about people who tried and found it impossible (complete with irregular cackling from the economist, John Smith).
Why I Game 
I’m not sure that screenshot of TP availability proves what you seem to be implying. For one thing, the quantities on sale are miniscule. 178 Favors of the Bazaar on sale in a global auction house for a game that has sold in excess of three and a half million copies would seem to indicate extreme scarcity. For another, I got that Favor on my very first kill. Not sure how common that is but I also got the Bazaar favor on my very first completed event there. I was wondering if it automatically grants one on first participation?
IN the end, though, as I posted yesterday, in the end it all comes down to “risk” vs reward. The first set of rewards were seen not just as inadequate but as downright rude. Now they are seen as fair people are willing to put in the time and effort. The event was never going to be difficult to complete – the strats were known within hours (minutes) of the patch landing. People just thought it was a waste of their time for what they got. Had the rewards not been improved the Boss Blitz would still be empty.
That said, I still think its hideously badly designed. Any MMO content that encourages out-of-game metagaming, which includes the entire concept of cross-server guilds, organizing via social media, external voice chat and the rest stinks like a sewer. Moreover it’s a sewer that only exists because of ANet’s terrible judgment and thoughtless design choices.
If players need to organize in this way to do content in the game then ALL the tools to do it should be inside the game. Period. If we end up with a genre where external media are required to play then I won’t be playing any more.
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I left out the original prices, which may be relevant.
On the first day, both favors started at around 12g each.
I know, because I couldn’t decide between a tiny panda and a tiny dolyak, caved in and decided to buy one each to give myself peace of mind.
On the second day, when the Pavilion negativity was at its greatest and many were despairing of ever seeing success, Bazaar favors held at 11-12g, and Pavilion favors went as high as 24g.
I’d gotten one to pop from a Gauntlet Chance and immediately got lucky enough to sell it, recouping my original expenditure.
Six days later, well, the prices are as you see in the picture.
LikeLike
There are people organizing through the in-game LFG tool, but most of the ones I’ve seen were only looking for commanders. I did find one that wasn’t, so I got my chance at the organized group experience of spamming right click+Join In.
When people talk about better tools for organization, I sometimes wonder if they’re talking about the problem of “How do I help this team succeed?” or “How do I get on a better team?” And the tools don’t matter for the second problem as long as the follower/leader ratio is higher than the content can support. I was on a random instance once that tried to do it without any commander tags since it didn’t have six. It seemed to be going all right… until we realized with two minutes left on Gold time that nobody was fighting Pyroxis.
(And I think you’ve been lucky on the Favors. I’ve done both about a half a dozen times, with varying levels of success on Boss Blitz, and not seen any. There is a guaranteed drop of one of each when you complete the meta, and only two rewards that require them, so you only to drop/buy one of each to be set. I think that’s why the TP quantities are so low.)
LikeLike
You can use them for Sovereign weapon skins too! Pretty sure that’s where mine will be going, since I missed the living story event that rewarded them.
LikeLike
I’d like to mention that the amount of any item on the trading post is a red herring. It’s just a snapshot of something like a millisecond in time. Volume on the trading post moves very, very fast. It moves especially faster for any item a lot of people are interested in trying to farm them, farm for them, or flip them. You can look on the official forums how there’s always a post about people cornering a market and then posts about people who tried and found it impossible (complete with irregular cackling from the economist, John Smith).
LikeLike