Guild Wars 2

TL;DR

It’s Supply vs Demand. The ones who own the Legendaries can decide whatever price to sell it for. If they choose to sell for 200 or 2,000 gold, that’s all up to them. But the players who want one can either pay these prices, or take the time to make their own.

There’s nothing wrong with selling something you own for a price you want.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

TL;DR

It’s Supply vs Demand. The ones who own the Legendaries can decide whatever price to sell it for. If they choose to sell for 200 or 2,000 gold, that’s all up to them. But the players who want one can either pay these prices, or take the time to make their own.

There’s nothing wrong with selling something you own for a price you want.

This isn’t an issue of suppliers, it’s an issue of buyers. Of course anyone that has an unbound legendary would be willing to sell it for thousands of gold – but that’s no good if there’s nobody to sell it to. The problem is now people are actually putting up offers in the thousands, and now that there’s actually a market with an extreme profit margin, there’s no reason for players not to sell their legendaries and buy up all the components of a new one while making several hundred gold. The people buying these legendaries, a lot of them likely botters, gold farming companies, etc, can afford to take the hit because they control the supply of precursors and lodestones. They pay a little gold now to incentivize people selling legendaries, and then make a killing off even more artificially inflated precursor components which they control the supply of (because they’re the ones with all the money anyway).

Does that clear things up for you? I’d hope so, this isn’t complicated.

I seriously doubt there’ll be as many people as you think that will keep putting up offers for 1.5g+ per legendary

Besides Sunrise all other offers don’t even cover 2/3rds of the legendaries offered for.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

TL;DR

It’s Supply vs Demand. The ones who own the Legendaries can decide whatever price to sell it for. If they choose to sell for 200 or 2,000 gold, that’s all up to them. But the players who want one can either pay these prices, or take the time to make their own.

There’s nothing wrong with selling something you own for a price you want.

There currently is an issue with supply in this game.

precursors should not inflate faster than the median income if ANet doesn’t want people feeling their efforts at progression are futile.

Materials such as lodestones are frankly out of control, as well.

If you want to constrict the supply of t6 mats and lodestones to that degree, then you need to lower the requirement for recipes, otherwise they’ll continue to skyrocket and remain out of reach for the majority of the playerbase.

If you’re not going to reduce the required number of these mats, then their supply needs to be increased from drops, and this means fixing the DR system and making loot progressive as you fight more difficult enemies.

Again, the reason prices are able to creep so high is because players don’t have a reasonable option for obtaining it without the TP’s help…. the TP has a monopoly.

Darmikau.9413:

The problem is now people are actually putting up offers in the thousands, and now that there’s actually a market with an extreme profit margin, there’s no reason for players not to sell their legendaries and buy up all the components of a new one while making several hundred gold. The people buying these legendaries, a lot of them likely botters, gold farming companies, etc, can afford to take the hit because they control the supply of precursors and lodestones. They pay a little gold now to incentivize people selling legendaries, and then make a killing off even more artificially inflated precursor components which they control the supply of (because they’re the ones with all the money anyway).

Does that clear things up for you? I’d hope so, this isn’t complicated.

Just seems like a natural paradigm shift.

Once upon a time, people only had access to tier 5 rares; but a few lucky people got ecto and they could make exotics… then something terrible happened. People started selling exotics!!! – doom was upon the econom… no wait it wasn’t.

Then people started making precursors… and some people started -selling precursors_, the horror – and they destroyed the econ… no wait… the economy was fine.

Now people’ve started crafting and selling legends, and I’m pretty sure life will continue as normal for the vast majority of us

Ryuujin.8236:

and some people started -selling precursors_, the horror – and they destroyed the econ… no wait… the economy was fine.

This is subjective.

The “health” of an economy is a matter of perspective and goals of the humans impacted.

I guarantee you that pre-revolution, the nobility thought the french economy was fine too.

In regard to precursors, the vast majority of the playerbase doesn’t think it’s fine. It’s one thing to have a high but stable price, its another to see continued inflation vastly outpacing individual income. This is what is happening now. Precursors are an unreachable goal for the vast, vast majority because ANet has failed to tune the drop rates properly.

There’s always gonna be someone who doesn’t understand how markets work. It’s unfortunate that Anet has a great system in place, but due to a vast majority of people who are new to this sort of mechanic, these people will complain over everything. It’s not their fault since they’re so used to a small scale economy from GW1.

In order to buy something of value, someone else must not only have said item of value, but also is willing to sell it. In the case of Legendaries, the time it takes to gather the resources and craft one, will make selling it that much smaller. Add in the fact that some Legendary weapons have a higher demand, thus higher mat costs, you have yourself an interesting situation. How does the seller value his time in addition to the cost of the individual mats? Is there an emotional attachment to the item?

