Q:
Is arbitrage bannable?
A:
Arbitrage is not an exploit. You are merely buying items for what people are willing to sell them for, then selling them for what people are willing to buy them for.
You are not exploiting a bug, you are capitalizing on the market. You are not abusing any bugged game mechanics, which is what defines an exploit.
Edit: Grammer
(edited by Syntax.3704)
As far as I know it is not bannable. The snowflake exploit had nothing to do with the price of the materials or how much you could earn from it. The problem was an error in the recipe that allowed for you to put craft the item using 1 ecto then salvaging it for 0-3 ecto but you get back the part of the item that was crafted using the orginal ecto. This changed the equation to you make the item you get 1-4 ecto (0-3 ecto for breaking it down and the brilliant snowflake back which was crafted using 1 ecto). you also got back some mithril as well.
This is how i look at it, if i craft a rare staff and break it down for ecto i dont get the inscription back for breaking it down where as with this recipe you got the inscription back plus some base materials
From John Smiths blog post "“The Guild Wars 2 economy (and virtually every other economy in the same vein) is not designed to have any loop that involves creating value for no cost.” (This statement is over 1 month old and had nothing to do with the wintersday exploit sorry for any confusion)
Guild Leader for [Myth] Darkhaven
(edited by Mira.4906)
It can be, the truth is that the Guild Wars 2 support either does not fully understand what happened, or they do not care about really delivering justice to the players they have banned.
The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.
At this point you have to look at profit margin and say well ok that has to be how a player knows it’s an exploit. Sadly the profit margin was only about 5 silver after snowflakes had reached 30 silver. This was only 2 silver better than the normal rare crafting market profit.
It seems Anet support has either not considered these facts, or they really just don’t care about unfairly banning players. I hope they take a look at what happened, and realize that what they did was not just.
I am pretty sad that it seems like the prevailing sentiment on these forums is that since only 200 players were banned they were justified. That is something that doesn’t even speak to the justice of what happened at all, and is instead a statement to try and turn members against the banned players.
If they are suggesting that salvaging returns were unnatural (returning the materials 80% of the time) then they failed to see that when snowflakes were at 30 silver, and you failed to recover the materials you lost about 55 silver. It means doing this was by no means a sure way to make money anymore than crafting conventional rares.
So basically to your question if Anet decided the activity is toxic then it’s possible to get banned for partaking in it, even if you only make 10-20 gold.
(edited by van.5367)
Mira, thanks for clearing up the snowflake matter, it appears I was misinformed as to what it precisely was. I do not think that this changes the point however. Correct me if I am wrong, but I feel that due to the new recipe, the market merely changed, and players were temporarily able to profit, until the market prices of e.g. mithril, snowflakes and ecto adjusted.
Thank you for your answers; (freely) interpreting them, it appears there is a chance (however remote), of being banned for playing on price differences. I would like to hear an official stance on this. For if Smith’s post is anything to go by, arbitrage should actually be promoted, as it makes his goal of an efficient market, in which no returns disproportional to cost can be had much more realistic.
The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.
No. They didn’t get banned for any specific step in the cycle. They got banned for repeatedly running the entire ecto generating cycle.
So you can simply avoid being banned for this by never using any of the output of a salvage to produce the item you just salvaged.
The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.
No. They didn’t get banned for any specific step in the cycle. They got banned for repeatedly running the entire ecto generating cycle.
So you can simply avoid being banned for this by never using any of the output of a salvage to produce the item you just salvaged.
People who craft rare items to gamble at salvaging them for ecto will end up with both ecto and a small amount of the original materials used to make the rare item.
Are you advocating that those who roll roll their fabric or metal scraps back into another batch are “exploiting”?
The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.
No. They didn’t get banned for any specific step in the cycle. They got banned for repeatedly running the entire ecto generating cycle.
So you can simply avoid being banned for this by never using any of the output of a salvage to produce the item you just salvaged.
People who craft rare items to gamble at salvaging them for ecto will end up with both ecto and a small amount of the original materials used to make the rare item.
Are you advocating that those who roll roll their fabric or metal scraps back into another batch are “exploiting”?
It seems like most people agree if you get to much back (~ 80% of ectos and snowflakes and ~33% of mithril) that is to much and is worthy of a ban. That or they don’t really get the process and assume you get 100% back.
Also if you had salvaged 100 rings, and deleted the 80 jewels you got back on average for some reason you would have still been banned. It was a 100+ salvages ban.
