Guild Wars 2

People taking things literally are why we can’t have nice things. The rules of this thread are that he won’t say anything to interfere in the game’s economy, and why would he, he’d have to fix it. While just saying that something exists will lead to more usage of the mystic forge and throwing things in for science, hinting at something cool that can be created or even something lame that can be created would be interfering.

Nobody should think that there was a deeper meaning.

Undiscovered MF recipes: has anyone ever tried throwing four precursors into the MF? Has anyone tried throwing a legendary in?

What JS might mean is that more information is coming very soon. Remember how he told us that there are changes to the way the MF works in the pipeline? They might be part of Week 3’s update in the Sep Feature Pack.

I’m a bit disappointed that you can’t discuss the Watchwork Pick and it might mean for future gem store tools, but I guess I can understand the reason for that.

John Smith.4610:

Supermagnum.3458:

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Well it’s about time we fixed that.

I will treasure this.

Well its obvious that you deserve it. With this recent backlash I’ve seen plenty of references to the effort you put into this section.

“While some forums get Anet attention and dev interaction (ex: BLTC forum)…”

“I’ve loved the back and forth with John Smith in the q&a thread over there, it’s been pretty fascinating even with the understanding that he WILL NOT answer questions about anything specific that might affect the current economy or future releases.”

That was just in the last 2 hours and if the search function worked properly I could probably find the rest.

Also for Christmas, can you convince Anet to rebuild Fort Marriner Waypoint. I’ll donate all my bloodstone bricks and some gold to have it reconstructed.

John Smith.4610:

Mckeone.9804:

(a) Does anyone read the “what we would like in the gemstore thread” and take the suggestions into account?

(b) Has anyone ever given you an award for good communication, ie, giving straight answers or, if you don’t have a straight answer, admitting it and explaining why?

A. Yes, people are constantly reading that thread.
B. No and while I’m here answering questions often, tact clearly isn’t my strongest skillset, so I’ll need to continue developing that before any awards are in order.

Honesty trumps tact.

John Smith.4610:

It’s the Christmas present you always wanted, but never received.

Is it chairs that work?

And… yes, all snark aside? Honesty trumps tact – it shows that you respect us, and that’s really appreciated. Thank you.

John Smith.4610:

It’s the Christmas present you always wanted, but never received.

It must be Mini John Smith.

Recipe for UW and FoW scrolls.

Zuldar.5093:

Recipe for UW and FoW scrolls.

Lol, imagine that. And when you double-click the scroll your GW2 character gets taken to GW1’s UW/FoW dungeon…

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

Are there still Mystic Forge Recipes/items that havent been discovered yet that are not recipe sheets for food feasts/pots/trays or recipe sheets for satchels/boxes of armor?

Does Zommoros still have some secrets up his djinny sleeve?

Yes.

Could you at least check to see if the Reaper of Souls isnt bugged? and it truly can be Mystic forged? its been 2 years and no one found this recipe yet.

Calling it now, puddle of water skinned legendary combining frostfang and rodgort

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

Are there still Mystic Forge Recipes/items that havent been discovered yet that are not recipe sheets for food feasts/pots/trays or recipe sheets for satchels/boxes of armor?

Does Zommoros still have some secrets up his djinny sleeve?

Yes.

Is it Mounts?

It’s the Christmas present you always wanted, but never received.

Guild Halls!!

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

Are there still Mystic Forge Recipes/items that havent been discovered yet that are not recipe sheets for food feasts/pots/trays or recipe sheets for satchels/boxes of armor?

Does Zommoros still have some secrets up his djinny sleeve?

Yes.

The Guild Wars 2 Experience: “Yo dawg, I heard you liked RNG, so I put some RNG in your RNG so you can gamble while you gamble!”

wwwes.1398:

Either that or precursor forging has existed for the last year and we just aren’t smart enough to have unlocked it. That’s why they won’t tell us, they’re disappointed in us. :-(

LMFAO, ….imagining that XD.

