Guild Wars 2

When Ascended gear was introduced I fully expected them to be tradeable, just like everything else in this game.

But for some reason they are not. Instead nearly everything tied to Ascended gear is account bound. This seems to go against everything GW2 stood for previously.

If everything was unbound at least there’d be a real market for Ascended mats and people with no desire for them could sell their components while others could buy what they need.

That way Ascended Gear would also be equally accessible to everyone, regardless of their preferred method of play.

Yes, fully agree. At this time the crafting from 400 to 500 has no MMO component neither Guild component is only an end in itself.
Maybe a dead content.

If the weapons will be tradable…maybe…

Think this is a real possibility , legendaries weren’t tradable for months.

I’d be in favor of this. I have a lot of mats that I won’t use. as well as 500 WS which I’d like to maybe profit from.

I do not want to craft for items, I absolutely hate crafting with a passion. I enjoy many other aspects of MMO’s but crafting has never and probably will never be one of them. Crafting to me is like watching paint dry, it’s painfully, agonizingly boring. With the introduction of ascended items that are account bound, I am being forced to do something I would probably rather stab myself in the face than do for any extended period of time, or become increasingly more obsolete and unable to compete with the already 10% total damage increase from ascended weapons alone. It’s quickly turning this game into a hugely gated, irritating, tedious process that’s very quickly pushing me out, and many others too. If ascended items are not trade-able, or purchasable by any other means than crafting with the introduction of ascended armor, than I am absolutely saying goodbye to this game once and for all and will not look back with other games such as ESO, and WS coming out next year.

No they shouldn’t be unbound. If you want it, put in the time and work for the highest tier of gear. This game needed another sink.

Legendaries shouldn’t be sellable either. The dev’s even said that they regretted this decision for legendaires in the past. I don’t think they’ll make the same mistake twice.

Buffalo Sabres.1072:

Think this is a real possibility , legendaries weren’t tradable for months.

Wasn’t that only because the first players to make them didn’t do it to sell them, and it took a while for the traders to obtain them.

Aberrant.6749:

No they shouldn’t be unbound. If you want it, put in the time and work for the highest tier of gear. This game needed another sink.

Why?

Aberrant.6749:

Legendaries shouldn’t be sellable either. The dev’s even said that they regretted this decision for legendaires in the past. I don’t think they’ll make the same mistake twice.

They make a mistake with legendaries so they make a lesser tier of weapons account bound. That does not make sense. Its like shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted.

Aberrant.6749:

No they shouldn’t be unbound. If you want it, put in the time and work for the highest tier of gear. This game needed another sink.

Why? because you have done it and you will feel yourself superior to other players?
No is a question of expand a dead branch of the game, after you have finish your weapons what is the sense of this 100 level of crafting? No one is the answer. And the sense of dragonite ore, bloodstone dust and emphyreals? No one even here.
In conclusion, is a nice system, with a very limited use, is like a race car with a very small fuel capacity

For me is not a question of envy, i have crafted ascendant scepter and focus for my mesmer, and ready for the third weapon, which i don’t need, because i have twilight as main weapon.

Legendary weapons should NOT be tradeable, but the precursors should until they give us a way other than RNG to get them. Account bound ascended items have destroyed the crafting for profit mechanic and thus any hope of getting another precursor or legendary. Spending most of my time farming all the mats for ascended weapons, and soon armor is not fun, but I guess it makes each one I make a bit more valuable to me.

I am not sure why, but I do enjoy crafting, and equipping all of my characters is gonna take a long time. Lots of grind. Grind I don’t like.

I wish they would annouce that future legendary weapons will be account bound starting Dec 1st. or a similar date. Enough time for people to get their affairs in order and not feel shafted (whether they be buying or selling). I definitely want this change before they introduce more legendaries.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Legendary weapons should NOT be tradeable, but the precursors should until they give us a way other than RNG to get them. Account bound ascended items have destroyed the crafting for profit mechanic and thus any hope of getting another precursor or legendary. Spending most of my time farming all the mats for ascended weapons, and soon armor is not fun, but I guess it makes each one I make a bit more valuable to me.

I am not sure why, but I do enjoy crafting, and equipping all of my characters is gonna take a long time. Lots of grind. Grind I don’t like.

