Guild Wars 2

Hy Anet, I know there are many posts/discussions like this, but here is what i think. I know you didn’t mean for legendary weapons to be easily obtainable, and that’s ok. I also know you didn’t mean for gold sellers and bots to be as widespread as they are now, but they are. So how i see the game now – there are 3 types factors that are currently destroying the games economy – TP manipulators that are raising and lowering prices of certain items to serve their need. There are bots farming loads of materials and deflating the prices of everything but the most rare items in the game, and those few items we can see are skyrocketing atm (legendary precursors, lodestones, even ectos going up now) and then there are gold sellers.

What is happening atm is gold sellers controlling probably every part of the market. They are making loads of gold on flipping legendary precursors and certain other items. What they can’t flip they farm with their bots. I’ve been reporting them since day one, and while i do see the number of spammers in major cities and people sending in game mail with offers of selling money drop, I still see the same b0ots i reported weeks ago still farming the same events/areas.
So, they keep the prices of legendary precursors absurdly high and still raising them. The highest order for dusk not 2 months ago was like 30-40 gold, while atm it’s 370g. That’s 11 times more in just 2 months, why aren’t you doing something about it? It is not like the price is stabilising, it’s going crazy atm. At the same time the mentioned gold sellers sell 530G for 150€ and if I buy gems for 150€ i can convert them to 68-70G. I never bought money from gold sellers (in gw1 or gw2 or any other game) because I think people like that are what is ruining the economy and the game in the end, but then again it’s not like we see you actively doing anything to prevent this.
Basically atm I can “farm” the extra 150€ in real life for 2-3 days (at most the 1 work week) and buy myself legendary precursor (dusk) along with icy runestones and 2 recipes for the gifts and still have some extra pocket money, or I could waste more time in this game farming money and achieving nothing. So far I have 100g on my character (and i preordered the game so i’ve been playing since 25th of august) and few attempts to get the precursor via mystic forge, not to mention how many dungeon runs and farming claw of jormag, shatterer and temples in orr. The only thing i see is that when i make 1 step forward in getting the precursor (i’ve all but given up on the idea that i will get it as a drop so i figured i would just buy it on tp) i see it’s price going up another 30-50% and that i’ve actually gone 2 steps back. This is very frustrating and the idea of saying “screw you Anet” and just buying the kitten thing from the goldsellers ( the same ones that will sell me the gold for 150€) via “forbidden methods”. I’m not the only one feeling this frustration and while i am strong believer that you should be supported and that doing any kind of business with goldsellers is bad, you’re doing everything you can to disapprove me by doing nothing to prevent this kinds of issues ingame.

I hope you will give this some serious thought as I’ve seen a number of my friends giving up on the idea that there is any hope of us getting the legendaryes the “legitimate” way and since economy is all but broken, that we could get any kind of money ingame with crafting, farming, or any other method in a “normal” amount of time. You said there would be no need for grinding in this game, and we believed you. Now we’re not saying you should just plain out give the legendaries to people, just that you should better control what is going on with games economy and stopp supporting gold sellers and bots and give sth to us “regular” people.

I summed your post up in nice numbered statements…

1. Legendary weapons are too expensive. Their price goes up faster then normal-playing-people can make the money.
2. Anet is not doing anything about it.
3. This drives players away.

These three points are in my opinion 100% correct.

I do not know, however, if this is intended by Anet. It may very well be that Anet wants this to happen.

Because Anet does not make money by keeping all players. No, Anet makes money by a) selling games to new players and b) selling gems to existing players.

So it may well be that their marketing departement decided that the prices for Legendaries must stay this high, because it will make a certain portion of the players buy gems to get gold.

Does their marketing departement see how many people buy gems, convert it to money and buy a Legendary?
Do they also see that the people that are leaving did not buy gems?

2.1. There are too many bots & gold sellers.
2.2. Gold sellers control the rare part of the market.
2.3. Anet is not preventing bots & gold sellers enough.
2.4. Anet drives people towards gold sellers because of the high prices.

Again, sadly, I agree 100% with you

I have reported alot of bots too. And they are still there, plain and simple.

For the price difference between Anet & goldsellers, I assume that Anet compared with other games where you can buy gold from a legal source and that they don’t find this ratio to be too high for GW2. I am fine with that, it is Anet’s choice to choice how the dollar-to-gold-price is set.

Anet has the power to set the gold price for gems. They claim that they don’t use that power and let the dollar-to-gold price be determined by the players.

Altough I have no evidence that they are lying about this, I find it very hard to believe. It is very hard for me to believe that a company that relies on legal gold selling for it’s long-term-revenue would not set that gold price themselves. VERY hard.

