Guild Wars 2

Dee Jay.2460:

Vol.5241:

I don’t know why people here think they know more about the economy than an economist.

And yet so called “experts” are known to give less reliable predictions than amateurs.

It’s called the monkey-shakespeare paradox. However given the million amateurs giving conflicting predictions, at least one is bound to give the correct one. On the other hand, experts are at least in the right direction which is not true for most amateurs.

Most people on this forum are monkeys slamming their keyboards as far as economic obliviousness goes. This thread alone contains so much false information it makes my brain cry.
Making a 100gp out of the TP takes time, a few hours in game and hours of tracking data, thinking about predictions… those few people with thousands of gold haven’t done anything but play the game since release, it’s impossible for them to have a daytime job, social life or family. I pity them. They can have my in game gold, no problem.
However given some of the constraints in an MMO, money alone does not create money, and limits on TP numbers means there’s a top limit in gold earned per hour, no matter the amount of disposable income these TPplayers have. Flipping items takes time, flipping vast amounts of money takes vast amounts of time.

In the end, these elitist guys want to buy gems. That’s when the TP comes full circle and I reap their work.

MRA.4758:

SteepledHat.1345:

Complete data…. I guess you mean mostly complete or more complete than in reality.

I guess he means that they log and store each an every action taken in the game. Which would be smart move to do, since you can choose to mine the data for whatever reason later.

SteepledHat.1345:

But how do you sort legitimate trades from gold sellers moving gold or players shifting funds.

They can utilize pattern recognition techniques to sort out malicious from legitimate actions. If they have enough data, the observed features of these actions should be significantly different. You should keep in mind that gold sellers, to be a business, have to repeat certain activities over and over again to do their “trade”. This is very distinct from a legit player that occasionally shifts funds.

~MRA

Yeah, but I was really speaking about the details of their specific approach. But yes, what you’re saying is accurate. It’s just the mathematician in me that hates the phrase “complete data.” (Unless it really is a catalog of all possible movement of currency without exception.)

Forgive me, this kind of careful speech was drilled into me.

Vol.5241:

I don’t know why people here think they know more about the economy than an economist.

Because there is only 1 economist in the world right (Mr. Smith..heh I always remember the Matrix after that)?

Or are we (economists) banned from playing games in your mind?

Anyway, Smith is right, he does have the most complete data of us all. From that statement, one can extrapolate that the market is where they want it (go grind scrubs if u want stuff, flip TP or buy mah gemz). If it’s not, they’re slow at fixing stuff (idk, drop rates). Either way, it’s not a pretty situation.

As for my personal opinions about TP and prices, it’s biased on the fact that I hate griding and I don’t want to play a game which reminds me of work and I hate people that use other ppl for their own gain.

Nike.2631:

John Smith.4610:

This is very far from the truth.
Even more so inside of MMOs where there is complete data.

I’ll bite. Do you have a good sense of the percentage of people interested in playing a heroic adventure game that are being driven out of the playerbase by occasional contact with a highly predatory market simulator that is little more than semi-consenual PvP in the path to achieving endgame cosmetic goals?

Could you describe in terms well enough to base a company’s finacial well being on the differences between appealing to a rational actor in an economic model and appealing any substantial segment of the MMO playing audience, an audience I’ll mention that is often specifically looking for a little escapism from a strangely similar system that has served them so well they are dinking around in a game instead of vacationing somewhere in the real world.

The numbers available are solid, but they are driving the actions of people in decisions that range far outside their next buy or sell order. Sometimes I think the broader context of GW2 gets lost when defending the efficiencies of this particular sub-system within it .

Hopefully someone is able to see the bigger picture.

John Smith.4610:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Vol.5241:

I don’t know why people here think they know more about the economy than an economist.

A couple reasons, but the main reason is that the study of economics is the study of human behavior and psychology and as such, it is imperfect, incomplete and subject to very different interpretations and perspectives.

It’s the voodoo witch doctor profession of our age.

This is very far from the truth.
Even more so inside of MMOs where there is complete data.

In ancient times, being the voodoo witch doctor was probably one of the best professions.

My point is not that data is unavailable, but that even with all of the data, it is still up to a human to do something useful with it and whatever that goal is, it’s going to flow from human belief, experience and bias.

What is the most important thing about the Trading Post and the GW2 economy?