I didn’t think crafting is ever profitable. Maybe for a very few selected items that most people didn’t know about. But once people know it, then these item won’t be profitable anymore. The reasoning is simple, a mat can be used to do many things: craft many types of gear, and leveling up crafting, but the finished product can only be used for one thing. In order for crafting to be profitable, the game will have to remove all gear drops, make the player choose either slaying monster or crafting but not both. This will make it a really boring game.

Since you can almost always get the finished gear cheaper then crafting it, there is no point to level crafting unless there is some sort of perk that only the crafters gets. That perk is Ascended gear. If ascended gear is trade-able, then you end up with the same issue of crafting becoming completely useless.

Crafting is/was absolutely profitable. I financed the materials cost plus the precursor of two legendary weapons over two months just by crafting for profit. I am now making about 10% of what I was because everyone is broke. On the items I was crafting I was making about 15-20% profit because people just don’t like to craft. Now everyone has to craft to get the best gear, so no more cash cow for those of us who like to craft.

There is absolutely no reason to think ascended gear is going to become unbound. The WHOLE POINT of the tier is to give people long term statistical advancement goals that are less long term than Legendaries.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Crafting is/was absolutely profitable. I financed the materials cost plus the precursor of two legendary weapons over two months just by crafting for profit. I am now making about 10% of what I was because everyone is broke. On the items I was crafting I was making about 15-20% profit because people just don’t like to craft. Now everyone has to craft to get the best gear, so no more cash cow for those of us who like to craft.

I would like to know what exactly you did for it to be profitable. Let me guess its a secret.

As I was saying Crafting is profitable only for selected few items that very few people knows about. Once that becomes public knowledge, the same path would be exploit by everyone else and thus become not profitable anymore. You can find these type of profitable exploit without crafting as well.

In general crafting is not profitable for people who plays the game normally.

bigmonto.4215:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

Crafting is/was absolutely profitable. I financed the materials cost plus the precursor of two legendary weapons over two months just by crafting for profit. I am now making about 10% of what I was because everyone is broke. On the items I was crafting I was making about 15-20% profit because people just don’t like to craft. Now everyone has to craft to get the best gear, so no more cash cow for those of us who like to craft.

I would like to know what exactly you did for it to be profitable. Let me guess its a secret.

As I was saying Crafting is profitable only for selected few items that very few people knows about. Once that becomes public knowledge, the same path would be exploit by everyone else and thus become not profitable anymore. You can find these type of profitable exploit without crafting as well.

In general crafting is not profitable for people who plays the game normally.

The items I crafted are very well known. I bought my materials with buy orders and listed the finished products with a markup of about 30% over cost. The first 5% goes to the listing fee, the next 10% goes for the fee on sale. If I had to re-list the item lower do to undercutting, I would lose another 5%. The trick is to watch where demand was greater than supply. I focused on the type of item that was towards the lower end of the demand scale, as the higher volume items had much more competition and undercutting. If a market got to over supplied I would have a clearance sale and move my cash elsewhere.

I play the game very normally. I am not a flipper. I have a spreadsheet to enter material costs and I monitor sell prices for these items that I supply. Since the ascended weapons release, material prices have been crazy, and demand has been low to non-existent. I used to have about 500g worth of product on the market at any given time, and two or three times a day 50g-100g in sales to collect, bid on materials, craft, and list. Now I seldom break 200g in total listings and I will go a day or two with sometimes no sales at all. This latest spike in gossamer should drive prices up and cause some more sales for me when the other crafters are forced to list higher.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

The items I crafted are very well known.

What is it then? If its not a secret, you should be able to tell us a few here.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

I have a spreadsheet to enter material costs and I monitor sell prices for these items that I supply.

Ok, any game require you to keep a spreadsheet is probably consider more work than play.

But lets be clear, you are not making money by using the in-game crafting mechanism. You are exploiting the market inefficiencies.

I never quite understand why people play a game that way. There are a lot of markets in real life that can make you a lot more money… Stocks, futures, commodity, options. Personally I had enough of that at work.

bigmonto.4215:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

The items I crafted are very well known.

