Guild Wars 2

TheKillerAngel.3596:

It’s easy why they have gone up. Only half of it has to do with inflation.

Because gold has gotten a lot cheaper (a little over 20 USD for 100 gold at 3rd party sites) buying finished legendaries is more accessible. Thus, the legendary-selling market is hotter and there is more competition for precursors among people who sell finished legendaries.

You are overestimating the # of people who buy gold (legit or unlegit)

Vol.5241:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

It’s easy why they have gone up. Only half of it has to do with inflation.

Because gold has gotten a lot cheaper (a little over 20 USD for 100 gold at 3rd party sites) buying finished legendaries is more accessible. Thus, the legendary-selling market is hotter and there is more competition for precursors among people who sell finished legendaries.

You are overestimating the # of people who buy gold (legit or unlegit)

I think you are underestimating it, but there is a degree of speculation to this of course.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

Vol.5241:

TheKillerAngel.3596:

It’s easy why they have gone up. Only half of it has to do with inflation.

Because gold has gotten a lot cheaper (a little over 20 USD for 100 gold at 3rd party sites) buying finished legendaries is more accessible. Thus, the legendary-selling market is hotter and there is more competition for precursors among people who sell finished legendaries.

You are overestimating the # of people who buy gold (legit or unlegit)

I think you are underestimating it, but there is a degree of speculation to this of course.

I use four considerations
1.) Gold buying in non-F2P games is low
2.) Anet’s gold banning system is incredibly sensitive (discourages people since they can easily be caught)
3.) Anet’s gem/gold exchange system (a safer and legit alternative)
4.) Gold in game is easily acquirable

From that I think the # of people who buy gold in non-legit ways to be a very, small minority. Probably less than 5% of concurrent players (although those 5% probably buy a ton of gold).

Of course, when we consider those who buy gems for real $ (not including gold to gems conversion), I’d wager that to be 20%.

LordByron.8369:

Vol.5241:

LordByron.8369:

You are right only unique buyers.

Vol.5241:

I hoarded 4 storms at one time

DO you know how many players have several of the same precursor in their banks?

I am repeating same things over and over….

but more than anything dev post about precursor is OUTDATED and can be interpreted to be true even without denying market manipulation.

He is smart to say monopoly is impossible…
But being an economist i really tend to see him as biased when i look an economy where most skilled players have to farm and give a hige part of their gold to people playing TP minigame that are rich to the point of not having anything other to do with their golds than flip.

What exactly is this bias that our resident economist has? What does he have to gain with his bias?

If you like something you tends to make it too much important.

Economy in mmorpg is vital….
But is something that should exist in function of the game.

Now someone thougt that “playing the market” should be another “minigame”.

Well its nice indeed but this minigame is TOTALLY broken in risk reward and its like FREE pvp even for people who don t want to play it.

Its like if glory would be awarded for minigames like crab toss and 1000% more than normal PvP then adapt PvP rewards at crab toss points ratio.

Something have to be done fast for TP risk/reward.
Something similar to crystalline dust but MORE often and MORE fast.

Give speculators the message “if you are too greedy you WILL lose everything”, rather than giving them advices and defending them.

Well said. I introduced an idea a month ago about placing “time limits” on sell orders. This greatly increases the risk and encourages sellers to actually price their merchandise to sell. If you have such a time limit, flipping has a much larger risk due to the volumes involved. However the risk to the casual player is minimal because they are not selling items in bulk like flippers.

My original suggestion post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/IDEA-add-post-time-limit-to-TP/first

amiable.4823:

It’s relatively easy to calculate the rough price a precursor should go for based on the chances of acquiring one via the mystic forge.

It would be if you knew the chance of getting one from the mystic forge (as well as everything else that you could get from the same recipe).

That would give you the expected price. Plus TP fees, time costs, and risk premiums.

So it would at least get you into the ballpark.

amiable.4823:

At a 0.2-0.5% rate of creation (let’s assume 0.2% for purposes of this discussion)

The rate you are assuming is too high. The actual precursor rate for rares from the forge is significantly less than 0.2%.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Dusk-sold-out-1-Left/page/3#post2734427

what seemed to happen is that a lot of people bought precursers because of the Ascension upgrade and the stat flip. was announced witch caused a crash on the market. this issue of TP monopoly with precursors was answered by John Smith. and until we are able to craft our precursors the precursors on the market will keep rising. due to supply and demand.

