Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been browsing here recently hoping to uncover some secrets of the trade used by our wealthier Tyrians. Of course I didn’t find much given that it’s not in a persons best interest to ruin their niche in the ever changing market we share. So I’ll settle for this, how did you start out? As a poor Tyrian “hero” scrounging around in the slums of copper to the TPTycoon you are today? What gave you your capital? How did you invest it? Was it a lucky break that lead you to slay Zhaitan with your wallet alone?

I am currently by no means wealthy, I’m busy chasing Sunrise and I think I’ve almost got it :p. While my GOLD value may be very little, in the 50’s of gold at any given time, my net worth is much higher, in the thousands. However most of that gold is in assets that I will one day wear on my back.

I got interested in the TP about a year or so after the game launched, I had spent most of my time just “playing the game” as I’ve seen it called. So naturally, I never noticed the TP for much more than an auction house. Then one day I ran into a flipper, which I think is just a slur for “investor”. He explained some basics to me, and I used the capital I had built bashing baddies to start buying and selling low level mats in bulk, which lead to more capital to explore the market with. Soon after I found I enjoyed moving money around in the market almost as much as I enjoyed moving meat around on the battlefield and invested my time equally. So whats your story if you’re willing to tell?

During one of the patches, during the original Queen’s Jubilee, they removed Traveler armor and introduce Dire armor to take it’s place. While seemingly everyone was farming Scarlet’s invasion events, many didn’t noticed the new Dire drops. And with no history prices were much lower than the other standard armors (Berserker, Carrion, Cleric, Rampage, Shaman’s) which made salvaging them highly profitable. In the 30-40% range. Eventually enough players noticed and the price gap closed. But for several weeks I was salvaging 50-150 pieces of rare armor a day and selling off the ectos major runes and basic mats. Went from under 70g, which was painstakingly earned and saved, to over 200g in that time. It was horrible grunt work.

Now I sell my daily and monthly laurels for T6 bags which I sell on the TP. That’s about 40g a month. The rest of time it’s doing loads of events, some champs and a few bosses a night and sell off the dropped loot and salvage any rares. Ectos are still priced well. Major runes are up.

MFed 2 Dusks and a Dawn, grand total of 400 rares thrown in the forge. My friends hate me as a result. Oh well.

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

Then one day I ran into a flipper, which I think is just a slur for “investor”.

It’s a little more complicated than that. A flipper is someone who accumulates gold quickly by buying items priced below the market average (buying from players who either don’t know the value of the items or aren’t interested in waiting for a buyer who will offer market value) and “flipping” them by immediately offering them for sale at market value to someone else. The risk to this is that if he misjudges the market price, he may not sell the items quickly enough, tying up a lot of gold in unsold inventory and costing more in TP fees when he cancels and relists.

An investor is also called a speculator, they buy underpriced goods they believe will be worth much more in the future, then hold them until the time is right and sell at (hopefully) a much higher price. Speculators gamble that items like weapon skins, backpacks, and crafting mats will go up in price as they become harder to acquire or when changes to the game make them more desirable. The risk here is that those changes to the game may never come, or the items are reintroduced into the game (becoming more common and thus less valuable) or too many speculators hoard the same items leading to supply overwhelming the demand for these items.

Both approaches have risks and benefits, the main difference being that flippers are looking for immediate profit that they reinvest, while speculators take a long term approach.

@Beh,

Haha I did that for a while with rates etc when they were cheap. But like I said I was more absorbed in going out and killing stuff. Lesson learned, kill the market, then kill the baddies. The market, at least in my eyes, is becoming very balanced which is great, it makes flipping or finding niche profitable endeavors like that both rewarding and I difficult. In this instance difficult being the best word I can use to describe something that would take some thinking or insight to accomplish.

@Val
Yes, I hate you too. But grats on the legendary luck thats insane, we should make a documentary about you.

@Tolunart,

Yeah I don’t mean to say that speculation and flipping are the same. I was just using the lingo everyone seems to apply to anyone and everyone that makes any margin of profit off the TP. Theres a lot of hate for it i’m finding on here, a lot of people that demand the rich bow down and pick up the poor or the they need hand out, and I usually see it posted in something to the effect of " FLIPPERS MADE X EXPENSIVE" or “FLIPPERS SHOULD BE BANNED” etc. In regards to anyone who may have invested in say a skin, rune, etc and then held on to it. I flip things daily, move gold where I think I can make some profit, and at the same time I pick up things I think will go up in price in the long run either due to nerfed drops, farms, or stats etc.

Come on guys keep the stories rolling. When I started out I was a copper flipper, talking days for silvers of profit hahahaa. It was slow, pain staking work.

