Guild Wars 2

“We have been watching the prices climbing on Legendary precursors and share your concerns about some of them becoming too expensive. We will continue to monitor the situation and will make any adjustments we feel are necessary.” -Linsey Murdock

Precursor prices over past week have decreased slightly &/or have remained relatively stable. This however is only indicative of 2 things:

1. Linsey’s post scared precursor sellers into decreasing their prices or risk losing their cash cow.

2. Buyers interested in precursor market are withholding purchase until official announcement from A-NET.

What does this mean? It means if A-NET is waiting for precursors to hit a ideal value its not going to happen. The moment they announce “We are comfortable with current rate in which precursors are being sold for” it will be the greenlight for precursor sellers to make the prices skyrocket once again. Make no mistake the points listed above are the only reasons precursors are not hitting the 500-600g range this week.

What can be done? Best case scenario? A-NET needs to make all precursors account bound like almost every single other component of the legendary process & create a alternative for the acquisition of said precursor. This accomplishes 2 things:

1. It eliminates all the remaining precursors which are stockpiled by a handful of players being sold for vast sums of gold. These precursors (Most of which are the product of early exploits) are the reason behind a vast majority of the problems we are experiencing with the economy right now. A handful of players with so much wealth over precursor transactions it has impacted every other commodity.

2. It ensures the player actually earned said precursor. Not just swiped their Visa or got lucky at Mystic Forge slot machine (A design concept no one enjoys). Provided the alternative is challenging this could be much more rewarding than current design concept.

Suggestions: While I do have one which I think is particularly fitting/fair, I would like others to share their suggestions as well. I think a appropriate exchange for a precursor would be acquisition of the Dungeon Master title & (250-500) tokens from every dungeon. This proves you have experienced all dungeon content & your mastery of said dungeons. (Something that is somewhat lacking in legendary process) Tokens would be exchanged at a designated vendor or a token much like the “pact token” would be mailed to the player which could be exchanged for a precursor of their choice.

I don’t think they can change how precursor’s drop without pissing off alot of people that already bought them at this point since they’ve taken way too long.

At most they could bump the drop rate of it a smidge from the forge and/or world drops.

To me, the fix would be to implement a system that was used in another game: ff11. They had items that were catagorized as “rare/ex”. Ex basically meant soulbound, and rare meant you couldn’t hold more than 1 of them (ie, couldn’t dual wield 2 of the same rare/ex weapon)

Personally, I think a way to fix the market a bit would be to disallow people from carrying more than 1 precursor of the same type on an account. (shouldn’t be too difficult to implement) This would make it hard/impossible for people to control the market. Any precursor listed by an account on the TP would also count as them holding it (not sure if this is feasable with the current system) It would also let you keep your dumb gambling system that you guys seem so intent on keeping for the precursor.

Don’t agree at all. I don’t know how much you watch the Trading Post. Infinite Light hit the trading post for 555g about a week ago I think. It was gone a few hours later.

Volcanus has yet to hit the TP and costs about as much as Infinite light if all mats are bought I think the lightning hammer is close if not more than those 2 also.

Precursors weapons will 9/10 stay ahead in price of all other Unique exotics in the game. Whisper blade is on tp for 150g and seems to be selling the low Immobuls for 125g sold or was pulled there where 5 now there are 2 priced at 155g last I checked the 145g probably sold since I dont see it listed anymore.

I pay attention to all the exotic weapons the uniques and the precursors. In my opinion there really isnt anything to be done. I think whoever had all the dusks doesn’t have them anymore.

I poster on guru said he bought up a few low dusks and flipped them to higher price. If you notice when there are more dusks available the lower the price. When there are less the higher. Im sure you realize this is supply and demand. Its not just effecting precursors.

Khilbons Armor set for Light armor exotic. 3 days ago was 77g for the whole set lowest piece was the top at 6g cause there was 22 available.

Now more supply hit the tp you can get it all for 43g.

Basically Precursors are the top of the line the ferrari of weapons if you will. At least perceived that way by many people. Also there arent a ton of them and you can’t craft them yourselves. So they will always be higher than exotics.

Valkerye destroyer greatsword I got mine for 28g its 50g now on the tp. So unique exotics rise in price as materials rise in price so then Precursors rise in price.

Whisper blade was listed above zap 3 days ago. Didnt last long Zap shot up 90g more than whisper. Now if Im a seller of a precursor Im thinking to myself I have Zap listed at 120g and jormags breath is listed at 100g I am going to raise the price. Of course Zap is way more than 20g above jormags breath.

Maybe people just want to hold on to gifted exotics, because there is absolutely no demand for them on the TP. I’m not going to spend 30g on listing an item when no-one wants it in the first place.

In a few days Im going to be in a terrible position. I will have the gift of mastery, juggernaut, and fortune. I will have run out of money of course, and i will be low on karma as well. I will have no resources, but I will own everything but the pre-cursor. Without a way to earn it, I will have to grind money purely for the sake of throwing it either into the TP or the MF, to get out the hammer. I cannot earn it slowly and steadily, but instead rely on others in the TP, or hope for luck in the MF. In my opinion, ridiculous..

The problem with “grinding the cash for it” for a precursor is by the time you grind out say 300g for said precursor, it will be 500g. If you noticed from when the game went live, precursors were like 60g. Now they are 300-500g. And thats in a matter of like what, 2 months. I too thought of trying to grind cash for a staff but after thinking of what i just typed above, its gonna be futile.

I agree and think Anet needs to just make precursors acct bound and give em a fixed recipe for the mystic forge with a fairly high amount of mats so its still obtainable by the average joe but not so fast that everyone has one. Say something like 500 of X mats and 500 of Y mats. This way, when you devote say 2 hours to obtaining mats, you know its going to something guaranteed instead of “hey look, i spent 4 days farming mats to make 24 exotics and dumped all in the mystics forge and got absolutely nothing.”

oZii.2864:

Don’t agree at all. I don’t know how much you watch the Trading Post. Infinite Light hit the trading post for 555g about a week ago I think. It was gone a few hours later.