Even if we could agree that the most important thing is that it promotes and facilitates a good player experience and advances the business interests of ANet, we still won’t have people agree on how that should manifest.

Should it be stable? Should it offer maximum freedom to people who want to be traders? Should it incorporate mechanisms to inhibit extreme wealth accumulation? To what degree?

John Smith.4610:

Dreamslayer.7659:

Vol.5241:

I don’t know why people here think they know more about the economy than an economist.

A couple reasons, but the main reason is that the study of economics is the study of human behavior and psychology and as such, it is imperfect, incomplete and subject to very different interpretations and perspectives.

It’s the voodoo witch doctor profession of our age.

This is very far from the truth.
Even more so inside of MMOs where there is complete data.

This claim, despite a strong effort to assert authority as a developer, is wrong.

As someone who worked in the financial sector, I will give you this example: I’ve spoken with technical analysts from the top banks and the whole profession is basically nonsense. In one breath the banks tell us that “past performance is no guarantee of future results” and in the other they claim that market “trends” are predictable – Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_retracement. Technical analysts regularly conjure new mathematical formulae and tools (e.g. candlesticks/clouds) to give themselves the appearance of magicians and keep their profession alive. It’s absolute claptrap.

The only way in which trends are predictable is that all of the technical analysts are working from the same text books.

John Smith.4610:

This is very far from the truth.
Even more so inside of MMOs where there is complete data.

I’m pretty sure that the only way to have “complete data” in a science that purports to study human action would be to be omniscient with regard even to the thoughts and motivations of the people involved. Certainly more data helps with the analysis of specific historical trends, but the data still isn’t “complete.” We’re dealing with the activities of human beings, not the motion of inanimate objects, and as such, much of the “motive forces” behind economic trends lie beyond our view.

Karsusk.5247:

The economy is headed for a state where new players will be powerless to purchase certain items. As the inflation grows out of control, new people will need to rely in irl friends or generous guild mates to be able to function. This will shift the game to having far less casuals playing. Like everything in the game is doing now.

“To be able to function?” Ridiculous. You do not need a legendary to function. You don’t even necessarily need exotics to function… but if you do, there are plenty of ways to get them that have nothing to do with gold. (THIS is the difference between GW2 and the real world.) And the best stuff, Ascended gear, isn’t available at any price in gold; you have to farm it. And there is no way to use gold to prevent another person from playing. Only sheer envy could possibly cause someone to QQ over the prices of items on the trading post.

Dee Jay.2460:

And yet so called “experts” are known to give less reliable predictions than amateurs.

aw, man … No, they are not. Please, don’t be silly.

~MRA

Tarvok.4206:

John Smith.4610:

This is very far from the truth.
Even more so inside of MMOs where there is complete data.

I’m pretty sure that the only way to have “complete data” in a science that purports to study human action would be to be omniscient with regard even to the thoughts and motivations of the people involved.

This is an excellent rebuttal.

I’m glad we entertained you. Now, hopefully you’ll put out a brightly colored graph that will entertain us .

Novalight.7568:

Anyway, Smith is right, he does have the most complete data of us all. From that statement, one can extrapolate that the market is where they want it

I agree.

The thing that most people here fail to realise is that the in-game economy needs to serve one purpose and one purpose only: to make money for Anet.

There is only one way Anet makes money from existing players, that is when they buy gems woth dollars.

Some people buy gems for purchases at the gem store, but I would LOVE to know how many people buy gems to convert to gold: in other words: how much $$$ does Anet makes a week from gem-to-gold buyers.

I bet that there is someone atanet who’s job it is to ensure that the prices in the TP are set in such a way that it generates extra income in $$$ for Anet. They say it’s ‘player driven’, but if Anet can make -say- 3 million a month extra by selling gems because of the high prices on TP, you can be pretty sure they will intervene on the TP.

.

Also… a good marketing director would like to know two key indicators:

A: how much dollars would Anet gets extra, when the gem price goes up with 10%.

B: how much players would Anet loose when the gem price goes up with 10%, in each ‘’expected income bracket’’ of players.

They would divide players into different ‘’expected income brackets’’, based on the prediction of how many dollars this person will spend to buy gems. A player that has indicators that suggest he will never buy gems with dollars is worth alot less than a player that has indicators that he will buy gems with dollars.

Categorising customers like this is standard practise in pretty much any company with returning customers, it would be very surprising if Anet doesn’t do this.

As long as A >> B, a good marketing manager would demand that prices of gems will go up with 10%.

