Guild Wars 2

This might sound like Libertarian claptrap, but any price a fair, free market agrees upon is the correct price.

You were right the first time, not so much the second.

Ohoni.6057:

This might sound like Libertarian claptrap, but any price a fair, free market agrees upon is the correct price.

You were right the first time, not so much the second.

So the 1681 sell listing on 9/21 was set by Anet as well as the 1409 listing we have now for Dusk? After all, the players are but just pawns and are controlled by Anet in regards to the prices that they set for items such as Dusk.

Just like how the supply changes that occurred were not caused by players but Anet directly manipulating it. They control the drop rates and players have no say in whether their actions or inactions affect their ability to get precursors and whether they have a choice to post it on the TP or not. I guess Anet must continually be changing the drop rates of precursors to match the prices and supply.

Ohoni.6057:

This might sound like Libertarian claptrap, but any price a fair, free market agrees upon is the correct price.

You were right the first time, not so much the second.

If there is a seller willing to pay a price a buyer wants, then there isn’t a problem with pricing. In fact, there isn’t even a problem with pricing if there AREN’T any buyers that want the goods at the prices the seller wants. That’s an indicator to sellers. Same is true to sellers when they price to low. The difference between fast and slow sitting sellers is what makes all this market stuff ‘work’. These factors creates the fair, free market. I’m not sure what background you have, but economics sure isn’kitten

So the 1681 sell listing on 9/21 was set by Anet as well as the 1409 listing we have now for Dusk? After all, the players are but just pawns and are controlled by Anet in regards to the prices that they set for items such as Dusk.

It’s like you aren’t even paying attention.

If there is a seller willing to pay a price a buyer wants, then there isn’t a problem with pricing.

No, again that’s the bare minimum to count as an economy, not the ideal. That only benefits the seller, not the buyer who may prefer to pay less. If there are some buyers who would be willing to pay X for an item, but many more potential buyers who want the same item, but are only willing or able to pay 1/2X for it, then there’s really nothing they can do about it. They aren’t getting the item they want for the price they want, the system is not working in a way that makes them satisfied customers.

Now, the important factor here is that ANet can control the price of the items by adjusting supply or demand. They could either increase supply until all the people willing to pay between 1/2X and X are exhausted and all that’s left are the customers willing to pay 1/2X, or they can decrease demand for the item until nobody is willing to pay X for it anymore, and then they’ll be selling them for 1/2X and the customers that wanted to pay that price are now happy.

The ideal economy is not the one in which [some people] are willing to pay [the absolute highest price anyone will pay for an item], the ideal economy is one in which as many players as possible get what they want out of it, and the minimum number of players don’t receive what they want.

Ohoni.6057:

You do understand that the core supply of precursors is random world loot drops, not MF rolls, right?

I have a lot of difficulty understanding things that aren’t true.

The volume of greatsword precursors alone is in the ballpark of 10x that of the lowest demand precursors, indicating a huge amount of dedicated, targeted forging. Add that on top of random precursors from throwing 4 assorted rares or assorted exotics into the forge.

It’s certainly possible that if you sum over every single precursor that more come from drops than from the forge (I doubt it, but I don’t have a good way to disambiguate drops from random throws in the forge), but if you look at the high demand precursors (Dusk, Dawn, Spark, Legend, Zap) the market for those are utterly, utterly dominated by people fishing for them in the forge.

Ohoni.6057:

You have any data on that? I’m just countering baseless assumption with baseless assumption, like that earlier one that T5-6 mats somehow make up the bulk of most players’ incomes.

‘Most players’ haven’t hit level 80 on a single character so clearly it’s not the bulk of most incomes.

Late game though? There are a handful of markets that represent the bulk of trading (ectos, T6 fine, T5 fine, silk, and related items); player incomes can’t be more than ~15% raw gold due to accounting identities, and besides silk all the big markets are tied intimately to the precursor market.

Ecto is the single biggest market in the game, and I suspect that all of the T6 fine mats combined are even bigger; T5 fine is enormous, almost certainly bigger that silk.

This is just adding up all the pieces, it’s not that complicated. I’d be really interested in hearing anecdotes from anyone whose end game production income isn’t dominated by some combination of the above, and where it’s coming from instead.

phys.7689:

So rage supply is probably close to the amount from world drops.

Plus 4 assorted rare forges, plus 4 assorted exotic forges, both of which are profitable and done on a large scale (see the difference in price between exotic spearguns and exotic armor with no rune/insignia. That’s entirely due to forging). It honestly wouldn’t shock me if there were more Rages coming from the forge than drops.

hybrid.5027:

The “90g precursors” have rares that sell for the price of the ectoplasm.

Those rares also track the break even price on throwing 4 random rares into the forge pretty closely.

I have no idea what direction causality runs on that one, but it’s pretty consistent – the price of an ‘average’ precursor correlates very, very well with the price of a glob of ectoplasm.

Late game though? There are a handful of markets that represent the bulk of trading (ectos, T6 fine, T5 fine, silk, and related items); player incomes can’t be more than ~15% raw gold due to accounting identities, and besides silk all the big markets are tied intimately to the precursor market.

My assumption, which admittedly is no more funded in evidence than your own, is that the bulk of the average level 80’s income doesn’t even come from the TP at all, or at least not in any concentrated fashion. What gold they do pull from the TP more likely comes from rare and exotic drops than from T6 mats. The bulk of their gold would come from direct cash loot (ie dailies, dungeons finales, drops, events, etc.), and from vendoring stuff that drops. I’m not saying that’s anywhere near the best method of making money, but I’d wager it’s the most common method in practice.