Yeah,
I thought he was just being silly/joking. Not trying to create hype ..or make it seem like there’s a superty duperty recipe we haven’t discovered yet.

I have a simple question that i couldn’t find on other topics in a first survey:

I have been searching for the GEM PRICE VARIATIONS from 2013 to 2014 and became surprisingly stunned with the big increase in the Gem Cost (i mean how many gold one need to pay to buy gems).
100 Gems were usually buyable for about 3g a year ago and now the same amount of gems is costing around 14g.
The curve seems to be constant and this lead me to think that gems follow some kind of influence of the gold inflation or something like that.

I tried to link the gem prices to the number of active players (buyng and selling gem stuff) but couldn’t.

So the question is:

Is it safe to assume that the cost for 100 GEMS (in gold currency) is becoming bigger and bigger forever no matter what?
I mean, anyone can see that eventually the prices go dow a little but at long term, it always seem to be bigger.

Because i normally wait for a low for buyng gems with gold, but it seems there are never real “lows”.

There’s two primary reasons that gem prices will rise:

1. Inflation. JS and the devs do what they can to mitigate it, but in a situation where money appears out of thin air, it can’t be held back indefinitely. Eventually, people will have enough money to buy gems, regardless of their price.

2. Players buy gems with gold, likely at a rate above players selling gems for gold. As the gem supply decreases, the price will rise.

If I understand it right, #2 is the primary reason, since the gem market interacts very little with the player base otherwise.

Yeah, but the thing is: about a year ago one could buy 100 gems within 1 hour farming dungeons, now he needs to farm 5 times more and who knows how many farming time will be needed to buy 100 gems next year!? This looks to me as if the Gem store was in an inevitable crashing path. I mean: who would farm 50 hours just to buy some 3 black lion keys for example and have a chance to get something totally unworthy?

There MUST be something to deal with this.

So you are saying that the quantity of gems is limited? Because if there is a gem pool and people usually buy more gems than sell them, so the gems will eventually vanish. I wonder what happens when people use real cash to buy gems: Does the gems come from the “pool”, or are they “magically created” to satisfy the buyer’s intent, resulting in an increased total number of gems inside the game?

John Smith.4610:

I’ve answered all these questions before, several times. Does anyone have the links for those answers? (Even I don’t want to comb through my entire post history )

I’m looking for them now :P

(Just an idea, having a functional search option in the post by John Smith, or anyone else, would be awesome and amazing :P)

brunobyof.3541:

Yeah, but the thing is: about a year ago one could buy 100 gems within 1 hour farming dungeons, now he needs to farm 5 times more and who knows how many farming time will be needed to buy 100 gems next year!? This looks to me as if the Gem store was in an inevitable crashing path. I mean: who would farm 50 hours just to buy some 3 black lion keys for example and have a chance to get something totally unworthy?

There MUST be something to deal with this.

So you are saying that the quantity of gems is limited? Because if there is a gem pool and people usually buy more gems than sell them, so the gems will eventually vanish. I wonder what happens when people use real cash to buy gems: Does the gems come from the “pool”, or are they “magically created” to satisfy the buyer’s intent, resulting in an increased total number of gems inside the game?

I can’t find the links right now, but I’ll keep looking. Basically what you are saying is correct. There is a finite (limited) amount of gems, when you buy gems with gold, you take some out, when you buy gems with cash, you put some in. The gem to gold/gold to gem rate is determined by how many people are using gold to convert to gems, and how many people are buying gems with cash and converting to gold. The more people use gold to buy gems, the higher the price, the more people use cash and convert, the lower the price.

Many people like to use “inflation” as a reason that the price is going up, but that simply isnt the case. The reason is people like the cool items, upgrades, etc in the gem store, and don’t want to spend the money. Thats fine, they can do that. Others may want the items and are willing to pay the money. Sweet!! But they are using their gems, and not converting them to gold.

Hey John, thank you for answering the questions here and talking to the community in general, it’s appreciated.