This discussion aside, Anet apparently approves of the current dollar-to-gold ratio. Else this ratio would change in a heart beat: this is their revenue!

3.1 I am tempted to buy from gold sellers.

This is where we STRONGLY disagree.

See, I am not tempted. I hate gold sellers. HATE. H.A.T.E. H.A.T.E. Hate is not even a strong enough word.

My knowledge of english is not good enough to express my feelings towards these people… They are parasites, leeching off gaming companies. They ruin normal player’s fun, by giving stuff to rich children that they didn’t deserve.

I agree that Anet is not doing enough to fight the bots & goldsellers.

Apparently, Anet think they have more important things to work on. I disagree, this is the single most important issue in the game. there is absolutely nothing as game-breaking as this. Nothing. Not the class imbalances. Not the lack of a bar for potions and items. Not the extremely bad TP interface. No, these people ruin the game more than anything else.

And I agree that gold selling creates problems that drives people away from the game.

But I strongly disagree with people that want to support these criminals.
It is not because the police is doing a bad job, that you should help criminals.

make it drop from dragon’s raid chest only. people can work to get it rather than “chance”. this also increase number of people at dragon’s event

@Tallis I can only say that while from my post it might seem I am tempted, but I will never do it, I will never buy gold from gold sellers (nor from Anet at this ratio) I hate them every bit as much as you do.
I just wanted to point out that it would be far easier to do it that way. You see farming for the last 2 and a half months (well not exactly farming, but “playing with a bit of farming, mostly enjoying myself”) has gotten me nowhere, while I could afford the mentioned 150€ or 530G via gold sellers in less than a week of my real life. They (Anet) are letting the game go there, they are letting them do this to the rest of us (mostly control the high end market and amassing the huge amounts of gold they sell to us, while bots ruin every other aspect of the market by lowering the prices drastically cause of the inflation of most of the items regular people can farm), by doing it (or Anet not doing what they should) they are in fact turning people from the game and ruining it. They (Anet) should really do something about it.

It’s not necessarily the botters that are in control of the precursors. Most likely it’s TP merchants that bought them when they were cheap.

Also, we currently have a complaint about them being mostly about luck or farming coin. But there’s really no way to please the crowd. If you make it so that you can farm it, you get squashed by the anti-farming crowd. If you make it so that you can get it guaranteed by doing anything, you get squashed by the rarity crowd. And if you can’t farm it through repeated spammage of events/puzzles/dungeons and getting lucky on a chest nor get it guaranteed by doing a set achievement, you’re left with nothing.

The reason the precursors are high as they are is a product of a multitude of things. For one, some people don’t want to just buy it, they want to get it on their own. Others might believe they can get it cheaper by challenging the Mystic Forge. Yet another crowd believes that the prices are too high and the demand is too little and thus they expect a drop in prices. However, that drop isn’t coming because there’s a fee on relisting in TP.

And let’s be honest, most of the people who would resell a precursor and haven’t done that yet probably did not buy them when they were dirt cheap. After all, it wouldn’t make much sense to wait that long to get a few more gold out of it when you’re already getting like 4x your initial investment. So we’re stuck with people who bought them recently and are currently waiting for the demand to go up so that their higher prices will be sold.

Either way, I think the legendaries are a messy thing.

Nub.2391:

make it drop from dragon’s raid chest only. people can work to get it rather than “chance”. this also increase number of people at dragon’s event

The number of people at lag and loot needs increasing? Nope.

More RNG? Nope.

Prices have stabilized. I know very few people who have everything else for their legendary other than a precursor.

They are rising because people are willing to pay more.

When they reach the level that people are unwilling to pay then the prices will decrease either via relisting or undercutting as the overpriced items don’t sell.

Inflation also plays a huge role. As it sets in, everything will be valued higher. BUT, you will still get the same amount of silver for completing dungeons and doing DEs, creating a bigger disparity of income and gold sinks

Right now the gold botters control prices on the tp. They make tons of money through bots, then monopolize markets on the TP and profit off big time in real monies

Flyfunner.2093:

Right now the gold botters control prices on the tp. They make tons of money through bots, then monopolize markets on the TP and profit off big time in real monies

Do you have a spare tinfoil hat?

He doesn’t need a spare tinfoil… TBH it’s obvious to any1 watching the TP prices for some time.

Mackodlak.7961:

He doesn’t need a spare tinfoil… TBH it’s obvious to any1 watching the TP prices for some time.