Precursors are falling. Spark went from 670g to 635g(buy now) / 640g to 525g!(bid). Dawn dropped also 30g(buy now). Cheap precursors are going up right now.

I think precursors will fall until we can craft them ourselves, then people will realise it will be the same(I guess around 500-600g) amount time/gold you will need to buy it from the tp —> Precursors will explode up again.

Problem right now: people think ANet will throw the precursos for like 300g(g for crafting it) at them. Well, some of us will probably take the “problem” into budget, if you know what I mean?

If player X can go obtain item Y in any significant quantity within a reasonable period of time (relatively guaranteed) , then that item CANNOT be monopolized on the TP. No significant control of a particular market can exist without some sort of control on the SUPPLY and while speculators can attempt to buy up all the crafting materials on the TP, the game constantly generates more that is beyond control.

Again, Precursors are an anomoly in this system as they are only GENERATED via very small percentage drops from 2 sources (at the moment). Talk about how to fix Precursor prices should have no bearing on discussions of how to fix the overall TP.

what 2 sources?
they drop from the same as monsters as any other exotic weapon

Korsbaek.9803:

what 2 sources?
they drop from the same as monsters as any other exotic weapon

That would be monsters or forge

what about chest then?

chests that come from monsters maybe ??

Or Open world and forge

Or looting and forge

there I made it 2 sources

Fasyx.9347:

I think precursors will fall until we can craft them ourselves, then people will realise it will be the same(I guess around 500-600g) amount time/gold you will need to buy it from the tp —> Precursors will explode up again.

Problem right now: people think ANet will throw the precursos for like 300g(g for crafting it) at them.

Don’t have a source, but I recall a claim from Anet that only 5% of the player base will ever get a legendary. With that rarity goal in mind, I agree with you that the upcoming precursor crafting/hunt is not going to be easy or just crafting them for ~300g.

amiable.4823:

It’s relatively easy to calculate the rough price a precursor should go for based on the chances of acquiring one via the mystic forge. I will use myself as an example, I am currently trying to acquire a precursor for quip: a chaos gun.

At a 0.2-0.5% rate of creation (let’s assume 0.2% for purposes of this discussion) it will take an average of 500 combinations to result in a precursor. Assuming ~ 25s a rare (and 4 rares for combining = 200 rares) that would be 1 gold per combination. Now since combining is an iterative process whereby every 4 combinations we get 1 additional combination (and we may also generate uniques that can be resold for a profit or recombined) let’s say we will only need 1500 rares on average to generate a chaos gun. 1500 × .25 = 375. The current price to outright by a chaos gun on the AH is around 350, I put in a substantively lower bid because I was making some conservative assumptions (i.e. that the generation rate is on the low end, bad luck, etc)….

Ultimately if I have to pay up to 350-375 for a chaos gun I am not going to be angry, because I think that accurately reflects its value. Do these calculations for yourself when you are pricing a precursor, if the amount cost is double or treble the amount you calculate, you are better of hitting the mystic forge, if it is around the price you calculate (chaos gun is a good example because the pricing tracks very well with the expected value) then paying for it is a better option to avoid the RNG risks. Also note my math here is very rough, I assume the folks playing the precursor market have it down to a real science.

I would say there are real market opportunities right now on the more expensive precursors. The problem is the RNG may completely screw you over after investing thousands of gold.

kitten , can’t believe I missed something so obvious, precursor prices fluctuating as a dependant of Rare and exotic prices! Guess that’s something else I’d have to pay attention to, cheers!

Ensign.2189:

500 crafting crashed the exotic markets, which has forced price out of random exotics and into the precursors. Precursor prices will drop again when assorted exotic weapons start selling at higher prices.

I have to agree 1000%.

At the beginning of the Queen’s Pavillion we were getting the ascended hype.

I found a gorgeous exotic that listed for 60 gold – in less than eight hours it had gone down TWENTY gold.

Not silver, GOLD.

The market is busted – and it’s getting worse.

