Guild Wars 2

So its been a while since the new TP was launched. I waited for a while until things settle, people get somewhat used to it, etc. But still we seem to have utter ‘disorder’ in the GW2 economy. What I mean by that is that people dont use the TP anymore. Not all ofc, you still can buy stuff but the market volume has dramatically dropped – if my observations are accurate.

The first clue was the rise in prices of crafting mats (scraps, bolts, ingots, etc.). So then I thought ‘Oh ppl are going for the new collection achievements and they keep the mats for themselves, thats why supply dropped and demand increased’. But it seems I was wrong… I checked the buy orders too. And if in a typical scenario – a situation like this results in an increase of buy orders too. Both in volume and price. But it didnt.

So to summarize: Sell prices increased while demand is dropping, sell listings are dropping both in volume and price. This two usually are in contradiction. Why would ppl buy stuff for a higher price and refuse to take advantage of the dropping price lvl of buy orders? Example: bolt of cotton is hovering between 9.20s and 10.50s but at the same time buy orders for armor from which cotton scraps can be salvaged almost halved.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19742

Also, buy orders get filled a lot slower. I used to place 300-500 buy orders every 2-3 days. And they resulted 2000-2400 items on average over 3 days. Now I cant even make it to 500 over a week’s time. Ppl dont buy, and sont sell…

This is telling me that a lot of ppl stopped using the TP in general. Anet, time to get you kitten s in gear.

p.s.: Besides all the convenience issues that the TP changes brought us, the most important is the cap on the buying/selling tabs. Other problems may take a bit more clicks to solve, but this has no alternative solutions. If you have more than 100 buy orders or sell listings you cant manage them, period. So fix this first!

/rant

I think you are missing a much more obvious reason for this decline.

People were very angry with the NPE patch, and the smack in the face to veteran players that they saw it as. Many players quit with the launch of this feature patch. There are simply less people playing the game now.

Demand is dropping because there are less players. Sell prices are increasing because there are less players to farm the mats in the first place.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think you are missing a much more obvious reason for this decline.

People were very angry with the NPE patch, and the smack in the face to veteran players that they saw it as. Many players quit with the launch of this feature patch. There are simply less people playing the game now.

Demand is dropping because there are less players. Sell prices are increasing because there are less players to farm the mats in the first place.

Arent the majority of the community PvE players? Miniature collectors, living story heroes, etc.? I dont mean to insult any1 as I’m no1 to tell others what to enjoy in this game… but did the changes really hurt the majority? Did they subvert fractal/dungeon mechanics, did any class get a serious pve nerf?

I dont think that the rightful moaning of the PvP community is enough to explain such a great decline in TP activity. PvE players stayed, didnt they?

Nimrud.5642:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think you are missing a much more obvious reason for this decline.

People were very angry with the NPE patch, and the smack in the face to veteran players that they saw it as. Many players quit with the launch of this feature patch. There are simply less people playing the game now.

Demand is dropping because there are less players. Sell prices are increasing because there are less players to farm the mats in the first place.

Arent the majority of the community PvE players? Miniature collectors, living story heroes, etc.? I dont mean to insult any1 as I’m no1 to tell others what to enjoy in this game… but did the changes really hurt the majority? Did they subvert fractal/dungeon mechanics, did any class get a serious pve nerf?

I dont think that the rightful moaning of the PvP community is enough to explain such a great decline in TP activity. PvE players stayed, didnt they?

Archeage release + drama bout feature patch + nothing new in next weeks, only wvw tournament what none cares bout

half my friendlist is now playing archeage

Nimrud.5642:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think you are missing a much more obvious reason for this decline.

People were very angry with the NPE patch, and the smack in the face to veteran players that they saw it as. Many players quit with the launch of this feature patch. There are simply less people playing the game now.

Demand is dropping because there are less players. Sell prices are increasing because there are less players to farm the mats in the first place.

Arent the majority of the community PvE players? Miniature collectors, living story heroes, etc.? I dont mean to insult any1 as I’m no1 to tell others what to enjoy in this game… but did the changes really hurt the majority? Did they subvert fractal/dungeon mechanics, did any class get a serious pve nerf?

I dont think that the rightful moaning of the PvP community is enough to explain such a great decline in TP activity. PvE players stayed, didnt they?

Maybe the announcement that there would be no more dungeons contributed to some of this? Don’t forget the fact that SAB isn’t returning as well. Also, the really disappointing NPE. Maybe vets are finally getting sick of Anet’s excuses (“it’s a bug!”).

Inb4 thread closes. remember EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!

eithinan.9841:

Inb4 thread closes. remember EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGnH6JPsv7E

I personally was only looking for an advice to understand the obvious changes in the GW2 economy… And the answers I got were all rational/emotionless/factual. Oh well, these are too strict words to describe them, but anyway. No hate-speech/name-calling/cursing was involved. Neither towards the game, nor towards Anet emplyees. Or can something be locked down only due to mentioning undeniable facts?

