Guild Wars 2

It was hovering by 3.6 for a bit but now it’s crashing down towards 3. I can’t figure out what is causing this. It shouldn’t be too tied to the price of Ectos as you need both Ectos and Ori to craft exotic gear. It shouldn’t have to do with the release of the new pick, as not enough people have bought the pick to cause an Ori mining rampage (and their decision whether to mine hardly should be influenced by this as it is profitable to mine Ori regardless.) Any ideas as to what is causing this?

John Smith.4610:

You’ve made two false assumptions, fix them both and you have your answer.

JOHN SMITH! It’s good to see you back.

But I was about to say, I imagine it’s because people going ori-crazy with the new picks to try to justify their purchase. I guess John’s post is a pretty good confirmation.

Well I’m happy to bring John to the thread! So I guess I was wrong and the picks are selling better than I thought, and people are going wild trying to show off their new item. Too bad much of my wealth is currently tied up in the 25-26 stacks of 250 Ori I’m holding.

John Smith has more +1’s than Hugh Hefner at a charity dinner. I never salvage hoping for Ori, just ecto. From my little experiment I noticed that different items have different mats drop more frequently. I’m guessing this is because it takes different mats to make them of course. I often farm mithril more because Ori is never on an easy path and I am at times very lazy :P Prices will rise and fall just like the ectos are, and don;t forget there are TP players that post on forums just to influence (even if just for a short time) prices to their advantage. And sadly it actually works sometimes.

Ectos are tanking!: TP players and other scramble to buy them out, price goes back up, $$.
Ectos are going to rise because of X patch!:Players rush to buy them all and people unload ectos as the price rises.

Prices come back to a lull, and people rinse and repeat. Then John comes in and lazer blasts everyone with single sentences for 9000 damage.

Ah the circle of life :P

John Smith.4610:

You’ve made two false assumptions, fix them both and you have your answer.

So is one of the false assumptions that the prices of Orichalcum and ectos aren’t somehow tied together? I’m trying to think this one through, but I’m no economist, so the only possible linkage I can see is on the demand side of the equation (i.e. people buying ectos to craft exotics often buy orichalcum as well, so if the fall in ecto prices is due to softening demand for ectos, there would be a similar softening in demand for orichalcum).

I think it’s pretty clear the new pick is popular and sparked an Ori mining rampage.

Not only has it compelled people who already mined Ori to mine more, but it has spurred people who previously didn’t mine all that much to begin mining – because who doesn’t like playing with new toys?

Honestly I feel silly for not dumping Ori when I saw the pick in the store – the price crash should have been obvious without even thinking about it.

I know i can’t seem to stop using my pick, it’s pretty kitten cool. I can totally see the ori price drop (even most ores for that matter) since people use the pick willy nilly now.

Off topic, but maybe John can poke someone over in the leaderboards group and ask them if we can grab that data somewhere to use on our various guild websites. It actually contains more useful info than the in-game roster does currently!

I’d almost wager that indeed a lot of people bought the mining pick.

As to whether or not they are going on a mining rampage to see the animation … hehe (well I mined a few extra mithril, not that that influenced anything).

The sell volume apparently increased for ori according to spidy.

Astraea.6075:

So is one of the false assumptions that the prices of Orichalcum and ectos aren’t somehow tied together?

The false assumptions are that not a lot of people are buying the uberpick, and that people buying the uberpick don’t rush to try it out in an ori frenzy.

The prices of ecto and ori are not correlated in any particularly useful way. There are good reasons for the two to be both positively and negatively correlated, and in practice it seems like a wash.

Ensign.2189:

Honestly I feel silly for not dumping Ori when I saw the pick in the store – the price crash should have been obvious without even thinking about it.

Actually the thing to do now is buy ori while the price is low and save them for a few weeks (or set high sell orders near the “usual” price) until the shiny wears off and people go back to their usual habits and aren’t mining every node on the map.

Its just like when world bosses were announced to be limited in that thread, prices went up as a result of player reaction not a supply shortage. People are collectively assuming that ori is less valuable(albeit so far only 10-15% drop according to OP) because of the new pick so they will take whatever they get knowing that there is more competition.

Enough 1c undercutters eventually leads to this type of situation, I bet it stops around the cost of t5 salvage or a little higher.

Ensign.2189:

I think it’s pretty clear the new pick is popular and sparked an Ori mining rampage.

Not only has it compelled people who already mined Ori to mine more, but it has spurred people who previously didn’t mine all that much to begin mining – because who doesn’t like playing with new toys?

Honestly I feel silly for not dumping Ori when I saw the pick in the store – the price crash should have been obvious without even thinking about it.

When you have multiple materials price almost always will shift to the rarest of the two.