Neriglissar.8730:

kitten , can’t believe I missed something so obvious, precursor prices fluctuating as a dependant of Rare and exotic prices! Guess that’s something else I’d have to pay attention to, cheers!

As a follow up I was able to purchase my chaos gun via buy order for 295, which I think is about 100 gold less than its actual value.

atheria.2837:

I have to agree 1000%.

At the beginning of the Queen’s Pavillion we were getting the ascended hype.

I found a gorgeous exotic that listed for 60 gold – in less than eight hours it had gone down TWENTY gold.

Not silver, GOLD.

The market is busted – and it’s getting worse.

That’s because as soon as new content is released a huge number of players rush to “farm” it and start selling everything they find, leading to a surplus of items on the TP and prices that start out high and quickly fall into reality as they undercut each other to try to make a quick sale.

The players are broken, not the market.

tolunart.2095:

The players are broken, not the market.

I would argue neither is true, markets just fluctuate based on supply and demand. High end prestige items are rare and expensive, just like in real life.

amiable.4823:

As a follow up I was able to purchase my chaos gun via buy order for 295, which I think is about 100 gold less than its actual value.

There are basically two production paths via the mystic forge. First, you can throw a bunch of weapons of the same type into the forge – 4 greatswords always results in another greatsword. The other is weapons of different types, which gives a random weapon type.

Throwing weapons of the same type into the forge only makes sense when you are fishing for the highest value precursors – greatswords, daggers, staves. Chaos Guns are produced almost exclusively via the second method.

Getting the fair market price of that method is more tricky, but ultimately it means the average price of all the precursors has to equal the inputs for it to make sense – some above average, some below. Chaos Gun is low enough demand that it comes in below average.

The closer we get to the end of the year, the price will fall further- back to the 200-300g mark for most of the good ones.
Crafting precursor was guaranteed by Colin and so its only a few months away. Players who list their weps at a very high price will only regret it soon as the patch arrives.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

juno.1840:

My friend saw a bunch of dawns vanish from the TP and then an identical number show up shortly afterwards, reposted for roughly 200gp more.

…and we’re off into conspiracy theory land!

All of the exotic set 1 miniatures went from 80-95g to 160-225g in one day. You can check gw2spidy for the graph.

LordByron.8369:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

juno.1840:

My friend saw a bunch of dawns vanish from the TP and then an identical number show up shortly afterwards, reposted for roughly 200gp more.

…and we’re off into conspiracy theory land!

Ecto salvage rates are fine

Fractal drop was never nerfed….

Ecto salvage rates were ninja nerfed on the 20th. I know because I salvaged 25 rares and got 7 ectos out of it, which has never, ever happened before. I allways got 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, so salvagin them was a profit. Ever since the 20th patch, It’s allways a loss to salvage it. I salvage 5-6 rares a day and I haven’t gotten 3 ectos out of it in days, I’m always loosing money from salvaging them.

It was nerfed, believe it.

Shpongle.6025:

LordByron.8369:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

juno.1840:

My friend saw a bunch of dawns vanish from the TP and then an identical number show up shortly afterwards, reposted for roughly 200gp more.

…and we’re off into conspiracy theory land!

Ecto salvage rates are fine

Fractal drop was never nerfed….

Ecto salvage rates were ninja nerfed on the 20th. I know because I salvaged 25 rares and got 7 ectos out of it, which has never, ever happened before. I allways got 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, so salvagin them was a profit. Ever since the 20th patch, It’s allways a loss to salvage it. I salvage 5-6 rares a day and I haven’t gotten 3 ectos out of it in days, I’m always loosing money from salvaging them.

It was nerfed, believe it.

not sure if serious…

Salvaged 150 rare armors last night with master kits, got 139 ectos. Expected return is 135 with master kits.

Shpongle.6025:

Ecto salvage rates were ninja nerfed on the 20th. I know because I salvaged 25 rares and got 7 ectos out of it, which has never, ever happened before. I allways got 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, so salvagin them was a profit. Ever since the 20th patch, It’s allways a loss to salvage it. I salvage 5-6 rares a day and I haven’t gotten 3 ectos out of it in days, I’m always loosing money from salvaging them.

It was nerfed, believe it.