I honestly don’t see this decline of demand that you speak of.

When you look at a health of a market you don’t look at the short term you look at the long term.

There was honestly a transition of the way gw2spidy pulled the data around the 10th. It is possible that this is a data error not a actual problem.

Romek.4201:

Nimrud.5642:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think you are missing a much more obvious reason for this decline.

People were very angry with the NPE patch, and the smack in the face to veteran players that they saw it as. Many players quit with the launch of this feature patch. There are simply less people playing the game now.

Demand is dropping because there are less players. Sell prices are increasing because there are less players to farm the mats in the first place.

Arent the majority of the community PvE players? Miniature collectors, living story heroes, etc.? I dont mean to insult any1 as I’m no1 to tell others what to enjoy in this game… but did the changes really hurt the majority? Did they subvert fractal/dungeon mechanics, did any class get a serious pve nerf?

I dont think that the rightful moaning of the PvP community is enough to explain such a great decline in TP activity. PvE players stayed, didnt they?

Archeage release + drama bout feature patch + nothing new in next weeks, only wvw tournament what none cares bout

half my friendlist is now playing archeage

it’s true.

I found the feature patch to be very underwhelming, and the announcement that the next content update would be in November pretty much put this game on hiatus.

They expect me to kill my time in WvW, but it’s been the same thing for the past few years, so how can they expect me to remain interested in the 8 week long match-up?

It doesn’t help that I have everything I want in the game and nothing to work towards, but I guess that’s my fault for rushing content and not taking my time.

In the meantime, I too am playing Archeage and enjoying it tremendously, so I don’t expect to be playing GW2 steadily until November.

anzenketh.3759:

I honestly don’t see this decline of demand that you speak of.

When you look at a health of a market you don’t look at the short term you look at the long term.

There was honestly a transition of the way gw2spidy pulled the data around the 10th. It is possible that this is a data error not a actual problem.

Set it on monthly view and it’ll be more visible what I’m talking about. Also my first observations were in-game not from spidy. Buy orders dont get filled, price gaps widen, etc. You can experience these without ever navigating to spidy.

Nimrud.5642:

anzenketh.3759:

I honestly don’t see this decline of demand that you speak of.

When you look at a health of a market you don’t look at the short term you look at the long term.

There was honestly a transition of the way gw2spidy pulled the data around the 10th. It is possible that this is a data error not a actual problem.

Set it on monthly view and it’ll be more visible what I’m talking about. Also my first observations were in-game not from spidy. Buy orders dont get filled, price gaps widen, etc. You can experience these without ever navigating to spidy.

I still don’t see it. There is a slight decrease but that is bound to happen during slow times.

This might be interesting for you to read.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Trading-Post-4/first#post4418777

Nimrud.5642:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I think you are missing a much more obvious reason for this decline.

People were very angry with the NPE patch, and the smack in the face to veteran players that they saw it as. Many players quit with the launch of this feature patch. There are simply less people playing the game now.

Demand is dropping because there are less players. Sell prices are increasing because there are less players to farm the mats in the first place.

Arent the majority of the community PvE players? Miniature collectors, living story heroes, etc.? I dont mean to insult any1 as I’m no1 to tell others what to enjoy in this game… but did the changes really hurt the majority? Did they subvert fractal/dungeon mechanics, did any class get a serious pve nerf?

I dont think that the rightful moaning of the PvP community is enough to explain such a great decline in TP activity. PvE players stayed, didnt they?

It wasn’t totally the patch itself.

The devs also came out and said that they considered dungeons and endgame activities a waste of time and they are abandoning work on everything that isn’t gem store or LS related. This put off a lot of people who have been patiently waiting for new dungeons or some raid style alternative.

Then they announced that SAB and festival style content is also getting put on the back burner and won’t be seeing any improvements or additions, which drove even more people away.

Then there was the lack of any serious PvP or WvW updates which drove some more of those people away.

Couple that with the release of several new MMO’s and the distain for the NPE and the net effect is that a lot of people are taking at least a temporary break.

I suspect you will see an upswing in the market again once the LS kicks off in November. Until then though I suspect things will stay how they are now.

Buy and sell orders do not show true demand and supply. You do not see the number of transactions that occur on the TP throughout the day.

Edit: Oh yeah. GW2spidy doesn’t constantly update so you miss all of what happens inbetween.

Most people buy the scraps rather than the bolts. Using data on bolts will be inaccurate and misleading.

