I’ve recently started noticing various markets being obviously controlled/manipulated by an individual or small group to the point where they become monopolies
. For example, Silver Doubloons; this is a perfect item to control, there is no way to create them (why can Gold Doubloon be created and not the others…), they are a rare drop from a specific level range and they are required for a legendary. I watched as over the course of two weeks they rose in price from 2s to the current price of 48s. I find this very disturbing as it is an item that should have no where near that value. Another example, Chocolate Bars; supply before Halloween was over one million but shortly after the supply very quickly went down to around 10,000 to 12,000 and has inflated in price from 4-6c to now over 65c peaking at times over 1s. I do understand various thing could be a factor on this second example (bot bannings, reduced drop %, and Christmas speculation) but I highly doubt that this would reduce the supply from the millions to the now very regular range of 10-12k.
The reason for this post is that I want to know what other players and ANet’s stance is on this. Can something be done to fix the issues with market controlling especially on hard to come by items required for legendaries? Juggernaut has now become the most expensive legendary by a huge margin.
Where you see difficulty buying materials, I see a better return on farming. When all the junk you find playing the game only sells for a few copper, it’s no surprise you don’t have 2 gold to rub together.
When a market is being manipulated, any of that item you find will sell for several times it’s previous value. In turn you can use that extra scratch to buy the stuff you do want…
Not saying that there aren’t people playing the TP aspect of the game, but there is only one significant controller of the economy and that would be Anet. And the primary mechanism for control is the drop rate.
some markets are fine to have a minority control because they can be farmed and/or people can refuse to pay the cost but items like Silver Doubloons are borderline impossible to farm and when one person buys up all the one posted for reasonable costs and sell them for 4 times the worth its a problem. Like I asked, Why is there a recipe to convert Silver Doubloons to Gold but not recipes to convert Copper to Silver or Gold to Platinum? makes absolutely no sense.
Not saying that there aren’t people playing the TP aspect of the game, but there is only one significant controller of the economy and that would be Anet. And the primary mechanism for control is the drop rate.
show me how to farm doubloons consistently, you can’t.
Chocolate bars were used in Halloween recipes weren’t they? That’s why they dropped. And I think more people are going for legendaries now that they have the precursors.
Not saying that there aren’t people playing the TP aspect of the game, but there is only one significant controller of the economy and that would be Anet. And the primary mechanism for control is the drop rate.
. . . and simply adjusting the drop rate can play havoc with other interlocked wheels on loot tables. Witness what happened when they added butter and chocolate to loot bags of certain types, and how the Fine Material drop rate from them took a hit due to the increase in number of different items on the table.
Lots of people are playing the Trading Post for profit, or trying to – they are hoping to speculate on the next big score to fill their wallets. When butter was selling ungodly cheap, there were a few posts on Reddit showing bank vaults full of the stuff simply in order to stock for when the price swung around.
There are two sure ways to drop prices, one is to increase supply to meet demand (though there is a risk in doing this, as there are often unintended consequences) . . . or to simply boycott the high sales. NOBODY buy it and the price will fall so they can actually sell them at a more reasonable price.
The trick with the second one is to get it to stick.
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1,000,000 supply ain’t that much. There are still hundreds of thousand very active players in the game.
the point is that it went from 1 mil to 12,000 supply in the course of about a week and ever since then has stayed right at a consistent 10-12k supply. Kind of fishy right?
1,000,000 supply ain’t that much. There are still hundreds of thousand very active players in the game.
the point is that it went from 1 mil to 12,000 supply in the course of about a week and ever since then has stayed right at a consistent 10-12k supply. Kind of fishy right?
Not really fishy, exactly. There’s not a lot of need for chocolate unless you’re baking stuff, and the input to the Trading Post is probably equivalent or near equivalent of the drop rate. Hence, the amount stays stable.
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Silver Doubloons are borderline impossible to farm and when one person buys up all the one posted for reasonable costs and sell them for 4 times the worth its a problem.
show me how to farm doubloons consistently, you can’t.
The fact that you keep saying they’re impossible to farm would suggest to me that the item should be expensive. Basic supply and demand. Anyone who finds a silver doubloon right now is going to get the current price for it, so it’s not a monopoly (a monopoly is when you control the supply, and no one controls drop rates except Anet). If people are actually underselling their own doubloons at 1/4 the market rate, whose fault is that? Why aren’t you posting a buy at 1/3?
Not really fishy, exactly. There’s not a lot of need for chocolate unless you’re baking stuff, and the input to the Trading Post is probably equivalent or near equivalent of the drop rate. Hence, the amount stays stable.