Then you’ve been lucky all the time. I’ve neved had as much as 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, i have around 0.75 ecto per gold (using master kit, not black lion ones)

SRG.3607:

Shpongle.6025:

Ecto salvage rates were ninja nerfed on the 20th. I know because I salvaged 25 rares and got 7 ectos out of it, which has never, ever happened before. I allways got 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, so salvagin them was a profit. Ever since the 20th patch, It’s allways a loss to salvage it. I salvage 5-6 rares a day and I haven’t gotten 3 ectos out of it in days, I’m always loosing money from salvaging them.

It was nerfed, believe it.

Then you’ve been lucky all the time. I’ve neved had as much as 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, i have around 0.75 ecto per gold (using master kit, not black lion ones)

Unfortunately, it’s called RNG. Some have the luck, some don’t.

cranked.3812:

SRG.3607:

Shpongle.6025:

Ecto salvage rates were ninja nerfed on the 20th. I know because I salvaged 25 rares and got 7 ectos out of it, which has never, ever happened before. I allways got 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, so salvagin them was a profit. Ever since the 20th patch, It’s allways a loss to salvage it. I salvage 5-6 rares a day and I haven’t gotten 3 ectos out of it in days, I’m always loosing money from salvaging them.

It was nerfed, believe it.

Then you’ve been lucky all the time. I’ve neved had as much as 1-3 ectos 90% of the time, i have around 0.75 ecto per gold (using master kit, not black lion ones)

Unfortunately, it’s called RNG. Some have the luck, some don’t.

It’s not 1-3 90% of the time. It’s 9 ectos from 10 rares with a master kit (on average). That rate is pretty high, so it should usually average out fairly quickly.

What I find happens with a lot of players that think they aren’t getting the right number of ecto’s is that they are just doing them one or two at a time. It some times appears like you’re just not getting diddly when doing this. Save up like 50 then do them all in one go and you should see it average out in front of you. I have a level 2 alt with 15 slot bags that I just toss all my rares at and salvage when he’s nearly full so I can see it happen myself.

If you do get bad streaks (which happen) just keep watching the next time and think about it when you get more ectos than you had rares. It really does even out more the more rares you salvage.

I’ve had no noticeable changes in my ecto rates personally.

That ecto sentence was referring to ecto BUG.
Not to eventual recent nerfs.
As it is fractal drop nerf.

Tom Gore.4035:

marnick.4305:

or about 100 in a day.

Sounds a bit hardcore to me.

No wait, it actually sounds like a total no-life in order to grind VP.

Healthy, much?

1/ Legendaries are not VP, they’re skins first and foremost. Skins are supposed to take time and grind.

2/ I’m as casual as it gets, and still I can make 10~20 ectos in an evening. The 100 ectos was merely extrapolating. It’s possible but I don’t think getting your legendary would be fun in that case. Personally I’d rather take my time.

To take your time for a top skin would be the healthy thing indeed. As for an almost guarantueed 8 ecto, do COF12. In less than 40 minutes you should have 2g and 120 tokens. Convert that into 4 rares and salvage them for 1~3 ecto. Buy 6 more ecto for the 2g.

LordByron.8369:

If you like something you tends to make it too much important.

Economy in mmorpg is vital….
But is something that should exist in function of the game.

Now someone thougt that “playing the market” should be another “minigame”.

Well its nice indeed but this minigame is TOTALLY broken in risk reward and its like FREE pvp even for people who don t want to play it.

Its like if glory would be awarded for minigames like crab toss and 1000% more than normal PvP then adapt PvP rewards at crab toss points ratio.

Something have to be done fast for TP risk/reward.
Something similar to crystalline dust but MORE often and MORE fast.

Give speculators the message “if you are too greedy you WILL lose everything”, rather than giving them advices and defending them.

Just because the risk isn’t meaningless character death doesn’t mean there is zero risk. I’m not aware of a single other activity in game that can result in hundreds of gold losses in a single day.

There is no other activity even remotely as economically risky as plying the TP, so there should be no other activity as rewarding.

Imperatora.7654:

There is no other activity even remotely as economically risky as plying the TP, so there should be no other activity as rewarding.

I disagree. Unless you’re braindead, it’s impossible to lose money on the TP in the long run. You might do some bad calls and lose money every now and then but the general long term trend will always be an increase in wealth which completely outclasses any other in game venue for obtaining gold by several orders of magnitude.