Just this patch I was playing with the salvage materials on the TP, because they spiked when people realized they could just salvage bits into metals and then either sell those to people buying them for the event or get reward chests themselves. Unfortunately ANET recognized the correlation is price spikes and changed the item to only drop coppers as a result. I had over 1k in stock when it happened and half way through selling everything just stopped, price plummeted and I got shafted on my investment. Recouped by price matching ½ of the stock and salvaging/ selling the remainder that was purchased at a relatively low price. Anyone else out there have some horror stories from not paying attention to daily patches etc?

20 copper ancient bones.

Vol.7601:

20 copper ancient bones.

A long time ago when the TP was new and shiny.

Vol.7601:

20 copper ancient bones.

Ya know, I wish at the time I had the foresight to think that the end game mats would be worth a lot, you know, END GAME. Freiken A. I’ve been Ive been in since Betas and before and I never thought to stock up on anything I was so obsessed with playing and exploring I gave no thought to my future or my finances haha.

Behellagh.1468:

Vol.7601:

20 copper ancient bones.

A long time ago when the TP was new and shiny.

When ancient bones dropped more than all other mats combined*

they didn’t even hit 2s until like january iirc. basically all t6 was dirt cheap except blood which was around 4s.

RemiRome.8495:

Behellagh.1468:

Vol.7601:

20 copper ancient bones.

A long time ago when the TP was new and shiny.

When ancient bones dropped more than all other mats combined*

Before my time. I started December 4th, 2012.

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous? I’ve seen a lot of QQ on these forums and I just don’t know what to make of it? I started with nothing, and while I’ve been playing forever and a day I’ve kept my player wealth fairly low, distributed between new character after new character and what ever I happened to be enjoying at the moment. As soon as I start TRYING to make money again I seem to just rake it in.

Anyone else feel like your shift from poor to more was sudden? Or did you grind hard and long hours and sell your blood and soul on the TP till you got a break?

In the beginning of the game, I played just to explore the world. When I needed rare/exotic equipment or another bank/character slot, I just emptied my collectibles storage and sold everything I could. A week or two of accumulating crafting mats and I could pretty much buy anything I really needed.

Then I started supplementing exploration XP with crafting XP…

I started out crafting rare greatswords for other to throw into the toilet over a year ago.
At that time buy orders for the inscriptions were well below crafting value, so i bought them instead of crafting them myself. That somehow limited my volume compared t ocrafting them myself but i usually managed to get at least 2000 per week and that way i made a profit of 7-10s per greatsword.
During that time i also made alot of gold salvaging rare equipment that had exotic upgrade components on them. The gold i earned during that time i mostly invested into speculative items, i barely ever flipped items for profit.
I got lucky with investing in exotic sentinel insignias and inscriptions from the molten facility. Initially i only bought them because they were half the price of other crafted ones, so i thought i might make about 100% profit on them. I didnt expect them rise 10 fold within a couple of months. I also made lots of profit from celestial recipes from last years bazaar with an average of a 1000% profit margin.

I don’t do anything special to get the cash, just the same thing I always do in MMOs.

Materials.

Playing a lot of alts, I end up in mid-level zones a lot more often than most, and those crafting mats sell for a good chunk. I don’t try to flip the trading post or chain run dungeons, so I’m not rich by any means, but I have no complaints. Even had enough to risk it on the Unidentified Dye spike of 2014. (Had I taken off work that day, I would’ve scored an easy 70 gold once the price spiked.)

Every so often, I purge half the materials from my collection, and that nets me a few dozen gold once I’m done.

And, for some strange reason, selling blues and whites for low level earns a silly amount of extra silver.

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous? I’ve seen a lot of QQ on these forums and I just don’t know what to make of it? I started with nothing, and while I’ve been playing forever and a day I’ve kept my player wealth fairly low, distributed between new character after new character and what ever I happened to be enjoying at the moment. As soon as I start TRYING to make money again I seem to just rake it in.

Anyone else feel like your shift from poor to more was sudden? Or did you grind hard and long hours and sell your blood and soul on the TP till you got a break?

Here’s my take on this.

It’s called jealousy. We see it in the real world as well. Wake up on January 1 and read the news. Countless articles how a CEOs have already made your year’s salary in one day. Or how CEO pay is 400x larger on average compared to the minimum wage.

To which I say, who the kitten cares? They are getting paid that much because of their value to the company and their skills that the brought to the table. And of course, a little bit of luck.

Here in GW2, yes, I admit, this should be treated as a game, and not real life. I understand that.

But also understand that just because this is a game doesn’t mean that everything is handed upon log-in. If people want that, they should play a single player game and run some cheat codes.

People are jealous that there are others in game that are luckier and smarter than them, and they can’t stomach it. They want instant gratification at minimum loss/risk.

