Guild Wars 2

Smooth Penguin.5294:

You must remember that considering all methods of acquiring coin, only the TP way doesn’t actually create it. Part of the purpose of the TP is to eliminate coin from the game. So you can’t aim to bring making money on the TP to be on par with everything else, because the inherent purposes are completely different.

Farming monsters creates coin.
Map completions creates coin.
Guild Missions creates coin.
Daily/Monthly metas creates coin.
Event completions creates coin.
Dungeon completions creates coin.
WvW ranking up creates coin.
Trading Post move coins between players, and eliminates 15% of them from the game.

Exactly. Now, isn’t it funny that the best way to earn gold in this game is through an activity that does not produce anything? That is completely dependant on the work of others?

Southern.8973:

To use your argument, does a player deserve to be at the top of the PvP leaderboard, even though they never PvP, but have played for hundreds of hours doing other things?

This “argument” is flawed. Account wealth is not just a “TP leaderboard” – if it were, there would be no problem. The comparable situation would have been if PvP was the clearly superior way to obtain wealth in this game (one that would trump all others, and make people pursuing different ways paupers in comparison). I’m pretty sure that if something like that happened, all the TP barons would scream bloody murder.

I like your round-about stretchy arguments and I especially like the part where people who are rich are evil and people who are poor are saints.

I didn’t say anything of the sort. Read before you speak.

You failed to realize that not everyone who is poor is hard working and not everyone who is rich is lazy.

I actually said exactly that. I was just countering the idea that everyone who’s rich is hard working and everyone who’s poor is lazy. The reality is that the two have little to do with each other. There are lazy rich and hard working poor, lazy poor and hard working rich, and plenty of people in the middle who are lazy, hard working, or just somewhere in the middle.

There’s no value in trying to make an argument that people who are rich/poor necessarily deserve to be in that state because they must be hard-working/lazy to be there.

As long as there is one hard-working rich GW2 player and one lazy poor GW2 player, it would not be right to punish the hard-working rich player so as to reward the lazy poor player.

Again, chill out with the persecution complex. This has nothing to do with “punishment,” this is about bringing balance to the system. It’s not “punishing” the rich or “rewarding” the poor, it’s just bringing the economic system into some semblance of balance such that effort ~= reward, rather than “effort of one specific type = 10K x reward, while equal effort of any other type offers only 1 x reward.”

You make a choice where to spend your time in game. Do you think a “Rich” person got that way from only playing 30 minutes a day? No; they’ve devoted hundreds, if not thousands of hours buying, selling, crafting, farming, and building their bankrolls.

Maybe, but plenty of other players have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the game doing other activities, and not made remotely as much. I’m not saying that every hour spent should result in exactly the same amount of reward, just as it would be impossible to perfectly balance every class against the others, but they should at least be reasonably close.

To use your argument, does a player deserve to be at the top of the PvP leaderboard, even though they never PvP?

It concerns me that you view making money in the game as a PvP leaderboard. This is why I’ve suggested that they should separate out the way the current market functions like how sPvP was currently separated out, so that those players who do view the TP as a PvP activity that they can win at can continue to do so, but without interfering in the player marketplace that adventurers use to buy and sell goods for their own needs.

I do not believe that the player marketplace should pit players VS other players, it should be a place of cooperative play, where players help other players to find items that they need, and in exchange receive a fair reward for their efforts, not one in which the goal is to gouge their fellow players for as much of a transaction fee as they can get away with.

Players that only play merchant-type characters will always tend to be wealthy, because that’s what they do.

And in theory, if all they were doing was stacking up “Merchant Points” then that would be fine, but as it turns out, “Merchant Points” are also the most useful currency in the game, capable of buying almost anything you could want, including all the most desirable weapons and armors, aside from Ascended armor, which “Merchant Points” can only be used to acquire 95% of what you’ll need.

So long as gold is the most useful currency in the game, I’m sorry, but it’s not a “no harm no foul” situation that one playstyle accumulates significantly higher amounts of it than any other.

I don’t begrudge them for their playstyle or that they enjoy it, I only take issue with how rewarding it is relative to other playstyles. I don’t seek to “punish” anyone, I only seek to bring that playstyle into balance with the other playstyles so that while they may still make more than others, the difference would be a lot smaller. If this takes the fun out of it for them, then I think that would be a small price to pay relative to the benefits of everyone else making relatively more.

LordByron.8369:

I think that there is indeed a problem on this forum but avoiding civil discussions goes in the interests of people wanting to preserve this status.

To answer you:
Its not that rich are evil …

Yet as in other parts of the game, players with an unfair advantage, wants to preserve it…
Its not that other players cares if those players has advantage until said advantage starts hindering their game.

Infact i see a strong relation between certain profession community and TP community.
Answers are the same, behavior is identical.

I hope to not receive the usual reply….

But how do rich players have an unfair advantage over regular players? Sure, they have an advantage, but is it unfair? If a single profession is OP in certain aspects of the game, i can see it being unfair towards other professions. But concerning profits on the tp, every account has the same starting requirements, we all start with 0 gold.
There is just 2 kinds of people, those who play the tp and those who dont.
And it is actually easier to double 10g investment in a day than it is doubling 1000g.

Wanze.8410:

But how do rich players have an unfair advantage over regular players? Sure, they have an advantage, but is it unfair? If a single profession is OP in certain aspects of the game, i can see it being unfair towards other professions. But concerning profits on the tp, every account has the same starting requirements, we all start with 0 gold.
There is just 2 kinds of people, those who play the tp and those who dont.
And it is actually easier to double 10g investment in a day than it is doubling 1000g.