Same for a lower gem-to-gold ration, ofcourse.

I was going to reply to Tallis, but I realised there wasn’t much point… people believe all sorts of crazy things despite evidence to the contrary.

John, if you could give us some data like the OP asked for, that would be great. That’s kinda the whole point of this thread.

You guys are all good sports.

So you are saying that Anet is in control of you spending your money? What the heck. Since when can they grab my wallet and make me spend money.

oh wait they don’t. That is all on you.

MRA.4758:

SteepledHat.1345:

But how do you sort legitimate trades from gold sellers moving gold or players shifting funds.

They can utilize pattern recognition techniques to sort out malicious from legitimate actions. If they have enough data, the observed features of these actions should be significantly different. You should keep in mind that gold sellers, to be a business, have to repeat certain activities over and over again to do their “trade”. This is very distinct from a legit player that occasionally shifts funds.

~MRA

I hope you realize legitimate guild leaders of WvW guilds have been banned with a false positive of being gold sellers. These people had to send in tickets to get the ban reversed. So no, ANet’s process of determining a real player from an RMT is far less than perfect.

Quite a few expert microeconomists have shown that they don’t understand macroeconomics (Hi University of Chicago!), or that they are happy to pretend they don’t when it serves their political ends. But that is a wholly off topic discussion.

People’s intuitions about how a game economy will work – based on empirical evidence from the world economy – can go wildly awry, as a game economy has so many different constraints and pressures. It is much simpler in many ways. For instance, two of the most important influences in the real world are the financial system (being able to explicitly borrow and lend money) and land as a fundamental limited resource; without either of those; the economy is much simpler to analyze without either.

In a similar vein, much of the market manipulation and increasing returns in the real world depends on market power and regulatory capture, neither of which are really relevant here. You can’t even buy the means of production in game, only the fruits – and it’s essentially impossible to monopolize a market without controlling the means of production.

‘Market manipulation’ in this game appears to be nothing more than capitalizing upon massive information asymmetries and pocketing bid/ask spreads from markets with an extremely high implied interest rate. There have been high return, long term investments based on that high interest rate and low information, as well as profits in markets suffering from liquidity problems (especially early in the game).

The real issue, as far as I can tell, is that drops are unrewarding. Exotic drops are extremely infrequent and come soulbound half the time, while rare drops generally are just an ecto that represents less than a tenth of a percent of a long term goal. Besides a couple high priced precursors there’s nothing attractive that can drop. Couple that with prices that put many of those goals completely out of reach for most players, and you have a dis-satisfying reward structure.

The problem there isn’t the economy, or the pricing, or the trading post, but that the drops are not doing a good job of rewarding players for playing the game. Essentially, the reward structure has people getting their exotic gear at 2-4 gold per piece, and after that it’s a long, long grind to several hundred gold before achieving the next tier. The game wants more variance in drops, and it really needs more goals between basic exotics and 1000 gold legendaries that most players will never touch.

I agree that this thread should get back on topic. If Mr. Smith would give a reply saying yes or no then further discussion could be directed to other threads. I am personally very curious as to the macroeconomic data that has worked itself out since release, not that I wish to prove anything by it, but being able to see the actual rate of inflation, population variations, money supply/velocity, etc… Especially when it comes to all of the various predictions given by many players in this and other threads.

it might just be that there is a cyclical aspect to the data that hasn’t yet completed, and we may just have to wait for the cycle to renew.

If I do remember correctly, CCP has a very good reputation for presenting macroeconomic data at the Eve Fanfest.

I do reference CCP alot, but I just find it interesting that they report their information as if it is their duty to inform the player-base.

I think Ensign’s analysis hits the nail exactly on the head! Comparisons with real-world economies are quite futile, given that important factors in real economies are missing in the in-game economy.

I too think that massive information asymmetries are at the heart of much of the ‘market manipulation’ (although I do think that some market control is at work too). The game really does an appalling job at providing information and one needs to consult the wiki pages at the very least to get some decent information. In my opinion this is simply bad game design.

A large culprit here is the mystic forge; which has many recipes but no information about them in game. Good money can be made of conversions unknown to the majority of (casual) players. It would be better if some recipes were removed from the forge and given to the crafting proficiencies (i.e., upgrading crafting materials, forging weapons, boxes of armor recipes, etc).