Volcanus has yet to hit the TP and costs about as much as Infinite light if all mats are bought I think the lightning hammer is close if not more than those 2 also.

Precursors weapons will 9/10 stay ahead in price of all other Unique exotics in the game. Whisper blade is on tp for 150g and seems to be selling the low Immobuls for 125g sold or was pulled there where 5 now there are 2 priced at 155g last I checked the 145g probably sold since I dont see it listed anymore.

I pay attention to all the exotic weapons the uniques and the precursors. In my opinion there really isnt anything to be done. I think whoever had all the dusks doesn’t have them anymore.

I poster on guru said he bought up a few low dusks and flipped them to higher price. If you notice when there are more dusks available the lower the price. When there are less the higher. Im sure you realize this is supply and demand. Its not just effecting precursors.

Khilbons Armor set for Light armor exotic. 3 days ago was 77g for the whole set lowest piece was the top at 6g cause there was 22 available.

Now more supply hit the tp you can get it all for 43g.

Basically Precursors are the top of the line the ferrari of weapons if you will. At least perceived that way by many people. Also there arent a ton of them and you can’t craft them yourselves. So they will always be higher than exotics.

Valkerye destroyer greatsword I got mine for 28g its 50g now on the tp. So unique exotics rise in price as materials rise in price so then Precursors rise in price.

Whisper blade was listed above zap 3 days ago. Didnt last long Zap shot up 90g more than whisper. Now if Im a seller of a precursor Im thinking to myself I have Zap listed at 120g and jormags breath is listed at 100g I am going to raise the price. Of course Zap is way more than 20g above jormags breath.

While I think you have many valid points I do not agree with your bottom one. If other exotics are going for a rate comparable to a precursor that does not mean the value of a precursor does or should increase.

There is absolutely nothing desirable or special about a precursor in most cases other than it leads to a legendary. Most precursors look horrible & for many they are less desirable than a normal exotic simply because players know they will have to throw another 400-500g + hundreds of hours of time into the recipe just to make it into a legendary “especially” with all the new MF 100% chance recipes that are being discovered that look amazing & many are comparable to a legendary without the grind.

I think the last part of Snow’s post is the important part. People who know they aren’t going to grind out a legendary aren’t spending the money on them, or they are going to farm everything else first and then worry about the gold.

The one issue with fearmongering about precursor prices in this thread: precursor prices are not open-ended. They are directly tied to the current “drop” rate at the MF and the price of the ingredients. Prices are stabilizing based on those factors. If someone decides to sell a precursor at 800g, they will be undercut because it is economical to do so.

When Linsey said, “We will continue to monitor the situation and will make any adjustments we feel are necessary,” that was not a promise that they were definitely going to make a change to the current precursor system; it was merely them re-stating their policy that ArenaNet takes an active interest in their in-game economy.

Believe me, they calculated the likely cost of a precursor based on the above factors and anticipated the current prices based on the current value of gold and raw materials.

Snow.5269:

(Most of which are the product of early exploits)

Do you have any evidence whatsoever for this bold claim? People seem to like making it a lot, whenever someone has a new legendary (see the Eternity thread) or a lot of money or more than one precursor or whatever. As far as I can tell, it’s just a bunch of sour grapes from people who are crabby that they aren’t doing as well in-game. You don’t have to accept the fact that you’re either not as good or not as lucky as someone else if you can conveniently accuse them of using an exploit, but that doesn’t make your accusation true.

These precursors are the reason behind a vast majority of the problems we are experiencing with the economy right now. A handful of players with so much wealth over precursor transactions it has impacted every other commodity.

I also have a hard time believing any of this. How does a lot of wealth in the precursors exchange, even if it is ill-gotten, explain the price fluctuations of low-level crafting materials?

The main problem with the Precursor now is it’s too easy to be controlled. Once a few people manage to have an early monopoly for whatever reason (I won’t throw around accusation) they can maintain an iron-grip on the Precursor market. The output is low enough for them to control, and the entry barrier is pretty much prohibitive at this point.

I support the notion of maybe Precusor should become a AB or SB on acquire and some tunning is done to their acquisition. It may be not the perfect solution but IMO, something like a legendary of one person should not be subjected to another person wimp.

I really don’t see how making them soulbound or account bound would help anybody. It’s not like people with enough money to pay several hundred gold for a precursor will suddenly magically not have that much money if precursors are taken off the market. All the gold in the game comes from vendors and events and renown hearts, and a sizeable chunk of it then leaves the game via the TP. Removing precursors from the TP would really have very little effect other than removing quite a large gold sink from their sales.

Account bound on equipment is one method in which to limit artificial inflation. It would make the player buying to use the item, not to flip it. To have this implemented though, preview through TP would first need to be necessary in my opinion.

Alternatively (and one I would prefer), you can just add a time limit for an item on sell. Currently (as far as I can tell), the item can be listed indefinitely. If a time limit (say, 3 days per listing) is implemented, then artificial inflation can be mitigated since you would just be throwing away money if you are not pricing it at where buyers would be willing to buy. This would put the power back in buyer’s hands. Problem with this implementation is we don’t know if this would cause a good or bad chain reaction to non-precursor equipment/material. Various buy conditions can be added on, but the general idea is the same.

I personally think that it’s more important to make changes to how TP functions than to make any changes to how precursors are obtained.

TJL

Arciel.9650
The main problem with the Precursor now is it’s too easy to be controlled. Once a few people manage to have an early monopoly for whatever reason (I won’t throw around accusation) they can maintain an iron-grip on the Precursor market. The output is low enough for them to control, and the entry barrier is pretty much prohibitive at this point.

Lets imagine two scenarios;
1. A few dozen people have precursors because of an early exploit (a favorite theory here, it seems). They trickle them out onto the TP for high prices, making it hard for anyone to afford them.