People can post offers as much as they want. But the power falls on the people who actually have the weapon. You can’t actually manipulate the value of an item that you don’t have. Twilight can sell for 200 gold, or 2,000, or 9,000. That would be the sole choice of the seller. They can manipulate the prices all they want, and a buyer is at their mercy. If there are only a couple of Legendaries on the market, it’s just simple Supply vs Demand. If the demand is great enough, and the supply is limited to a couple of weapons, someone rich will be willing to pay anything for it if they really want it. The rare case would be that a buyer makes an offer so great, that a seller may just fill that order.

Legendary weapons (and hopefully armor) will be their own niche market in the larger TP World. The costs to make them severely limit their availability to be crafted often, so even after years in this game, you won’t see thousands for sale. Legendary weapon sellers will forever have the power to dictate the prices they see fit.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

In order to buy something of value, someone else must not only have said item of value, but also is willing to sell it. In the case of Legendaries, the time it takes to gather the resources and craft one, will make selling it that much smaller. Add in the fact that some Legendary weapons have a higher demand, thus higher mat costs, you have yourself an interesting situation. How does the seller value his time in addition to the cost of the individual mats? Is there an emotional attachment to the item?

I think you completely skipped over the part where I explicitly outlined the value in this situation. The only non-monetary component of legendaries are the karma, badges, world completion, and skill points. This can be done in two weeks or less, and doing so, making the legendary, and selling it will result in profits upwards of 500g at the current buyer level. That’s more money than 98% of the population can make in two weeks, and is way more than is even tangibly possible farming Fractals or Cursed Shore. Unless a player has absolutely 0 desire to make money, or doesn’t think waiting two weeks for 500g is a good investment, there’s absolutely no reason for this not to be taken advantage of. Lodestones and Dawn, which were previously stable, have started to go up in price again substantially. Why? Because if you have a bunch of the non-money goods lying around that you’ve accrued from playing what incentive do you have to not pay an extra 50g on a precursor, in order to make a 500g profit?

How a seller values their time is a very easy estimate when the return is nearly three times more than the maximum possible money that could be gained doing hardcore farming in the same time period.

plasmacutter.2709:

In regard to precursors, the vast majority of the playerbase doesn’t think it’s fine. It’s one thing to have a high but stable price, its another to see continued inflation vastly outpacing individual income. This is what is happening now. Precursors are an unreachable goal for the vast, vast majority because ANet has failed to tune the drop rates properly.

Again, it’s not the inflation. Precursors, lodestones, etc: all the hard drops for legendaries and elite skins will continue to rise in price faster than inflation. They are a fast moving goal post because the richest players have no problem paying that much for them. The root of the issue is the Trading Post which is a tool for creating vast wealth inequalities similar to those in the real world. While that is not a problem per se, people playing fantasy MMOs do expect legendary weapons to be awarded for more than playing the TP better than 99% of the population. At the moment the best way to get a legendary is to park your toon in the TP at lvl 2 and alt-tab to gw2spidy.

As I’ve pointed out before, GW2 design unwisely chose to defy both the soulbind on acquire legendary components of casual MMOs that don’t allow for legendary purchasing on the open market; and the harsh penalties on death that the hardcore MMOs with detailed economy have. As a result, one doesn’t need to play GW2 to get a legendary and in fact one is wasting time when not playing the TP.

For example, a person with legendary (yep, the orange ones) in WoW is a person who raided a lot and his entire guild decided he is worthy of the single legendary that can reasonably be assembled. A person with the legendary “equivalent” in EVE, the supercapital ship, certainly has the skill and knowledge to play the game well enough to protect his ship, and trust me there isn’t anything that gets pilots scrambling as the yell “supercapital tackled at X”. Whereas owning legendary in GW2 means…what? That the owner applied math and tracking software to win the TP mostly at the expense of the other players? Not very legendary, especially in the setting of GW2, supposedly a game of heroes like the Destiny’s Edge and not Monopoly gentlemen.

Zid.4196:

plasmacutter.2709:

In regard to precursors, the vast majority of the playerbase doesn’t think it’s fine. It’s one thing to have a high but stable price, its another to see continued inflation vastly outpacing individual income. This is what is happening now. Precursors are an unreachable goal for the vast, vast majority because ANet has failed to tune the drop rates properly.