All the stuff you talk about are the methods of people “working the economy,” a game that I doubt most players even consider. It would be kind of interesting if we could get a statistic like what the average amount each player withdraws from the TP in a given day though. I have to say, I’ve almost never sold any T6 mats, and very few T5, as I’ve never had that many more than I’ve needed for various crafts.

Ohoni.6057:

I have to say, I’ve almost never sold any T6 mats, and very few T5, as I’ve never had that many more than I’ve needed for various crafts.

Those T5 and T6 materials are still income even if you do not liquidate them on the trading post.

Those T5 and T6 materials are still income even if you do not liquidate them on the trading post.

In a sense, but it was being discussed in the sense of gold income. If we’re only considering it’s base value pre-liquidation then it really doesn’t matter what their price on the TP is. The discussion was that if the price dropped on the TP then it would “ruin” “most” level 80 players’ incomes, which would only be true if “most” level 80s were liquidating their mats. For those players that were accumulating mats and not putting them on the TP, they would carry the same value either way.

Ohoni.6057:

Those T5 and T6 materials are still income even if you do not liquidate them on the trading post.

In a sense, but it was being discussed in the sense of gold income. If we’re only considering it’s base value pre-liquidation then it really doesn’t matter what their price on the TP is. The discussion was that if the price dropped on the TP then it would “ruin” “most” level 80 players’ incomes, which would only be true if “most” level 80s were liquidating their mats. For those players that were accumulating mats and not putting them on the TP, they would carry the same value either way.

Just think of t5-6 mats and rare/exotic weapons as precursor tokens. Once you accumulated enough, you will be able to forgethem into a precursor.
In that way, precursor prices have been pretty stable, they even got a kitteneaper since launch, as the forge rate was buffed a bit and t5/6 as well as rare/exotics drop more commonly now, after the introduction of champ bags, world boss daily chests and account mf.

Ohoni.6057:

So the 1681 sell listing on 9/21 was set by Anet as well as the 1409 listing we have now for Dusk? After all, the players are but just pawns and are controlled by Anet in regards to the prices that they set for items such as Dusk.

It’s like you aren’t even paying attention.

No. Not at all. Do you disagree with my post? I’d find it odd if you did since you’d be disagreeing with everything that you’ve stated so far. You have stated numerous times that all demand and supply in this game is controlled by Anet along with the prices as a result with little to none of that due to players. There are a lot of items that have wide fluctuations in price and supply. So if that’s not caused by players then it must be caused by Anet.

Wanze.8410:

Ohoni.6057:

Those T5 and T6 materials are still income even if you do not liquidate them on the trading post.

In a sense, but it was being discussed in the sense of gold income. If we’re only considering it’s base value pre-liquidation then it really doesn’t matter what their price on the TP is. The discussion was that if the price dropped on the TP then it would “ruin” “most” level 80 players’ incomes, which would only be true if “most” level 80s were liquidating their mats. For those players that were accumulating mats and not putting them on the TP, they would carry the same value either way.

Just think of t5-6 mats and rare/exotic weapons as precursor tokens. Once you accumulated enough, you will be able to forgethem into a precursor.
In that way, precursor prices have been pretty stable, they even got a kitteneaper since launch, as the forge rate was buffed a bit and t5/6 as well as rare/exotics drop more commonly now, after the introduction of champ bags, world boss daily chests and account mf.

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.
Their value in general is 2-4 times the value whilw precursors are 4-6 times the value.
Rares have are about 2-2.5 the value.
Exotics have been all over but let’s say 2-1 times the value depending on the exotic

Also there is no feasible method of storage for rares/exotics long term other than massive gem inventory expenditures.

Yeah items are better for long term investments, but are not at the same rate as precursors

Not to say its impossible to do it, but it amounts to playing the market with a long term investmrnt focus.

phys.7689:

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.
Their value in general is 2-4 times the value whilw precursors are 4-6 times the value.
Rares have are about 2-2.5 the value.
Exotics have been all over but let’s say 2-1 times the value depending on the exotic

Also there is no feasible method of storage for rares/exotics long term other than massive gem inventory expenditures.

Yeah items are better for long term investments, but are not at the same rate as precursors

Not to say its impossible to do it, but it amounts to playing the market with a long term investmrnt focus.

They don’t have to increase in value as long as the drop rate from the forge remains the same.

If you need 127 exotic forges to get a precursor (the average, so your mileage may vary), you will need to acquire 382 exotic weapons (less if you want to use up any Mystic Forge Stones). Crafting 382 exotic weapons will require the use of 1,910 T6 fine materials, thus each T6 fine you acquire is ALWAYS worth 1/1910 of a precursor.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.
Their value in general is 2-4 times the value whilw precursors are 4-6 times the value.
Rares have are about 2-2.5 the value.
Exotics have been all over but let’s say 2-1 times the value depending on the exotic

Also there is no feasible method of storage for rares/exotics long term other than massive gem inventory expenditures.

Yeah items are better for long term investments, but are not at the same rate as precursors

Not to say its impossible to do it, but it amounts to playing the market with a long term investmrnt focus.

They don’t have to increase in value as long as the drop rate from the forge remains the same.

If you need 127 exotic forges to get a precursor (the average, so your mileage may vary), you will need to acquire 382 exotic weapons (less if you want to use up any Mystic Forge Stones). Crafting 382 exotic weapons will require the use of 1,910 T6 fine materials, thus each T6 fine you acquire is ALWAYS worth 1/1910 of a precursor.

You can’t make any absolute number or values for what percent of progress based on the mystic forge. The variation is too large. The amount of trials you would have to do to normalize the results with such a low rate is extremely large, and defiantly nothing more than a gamble for most players.