Nimrud.5642:

eithinan.9841:

Inb4 thread closes. remember EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGnH6JPsv7E

I personally was only looking for an advice to understand the obvious changes in the GW2 economy… And the answers I got were all rational/emotionless/factual. Oh well, these are too strict words to describe them, but anyway. No hate-speech/name-calling/cursing was involved. Neither towards the game, nor towards Anet emplyees. Or can something be locked down only due to mentioning undeniable facts?

Dude, everything is awesome!!!

yes they can and will close any thread that they want whenever they want.

Nimrud.5642:

So its been a while since the new TP was launched. I waited for a while until things settle, people get somewhat used to it, etc. But still we seem to have utter ‘disorder’ in the GW2 economy. What I mean by that is that people dont use the TP anymore. Not all ofc, you still can buy stuff but the market volume has dramatically dropped – if my observations are accurate.

The first clue was the rise in prices of crafting mats (scraps, bolts, ingots, etc.). So then I thought ‘Oh ppl are going for the new collection achievements and they keep the mats for themselves, thats why supply dropped and demand increased’. But it seems I was wrong… I checked the buy orders too. And if in a typical scenario – a situation like this results in an increase of buy orders too. Both in volume and price. But it didnt.

So to summarize: Sell prices increased while demand is dropping, sell listings are dropping both in volume and price. This two usually are in contradiction. Why would ppl buy stuff for a higher price and refuse to take advantage of the dropping price lvl of buy orders? Example: bolt of cotton is hovering between 9.20s and 10.50s but at the same time buy orders for armor from which cotton scraps can be salvaged almost halved.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19742

Also, buy orders get filled a lot slower. I used to place 300-500 buy orders every 2-3 days. And they resulted 2000-2400 items on average over 3 days. Now I cant even make it to 500 over a week’s time. Ppl dont buy, and sont sell…

This is telling me that a lot of ppl stopped using the TP in general. Anet, time to get you kitten s in gear.

p.s.: Besides all the convenience issues that the TP changes brought us, the most important is the cap on the buying/selling tabs. Other problems may take a bit more clicks to solve, but this has no alternative solutions. If you have more than 100 buy orders or sell listings you cant manage them, period. So fix this first!

/rant

While some conclusions you have seem logical, i dont think that you have adequate data for them.

Value and volume of supply and demand is influenced by many factors (patch updates, population, etc.) and spidy isnt a reliable source.
Concluding that the new TP slows down trading in general is a wide stretch and I am quite sure Anet is monitoring these metrics regularly.

One thing that hasnt been mentioned yet and might influence trading post activity as well:

I am a high volume trader and since release, i have been on 5 servers. So on every server, i had to build up my guild banks for personal storage again. Before my last transfer, i listed about 600 items/stacks on the tp and on my current server, i only researched 2×50 extra guild bank slots. With the featue patch, guilds and upgrades went global, so out of a sudden, i had 650 slots more storage available. So I am not storing that much items on the tp (as listing) as i was used to.
Not sure, how many people had the same happening to them.

Your personal orders filling slower isn’t a sign of trading post decline since the new design is to make players more aware of when it is a mistake to sell to buy orders or buy instantly. Orders filling slowly for flippers is actually a sign the new design is working as they intended.

John Smith.4610:

I don’t think the new TP is having a large effect on users using the TP. I think you make a compelling argument and it was a good idea and a good use of reasoning, but there are other factors involved that may be missing.

I’m attaching a simple chart of TP Users and Buyers as unique counts relative to logins since the beginning of the month.

The key phrase being “relative to logins”. So the data is normalized “per active capita” so to speak. The good news is it definitely shows that Players are not using the TP less.

John Smith.4610:

I’m attaching a simple chart of TP Users and Buyers as unique counts relative to logins since the beginning of the month.

Shouldn’t buy numbers fluctuate a bit similarly to sell numbers? Even if it’s relative to log in numbers, unless free items are universally counted and this is “opened tp and made one or more purchase” graph

John Smith.4610:

I don’t think the new TP is having a large effect on users using the TP. I think you make a compelling argument and it was a good idea and a good use of reasoning, but there are other factors involved that may be missing.

I’m attaching a simple chart of TP Users and Buyers as unique counts relative to logins since the beginning of the month.

Ty for the answer. It is an even more complicated issue than you described it to be. But I am the one who started with a simplified course of thinking to begin with, so I have no basis to put any blame on you.

Your chart ‘should’ also tell us what is considered as a ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ action. Maybe they are more or less the same relative to logins. But what if those who do not log in are the big sellers/buyers? Does your chart make a difference between posting 2 or 250 pieces of a certain item? Or are both counted as one sale?

Anyways, what I can tell you for sure:

Buy orders get filled a lot slower. And it is not because of competition. Because if it was competition, the price level of buy orders would also increase with competition.

