Guild Wars 2

Tell me this is natural and manipulators don’t exist. Come on anet, can you please fix precursors already?

Inb4 tinfoils.
Inb4 trolls.

I know for a fact that the legendaries are being manipulated, and if people have enough gold to do that, precursors is like baby change.

I agree that, given the limited supply of precursors and legendaries, it’s easy to corner the market, but I think you’re not giving the buyer enough credit in your consideration. A sell listing only makes money if someone buys it, so there’s no point in artificially inflating sell prices because nobody will buy it, and you’ve just wasted the listing fee. “Manipulating” prices only works if you can get someone to pay your new higher prices, which means that the item actually has that much value to someone, at which point, all the seller is doing is getting the most out of their initial investment, which is within their rights to do.

Now, granted this line of thinking is only valid for goods with elastic demand, but I would argue that since precursors and legendaries are not necessary to improve your performance in the game in any way, that they fall under the definition of goods with elastic demand.

true, but they have a very inelastic demand to those who have the 3 other parts, usually those who made those parts when precursors were FAR cheaper than they re now, and unless they buy it, all there previous investments amount to a big fat nothing.
so they are almost forced to buy the precursor, no matter the new price.

Blacky Sheaperd.8690:

true, but they have a very inelastic demand to those who have the 3 other parts, usually those who made those parts when precursors were FAR cheaper than they re now, and unless they buy it, all there previous investments amount to a big fat nothing.
so they are almost forced to buy the precursor, no matter the new price.

Or you can buy Venom =)

Finally the manipulators are putting some love for the Meteorlogicus lol.

Well some people are expecting some of the legendaries to finally get upgraded this patch. But the real reason is the supply of Storms on TP has decreased from ~15 to 4. A price increase from the drop in supply is expected. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/29176

If everyone protested against the ridiculous system that is the legendary grind; you know how much those precursors would be worth?

Zero.

While im not fond of manipulators i happen to have bought a storm halfway januari for 30g, its ridiculous that its price has been tenfold not even 3 months later.

Or it’s ridiculous that you where able to buy it for 30g three months ago…

Glass half empty, glass half full….

I for one am happy

I’ve been speculating Storm for 2 months now, bought a few for 140g awhile back.

After the February patch, a lot of people sold their inventory (speculating there would be a change to Meteor) but since that didn’t happen, it went all the way down. Foolishly I sold one piece but kept another.

But now that it has gone up over 100%, I’m a happy camper. I’m not sure if there are any other precursors worth speculating now.

Did people manipulate the supply? kitten right they did. And theres nothing wrong with it because it’ll help see where equilibrium will end up

Yesterday there was like 4 supply at 375g. Whoopy doo. Now it’s down to 292s and we see a buy order at 200g.

What we now know is that the equilibrium price will end up between that. The old price of mid 150g or so was too cheap.

In the long term all the precursors should have a similar price; they all come out of a similar recipe in the forge, and thus have a similar cost to craft.

The cheap ones are only cheap due to world drops being sufficient to meet demand, either for crafting or speculating.

In the long run though, without changes, demand should shoot up (legendaries like the focus are not popular as a first legendary, but will be popular as a 2nd or 3rd) and unless world drops can hold the price down, they’ll be up there in the 600-700 gold range like everything else.

This isn’t manipulation, this is that reality starting to set in and someone making a good profit off of driving it there a bit faster.

While I wouldn’t yell “conspiracy!”, it’s true that with such a low supply of this item, the price is in the hands of just a few people. I count sixteen on the market right now, which means that, at the time of writing, a maximum of sixteen people get full control over the selling prices. Thus, the price that we see in the GW2DB is going to fluctuate insanely due to even slight shifts in supply or demand. As I’m reading, it sounds like the supply yesterday was 25% of what it is now. Because there’s such a demand for an item like Storm, I can’t say I’m surprised that sellers saw this supply decreasing, and, thinking that they could make a very nice buck, decided to increase the cost by 150g. I’m sure that a great deal of them were also thinking things like “hey, with the new patch, the supply of Storm is going to increase, like, tenfold, so I’d better sell while prices are high!”. There’s not really anything we can do about it when the number of sellers of an item like Storm is so low.

On the bright side, the sellers are eventually going to have to realize that they’re selling too high for the demand for Storm, and they’re eventually going to have to lower the prices to compensate. By the looks of things, the price has already decreased ~80g from its peak last night, so I doubt that there’s too much worry about the selling price continuing to lower from here.

Arganthium.5638:

While I wouldn’t yell “conspiracy!”, it’s true that with such a low supply of this item, the price is in the hands of just a few people. I count sixteen on the market right now, which means that, at the time of writing, a maximum of sixteen people get full control over the selling prices. Thus, the price that we see in the GW2DB is going to fluctuate insanely due to even slight shifts in supply or demand. As I’m reading, it sounds like the supply yesterday was 25% of what it is now. Because there’s such a demand for an item like Storm, I can’t say I’m surprised that sellers saw this supply decreasing, and, thinking that they could make a very nice buck, decided to increase the cost by 150g. I’m sure that a great deal of them were also thinking things like “hey, with the new patch, the supply of Storm is going to increase, like, tenfold, so I’d better sell while prices are high!”. There’s not really anything we can do about it when the number of sellers of an item like Storm is so low.

On the bright side, the sellers are eventually going to have to realize that they’re selling too high for the demand for Storm, and they’re eventually going to have to lower the prices to compensate. By the looks of things, the price has already decreased ~80g from its peak last night, so I doubt that there’s too much worry about the selling price continuing to lower from here.

And that’s the whole thing about market manipulators. People can say that they’re bad but they’re doing good for the economy. If the price is too low before, then the demand/supply will dictate the better price. The fact that someone is willing to pay 200g now, when a few days ago a few wanted to only pay 150g shows that there was still room to find true equilibrium.

We have reached true equilibrium with weapons like Dawn/Dusk which have been in their prices ranges for a few months. Storm has been terribly underpriced for quite some time.

Manipulators are thieves and that’s that.

Well, they do indeed use a weapon as a mean of separating you from your gold.

Gasoline.2570:

Manipulators are thieves and that’s that.

Ooshi.8607:

Well, they do indeed use a weapon as a mean of separating you from your gold.

Good point. I lol’d.

Gasoline.2570:

Manipulators are thieves and that’s that.

And they do it under their veil of Stealth, too!

All more evidence that playing the tp is a valid form of gameplay.

Rebort.6295:

All more evidence that playing the tp is a valid form of gameplay.

Which kittens up the rest of the players.

Nope. Speculating is very risky business. One small update and a 100+g investment vanishes into thin air. Their risk is your loss, yes. For now. But once an update does go live, every speculator and their mother will be selling your precious precursor at bottom dollar, making your life a lot easier.

Nothing to fix here. You have 3 ways to get your precursor. If the fluctuating prices on the market is something you can’t handle, make it yourself or gamble the MF for it. The people selling on the market aren’t theives at all, no more than anything else you buy. They post a price, you decide if you want to buy it at that price. That’s all there is to it. Time for some people to grow up a bit.

Gasoline.2570:

Tell me this is natural and manipulators don’t exist. Come on anet, can you please fix precursors already?

Inb4 tinfoils.
Inb4 trolls.

Do you get how markets work? Oh and anyone is a troll if they don’t agree with you?

By the way, this is natural and has nothing to do with manipulators