You buy huge quantity of stuff creating false lack of offer.

And you perfectly know that doubling 10G by the TP is really risky while getting a good profit from 1000 G is rather easy.

The more gold you have the more you are able to distort the market and make more gold

“doubling” is something different.

Playing the TP efficiently needs golds.
But why are we even discussing this? and why do you pretend you don t know this?

But looking at gw2 spidy just after update’s info are released is an undeniable proof of how cancerous are TP players for the game economy.

But how do rich players have an unfair advantage over regular players? Sure, they have an advantage, but is it unfair? If a single profession is OP in certain aspects of the game, i can see it being unfair towards other professions. But concerning profits on the tp, every account has the same starting requirements, we all start with 0 gold.
There is just 2 kinds of people, those who play the tp and those who dont.

Perhaps so, but what if we consider it from a different standpoint. What if there was one dungeon where you could run it 24/7, and it rewarded 15g per hour, while anything else you did in game only rewarded say 1g per hour. And let’s assume that not everyone particularly enjoyed that dungeon, or was particularly good at it, so plenty of players could rarely complete it, and even of those that could they weren’t having much fun. Yet there would be a subset of players that were both quite good at the particular mechanics of that dungeon (not necessarily better than other players overall, just more skilled at the particular challenges of this specific dungeon), and enjoyed it more than anything else in the game.

Now on the face of it, this latter group is very lucky, because they get to do what they love, what they are good at, AND make significantly higher rewards for it than they can at anything else. The former group is particularly unlucky, since they are stuck being incapable of doing that dungeon and are stuck doing the other dungeons, which they might have more fun with, but are left well in the dust when it comes to being able to afford the things they’d like to be able to afford.

A game developer could look at that and say “working as intended” the players who are good at and enjoy the dungeon are having fun with it, the ones that aren’t are at least having a decent amount of fun with the other content, and why should I be concerned if the former players have enough money to trivialize any rewards in the game, while the latter group is never able to afford the rewards that they really want?

I think that ideally though a developer would want to balance those two groups out, to make it so that no activity rewards spectacularly higher than any other, so that each group can do the content that they are good at and enjoy, and each be rewarded evenly for it.

And it is actually easier to double 10g investment in a day than it is doubling 1000g.

And that would be a fair point if your objective was “to double your investment.” Maybe some people would think that way, but I doubt most players consider that their goal in the markets. Most players don’t want to “double their investments,” they want to “be able to afford the things they want to buy.” If you want to buy an item that costs 10g, and let’s assume that you don’t want to be out a dime of your seed money by the end of it, then it would be much easier to turn 1000g into 1010g than it is to turn 10g into 20g, and in practical terms just dropping the 10g out of pocket really wouldn’t hurt you, you could make that back quickly enough, while if the 10g person spent every dime he had it might take a while to work it back up.

What matters is not the percentage rate of how fast your money grows, but rather the practical value of your assets, what use you can put it to if you find a reason to spend money. Someone turning 10g into 50g might be a 400% growth, and that sounds very impressive, while someone turning 1000g into 1080g might only be a 8% growth, and sound well less impressive, but you can buy twice as much stuff with that 80g than you could with the 40g each made.

LordByron.8369:

As we all said its all about RISK/REWARDS…
TP lacks risk…..

And that is where your argument breaks down. There is a risk. There’s a risk that you will be stuck with inventory on the market that you can’t get rid of, to free up additional investment capital, without taking a loss. Like you guessed wrong as to what would be needed in the new Level 500 crafting. Or that new event ends up flooding the TP with goods you were selling for a nice price because of a low supply rate relative to demand rate. Or someone quitting for a time decides to dump all their excess items for coin.

People keep saying that the TP is risk free and that it’s trivial to rack in the coin but it isn’t. If it was risk free then the money player vendors make would vanish overnight because a significant size population of player vendors would wipe any profit from the activity due to excessive competition.

LordByron.8369:

Wanze.8410:

But how do rich players have an unfair advantage over regular players? Sure, they have an advantage, but is it unfair? If a single profession is OP in certain aspects of the game, i can see it being unfair towards other professions. But concerning profits on the tp, every account has the same starting requirements, we all start with 0 gold.
There is just 2 kinds of people, those who play the tp and those who dont.
And it is actually easier to double 10g investment in a day than it is doubling 1000g.

You buy huge quantity of stuff creating false lack of offer.

And you perfectly know that doubling 10G by the TP is really risky while getting a good profit from 1000 G is rather easy.

The more gold you have the more you are able to distort the market and make more gold

“doubling” is something different.

Playing the TP efficiently needs golds.
But why are we even discussing this? and why do you pretend you don t know this?

But looking at gw2 spidy just after update’s info are released is an undeniable proof of how cancerous are TP players for the game economy.

But why would i buy huge quantities of stuff to take off supply? If nobody bought the item at the price i bought it, why would they buy it at a higher price?

I just dont know why you think that every rich player is trying to do something malicious with this gold?
And why are only rich players responsible for market shifts?
If we take 2 markets that recently rose in value after the announcements for the feature patch, precursors and t6 fine mats, what makes you think that its rich players that are responible for this?

Its the general player base that drives the demand on those, not rich players.