Another source of income are the TP fees that the majority of (casual) players seem to have a hard time understanding. Many people seem to think that they don’t pay the taxes when selling to a buy order. ANet could do a far better job at showing the profit made by selling on the TP. Displaying the projected profit on the UI was a good first step, but it could be more prominently displayed and explained.

Like Ensign, I too think that the reward system needs upgrading. The difference between exotics and legendaries is too large and the ascended gear did little to improve this situation. The named exotics are not so well-known it seems, but could also be part of a solution.

Finally, the quest for a legendary seems to rely heavily on grinding. It’s all about getting large quantities of the same materials (i.e., 250 ore, 250 trophies, 100 lodestones, etc). Since people loathe doing the same (simple) content over and over again, they start looking at the TP instead. Making the quest for a legendary more varied and more fun would probably lower the amount of complaints (including those about the TP and the people playing it).

I’m really quite confused here. The thread made a very specific request, and yet the actual topic has been avoided. When I see an ArenaNet symbol next to a thread, I usually assume it means they’ve taken the time to provide constructive feedback and answer questions.

Other people have even reiterated the question to John in this very thread after he responded in here. If I sound frustrated, it’s because I am, and it’s a problem that in my opinion is becoming rampant the forums. Why bother posting at all if you aren’t going to address the issue raised in the thread? It drives me up a wall when ArenaNet takes the time to post on a thread that they’ve obviously been reading, and then have unrelated sidebar conversations while completely avoiding the point of the particular thread.

So, I’ll repeat the request again, is this data something you can provide to us again?

A simple, “I can’t provide that for you at this time”, or “it’s something I will work on getting out” is all that’s needed. Even a flat out “No.” will suffice. I feel like it’s a game sometimes (of pulling teeth) to actually get an ArenaNet response on these forums that’s relevant to the purpose of the thread. No one expects you to reply to every thread and post, but if you’re going to take the time to post in one, please at the very least address the heart of the thread, instead of just ignoring it.

Zegai.8256:

I’m really quite confused here. The thread made a very specific request, and yet the actual topic has been avoided. When I see an ArenaNet symbol next to a thread, I usually assume it means they’ve taken the time to provide constructive feedback and answer questions.

Other people have even reiterated the question to John in this very thread after he responded in here. If I sound frustrated, it’s because I am, and it’s a problem that in my opinion is being rampant the forums. Why bother posting at all if you aren’t going to address the issue raised in the thread? It drives me up a wall when ArenaNet takes the time to post on a thread that they’ve obviously been reading, and then have unrelated sidebar conversations while completely avoiding the point of the particular thread.

So, I’ll repeat the request again, is this data something you can provide to us again?

A simple, “I can’t provide that for you at this time”, or “it’s something I will work on getting out” is all that’s needed. Even a flat out “No.” will suffice. I feel like it’s a game sometimes (of pulling teeth) to actually get an ArenaNet response on these forums that’s relevant to the purpose of the thread. No one expects you to reply to every thread and post, but if you’re going to take the time to post in one, please at the very least address the heart of the thread, instead of just ignoring it.

My thoughts precisely

John Smith.4610:

marnick.4305:

it makes my brain cry.

I really laughed at makes my brain cry, going to use that in the future, thanks!

I’m glad that you are enjoying the off topic discussion but as it has been mentioned already, would you mind addressing the OP as well? Especially since you took time to read through?

It just doesn’t feel right to see a Dev/Employee response(s) which have nothing to do with the whole point of the thread.

I really want to know the answer to this as well. “Yes-No-We don’t care.” Any answer will do.

Ensign.2189:

Quite a few expert microeconomists have shown that they don’t understand macroeconomics (Hi University of Chicago!), or that they are happy to pretend they don’t when it serves their political ends. But that is a wholly off topic discussion.

People’s intuitions about how a game economy will work – based on empirical evidence from the world economy – can go wildly awry, as a game economy has so many different constraints and pressures. It is much simpler in many ways. For instance, two of the most important influences in the real world are the financial system (being able to explicitly borrow and lend money) and land as a fundamental limited resource; without either of those; the economy is much simpler to analyze without either.

In a similar vein, much of the market manipulation and increasing returns in the real world depends on market power and regulatory capture, neither of which are really relevant here. You can’t even buy the means of production in game, only the fruits – and it’s essentially impossible to monopolize a market without controlling the means of production.