2. These precursors become account bound, so nobody can trickle them out onto the TP at any price.

You aren’t going to get your precursors any faster with scenario 2, you just lost a way of getting them that you had in scenario 1.

People are conflating two different things, one is a small number of people who may or may not have a pile of precursors, and the other is the system ANet has for making them. They are completely unrelated. If you want ANet to make legendary precursors easier or more reliable to get, just ask for it. I suspect they will refuse, because they want the legendaries to require a great deal of effort to get, and they seem to like the random chance element (which I’m not wild about either, by the way). They certainly can’t change anything about the TP to force those hoarders, if they exist, to cough up their supply at a low price, though.

Easy fix, make a overly complicated scavanger run from heart vendors and a at least basic dungeon achivement as the requirement for unlocking the combinations (like collecting 80 special/flavour texted heart weapons of the type and somehow combining them for the precursor).

The current precursor method fills an important role in the economy: it drains the supply of crafted and looted, rare and exotic weapons on the market. No proposal that I’ve read for an alternate method of precursor obtainment would replace that role in the economy. Those are needed to provide an outlet for the supply of mithril and orichalcum ore, elder and ancient wood, ectoplasm and T5/T6 fine materials.

“The current precursor method fills an important role in the economy: it drains the supply of crafted and looted, rare and exotic weapons on the market. No proposal that I’ve read for an alternate method of precursor obtainment would replace that role in the economy. Those are needed to provide an outlet for the supply of mithril and orichalcum ore, elder and ancient wood, ectoplasm and T5/T6 fine materials.”

I’ve hear this argument before but it doesn’t hold much weight. Right now the way legendaries are currently designed a person would be silly to throw anything into the Mystic Forge. 1-3g attempts with a 1% chance of success? No thanks. I like many other refuse to, so what exactly is getting removed from the economy? Most of the precursors still in existence are the result of early exploits & were hoarded. Very few new precursors have been reportedly made/found. If our entire economy is that dependent on precursors to survive then something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Snow.5269:

oZii.2864:

Don’t agree at all. I don’t know how much you watch the Trading Post. Infinite Light hit the trading post for 555g about a week ago I think. It was gone a few hours later.

Volcanus has yet to hit the TP and costs about as much as Infinite light if all mats are bought I think the lightning hammer is close if not more than those 2 also.

Precursors weapons will 9/10 stay ahead in price of all other Unique exotics in the game. Whisper blade is on tp for 150g and seems to be selling the low Immobuls for 125g sold or was pulled there where 5 now there are 2 priced at 155g last I checked the 145g probably sold since I dont see it listed anymore.

I pay attention to all the exotic weapons the uniques and the precursors. In my opinion there really isnt anything to be done. I think whoever had all the dusks doesn’t have them anymore.

I poster on guru said he bought up a few low dusks and flipped them to higher price. If you notice when there are more dusks available the lower the price. When there are less the higher. Im sure you realize this is supply and demand. Its not just effecting precursors.

Khilbons Armor set for Light armor exotic. 3 days ago was 77g for the whole set lowest piece was the top at 6g cause there was 22 available.

Now more supply hit the tp you can get it all for 43g.

Basically Precursors are the top of the line the ferrari of weapons if you will. At least perceived that way by many people. Also there arent a ton of them and you can’t craft them yourselves. So they will always be higher than exotics.

Valkerye destroyer greatsword I got mine for 28g its 50g now on the tp. So unique exotics rise in price as materials rise in price so then Precursors rise in price.

Whisper blade was listed above zap 3 days ago. Didnt last long Zap shot up 90g more than whisper. Now if Im a seller of a precursor Im thinking to myself I have Zap listed at 120g and jormags breath is listed at 100g I am going to raise the price. Of course Zap is way more than 20g above jormags breath.

While I think you have many valid points I do not agree with your bottom one. If other exotics are going for a rate comparable to a precursor that does not mean the value of a precursor does or should increase.

There is absolutely nothing desirable or special about a precursor in most cases other than it leads to a legendary. Most precursors look horrible & for many they are less desirable than a normal exotic simply because players know they will have to throw another 400-500g + hundreds of hours of time into the recipe just to make it into a legendary “especially” with all the new MF 100% chance recipes that are being discovered that look amazing & many are comparable to a legendary without the grind.

Thats why the price is high. Precursor =/= legendary but people think it does. Many people obsess over the precursor without thinking about all the other things you have to worry about. Clovers are the worst part of precursors in my opinion I think anyone who hasn’t started working on a legendary doesn’t realize it. They just want the precursor first then start working more on legendary.

Its not like people want to run around with the precursor I think they just want it as the validation to start working more intensely on completing a legendary. This is just my opinion really. On my server I do see alot of people that don’t have a precursor but are working on their legendary.

Many people obsess over the precursor without thinking about all the other things you have to worry about.

Other things are all set in stone though and can be planned for, even with the rng on clovers. Precursor is the only really variable thing without a 100% reliable way of getting it because it is partly dictated by how actual players price/value the items (both buyers and sellers).

You can get lucky with 4x 15 silver rares, you could feed 1000g of rares into the forge or you could plan to buy it off the tp with its fluctuating prices.

Personally I’m about half way there with all the other stuff just through playing a lot, before I start focus grinding I want the precursor just in case it is impossible to get when I have all the rest done, so all my money for the last month has been kitten into the forge trying to get lucky.

To be honest, with the new karma updates (dungeon, daily, monthly), it is no longer an issue at all. Just one month of jugs (20+30) with karma +70% will yield you 380k. Add in dungeon karma as well as your regular grind while farming for gold, hitting 1 million will be a simple matter now.

As someone working on, and getting close to, Bolt, I feel that the prohibitive factor is now purely gold. This is compounded by the fact, at least in my case, by the cost of gift of “legendary name” going upwards due to lodestone price hike. I’m getting killed by the price of charged lodestones right now, and I will probably end up paying 20-30g more for gift of bolt than the precursor itself.