So while there can be demand for both items to produce a particular good, the material costs can easily shift. A drop in price of the cheaper good can trigger an increase in price in the rare good.

tolunart.2095:

Actually the thing to do now is buy ori while the price is low and save them for a few weeks (or set high sell orders near the “usual” price) until the shiny wears off and people go back to their usual habits and aren’t mining every node on the map.

Even at a cost of 3s, selling at 3.6s nets you a mere 6c profit per Ore. Maybe if Ori dropped to 2.5s, or it could be expected to go up to ~4.2s, that would be worth it. For now there are far better investments elsewhere.

Yeah, I looked at the graph on Spidy for ten seconds and came to the same conclusion.

John Smith.4610:

Economists neither sleep nor leave, I was never gone, I just require interesting posts

This explains so much, all this time in Orr we thought they were zombies.

“More come”

Arrg nooooo its the Economists

John Smith.4610:

cargan.5689:

John Smith.4610:

Economists neither sleep nor leave, I was never gone, I just require interesting posts

This explains so much, all this time in Orr we thought they were zombies.

“More come”

Arrg nooooo its the Economists

gaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnssssssssssssss

At least someone who’s earlier in the office than me. And I thought I was a zombie.

John Smith.4610:

cargan.5689:

John Smith.4610:

Economists neither sleep nor leave, I was never gone, I just require interesting posts

This explains so much, all this time in Orr we thought they were zombies.

“More come”

Arrg nooooo its the Economists

gaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnssssssssssssss

This gives new meaning to the term “zombie banks”.

When the price was 2.5g for 100gems, the mining pick costed 20g.

To win back 20g, or 200,000 copper, with a tool that replaces a tool that costed 4c to use (4s per 100), you need to mine a total of 50,000 ore.

If you mine 100 ore a day (which I am guessing not alot of people do), it would take your character 500 days to win back your gold from the mining pick, excluding opportunity costs from that 20g, soit.

My guess is that a) most buyers didn’t calculate the costs or b) most buyers are very lazy and don’t want to buy new sets of mining gear once a week.

Very odd!

On a totally unrelated side-note. Odd that someone would post that a post is ‘intresting’ just to say the OP made two false assumptions.

@Tallis : There’s other threads talking about the molten picks, but you’re forgetting both the cosmetic appeal and the fact that people will often pay a premium for convenience (it’s not just laziness, it’s also how they value the time they will save).

Tallis.5607:

When the price was 2.5g for 100gems, the mining pick costed 20g.

To win back 20g, or 200,000 copper, with a tool that replaces a tool that costed 4c to use (4s per 100), you need to mine a total of 50,000 ore.

If you mine 100 ore a day (which I am guessing not alot of people do), it would take your character 500 days to win back your gold from the mining pick, excluding opportunity costs from that 20g, soit.

My guess is that a) most buyers didn’t calculate the costs or b) most buyers are very lazy and don’t want to buy new sets of mining gear once a week.

Very odd!
[…]

On top of that, instead getting the pick unlocked and permanently available for a price in a vendor for any character as it should, it’s a single item that gets soulbound to a character.

And even if it was account bound, you’d have to switch it between characters unless you cant to pay a small fortune if you have many characters.

So it’s both expensive and unpractical, all that’s left is the visual effect, making the item just for show.

why is this post posted this late? -_-
Already sold my ori >_<

The moment I bought my pick, I saw a slightly downward of the ori, so I though holy! need sell them fast…guess I was wrong.

beside I don’t see the price going down under 3.0
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19701

Of course the picks would effect the price of ori. Its actually probably going to effect all ore. Orichalcum will be the one that gets the bigger hit. You have more supply coming into the market now. Now that everyone has at least one character with an unlimited pickm supply is currently slightly higher than demand, even though demand for orichalcum is up there. That is why your orichalcum prices are going down. It isn’t that hard to figure out.

John Smith.4610:

Economists neither sleep nor leave, I was never gone, I just require interesting posts

Baited!

John Smith.4610:

Economists neither sleep nor leave, I was never gone, I just require interesting posts

I don’t find “blatantly erronious” to be part of the “interesting” set myself, but tastes vary.

John Smith.4610:

gaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnssssssssssssss

Ok, that made me laugh.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Tallis.5607:

When the price was 2.5g for 100gems, the mining pick costed 20g.

To win back 20g, or 200,000 copper, with a tool that replaces a tool that costed 4c to use (4s per 100), you need to mine a total of 50,000 ore.

If you mine 100 ore a day (which I am guessing not alot of people do), it would take your character 500 days to win back your gold from the mining pick, excluding opportunity costs from that 20g, soit.

My guess is that a) most buyers didn’t calculate the costs or b) most buyers are very lazy and don’t want to buy new sets of mining gear once a week.