If you play 3 hours a day doing WvW or open world exploring, why in the world do you expect to earn as much as the person who farms 40 hours a week or does 3 hours of high intensive TP trading?

The only way you can ever have a situation where everyone earns the same amount of gold in the same amount of time is if there were fixed gold rewards for x hours dedicated across y activities. And if you miss those hours, they get banked like rest exp.

It’s a great concept – but at that point you are not playing an MMO that anyone enjoys. It would be a great game for those casual players who want all the nice bells and whistles upon log-in. But I’m afraid such a group of players is so small that any game tailored to them would be a loss before launch.

Vol.7601:

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous? I’ve seen a lot of QQ on these forums and I just don’t know what to make of it? I started with nothing, and while I’ve been playing forever and a day I’ve kept my player wealth fairly low, distributed between new character after new character and what ever I happened to be enjoying at the moment. As soon as I start TRYING to make money again I seem to just rake it in.

Anyone else feel like your shift from poor to more was sudden? Or did you grind hard and long hours and sell your blood and soul on the TP till you got a break?

Here’s my take on this.

It’s called jealousy. We see it in the real world as well. Wake up on January 1 and read the news. Countless articles how a CEOs have already made your year’s salary in one day. Or how CEO pay is 400x larger on average compared to the minimum wage.

To which I say, who the kitten cares? They are getting paid that much because of their value to the company and their skills that the brought to the table. And of course, a little bit of luck.

Here in GW2, yes, I admit, this should be treated as a game, and not real life. I understand that.

But also understand that just because this is a game doesn’t mean that everything is handed upon log-in. If people want that, they should play a single player game and run some cheat codes.

People are jealous that there are others in game that are luckier and smarter than them, and they can’t stomach it. They want instant gratification at minimum loss/risk.

If you play 3 hours a day doing WvW or open world exploring, why in the world do you expect to earn as much as the person who farms 40 hours a week or does 3 hours of high intensive TP trading?

The only way you can ever have a situation where everyone earns the same amount of gold in the same amount of time is if there were fixed gold rewards for x hours dedicated across y activities. And if you miss those hours, they get banked like rest exp.

It’s a great concept – but at that point you are not playing an MMO that anyone enjoys. It would be a great game for those casual players who want all the nice bells and whistles upon log-in. But I’m afraid such a group of players is so small that any game tailored to them would be a loss before launch.

I believe this is a very arrogant view shared by many in this section of the forums.

Comparing 3 hours of casual play to 40 hours of grinding is not an honest assessment. Of course 1 hour of grinding should earn more than 1 hour of casual play, that’s not the issue. The issue is that the same levels of intensity are not even remotely balanced across various methods. If they were in the same ball park, then the point would be moot.

Let me explain “ball park” further…it’s like a bell curve scenario that excludes extreme outliers. There is a variance of lows and highs within a given context that keeps balance in check.

What we have with the trading post is a method outside of the ball park that’s heading down the road while everything else (for the most part) is contained within the walls.

It boils down to balance. Of course there will be deviation across methods and intensities, but having such an outlier when all others are relatively consistent is prejudicial to a mmo’s community (imo).

I gave that example because it seems the overwhelmingly majority of players who complain about the riches are those who sparringly play. I have great respect for those who are understanding, but they are very few.

Again, there is no way to balance this. This is because:
1.) TP players take advantage of the lack of patience/knowledge of the average playerbase. The only way to get rid of this is to change player tendencies, which is impossible.

2.) TP being the most profitable avenue is only available to a small group of players. If everyone tried to play the TP, profit would be reduced to the point that it is no longer viable

3.) You cannot balance different gameplay types and their rewards so that they are equal. It’s impossible to design such a system so that the rewards per hour are similar, unless you use the example I gave earlier. But no one would play that type of game, nor would any team design such a system and expect to have a playable game.

We’ve been through this discussion before. It’s not happening.

I would say a good way to make money at first to give you enough capital to play on the BLTP is to sell your first legendary you create. That is what I did and bought another precursor I wanted and slowly made that legendary while having a pile of gold to play with.

Now I buy a lot but do not sell as much as I should. Seems I am a bit of a hoarder now that space is a little easier to come buy with the skin changes and collection tab expansions. Maybe one day the Large Skulls will go up in price for some reason… or I do have a ton of elaborate totems to sell whenever I feel like it. Point is if you sell that legendary skin for bunch of money you will have plenty to play with on the trading post.

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous?

I don’t really care about disparities in game.

Wealth disparity on its own is benign. What matters is what impact that disparity has on everyone else. In the real world, some disparities, such as those that arise from hard or clever work, are good for everyone. Others, such as the rents collected by market power, are not. You have to look at the consequences of particular disparities to understand and judge the value.