Gift of Fortune and Gift of mastery are basically non-factors at the moment. Gift of legendary and the precursor will cost you roughly 85-90% of total cost. If market stablizes for lodestone around 1-1.5g, to be honest the pricing for precursor around 200-300g seems about right. Again, I believe the issue can be alleviated greatly with a time limit on item listed, which would prevent artificial inflation and put the price determinant of those items back in buyer’s hands.

TJL

Snow.5269:

“The current precursor method fills an important role in the economy: it drains the supply of crafted and looted, rare and exotic weapons on the market. No proposal that I’ve read for an alternate method of precursor obtainment would replace that role in the economy. Those are needed to provide an outlet for the supply of mithril and orichalcum ore, elder and ancient wood, ectoplasm and T5/T6 fine materials.”

I’ve hear this argument before but it doesn’t hold much weight. Right now the way legendaries are currently designed a person would be silly to throw anything into the Mystic Forge. 1-3g attempts with a 1% chance of success? No thanks. I like many other refuse to, so what exactly is getting removed from the economy? Most of the precursors still in existence are the result of early exploits & were hoarded. Very few new precursors have been reportedly made/found. If our entire economy is that dependent on precursors to survive then something is terribly, terribly wrong.

You supply no evidence to prove that most of the precursors on the market at the moment are the result of early exploits. These things drop every day in Orr and just because YOU dont like to gamble in the mystic forge doesn’t mean people with a large bank roll don’t craft massive amounts of rares/exotics to create precursors via the mystic forge thereby putting a massive demand on the economy for all sorts of materials.

The argument that the precursor market essentially balances the supply and demand for end game materials such as wood ore and other fine mats is extremely important. Just because YOU don’t do it doesn’t mean other people aren’t doing it and making a killing by selling the precursors they make from the MF. The thing is to do it reliably takes a large time and gold investment and most people are just not interested in doing it. So if you don’t want to invest in making your own then buy one off the TP or move on to something else.

ryokoalways.3450:

Account bound on equipment is one method in which to limit artificial inflation. It would make the player buying to use the item, not to flip it. To have this implemented though, preview through TP would first need to be necessary in my opinion.

If it’s account bound, it can’t be sold on the TP. Period. So no, it wouldn’t have this effect.

Alternatively (and one I would prefer), you can just add a time limit for an item on sell. Currently (as far as I can tell), the item can be listed indefinitely. If a time limit (say, 3 days per listing) is implemented, then artificial inflation can be mitigated since you would just be throwing away money if you are not pricing it at where buyers would be willing to buy. This would put the power back in buyer’s hands.

Power is already in the buyers’ hands. If you haven’t noticed, buyers have to agree to the price either way, and buy orders for precursors aren’t much below sell listings, relatively speaking.

Snow.5269:

Right now the way legendaries are currently designed a person would be silly to throw anything into the Mystic Forge. 1-3g attempts with a 1% chance of success? No thanks. I like many other refuse to, so what exactly is getting removed from the economy?

It doesn’t matter if you and some others refuse to, when others are singlehandedly throwing in hundreds of exotics or thousands of rares. With that kind of volume, the economy doesn’t need all that many people willing to do it.

Most of the precursors still in existence are the result of early exploits & were hoarded. Very few new precursors have been reportedly made/found.

Do you have any reason to believe this beyond sour-grapes bitterness that others have been luckier than you?

If our entire economy is that dependent on precursors to survive then something is terribly, terribly wrong.

I’m pretty sure no one is buying tier 1-4 materials or sub-level-70 weapons in order to get precursors. So the economy isn’t dependent on precursors to survive, though they do play an important role in the supply and demand of high-end stuff.

Snow.5269:

“The current precursor method fills an important role in the economy: it drains the supply of crafted and looted, rare and exotic weapons on the market. No proposal that I’ve read for an alternate method of precursor obtainment would replace that role in the economy. Those are needed to provide an outlet for the supply of mithril and orichalcum ore, elder and ancient wood, ectoplasm and T5/T6 fine materials.”

I’ve hear this argument before but it doesn’t hold much weight. Right now the way legendaries are currently designed a person would be silly to throw anything into the Mystic Forge. 1-3g attempts with a 1% chance of success? No thanks. I like many other refuse to, so what exactly is getting removed from the economy? Most of the precursors still in existence are the result of early exploits & were hoarded. Very few new precursors have been reportedly made/found. If our entire economy is that dependent on precursors to survive then something is terribly, terribly wrong.

Any person would be silly to throw anything into the Mystic Forge? Not at all. The scale is large and the risk of not getting a precursor is substantial; however over the long term:

• 3g attempts
• 1% chance of success
• mean number of attempts is, what, 50? (don’t know, haven’t calculated probabilities for a while)
• Assuming the above, average cost 150g with risk of failure
• Throw it up on the market for 300g, turn ~100g profit after taxes

It will always be worthwhile to create a precursor. The price that a player will be willing to both buy and sell a precursor for will reflect the difficulty of creating one. The daunting entrance to the business of crafting precursors means that creating one is currently a very valuable accomplishment and will be worth good money to other players who are seeking that item.

The cost and success rate of creating a precursor, call it 1% or whatever, is most likely in place to both establish a market for creating precursors and an average cost of 200-400 exotic weapons or 2000-4000 rare weapons. There’s a lot of liability with a lot of possible reward in that business, and it creates exactly the high-end crafting material sink I pointed out.

The argument that, “most precursors were made with exploits and very few new ones have been made,” is a matter of opinion and speculation only. There are not an infinite number of ‘exploited’ precursors in existence, and hundreds if not thousands of people are throwing hundreds of thousands of weapons into the Mystic Forge seeking them. It’s more likely that they will ultimately comprise a very small fraction of the whole precursor market.

If there’s a set probability of getting the item on each attempt, it’s a geometric distribution, whose average is 1/p, or 100 attempts for a 1% chance, or an average cost to produce of 300g.