It’s like saying every lottery ticket you are 1/100000 closer to winning

Not to mention you cannot store enough rares/exotics without a large investment in inventory expansion

There is no amount of rares or exotics that guarantees a precursor

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

For them, but not necessarily for the game in general. Most of the players that throw in and fail more often or not do not keep track nor continue. All of those attempts as well as ones on the other side of the bell would need to be taken into account for a reasonable estimate…….ie…..those keeping track of mass forges are likely to be on the luckier side of the bell

Essence Snow.3194:

For them, but not necessarily for the game in general. Most of the players that throw in and fail more often or not do not keep track nor continue. All of those attempts as well as ones on the other side of the bell would need to be taken into account for a reasonable estimate…….ie…..those keeping track of mass forges are likely to be on the luckier side of the bell

If you have the “lucky” handful do 1,000,000 forges that track their results and 1,000,000 forges among those that don’t, do you really expect to see two different results? One group recording their results is no different than another group whether they record them or not.

It all comes down to sample size.

No one has done that. What we have is players who have relative consistent results continue forging and those that do not stop.

I’m not saying what we have is completely wrong….just not enough of the picture to make definitive assertions about.

Essence Snow.3194:

No one has done that. What we have is players who have relative consistent results continue forging and those that do not stop.

I’m not saying what we have is completely wrong….just not enough of the picture to make definitive assertions about.

If I log all of my salvage attempts (which I do), I don’t have to also log every other players’ salvage attempts in order to figure out what the salvage rates are. I simply need to log enough attempts of my own and I can determine the rates. When I compare my detailed results with the results other players have posted and see that they are similar, I can increase my confidence level that my data set is large enough to be accurate.

Likewise, if I log my MF attempts (which I don’t do), I don’t need to log every other players’ MF attempts in order to figure out what the MF rates are.

As there are several players who have logged their data and their data all corroborates each other, we know what the average number of attempts is to get a precursor from the forge.

The people who never logged anything and the people who quit attempting don’t matter when assembling data. They have the same rate as everyone else.

Essence Snow.3194:

I’m not saying what we have is completely wrong….just not enough of the picture to make definitive assertions about.

The sample size is in the hundreds of precursors at this point. How many standard deviations are you comfortable with?

As far as we know, everyone has an equal chance as getting a precursor from the forge. There’s no DR and no accounts that are supposedly “luckier” that others. So long as people record all of their results, excluding those that choose not to record their results is not important. As there’s no difference between the two groups of players, it really just comes down to whether there’s a large enough sample size to base your results on.

As far as whether we have reached a sufficient sample size, I do not know. I don’t follow people’s results. All i know is you can’t just discount one group’s results because they don’t include the others. That was the point I was trying to make after reading your post.

How many accounts do we have of long cold streaks? That’s kinda what I am getting at. As soon a players hit those..most of the time they stop forging, stop collecting data, and/or submitting said data. So the data that does get collected and submitted tends to be a bit luckier.

I’m not discounting what we have…just noting that it’s more or less likely to be a bit towards the luckier side of the bell curve than in the middle.

Essence Snow.3194:

How many accounts do we have of long cold streaks? That’s kinda what I am getting at. As soon a players hit those..most of the time they stop forging, stop collecting data, and/or submitting said data. So the data that does get collected and submitted tends to be a bit luckier.

I’m not discounting what we have…just noting that it’s more or less likely to be a bit towards the luckier side of the bell curve than in the middle.

For the things I track, I track every single instance. Anyone with a background in data (such as the people who would be inclined to track such things) would do the same.

Even if I wasn’t though, it shouldn’t change the ultimate outcome of my data in the long run with enough logging as bags that aren’t logged (lucky or not) never hit my data. The only way my data would be corrupted would be if I was picking and choosing which attempts to log and only logged the successes or if I only logged in bursts around a successful attempt.

Also, attempts that never happen (such as when players stop forging) don’t count for anything because they didn’t happen.

I do see your point though, that you are concerned that the rate is overstated due to people not keeping accurate logs. That’s why I do my own logging for anything I do regularly, so that I can corroborate or challenge data I see posted.

Just think of t5-6 mats and rare/exotic weapons as precursor tokens. Once you accumulated enough, you will be able to forgethem into a precursor.

Even by that metric, Precursors are way too expensive.

No. Not at all. Do you disagree with my post? I’d find it odd if you did since you’d be disagreeing with everything that you’ve stated so far. You have stated numerous times that all demand and supply in this game is controlled by Anet along with the prices as a result with little to none of that due to players. There are a lot of items that have wide fluctuations in price and supply. So if that’s not caused by players then it must be caused by Anet.

Players determine the fluctuation, ANet determines the actual value that the player price fluctuates around. The fluctuation is irrelevant, all it takes is a little time to buy/sell for any price within that fluctuation range, what you can’t do is buy/sell for a price that’s outside that fluctuation range, so if the entire range is unacceptable to you then you’re kitten out of luck.

If ANet chose to, they could accomplish the exact same market without player interaction, merely by applying a random variable to the equation. So for example, Dusk has had a weekly high sell of 1594g, and a weekly low buy of 1175g, they could achieve the same general market by just vendoring it at 1384g + [a random number between -400 and 400]. If they wanted to be super sneaky about it then they could skew the variable based on known price spikers like higher activity days.

I’m not implying that they DO fake the market, just that they could. The player’s interaction in the market is largely irrelevant when compared to their own interaction with it, the only times the prices REALLY change is when ANet makes a macro change to the game to cause such a change, otherwise it’s just fiddling around the edges.

So if all players from this point on unanimously decided to sell Dusk for 5k, that would be Anet controlling them to do that?

phys.7689:

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.