Most of the negative consequences of a wealth disparity don’t exist in game. There isn’t competition for scarce means of production, no interdependencies to leverage. Sure, some people have more money than others, but that doesn’t negatively impact anyone else; they can still play the game and get rewarded just the same regardless of what anyone else is doing. The market isn’t flooding; the goods everyone finds are holding value very well.

So I really don’t care at all. This isn’t the real world where those big fortunes are often coming at the expense of others from big power disparities. In game, no one gets hurt, so why worry?

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

how did you start out?

I made most of my initial money from dungeons, back when they were still new and shiny.

That was amplified by salvaging rares (forging the runes) and opening bags. A year ago the margins were not anywhere near as tight as they are now, and it was pretty easy to make 20, 25% per salvage.

The big spike was from early precursor forging. Last summer the margin from forging Sparks was up around 80%, and even with some pretty poor luck you make a killing at that margin.

Haven’t done too much since; the margins tend to be tighter, and I’d rather spend my time doing other things in game outside of big market shocks that are fun in their own right.

When I came back to the game early this year I had some traveler runes that I didn’t want, so that gave me some ‘welcome back’ capital I used to replace my masterwork trinkets. I decided to get the ascended Triforge pendant, so I farmed the FGS train until I got that. Then I continued until I raised my tailoring from 400 to 500, then I worked on a complete set of ascended armor. I waited a little bit for the April 15th update to decide on runes, but after getting those I felt more or less done. Right around then I tried my first attempt at playing the market, and went from 40g (leftover from farming) to around 6g. I used that for my second attempt, where I just tried to find a market. I found one I was pretty happy with, but it’s slowed since then so moved to other items. I have less gold now than many players that don’t play the market, but since I waited until I felt like I didn’t need much else I’m pretty happy with where I am.

Runes and sigils.

Being a player before a trader, I’ve always felt I have a good handle on where the game is at. PvP and WvW have been my main occupation since the start, so I saw the trends coming/going for a long time. I didn’t start investing the runes/sigils until later because I blew all my starter gold on guild influence, but once I did, it was remarkably easy to predict what was going to happen at a patch or when Twitch Player X started talking about <insert rune set>.

A good example is the April feature pack and Rune of Balthazar, I cleaned house with a speculation order on that just by paying attention. Everybody is saying it is totally nutso strong, yet the buy price is pennies? GIMME!

Unfortunately, I have trouble resisting the urge to spend all the profits on ectoplasms and crafting. I don’t think I will ever be rich.

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous?

In other games I have played, the wealth disparity was still present, but created differently. One loser spends 23 hours of a day farming bat poop in a cave because it vendors for the highest amount in the game and after 3 years of brain-frying farm he/she is loaded. No thanks! In this game, I don’t have to grind nickels to get ahead. The wealth disparity will always exist, and though I don’t mean to be insulting to any of the other players, much of it is self inflicted.

Just like we see on this forum, many people assume that I spend all day staring at the TP so I can somehow rob them of coins!!! When in reality, I am paying the most minimal amount of attention and hold some understanding of math. If they wanted to gain steady income with marginal effort, they could too. But they don’t. Are the OMEGA rich a problem? Sort of, I dunno about these multi-thousand gold precursors orders/sales… But we’re nowhere near plutocracy.

I sold a dawn for 72g. I was such a baller back then.

tolunart.2095:

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

Then one day I ran into a flipper, which I think is just a slur for “investor”.

It’s a little more complicated than that. A flipper is someone who accumulates gold quickly by buying items priced below the market average (buying from players who either don’t know the value of the items or aren’t interested in waiting for a buyer who will offer market value) and “flipping” them by immediately offering them for sale at market value to someone else. The risk to this is that if he misjudges the market price, he may not sell the items quickly enough, tying up a lot of gold in unsold inventory and costing more in TP fees when he cancels and relists.

This is great in theory, but most flippers will have enough cash to just sit on stuff at the new price. I see it all the time, loads of items way higher than market price that will not sell unless Arenanet change the game in some way. And they (we) can sit on those sell orders forever, paying no fee.

Omnitek.3876:

I sold a dawn for 72g. I was such a baller back then.

Good lord man write that off as a charitable donation on your next tax form. The cringe was strong with that post.

Bots were rampantly farming powerful bloods during release, dropped to 5s-ish.

Bought as much as I could and waited for ban wave to come in.

Essence Snow.3194:

Vol.7601:

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous? I’ve seen a lot of QQ on these forums and I just don’t know what to make of it? I started with nothing, and while I’ve been playing forever and a day I’ve kept my player wealth fairly low, distributed between new character after new character and what ever I happened to be enjoying at the moment. As soon as I start TRYING to make money again I seem to just rake it in.