Personally, i bought 0 t6 mats the month before the announcement and i bought 0 t6 mats after and i never bought or sold a single precursor. In fact i actually supplied the t6 market, by putting in buy orders for lootbags and selling the t6 mats i got.

To last 2 posters:

Risk in TP => look in basic TP guides (differetiating)
Oh but i m sure you didn t know that……its like saying a dungeon speedrunners don t know about stacking….

Demand… already answered some pages ago…
Some items can and are being controlled Others requires huge sums of gold and a favourable situation…that means a possible increase of 5% due to demand/offer will turn into 15-20% increase.

Bags => T5-T6 already answered i never complained about it despite the fact they are against TOS since to get any profit out of it, you need an autoclicker.

P.S: why people would pay an overpriced item?
To play the MAIN game
I could have avoided paying overpriced silk and just stay out of fractal 50 for months
I could have avoided buying sigils and runes i needed for my build and just be suboptimal in WWW and so on.

Ohoni.6057:

Perhaps so, but what if we consider it from a different standpoint. What if there was one dungeon where you could run it 24/7, and it rewarded 15g per hour, while anything else you did in game only rewarded say 1g per hour. And let’s assume that not everyone particularly enjoyed that dungeon, or was particularly good at it, so plenty of players could rarely complete it, and even of those that could they weren’t having much fun. Yet there would be a subset of players that were both quite good at the particular mechanics of that dungeon (not necessarily better than other players overall, just more skilled at the particular challenges of this specific dungeon), and enjoyed it more than anything else in the game.

Now on the face of it, this latter group is very lucky, because they get to do what they love, what they are good at, AND make significantly higher rewards for it than they can at anything else. The former group is particularly unlucky, since they are stuck being incapable of doing that dungeon and are stuck doing the other dungeons, which they might have more fun with, but are left well in the dust when it comes to being able to afford the things they’d like to be able to afford.

A game developer could look at that and say “working as intended” the players who are good at and enjoy the dungeon are having fun with it, the ones that aren’t are at least having a decent amount of fun with the other content, and why should I be concerned if the former players have enough money to trivialize any rewards in the game, while the latter group is never able to afford the rewards that they really want?

I think that ideally though a developer would want to balance those two groups out, to make it so that no activity rewards spectacularly higher than any other, so that each group can do the content that they are good at and enjoy, and each be rewarded evenly for it.

Concerning your dungeon example:

Its still the wrong comparison between profits and rewards. If that dungeon guarantees a 15g coin reward, if you clear it in under 1 hour its something entirely different than making 15g profit per hour on the tp. The dungeon runners dont have to make an initial investment except their gear and skills, which, in case of failure, wont be taken off them. The TP Player need skills and gold and takes the risk to lose his gold, while the dungeon runner gets to keep his gear, in case he fails.

I would actually be fine with a challenging dungeon that rewards 15g in coins (no extra loot, no other currency, titles or achievement points), if you clear it in under 1 hour and failure will be punished as well.

How could punishments look like?

Everytime a party member dies, 1g will be deducted from the final reward. Or each party member has to pay 1-5g to enter the dungeon and if the party is able to clear it in under an hour, they get 4 times their entrance fee back. If they fail to do so, they get no reward and lose their fee.

I would be fine with that, even, if i would propably not be someone reaping much rewards frm this.
But still, there is a fundamental difference in both, as the dungeon is a gold faucet, favouring inflation, while playing the tp is a gold sink.

So the dungeon would be way more damaging to the economy in the long run than the tp.

But this is getting off topic again, as we are trying to establish how to put a leash or diminishing returns on playing the tp.

For discussion sake, i agree with you guys: I make to much profit via the tp.

If you have a good suggestion, on how to limit my profits, that doesnt affect the general player bases use of the tp in a negative way, I am very interested to hear them.

What i vehemently disagree with, is that I am bad for the economy in general, cause inflation or impact anybodies general game experience in a substantial way.

John mentioned the same:

It’s possible I’ve missed it and I apologize if that’s true, but I haven’t seen any evidence or even a correct hypothesis that a group of the rich can negatively effect your gameplay experience. I think a clear set of ideas would help me understand and respond to the issue.

P.S. Don’t say luxury goods or I will refer you to the first rule of the tautology club.

So your proposed solution on limiting my profits cant affect other players more negatively than my wealth does right now.

Ohoni.6057:

Which is kind of my point. A market that makes you money only if you’re one of only few people benefiting from it is as close to an exploit as ANet currently allows.

Anyone selling anything on the market, makes money and LOTS of players are benefiting from it. As for comparing it to an exploit, well that is just a patently wrong.

And that’s my point. Some people can’t learn to fish. You can try to teach them, but they just won’t get it. And if fishing is the only industry in town that is worth anything, that represents a problem.

If some people can’t learn, tough. Before you jump on that let’s look at the most important part you seem to keep getting wrong. Fishing is not the only industry in town. You can make massive amounts of gold via non TP methods.

I have no tools available to me with which to collect better evidence, but I see what seems like a problem from my end. If those with the analytical tools available can prove to me that there are in fact no players with multiple legendaries or thousands of gold in assets, then fair enough, I stand corrected, but until I see such evidence, I can only work with what I believe to be the case.

Again, you have zero proof. When making wild claims over and over again (as you are doing), then it’s best to have some shred of evidence. You have none.