Please stop with this nonsense. The exploit was only the fact that you crafted and salvaged an item with negligable item loss 80%/100% of the time due to recipe being incorrectly designed.
It wasnt an exploit because people did it multiple times. That was the reason they got them banned. Other people who used this exploit, only did it several times and then reported it. They didnt get banned.
It wasnt an exploit because they were profiting from it.
And it wasnt an exploit because they crafted from materials they salvaged.
It was an exploit, because recipe allowed to infinitely craft using the same jewel, with no loss of expensive material, unlike every other recipe in jewelcrafting. And those who abused this exploit got punished for it.
The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.
No. They didn’t get banned for any specific step in the cycle. They got banned for repeatedly running the entire ecto generating cycle.
So you can simply avoid being banned for this by never using any of the output of a salvage to produce the item you just salvaged.
People who craft rare items to gamble at salvaging them for ecto will end up with both ecto and a small amount of the original materials used to make the rare item.
Are you advocating that those who roll roll their fabric or metal scraps back into another batch are “exploiting”?
Only if they get more of that material back than they put in. If they get back less, it’s fine.
Please stop with this nonsense. The exploit was only the fact that you crafted and salvaged an item with negligable item loss 80%/100% of the time due to recipe being incorrectly designed.
I’m sorry, 20% is negligeable??? When the material cost to make it is 60s+, it is not so negligeable no.
The drop rate of an unbreakable bell from a witersday gift is around 0.005%
Now THAT is negligeable.
I’m sorry, 20% is negligeable??? When the material cost to make it is 60s+, it is not so negligeable no.
Reading comprehension ftw…
The exploit was only the fact that you crafted and salvaged an item with negligable item loss [meaning that you loose several pieces of mithril ore and a charge from salvage kit] 80% of the time [when you use master salvage kit] or 100% of the time [when you use black lion kit, because you loose nothing]. Its not that difficult.
And yes, i would still call it negligible in 5 crafts/salvage cycle because it takes one ecto, and produces 4.5, while every other rare recipe would take 15 and produce 4.5. So yeah, viewing this in the context that for every other jewellery you loose 10+ ectos on this, while this one specific recipe PRODUCES 4+ ectos, i would call the loss of snowflake negligible regardless of its cost.
Reading comprehention ftw..
I would call the loss of snowflake negligible regardless of its cost.
No problem of comprehention here. Or actually yes, it seem we do not share the same definiton of the word “negligible”, so we will have to agree to disagree here.
(beacause I really don’t see how anything can be negligible regardless of its cost, when all is about generating a profit)
(edited by Kethryes.5712)
No problem of comprehention here
Yes there is. For whatever reason, you are ignoring the context, in which one recipe turned 1 ecto into 4 ecto, and thats only on average, because infinite loop was quite possible, while every other recipe consumes ectos at ratio 2 consumed to 1 produced.
You are aware you can generate ectos out of 0 ectos by crafting rares other than jewels?
And there is no “infinite loop”, since it consumes mithril and snowflake.
Actually any recipe in this game can be writen in the form of an equation: stuff1 + stuff2 = other stuff
This recipe was on average:
7.3 mithril + 0.2 snowflake + recycling cost = 0.7 ecto
(Note I am talking about the “best” recipe in terms of benefits: no black lion kits way too expenstive, no orichalcum)
Not infinite loop to see here, just transformation of something into something else, whose price are driven by the market.
There was no real ‘infinite loop’, as every new creation of ecto would require inputs, making the profit people were making of a temporary kind. This new feature simply drove markets out of equilibrium. The price of the inputs would be (and was partly) driven up as players realized the true value of them (with the new recipe). I think this is also supported by what #3 mentions in his post, that the profitability of using snowflakes was already approaching that of normal ecto crafting.
During the event however, players were simply using a recipe that was in the game. In an ever changing game, who are we to discern between bug and feature? This choice would be an opaque one at best, yet we take the blame for it. The ecto crafting method was profitable, in hindsight we can say it was accidentally so, but events are often meant to be temporary, profitable and fun.
N.B. I am loosely interpreting arbitrage here, since these inputs and outputs are different products, but they can be converted into each other nearly instantaneously, at minimal cost and with no further prerequisites. The only real difference, as Syntax rightly pointed out, is that for real arbitrage, transformation of the materials is irrelevant, as game mechanics do not come into play there.