1. When you came up with voluntary/charity gold sinks, how far did you take it in concept and did you turn down the idea of more visually impactful donations? Such as speeding up reconstruction of certain parts of Lions Arch or rewarding donors with a name/donor’s plaque, depending on how generous donations were.
   Did the money that went to Heal-o-tron actually had an impact on reconstructing Lions Arch?
   If the Asura ever decide to crowd found a biggest-mega-laser, I’d be happy to speed up construction and fuel corruption.
2. Why does a bottle of Elonian Wine cost 25s 4c instead of a flat 25s or 24.99s?
3. What was the hardest decision you had to make since Launch?

I have searched through your messages by highlighting “hobo” and “heal” but I didn’t find anything. Didn’t look for the other questions.

Have a great weekend

John Smith.4610:

I’ve answered all these questions before, several times. Does anyone have the links for those answers? (Even I don’t want to comb through my entire post history )

Meh. I don’t have my cheat sheet with all of your posts with me otherwise I would. I do think that I referenced your gem price quotes earlier in this thread though.

Edit:

John Smith.4610:

John Smith.4610:

As a quick aside. Gems in the currency exchange are finite. You may buy gems with real money to your hearts content, but if you don’t put any of them gems into the currency exchange the currency exchange’s stock of gems never changes.

John Smith.4610:

Think of it this way. The government can print as much money as they want, that doesn’t mean your bank account has access to that money. The currency exchange does not have access to gem creation. It has a limited stock that players add and subtract from.

Is elder wood giving you headaches after the introduction of foxfire clusters?

Aand, sort of a repeat … you have to love numbers, perhaps you could tease us with some numbers. I don’t know, x bazillion oozes squished since launch and they dropped x gold total. Pretty please with interest on top.

Holy smokes, thanks

John Smith.4610:

Just this month 7,496,080 Oozes have been dealt with.

It is pretty amazing that you even have the ability to pull such a random and useless factoid. Unless, Ooze’s are actually the one mob that most contributes to the changes in the state of the economy which I find highly unlikely

How is that possible, there are barely any oozes in this game!

Queensdale jumping puzzle has quite a few. Probably reached that high due to players going for the slayer achievement.

Vol.7601:

How is that possible, there are barely any oozes in this game!

Yeah there are not alot of oozes in the game, but that number could very well be a hint at the number of players we have. But of course some people are killing more oozes than other, but it could be an average of say (making up numbers here) 3 oozes killed per player, which would be about 2,498,693 players just this past month. But that still wouldn’t tell us how many are daily players that killed 3 oozes a day, or if it was each player killing those 3 oozes over the course of the entire month.

Either way its fun to speculate

I have a question about the chance to salvage rarer materials.
The salvage kits have a chance to salvage rarer materials in their tooltips, ranging from 0% (crude) to 50% (Black Lion).

1. Does that chance apply to the common mats from the salvage process, like getting orichalcum ore instead of mithril when salvaging a lvl 80 heavy armor?
2. Do salvageable items have an internal chance to salvage into a higher tier mat that the chance of the salvage kit is applied to?

Reason im asking is that i had done some research and it seemed to me that #2 is the case (~10%) because even with a crude kit, i would still have a chance to get a higher tier mat and with master sk (25% chance) it was more like 12.5% and 15% with black lion sk.

John Smith.4610:

2. I’ve been meaning to check up on Heal-o-tron. That money should have been used properly, but I did see him recently with what appeared to be a very expensive fur coat, definitely need to follow up on that.

Oh, so that’s how it goes… Even in Kryta donation money sticks to the bow! [don’t you love literal translations of sayings? :p]

I’ll be thinking a second time before I donate money again to that lying piece of metal!

John Smith.4610:

1. We prototyped several ideas, but ended up going pretty basic. I really like the idea of charity sinks that have a larger visual affect on the world or help surrounding people.

2. I’ve been meaning to check up on Heal-o-tron. That money should have been used properly, but I did see him recently with what appeared to be a very expensive fur coat, definitely need to follow up on that.