Maybe you should follow it constantly, rather than “for some time”?

Olba.5376:

It’s not necessarily the botters that are in control of the precursors. Most likely it’s TP merchants that bought them when they were cheap.

I doubt that this is the correct explanation, either. There are so few listed that you can essentially see when each one sells by paying attention to sites like gw2spidy, and from there I conclude that most if not all of the high-profile precursors currently on the TP were created/dropped within the past few weeks. Dusk and Dawn prices have recently spiked due, apparently, to having most of their sell listings bought up. The new listings, though at a higher price than before, aren’t really high enough for this to have been a reasonable attempt at buying and relisting for profit, considering how hefty the fee and tax get once you’re talking 400g items.

You can see when it was unlisted.

If the price changed, and the sell order volume dropped by one and went back up by one, then you have no way of knowing whether it sold and a new one was listed or if it was brought down and relisted.

The data only shows certain things, transactions are not among them.

Hippocampus.8470:

Olba.5376:

It’s not necessarily the botters that are in control of the precursors. Most likely it’s TP merchants that bought them when they were cheap.

I doubt that this is the correct explanation, either. There are so few listed that you can essentially see when each one sells by paying attention to sites like gw2spidy, and from there I conclude that most if not all of the high-profile precursors currently on the TP were created/dropped within the past few weeks. Dusk and Dawn prices have recently spiked due, apparently, to having most of their sell listings bought up. The new listings, though at a higher price than before, aren’t really high enough for this to have been a reasonable attempt at buying and relisting for profit, considering how hefty the fee and tax get once you’re talking 400g items.

There are 13 shields for sale last I looked lowest was 213g. I think dusk and dawns where bought up. I don’t think they are selling at the price the “idiot” placed them at. So your stuck with a 444 price there where some that where higher than that and they are gone now. Dusk got as low as 375g and has hovered for the most part aroudn 400g since they where bought up. Zap was as low as 240g there where 2 listing at 205,206, and another at 210 those have all disappeared. I filled the 205g listing since I got zap from the forge the other night. Its hard to say what is being controlled and what isn’t I think someone or people are “trying” to control dusk and dawn I just don’t feel its possible. I got Zap on first combine just said Im going to put 8 swords in the forge that is why its hard to control precursors because anyone can get one.

People controlling the dusk price have order’s at 300g-320g and sell it for 400g+ (it costs them 60g to sell it for 400g so every piece they buy for 300g-320g gives them minimum of 20g profit) so the only way a “random” person can sell it to you is for buy order that is higher than 330g and lower than 400g. The price is now shifting to 430g(ish) and it costs them around 65gold to sell it for that amount so they can rise the buy order to as much as 350g. The higher they have to buyout the swords on sale, the higher their low price for selling them goes. And it keeps going up every time a random person doesn’t sell it to their buy order but put’s it on sale for 10-20 gold lower than they sell it to.

You realise that investing 60g to earn 20g is horribly inefficient compared to other items which sell at a reasonable price?

I mean, that’s only 20% profit on a low turnover item.

If you invested the same amount of gold in more profitable items with a higher turnover you would make gold much more reliably.

For someone who had 18 of them in inventory from before (and i know people had more, there was 1 confirmed screenshot of a person holding like 15 of them – dusk and dawn combination – in inventory) it’s in their interest to sell them for as high as they can. So if you think in a way that he MAKES 340g for every1 sold and that he makes at lest 20g for every1 he resells, it’s not such a bad deal. Considering he sells 340g for 100€, even if he sells 1 of the ones he had from before every week it’s not a bad thing. It’s not as it’s his only way of making money.

That’s my opinion and the fact that market reacts in a way i thought it would just confirms it to me.

If you think it’s conspiracy theory, look at the price of small fang. I was transmuting them 2 months ago (tiny to small) for a small profit. The price of small fang at a time was 1s20c to 1s40c. Then it fell to 30c and orders were about 22c . The person who lowered the price (and it was done in a matter of 2-3 days) has been buying them for 2 months, and now the price has risen to 1s18c again in a matter of 3-4 days. Guess it’s a conspiracy theory that a person, or a small number of people are doing this to make money?

Yes, it’s a conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theories aren’t necessarily false, of course, but there’s little reason to believe this one.

Well live then in your world with teddy bears and rainbows.

Yep. Those are things that are in the real world; they’re pretty cool you know. I hope to see you around here sometime.

In the meantime, you need to find better evidence for your conspiracy theory, because nothing you’ve presented so far is particularly convincing.

The price does not bother me, it’s the fact that precursors are just random luck, nothing epic about luck.