Vol.5241:

Precursor crafting will come before the end of the year. I expect the price to fall.

However, expect it to still be expensive. I don’t expect Dusk to fall to 50g, for example. Precursor crafting will cause the mats to make it to rise as well so we can see the price fall to a reasonable few hundred G or so.

I thought they said they “planned” on it but it wasn’t a guarantee as they want to “carefully” add precursor crafting. Seeing how precursors drive the rare/exotic market and much of the game market if precursors did crash to 200-300g over it then you can expect ALL exotics to drop as well. I’m pretty certain the precursor craft will take so long to do that most people would prefer to just buy it since gold isn’t hard to make, even if you just open champion bags, run around WvW/PvE and do events you do accumulate gold quite quickly.

What if one of the materials needed to craft a precursor was a STACK of each refined ascended material? Then it would require MONTHS of farming and therefore most people wouldn’t try so much to get one as to buy them and keep the market strong still. I doubt getting a precursor will be a lightly effort and I’m sure crafting the precursor would be somewhat similar to crafting a legendary. A very very long list of items.

People is assuming they want to defend the ridiculous price of precursors..

Those prices were never intended.

LordByron.8369:

People is assuming they want to defend the ridiculous price of precursors..

Those prices were never intended.

No one wants to defend prices of precursors because people can’t pull them out of their rear for their own benefit. The reality is that is how much they are worth because people are buying and selling them nearly every hour or two. Therefore the prices are REAL. If you can’t make that much money which is hard to believe then you should go play a new game that doesn’t have “end game weapons” because not everything will be handed to you. If precursors dropped to 100g each then every person right now buying 1 precursor for 500-800g would buy 5-8 instead which means there would hardly be any.

Really…. can’t understand some peoples logic.

we perfectly know prices are NOT real.

Both players and gold sellers are speculating over it……(don t pretend gold seller mails don t say they sell precursors and legendaries we all saw them).

If they had a fair price anet wouldn t even thougt of introduce craft.

Issue: precursor price:
Solution: another way to obtain them

And since we know how craft works they will even balance cost of precursor so nno doubt expensive precursor will be WAY cheaper to craft.

I can see them in the order of 200 G with time gating……

The hunter is perfect example of why the prices are to high. There’s 25 or so listed and 10 of them are incredible close in range of each other in price (meaning they should have undercutted, but they were reluctant too), now the price lingers at the same point cause nobody wants to undercut, or buy. We know the market has to move on, but it isn’t. Only with less then 10 precursors of one sort, high price is (a little) justified.

LordByron.8369:

we perfectly know prices are NOT real.

Uh, when they sell an average of 10 times per day to 10 different buyers, yeah, the prices are real.

And honestly it wouldn’t matter if they were FREE – all that would do is free up that coin to buy the 2,000 T6 mat you need, or the lodestones, or whatever, and then those prices would explode. The money other people have which is allowing them to buy the precursors when you can’t doesn’t just go away because the precursor got cheaper…

marnick.4305:

2/ I’m as casual as it gets, and still I can make 10~20 ectos in an evening. The 100 ectos was merely extrapolating. It’s possible but I don’t think getting your legendary would be fun in that case. Personally I’d rather take my time.
.

I’m afraid your definition of casual is skewed. Most of us posters here are not even in the same realm as the real casuals.

Nike.2631:

LordByron.8369:

we perfectly know prices are NOT real.

Uh, when they sell an average of 10 times per day to 10 different buyers, yeah, the prices are real.

You are still trying to deny that people stocked precursors?

._.

Even when people doing that posts it themselves?

nothing to add then.

P.S: its obvious BUYERS are usually different…
People who speculate buy them in a short time span and resell slowly….

LordByron.8369:

Nike.2631:

LordByron.8369:

we perfectly know prices are NOT real.

Uh, when they sell an average of 10 times per day to 10 different buyers, yeah, the prices are real.

You are still trying to deny that people stocked precursors?

._.

Even when people doing that posts it themselves?

nothing to add then.

P.S: its obvious BUYERS are usually different…
People who speculate buy them in a short time span and resell slowly….