So how did supply drop nearly a million over a week or two period? Explain that. You basically contradict yourself by stating its not used but that the drop rate keeps the supply stable. So its not used BUT very quickly 1million bars vanished and then all of sudden it became one of the most stable markets (the drop nerf was about a month before this happened as well, just fyi). try again?
Not really fishy, exactly. There’s not a lot of need for chocolate unless you’re baking stuff, and the input to the Trading Post is probably equivalent or near equivalent of the drop rate. Hence, the amount stays stable.
So how did supply drop nearly a million over a week or two period? Explain that. You basically contradict yourself by stating its not used but that the drop rate keeps the supply stable. So its not used BUT very quickly 1million bars vanished and then all of sudden it became one of the most stable markets (the drop nerf was about a month before this happened as well, just fyi). try again?
No, don’t think I will take a more serious stab at this, it’s not worth my time. But I will drop these links here:
They’re used in several recipes for very nice high-level food. Not to mention if you can pretty much keep boons on yourself you can make some cheaper magic find recipes.
Can I absolutely account for the drop in supply? No. But there are better theories than “oh my God someone is doing something naughty!” . . . such as this one, which I don’t even have to stress to come up with.
People bought the supply when a lot were available to speculate later. It’s been touted as a great way to make money, to speculate with materials. However you can miss an awful lot more than you hit. The flood of supply was possibly a bunch of hoarders who had kept it on hand (like the butter from before) and decided they didn’t want it anymore.
There does not have to be a sinister reason for everything that happens.
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I’m sure I have recipes to make 2 different types of doubloons, but I’ll have to check my character when I get home, since I don’t remember which ones they are.
Also, supply dropped because a patch reduced the drop rate of chocolate bars.
Where does one guy put 1 million chocolate bars? Besides which, market prediction is not market manipulation. Given the amount of chocolate bars I’ve looted recently (zero) and their usefulness in high-level food, a hundred thousand players could buy up a million chocolate bars pretty quickly.
GW2 markets are crazy because drop rates and uses are changed so much.
It might not have been just one guy, but a group of people. For bag space, they probably have a bunch of character slots, since I’m currently unaware of what the limit to number of characters you can have. The market was clearly manipulated for chocolate. If you look at the charts for chocolate bars, there was a sudden 500k increase of buy orders at around 60c on November 27, 2012, and then a subsequently curious 500k drop in the buy orders yesterday after the manipulators sold their supply and made their profit.
Where does one guy put 1 million chocolate bars? Besides which, market prediction is not market manipulation. Given the amount of chocolate bars I’ve looted recently (zero) and their usefulness in high-level food, a hundred thousand players could buy up a million chocolate bars pretty quickly.
GW2 markets are crazy because drop rates and uses are changed so much.
Funny you should mention that, because there is a fine line between “manipulation” and “prediction”. One is creating the trend and another is simply predicting it . . . both take advantage of the fickleness of MMO markets mind you, but one is a lot more active than the other.
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It might not have been just one guy, but a group of people. For bag space, they probably have a bunch of character slots, since I’m currently unaware of what the limit to number of characters you can have. The market was clearly manipulated for chocolate. If you look at the charts for chocolate bars, there was a sudden 500k increase of buy orders at around 60c on November 27, 2012, and then a subsequently curious 500k drop in the buy orders yesterday after the manipulators sold their supply and made their profit.
Click the link I gave above and read the posts by the user I mentioned. What happened with chocolate is not a mystery or a secret.
It isn’t a conspiracy since it is barely a secret. There are no rules in the trading post except hacking/other obviously illegal things. These price changes are not from people buying materials to make any product.
There is nothing stopping a group of people to spend 10k g on ectos to push up the price.
It’s all about speculation. It’s a good thing though because it makes the game more exciting than just completing quests, killing mobs or getting your legendary. It gives the other players who are good at economics to apply what they know. Basically it’s always demand and supply theories. Like the chocolate bars, but i also noticed one raw material that had a spike and that is the cotton scrap. It rose to +50c because of low on supply and lots of demand. And i noticed too that the Acolyte’s armors before the spike only cost around 40c and spike to 1s now. Probably players started to know that they can salvage those armors to get 2-3 cotton scraps per salvage. That would double/triple their earnings if they sell the cotton. At this time, Cotton is at 92c. When i started to check it, it was around 42c. Probably, some players also speculate that cotton will also be valuable on Wintersday. Ahem “Socks” are known as part of Christmas where we get gifts. And to create socks you need cotton or any other raw materials. So it’s a matter what material you want to flip and hoping market will react on it. If it reacts then you made gold. Goodluck!
Go flip other items like oregano or thyme or something