3. It never occurred to me to think about it, I have no idea.

4. Identifying exploiters early in the game had a lot of very hard decisions involved.

1. nice to hear

2. “winter is coming joke” – quite the journey for a robot though, looking forward to seeing him in action again soon. I’d love to hear his position also, before judging fine clothing. capes.

3. ok

4. Identifying exploiters or defining “exploiters”? Decisions made for systems to be put in place for finding them or the decision where to draw the line?

Good day Mr. John Smith!!!
I have a question about the economy.
If we make items bought on the TP account bound(eg: t1-6 mats), and can be only unbounded when used for crafting or salvaging them.
How do you think it will affect the prices of items in the TP?

Ramza.9421:

Good day Mr. John Smith!!!
I have a question about the economy.
If we make items bought on the TP account bound(eg: t1-6 mats), and can be only unbounded when used for crafting or salvaging them.
How do you think it will affect the prices of items in the TP?

considering those mats aren’t actually worthwhile flipping,( for the most part. )
Probably no affect.

The real issue would not be prices but implantation. Everybody would need to stacks of such mats, 2 collection tabs.
1 for the acc.bound version and one for the sellable version.

It’s not really viable like that.

First I wanted to say it’s great you’ve talked to the community so often and in such a straightforward fashion.

I don’t know if my question has been asked before, the posts have become quite long and if someone has an answer that would be great.

After the transition to the new wardrobe, Several items have become a burdern to player inventories such as armors bought with karma and even armor bought with gold. Does it seem detrimental if these items could be salvaged?

1) Gold cost of buying cultural armor and even armor skins from each order doesn’t seem like it would offset the possible ‘ecto’ gain of salvaging. Would this be likely to happen in the near future?

2) If karma armor could be salvaged only to remove upgrades added to the armor (and possibly not runes that came with such an armor) be possible in the future? Or is it mainly the fear of possible unknown exploits that’s keeping this from being implemented?

Imho, honesty without tact is the cliche of ’keeping it real", and tactful honesty is difficult to balance in an anonymous forum. I think John Smith does a decent job, even though he never answered my last questions.

1, Have you ever made a statement concerning the ethics of economic punditry in game or in the forums? I imagine you see posts from people giving not only bad information but purposefully misleading information.

Perhaps a for instance would help. Say I am convinced that Fishing game-play will be released on Monday and want to talk about the effects of fishing on the economy. Would you have pointers or standards you would want players to apply to such a discussion?

I may be repeating a question, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Was there an economic reason for ascended gear being bound (Soul/account) and not tradeable on the TP? And if so, what were those reasons? Maybe a way to minimize a “pay to win” scenario? Or to avoid having a bunch of new items that would reach the cost of legendaries and be seen as unobtainable by the player base?

pdavis.8031:

I may be repeating a question, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Was there an economic reason for ascended gear being bound (Soul/account) and not tradeable on the TP? And if so, what were those reasons? Maybe a way to minimize a “pay to win” scenario? Or to avoid having a bunch of new items that would reach the cost of legendaries and be seen as unobtainable by the player base?

It was clearly a game design and not an economic decision.

Nefara.2186:

Since you’ve mentioned that “silk wasn’t an accident”, I’d love to know some of the reasoning behind that. When you say you want to add volatility, I’m very curious as to what the benefits are to putting an immense amount of demand stress on to a specific commodity. Doing so effected the price of all cloth (except jute), since Damask is so profitable to craft. However, it is more than triple the price of other ascended materials and all cloth is at least twice as expensive as its counterparts. it’s been terrible for newbs who want to level up their armor related crafting. I don’t understand the need for the imbalance so I’d love some illumination.

On a related note, is there an economic reason why superior runes and sigils are not able to be put into the mystic forge? Adding a mystic forge recipe would help equalize the prices of all of the superior runes, adding value to the, well, crappy ones and adding supply to whichever ones are currently en vogue. Was this inequality something else that was planned and if so, why?

John Smith.4610:

I’m not confident I can adequately explain the concepts you’re asking about in this forum without a significant time investment. Remind me of this question at a later date and I’ll put some thought into it.