By you saying precursor prices are fake when there are tons of people buying them and they only rose after people were making heaps of money off the new living story content just says to me you don’t know a lot about the market. Anyone who buys and sells these for profit are dumb because 95% of the time there is no profit margin and these weapons sit around the same price for months at a time normally. This means what? You would make more money flipping other items than waiting MONTHS for an item to go up.

Also with the announcement of crafted precursors i doubt anyone would risk holding these now and the only time I heard of people admitting they bought multiple was before a graphical update that would increase demand, which is normal pricing anyways. Zero manipulation here.

Osi
1) some people are so rich “abusing” the tp that they just like to troll the market…..

2) Dumb players you say has got a huge profit already……its not they tried to control 100% of precursors its way easier….

3) Saying there is no profit is just a lie…..i personally got 150G clear profit when i decided to change my legendary plans…..and wasn t even before “legendary rework speculation”.
People who did at legendary rework speculation got thousands gold profit instead.

4) Gold is worthless compared to real moneys….for gold sellers…..i suspect its the reason why at least 2 times 20-30 “offers” suddenly disappeared from the market with no apparent reason.

5) with precursor crafting they also gave a sort of release date…..that is really far.
So using fakes offers is quite easy to profit now.

Zero manipulation is denying facts not theories.
We have undeniable proofs and people admitting to do that what else do you want?

just a note to the poster i had to buy zap 100g more i. it was 400 / 450 its now 500 / 550. you said you dont want to grind any more wtf all mats are 100% more expensive apart from mith and silk get down to t2 grinding soft wood is the highest ive ever seen it its not much of an effort of chop a tree and get 7 / 8s

edit:- i should put its planks ;D

LordByron.8369:

Osi
1) some people are so rich “abusing” the tp that they just like to troll the market…..

2) Dumb players you say has got a huge profit already……its not they tried to control 100% of precursors its way easier….

3) Saying there is no profit is just a lie…..i personally got 150G clear profit when i decided to change my legendary plans…..and wasn t even before “legendary rework speculation”.
People who did at legendary rework speculation got thousands gold profit instead.

4) Gold is worthless compared to real moneys….for gold sellers…..i suspect its the reason why at least 2 times 20-30 “offers” suddenly disappeared from the market with no apparent reason.

5) with precursor crafting they also gave a sort of release date…..that is really far.
So using fakes offers is quite easy to profit now.

Zero manipulation is denying facts not theories.
We have undeniable proofs and people admitting to do that what else do you want?

Either you are a troll or you don’t realize you make no sense.

1) you can’t manipulate the TP, why? Because no one is going to buy all the sparks out at 700g and relist them at 2000g, why? they come into the game so often they would immediately get undercut and would waste deposit fees, also precursors have went up only a few 100g in a COUPLE MONTH SPAN which is terrible profit from other types of merchants/flips, so no… hoarding percusors DOES NOT EXIST, FALSE.

As far as your last words, you have no proof except hearsay from most likely trolls who stated they hoarded precursors. I might as well say im hoarding stuff, you would believe it too.

Hoarding doesn’t work in Guild Wars, and if it does among limited supply items, assuming you could control all the stock once you start selling a few at super high prices, those will be relisted and undercut your stock, wasting deposit and forcing you to wait long periods of time for them to get bought up to relist or making you rebuy the item so you can sell the rest. It’s pointless….

Example, the guy who bought out and hoarded all the Mini Karka (prob 1,500 gold worth?) and relisted them all 300g ea, guess what? 5 months later they are still listed and he has been undercut like 10 times. That 1,500 gold could have been used over 5 months to make HEAPS MORE than he would have made if he sold them today.

It DOES NOT WORK, people with logic knows this, and precursor markets are controlled by legitimate players with REAL OFFERS AND BIDS, hence why if you go to gw2spidy.com you can find 0 copper profit on most precusors, and they don’t normally rise in drastic changes enough for them to be worth flipping. Even if people flipped them, they would be re-listed eventually, bringing the supply right back into the game. You act as if people hoard and hold them forever making there hardly be any and therefore why the price is so high… no that’s not the case at all, they are rare to get in-game and from the forge. Deal with it, if you don’t understand then sorry, you won’t have anything changed and ANET knows how the market works better than any of us.