Which is why some have maintained that precursors are currently underpriced, despite how expensive they are.

(I would expect the price to be higher than the average cost by more than just the 15% necessary to profit after taxes, because the 50% of people who spent more than average will want to at least break even, and those who spent average or below average will be happy to charge the same price.)

Hippocampus.8470:

ryokoalways.3450:

Account bound on equipment is one method in which to limit artificial inflation. It would make the player buying to use the item, not to flip it. To have this implemented though, preview through TP would first need to be necessary in my opinion.

If it’s account bound, it can’t be sold on the TP. Period. So no, it wouldn’t have this effect.

Alternatively (and one I would prefer), you can just add a time limit for an item on sell. Currently (as far as I can tell), the item can be listed indefinitely. If a time limit (say, 3 days per listing) is implemented, then artificial inflation can be mitigated since you would just be throwing away money if you are not pricing it at where buyers would be willing to buy. This would put the power back in buyer’s hands.

Power is already in the buyers’ hands. If you haven’t noticed, buyers have to agree to the price either way, and buy orders for precursors aren’t much below sell listings, relatively speaking.

Point 1 is meant to be account bound on purchase. This way, you are buying purely to use an item, and not to resell it. Problem is, this method is not good unless preview is available so buyers know what they are getting. Additionally, this has to be limited to equipment because account bound on purchase would have adverse effect on materials.

Point 2 is more to address an issue that will arise as more money enters the game. This is purely an issue with Precursors though, and really do not affect anything else. Demand for precursor will always be infinite, so price will have to rise, which isn’t a problem. The issue is the balance between increasing wealth vs increasing price. The goal is to purely punish people that would be willing to put up the Legend for 500g just because he can, and not for legitimate sellers that place it between (at the moment) 250-350g.

TJL

ryokoalways.3450:

Hippocampus.8470:

ryokoalways.3450:

Account bound on equipment is one method in which to limit artificial inflation. It would make the player buying to use the item, not to flip it. To have this implemented though, preview through TP would first need to be necessary in my opinion.

If it’s account bound, it can’t be sold on the TP. Period. So no, it wouldn’t have this effect.

Alternatively (and one I would prefer), you can just add a time limit for an item on sell. Currently (as far as I can tell), the item can be listed indefinitely. If a time limit (say, 3 days per listing) is implemented, then artificial inflation can be mitigated since you would just be throwing away money if you are not pricing it at where buyers would be willing to buy. This would put the power back in buyer’s hands.

Power is already in the buyers’ hands. If you haven’t noticed, buyers have to agree to the price either way, and buy orders for precursors aren’t much below sell listings, relatively speaking.

Point 1 is meant to be account bound on purchase. This way, you are buying purely to use an item, and not to resell it. Problem is, this method is not good unless preview is available so buyers know what they are getting. Additionally, this has to be limited to equipment because account bound on purchase would have adverse effect on materials.

Point 2 is more to address an issue that will arise as more money enters the game. This is purely an issue with Precursors though, and really do not affect anything else. Demand for precursor will always be infinite, so price will have to rise, which isn’t a problem. The issue is the balance between increasing wealth vs increasing price. The goal is to purely punish people that would be willing to put up the Legend for 500g just because he can, and not for legitimate sellers that place it between (at the moment) 250-350g.

TJL

The demand for precursors is no more infinite than the ability to produce them. Not everyone wants all legendaries, not everyone even wants any legendary, and not everyone is going to buy a legendary from the trading post. If someone tries to manipulate the market and mark up precursors so high that few can afford them, then, in the long run:

• More legendary seekers will try to create their own precursor using the MF
• More precursors sellers will enter the market to undercut the person marking up prices

Supply is only limited by the time it takes to tear up Mithril Ore, Elder Wood Logs, and any fine crafting materials in Orr.

Demand is also, as ever, not a single value, finite or otherwise. Demand changes with price, and at the moment likely decreases to zero long before we get to truly absurd prices like 1000g for one of the precursors.

+1 Agreed with OP.

I agree for some part and disagree for the majority of what you just said.

First, let’s assume precursor can be obtained some other way other than using mystic forge then the question is how we going to have a stable market with the extoics/rares?
the entire trade post will be flooded with them because you only need one time upgrade then you are pretty much done. Who is going to buy all those rares and extoics to keep the price high? or should all the rares and extoics fall below current market line? if there is no sink for those items there will be no use for them at all except turning them into ectos. (pretty much the price is dropping as well)

Second, let’s assume people can get precursor by running massive number of dungeons and trade tokens or dungeon master titles (which they will probably just speed run all of them and get them within 2-3 days) so now everyone has precursor and the legendary part isnt really difficult to get since the mats are really cheap now. They also made monthly achievement + daily + dungeon (with karma buff). Unlike those who was grinding orr like a bot few weeks before they obtained legendaries. So with this now everyone has legendaries wouldn’t that make you feel just like everyone else? why obtain the legendary at first place if everyone can get it easily?

Third, this is the part you makes me lid for a moment. You said wipe out existing precursors on the market? are you kidding me? most of them in the market right now are the one being made AFTER the godskull nerf and as we heard from A-net they ONLY nerf the lower level ones they did not touch other drop rate formulas besides that. I have a dawn I made after the patch recent ago. Are you saying to tell them to remove it because YOU didn’t get one? I think that is pretty unfair opinion you just made there. There are number of people in game who just recently made their precursor and they pulled in a lots of resource into it. Of course some of them have help from their guild but most of them done it alone just like me.

Lastly, buying a precursor may seems impossible to some of you especially if you play less 2 hours a day but there are ways to make gold without farming Orr. You can farm TP if you know how to invest. I know people that made 500g every week spending like half hour on TP alone. Some people buy, some people sell. This is a real world market. Take adventage during special events (halloween)(wintersday)(new year festavial)(ect.). I might post a how to TP gold guide under the black-lion trade section but really….precursor has been talking about a lot and the price will be maintained as long there are competition sellers in the market.

