Guild Wars 2

This may be my ignorance, but last night a friend tells me Ley Line skins are selling for 90 gold on the trading post. I think, “Great!” I need some money for a skin I’d much rather buy.
I go, buy the skin, and proceed to place it on the market. And then …anger. The price on the market for each skin is indeed 90 gold. The actual projected profit for myself is …30 something. That’s a 200% mark up from my projected value! Is this a bug?!

If it isn’t this is infuriating. Complete robbery. Let’s do some math, because I don’t think Anet realizes just how much of a snub this is to their players. If I want to get an Aetherized skin they are currently 300-500 gold. The ley line skins are selling for 90 gold, but my projected profit is 30?! So what exactly are you saying Anet? That my REAL LIFE time to you is only worth a day of dungeon raids? A day mind you. Are you saying that all of the effort and time it would take to get just 1 Black Lion ticket is somehow less time-played because I bought something with a ticket?

When we trade gold for items we are really trading time. This is real time out of our real lives that we as players put into the game. If I tried to get 90 gold through dungeon runs I would have to do 8 dungeons x 3 paths for 24 gold + that again in silver totaling around 28.8 gold. I have no idea how much fractals reward since I don’t do them or know how yet. What this ultimately means is that for a full day of dungeon runs (done once) I can make roughly 28 gold. This means 30 gold is worth roughly the same as a day of game play. A very, very dedicated player could maybe make more, but it is far beyond the means (time players have to be online) to do this.

The above tells me that 30 gold is = to one day of played time.

Now… how about the acquisition of ONE black lion ticket? Well, first it takes 10 scraps. The scraps only come from black lion chests. The chests only come from either YOUR Trading Post through REAL money or the not so frequently known repeatable first few personal story missions. Having recently tried both methods of acquisition here’s what I discovered. In 50 chests opened I received 3 black lion scraps and 1 black lion ticket. I don’t foresee myself EVER buying black lion keys again. Ever. There is absolutely no gain in doing so. It is a gambling system, plain and simple.

So… we come back to the second method… story missions. Well, doing the shortest one I could fine takes about 20 to 30 minutes depending on luck and strategy. That’s to receive 1 key at the end for a 1 in 50 chance to receive a full ticket and maybe a 1 in 15 chance of receiving a scrap (of which I need 10). Assuming that I am miraculously successful I could do this 10 times and at 20 minutes that’s 3 hours and 2 minutes. I’ve been doing this second method for a week for about 3 hours and 2 minutes. Want to know how many scraps I’ve found? Zero.

So… What’s the probability of ‘naturally’ finding black lion scraps? Absolutely way more time than any day of dungeon raiding.

I’m pretty sure gambling in video games is illegal anyway? So, what is this? Is this a bug? Is the market place some how influenced by some corrective mechanism for content consumption? Do you just randomly inject items into the market to produce artificial inflation? Are a few elite players or gold farmers jacking up the prices through some artificial means and this has slipped under the radar?

I don’t know what is going on here, but this is one giant scam. I thoroughly recommend to any new players to avoid buying black lion keys because there’s no chance you’re buying into anything remotely fair. If you intend to sell your skins for any profit be aware the Trading Post prices to do not accurately represent the price you will actually receive for the item you are selling. This may be a built in mechanic to the trading post since when I first started playing legendary weapons were selling for just around 1000 gold. Now they are upwards for 3,500. Someone is artificially inflating the whole trading post. And, there is no way to check projected profit against purchase prices.

This whole situation is really sketchy.

it probably said something around 80 gold.
projected profit shows you what you would get -10%

the real problem i would say is that doesnt include the 5% they will take directly.

anyhow at the end of the day you can expect to lose 15% off any successful sale on the tp

Unless you put up a screenshot, the rant makes no sense. “Profit” is the price you listed at minus 10%. Always. Now unless you listed it at a price substantially less, in which case it will be sold at that price and not the current low bid as the TP use to work pre-June? April? Don’t know when they “fixed” the “avoid the post fee” exploit.

Unless you aren’t talking about the “profit” displayed but the profit taking into account the costs in acquiring that ticket. In which case it’s well know that skins are a suckers game if you aren’t interested in the skin yourself. Unless you farm keys or are extremely lucky, it’s not profitable turning BLTC tickets into skins for sale. Key prices in gold are extreme now and it’s more profitable converting cash bought gems into gold thkittened to by keys to farm for tickets.

I would guess that the OP is referring to the sell now price. 90G vs 30G buy order.

You have to choose the price you sell it at to do it right. It would be better though to buy the skin and hold it for a couple months.

I’m really confused as to what this rant is really all about

Vol.7601:

I’m really confused as to what this rant is really all about

Likely what was recently mentioned and the OP didn’t realize that there are two prices available when trying to sell an item. They saw the buy order price and assumed they got ripped off.

I looked when he posted, I didn’t see any with that low of a bid. Bids were all within 20-25g of the sell price and the best spread is 6-7g right now. And they haven’t really changed a lot since Sunday so that means he bought it with a ticket, they are a single ticket item for now.

His rant is all over the place.

The only thing I get out of this is that keys are not worth buying when thinking of those black lion scraps … that’s not really news but .. yeah, I agree to that part.

Vol.7601:

I’m really confused as to what this rant is really all about

I think confusion pretty much sums it up for all involved…..

Newsflash:This just in…casinos take in more money than they give out….

My guess is he paid ~60 gold to get the one ticket from 50 keys. After that he tried to sell the weapon skin for 90 gold, which is the 30 gold difference he was talking about.

“In 50 chests opened I received 3 black lion scraps and 1 black lion ticket. I don’t foresee myself EVER buying black lion keys again.”

I don’t think OP did so bad for himself. It appears he invested 60 gold and made 30 gold profit in a few minutes. As he said, he could have run dungeons to make that amount, but it would have taken hours. He saw that 90 gold and was expecting 90 gold pure profit. The only way it could be “pure profit” would be to do key runs, and not to consider opportunity costs of gold not gained by doing other things.

I don’t think OP is being realistic here.

I don’t think anyone really knows, including the OP. That sure is a lot of words to not say anything.

60g would be 5 or 6 keys, so if that’s the case, I’d say he did EXTREMELY well for himself tbh.

Tman.6349:

I don’t think anyone really knows, including the OP. That sure is a lot of words to not say anything.

60g would be 5 or 6 keys, so if that’s the case, I’d say he did EXTREMELY well for himself tbh.

Well, in that case, I have no idea what he was talking about since he said 50 keys and 60 gold. I’m going to put myself among the ranks of the confused also.

Based on op’s post history we may have to wait 10 months until he comes back to the forums to maybe enlighten us about what he is talking about.

eithinan.9841:

Based on op’s post history we may have to wait 10 months until he comes back to the forums to maybe enlighten us about what he is talking about.

Must be a hit and run Mesmer. Comes in, tosses Confusion into the forum, which hits multiple targets, then runs off.