‘Market manipulation’ in this game appears to be nothing more than capitalizing upon massive information asymmetries and pocketing bid/ask spreads from markets with an extremely high implied interest rate. There have been high return, long term investments based on that high interest rate and low information, as well as profits in markets suffering from liquidity problems (especially early in the game).

The real issue, as far as I can tell, is that drops are unrewarding. Exotic drops are extremely infrequent and come soulbound half the time, while rare drops generally are just an ecto that represents less than a tenth of a percent of a long term goal. Besides a couple high priced precursors there’s nothing attractive that can drop. Couple that with prices that put many of those goals completely out of reach for most players, and you have a dis-satisfying reward structure.

The problem there isn’t the economy, or the pricing, or the trading post, but that the drops are not doing a good job of rewarding players for playing the game. Essentially, the reward structure has people getting their exotic gear at 2-4 gold per piece, and after that it’s a long, long grind to several hundred gold before achieving the next tier. The game wants more variance in drops, and it really needs more goals between basic exotics and 1000 gold legendaries that most players will never touch.

I think the main problem that people are seeing with regards to “market manipulators” is that there is no financial system in which to earn interest over time, apart from the TP, which is why people are seeing what is going on now, with lots of traders trying to make money on their massive bankrolls. In this respect, I agree wholeheartedly with this post.

But all in all, this discussion belongs in a different thread.

I for one would love to see more information.

Whether it is a Player Density Map of Queensdale or in an infographic / blog format such as these two blog / news posts
– John Smith on the Guild Wars 2 Virtual Economy
– John Smith on the State of the Guild Wars 2 Economy

The above showed the players things that aren’t normally available to them. With bits and pieces of information on the trading post, the mystic forge, profession / race distribution and so on, they were widely discussed by the playerbase, even those who normally abstain were loving the information.

In short more of the things linked above please.

You are under no obligation to reveal that information John Smith, ignore these guys :P

I’d much rather talk about the economics of Guild Wars 2.

-How do you feel about controlling inflation? Do you think the gold sinks we have in the game are sufficient enough to keep the value of gold steady overtime?

John Smith.4610:

I post because I enjoy interacting with the community.

Wow, and you still didn’t address the inquiry, that comes off rather spiteful :/. I don’t even know if I should assume that it wasn’t intentional at this point.

Eve’s economy is hardcore. I love it when a game can create a virtual economy system that reflects market and human behaviour similar to real life. I think it raises the level of mature people playing it and add another “end game” as economy forms part of the game handicap.

Good job John, economy truly is here another monster to deal with and I love it the way it is.

John Smith.4610:

Inflation is a really tricky topic. One important thing to understand about inflation (the EVE guys have done a great job explaining this) is that it isn’t a change in the quantity of money available, it’s a change in prices (not individual prices). It’s easy to double the money supply and not inflate the economy.

Somebody get Glenn Beck on the phone! ;-)

But in all seriousness, I have a couple questions, I don’t know if you can give much detail on them…

1) It sounds like you have some sort of target in mind when you “balance” the economy. Is this an inflation target (e.g. we’d like to keep inflation at or around 2%) or is it a price target (e.g. we think 1 gold should buy 3-4 ecto… which is my guess, btw)? And did you guys come up with these targets before the official release or was/is it something you’re constantly refining?

2) People have criticized ArenaNet for being very harsh with the ban-hammer, but I tend to agree with your decisions in the name of protecting the economy. I’m curious as to the size of exploits/RMT transactions that get caught in relation to the size of the economy and the amassed wealth. Meaning: if the snowflake exploit created 2 million “illegal” gold, how does that compare as a percentage to the daily/weekly/monthly gold-creation rate and how does it compare to the accumulated wealth of all players?

It’d be really cool to see numbers like “during the two days the exploit was being used, 15% of in-game value creation came from snowflake salvaging.” I’m not even sure if you guys have the data for that, but it’d be really interesting. Ditto RMT: you guys are regularly banning accounts and undoing transfers, I assume… what percentage of the economy is involved in illicit trade?

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

John Smith.4610:

I post because I enjoy interacting with the community.

Wow, and you still didn’t address the inquiry, that comes off rather spiteful :/. I don’t even know if I should assume that it wasn’t intentional at this point.

I read this as “look, I’m here on my lunch break. I can’t promise or release information to the community without authorization, so I can’t tell you one way or another without a huge hassle. I’m here posting because we have a great community and I want to be a part of it, but there is a line between community member and ANet employee that I can’t cross.”