Materials are increasing faster; the margins claimed by precursor forgers have fallen substantially over time.

Essence Snow.3194:

How many accounts do we have of long cold streaks? That’s kinda what I am getting at. As soon a players hit those..most of the time they stop forging, stop collecting data, and/or submitting said data. So the data that does get collected and submitted tends to be a bit luckier.

This is a real problem – deciding to quit gathering data when you hit a cold streak will bias estimation of the real odds from simply taking the mean. A lot of the odds I see posted in this forum are over-optimistic, presumably because of this.

It’s not an insurmountable problem. We know the underlying distribution and can estimate a real mean by accounting for the under-dispersion in the data, for one. Even with that, it gets increasingly difficult to narrow down the real range further without making assumptions about the drop table structure – to reduce the credible interval by a factor of two you need roughly 4x more data.

I was pretty confident that the drop rate was 1:160 before the update, but that was due to some more intricate model selection that presupposed integer table parameters and modeled the drop rate of every single output, not just precursors; post update I’m still at a loss and need a few thousand more data points to start to feel conclusive.

Ayrilana.1396:

As far as whether we have reached a sufficient sample size, I do not know.

The question, of course, is sufficient sample size for what?

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

Ensign.2189:

phys.7689:

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.

Materials are increasing faster; the margins claimed by precursor forgers have fallen substantially over time.

Essence Snow.3194:

How many accounts do we have of long cold streaks? That’s kinda what I am getting at. As soon a players hit those..most of the time they stop forging, stop collecting data, and/or submitting said data. So the data that does get collected and submitted tends to be a bit luckier.

This is a real problem – deciding to quit gathering data when you hit a cold streak will bias estimation of the real odds from simply taking the mean. A lot of the odds I see posted in this forum are over-optimistic, presumably because of this.

It’s not an insurmountable problem. We know the underlying distribution and can estimate a real mean by accounting for the under-dispersion in the data, for one. Even with that, it gets increasingly difficult to narrow down the real range further without making assumptions about the drop table structure – to reduce the credible interval by a factor of two you need roughly 4x more data.

I was pretty confident that the drop rate was 1:160 before the update, but that was due to some more intricate model selection that presupposed integer table parameters and modeled the drop rate of every single output, not just precursors; post update I’m still at a loss and need a few thousand more data points to start to feel conclusive.

Ayrilana.1396:

As far as whether we have reached a sufficient sample size, I do not know.

The question, of course, is sufficient sample size for what?

some of them are, others are not, for example
from dec 1 2012 till now;

• powerful blood has gone from 26 silver to 66 from , 2.5 times the value
• dusk has gone from 366-1400 3.8 times the value
  *ancient bone has gone from 2.38 to 55 silver, 23 times the value
• spark has gone from 221 to 1359 6.5 times the value
• large scale has gone fro 1.49 to 3.36 2.2 times the value

i didnt go through them all, and didnt pull some average values, but point is, precursors have gone from 4-6 times the value
materials have ranged, but many are in the 2-3 times range

while it is possible, for some precursors, and some materials, you could get a better value, it is not true for all. overall, high demand precursors have increased in value more greatly than materials. with smart investment (say in ancient bones) you can definately beat inflation, but like i said, now you are stepping into the sphere of long term investment, which is not something that is even common among tp players (most are short term)

definately materials are a better investment than gold, but they still arent keeping pace with precursors of demand (so far) UNLESS you are good at picking the items with long term value, which is probably not any where common for this playerbase.

phys.7689:

some of them are, others are not, for example
from dec 1 2012 till now;

It wasn’t worth crafting precursors back in 2012 – people were still far too liquidity constrained. Precursors hit a price point where it started to make sense to forge them around April-May of 2013; that summer was the high point of profitability.

I see your point but please understand that quoting prices from the first couple months of the game really isn’t very illustrative – yes, very valuable items were super cheap early on when no one had a lot of cash on hand. T5/T6 prices have tracked closely with precursor prices for about a year and a half now, and the gap between them has been narrowing steadily. That’s the behavior that’ll be consistent in the future – throwing in a few data points from the first couple months just misleads people about that general trend.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

do you really want to compare statistics and gambling? statistics gives you overall analysis of large trends, it does not apply to single cases.

1/6 odds of picking a red marble out of a bag doesnt mean if you try 6 times you will get a red marble, it doesnt mean if you try 20 times you will get a red marble.

if a red marble is worth 60 dollars, you should not pay 9 dollars for 6 chances, thinking you will make 6 dollars, that is not the way gambling works.

statistics mean, that if i take a large amount of trials, overall i will notice a trend toward 6 attempts, within those attempts there will be a bell curve, this means a signifigant number of people will take 7 8 or 9 attempts (usually almost as many as took 6) some edge cases may take 100 attempts.

the flaw with using statistics for gambling, is statistics doesnt predict the future, it doesnt know whether you are one of the people in the middle, or the end of the bell curve. therefore, do not assert that every time someone throws 4 exotics into the forge they are 1/127 their way to precursor. You have no idea.

dont confuse gambling with statistics/probability, its a fatal flaw many gamblers have. probability doesnt normalize until you have an extremely large sample size.
you also can never predict any future occurences based on past occurences.

Ensign.2189:

phys.7689:

some of them are, others are not, for example
from dec 1 2012 till now;

It wasn’t worth crafting precursors back in 2012 – people were still far too liquidity constrained. Precursors hit a price point where it started to make sense to forge them around April-May of 2013; that summer was the high point of profitability.