You say you see what seems like a problem from your end, and yet I don’t see it. If you log in and hear about some dude “got like 10kG and 5 legendaries” and you think, “oh I don’t”, that is not the basis to come on the forums and scream for nerfs.

I see and know plenty of people with legendaries and, shock horror, multiple legendaries from non TP methods. I know plenty of people with thousands of gold who don’t “play” the TP. I myself have cleared 1k gold in around six weeks of nothing but pve. Within that arbitrary two hour window you came up with earlier in the thread, I can average three times what you claim to make whilst also gaining SP’s, AP’s, Karma, T6 and high value lucky drops, all from pve.

This isn’t about “punishing” anyone, it’s about bringing the game’s economy back into balance.

You need to stop talking about balance, given you continually fail to demonstrate what the disparity is, how large it is, how it is impacting upon the game and why systems with totally and utterly different underlying core mechanics need to observe the same potential rewward structure.

So yes, it is ALL about “punishing” people because of some hyberbolic notion that the nasty old 1% are making it impossibru for the poor old pve player to get by.

LordByron.8369:

To last 2 posters:

Risk in TP => look in basic TP guides (differetiating)
Oh but i m sure you didn t know that……its like saying a dungeon speedrunners don t know about stacking….

Demand… already answered some pages ago…
Some items can and are being controlled Others requires huge sums of gold and a favourable situation…that means a possible increase of 5% due to demand/offer will turn into 15-20% increase.

Bags => T5-T6 already answered i never complained about it despite the fact they are against TOS since to get any profit out of it, you need an autoclicker.

P.S: why people would pay an overpriced item?
To play the MAIN game
I could have avoided paying overpriced silk and just stay out of fractal 50 for months
I could have avoided buying sigils and runes i needed for my build and just be suboptimal in WWW and so on.

Can you state specific items that you think are controlled by a few with alot of gold?
That way, John might be able to provide some data to either prove or disapprove your point.

Concerning Silk:

Do you really think a couple of rich players could have even had the slightest impact on those prices in december?

Those prices rose because the daily consumption was too high. And that consumption cant come from a couple of rich players as they only can craft 1 bolt of damask per day, like everybody else.

I mentioned it before:

My estimated guess is that at least 100k bolts of damask were crafted on patch day.
If John could provide the actual number, it would be great and i will stand corrected.
That would mean 30 million silk scraps being used per day.
There is no way for a couple of people of rich people can have any impact on that.
At a price of 1.5s per scrap, we are talking about a daily trading value of 4.5 million gold.

Concerning runes and sigils: If some of them are popular, lets say traveler and divinity, but only available through rng drops, the demand is higher than supply. So again, its the general player base as consumer that drives the price up, not some rich people cornering a market.
Rich players might be more freely to buy a set of those for their own use but in that case, they dont impact the price more than any other consumer.
So i agree with you that ascended armor is pricy and you want to have it for fracs or wvw but i dont see a link between their inflated prices and rich players.

Wanze should i repeat every post i made ciclically?

Old example of controlled items:
Sigil of generosity….
No action from DEV and they even removed it from following year event.

Frequent example of MANIPULATED item:
Precursors…everybody knows at least a couple players that have bought dozen precursor to resell later.
Infact the precursor price rises without taking in account gold deflation or inflation….

Silk:
The prepatch resources were clearly removed from the market by someone who had access to information other player didn t have see the “insider trading” in Patches….

Sigils…just look at when they announced sigil changes last patch

How long should i go….i follow the market since a long…i could profit it myself but since i find it disgusting and unfair i don t.

LordByron.8369:

To last 2 posters:

Risk in TP => look in basic TP guides (differetiating)
Oh but i m sure you didn t know that……its like saying a dungeon speedrunners don t know about stacking.

But unlike learning to speedrun a dungeon, which you can do by watching YouTube walkthroughs or actually tagging along with a party willing to show you the ropes, every TP flipping site I’ve just looked at want you to buy a subscription to their “exclusive” tool or newsletter or at the very least harvest a login ID and password so they can share their “exclusive” secrets.

Why should anyone listen to or pay for someone else’s pump and dump schemes? All the free information is trivial and obvious. Put in a bid, collect item, post item at a markup to cover fees, profit. Gee, is their a grad level course on that? The information we don’t have and what takes time to research is estimating the actual trading volume of every prospective item. That’s how you lower your risk. You have to work at it.

No most players are simply going to look at the estimated profits listed on sites like GW2TP.com (as oppose to .net) and wrongly believe that items like Minor Runes of Divinity actually generate 80% profit, that players are buying them at 40c+ even though you can routinely buy as many as you want, if you are patient, at half that price or less.

It’s no wonder players think flippers are cheaters because they are convinced it’s easy and risk free by players like you and since they can’t pull in the big bucks with the “work from the TP” schemes then there must be nefarious deeds afoot. Those dirty cheating flippers.

LordByron.8369:

Wanze should i repeat every post i made ciclically?

Old example of controlled items:
Sigil of generosity….
No action from DEV and they even removed it from following year event.

Frequent example of MANIPULATED item:
Precursors…everybody knows at least a couple players that have bought dozen precursor to resell later.
Infact the precursor price rises without taking in account gold deflation or inflation….

Silk:
The prepatch resources were clearly removed from the market by someone who had access to information other player didn t have see the “insider trading” in Patches….

Sigils…just look at when they announced sigil changes last patch

How long should i go….i follow the market since a long…i could profit it myself but since i find it disgusting and unfair i don t.