Just a nudge in case you do find some time to ramble! I’ve still been wondering about the value of demand stress on a specific commodity (for example charged lodestones in comparison to other lodestones, silk in comparison to other t5 basic mats, etc)

Wanze.8410:

pdavis.8031:

I may be repeating a question, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Was there an economic reason for ascended gear being bound (Soul/account) and not tradeable on the TP? And if so, what were those reasons? Maybe a way to minimize a “pay to win” scenario? Or to avoid having a bunch of new items that would reach the cost of legendaries and be seen as unobtainable by the player base?

It was clearly a game design and not an economic decision.

I would like to see the Ockham’s razor able to distinguish between game-play and economics.

Nefara.2186:

Nefara.2186:

Since you’ve mentioned that “silk wasn’t an accident”, I’d love to know some of the reasoning behind that. When you say you want to add volatility, I’m very curious as to what the benefits are to putting an immense amount of demand stress on to a specific commodity. Doing so effected the price of all cloth (except jute), since Damask is so profitable to craft. However, it is more than triple the price of other ascended materials and all cloth is at least twice as expensive as its counterparts. it’s been terrible for newbs who want to level up their armor related crafting. I don’t understand the need for the imbalance so I’d love some illumination.

On a related note, is there an economic reason why superior runes and sigils are not able to be put into the mystic forge? Adding a mystic forge recipe would help equalize the prices of all of the superior runes, adding value to the, well, crappy ones and adding supply to whichever ones are currently en vogue. Was this inequality something else that was planned and if so, why?

John Smith.4610:

I’m not confident I can adequately explain the concepts you’re asking about in this forum without a significant time investment. Remind me of this question at a later date and I’ll put some thought into it.

Just a nudge in case you do find some time to ramble! I’ve still been wondering about the value of demand stress on a specific commodity (for example charged lodestones in comparison to other lodestones, silk in comparison to other t5 basic mats, etc)

As a well defined, selectively permeable system; the Tyrian economic ecosystem is under tremenbous recursive forces. Consider the kinetic workload as a cymatic structure supplied by potential reserves outside the structure. The size of supply apertures (elastic cross-sections of cones with the cymatic structure) are not necessarily planned in advance and when a supply aperture is constricted, that constriction can provide overall system stability.

Superior sigils and runes into the MF is a source of future workload. I would be tempted to maintain them as a potential workload reserve as well.

Psientist.6437:

Wanze.8410:

pdavis.8031:

I may be repeating a question, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Was there an economic reason for ascended gear being bound (Soul/account) and not tradeable on the TP? And if so, what were those reasons? Maybe a way to minimize a “pay to win” scenario? Or to avoid having a bunch of new items that would reach the cost of legendaries and be seen as unobtainable by the player base?

It was clearly a game design and not an economic decision.

I would like to see the Ockham’s razor able to distinguish between game-play and economics.

Iirc, Anet mentioned why ascended gear is bound and untradeable in a twitch video about it last August. They wanted to give everybody a long term goal by crafting ascended gear.

Wanze.8410:

Iirc, Anet mentioned why ascended gear is bound and untradeable in a twitch video about it last August. They wanted to give everybody a long term goal by crafting ascended gear.

Unfortunately the allowed the intermediate materials to be traded (elonian leather and so on) which negates much of the “long term” part of the goal, but it did revitalize the economy somewhat.

tolunart.2095:

Wanze.8410:

Iirc, Anet mentioned why ascended gear is bound and untradeable in a twitch video about it last August. They wanted to give everybody a long term goal by crafting ascended gear.

Unfortunately the allowed the intermediate materials to be traded (elonian leather and so on) which negates much of the “long term” part of the goal, but it did revitalize the economy somewhat.

I think that was a good move. Rich people still had to get thier crafting to 500, they need to grind their vision crystals and they are hard capped by the laurel cost for the recipes at 8 asc pieces per month.

In general, do you consider the impact of magic find when deciding on rewards for LS & seasonal events? For example, in deciding to change Queen’s Pavilion from mob drops to event reward chests.