Guild Wars 2

Things will be in a better place for all.

Its just a skin!!!!! That is the first thing its only a skin. You do not HAVE to own it. It is not NEEDED to progress or participate in any content.

All these precursors are to expensive threads always leave out 1 important thing. Unique exotics which cost as much as the precursors do. No one goes on about RNG for a Unique exotic when they require the same lodestones as the Legendaries.

Everyone is focused on the precursors.

If you can’t get the 300g to buy the precursor off the tp where are you going to get the 200g to buy the lodestones? Or the 67g to buy the orchalium for gift of metal. All of these things I just mentioned are all optional of course and are not required of you to participate in GW2.

If Anet just gave precursors away. Those same people will complain about lodestone prices, then its on to drop rates, then its on to RNG for salvaging to get there globs of ectoplasm cause you know you need like 500 globs of ecto, then it will be complaining about clover RNG.

All of this is optional remember when your in COF with your already set up exotic staff that has the perfect stats that you only want the legendary because YOU want it not because you are forced to have it.

Bravo sir (or madam), bravo!

It’s the only exotic that will help people light up that achievement icon on their character select screen.

You totally don’t get it, the problem is not that precursors are expensive and they should be, but they are increasing on price faster than we are making money.
The real problem is that people with bots who farm in frostgorge (big Botgroups 5+ Bots) are buying off precursors for this illegally obtained money, and then sell them for 150g more than they originally bought them for. They are stacking precursors in bank and totally bought off any suppliers.

The solution is very simple, once you buy precursor from TP it becomes account bound, this would mean, you can still sell a precursor that drops for you, but you cant buy off other precursors just to sell them a week later with a doubled price!

If arenanet is not able to ban the Botters (whatever), they can at least make this change and strip them of market-control.

I dont see it. There was a large spike for some of the precursors around beginning of october since then they seem to be between 300-400 range. With the legend hitting around 500g range probably do to supply since there is only ever 2 or 3 at the max on tp.

Dusks always go down in price when there are alot of them so paying attention to the most expensive one is a waste of time. When there are 12 dusks its about 350g. Dawn has stayed around 300g -335g for a while now. It looks like supply Demand when I look at it. I check precursors all the time on the TP.

Zap Hit high of about 290 not to long ago there are 12 as of 15 minutes ago driving the price down to 245g.

Also you didn’t get the point of my OP. Its still a skin and something you don’t have to do or is required to play the game. Its something people want not need. People are impatient the game has only been out for 2 months and they want it now. There is a big update coming in November for GW2 who knows what happens then.

“The solution is very simple, once you buy precursor from TP it becomes account bound, this would mean, you can still sell a precursor that drops for you, but you cant buy off other precursors just to sell them a week later with a doubled price!”

Thats a great idea

Don’t forget about taxes. Say someone puts something on TP for 400g. They paid tax on that. If no one buys it and the price is stagnant, and other people want to sell theirs…will they also put theirs up for 400g? No! Ignore the prices for now, they will stabilize eventually on e folks stop trying to rig everything and loose too much money on the astronomical TP prices.

There will be no stabilization in an economy where bots run rampant and out-of-game gold-sales are driving the market for high-end items. It is a plague to nearly every mmo and has been for years. Saving up 400g for the typical player is months of work . . . unless they happen to get lucky enough to get a pre-cursor drop and want to sell it too.

Folks can stick their heads in the sand about this all they want, but ANet has to find a mechanism to get this under control (because the bots are increasing . . . not decreasing).

Sure, it’s just a skin, but you know what? GW2 is all about the ‘look’. Not the end-game raiding. Not the mish-mosh of repetitive pvp. It is the carrot that keeps the vast majority of us moving forward and the biggest carrot . . . the most important . . . is the legendary. Like it or not.

I like the idea of making the precursor account-bound like Bartho said. I think that would seriously put a dent in the problem.

There is no problem. Prices have mostly been stable for awhile, it’s just that they’ve stabilized way above what casual gamers are interested in paying, so they claim it’s botters or exploiters or the super-rich just trying to manipulate the market.

The reality is, it costs on average several hundred gold to make a precursor. Therefore they should be priced on the TP for an average of several hundred gold.

Prices havent been stable they jumped by 160g in one week for some of the precursors.

Yes, because they were underpriced. Some still are.

Some of the precursors went up about a week ago. When unique exotics like llya, visions of the mist, whisperblade, jormags breath all hit the tp around the same time priced at or above the same price as precursors. Then all the precursors pretty much got priced above those at least the popular ones did.