But how do you know these prices are manipulated by a few rich players?

Its a shame that Sigil of Generosity is so expensive but i would still argue that the mayority of those are in posession of a huge group of players, who all own 1 each that they are using and could easily resale if they salvage the weapon with a BLSK, not a couple of players holding a big chunk of the supply.

Its the same with precursors:

Check the graphs on spidy. Precursors have been more stable in price and showed less fluctuation for over 6 months than 90% of all common, fine and rare crafting mats.
In general, Precursors havent had a direct flipping profit for months either.
If somebody buys a couple of dozen precursors to sell later, thats not manipulation but speculation. How does someone that buys 10 dusks to sell at a later stage for profit have any significant impact its price, if dozens of dusks get traded every day? Its miniscule.
Here is the graph for dusk, you will see that it tanked a bit in price recently making it available at ~750g.
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29185

Right now, the price spiked again but if we assume, someone bought out 10 dusks at 750g, it would mean that he needs to sell them all at 950g each to make 10% profit.
I dont know anybody in his right mind with alot of gold that is investing it in precursors.

Silk: The supply of silk pre patch, it doesnt matter who bought it (inside trader, speculators or ordinary people promoting it to gossamer) was in no way enough to influence the silk price past patch by withholding it.

Sigils in general:

With speculation about the new feature patch, everybody and their mother bought some runes/sigils/dyes/skins to speculate with.

Bottom Line here:

I agree that rising prices for things you want effect you negatively, i also wont deny that tp traders make a profit with those items.

But i strongly disagree that they are the mayor force behind the rising prices because its driven by demand of the general player base. There is no way that the richest 2% have enough gold to dictate prices more than the combined gold and demand of the other 98%.

How do i know?
gw2 spidy
and even admitted by players and devs.

You can disagree but you can t deny facts (see infact price spikes).

Since there is almost no risk more and more people have being pushed into speculation to the point that manipulation is out of control.

Despite this old discussion something should be done and developers knows exactly what to do since they did it already once. (see crystalline dust).

Yet they refuse and this is what i don t get…..

LordByron.8369:

How do i know?
gw2 spidy
and even admitted by players and devs.

You can disagree but you can t deny facts (see infact price spikes).

Since there is almost no risk more and more people have being pushed into speculation to the point that manipulation is out of control.

Despite this old discussion something should be done and developers knows exactly what to do since they did it already once. (see crystalline dust).

Yet they refuse and this is what i don t get…..

Spidy doesnt show, if a rich player bought 100 items or 100 regular players bought 1 each.

Even if someone claimed to successully have manipulated a market, you still fail to give even anecdotal evidence that this single person has more impact on the economy as a whole than supply and demand of the regular player base.

Wanze.8410:

I agree that rising prices for things you want effect you negatively, i also wont deny that tp traders make a profit with those items.

But i strongly disagree that they are the mayor force behind the rising prices because its driven by demand of the general player base. There is no way that the richest 2% have enough gold to dictate prices more than the combined gold and demand of the other 98%.

I think the Iron prices in the weeks of the last LS Stories shows very good how a highly rising demand can suddenly change the prices.

Too sad that iron now is down again .. as a harvester that was such a nice month

Ohoni.6057:

Again, I reject the theory that cash-to-gold is a major part of ANet’s profit model, and even if it were, the system would be self-policing since you can only do so by selling gems to other players, so if there weren’t already plenty of people converting gold into gems, then you wouldn’t be able to get any reasonable returns on gems into gold, and it would cost thousands of dollars in gems to buy a Legendary that way.

Just because you reject it doesn’t make it false. Load the game, open the TP, click the circular arrows, click convert gems to gold. There, Anet makes money off people converting gems to gold. And the thing about this model is that you don’t need a lot of people doing this. You just need a small, impatient group of players who do this regularly to make in game gold. People buy gems with money, good for Anet as it makes them money. People buy gems with gold, still good for Anet as it removes more gold from the game which makes it harder to buy things and buying gems with money looks better.

Edit: Removed embarrassingly incorrect math.

ValeN.3129:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Precisely, if the richer players in GW2 have done nothing wrong, I don’t see why they should be punished. They worked hard for their gold and deserve to keep them.

Now that’s american culture!

Used to be, anyway.

LordByron.8369:

…
And you perfectly know that doubling 10G by the TP is really risky while getting a good profit from 1000 G is rather easy….

This is an economic and mathematical constant – no matter how hard progressivism says it can change it, it can’t… without resorting to theft.

Those that got to the point where they could leverage capital effectively got there within the constraints of the rules. Stealing gold from them now is changing the rules after they’ve done the work.

I don’t even know why I’m commenting on this since the entire premise (that there’s a problem for non-rich players that stems from the existence of rich players) is fallacious and unproven… again art imitating life. Inequality is only a problem when 1) there’s a finite resource (which there’s not) and 2) it is a direct impediment to others (which it isn’t). Being behind on the treadmill is NOT an impediment… it’s simply annoying.

Due Diligence: I have a grand total of like 14 Gold in my account – I am therefore NOT speaking from a standpoint of protectionism.

Beldin.5498:

Wanze.8410:

I agree that rising prices for things you want effect you negatively, i also wont deny that tp traders make a profit with those items.

But i strongly disagree that they are the mayor force behind the rising prices because its driven by demand of the general player base. There is no way that the richest 2% have enough gold to dictate prices more than the combined gold and demand of the other 98%.

