Guild Wars 2

A few items currently make little economic sense:

Rare items
Green items are trash you can buy for 1-2 silver. Rare items costs between 15-40s. A rare item has an advantage of three levels over a green, i.e. 8%. If you are not level 80, then you will replace your gear often enough that the increased costs are not worth it. Especially when crafting, rare items are a colossal waste. It does not even make sense when you consider the crafting XP gained. The increase XP gain does not reflect the increase resource requirements 1:1, it is less efficient.

Mystic Forge:
There were a few things one could do to break even by tossing greenies in the forge and hope for gold. The math just worked out. Currently though, the money you yield is too low. At the other end of the spectrum, tossing exotics into the forge in hope of special exotics, the money you need to have up front and the utter lack of working knowledge into this process prohibit the forge from driving down costs of exotics. Instead, we see run away costs of ultra-rare exotics and prices of regular exotics being driven up as a result.

Mystic Coins:
Here we have an item which cannot be mass produced in the same way any other item can be mass produced. The game hard-caps the amount of those coins. But oddly enough, when it comes to “Mystic Greatswords” and similar weapons, the prices do not seem to reflect the effort of having 50 skillpoints and 50 coins all that well. Considering what Mystic Coins represent, they are dirt cheap.

It seems Mystical Coins need more practical recipes appealing to a crowd beyond exotic-prestige players. From 1-69, you earn one of these coins per day, while making 1-2 levels per day. If each mystic coin amounted to one rare item of choice, players would get a huge perceived reward. On weekends, players probably still burn faster through their levels than they can restock 13 item slots with rare gear generated from mystic coins. This would stop the current status quo of newbie players flooding the market, while level 80 experienced player say “so long kittens, thank you for the cheap Mystic”. It takes me one minute in Orr to earn the money necessary to buy a coin which represents one player’s daily achievement. That is wrong. I stopped doing dailies, instead I just farm a bit and then buy a few coins.

Certainly, the effect on rares of level 1-69 would be devastating in terms of price. But mechanically speaking, from a gameplay perspective, the high price already makes them obsolete. Above 70 we have ecto salvage, which is a market force onto itself. This is why I said 1-69. The mystic forge upconversion (If coins = weapons, then coins = ectos) will take it from there to drive the price up to at least 1/4 ecto, alternative recipes for all players will get rid of this conversion alltogether..

Ancient Bones:
Compared to other T6 trophies, the ancient bones are dirt cheap. Kitten, they are even dirt cheap, when compared to T3-T5 bones. They drop too often.

3 words for you.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

If you don’t think something is worth what the market values it at, then sell if it’s priced too high, and buy if it’s priced too low.

Your personal utility doesn’t have to match up with the global market.

If mystic Coins constitute a reward so precious ArenaNet decided to grant only one per player per day (1.6 if you count monthlys), then there is absolutely no demand for them. Why? Is this the desired outcome that we have a token currency linked to an achievement and with the value of a random green drop?

If supply of Butter and Wood spiraled so much out of control that a gimmick recipe was introduced, then why watch while the same thing is happening to a material required to craft exotics.

If rare items have manufacturing costs greatly outweighing their usability and lifetime, then why be happy about it? Not sure if you noticed, but the price of rares is not the sum of their components, it is the average median of green items you need to toss into the forge to create them. That is not good, because on one hand it means that leveling your crafting skill goes largely unrewarded and it means the overabundance of green drops is growing ridiculously large. Why level crafting for a lot of silver and time, when you just toss 12 greenies in the forge and there you have your rare? It is even cheaper than buying the materials for the rare and yields the chance of a unique item for your personal collection. Something regular crafting can never do.

Ancient Bones:
Compared to other T6 trophies, the ancient bones are dirt cheap. Kitten, they are even dirt cheap, when compared to T3-T5 bones. They drop too often.

It’s not that they drop too often. i see them drop less often than many other types of bones. What you’re seeing is oversupply as a result of the mass wave of 80’s farming non-stop to get their exotic karma sets (or to make coin/craft).

I’m sure if you do the actual math, you’ll see that ancient bone is in line with pretty much other bones on drop rate. the amount of mobs we kill in one or two Orr event is probably about how many a T1-T2 player kills in an entire map of leveling.

You complain about all the equipment drops that is virtually worthless, then you complain about the high prices of exotics? This logic seems inconsistent to me.

I wish we could short-sell the market.

Foxodi.4809:

I wish we could short-sell the market.

There’s nothing really stopping you, is there? It’s just that you’d have to find a person or guild willing to act as a lender.

For a few of these things the reason because stuff it under valued is because a few people are still at lower levels and don’t bother with things like mystic coins and just sell it.