I know they are only skins and imo some of them are the best looking skins in the game and looking cool is the main reason I play mmos

Hippocampus.8470:

There is no problem. Prices have mostly been stable for awhile, it’s just that they’ve stabilized way above what casual gamers are interested in paying, so they claim it’s botters or exploiters or the super-rich just trying to manipulate the market.

The reality is, it costs on average several hundred gold to make a precursor. Therefore they should be priced on the TP for an average of several hundred gold.

I’m not what you would call a casual player and I still can’t keep up with the prices.

I’ve asked this before and never really got a reply from people who insist that RNG is fun… why are you against the system changing for the better? To one that is actually fun and anyone can get one if they do the work?

I’m not saying it should be easy or anything but RNG is only fun if you are winning, and odds are that you won’t.

Bartho.7896:

Prices havent been stable they jumped by 160g in one week for some of the precursors.

Dawn and Dusk and some of the others that have existed long enough for stability to be possible, have been stable. Please point to the last week when any of those jumped by 160g (as in, the prices before that week were at least 160g lower than the prices after that week).

It’s just a skin? Oh, well thanks for making me realize that, I totally didn’t know. Things are so much better for me now.

And yes! I totall did want Anet to just give me a precursor! But with your post I finally see the error of my ways. How did I not see that there were all these other expensive items to obtain? Man, you must feel so good about yourself for making all of us see the light and finally realize how wrong we were, because we totally didn’t know all this stuff about legendaries.

Hippocampus.8470:

Bartho.7896:

Prices havent been stable they jumped by 160g in one week for some of the precursors.

Dawn and Dusk and some of the others that have existed long enough for stability to be possible, have been stable. Please point to the last week when any of those jumped by 160g (as in, the prices before that week were at least 160g lower than the prices after that week).

You need to consider these prices for the long term as well. This isn’t about individual weeks. Depending on how busy I am, farming 350 gold could potentially take me 6 months. Do you honestly think there will be no inflation in GW2 within 6 months? The supply of precursors is incredibly low, this means that the popular ones will not reflect the prices of the general population but the prices of the richest population and I’m pretty sure that the richest population will have quite a bit more money than 350g within 6 months.

If inflation is your concern, then you can hedge against it by stashing items instead of gold.

I also don’t see much evidence to indicate that the rate of inflation is especially large, either.

I’m not really willing to bet which items will still be valuable in 6 months, since there’s no telling what new patches will bring. (halloween caused the prices of high tier crafting materials to drop. Will they ever recover to their previous prices?)

Precursors have been inflating since they first showed up on the TP, even before the godskull fix. Inflation happens in every mmo. In the real world, inflation can only happen when a country puts more money into circulation. In an mmo we’re constantly “printing” money with every event completed and every item sold to the vendor. Even GW2 with all it’s money sinks can’t stop it.

You don’t see it on oversupplied items because there’s an item inflation as well. That doesn’t help the precursor prices though since those will always be super rare.

You should be more careful about how you use the term “inflation”, because some of the ways you’re using the term are contradictory. In general, it’s economy-wide price increases, although you can also use it to refer to narrower groups (so yes, it does make some sense to say “precursor inflation”, though I wouldn’t use the term myself). However, if the term “item inflation” means anything, it’s an increase in the prices of items, and not the opposite.

It is true that the overall amount of currency in GW2 will continue to increase, and I agree that inflation is to be expected. However, as you seem to understand, the fact that various materials and items are also being “printed” along with currency is also a balancing factor against inflation.

Precursors are also part of this, because ultimately they are still produced from those materials. The fact that their production is probabilistic means that they are more loosely tied to material prices, but ultimately their prices are still linked – they cannot rise significantly above the cost of the materials for several thousand rares without the supply surging upward to drive down the price again, and/or the demand for the materials surging upwards and causing the material prices to increase.

If you’re especially concerned and you want a guarantee that you will eventually be able to afford a precursor, stockpiling mithril, elder wood, and T5 materials will achieve this. I’m not saying that it’s a good idea, but if you want a guarantee then that will get you one.

I’d say that a better way to hedge against inflation would be gems; the tax is significant, but they’re a safe bet. Personally, I’m happier trading other items on a day-to-day basis, but if you don’t do this it’s better to buy gems than to just let your gold sit idle.

Archer.6485:

Precursors have been inflating since they first showed up on the TP, even before the godskull fix.

It’s quite misleading to refer to this as “precursor inflation” when this misses very many of the factors involved.

Prices on precursors were exceedingly low initially, and there are a number of reasons that this was the case. First and foremost, there was essentially no information on their costs of production, which made valuation very difficult. Secondly, several exploits, including the 21 Karma weapons and the Godskulls, allowed some initial precursors to be produced much more cheaply than they were supposed to have been. Thirdly, there was very little demand initially, since players hadn’t set their sights on legendaries yet and/or didn’t have the resources.