I’m far more interested in the insights into the process of ANet than the actual implementation or results—and already we’ve gotten a lot of those.

John Smith.4610:

2. The economy is so massive and filled with good players that RMT holds relatively little total percentage of the economy. To give some perspective on banning for exploits. Our last round of snowflake banning encompassed greater than 275,000 illicitly created ectos.

Wow, seriously? Someone else from ANet (it might have been you, John, I can’t remember) said that there were fewer than 200 total bans. Less than 200 people managed to make over 275,000 ectos?!

Revan.6259:

John Smith.4610:

2. The economy is so massive and filled with good players that RMT holds relatively little total percentage of the economy. To give some perspective on banning for exploits. Our last round of snowflake banning encompassed greater than 275,000 illicitly created ectos.

Wow, seriously? Someone else from ANet (it might have been you, John, I can’t remember) said that there were fewer than 200 total bans. Less than 200 people managed to make over 275,000 ectos?!

As far as I remember those 200 total bans were those who exploited heavily. And those people were the ones who massively abused the system.

Remember that the exploit was that you could get more ectos than you would invest

He specifically noted that the exploit resulted in that many ectos created; there is no need for all 275,000 of those ectos having been made by those who were banned. Imagine, for instance, that 10,000 players only salvaged around 5 of the snowflakes, resulting in an average of, say, 4.5 ecto created per player. That alone accounts for 45,000 of the ectos without even factoring in those who were banned. I know that I, personally, only narrowly missed the ban cutoff after having salvaged exactly 184 snowflakes. Imagine several hundred other people being in the same boat, and 275,000 ectos created is not so far-fetched.

So on average, that’s 1375 ectos per person

John Smith.4610:

An interesting strategy that not many people think about is allowing the economy to inflate a bit, then pulling the money back out in a cycle ( many countries do this, but not on purpose :P )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

Hmm im making around 20g a/day and sometimes lose around 5g, my method gave me all the gold for mats etc for sunrise ( 800g ) still im making gold on this way only standing in LA.. I need a bit of luck but it works for me.

And no sorry guys and girls, i dont tell what i do or else i destroy my own window.. and i need to save up some gold for future events!

I have 180g atm, dont wanna brag or something.. just telling my financial situation

Ah, very well Mr. Smith. My friend was banned for having salvaged 337 of the snowflakes, which with BL kits (which I know he used, because he was trying to get rid of his BL kits) is ~1.4 ecto/salvage rate. Thus, he alone created ~468 ecto. I imagine there were several offenders who created well above the average, balancing this out.

John Smith.4610:

When I say the last round of banning encompassed, I mean those who were banned created that many.

Hmm, I don’t know if you can divulge this type of information but it doesn’t hurt to ask…

when accounts get banned, do all the items they currently have listed in the TP get deleted, thus removing them from the market and making it easy to restore the market to what it was previously?

BTW thank you for responding to people here, it is enlightening to get the ‘other’ sides POV

John Smith.4610:

When I say the last round of banning encompassed, I mean those who were banned created that many.

And now we understand why it is that you guys are so “harsh” on banning people who do things like the snowflake exploit. If you’re getting 1350 ectos essentially for free, I don’t know how you could NOT know that was an exploit.

I don’t want to diverge the thread from its original discussion, so I will keep this short. Maybe if you’re creating thousands of snowflakes to salvage, it’s clear that you’re in it to profit. However, I created a stack of ecto, and I didn’t think it was an exploit while doing it. The change to the value of ectos seemed totally intentional to me; people were converting mithril and snowflakes into ecto. It didn’t seem any more radical to me than dropping precursors out of the Ancient Karka chest, dropping Arach/Crossing/Mad Moon out of the MK chest, dropping permanent bank access items out of the MK chest, or allowing people to convert exotic trinkets into BL keys. If I had 1 more BL kit to waste, I would’ve used it, and I’d be banned right now because of it.

It might be easy on the outside looking in to say that it was obviously an exploit, but hindsight is 20/20. If ANet had told me somehow “This is an exploit” I would’ve never done it. As far as I was aware, however, I was converting BL kits, which cost a boatload of gold, and mithril into ecto. That didn’t seem too far-fetched to me, and seemed in-line with Regina’s post about lowering the cost of ascended items (what spurred the increase in ecto value in the first place).

