Guild Wars 2

I am beginning to suspect that there is are large-scale gold farming groups which are controlling the prices of raw materials. All components seem to add up to the finished item price (crafting is nearly useless), and its all too perfect to just be players knowing what each item is worth. Not enough fluctuation.

I encourage ArenaNet to look into it because the economy on this game is boring as hell, and I normally love to trade & craft stuff, but there’s no point here.

Most players do know how much each item is worth. There is items with ridiculously high fluctuation – most of fine crafting materials, especially T5, ectos, lodestones and unidentified dyes.
Depend of the item, but lvl 80 crafted rare gear is usually cheaper than the materials needed to be crafted.
Price for crafting is high, because of the expensive T5 fine materials. T5 materials is expensive, because most of them is used for crafting rare greatswords or staffs and playing for precursor on the toilet.
The crafted item itself is cheap, because of the competition from lot of droped rare gear.
For lower level items the reason is similar. Greatswords and other weapons are relatively more expensive than the gear, but still there is some items you can craft and sell with profit. The common case is that if you craft and sell T3 gear item, you will get like 5-10% more, than if you sell the raw materials, but if you buy all raw materials and craft a piece of gear – you will loose money to the TP taxes.
Here the price is high because of the limited supply for lower tiers materials. No one is farming low level zones.
The prices for this low level items are high, because most of the low lvl players are alt characters made in accounts with hundreds of gold. I have 500 gold and i will make mesmer soon. I dont care about 10 or 20 gold for gear as long as it will help me level it up faster.

Sigh…. there have been countless threads about this already… please just stop it. There is no large manipilation or “mafia”! It’s just players knowing how to use a calculator and gw2spidy. If there’s an easy method to gain gold fast players will compete until it is no more.

Post done.

Poster right above me is spot on.

This is particularly true when you realize you don’t need to be farming to manipulate the market to the degree you’re talking about. Anyone with a few thousand gold can eke every possible morsel of short-term profit from a market as simple as crafting materials, and there are plenty of people like that.

Snowpea.5469:

I am beginning to suspect that there is are large-scale gold farming groups which are controlling the prices of raw materials. All components seem to add up to the finished item price (crafting is nearly useless), and its all too perfect to just be players knowing what each item is worth. Not enough fluctuation.

I encourage ArenaNet to look into it because the economy on this game is boring as hell, and I normally love to trade & craft stuff, but there’s no point here.

Global TP, crafting and all mats available to everyone, with crafting being also a great (and easy) way to level.
Guess in what that results? Right, everyone tries crafting and undercuts the previous seller until the prize is roughly at the material prize.
That has nothing to do with manipulation.

You can still make profits through crafting. Certain midlevel items sell really well for example.

But you have to look for market niches not simply craft the endgame recipes and excpect a huge income.

Snowpea.5469:

I am beginning to suspect that there is are large-scale gold farming groups which are controlling the prices of raw materials. All components seem to add up to the finished item price (crafting is nearly useless), and its all too perfect to just be players knowing what each item is worth. Not enough fluctuation.

I encourage ArenaNet to look into it because the economy on this game is boring as hell, and I normally love to trade & craft stuff, but there’s no point here.

You are exactly right. There is a large scale gold farming group that IS controling the market. Every player that has ever or will ever use the TP for any reason is a member. Welcome to the free market. Its a beautiful thing.

Yet another conspiracy post…

Realize that many, many people have 400s in Crafting, particularly in some of the higher-demand areas, like specific armor sets. As goldi stated, people just undercut and undercut one another until the profit margin is so small that it’s essentially worthless to craft for a profit. Also, realize that people are going to calculate how much it costs for them to supply armor and whatnot to you. They’re going to add up supply costs, and when that happens, you’ll have a price that has all the properties that you stated in your post.

Instead, look at what happens to the markets when, say, another wave of bots is banned. What I’m guessing you’ll discover is a brief but large fluctuation in prices that do give crafters, for a while, a profitable margin, because the economy has to, in a sense, “come to rest” with new supply prices.

I probably post it so many times. The reason it is very hard to craft and make money is because “the trading post is server wide”. Where as in other game you might have 2 or 3 competitor on crafting you have 60-80 in this game.

To the above poster: not 60-80… keep adding zeros to those numbers ^^

Every time a silly conspiracy thread pops up, your character must drink a Flask of Firewater.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Every time a silly conspiracy thread pops up, your character must drink a Flask of Firewater.

Oh goodness.

We should make a drinking game for conspiracy theories.

1. Go to wikipedia.
2. Search for “market equilibrium.”

That should clear up about 75% of the conspiracy theory threads on this forum.

Also, crafting provides value to the crafter greater just the value of what you produce.

price for crafted good + value placed of experience from crafting – cost of raw materials = value for crafting.

Therefore, the price for crafted good can be the same as the cost of raw materials and crafting will still have value, and people will still do it.