These early phenomena in the precursor market are terrible indicators of long-term trends, and were mostly caused by short-term imbalances in the market. You’re going to have to do much better than that if you want to convincingly show that precursor prices will continue to increase at a significant rate.

As I am looking at the precursors right now. They are going down in price zap is down to 220g with like 12 available dusk is around 330 which it has been for a while there are others listed in the high range of course but the low is like 330. Seems to me that prices as of today at least are going down on precursors. Will they stay there depends on how fast they are bought up. The people with them listed more than likely wont relist them because of the fee they would have to pay.

You have a lot of faith in thinking that everything will just balance out. I doubt the system is that perfect. In order for the supply of precursors to remain steady you need people to constantly make bets on the MF (people who want to make a profit, not people who just want a precursor for themselves, since they won’t supply the TP) Right now T5 fine crafting mats have droped in price and I think mithril and elder wood have as well. Halloween is obviously to blame but still, by your reasoning, someone will sooner or later have to buy these mats up, get precursors and post them on the TP with lower prices, in order to balance the cheaper mats. So I should expect cheaper Dusks anytime now right? I sure hope that not everyone has lost interest in the really unreliable MF. Especially now that all the videos have shown just how bad the drop rate can be.

I said before that the precursor market being as rare as it is will probably always cater to the richest players. People who make money slowly can easily be left behind. And I don’t see why I should be paying gem taxes just to keep my gold progress from decaying.

A fixed price could solve all these problems. The MF wouldn’t be used but who cares since according to you the economy can so easily balance itself out. If you need the item sink, just make the cost whatever the average amount of items thrown to obtain it was. The amount of items sunk will remain exactly the same.

You simply cannot guarantee what’s going to happen to the market in six months time. I have no reason to trust it and there is no reason why I should have to rely on ingame economy to obtain my precursor.

Archer.6485:

Right now T5 fine crafting mats have droped in price and I think mithril and elder wood have as well. Halloween is obviously to blame but still, by your reasoning, someone will sooner or later have to buy these mats up, get precursors and post them on the TP with lower prices, in order to balance the cheaper mats. So I should expect cheaper Dusks anytime now right? I sure hope that not everyone has lost interest in the really unreliable MF. Especially now that all the videos have shown just how bad the drop rate can be.

While T5 fine materials have indeed fallen in price, elder wood has increased in price, and mithril has gone up and down.

Moreover, as I said myself, the price relationship between the materials and the precursors is not direct and strict the way it is with fixed-recipe items. However, there is a relationship – there is pretty much no way precursors would hit, say, 800g with the materials at their current prices. With the current prices of precursors, I’m not at all convinced that it’s profitable to make them, but if they were at 800g I would definitely invest in some forging, especially if I could pool resources with other players to reduce the risk of the investment.

Archer.6485:

A fixed price could solve all these problems. The MF wouldn’t be used but who cares since according to you the economy can so easily balance itself out.

That is by no means what I am saying. The health of the economy depends on all of the factors involved – gold sources and sinks as well as item sources and sinks – and the Mystic Forge plays an important role in this.

Archer.6485:

If you need the item sink, just make the cost whatever the average amount of items thrown to obtain it was. The amount of items sunk will remain exactly the same.

That would work to an extent, but a recipe consisting of several thousand rare items would be highly inconvenient to implement and use.

Archer.6485:

You simply cannot guarantee what’s going to happen to the market in six months time. I have no reason to trust it and there is no reason why I should have to rely on ingame economy to obtain my precursor.

Quite a lot of what you do in this game relies on the ingame economy. I don’t see why precursors should be any different.

As for my “guarantee”, you can feel free not to trust me, but when all you have to offer is baseless conjecture I feel obliged to argue against you.

Baseless? Really? You watch the market. Many things have affected it already. A single patch or discovery can make a difference. You know as well as I do that there will be more changes. You alone came up with three things that affected the price of precursors already. Four if we count the karma and godskull exploits separatly.

I rely on ingame economy but only to the point I want to. With precursors I’m obligated to. Pretty much any other item for the legendary I could potentially farm out on my own. Lodestones and t6 mats would take me the longest but at least with every item gained I would be one step closer and no one could take that progress away from me. With precursors I can’t do that because the MF is designed to eat your money not reward you.

You make good arguments but the one about fixed recipies being too inconvenient is really weak. Here’s one simple idea. You remove the precursors as random chance but for every use of 4 same type of rare/exotic weapon you get a corresponding number on a stacking buff. When you have the right number of stacks you get a guaranteed precursor. The method of obtaining precursors would remain exactly the same (throwing weapons into the forge) it would just take out the randomness. I’m sure Anet could think of a much more elegant design though.