The OP gives no reason to believe that those two points are the “only” reason that precursor prices are currently relatively stable at 300-400g. Moreover, even if this was the case, so what? ArenaNet by no means has to make a ridiculous announcement like “we are happy with current prices” – it makes no sense for them to do this.

In any case, I don’t agree with the idea that those factors are the “only reason” precursors aren’t hitting 500g-600g. As long as the average cost to make a precursor is more like 300g, the price cannot remain at 500-600g for any significant period of time.

The thing I’ve noticed is that the precursor’s are popping up much more commonly now that the new updates to the mystic forge has occurred.

My thinking is that the prices are going to be slowly dropping now and hopefully within the next month or so they may hover around the 200 Gold mark. One can only hope.

In the mean time my question is this, have you got ALL the other necessary components for your legendary yet? If not, then I would not even begin to worry about the precursor because you have a heck of a lot of work to do before it even makes a difference….

Azelroth.6801:

The thing I’ve noticed is that the precursor’s are popping up much more commonly now that the new updates to the mystic forge has occurred.

My thinking is that the prices are going to be slowly dropping now and hopefully within the next month or so they may hover around the 200 Gold mark. One can only hope.

In the mean time my question is this, have you got ALL the other necessary components for your legendary yet? If not, then I would not even begin to worry about the precursor because you have a heck of a lot of work to do before it even makes a difference….

Gift of fortune and Gift of Mastery are the requirements for every legendary. I’m going for one of the greatswords, and I really don’t mind. I’m waiting for the precursor to move on for the next component and all I need besides the dusk/dawn is either charged or onyx lodestones so… you are not 100% right.

3-400g or 5-600g .. When we are on this level it doesn’t really matter. Either you were lucky playing the TP early or you have to buy your way up there. These rediculously high prices encourage buying gold from 3rd party sites, which is sad.

Actually farming 600g is not going to be a possible feat for most, if any, people!

I kind of wonder where the money to buy them is coming from right now. Are there really that many people with that much money buying them or are they sitting there and never being bought? There are only profitable if someone is buying, obviously, so there must be people willing to pay that much. Honestly this points to a more pressing issue to me, which is the mass inflation that will occur over time as more money is pumped into the system. If there are enough people with hundreds of gold around right now that precursors are making money then its going to get worse over time as more gold is created in the economy. I wouldn’t be surprised if things on the market sell for thousands of gold a year or two down the line.

Twilight Zone Guy.1487:

I kind of wonder where the money to buy them is coming from right now. Are there really that many people with that much money buying them or are they sitting there and never being bought? There are only profitable if someone is buying, obviously, so there must be people willing to pay that much. Honestly this points to a more pressing issue to me, which is the mass inflation that will occur over time as more money is pumped into the system. If there are enough people with hundreds of gold around right now that precursors are making money then its going to get worse over time as more gold is created in the economy. I wouldn’t be surprised if things on the market sell for thousands of gold a year or two down the line.

The game is world wide so its not like there are a ton of people running around with fat pockets. Its just that everyone can see which are the most wanted items. So you can see there is 12 dusks for sale then 8 left after a week or whatever and everyone knows its people with fat pockets. If 4 dusks get bought it doesnt mean mass pop is rich.

Some people make the price hike on purpose to flip them. Ive only seen 3 legendaries on my server and I have alot of hours played. 2 people just recently got theirs and 1 is world first for Frost Fang. Maybe its different on other servers. Only time I ever see alot of the more expensive weapons is if I get moved to overflow in Lions Arch then its people from everywhere in there. Still maybe 1 or 2 of the really expensive weapons if I see any there.

3. t5 and t6 rare material prices crashed. Inceased amount of throwing junk to forge due cheaper raw material prices has increased supply of precursors.

When it costs only half as much to make rares to throw them into forge you kinda should expect people to end up more precursors due increased lottery tickets.

It’s not that hard to figure out. t5 rare material prices have gone down to 20 range from 80 range. That’s 60c*15*4 aka 36 silver less per forging.

Let’s say 30c for mithril ore, 45c for elder wood log. 4x rare greatswords cost
48 plank (21,6s)
96 ingot(28,8s)
60 rare mat (12s)
Which ends up 62s40c – naturally cheaper when you get other 2 mats @ cheaper price. Now compare that to 1g(98s40c) version? That’s like 57% increased supply.

Ofcourse these figures aren’t completly 1-1 related because mithril and elder wood have gone up in price (october 4th, price of mithril was 25 and elderwood log was 22 while t5 mats were in 80-90 range) due their exessive consumption due cheaper rare materials & reduced supply (no server swapping anymore for easy mats?).
So, back then it’d costed 82s56c to 88s56c (80-90c for rare t5), then price suddenly fell to some 50s~ range and tada.

We shouldn’t forge increased amount of gold in circulation (inflation, anyone) which should increase amount of junk thrown to forge because people just can afford doing that.
—-
Naturally I could be completly wrong – but then it should be easy to prove that.

Ok so I want to point out something from the very beggining of this thread nad remake an argument.

A hugely minute and miniscule number of the GW2 community own precursor weapons. This is bad, because they can (and have done) charge what they want and become a financial superpower which dramatically effects the rest of the economy and effectively devalues everything else for them alone. Everything is affordable to them and the majority of the market is not affordable for us. Looking at gold sincs, we can see that this causes inbalance as well. For example map travel – to be fair the gold sinc should scale to your overall finance in the same way that tax does in real life. However it is currently bound by level only, so players of the same level but much less finance will find that the gold sinc in map travel is a significant cost and limits their gameplay in comparison to a rich player.

This represents the flaws in our own real life economy which has lead to nations borrowing money that they do not have and digging deeper debts. (This could potentially be a dangerous real life threat for GW2 players that might want to use real money to buy gold… it’s very easy to get carried away!)