What is it then? If its not a secret, you should be able to tell us a few here.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

I have a spreadsheet to enter material costs and I monitor sell prices for these items that I supply.

Ok, any game require you to keep a spreadsheet is probably consider more work than play.

But lets be clear, you are not making money by using the in-game crafting mechanism. You are exploiting the market inefficiencies.

I never quite understand why people play a game that way. There are a lot of markets in real life that can make you a lot more money… Stocks, futures, commodity, options. Personally I had enough of that at work.

If I told you my markets, how many crafters do you think are going to descend on it and flood them with bargain basement prices? It takes time and effort to find these opportunities, and the reward is PROFIT.

If it was really work to me then why would I do it? I consider it fun to find an opportunity and make some gold off of it. Running a dungeon over and over again is not fun for me. Crafting is, so why shouldn’t I be able to make some money?

How am I “exploiting market inefficiencies”? There are tons of items for sale, and no one can fill ALL the demand ALL the time, and every crafter gets to set their profit margin when they list an item. More greed == less sales because someone else will do it for less. Striking the right balance is the art form that gets you the most gold per time spent. What truly baffles me is all the people selling things for cost or less. They have put me out of business in many markets.

Speaking of the real world, I actually managed to make more money in the market than I did for my job over the last 12 months, but it wasn’t as fun.

They’ve introduced new tier of gear, because they felt exotics are too easy obtainable. They’ve already broken Legendaries and don’t want to do the same with ascended. See, if you play the game, do content and work hard for your gear, you might be dissapointed that whoever has stuffed credit card can buy the same gear, not going outside of LA, not playing game at all.
With Ascended, they’ve done two things – made professions, which were skipped by most players very important and cut off these kids, buying everything off from TP from ew shinies. Same for tequatl, since you couldn’t buy achievments, sunless weapons and you had to kill hardest world boss to get them, QQ started.
Keep ascended bound, do the same for Legendaries.

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

If I told you my markets, how many crafters do you think are going to descend on it and flood them with bargain basement prices? It takes time and effort to find these opportunities, and the reward is PROFIT.

You just proved my point.

Market Efficiency is a real economic term, if you trade in real life, you should know what it means.

Exploit Market inefficiency works in real life as well. A example in Foreign exchange market, you can exchange currency A with currency B, then exchange B with C, and then exchange C with A, and actually make a profit. In a efficient market however, so many people would try to do the same exploit so quickly that would move the price such that A -> B -> C -> A would give you the same amount.

This is the similar thing to what you are doing in game. Finding such market inefficiency that A (gold) -> mat B turn into mat C -> More A (gold). Because this is a game, not many players watch the market like traders, that’s why you can find many such deals. In fact you don’t need crafting at all. You can buy certain level of armor, salvage, sell mat and get more gold.

This is why I am saying you are awarded for your effort to find market inefficiencies and not for your skill or time to craft. I also don’t think this is what Anet intended when they add crafting in the game, to add more ways to exploit market inefficiencies.

Now getting back to the point of this thread, how do Anet then making level crafting rewarding to most people (who doesn’t care to exploit the inefficiencies of a virtual market)? The answer is to add a perk that only the crafters enjoy, that is the ascended gear.

Rym.1469:

They’ve introduced new tier of gear, because they felt exotics are too easy obtainable.

Only if you believe that statement, which I don’t.

Rym.1469:

With Ascended, they’ve done two things – made professions, which were skipped by most players very important and cut off these kids, buying everything off from TP from ew shinies. Same for tequatl, since you couldn’t buy achievments, sunless weapons and you had to kill hardest world boss to get them, QQ started.
Keep ascended bound, do the same for Legendaries.

Why should players have to craft if they don’t like it? How can they try and make the BLTC a free market simulation and some sort of game in and of itself and not have a whole tier in it?

bigmonto.4215:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

If I told you my markets, how many crafters do you think are going to descend on it and flood them with bargain basement prices? It takes time and effort to find these opportunities, and the reward is PROFIT.

You just proved my point.

Market Efficiency is a real economic term, if you trade in real life, you should know what it means.

When trading in real life I invest in the stock of companies I believe will do well and thus grow my investment, it has nothing to do with market efficiency, I am not ‘gaming’ the market.