I see your point but please understand that quoting prices from the first couple months of the game really isn’t very illustrative – yes, very valuable items were super cheap early on when no one had a lot of cash on hand. T5/T6 prices have tracked closely with precursor prices for about a year and a half now, and the gap between them has been narrowing steadily. That’s the behavior that’ll be consistent in the future – throwing in a few data points from the first couple months just misleads people about that general trend.

i was taking data from dec, because it was long enough to establish the basic economy, but far enough to give an overall picture. However i have not studied the trends for all of these items and compared them, looking for sept 2013, it seems some mats have grown a lot, some have not. some demanded precursors doubled in value, some have not

now, i didnt do a detailed study, but it does not seem as black and white as you make it seem, or even as i thought, but it definately seems like something that would require long term investment strategy and predictions to come out ahead. You make a prediction that precursors and t5 t6 will now stabilize and move at similar rates. You may be right, but that is a guess based on a decent amount of observation and research into the market. Most players are not of that type.

And im sure even you concede that it may not pan out that way

i will say that in general based on most the trends i have seen in this game, for long term value, you are generally better off investing in items over gold.

So if all players from this point on unanimously decided to sell Dusk for 5k, that would be Anet controlling them to do that?

No, but they wouldn’t do that because it’d be irrational. You can’t expect people to be irrational to justify the system as “player driven.” You have to expect people to behave as people will behave. ANet does this and manage the economy accordingly. Players will only sell Dusks at 5000 when ANet drive supply low enough or demand high enough that they can reasonably assume players will spend that much, and after the likely dozens of Dusks between the current price and that one have already sold.

“Players have the right to be stupid” is poor evidence of player agency. It’d be like saying that a very linear game has a wide variety of non-linear options because you can just run into a corner instead of going down the only corridor that offers forward progress.

phys.7689:

i was taking data from dec, because it was long enough to establish the basic economy, but far enough to give an overall picture.

You’re right, as of December 2012 big chunks of the economy had established themselves. Precursors, however, are far from the basic economy – they’re enormously valuable items that didn’t really kick it into gear for several more months.

phys.7689:

However i have not studied the trends for all of these items and compared them, looking for sept 2013, it seems some mats have grown a lot, some have not. some demanded precursors doubled in value, some have not

It’s not as simple as I made it out to be. There were a couple periods where there was a severe elder wood shortage – which made the price of T5 fine materials crash. We’ve had the wardrobe change and all kinds of shocks to the ecto market. Secondary precursors (The Hunter, The Lover, Tooth of Frostfang, etc) tend to not be forged directly but their price matters a lot for the efficiency of forging random precursors.

But I do check the craft prices fairly often, and while there are plenty of bumps in it, the profit margin of forging a precursor has been on a pretty steady downward trajectory for well over a year.

phys.7689:

And im sure even you concede that it may not pan out that way

Of course. It’s a trend that’s held for a long time now, but changes could come and upset the market in any patch. All I can really say is that it looks stable and that betting on it continuing that way is probably safe.

hybrid.5027:

This might sound like Libertarian claptrap, but any price a fair, free market agrees upon is the correct price.

Nah, that’s the point of capitalism in the first place and virtually every economist in the world will agree with you.

The Libertarian claptrap would be the belief that free, fair markets exist.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

do you really want to compare statistics and gambling? statistics gives you overall analysis of large trends, it does not apply to single cases.

1/6 odds of picking a red marble out of a bag doesnt mean if you try 6 times you will get a red marble, it doesnt mean if you try 20 times you will get a red marble.

if a red marble is worth 60 dollars, you should not pay 9 dollars for 6 chances, thinking you will make 6 dollars, that is not the way gambling works.

statistics mean, that if i take a large amount of trials, overall i will notice a trend toward 6 attempts, within those attempts there will be a bell curve, this means a signifigant number of people will take 7 8 or 9 attempts (usually almost as many as took 6) some edge cases may take 100 attempts.

the flaw with using statistics for gambling, is statistics doesnt predict the future, it doesnt know whether you are one of the people in the middle, or the end of the bell curve. therefore, do not assert that every time someone throws 4 exotics into the forge they are 1/127 their way to precursor. You have no idea.

dont confuse gambling with statistics/probability, its a fatal flaw many gamblers have. probability doesnt normalize until you have an extremely large sample size.
you also can never predict any future occurences based on past occurences.

Nowhere did I say that you were guaranteed to get a precursor within X amount of forges. How difficult is that to understand? When I said on average, that’s just want I mean. Some people will get it in exactly that many, some will take more tries, and some will take less. What you seem to be suggesting is that you cannot use any form of statistics to calculate probabilities. You are wrong.

Ohoni.6057:

So if all players from this point on unanimously decided to sell Dusk for 5k, that would be Anet controlling them to do that?

No, but they wouldn’t do that because it’d be irrational. You can’t expect people to be irrational to justify the system as “player driven.” You have to expect people to behave as people will behave. ANet does this and manage the economy accordingly. Players will only sell Dusks at 5000 when ANet drive supply low enough or demand high enough that they can reasonably assume players will spend that much, and after the likely dozens of Dusks between the current price and that one have already sold.

“Players have the right to be stupid” is poor evidence of player agency. It’d be like saying that a very linear game has a wide variety of non-linear options because you can just run into a corner instead of going down the only corridor that offers forward progress.

Of course it’s irrational. It goes against your belief that Anet controls everything and players are but pawns.

Nah, that’s the point of capitalism in the first place and virtually every economist in the world will agree with you.

But again, real world economics is pointless to this discussion. If we’re dealing with the market price for an item made of iron, for example, the demand for that item is set by the real world properties it has, and the supply of them is restricted by the costs of transport, manufacturing, the cost of acquiring iron, the availability of iron in the world, etc. There are a lot of real world reasons why things cost the way they cost, that either don’t apply at all in the game (like transportation costs), and a lot of them are under direct developer control, like the quantity of raw materials that get added to the game world via casual play.

