Guild Wars 2

Hello

I am interested in making money in the market but I have a doubt.
I have seen that some peopla have been banned for using loops in the market.
So my question is:
What is a market loop?
Thanks in advance!

The only one I’m familiar with was the snowflake “exploit” from Wintersday.

It allowed people to salvage a jewelry item for a good chance at ecto and a very good chance to retain the main (most valuable) portion of the item so it could be cheaply re-created and the only thing lost was some mithril.

This was controversial because some people felt that since the game engine allowed this to happen using normal gaming mechanics that it shouldn’t be considered an exploit.

It was also compared to light shoulder crafting which is when someone combines silk, thread and T5 crafting material to make a rare item that can be salvaged for ecto. Once the item is salvaged, the player is left with some residual silk scraps (and about 80 ectos per 100 salvages)

The main difference is one of proportion. In the snowflake jewelry scenario, the residual material after the ecto salvage is well over 50% of the value of the item (possibly 85% or more) where as in the case of the light shoulder armor crafting, the residual silk is less than 5% of the value of the item salvaged.

The market has not really been in a place to support light armor crafting for ecto for at least 6 months, but when it was “working”, it worked very well if done in large quantities and if costs were carefully managed – but it was also possible to lose money if you had a bad salvage run or the market took a sudden turn.

I think that anything that lets you generate significant value very quickly, with no risk and without proportionate effort should be looked at with the same skepticism that we regard “get rich quick” schemed in the real world.

Honestly, ANet will not comment on this because they have not been consistent. The snowflake exploit, which people were banned for, was not a market loop. It was extremely profitable, and generated a ton of ectos, but those ectos did not come from nothing. There was a net loss of mithril. Once the price of ectos dropped and the price of mithril rose, it became unprofitable.

I do feel it was an obvious exploit, but a true market loop would produce the ectos and give at least as much mithril back.

Compare this to the early goldskull or recent holo knight exploits and you have the exact same situation with far, far more profit potential…zero bans. Both took something cheap and common and produced very expensive items repeatedly with huge effect on the market. Of course, if I can craft a 200g jack-a-lop, dump it to highest bidder, and buy more holo knights…I’d consider that a pretty nice loop!

So what exactly does ANet consider a loop? Who knows. I love this game but this is an area where they have been extremely inconsistent, so just be careful – remember the “if it is too good to be true, it probably is” mentality.

Disclaimer: yes I said “exploit”, no I am not here to argue over what is/isn’t an “exploit”.

I wanted someone from the staff would have solved my doubt but that has not happened.

Looking for information I found what is a loop:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/How-to-make-1-glob-of-ectoplasm-into-stacks/page/2#post1037389

John Smith says exactly “finding a loop that reliably produces more and more items in a cycle is an exploit”.
But then I found this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OTayQ7g8qSQ&t=116

In this video Richie P says in 3:25 that there was not an endless loop but it was a loop.
Honestly, that makes no sense. By definition, a loop is something without limit. If it ends, is not a loop.

Also as John Smith also said: “There were several recipes that produced significantly more output than the input required and could be easily and reliably cycled without using Black Lion kits.”

They were more recipes that produced more output than the input required and it are not exploit.

Analyzing it, I deduce that these bans were for taking advantage of a recipe that produced benefits like many others but it was not a loop.

Based on this arguments, arenanet could ban anyone who only plays with the market. Anything you make a profit could be considered an exploit.

I am a bit concerned about this and I would like if someone from the staff could clarify the situation.

Rodri Z.5416:

Based on this arguments, arenanet could ban anyone who only plays with the market. Anything you make a profit could be considered an exploit.

The market does not produce anything whatsoever. On the contrary, every transaction involves a 15% reduction of gold.

An exploit, as Anet means it, is a recipe/series of recipies that begins with X materials and in the end produce X+Y materials, consistently and with minimal tradeoff of any other recources. Say, a recipe that involved one ecto and some mithril and produced 2 ectos and some mithril upon salvageing the final product.

PMilkos.9103:

An exploit, as Anet means it, is a recipe/series of recipies that begins with X materials and in the end produce X+Y materials, consistently and with minimal tradeoff of any other recources. Say, a recipe that involved one ecto and some mithril and produced 2 ectos and some mithril upon salvageing the final product.

Just to clarify, though, the snowflake exploit did not do this. There was a net loss of mithril and net gain for ecto.

Check the prices in December here…:
Mithril – http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19700
Ectoplasm – http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721

Mithril doubled in price while ecto lost about 33% until it became unprofitable. If the recipe produced extra mithril, it would have crashed. Not a “loop”…unlesss you consider the fat stacks of gold you are making as part of the loop.

For comparison, exotic minipets lost about 85% of their value temporarily after the holo knight was introduced.

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

Just to clarify, though, the snowflake exploit did not do this. There was a net loss of mithril and net gain for ecto.

Check the prices in December here…:
Mithril – http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19700
Ectoplasm – http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721

Mithril doubled in price while ecto lost about 33% until it became unprofitable. If the recipe produced extra mithril, it would have crashed. Not a “loop”…unlesss you consider the fat stacks of gold you are making as part of the loop.

For comparison, exotic minipets lost about 85% of their value temporarily after the holo knight was introduced.

Well, while I don’t have the exact recipes available in front of me to accurately judge, I would say that a method that produces large amounts of materials that are supposed to be rare, in exchange for a small amount of overabundant common materials does fit the “minimal tradeoff” qualification. Since mithril is so common that the economy can never run out of it, it could essentially be viewed as “creating large quantities of ectoplasm out of nothing”, something which, regardless of whether or not it would eventually be non-profitable, would be extremely damaging to the economy. From that point of view, yeah, you could say it was an exploit.

If anyone deserved punisment for it though, that would be the QA team for not reporting a problem that was beyond obvious, and not the players for simply making use of hat they were given. This is not a bug being exploited, that’s just faulty design of the game itself.

And this is sadly a recurring theme with each new patch: they always introduce things that can be “exploited”, things so glaring that should have being fixed before they even reached the QA team, and then when they quickly become common knowledge they frantically race trying to hotfix them. And the hotfix is often just as bad. Latest example: "Let’s make an event that is a test of skill rather than a farmfest (Queen’s Guntlet). What should we put in it? But of course a boss that can be consistently and succesfully repeated at a rate of about 1/minute with multiple gambits on by just cassually walking in circles around it, because the boss just stands there. And then just make an unlimited supply of entry tickets available for about around 40% of the amount of gold/sprockets awarded by completing that fight. What a surprise that everyone would farm it like there’s no tomorrow! And how should we try to fix this? Increase the price of tickets maybe? No, but of course with reducing the rewards of that boss alone, so that people can just keep farm other bosses just as easily for a minimal amount of gold/hour lost.

(Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It may be a pretty poor job on the part of the QA/hotfix team, but because of this I was able to gather enough gold to buy my long-wanted full set of runes of divinity within just a few days. So keep up the good job, guys)