Anyone else feel like your shift from poor to more was sudden? Or did you grind hard and long hours and sell your blood and soul on the TP till you got a break?

Here’s my take on this.

It’s called jealousy. We see it in the real world as well. Wake up on January 1 and read the news. Countless articles how a CEOs have already made your year’s salary in one day. Or how CEO pay is 400x larger on average compared to the minimum wage.

To which I say, who the kitten cares? They are getting paid that much because of their value to the company and their skills that the brought to the table. And of course, a little bit of luck.

Here in GW2, yes, I admit, this should be treated as a game, and not real life. I understand that.

But also understand that just because this is a game doesn’t mean that everything is handed upon log-in. If people want that, they should play a single player game and run some cheat codes.

People are jealous that there are others in game that are luckier and smarter than them, and they can’t stomach it. They want instant gratification at minimum loss/risk.

If you play 3 hours a day doing WvW or open world exploring, why in the world do you expect to earn as much as the person who farms 40 hours a week or does 3 hours of high intensive TP trading?

The only way you can ever have a situation where everyone earns the same amount of gold in the same amount of time is if there were fixed gold rewards for x hours dedicated across y activities. And if you miss those hours, they get banked like rest exp.

It’s a great concept – but at that point you are not playing an MMO that anyone enjoys. It would be a great game for those casual players who want all the nice bells and whistles upon log-in. But I’m afraid such a group of players is so small that any game tailored to them would be a loss before launch.

I believe this is a very arrogant view shared by many in this section of the forums.

Comparing 3 hours of casual play to 40 hours of grinding is not an honest assessment. Of course 1 hour of grinding should earn more than 1 hour of casual play, that’s not the issue. The issue is that the same levels of intensity are not even remotely balanced across various methods. If they were in the same ball park, then the point would be moot.

Let me explain “ball park” further…it’s like a bell curve scenario that excludes extreme outliers. There is a variance of lows and highs within a given context that keeps balance in check.

What we have with the trading post is a method outside of the ball park that’s heading down the road while everything else (for the most part) is contained within the walls.

It boils down to balance. Of course there will be deviation across methods and intensities, but having such an outlier when all others are relatively consistent is prejudicial to a mmo’s community (imo).

I am by no means or definition rich. I play the game just like most normal players, and I spend and earn money at an equilibrium. But I do agree with his statement. Though definitely not an all exclusive and accurate statement I see jealousy a lot here. I can’t fathom why players would want to “balance” the rich. ANYONE can do what they do, what I do. Anyone can make money off the market if they wanna put the time and effort into it. If PVE was massively rewarding the value of our Gold would plummet, and you would see retiredly high prices, Legendaries in the MILLIONS or BILLIONS of gold. I don’t wanna see the AH of wow as the TP of GW2. I don’t wanna see high end mats selling for 2k a pop because we get 500g a dungeon run. I think having a valuable currency makes this game what it is.

However I would also like to see the depth of drops in GW2 PVE increased. I hate running dungeons and getting the same sets of blues and crap after crap for a dungeon, I do actually much prefer the loot table of boss drops like other MMO’s. Gives value to your efforts, now its just a slap in the jaw.

Svarty.8019:

tolunart.2095:

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

Then one day I ran into a flipper, which I think is just a slur for “investor”.

It’s a little more complicated than that. A flipper is someone who accumulates gold quickly by buying items priced below the market average (buying from players who either don’t know the value of the items or aren’t interested in waiting for a buyer who will offer market value) and “flipping” them by immediately offering them for sale at market value to someone else. The risk to this is that if he misjudges the market price, he may not sell the items quickly enough, tying up a lot of gold in unsold inventory and costing more in TP fees when he cancels and relists.

This is great in theory, but most flippers will have enough cash to just sit on stuff at the new price.

???

Then they are not flipping.

For me it started with the sigils of generosity purchased at 12 silver each.
Then the F&F patch hit, and I invested nearly all my saved “precursor moneyz” into sentinel gear, sentinel runes as well as a billion gazillion food drops from that molten facility as well as food recipe drops and azurite orbs. All of the above turned out to be a very good idea.

Svarty.8019:

tolunart.2095:

Svarty.8019:

tolunart.2095:

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

Then one day I ran into a flipper, which I think is just a slur for “investor”.

It’s a little more complicated than that. A flipper is someone who accumulates gold quickly by buying items priced below the market average (buying from players who either don’t know the value of the items or aren’t interested in waiting for a buyer who will offer market value) and “flipping” them by immediately offering them for sale at market value to someone else. The risk to this is that if he misjudges the market price, he may not sell the items quickly enough, tying up a lot of gold in unsold inventory and costing more in TP fees when he cancels and relists.