Yes, in the real world, the price is limited by how much people are willing to pay, but in a game world, if [the price that people are willing to pay] is considered “not cool” by the devs, they are always fully capable of adjusting levels of commerce that do not exist in the real world to result in players willing to pay (and accept) a “more cool” price.

The only way that hard-edged capitalist theory applies in a game world is IF the developers took a 100% hands off, “let the world burn” approach to the economy, in which they establish a set of rules and NEVER adjust them to meet unexpected supply or demand situations. This does not describe the game ANet is running.

Of course it’s irrational. It goes against your belief that Anet controls everything and players are but pawns.

Because they are. Players will behave as players will behave, and have very little practical agency in the market. You can say “but what if all the players decide to jump off a bridge?” that doesn’t describe actual player choice.

!http://img.pandawhale.com/post-22569-A-person-is-smart-People-are-d-Mjfk.gif!

phys.7689:

Ensign.2189:

phys.7689:

T6 and t5s aren’t imcreasing in value at the same rate as high dand precursors.

Materials are increasing faster; the margins claimed by precursor forgers have fallen substantially over time.

Essence Snow.3194:

How many accounts do we have of long cold streaks? That’s kinda what I am getting at. As soon a players hit those..most of the time they stop forging, stop collecting data, and/or submitting said data. So the data that does get collected and submitted tends to be a bit luckier.

This is a real problem – deciding to quit gathering data when you hit a cold streak will bias estimation of the real odds from simply taking the mean. A lot of the odds I see posted in this forum are over-optimistic, presumably because of this.

It’s not an insurmountable problem. We know the underlying distribution and can estimate a real mean by accounting for the under-dispersion in the data, for one. Even with that, it gets increasingly difficult to narrow down the real range further without making assumptions about the drop table structure – to reduce the credible interval by a factor of two you need roughly 4x more data.

I was pretty confident that the drop rate was 1:160 before the update, but that was due to some more intricate model selection that presupposed integer table parameters and modeled the drop rate of every single output, not just precursors; post update I’m still at a loss and need a few thousand more data points to start to feel conclusive.

Ayrilana.1396:

As far as whether we have reached a sufficient sample size, I do not know.

The question, of course, is sufficient sample size for what?

some of them are, others are not, for example
from dec 1 2012 till now;

• powerful blood has gone from 26 silver to 66 from , 2.5 times the value
• dusk has gone from 366-1400 3.8 times the value
  *ancient bone has gone from 2.38 to 55 silver, 23 times the value
• spark has gone from 221 to 1359 6.5 times the value
• large scale has gone fro 1.49 to 3.36 2.2 times the value

i didnt go through them all, and didnt pull some average values, but point is, precursors have gone from 4-6 times the value
materials have ranged, but many are in the 2-3 times range

while it is possible, for some precursors, and some materials, you could get a better value, it is not true for all. overall, high demand precursors have increased in value more greatly than materials. with smart investment (say in ancient bones) you can definately beat inflation, but like i said, now you are stepping into the sphere of long term investment, which is not something that is even common among tp players (most are short term)

definately materials are a better investment than gold, but they still arent keeping pace with precursors of demand (so far) UNLESS you are good at picking the items with long term value, which is probably not any where common for this playerbase.

T6 mats arent really a good comparison to precursor prices as they are seldom used to craft exotics to throw them in the forge. Why? Because the average price of exotic weapons on the tp is lower than the crafting value due to random loot drops.
So a better comparison would be to take the price of the 10 cheapest exotic greatswords on the tp over time (buy order) and compare them with the price of dusk and dawn.
T5 fine mat price evolution should be closer to the price evolution of precursors but again, i would rather compare the prices of the cheapest rare weapons to their corresponding precursors. As crafted rare weapons are usually the cheapest, you can actually also take the lvl 80 rare inscriptions and compare their prices.

As was already mentioned, the timeframe of dec 2012 until now is not very good either due to many market shocks inbetween. I guess the clearest picture of how close the price inflation of precursors and rare/exotic weapons is, you will get when comparing a timeframe from shortly before the feature patch in April until now.

Edit:
The comparison of t5-6 fine mat and precursor prices came up, i think, because i mentioned that all those mats can be regarded as some kind of “precursor token”, which will enable you to forge a precursor eventually. The same applies to rare and exotic weapons you loot. If you used all your rares/exos for forging and all your t5 and t6 mats for crafting rares/exos to forge, the chance to earn a precursor is actually better now (due to buffed chance from the forge and a higher rate of t5-6 mat and rare/exo weapon loot drops) than at the start of the game, while you can disregard gold inflation entirely.

Wanze.8410:

T6 mats arent really a good comparison to precursor prices as they are seldom used to craft exotics to throw them in the forge. Why? Because the average price of exotic weapons on the tp is lower than the crafting value due to random loot drops.
So a better comparison would be to take the price of the 10 cheapest exotic greatswords on the tp over time (buy order) and compare them with the price of dusk and dawn.
T5 fine mat price evolution should be closer to the price evolution of precursors but again, i would rather compare the prices of the cheapest rare weapons to their corresponding precursors. As crafted rare weapons are usually the cheapest, you can actually also take the lvl 80 rare inscriptions and compare their prices.

As was already mentioned, the timeframe of dec 2012 until now is not very good either due to many market shocks inbetween. I guess the clearest picture of how close the price inflation of precursors and rare/exotic weapons is, you will get when comparing a timeframe from shortly before the feature patch in April until now.