Archer.6485:

Baseless? Really? You watch the market. Many things have affected it already. A single patch or discovery can make a difference. You know as well as I do that there will be more changes. You alone came up with three things that affected the price of precursors already. Four if we count the karma and godskull exploits separatly.

A single patch or discovery can just as easily bring the prices down as up. None of this demonstrates the reasonableness of your suggestion that prices of precursors will continue to rise beyond the ability of most people to earn gold.

Archer.6485:

I rely on ingame economy but only to the point I want to. With precursors I’m obligated to. Pretty much any other item for the legendary I could potentially farm out on my own. Lodestones and t6 mats would take me the longest but at least with every item gained I would be one step closer and no one could take that progress away from me. With precursors I can’t do that because the MF is designed to eat your money not reward you.

There’s a big difference between eating money and eating items; don’t confuse the two.

Archer.6485:

You make good arguments but the one about fixed recipies being too inconvenient is really weak. Here’s one simple idea. You remove the precursors as random chance but for every use of 4 same type of rare/exotic weapon you get a corresponding number on a stacking buff. When you have the right number of stacks you get a guaranteed precursor. The method of obtaining precursors would remain exactly the same (throwing weapons into the forge) it would just take out the randomness. I’m sure Anet could think of a much more elegant design though.

The “same type” requirement is somewhat weird and unintuitive here – would you have 10 different buffs if you were doing 10 different weapon types? Nonetheless, while it doesn’t matter to me, I do agree that you could probably come up with a system that modifies the odds to give you an eventual guarantee of some kind. It would be less elegant than the current system, though.

The simple answer you’re looking for in regards to “why are you against change” is the first in first served, shut the door behind you principle.

Once they get their foot on the market for a high price high demand commodity they can then use that to make insane gold from those trying to again, invest in a high price high demand commodity and then use that gold to buy up other things or more of the same. The whole unwilling to support changes to the system comes from simple greed, and it along with botting are clearly supported by greed heavily.

Many reasonably well balanced players who grind out their legendary do so because they want to and not because it makes them “considerably better than yaoooo” but sadly that’s NOT the case for others and they’d much rather get to the end result and ownership of a legendary ASAP whilst at the same time wanting the door shut behind them, the metaphorical bridges they used burned, caltrops spread on the dirt tracks and sinkholes dug and basically ANYTHING possible to prolong their feeling of being “legendary” because deep down they know eventually this legendary will become nothing but an anecdote of “well I was one of the first to get it” and it won’t be as much of an achievement anymore.
The best answer to the prices of things on the market is to simply not buy them. That’s right, don’t buy the overpriced goods and they will go down in price or end up so inflated that the devs have to step in, wasting your cash on them is just that…
A waste

lackofcheese.5617:

A single patch or discovery can just as easily bring the prices down as up. None of this demonstrates the reasonableness of your suggestion that prices of precursors will continue to rise beyond the ability of most people to earn gold.

Yes, and since all the changes that affected precursors so far have raised their prices I think it’s high time for a drop. Maybe in the form of a patch that removes the rng from obtaining it.

lackofcheese.5617:

There’s a big difference between eating money and eating items; don’t confuse the two.

You didn’t really answer my point. Items and gold aren’t the same but they’re connected and either way the MF still makes you loose out.

lackofcheese.5617:

The “same type” requirement is somewhat weird and unintuitive here – would you have 10 different buffs if you were doing 10 different weapon types? Nonetheless, while it doesn’t matter to me, I do agree that you could probably come up with a system that modifies the odds to give you an eventual guarantee of some kind. It would be less elegant than the current system, though.

The reason I said your point was weak, is because it doesn’t even remotely matter how unelegant or unintuitive Anet makes the recipe. You said it would work and it’s the only thing most of us “whiners” really want. Anet should definitely do it then. I don’t care if I have to click and confirm on every individual sword in order to use the recipe, I’ll still take it over the MF’s RNG.

lackofcheese.5617:

Archer.6485:

If you need the item sink, just make the cost whatever the average amount of items thrown to obtain it was. The amount of items sunk will remain exactly the same.

That would work to an extent, but a recipe consisting of several thousand rare items would be highly inconvenient to implement and use.

You could implement that by having an NPC that sells stackable crafting tokens, and another NPC that sells precursors for stackable precursor tokens. Then add a mystic forge recipe with crafting token + 3x rare or exotic weapon of the same type, which outputs some fixed number of precursor tokens. I think that wouldn’t be much more inconvenient than the current MF precursor system.