A point that some people are making is that Items need to leave the economy (e.g. thousands of mystic forge attempts) in equilibrium with items entering in order that they may maintain value, which has been highlighted by one of the devs earlier in this post (millions of the same item sitting in TP will reduce their value significantly).

A couple of good examples of this are Anet creating goals and rewards that involve these worthless mats e.g. monthly salvage title – a great way to get basic mats back out of TP. This works incredibly well. Mystic forge itself as a priciple (not involving precursor weapons) does this incredibly well also – buy four items of lesser value for the potential to get one item of greater value.

The problem is that precursor weapons have completely demolished the economy because they are near enough priceless.

Random chance is actually not a fair model at all. Players have purchased this game to experience it’s content; some of that content needs to be worked for and earned – a good ethic that creates a sense of investment and pride in the Player’s account which thus leads them to most likely stay committed to the game for longer. Random chance ensures that some players will never get a precursor weapon – it is likely that they will eventually, but is still possible that it will never happen.

For this problem to be resolved and thus balance returned to the TP and overall economy I believe firmly, as others have stated, that the precursor weapons need to be account bound and thus literally priceless. NOT at all worthless. But priceless. They need to be removed from the TP.

Tom Larder.9701:

For this problem to be resolved and thus balance returned to the TP and overall economy I believe firmly, as others have stated, that the precursor weapons need to be account bound and thus literally priceless. NOT at all worthless. But priceless. They need to be removed from the TP.

Lets suppose this is done. How will this help you get a precursor? You just removed one source of supply (the TP), but the Mystic Forge creation system hasn’t changed, so it will still require exactly the same grind it does now, except that you can no longer subcontract that grind out to someone who doesn’t mind doing it and putting it on the TP for you to buy.

Tom Larder.9701:

Ok so I want to point out something from the very beggining of this thread nad remake an argument.

A hugely minute and miniscule number of the GW2 community own precursor weapons. This is bad, because they can (and have done) charge what they want and become a financial superpower which dramatically effects the rest of the economy and effectively devalues everything else for them alone. Everything is affordable to them and the majority of the market is not affordable for us. Looking at gold sincs, we can see that this causes inbalance as well. For example map travel – to be fair the gold sinc should scale to your overall finance in the same way that tax does in real life. However it is currently bound by level only, so players of the same level but much less finance will find that the gold sinc in map travel is a significant cost and limits their gameplay in comparison to a rich player.

This represents the flaws in our own real life economy which has lead to nations borrowing money that they do not have and digging deeper debts. (This could potentially be a dangerous real life threat for GW2 players that might want to use real money to buy gold… it’s very easy to get carried away!)

A point that some people are making is that Items need to leave the economy (e.g. thousands of mystic forge attempts) in equilibrium with items entering in order that they may maintain value, which has been highlighted by one of the devs earlier in this post (millions of the same item sitting in TP will reduce their value significantly).

A couple of good examples of this are Anet creating goals and rewards that involve these worthless mats e.g. monthly salvage title – a great way to get basic mats back out of TP. This works incredibly well. Mystic forge itself as a priciple (not involving precursor weapons) does this incredibly well also – buy four items of lesser value for the potential to get one item of greater value.

The problem is that precursor weapons have completely demolished the economy because they are near enough priceless.

Random chance is actually not a fair model at all. Players have purchased this game to experience it’s content; some of that content needs to be worked for and earned – a good ethic that creates a sense of investment and pride in the Player’s account which thus leads them to most likely stay committed to the game for longer. Random chance ensures that some players will never get a precursor weapon – it is likely that they will eventually, but is still possible that it will never happen.

For this problem to be resolved and thus balance returned to the TP and overall economy I believe firmly, as others have stated, that the precursor weapons need to be account bound and thus literally priceless. NOT at all worthless. But priceless. They need to be removed from the TP.

No! Like has been said several times in this thread by a few people. Saying that only a handful have precursors is speculation. No one has evidence of that. Really there was 1 guy who had all the dusks he posted on guru. It got hot on reddit. He made a ton of money.

That was like 1 month ago. You think he is the only 1 with a Dusk since then? The system is basically rich get richer if you want to. Many people are just chucking rares to get any precursor and flipping it. All that has been done by those “rich few” people is they have shown everyone that looks at the tp about where to price a precursor. Thats it.

Precursors have not demolished the economy (hyperbole) bots have. Like a poster said above me Its cheaper now to find a Precursor than before. All you need is a level 80 rare weapon to get you in the door and if you dont care about what precursor you get and just want to make some money. You can get 2 focus and like 2 spears for 70s total. with a random chance to get any exotic which could still mean profit. Cause alot of people do that to.

Bots have hurt the economy not people that have the precursor market cornered. When its not cornered in the first place because anyone has the chance to get one. So barrier to entry is luck/rng. Globs of ecto are like 13 silver 60copper last I checked your almost better off salvaging any rare below level 80 than even trying to sell it on the TP.

Only reason prices for level 80 great swords always hover at 19s-22s on average is because of people throwing them in the forge.

Prices reflect supply & demand.

Supply: an incompletely understood process involving the mystic forge. Some people undoubtedly know more about this than is public knowledge, but are not sharing it (to keep supply low).

Demand: everyone who wants a legendary weapon.
Demand: everyone who sees the price of legendary items only going up, who want to buy legendaries only to resell them at a higher price.

All that needs to hapkitten either have a change in the supply or the demand. Knowledge on the supply side will have a greater effect than actual adjustments in the drop rate. If a-net were to reveal that 1 in 100 mythic forges with matching level 80 gear will spit out a weapon, the price of a precursor becomes pinned at ‘not less than’ the price of 100 of the exotics used, and caps somewhere not unreasonably above that price (perhaps 200% above, but not 100000% above, which is the type of scenario most people posting here would prefer to avoid).

If that knowledge becomes open, then the price speculators lose their bubble market.