Edit:
The comparison of t5-6 fine mat and precursor prices came up, i think, because i mentioned that all those mats can be regarded as some kind of “precursor token”, which will enable you to forge a precursor eventually. The same applies to rare and exotic weapons you loot. If you used all your rares/exos for forging and all your t5 and t6 mats for crafting rares/exos to forge, the chance to earn a precursor is actually better now (due to buffed chance from the forge and a higher rate of t5-6 mat and rare/exo weapon loot drops) than at the start of the game, while you can disregard gold inflation entirely.

oh thats what you meant, you cant use any ingredients you put into a forge as a representitive of tokens, because for each case the results vary wildly. While the average may be X, in the streets, more people will not fall into the average, and a fairly signifigant number of people will fall outside. Some particularly unlucky (maybe the unlucky 5%) will spend substantially more.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

They never said guarantee. People have been tracking this since launch so I’m pretty sure they have a reasonable estimate by now on how many exotics or rares it would take on average to yield a precursor.

the odds of success are not relevant when talking about real situations, unless you can do so many trials that it becomes highly improbable for you to not to succeed.

lets say on average it takes 127 exotic forgings. thats an average, with a bell curve, if its actually an average that means that around 33% of people will not succeed in the after trying 127 times.

point is you cannot go by averages when you are gambling, because gambling an average is just an average.

so you cant say each forging is 1/127 the way there, because thats not the way gambling works, each time you gamble, the amount of past trials is not relevant. If it is random, there will in fact be someone who has try 600 times.
therefore you can never put any sort of progress based on the number of rares/exotics you have.

short version, how accurate your statistics are, is completely irrelevant with gambling. Some people will be average, most people will not be average, if you are not average on the losing side, its not relevant what the average is. This is the normal distribution of outcomes with random probability.

You’re right. The entire field of statistics is irrelevant. We better let all those that study and use it in on the bad news.

do you really want to compare statistics and gambling? statistics gives you overall analysis of large trends, it does not apply to single cases.

1/6 odds of picking a red marble out of a bag doesnt mean if you try 6 times you will get a red marble, it doesnt mean if you try 20 times you will get a red marble.

if a red marble is worth 60 dollars, you should not pay 9 dollars for 6 chances, thinking you will make 6 dollars, that is not the way gambling works.

statistics mean, that if i take a large amount of trials, overall i will notice a trend toward 6 attempts, within those attempts there will be a bell curve, this means a signifigant number of people will take 7 8 or 9 attempts (usually almost as many as took 6) some edge cases may take 100 attempts.

the flaw with using statistics for gambling, is statistics doesnt predict the future, it doesnt know whether you are one of the people in the middle, or the end of the bell curve. therefore, do not assert that every time someone throws 4 exotics into the forge they are 1/127 their way to precursor. You have no idea.

dont confuse gambling with statistics/probability, its a fatal flaw many gamblers have. probability doesnt normalize until you have an extremely large sample size.
you also can never predict any future occurences based on past occurences.

Nowhere did I say that you were guaranteed to get a precursor within X amount of forges. How difficult is that to understand? When I said on average, that’s just want I mean. Some people will get it in exactly that many, some will take more tries, and some will take less. What you seem to be suggesting is that you cannot use any form of statistics to calculate probabilities. You are wrong.

you were responding to post in relation to the idea that every exotic/rare you get, can be seen as making progress towards a precursor.
this was proposed in opposition to the fact that gold value is not a static progress towards a precursor, because the price fluctates steadily upward, and so far has outpaced golds vale substantially.

the point is, no rare or exotic represents progress towards a precursor if you are using the forge. Averages, and probabilities are not that relevant to small sample cases. All they do is compare the expected outcome (over many trials) to the actual outcome. You guys are advising that people could store rares/exotics and think of them as progress towards precursors, you are ignoring that statistically speaking your advice will be wrong for 33% of people, 25% of people will spend substantially more, and 10% of people will probably have to work insanely hard for the same results.

In short its bad and inaccurate advise.

Im telling players, you can gamble on the MF if you like, you can look at the probabilities to see if its a risk you want to take. But nothing you do in the mystic forge is progress. you are no more likely to get it on your 1000th try than your first try. many players will not fall within the positive average.

The real truth is you can only really figure out what was progress towards your precursor once you have it. its an all or nothing system.

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

They don’t have to increase in value as long as the drop rate from the forge remains the same.

If you need 127 exotic forges to get a precursor (the average, so your mileage may vary), you will need to acquire 382 exotic weapons (less if you want to use up any Mystic Forge Stones). Crafting 382 exotic weapons will require the use of 1,910 T6 fine materials, thus each T6 fine you acquire is ALWAYS worth 1/1910 of a precursor.

notice while he says your mileage may vary, he then goes on to say t6 is ALWAYS (in capitals) worth 1/1910 of a precursor, which is not true even within his own statement.

you then brought up averages, which are not really relevant for any one players path to 1 or even 2 legendaries.

what you could say is that 1 t6 mat is sometimes 1/1910 of a precursor, and sometimes it is 1/3820 of a precursor, and sometimes its 1/20th of a precursor.

phys.7689:

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

From a philosophical standpoint, it is incremental (assuming you keep going until you get one), you just don’t know what the increments are since they are subject to RNG.

Each MF attempt is equal to approximately 1/127 of a precursor.

In reality, each attempt is an independent event that has no bearing on the previous or future events, however, if you make enough attempts you will average out to the 1/127 rate.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

From a philosophical standpoint, it is incremental (assuming you keep going until you get one), you just don’t know what the increments are since they are subject to RNG.

Each MF attempt is equal to approximately 1/127 of a precursor.