I am also not gaming this market. Many people don’t want to craft, they just want to buy the shiny and get back to killing things. I am taking the time to get the materials at a good price for them and craft what they are looking for. That time I spent is paid for by my markup. I prefer doing this than killing things for gold. With the best gear being account bound, crafters have no way of earning their gold this way.

As far as buying shinies with a credit card goes, that is not for me, as I like to earn my shinies, but for the casual player who can only spend a few hours a week, I don’t see why they shouldn’t be able to get the best stats using their wallet. Gear does NOT make the best players, but it does make many players happy so why force a grind on everyone?

Let me be clear, you are not gaining the market by exploit market inefficiencies. In fact an efficient market is only efficient because a lot of people try to exploit the inefficiencies. So I am not accusing you of doing anything wrong. I am just saying how you choose to play is not how most people choose to play.

You are, however, certainly not paid for your time actually crafting the items. After all most of the items crafters craft will give you a net lost compare to the price of the mat. A simple search of almost every finished crafted weapons or armor on http://www.gw2spidy.com/ will tell you this fact.

In another way to see is to ask yourself: in a efficient market does crafting still make money. You can imagine an efficient market this way, everytime you discover a profitable path through crafting, you make it public, and you wait 3 days to wait for the market to correct. Does your path still work? The answer is no for this game. But guess what, it works in real life, Toyota still makes money by making (crafting) cars, even though the commodity market is pretty efficient. The question is why?

That website advertises at about 15 minute intervals the current profit to be made for all crafted items. Anyone who cares to use it can spot opportunities to craft for profit, and yet they sit open for days. Why? Because there are just not enough players who want to take the time to do it, and there is risk of being undercut on these lower volume items. The question is why are there so many items listed at cost or less? Is every one of those items from people leveling crafting? Seems unlikely. For weapons this is certainly true now, but for armor, doesn’t seem likely. It will be soon, and I will be forced to grind to make money.

Toyota makes money because the some of the parts is not equal to the value of the car. Crafters can make money by filling needs, until those needs go away.

morrolan.9608:

Aberrant.6749:

No they shouldn’t be unbound. If you want it, put in the time and work for the highest tier of gear. This game needed another sink.

Why?

Aberrant.6749:

Legendaries shouldn’t be sellable either. The dev’s even said that they regretted this decision for legendaires in the past. I don’t think they’ll make the same mistake twice.

They make a mistake with legendaries so they make a lesser tier of weapons account bound. That does not make sense. Its like shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted.

I would think more that it’s too late now to revert that and they would rather not make the same mistake again. You would have to ask a-net to confirm though.

darkvise.3197:

Aberrant.6749:

No they shouldn’t be unbound. If you want it, put in the time and work for the highest tier of gear. This game needed another sink.

Why? because you have done it and you will feel yourself superior to other players?
No is a question of expand a dead branch of the game, after you have finish your weapons what is the sense of this 100 level of crafting? No one is the answer. And the sense of dragonite ore, bloodstone dust and emphyreals? No one even here.
In conclusion, is a nice system, with a very limited use, is like a race car with a very small fuel capacity

For me is not a question of envy, i have crafted ascendant scepter and focus for my mesmer, and ready for the third weapon, which i don’t need, because i have twilight as main weapon.

When did I said that superiority and envy was the reason? o.O Don’t put words in my mouth to make up a strawman argument. I only have 500 huntsman right now. I’m waiting for the prices to settle down more to do the rest. I hardly feel superior lol.

A-net said they added this in because they felt it was too easy to get the top tier. Making it sellable would put them in that same situation again. There was also a need to make lower mats more valuable. So they put in a material and gold sink (thermo stuffs). This also had a side effect of giving players a reason to go back into lower zones.

I do think they should keep expanding what you can do with 500 crafting though. Making precursors with it is almost certainly going to happen from what they’ve said. That solves another problem. What else in the future? No one knows yet.

At the very least I hope they give us something to do with the 10+ stacks of Bloodstone Dust we have sitting in our bank. Heck, at least make them merchable!

I’d love to be able to make tuning crystals out of the dust, just like any other dusts.

Brigg.3961:

I’d love to be able to make tuning crystals out of the dust, just like any other dusts.

Ok, THAT may actually be genius.