If you make the items bound, you destroy the market. I don’t see a-net doing that – its taking a failure of the user-base and compounding it with an adjustment that prevents other players from recreating the successes that many users are upset with. – make no mistake, in my eye, the users have failed to stabilize the precursor market – all they need to do is find the precursor drop rate. Not hard, that. Just expensive.

To all you users out there: find the drop rate, and the bubble goes away. It really is that simple.

//Yamagawa

Oh, and the wiki has tools for gleaning real and meaningfull numbers from binomial drop rates, even if they include a no-drops scenario. By all means, stop sitting on your own thumbs and fix this problem yourselves. Or do you really need a-net to spoon feed you everything?

oZii.2864:

Precursors have not demolished the economy (hyperbole) bots have.

Personally, I’m not even convinced the economy is “demolished” or ruined or whatever people keep claiming, by bots or otherwise.

Yes, prices have gone down on a lot of things, and yes, bots do affect the economy and are bad for many other reasons reasons, but none of that means that the economy is currently “bad”.

They relaxed the anti-farm code a week or two ago. As a result there’s much more gold coming into the system. Inflation on top-end items like precursors is to be expected.

This of course doesn’t address the massive godskull exploitation that went on early in the game which arenanet did absolutely nothing about.

People need to stop quoting demand as everyone who “wants” a legendary precursor. Demand is set by the people who want the precursor AND have the ability to buy it. 400g is not unattainable but requires some serious commitment if you want to do it yourself. I farmed up everything for my Twilight in about 300ish hours making roughly 2g+ per hour.

All this argument really comes down to is people not wanting to invest the time or having the discipline to save enough gold to craft their legendary. I got a full magic find set then literally did not spend money on anything but travel, repairs, and magic find food/boosters for 300+ hours of play. If I can do it then you can too.

Agreed, it’s all about the effort since nobody is forcing anyone to go after a “skin”. If you want to be outstanding? You WORK for it.

Also, it’s always true that early market favors those who have the brain to invest on the right thing. So you can’t really blame those people stocking up on precursors. It’s all capitalism like what we are doing now EVERYDAY in our life.

Yeah, because farming orr for 300 hours on autopilot is the mark of “oustanding.”

Good grief.

Yukishiro.8792:

They relaxed the anti-farm code a week or two ago. As a result there’s much more gold coming into the system. Inflation on top-end items like precursors is to be expected.

And yet, it was a week or two ago when Dawn and Dusk more or less stopped getting more expensive.

So when should I expect to see those prices start rising again as you predict? Will they have to re-institute the harsher anti-farm code first?

This of course doesn’t address the massive godskull exploitation that went on early in the game which arenanet did absolutely nothing about.

For how many more months are you going to continue blaming all your complaints on Godskull? Do you really believe gold from that still constitutes a significant fraction of the total in-game wealth?

If so, do you actually have even a little bit of legitimate data to back that up?

The amount of people opposed to make precursors actually challenging to acquire is astounding. What is legendary about going to a 3rd party site & purchasing 300g? What is legendary about sitting at the mystic forge & throwing garbage into it until you get a desired result? Absolutely nothing.

Horrible, horrible design. The only reasons a person would not support a positive change to the game is out of fear of losing “special snowflake”status, they have no understanding of other prerequisites, or they have a precursor already.

Snow hits the nail on the head there. Prices like this only encourage people to buy from 3rd party sites.
It would be (for 90% of the people) too expensive to buy this amount of gold in the gem store and nearly impossible to farm3-400 gold for precurser and another 250g for other mats + more!

And i agree that the only people who can be against this is people sitting on the market or ones who have their precurser/legendary!

Need a fix for this Horrible design.

Snow.5269:

The amount of people opposed to make precursors actually challenging to acquire is astounding. What is legendary about going to a 3rd party site & purchasing 300g? What is legendary about sitting at the mystic forge & throwing garbage into it until you get a desired result? Absolutely nothing.

Horrible, horrible design. The only reasons a person would not support a positive change to the game is out of fear of losing “special snowflake”status, they have no understanding of other prerequisites, or they have a precursor already.

Well actually you can’t please everyone! You know cause the precursors do drop from mobs with a really low drop rate. You know like many other games in the past that have rare items. Everyone seems to not mention that.

Its obvious from design precursor is suppose to be Special Snowflake status. So you sound bitter because you don’t have one and anyone that does is some snob or think they are better than everyone else that is what your assuming. You only feel its better design because you like the idea while I may not.

What he is proposing is extremely easy to do.

What I dont get is the focus on precursors and fairness but none of you people crying about precursor prices are saying anything what so ever about the unique exotics that cost just as much as precursors.

Then the argument would look like you all want things handed to you. Cause all you need is just the weapon then. Wait some of them you need gifts for too. There is more to the TP than just precursors there are other weapons that cost just as much as the prrecursor.

Also 3rd party site = possible suspension or termination. I like how everyone tries to throw out there this little tid bit like its anets fault and they are failing the game by not changing how precursors are obtained.

BMW/Ford/Chevy/Honda Dealer= Legit

Chop Shop = Risk = Jail Time or Scam

You dont go to the chop shop to get a car cause its cheaper then the dealer do you? You can but you know the risk right. You go buy drugs from the corner drug dealer or you get them legit through prescription?

Anyone that has a problem with the current system is entitled and wants things handed to them and hold animosity to those that already have a precursor. See what I did there?

Also to the people that agree with the OP have any of you done more than one path in all the dungeons? You know there have been several paths that where broken/easily exploitable. Path 4 on Arah is dumb and as far as I know able to be completed but not the way its intended to be completed. So we are talking some dungeon master title when some of the dungeons aren’t finished. So yo know what happens then?

Everyone QQ’s anet what you doing I can’t get my legendary cause the High Priestess Dwayna regens to full health everytime she goes in Stealth on Path 4 of Arah. Or Oh Anet thats not fair what about all those people that where doing COF in 10 minute speed runs you know skipping parts?