In reality, each attempt is an independent event that has no bearing on the previous or future events, however, if you make enough attempts you will average out to the 1/127 rate.

which is true only in theory, the point was that people were advising people on how to get a legendary without losing value of gold, bringing up the overall macro average of results doesnt really work in the actual streets.

Its not a good idea for someone to save 400 exotics over the course of 2 years, throw them in the forge, and assume they will get a precursor. UNLESS they are fine knowing they are gambling, and may in fact get nothing, in fact they should realize a signifigant portion (30ish %) will not get precursor.

the amount of attempts that is required to make it likely you will average out to 127 attempts is fairly large. essentially for the law of large numbers to be accurate, with a base chance of 1/127 you would have to do more trials then any normal player can probably afford.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

Context? Really? I’m sorry but you cannot justify that we were saying players were guaranteed a precursor after so many forges or exotics. Please try again.

Nust because something isn’t 100%, does not mean that it should just be disregarded. You may have the general idea of statistics in regards to this situation but you do not know how to apply it.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

Context? Really? I’m sorry but you cannot justify that we were saying players were guaranteed a precursor after so many forges or exotics. Please try again.

Nust because something isn’t 100%, does not mean that it should just be disregarded. You may have the general idea of statistics in regards to this situation but you do not know how to apply it.

Its not about it being disregarded for not being 100%, its about it being disregarded for the issue at hand.
statistics are not predictions of short term events.
" Probability describes the long-term proportion with which a certain
outcome will occur in situations with short-term uncertainty"

notice, its long term, in the short term the outcome is always uncertain. 127 attempts in this case represents the short term odds of success for getting a precursor.

You should not advise people that rares/exotics represent any type of progress towards a legendary because each person is not a collection of cases, each person is few trials at in general.

to be clear, statistics and probabilities do not reduce, they are long term predictions based on large numbers.
the short term events are still unpredictable.

I do agree that overall, for many players, and on a macro level, a certain amount of rares/exotics are destroyed for each precursor on average in the MF.

Wanze.8410:

T6 mats arent really a good comparison to precursor prices as they are seldom used to craft exotics to throw them in the forge.

T6 fine materials are not linked to precursor prices because they are used to craft exotics that are thrown into the forge.

They’re linked to precursor prices because T6 fine materials tend to fluctuate near the edge of profitable promotions, and both T5 mats and T6 dust have prices that correlate well with the precursor market.

There isn’t a direct causal mechanism there, you’re right – actually, if anything, you’d expect the opposite, as higher precursor prices would drive down demand for T6 for the gifts – but in practice they track each other fairly well.

Wanze.8410:

So a better comparison would be to take the price of the 10 cheapest exotic greatswords on the tp over time (buy order) and compare them with the price of dusk and dawn.

That has actually bounced around quite a bit (and tanked really hard right when ascended weapon crafting came out). Generally it hasn’t been profitable to throw exotic level high demand weapon types into the forge. I don’t know why it’s managed to maintain the spread that it has so persistently, just that it has.

I tend to view the other exotics that come out of the forge as waste products to re-sell as a result.

Wanze.8410:

i would rather compare the prices of the cheapest rare weapons to their corresponding precursors. As crafted rare weapons are usually the cheapest, you can actually also take the lvl 80 rare inscriptions and compare their prices.

That has tightened up even more than the material markets. A year ago you could make 15-20% just by crafting up greatswords for sale; now that number is closer to 5%. You’re right though, this follows the precursor markets very, very closely.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Again, i was not saying it’s guaranteed. Are you understanding that? I commeted on bia post to clarify that he did not mean that everyone would need exactly 127 forges.

You can use statistics to calculate an average. The larger the sample size to calculate that, the better. If each attempt uses a fixes amount of ingredients, you can also express it in regards to those ingredients. Clovers have been estimated to take roughly 231 attempts on average to get 77. You can then break down the attempts into the four ingredients that you need.

Your issue is that you either don’t understand how statistics is used or you don’t understand that nobody has stated that players were gauranteed to get a precursors in X forges or using X exotics.

you dont understand what context means. If you are discussing collecting rares/exotics in the context of being a method of incremental gain towards getting precursors that isnt subject to price changes, then the fact that it isnt guaranteeded and the actual number of tries is unknown makes that theory worthless.

Ok lets be clear, are you or are you not saying that you believe collecting rares/exotics for the forge is a viable method of obtaining precursors in an incremental fashion?

if you are not then we have no disagreement

Context? Really? I’m sorry but you cannot justify that we were saying players were guaranteed a precursor after so many forges or exotics. Please try again.

Nust because something isn’t 100%, does not mean that it should just be disregarded. You may have the general idea of statistics in regards to this situation but you do not know how to apply it.

Its not about it being disregarded for not being 100%, its about it being disregarded for the issue at hand.
statistics are not predictions of short term events.
" Probability describes the long-term proportion with which a certain
outcome will occur in situations with short-term uncertainty"

notice, its long term, in the short term the outcome is always uncertain. 127 attempts in this case represents the short term odds of success for getting a precursor.

You should not advise people that rares/exotics represent any type of progress towards a legendary because each person is not a collection of cases, each person is few trials at in general.

to be clear, statistics and probabilities do not reduce, they are long term predictions based on large numbers.
the short term events are still unpredictable.

I do agree that overall, for many players, and on a macro level, a certain amount of rares/exotics are destroyed for each precursor on average in the MF.

Nobody was advising anybody doing anything. IT was only stated, that statistically, the chance to forge a pre is better now than at the start of the game and the average loot you need is easier to come by now. If you dont want to hassle with price inflation, forging your own precursor allows you to do that at the price of RNG involvement.