(edited by Waikd.4632)
7.3 mithril + 0.2 snowflake + recycling cost = 0.7 ecto
if this formula is true then we have :
7.3 * ( 0.6 ~ 0.8s) + 1s + 0.6s = 0.7 ecto
6.71s = 0.7 ecto
6.71s = 0.7 * 25s = 17.5s
6.71s = 17.5s ?? yaaaa
no comment
SFR
Obviously prices are not in equilibrium?
It can be, the truth is that the Guild Wars 2 support either does not fully understand what happened, or they do not care about really delivering justice to the players they have banned.
The criteria for ‘knowing’ it was wrong was only the amount of salvages you do. As a player who does 100+ rare salvages a day as a way to make money it seems like this is one of the worst ways to suggest a player is knowingly taking advantage of an exploit.
At this point you have to look at profit margin and say well ok that has to be how a player knows it’s an exploit. Sadly the profit margin was only about 5 silver after snowflakes had reached 30 silver. This was only 2 silver better than the normal rare crafting market profit.
So, if someone found a dodgy way to create Dusks for 10 gold and when it became public knowledge the Dusk prices would go down to 11 gold it would be no exploit because hey…he makes no profits anymore? Yeah…sure.
“GW2 takes everything you love about GW1” – M. O’Brien
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2” – C. Johanson
“The most important thing in any game should be the player” – R. Soesbee
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2” – C. Johanson
“The most important thing in any game should be the player” – R. Soesbee
You are aware you can generate ectos out of 0 ectos by crafting rares other than jewels?
You are aware that in jewelcrafting there is no other way and in all the other disciplines that happens with using T6 mats, which cannot be recovered at 1 to 1 ratio? Again, those recipes consume mats. The snowflake exploit produced mats. Whats difficult to grasp here?
So, if someone found a dodgy way to create Dusks for 10 gold and when it became public knowledge the Dusk prices would go down to 11 gold it would be no exploit because hey…he makes no profits anymore? Yeah…sure.
I sure hope some people think that way. The more exploiters banned the better the game community will be.
7.3 mithril + 0.2 snowflake + recycling cost = 0.7 ecto
if this formula is true then we have :
7.3 * ( 0.6 ~ 0.8s) + 1s + 0.6s = 0.7 ecto
6.71s = 0.7 ecto
6.71s = 0.7 * 25s = 17.5s
6.71s = 17.5s ?? yaaaa
no comment
Two days after the recipe was introduced we had mithril at 0.9s, snowflake at 26s, and still rising, to soon reach the equilibrium. Which is what happen every time Anet make a modification to the game that afect the market: the ones who see it first can make a lot of money out of it beacause the price of TP did not adjusted yet, and then it becomes like all the rest: unprofitable because everyone is doing it.
And you forgot to take into account the 15% fee of the TP for reselling ectos
You are aware that in jewelcrafting there is no other way and in all the other disciplines that happens with using T6 mats, which cannot be recovered at 1 to 1 ratio? Again, those recipes consume mats. The snowflake exploit produced mats. Whats difficult to grasp here?
So mithril and snowflake are not crafting materials. That’s what is dificult to grasp in your reasoning.
BTW it’s T5 not T6, and 3 ectos for jewels, since it is the rare recipes we are talking about, not exotics
(edited by Kethryes.5712)
So mithril and snowflake are not crafting materials. That’s what is dificult to grasp in your reasoning.
Mithril is used up in all recipes, and given back during salvaging in all recipes so we dont need to compare it.
The comparison goes like this
Mithril + (ecto+ snowflake) => less mithril, 0-3 ecto, and 0.8(ecto+snowflake)
Mithril + (ecto + t5/t6)x3 => less mithril, 0-3 ecto, and 0.8(ecto+t5/t6)
Mithril + silk + 15x t5/t6 => less mithril, 0-3 ecto
As you can see, mthril and less mthril is present in all equations and in all sides so we can ingore for the sake of comparison. As is evident by above, only the snowflake exploit is self propagating. All the other recipes require significant input, regardless of result of salvaging. Keep ignoring this though.
Rogacz, I think you are correct in saying that the snowflake recipe would always be preferable to the t5/t6 recipes.
I do not understand how this would lead to any sort of infinite loop however, mithril prices would simply adjust to their fair value, the highest they can be used to create.
(From a more technical & game theory point of view, the dominant strategy for every player shifts to the snowflake recipe. No one will choose to produce with T5/T6 mats.)
Hi everyone,
This thread has derailed from topic. Hence we are closing it.
Please refrain from this behaviour in the future.
Thanks for your understanding.