Example: The buy order price level for cloth chest items usually hovers around the price of a bolt from the corresponding cloth type – except silk. Bolt of cotton 9-10s, a lvl 31-48 chest 8-10s. (Unless flippers interfere… /angrylook :P ) Or at least this was the case ever since I started to play (Dec 2013). Now you can find many chest items half the price of the corresponding bolt or even lower. Gloves, shoes that can be salvaged into items worth 6-7s can be bought for less than 1s and so on. Before patch the competition was so strong I almost had to do an exact calculation for every item I placed buy orders for, because buy order prices were really close to the ‘economically sound’ limit of buying. Today prices are so low almost all is a no-brainer, but you cant get your buy orders filled.

So whatever the explanation is to this phenomena, lower intesity of trading must be part of it. Anyways it is what it is, I’ll just have to adopt. Back in the day when I was experimenting with different methods for playing the TP, I ditched some ideas due to the market being too active for them and settled with salvaging. Maybe its time to take a look on those again and see how they work now. If they work well, it could be an other clue about trading intesity being low.

John Smith.4610:

I’m attaching a simple chart of TP Users and Buyers as unique counts relative to logins since the beginning of the month.

“never trust a statistic you haven’t forged yourself” – winston churchill / joseph goebbels

I have a few theories. One day, about a week ago, I saw several commonly traded items plummet in demand by tens of thousands of pieces. Not a curbed line, no, bam all in one go. Obviously they were fake 1 copper bids that could be used to feign demand or curb it at will. So I was thinking, the new TP isn’t exactly easy to handle when dealing with large buy orders like that. And I don’t think you can place a buy offer for 1500 items anymore by clicking “place buy order” several times really fast (haven’t tried either, I may be wrong). So it’s possible some big traders gave up on that tactic. Another possibility is that they were banned, or the new TP was set to detect them with new built-in detection tooks (one can hope, right?). In any event, there may be other factors that previously influenced demand falsely, but they no longer do.

Regarding supply: could it be that there was another botwave ban that led to decreased (read: actual) supply? Or could it be the change of the personal story system, which some redditors have said was abused by people to farm low level materials excessively?

You cannot make any accurate comparisons by going off bolt prices. There’s often a lag between bolt prices and scraps. Scraps sell much quicker than bolts. Most people would sell the scraps rather than refine them first and then sell.

Ayrilana.1396:

You cannot make any accurate comparisons by going off bolt prices. There’s often a lag between bolt prices and scraps. Scraps sell much quicker than bolts. Most people would sell the scraps rather than refine them first and then sell.

This.

During the bazaar, you could only trade unrefined mats, so scraps of gossamer were more expensive than bolts.

You also cant make accurate assumptions about trade volume by monitoring only a couple of items.

I’m seeing no disorder in the economy, I’m willing to be convinced if there’s compelling evidence.

Ayrilana.1396:

You cannot make any accurate comparisons by going off bolt prices. There’s often a lag between bolt prices and scraps. Scraps sell much quicker than bolts. Most people would sell the scraps rather than refine them first and then sell.

This dodges the OP’s issue though. The real question is why scraps are more expensive, too. Or, specifically, why the low level salvage materials producing those scraps are sold less.

There is one change that might cause it. The minimum price you are allowed to sell items for has been increased. It is not impossible to list items for a price that would get you less coin, after fees, than if you just vendored the item.

That is bound to have some effect. First an increase in price of the items that were selling for below vendor and whatever they salvage to. Those increased prices then cause other prices to be affected.

I just want the option to switch between the new/old TP UI… the older version was WAY better, why fix what wasn’t broken.

Personally i can only say i sold less the last weeks because the prices of iron, platinum
and watchwork sprockets all went down

New TP is however not the reason.

Charak.9761:

I just want the option to switch between the new/old TP UI… the older version was WAY better, why fix what wasn’t broken.

So I’m not the only one. Please get rid of the “close window” button after you sell.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Charak.9761:

I just want the option to switch between the new/old TP UI… the older version was WAY better, why fix what wasn’t broken.

So I’m not the only one. Please get rid of the “close window” button after you sell.

Yes please (PRETTY PLEASE).

There are a myriad of confirm dialog boxes all across a variety of UIs that NEED to be eliminated as they are simply blocking the screen until you click on a useless (quite small) button on the screen. In some cases, they disable being able to use ground targeted skills or other mouse pointer required actions….for NO reason. It’s not a huge deal, but quite frustrating at times.

One solution would be for the ACCEPT button to be highlighted as default and the ACTION button to allow for it to be selected (NOT require us to move a mouse to click it).

What confuses me is that there was an OK button on the old TP as well. Maybe you could have bypassed clicking on that by selecting another item to sell but now the buy/sell UI “window” obscures the remaining items in your inventory.