I think the Iron prices in the weeks of the last LS Stories shows very good how a highly rising demand can suddenly change the prices.

Too sad that iron now is down again .. as a harvester that was such a nice month

Oh, you missed something of muuuuuuch higher profit~ Shortly after people began making the blueprints for the back item, Radiant Dust went from 1s and some copper, to over 20 silver a piece on buy orders in a matter of minutes. Do the math a moment, ONE STACK of Radiant Dust was able to sell for 50g. There are very few low tier materials capable of doing that.

As for this thread, can we just admit that it’s become pointless? Progressive tax does nothing but harm low-cash players. TP runners merely shift the cost onto buyers, and low-cash players that attempt to sell their materials get a very high tax burden that’s hard to overcome. This is even more obvious when some players, like me, dont sell stuff until there’s considerable amount in their collections, or need that money.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Beldin.5498:

Wanze.8410:

I agree that rising prices for things you want effect you negatively, i also wont deny that tp traders make a profit with those items.

But i strongly disagree that they are the mayor force behind the rising prices because its driven by demand of the general player base. There is no way that the richest 2% have enough gold to dictate prices more than the combined gold and demand of the other 98%.

I think the Iron prices in the weeks of the last LS Stories shows very good how a highly rising demand can suddenly change the prices.

Too sad that iron now is down again .. as a harvester that was such a nice month

Oh, you missed something of muuuuuuch higher profit~ Shortly after people began making the blueprints for the back item, Radiant Dust went from 1s and some copper, to over 20 silver a piece on buy orders in a matter of minutes. Do the math a moment, ONE STACK of Radiant Dust was able to sell for 50g. There are very few low tier materials capable of doing that.

But i’m no flipper .. whenever i try to speculate and buy stuff the price goes down. So i better just harvst stuff or kill mobs to get stuff to sell.
At least i don’t know where i could farm radiant dust in mass that it would had bring me more profit than harvesting iron.

Beldin.5498:

Aidan Savage.2078:

Beldin.5498:

Wanze.8410:

I agree that rising prices for things you want effect you negatively, i also wont deny that tp traders make a profit with those items.

But i strongly disagree that they are the mayor force behind the rising prices because its driven by demand of the general player base. There is no way that the richest 2% have enough gold to dictate prices more than the combined gold and demand of the other 98%.

I think the Iron prices in the weeks of the last LS Stories shows very good how a highly rising demand can suddenly change the prices.

Too sad that iron now is down again .. as a harvester that was such a nice month

Oh, you missed something of muuuuuuch higher profit~ Shortly after people began making the blueprints for the back item, Radiant Dust went from 1s and some copper, to over 20 silver a piece on buy orders in a matter of minutes. Do the math a moment, ONE STACK of Radiant Dust was able to sell for 50g. There are very few low tier materials capable of doing that.

But i’m no flipper .. whenever i try to speculate and buy stuff the price goes down. So i better just harvst stuff or kill mobs to get stuff to sell.
At least i don’t know where i could farm radiant dust in mass that it would had bring me more profit than harvesting iron.

I wouldnt bother either. The price of Radiant Dust crashed down to 2-3s 15 minutes after it peaked because hoarders decided to unload and had a price war. This wasnt speculation either, it was nothing but reaction to a sudden, and enormously massive, spike in demand. That being said, even sites like gw2spidy would not have helped. The price rose and crashed long before the site would have had a chance to update.

LordByron.8369:

As we all said its all about RISK/REWARDS…
TP lacks risk…..

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Ohoni.6057:

Maybe, but plenty of other players have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours in the game doing other activities, and not made remotely as much. I’m not saying that every hour spent should result in exactly the same amount of reward, just as it would be impossible to perfectly balance every class against the others, but they should at least be reasonably close.

So what? Many other players have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours searching and experimenting with new strategies, developing tools, debugging them, testing them, fixing them, planning and analyzing TP data also. Why should those hours count any less?

Its really hard to discuss with people denying facts….

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24714

Common tactic to derail topics…

You can easily spot peaks during any interview by anet revealing changes…
Obviusly people bought that much to equip their characters….

LordByron.8369:

Its really hard to discuss with people denying facts….

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24714

Common tactic to derail topics…

I don’t get your point. I did not invest in superior rune of strength and don’t see its relevance.

If you are saying that flipping has zero risk then you obviously know nothing about flipping and price undercutting.

Aidan Savage.2078:

I wouldnt bother either. The price of Radiant Dust crashed down to 2-3s 15 minutes after it peaked because hoarders decided to unload and had a price war. This wasnt speculation either, it was nothing but reaction to a sudden, and enormously massive, spike in demand. That being said, even sites like gw2spidy would not have helped. The price rose and crashed long before the site would have had a chance to update.

Yeah .. i’m also always to late to the party when things like that happen, since here in germany i’m normally at work when we get such news, and when i’m at home the big rush has already gone.

The spike in few minutes dring the interview maybe?
Quite usual..

Its really fun how this forum is full of “i was so cool i bought stacks of that reselling those later for thousands golds” and then “manipulation doesn t exist!”…

@DS
I won t answer to your lazy quote…read this forum you ll be disproven by TP players themselves as many time you want…

Beldin.5498:

Aidan Savage.2078:

I wouldnt bother either. The price of Radiant Dust crashed down to 2-3s 15 minutes after it peaked because hoarders decided to unload and had a price war. This wasnt speculation either, it was nothing but reaction to a sudden, and enormously massive, spike in demand. That being said, even sites like gw2spidy would not have helped. The price rose and crashed long before the site would have had a chance to update.