This is great in theory, but most flippers will have enough cash to just sit on stuff at the new price.

???

Then they are not flipping.

So does flipping involve some sort of limited timespan? When does an partially/unsuccessful flip become an “investment”?

Technically you’re right, you could refer to it as long term and short term flipping. However, the term “flip” to me has a very immediate and short-term connotation to it. I would not label my hoarding+investment behavior as “flipping” as I literally let stacks of random stuff sit in my bank without even thinking about it. From time to time I check on it and think “hey, this is a price worth selling it for” and I proceed to slowly feed my inventory to the market.

Buttercup.5871:

Technically you’re right, you could refer to it as long term and short term flipping. However, the term “flip” to me has a very immediate and short-term connotation to it. I would not label my hoarding+investment behavior as “flipping” as I literally let stacks of random stuff sit in my bank without even thinking about it. From time to time I check on it and think “hey, this is a price worth selling it for” and I proceed to slowly feed my inventory to the market.

Long term flipping is not long term flipping. While the idea does not make sense, it’s true. Flipping is short term by definition. The moment you’re looking at a timetable that exceeds 1-2 weeks, you’re moving into the realm of speculation. To put it another way, flipping is the act of buying a house, renovating it, and then tossing it back on the market at a higher price than the initial purchase plus cost of renovation and other fees. Speculation is buying beachside land outside of a growing town and betting on the prospect of selling portions of your land to homeowners that want, and will pay the high price for, the waterfront view and location as the town expands.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Buttercup.5871:

Technically you’re right, you could refer to it as long term and short term flipping. However, the term “flip” to me has a very immediate and short-term connotation to it. I would not label my hoarding+investment behavior as “flipping” as I literally let stacks of random stuff sit in my bank without even thinking about it. From time to time I check on it and think “hey, this is a price worth selling it for” and I proceed to slowly feed my inventory to the market.

Long term flipping is not long term flipping. While the idea does not make sense, it’s true. Flipping is short term by definition. The moment you’re looking at a timetable that exceeds 1-2 weeks, you’re moving into the realm of speculation. To put it another way, flipping is the act of buying a house, renovating it, and then tossing it back on the market at a higher price than the initial purchase plus cost of renovation and other fees. Speculation is buying beachside land outside of a growing town and betting on the prospect of selling portions of your land to homeowners that want, and will pay the high price for, the waterfront view and location as the town expands.

This. This was like the best way to separate flipping and speculation. I could never think of anything but long term flipping or “investment” as a way to describe it. The only problem with it being that sometimes the developers of the town come along and nerf it into the ground with a bunch of ghettos and power plants etc turning your once expanding town into bad real estate. Or in my case Anet decides that something needs to be changed and my speculation just turned into a massive gold sink. Bahahaha.

I think the difference between long term flipping and speculation is (or could be) that the long term flipper lists his items (at a high price) after he buys it, the speculator keeps it in his bank.
So the speculator doesnt make his supply available to the public and decides when the price went high enough to sell. The long term flipper makes his supply available to the public. The long term flipper can take advantage of sudden price spikes, when he is not online.

Yeah I guess thats true, Ive certainly missed out on a lot of spikes due to just posting stuff on the TP and letting nature run its course.

Flipping is just arbitrage. It’s a guaranteed profit because of the gap in the bid-ask spread. There’s no such thing as “long term flipping” because it’s not a “flip” it’s a “hold.” If you hold something hoping the price will rise, that’s investing/speculation/betting, and can be spread across a variety of time horizons.

You make money by buying low and selling high. It takes effort to research prices and think about the probable outcome of events, which is why until recently I’ve mostly stayed away from it.

Rauderi.8706:

I don’t do anything special to get the cash, just the same thing I always do in MMOs.

Materials.

Playing a lot of alts, I end up in mid-level zones a lot more often than most, and those crafting mats sell for a good chunk.

Harvesting with a lot of alts is also my main source of money. It started last year with ascended weapon crafting and Queens Jubilee i think when suddenly T3 wood went up to 1,50-2s or whatever and then Rosemary was at 16s. That was nice money for a long time .. but with ascended armor the wood price went down and Rosemary was also not worth much anymore.

Iron Ore was nice then when we had the Scarlett Events in LA, think i made nearly 1000g in that time with harvestig iron in Dredgehaunt Cliffs.
After that i discovered the “nerverending” Platinum vein, however thanks to megaserver that is history now
At the moment its again iron ore, platinum and lemongrass that i harvest mainly,
and of course i try to find my daily ori / ancient wood in Frostgorge.

Thanks to Megaserver harvesting however is now much worse late at night, so from time to time i also do my old farming of the Arctodus in Frostgorge for T6 mats.