Again, it’s not the inflation. Precursors, lodestones, etc: all the hard drops for legendaries and elite skins will continue to rise in price faster than inflation. They are a fast moving goal post because the richest players have no problem paying that much for them. The root of the issue is the Trading Post which is a tool for creating vast wealth inequalities similar to those in the real world. While that is not a problem per se, people playing fantasy MMOs do expect legendary weapons to be awarded for more than playing the TP better than 99% of the population. At the moment the best way to get a legendary is to park your toon in the TP at lvl 2 and alt-tab to gw2spidy.

As I’ve pointed out before, GW2 design unwisely chose to defy both the soulbind on acquire legendary components of casual MMOs that don’t allow for legendary purchasing on the open market; and the harsh penalties on death that the hardcore MMOs with detailed economy have. As a result, one doesn’t need to play GW2 to get a legendary and in fact one is wasting time when not playing the TP.

For example, a person with legendary (yep, the orange ones) in WoW is a person who raided a lot and his entire guild decided he is worthy of the single legendary that can reasonably be assembled. A person with the legendary “equivalent” in EVE, the supercapital ship, certainly has the skill and knowledge to play the game well enough to protect his ship, and trust me there isn’t anything that gets pilots scrambling as the yell “supercapital tackled at X”. Whereas owning legendary in GW2 means…what? That the owner applied math and tracking software to win the TP mostly at the expense of the other players? Not very legendary, especially in the setting of GW2, supposedly a game of heroes like the Destiny’s Edge and not Monopoly gentlemen.

The trading post is not the problem.

It’s a function of supply vs demand.

Other MMO’s do an excellent job of tweaking the drop rates of expensive items such as end-game weapons to maintain a stable price.

ANet needs to get their act together in this regard. If the supply remains as low as it is (i’m seeing a rolling average of 10 in any given month), yes, it will continue to soar inexorably out of reach.

They tried a short-term fix with karka chests, but it was a rather crude shock to the supply and they really just need to start slowly dialing it up until the price and stability are where they want it. (i’d suggest dialing it up disporoportionately higher for chests and champions to reward higher efforts)

The other option, of course, to make legendaries reflect skill, is to put precursors at the end of event chains, explorables, etc and soulbind precursors on pickup. This would allow dramatic increases in drop rates while assuring random lvl 3 noobs couldn’t buy one off the TP.

Anet, from the beginning and up until now, sees Legendaries as a long term investment. The rate at which people are getting the weapons are insane. Part of this was that Anet had no idea how dedicated some of us are with getting our awesome skinned items. The fact that people have Legendaries, and the fact that there are those with vast banks of wealth, can be attributed to either 1) exploits or 2) hardcore playing or 3) smart TP trading.

The people who current have Legendaries or can afford to buy them are a very small portion of the overall population.

Darmikau.9413:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

In order to buy something of value, someone else must not only have said item of value, but also is willing to sell it. In the case of Legendaries, the time it takes to gather the resources and craft one, will make selling it that much smaller. Add in the fact that some Legendary weapons have a higher demand, thus higher mat costs, you have yourself an interesting situation. How does the seller value his time in addition to the cost of the individual mats? Is there an emotional attachment to the item?

I think you completely skipped over the part where I explicitly outlined the value in this situation. The only non-monetary component of legendaries are the karma, badges, world completion, and skill points. This can be done in two weeks or less, and doing so, making the legendary, and selling it will result in profits upwards of 500g at the current buyer level. That’s more money than 98% of the population can make in two weeks, and is way more than is even tangibly possible farming Fractals or Cursed Shore. Unless a player has absolutely 0 desire to make money, or doesn’t think waiting two weeks for 500g is a good investment, there’s absolutely no reason for this not to be taken advantage of. Lodestones and Dawn, which were previously stable, have started to go up in price again substantially. Why? Because if you have a bunch of the non-money goods lying around that you’ve accrued from playing what incentive do you have to not pay an extra 50g on a precursor, in order to make a 500g profit?

How a seller values their time is a very easy estimate when the return is nearly three times more than the maximum possible money that could be gained doing hardcore farming in the same time period.

It’s true that a hardcore player can farm all the Karma, Badges, and SP needed to for the Bloodstone. Part of the way Anet slows this down is the fact that you need to play the RNG of the Forge. You need to buy Mystic Coins and Ectos by the boatloads, then still have enough SP to buy crystals or stones to throw into the Clover formula.

After all is said and done, the only ones who can actually afford to buy all the mats, plus the precursor, and have all the Karma, Badges, and SP are a few. And then you have the few people who can afford to actually pay for it. We’re talking about a very small population of ultra wealthy players. Flipping Legendaries isn’t something you can do on a regular basis, since the money will only change hands among those ultra wealthy players The effects on the economy will be short lived, since high end drops will continue to supplied, and the demand to purchase Legendaries at profitable prices will slowly dissapear.