I guess my only point here is thus: Don’t lump everyone into the same boat and give anyone who made hundreds of these snowflakes the black mark of ‘exploiter’. ANet is free to ban whoever they want to whenever they want to, and I won’t argue that, but the difference between me and someone who was banned for the snowflakes is negligible. If ANet had said something, anything, I wouldn’t have salvaged a single one.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I don’t want to diverge the thread from its original discussion, so I will keep this short. Maybe if you’re creating thousands of snowflakes to salvage, it’s clear that you’re in it to profit. However, I created a stack of ecto, and I didn’t think it was an exploit while doing it. The change to the value of ectos seemed totally intentional to me; people were converting mithril and snowflakes into ecto. It didn’t seem any more radical to me than dropping precursors out of the Ancient Karka chest, dropping Arach/Crossing/Mad Moon out of the MK chest, dropping permanent bank access items out of the MK chest, or allowing people to convert exotic trinkets into BL keys. If I had 1 more BL kit to waste, I would’ve used it, and I’d be banned right now because of it.

It might be easy on the outside looking in to say that it was obviously an exploit, but hindsight is 20/20. If ANet had told me somehow “This is an exploit” I would’ve never done it. As far as I was aware, however, I was converting BL kits, which cost a boatload of gold, and mithril into ecto. That didn’t seem too far-fetched to me, and seemed in-line with Regina’s post about lowering the cost of ascended items (what spurred the increase in ecto value in the first place).

I guess my only point here is thus: Don’t lump everyone into the same boat and give anyone who made hundreds of these snowflakes the black mark of ‘exploiter’. ANet is free to ban whoever they want to whenever they want to, and I won’t argue that, but the difference between me and someone who was banned for the snowflakes is negligible. If ANet had said something, anything, I wouldn’t have salvaged a single one.

Just consider your self lucky, and be done with it, and remember if something is too good to be true, it probable is.

BobbyT.7192:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I don’t want to diverge the thread from its original discussion, so I will keep this short. Maybe if you’re creating thousands of snowflakes to salvage, it’s clear that you’re in it to profit. However, I created a stack of ecto, and I didn’t think it was an exploit while doing it. The change to the value of ectos seemed totally intentional to me; people were converting mithril and snowflakes into ecto. It didn’t seem any more radical to me than dropping precursors out of the Ancient Karka chest, dropping Arach/Crossing/Mad Moon out of the MK chest, dropping permanent bank access items out of the MK chest, or allowing people to convert exotic trinkets into BL keys. If I had 1 more BL kit to waste, I would’ve used it, and I’d be banned right now because of it.

It might be easy on the outside looking in to say that it was obviously an exploit, but hindsight is 20/20. If ANet had told me somehow “This is an exploit” I would’ve never done it. As far as I was aware, however, I was converting BL kits, which cost a boatload of gold, and mithril into ecto. That didn’t seem too far-fetched to me, and seemed in-line with Regina’s post about lowering the cost of ascended items (what spurred the increase in ecto value in the first place).

I guess my only point here is thus: Don’t lump everyone into the same boat and give anyone who made hundreds of these snowflakes the black mark of ‘exploiter’. ANet is free to ban whoever they want to whenever they want to, and I won’t argue that, but the difference between me and someone who was banned for the snowflakes is negligible. If ANet had said something, anything, I wouldn’t have salvaged a single one.

Just consider your self lucky, and be done with it, and remember if something is too good to be true, it probable is.

I think his point is that he was saying he didn’t think it was too good to be true. He’s saying that he felt like it was intentional, based on what ANet had said. Makes sense to me.

That’s exactly my point; it didn’t seem too good to be true, or at least no more so than my friends creating stacks of BL keys out of candy corn or getting multiple precursors from the Karka event. In hindsight, it still doesn’t seem too good to be true by comparison. Anyway, this’ll be my last post regarding this topic in this thread. I’m more interested in hearing what Mr. Smith has to say about in-game economics than the inevitability of my own ban when I accidentally cross an arbitrary threshold I won’t know exists.

John Smith.4610:

Lets not turn this thread into a discussion of one specific exploit.

Yes, agreed. I’m done, and apologize for bringing it up.

John Smith.4610:

Lets not turn this thread into a discussion of one specific exploit.

Thanks for the info on ecto creation. 275,000 is quite a lot… The current supply/demand on the TP is 20k and 90k, so that should help put it into perspective.