Guild Wars 2

So Anet created these massive candy corn sinks during halloween (e.g. the 20 slot pail), presumably in an attempt to reduce the abundance of candy corn in the world (or maybe the actual goal was to raise the price of candy corn).

Did it work? …or did people just decide they didn’t want these items?
Any TP master done an analysis?

I sure as hell could not be bothered with these overpriced items. Didn’t repeat any of the Halloween content once I got my achievements either. I believe few gave it any attention.

As soon as I discovered the prices I chuckled and groaned at the same time then pretended they weren’t in the game. Really, what’s the point of getting the pail other than for taking a screenshot for the forums or ctrl pinging in game to say “Look what I wasted my gold and time on”

If the vendor sticks around, it should only take 34.2 years to mine enough Candy Corn from your personal node to get the pail!

mtpelion.4562:

If the vendor sticks around, it should only take 34.2 years to mine enough Candy Corn from your personal node to get the pail!

Maybe I can cut it down to closer to 8 years by mining the home instance with 4 toons.

I can NOT wait!!!!!

MaxTheWrecker.5832:

http://gw2tp.net/items/18852-piece-of-candy-corn

-> buy price 35, sell price 35 = 3c profit – 0,15×3c = 2,55 profit each C.C. Nobody wants to buy them though, because well.. theyre useless. Dont try to flip them, you wont make any money.

If that is the formula you base your flipping on, i pity you.
The 5% listing fee and 10% sales tax are calculated from the sell price, not your win margin of flipping the item.

On topic:

What we learned is that now there is only 10% of the supply of candy corn on the TP compared to 6 months ago.

That is no surprise as you now can basically store 250k candy corn in 1 inventory slot, if you convert them into cobs.

The question is, will the demand be higher in the next 12 months for regular candy corn or the cobs?

There is plenty of gold to be made with trading of this years Halloween items but i dont think it will be either one of those 2.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/36041

Just looking at the price/supply/buy differences from the end of last year’s halloween, and this year’s halloween.

I must say this year was a resounding success in terms of keeping afloat the value of candy corn.

I’m still puzzled as to what was the larger goal ANet was trying to achieve with the vastly increased prices for festive goodies this Halloween. If it was to soak up excess supply, it could have been accomplished just by hoarders storing their Candy Corn in Cob form. I’m willing to bet that a large amount of Candy Corn in the game is still unused; it’s just sitting in people’s banks now as Cobs. (Personally I’ve got 5 Cobs.)

If their goal was to increase prices for Candy Corn, why? Are they trying to give lowbie players another source of income? Or do they somehow not like festive mats being sold for just coppers?

If their intent was to ruin one of the biggest GW2 holidays by making anything people wanted an impossible grind to get, then it was a success.

With regards to the crafted Halloween weapons, the only conclusion I can come to is that ANet wanted to make them VERY difficult to get in order to invest the items with prestige. It costs about 100 – 200g on average to get one of those weapons, which is not out of line with other prestige weapon skins like the various BL weapons.

The disconnect comes when you have players like me which see festive weapons as more of “getting into the spirit of the season” rather than as prestige weapons. Wintersday 2012 was a great example of this. You had tons of people running around with Wintersday weapons, and it really helped to reinforce the festival atmosphere. After Wintersday was over, nearly everyone went back to their usual weapons; the only people who continued using Wintersday weapons were those who specifically liked the look.

So yeah, I can see why ANet might have done what they did, but I think it introduced a very sour note into what was supposed to be a fun update.

Anet’s economist dun goofed.

Zaxares.5419:

With regards to the crafted Halloween weapons, the only conclusion I can come to is that ANet wanted to make them VERY difficult to get in order to invest the items with prestige. It costs about 100 – 200g on average to get one of those weapons, which is not out of line with other prestige weapon skins like the various BL weapons.

What they did wrong was update the price in the second year. If you had the recipe from last year, you are in luck. I only needed the gold for the elonian wine last year but this year I was highly disappointed that I needed a lot more than that…

Zaxares.5419:

I’m willing to bet that a large amount of Candy Corn in the game is still unused; it’s just sitting in people’s banks now as Cobs.

Or still inside Trick-or-Treat Bags. You get on average about 3 pieces of Candy Corn per bag, and there are a lot of those still on the TP.

I’m not here to talk about item flipping/playing the TP, just about the candy corn pricing.

In 2012, there was much more candy corn than needed, making it valueless and filling the TP with millions.
So, in 2013 Anet decided to fix this. Good idea. But they fixed through THREE changes, changing the issue to the opposite issue (= not enough candy anymore).

1 → Reducing the amount of gathered candy corn (remember in 2012 we has harvest points everywhere, now in 2013 there were much fewer, making it impossible to “farm”, and making non-farmers who just harvest along their way get much less)

2 → adding new nice sinks that a lot of players would want to use (mihnipet, 20-slot bags)

3 → making the amounts of candy corn needed much higher through the creation of cobs (multiplying by 250 (!!) the amounts for weapon recipes, high prices for point (2) items too)

Only 1 of these would have been nice to balance Candy Corn. 2 of these also empty the TP off 2012’s corn in a few days. All 3 of these fixes just create a new issue that is the opposite of 2012’s one :
- 2012 corn disappeared in a matter of minutes.
- candy corn price, while OK for each unit, became much too high in regards to the amounts needed →
-- “sink” items were made inaccessible (minipet price = too high for a festival pet – bag price = meaningless)
— 2012+2013 items (eg weapon recipes’ recipes) are now “you made a recipe in 2012, lucky you : you’re now part of the oligopoly of players who control the creation of these weapons” and “you didn’t make a recipe in 2012 ? In 2013 just give up the idea and buy a weapon from those guys from the 2012’s oligopoly”.

In short, I’m not saying that a rebalance wasn’t a good idea nor that making some items a bit harder to get is bad. But I’m saying that this balance, cumulating 3 fixes, was too strong.

Btw : this may be a proof that the balance was stronger than intended : Anet tried to sink corn through bags. Festival bags usually let players get nice inventory bags for a lower price (or for free/achievements). Bag price = 15000 corns = ~-60-75 gold coins. Since non-festival 20-slots bags cost 10g, I think it proves that the balance was much stronger than intended !

To anet : next year please either review the prices (for example cobs could cost 250 instead of 1000 corns ?); or give us back the 2012 supply (harvest nodes everywhere) so that the supply meets the demand in regard to the intended price for halloween items (especially minipets and inventory bags).

Regards,

Eowyn

Candy Corn got much overvalued in the build up to Halloween, which is the biggest problem. While they are easily to store now in candy corn cobs, the cobs are pretty much useless and oversupplied.
As the price of cobs is tied to the price of candy corn by the factor of 1000, the 20 slot bag and Mini that you can exchange for them are pretty much overpriced.

The only other use for cobs is for the recipes of Gift of Souls/Moon/Spiders.
As you cant exchange regular nougat/skulls/plastic fangs for the exotic versions anymore, the amount of recipes that still can be produced, is hard capped by the supply of those items, which is far less than the supply of cobs.

Had they put the greatsaw in there as some sort of purchasable or craftable item, then I think people would have done anything or bought pretty much any amount of candy corn for it.

Halloween = greatsaw for a great many people…..and it didn’t happen.