Buttercup.5871:

Technically you’re right, you could refer to it as long term and short term flipping. However, the term “flip” to me has a very immediate and short-term connotation to it. I would not label my hoarding+investment behavior as “flipping” as I literally let stacks of random stuff sit in my bank without even thinking about it. From time to time I check on it and think “hey, this is a price worth selling it for” and I proceed to slowly feed my inventory to the market.

I don’t know of any “MMO Dictionary” where terms like flipping and hardcore are defined, so it does get a little blurry around the edges, but since I was describing the differences between flipping and speculating, yeah, there’s definitely a short-term vibe there.

Exactly how long it should take to “flip” something and when it becomes speculating depends on the particular item/market but generally speaking I’d expect a flipper to either sell or relist within a few days to a week. If it’s on the TP more than that you’ve definitely misread the market and priced too high, or no one’s buying right now. At that point you need to either decide to leave it there in hopes the market will move to meet your price someday, or pull it and relist at a lower price. If you leave it alone, then it becomes speculation, you’re just storing on the TP instead of your bank.

Vol.7601:

I gave that example because it seems the overwhelmingly majority of players who complain about the riches are those who sparringly play. I have great respect for those who are understanding, but they are very few.

Again, there is no way to balance this. This is because:
1.) TP players take advantage of the lack of patience/knowledge of the average playerbase. The only way to get rid of this is to change player tendencies, which is impossible.

2.) TP being the most profitable avenue is only available to a small group of players. If everyone tried to play the TP, profit would be reduced to the point that it is no longer viable

3.) You cannot balance different gameplay types and their rewards so that they are equal. It’s impossible to design such a system so that the rewards per hour are similar, unless you use the example I gave earlier. But no one would play that type of game, nor would any team design such a system and expect to have a playable game.

We’ve been through this discussion before. It’s not happening.

1) the way to change this would be to provide more knowledge to players based on available data they could present people with more information.
2)TP being most profitable is available to a lot of players(not necessarilly the majority, but a large number), enough that high end items are essentially marketed towards thier earning power. (And gem sellers)
3)I agree that you cant balance all gameplay types, but why would you make the TP the one that makes you most successful at the game in terms of most rewards.

Vol.7601:

Ve Salu Sigtyr.4807:

So what does anyone here think of the disparity in wealth in the player populous? I’ve seen a lot of QQ on these forums and I just don’t know what to make of it? I started with nothing, and while I’ve been playing forever and a day I’ve kept my player wealth fairly low, distributed between new character after new character and what ever I happened to be enjoying at the moment. As soon as I start TRYING to make money again I seem to just rake it in.

Anyone else feel like your shift from poor to more was sudden? Or did you grind hard and long hours and sell your blood and soul on the TP till you got a break?

Here’s my take on this.

It’s called jealousy. We see it in the real world as well. Wake up on January 1 and read the news. Countless articles how a CEOs have already made your year’s salary in one day. Or how CEO pay is 400x larger on average compared to the minimum wage.

To which I say, who the kitten cares? They are getting paid that much because of their value to the company and their skills that the brought to the table. And of course, a little bit of luck.

Here in GW2, yes, I admit, this should be treated as a game, and not real life. I understand that.

But also understand that just because this is a game doesn’t mean that everything is handed upon log-in. If people want that, they should play a single player game and run some cheat codes.

People are jealous that there are others in game that are luckier and smarter than them, and they can’t stomach it. They want instant gratification at minimum loss/risk.

If you play 3 hours a day doing WvW or open world exploring, why in the world do you expect to earn as much as the person who farms 40 hours a week or does 3 hours of high intensive TP trading?

The only way you can ever have a situation where everyone earns the same amount of gold in the same amount of time is if there were fixed gold rewards for x hours dedicated across y activities. And if you miss those hours, they get banked like rest exp.

It’s a great concept – but at that point you are not playing an MMO that anyone enjoys. It would be a great game for those casual players who want all the nice bells and whistles upon log-in. But I’m afraid such a group of players is so small that any game tailored to them would be a loss before launch.

jealousy is a simplification, it is jealousy, but because you are jealous does not mean its not waranted. CEOs make 400X the money of someone else, because essentially they have convinced people to pay them that. Also note that this was usually decided by people who are also CEOs of some other company, and are given CEO jobs by the people they give CEO jobs too.

Basically a CEO is in a pretty good position to ask for/demand a lot of extra money, its not that he is 400x times more valuable/smart/unique/special than a software engineer, physicist, artist,teacher,MMA fighter, or any of many of the myriad other people out there.

And thats what people want in games, they want to be able to get good at something they enjoy. The big beef with TP style being the most profitable is that the game rewards having gold more than other activities. And that in a game about adventure, the best way of obtaining gold is the TP. any other good method is controlled, and nerfed. And many other types of play dont give much reward no matter how good you are at it.