I still say that the average player who is aiming to make a Legendary won’t just dump it into the TP. Currently, I’m guestimating that a majority of the Legendaries that were crafted are now Soulbound.

plasmacutter.2709:

Other MMO’s do an excellent job of tweaking the drop rates of expensive items such as end-game weapons to maintain a stable price.

Legendary weapons are not end game weapons in the conventional sense. The intention was always that only a small minority of dedicated players would have them and they’d be a symbol – the guy with the glowing sword forged with hellfire over an obsidian void and cooled in celestial waters leading the army into battle with it’s radiance.

Unfortunately, 90% of the player base want to be that guy and that is leading to a lot of issues both social and economic… not rightly sure how you rectify that one except maybe stop teaching kids that they’re all the greatest most unique snowflake in the world destined for greatness and that it’s ok to be average :p

I must be one of those 10% who just want to get that “glowing sword forged with hellfire over an obsidian void and cooled in celestial waters” and…. And then just stand somewhere silently and stare at/into it O_O
And hide! Hide it every time someone passes by! Because you know… What if they steal… my… precious… >.<

Arenanet put up those legendaries for players who have too much money to buy gems to gold.

All I’m saying is Darmikau has a good point about price manipulation. To watch the TP and see that a minute ago there were 9 Dawns posted at 330g per sword and then the next minute see them all off the market and reintroduced at an overly inflated cost is a little disheartening.

I’m legitimately 99% done with crafting my legendary. The last component I need is the precursor. About a week and a half ago, there were ~10 legends on the TP for an upwards amount of 300+g. Over the passed couple of weeks the supply went down to just a few and went upwards to 400g+. Now, magically, there are 10+ The Legends all priced at over 400g. Call me crazy or a conspirator, but I think something is up.

I understand there is a precursor scavenger hunt on it’s way. But in the mean time is ANET really gonna just sit back and watch other players be exploited for gold that’s ultimately gonna be sold online for an upwards of 50+$ to players who will need that much more gold to buy precursors and other legendary crafting parts. This is just kitten.

Honestly, I would have preferred for the Nov. event to not happen. All it did was, as someone had already stated in this thread, provide a shock to the TP system. Now things are back to where they were and much, much worse.

So, I have one solution/suggestion/plea: increase the drop rate of precursors. ASAP, like Monday maintenance ASAP. I don’t feel like waiting until February’s patch to craft something that’s been in the works since October. Do what ever you have to do. Make them soulbound, account bound, kitten bound. IDC. I would just like a reasonably way to obtain the last piece to this legendary puzzle.

And honestly – as sad as it is.. the TP is the only viable way to obtain most of the components needed to craft the legendary weapon. And the TP’s cheating :\

Selling gems to players that need that amount of gold to buy a Legendary Weapon is very good business…I doubt that Legendary Weapons trade via TP will be banned.

Anyway, in my opinion, Legendary Weapons (BoA) should be acquired using a Percursor got from a long and hard quest line (BoA) and using tokens got from game achievements (like the 100% world exploration, as an example) and not from game materials traded via TP.

I can accept the BoA status of Legendary Weapons to be account wide. After all, it was the person behind the account that got it..:)

RedBaron.6058:

Anyway, in my opinion, Legendary Weapons (BoA) should be acquired using a Percursor got from a long and hard quest line (BoA) and using tokens got from game achievements (like the 100% world exploration, as an example) and not from game materials traded via TP.

I can accept the BoA status of Legendary Weapons to be account wide. After all, it was the person behind the account that got it..:)

I am totally okey with the current Legendary weapons, with the way they are obtained, etc.

I think you simply dont understand they are just really expensive awesome looking crafted weapons, they are not some ultimate endgame, story weapons you get for completing the game.. they are simply crafted weapons.

And everything you craft should be also sellable like in every other mmorpgs.

maybe they could change Legendaries so they dont require gold and materials from TP but they should require 10 milion karma, 10 000 wvw badges and 10 000 dungeon tokens, 2000 skil points, 2000 hours long story quest, etc. and after they do this you would complain that you want them for gold … etc. Am I right? + new complains from rich players, etc Lose / Lose

There wont be any change to Legendary weapons, maybe some better way of obtaining precursor, some tweaks to drop rates of lodestones, etc. But nothing else There is already good and working system and it wont get changed and it shouldnt be changed.

Legendary weapons are ment to be crafted by minority of players, either hardcore ones which plays a lot, rich players or lucky ones. They are not weapons everyone will have and I dont see any reason why should they focus on such thing that only small portion of players will have. They should focus on new content, new skins of weapons etc instead.