Very odd!
[…]

On top of that, instead getting the pick unlocked and permanently available for a price in a vendor for any character as it should, it’s a single item that gets soulbound to a character.

And even if it was account bound, you’d have to switch it between characters unless you cant to pay a small fortune if you have many characters.

So it’s both expensive and unpractical, all that’s left is the visual effect, making the item just for show.

You’re leaving out huge portions of the equation here. (Note, I have not purchased a pick because I personally do not value it highly enough)

First, let’s go back to the “recouping your money” portion of this. Tallis only covered the extreme bare minimum here, with some relatively faulty logic. Since the Molten pick has infinite uses, the marginal cost (assuming your game time has no value) of mining a node drops to zero. Most people will not mine copper nodes on their level 80 character (except for daily gathering credit) because copper nets around 4c-5c per ore, and ori picks cost 4c per strike. With a Molten pick, the people will likely mine copper again and gain the value of not just the ore, but the gems that frequently come out as well. When talking about gold ore, that’s an extra 17c (plus gemstones) per strike, or the equivalent of 4+ normal gatherings.

You’re also leaving out the “spare” pick that has to be carried around in order to not miss out on nodes when your usual pick runs out. (Otherwise you’d have to add back in the value of missed ori/mithril due to pick shortage and that’s likely much higher) Carrying that extra pick comes at a cost of 1 bag space. Assuming the people in question are operating at the lowest cost/highest efficiency bag setup (all 18 slot bags with no purchased slots) the value of that bag slot is about 80s (18 slot bag ~ 3g, bag slot ~12g so 15g/18 slots = 83.3s).

Then we have the cosmetic value. This can vary greatly. For me the cosmetic value is negative (I think the particle effect is more annoying than anything else) but for other people this could alone be worth more than 20g.

Finally, there’s the issue of convenience. You never have to rebuy picks. You never have to worry about forgetting to pick one up at the merchant, or trying to break combat to swap picks because you were attacked while using your last pick on the node and there’s still two hits left (more annoying than you’d think and happened to me yesterday). Those conveniences sound small, but even if we say it’s worth an hour of your time, that might be 5g+ in value.

The value equation isn’t the 4c per use, but 4c per normal use + full ore and gem value per “additional” use + value of a bag slot (80s) + cosmetic value + convenience value. It takes a lot less time to get back to 20g when factoring everything in. Also remember, this is a game that’s intended to be around for years and years. That “500 days” figure sounds just huge, but that’s less than a year and a half. If you end up playing for 5 years, that’s 1326 days worth of time where your pick was fully paid off. At the rates used for Tallis’s assumptions, that’s a profit of 53g on this single item.

Im going into Orr now with a renewed desire to kill zombies…

Havana.8625:

It was hovering by 3.6 for a bit but now it’s crashing down towards 3. I can’t figure out what is causing this. It shouldn’t be too tied to the price of Ectos as you need both Ectos and Ori to craft exotic gear. It shouldn’t have to do with the release of the new pick, as not enough people have bought the pick to cause an Ori mining rampage (and their decision whether to mine hardly should be influenced by this as it is profitable to mine Ori regardless.) Any ideas as to what is causing this?

I would say the two false assumptions John Smith referred to are:
1. “you need both Ectos and Ori to craft exotic gear” Not all exotic gear requires orichalcum. If orichalcum becomes too expensive, more exotic weapons are acquired through dungeon tokens, trading post and wherever else. Furthermore, ectoplasm has many, many uses that have nothing to do with exotic gear. It is used in so many mystic forge recipes, for example.

2. You are assuming people who bought the new pick are mining more orichalcum than they did before. To me, the value of the new pick would be to clear up inventory space, not to get orichalcum for cheap.

Syeria.4812:

the marginal cost (assuming your game time has no value) of mining a node drops to zero.

The additional uses are calculated in the 100 uses per day: to make your money back, you need 100 uses per day for 500 days. And again, 100 uses is alot, I doubt that even 5% of the players do that.

And it doesn’t matter that you get gems, you got to compare a miner with and without the pick. The one without the pick needs to buy merchant picks, that is the cost you got to recover and you recover only 4c per use: you don’t get more gems with the pick afaik.

(also, if you subtract 80s for one inventory slot, you got to add 80s for each different type of ore, but okay)

I still amazes me people talk about RoI in a video game. Maybe if your a gold farmer selling of gold to people willing to buy it from you (illegally of course). Playing games isn’t a job and shouldn’t be discussed as if people need a return on investment for goods purchased in a game. People buy the picks because they are convenient and cool. Are they farming more ori on average? probably not. At least not anymore than what daily for gathering added to the market.