Guild Wars 2

The ingredients required to make the exotics mean that by the time a crafter has factored in the costs of trying to sell an item on the TP, there is very little profit to be made IF a crafter attempts to gain all of the ingredients via the TP.

Now, someone might say “well farm the stuff yourself”. And that is possible. Over the course of a few days, a crafter could conceivably farm the orichalcum, rares (for the ectoplasms), gossamer, and whatever else they need for your particular crafting profession.

BUT, the anti-farm code along with the restrictions imposed on gathering metals from nodes prevents crafters from doing this to much extent. Instead such restrictions are encouraging people to buy from the TP. Thus the time and effort to get the ingredients to make the items takes so long as to not make it worthwhile (when comparing the profit made vs the profit that can be made via other means).

Which brings us right back to where we began.

I would therefore suggest reducing the amount of ectoplasms required (even if its only by 1) to allow a little more “leeway” between the costs in making items, and the value for which they can be sold at a reasonable amount.

Also, In a game whereby the economy is truely “global” across all servers, and where everyone have 2 crafting professions, and where EVERY recipe is easily available from a vendor, there is no way for a crafter to create a “niche” for themselves. Everybody just ends up trying to sell the same items as everyone else, whilst competing against drops and “faction” items that are of equal potency and yet cost less to obtain (e.g. crafted gear vs the faction gear).

My suggestion to deal with this is to not actually have a “global” economy, but cluster several server economies together which switch out on a regular basis. Such an “economic” cluster could mimik the WvWvW server cluster and thus change as the WvWvW cluster changes. Thus allowing the “global” economy to remain stable.

Tarkaroshe.8370:

I would therefore suggest reducing the amount of ectoplasms required (even if its only by 1) to allow a little more “leeway” between the costs in making items, and the value for which they can be sold at a reasonable amount.

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My suggestion to deal with this is to not actually have a “global” economy, but cluster several server economies together which switch out on a regular basis. Such an “economic” cluster could mimik the WvWvW server cluster and thus change as the WvWvW cluster changes. Thus allowing the “global” economy to remain stable.

If by any chance Anet reduces number of ectos for craft – in a day or two prices on TP will adjust so you wont be able to profit again.

About WvW-like server cluster economy. Some servers (tier1 WvW) are locked with each other for quite a long time already so your suggestion wont work as intended.

The prices would adjust yes, they’d come down a bit thus allowing for a greater margin between operating costs and the cost for which crafted items can be sold at a reasonable price. Which would also allow for greater fluctuations in prices on the TP.

The point with the “economic cluters” is that rather than there being one almighty economy with all servers contributing to a central “TP”, instead the number of servers contributing to each “economic cluster” is smaller, allowing for niches to be made and reducing the sheer number of items being sold between the contributing servers in the cluster. The fact that the combination of servers in the cluster could possibly change at some point, is a bonus.

This all comes down to a “supply and demand” situation. When the supply is too great, then prices fall too much. When supply is far too little, prices can rise. In both cases, what can often hapkitten that the items involved are just not economically viable to sell on the TP. Which is good from an item sink perspective, but not good for crafters as their operating costs can be too high to make a decent profit from .