Yeah .. i’m also always to late to the party when things like that happen, since here in germany i’m normally at work when we get such news, and when i’m at home the big rush has already gone.

I feel your pain there, I went to bed with fine dyes at no higher than 3s and wake up to the lowest fine dye price at 20-25s. Then I later heard unid dyes peaked at over 1g. I cried for an hour.

LordByron.8369:

@DS
I won t answer to your lazy quote…read this forum you ll be disproven by TP players themselves as many time you want…

lol…then you have been taken in by their lies and brags. Every form of worthy investment carries an amount of risk, unless you are breaking rules (i.e. hacks, dupes, insider trading, etc.)

LordByron.8369:

The spike in few minutes dring the interview maybe?
Quite usual..

Its really fun how this forum is full of “i was so cool i bought stacks of that reselling those later for thousands golds” and then “manipulation doesn t exist!”…

@DS
I won t answer to your lazy quote…read this forum you ll be disproven by TP players themselves as many time you want…

You mean the TP players who have already stated they can lose hundreds or thousands of gold because an item they had been attempting to flip got crashed? Or if competition moves in? And speculation happens because of low information availability. Sometimes kitten happens and TP players lose big by speculating the wrong way.

Aidan Savage.2078:

I feel your pain there, I went to bed with fine dyes at no higher than 3s and wake up to the lowest fine dye price at 20-25s. Then I later heard unid dyes peaked at over 1g. I cried for an hour.

I also sold all the dyes i found in the last 2-3 weeks before, when prices where down to 27s a day before, when prices were again at 37s

When you try to flip something you never lose 100% (10% maybe? while potentially you can gain 50-300%)

Also if you are not trying to flip silly stuff you perfeclty know is extreme risk and you do that just because you have so much money you are doing it for the lulz, you never risk to lose much.

The only real situation where i could have seen some risk was infact crystalline dust patch.

And that SHOULD be the rule…when speculators try to pull resources out of the TP to create a false scarcity, devs should put a new resource fast and without announcements…to punish this behavior (that is ban worthy in other games).

P.S. and i don t fall for bragging….half my guild is doing that stuff and trying to convince me to do the same…..

tp lacks risk, funniest thing I’ve read today. If it was true. I would be far more rich than I am.

That comment and others which agree with it. Is actually nice to see at the first part of any post. Makes for far less reading.
When I see someone post something completely untrue. I just stop reading at that point fully aware they poster has no clue what they are talking about.

LordByron.8369:

When you try to flip something you never lose 100% (10% maybe? while potentially you can gain 50-300%)

That is bogus. People who flip often can tell you that their sell lists is full of items that failed to sell, if they are honest. Why? Because competition comes in and people undercut when they see a good deal, until the item is not profitable to flip anymore.

When would that happen and when to stop flipping? Almost impossible to tell and when you placed the items in the sell list, you already lose the 5% listing fee. I have made many mistakes and lost gold playing the TP too, so you win some and you lose some. You can only hope to win more than you lose. But most of the time, you only hear about the wins when people brag in the forums, they keep quiet about their losses. There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

I’m there with many of you, the economy is out of whack, but I would be willing to bet all my gold that it’s not due to rich flippers, it’s due to increase demand while supply stays pretty much the same.

I will also argue that anet is actually doing something about it and in very big ways. With the intro of the wardrobe system, the account bound dye system and the introduction of ascended gear prior, they’ve literally made the economy a more level playing field. It’s going to take time to see a significant change, but this conversation will more than likely be moot in a matter of months.

I’ll also say that my disposable income will net me more gold in the game than any other activity. 1 hour at my job will always yield my far more profit than any other activity and if anything, I take that gold and pass it off to lucky players that win contests i hold for various server activities i promote. “Rich” players are often doing the same thing as i am, giving a lot of it away.

LordByron.8369:

Its really hard to discuss with people denying facts….

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/24714

Common tactic to derail topics…

You can easily spot peaks during any interview by anet revealing changes…
Obviusly people bought that much to equip their characters….

But how does this negatively affect the average player?
Thats people buying lots of rune of strength and selling them to other speculators.
And thats not only rich players doing it, its normal players doing it as well.

All this example shows, is that the TP actually works quite efficient by finding equilibrium again.

If you think this is a problem, fair enough. But stop pblaming rich players for this and ask for higher taxes for them because it would solve nothing, as long as people can buy gold with gems.

I guess since tp has no risk, all the post about making an investment and losing gold because they were wrong, I guess all those people are just liars. That’s what anyone is implying when they say tp has no risk.

LordByron.8369:

When you try to flip something you never lose 100% (10% maybe? while potentially you can gain 50-300%)

Also if you are not trying to flip silly stuff you perfeclty know is extreme risk and you do that just because you have so much money you are doing it for the lulz, you never risk to lose much.

If you attempt to flip items that have an obvious profit margin, there is the chance to lose 100% because competition can move in on that item at any time. Smart flipping nets you a couple silvers here and there on each sale because the profit margin is going to be so small that it can only hold one, maybe two, person flipping it.

Flipping is high risk and high reward only if you try flipping items with sufficient profit margin. It’s moderate risk, low reward if you play it safe.