If success was not primarily measured/rewarded by how much gold you have, tp being best at it wouldnt be as much of an issue. If other activities, at a high difficulty, or with a lot of effort paid better, people would not be as upset.
Problem is, you play the game one way, then when you get to the endgame, you basically have to become a gold grinder to achieve most high end goals. And gold is best earned through farms and TP playing

1.) That would only go so far, as it won’t help when it comes to impatient players or those who value gold now rather than waiting.

For example, Anet can redesign the TP sell listings so that it can tell you if there is an artificial price listings and that you should sell for the ‘correct’ price

I.e. Sell listings for Mithril Ore
40c @ 3 units
48c @ 500 units
49c @ 1200 units
50c @ 80,000 units

The average player will not know that there is a price gap between 40 and 48c. Expanding sell listings will help fix this, but how about those who want gold ASAP. Mithril ore may not be a good example, but let’s say we had something with less velocity – such as lodestones.

2.) You are thinking of this point in different way. When I say that the TP being profitable to few, I mean that the TP is profitable because so few have the capability/knowledge of doing it. Again, if everyone did it, there would be no profit to be made. TP profitability scales, which doesn’t happen when you compare it to dungeons or even PvE events like gauntlet farming.
3.) It’s not Anet’s intention to make the TP the most successful. That’s just how the game works. If we suddenly made dungeons reward 20 gold per completion, and farming events an average of 30g/hour, what do you think is going to happen on the TP? Well for one, we will have inflation, which will increase all prices in game since everyone has gold. But the TP players are unaffected since these higher prices will still have a larger enough spread among buy orders and sell orders, which is where flippers get their money.

I started out pretty slow, I did decently but never had that much to invest. Got really lucky with celestial exalted recipes, quit for a while and when I came back I think they were at 22g a piece.

Mckeone.9804:

Flipping is just arbitrage.

Flipping would be arbitrage if you already had a guaranteed buyer for your item at the time that your buy order filled.

Since you do not (you have to re-list, at a later time), you are taking on some risk of the market moving in the interim and you do not know how long you will have to wait for your goods to move.

That keeps it from being an arbitrage situation.

Flipping is just spread trading, nothing more or less. We can discuss why the spreads are as large as they are, since that spread is usually competed away for the most part in a stock exchange, for example, but that’s the proper comparison.

I’ve only recently been playing with trading on the BLTP. Picked a few areas of stuff, Set buy orders. Whatever comes in is put up on a sell orders. As cash comes in, I add more items per day to the buy orders. Adding extra categories to buy and sell from helps too.

Don’t have a enough to buy a Legendary but have more cash than I’ve had in game before.

Wanze.8410:

I think the difference between long term flipping and speculation is (or could be) that the long term flipper lists his items (at a high price) after he buys it, the speculator keeps it in his bank.
So the speculator doesnt make his supply available to the public and decides when the price went high enough to sell. The long term flipper makes his supply available to the public. The long term flipper can take advantage of sudden price spikes, when he is not online.

The long term flipper is still hedging on the fact that prices will rise. It’s no different than a speculator’s actions. The primary difference is that the “long term flipper” has his assets already on the market for an auto-sale once prices rise to the level they deem “sufficient.” A “true” speculator (you, for example), holds back stock until prices fit whatever conditions you have in place and then unload.

Well 6 months ago I made my first legendary, the Bifrost. Before then, I was a poor noob, but once I had the taste of wealth I wanted more… Learned to flip and speculate, next legendary, Incinerator was made in a month. After that, Frostfang in another month (had to get more gifts). After that, I was back to 0, but I made money from dungeons and put all of that back into flipping. I am now sitting at around 12k-15k G(not including the legendaries). 1700 hours played. I guess my advice is, if you want money/rich, don’t sit around and complain about your lack of money, instead go out and actually make money, whether it be dungeons/boss/train/TP.
You get about 20g/day doing AC1-3, SE1,3, COF1,2, HOW1, salvage all the level 68+ armor you buy with tokens for ectos. Once you do that, use the 20g’s to put into investments/TP. Any money sitting in your wallet is wasted because it’s not growing. 600g-800g of money for a precursor is easily made in a month, if you are willing to put the hours and work into it. And if you feel like you can’t put in the work, then don’t go for a precursor. Nothing is free in this game except for INFORMATION (patch speculation, methods of making money), but INFORMATION is worth millions so you just have to put in the work.

Investing my own money in gems to gold to start out and buying up tons of precursors for as much as 10g each tops as well as lots of t6. Another huge investment before legendary changes and also the occasional drops as well as boat loads of large Wintersday boxes for glory during the last event in pvp. Just to name a few.