It honestly seems like you dont even know how to play the tradepost at this point. So I’m going to agree with a couple others and just disregard your posts in this thread.

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

If you know when to stop flipping, you can generally earn a profit overall, but you need to monitor and you certainly can’t say that there is absolutely no risk to flipping like what LordByron is saying.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

That is bogus. How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

You don’t, and he doesn’t really mean it’s guaranteed profit, just highly probable. In fact, there are some markets that have been consistently profitable for many months, and even if they become popular (and less profitable), they generally return to major profitability soon after. I have a couple specific ones in mind, one of which always has 5k+ buy/sell orders and makes around 60c per flip, and another that has around 500 buy/sell orders and earns around 15s a flip. Nothing guarantees that everyone won’t discover them, but they haven’t so far, and thus they are as close to guaranteed profits as one can find.

Bunda.2691:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

That is bogus. How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

You don’t, and he doesn’t really mean it’s guaranteed profit, just highly probable. .

He said “TP lacks risk…..”. How else would you interpret that? Does that mean I am probably going to make a profit even if I invest carelessly?

Like I have said, TP requires time to analyze and plan but some people here seem to think otherwise and you can just jump right into TP investing and make lots of gold from the air. Like him:

Nike.2631:

Farming monsters creates coin as a function constrained by time.
Map completions creates coin as a function constrained by time.
Guild Missions creates coin as a function constrained by time.
Daily/Monthly metas creates coin as a function constrained by time.
Event completions creates coin as a function constrained by time.
Dungeon completions creates coin as a function constrained by time.
WvW ranking up creates coin as a function constrained by time.
Trading Post concentrates coin as a function constrained by how much coin you already have.

DarkSpirit.7046:

He said “TP lacks risk…..”. How else would you interpret that? Does that mean I am probably going to make a profit even if I invest carelessly?

I’m fairly certain that LordByron is an English as a Second Language user, so I find it helps to rely more on the gist of what he posts, rather than the actual text.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Bunda.2691:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

That is bogus. How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

You don’t, and he doesn’t really mean it’s guaranteed profit, just highly probable. .

He said “TP lacks risk…..”. How else would you interpret that? Does that mean I am probably going to make a profit even if I invest carelessly?

Like I have said, TP requires time to analyze and plan but some people here seem to think otherwise and you can just jump right into TP investing and make lots of gold from the air.

It lacks risk relative to time invested. That isn’t saying that you won’t ever incur losses. It’s just that it retains the best time:income ratio (outside of buying gems) in the game.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

If you know when to stop flipping, you can generally earn a profit overall, but you need to monitor and you certainly can’t say that there is absolutely no risk to flipping like what LordByron is saying.

Because I dont stay in those markets until they run dry or start bleeding money
from me. I poke at them so they bleed enough money to suit whatever need I had at that time, and then I move on to other things and let the market recover. It’s remained stable for as long as I’ve been using it.

Is Anet big brother?? And has a hot line to some people that play the game. How in the world do some people know for certain how much time anyone spends on tp. How much time doing research.

To argue against earned vs time invested. One must first know how much time was invested vs what is earned. If they don’t know, then its very simple the person making those claims simply doesn’t know what they are talking about. Only assuming and we all know what that leads to.

Some people sure like to argue about things they don’t know. But it makes for interesting reading when we are bored. Waiting for orders to come in.

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

If you know when to stop flipping, you can generally earn a profit overall, but you need to monitor and you certainly can’t say that there is absolutely no risk to flipping like what LordByron is saying.

Because I dont stay in those markets until they run dry or start bleeding money
from me. I poke at them so they bleed enough money to suit whatever need I had at that time, and then I move on to other things and let the market recover. It’s remained stable for as long as I’ve been using it.

Which points to what I said about knowing when to get out which requires some amount of active playing and monitoring. Certainly not equivalent to a risk-free investing.

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

If you know when to stop flipping, you can generally earn a profit overall, but you need to monitor and you certainly can’t say that there is absolutely no risk to flipping like what LordByron is saying.

Because I dont stay in those markets until they run dry or start bleeding money
from me. I poke at them so they bleed enough money to suit whatever need I had at that time, and then I move on to other things and let the market recover. It’s remained stable for as long as I’ve been using it.

So they dont guarantee profit 100% of the time, as you claimed earlier.

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

Aidan Savage.2078:

DarkSpirit.7046:

There is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed profit from flipping.

There are…. certain items that do in fact guarantee profit. But like anyone else who has an uninvaded market on the trade post, I’m not going to spoil my own profit. I’ll simply confirm that they do exist. Smart TP players should be able to easily find the items I’m talking about too.

How do you prevent others from undercutting you when they see the same good deal? Once the spread becomes narrow enough, the item is not worth flipping anymore.

If you know when to stop flipping, you can generally earn a profit overall, but you need to monitor and you certainly can’t say that there is absolutely no risk to flipping like what LordByron is saying.

Because I dont stay in those markets until they run dry or start bleeding money
from me. I poke at them so they bleed enough money to suit whatever need I had at that time, and then I move on to other things and let the market recover. It’s remained stable for as long as I’ve been using it.

Which points to what I said about knowing when to get out which requires some amount of active playing and monitoring. Certainly not equivalent to a risk-free investing.

Knowing when to get out because profit is no longer there is distinctly different to getting out because you dont need that amount of profit anymore. It’s risk-free because I do not stay and abuse the market long enough that the risk becomes tangible enough to impact it’s viability.