Guild Wars 2

Zaxares.5419:

ChungHan Ho.5837:

Banning bots/RMT is out of question the right thing to do but the mechanism needs a lot of improvements since many honest players have been wrongfully banned as collateral damage.

There usually will be a few innocents caught up in the sweep, but you can appeal the banning to ANet support who can check their records and unban you if it was an honest mistake.

But most of the time? People who claim to have been banned incorrectly are guilty as sin.

Yeah. We all know that some % of the bots were characters with real names, expensive gear, and guild tags. I grant you some of them were bound to be hacked accounts (don’t buy gold!) but not all of them.

Barfoi.9537:

Indeed. My last gamble this morning looked to cost about 2-3x as much, and it didn’t help matters when the first batch of forges produced no exotics. Luckily, my next batch resulted in Spark, so I’ll suspend my gambling on a good note — well, until prices stabilize.

Grats! Nice roll.

Ok, to all the people complaining about the cost of mats to cost a legendary: I’m not sure you grasp the concept of legendary. By definition it’s something that very very few players will obtain. If everybody could get it with even a medium amount of effort then it wouldn’t be very legendary would it?

One of the main reasons I quit WoW was because I could get a character fully ready to raid in one day. The ability to do this made epic gear normal and therefore no longer epic. I like what ANet has done by making legendary items actually legendary.

I don’t plan on getting one myself but I appreciate what they’re doing. ANet, just ignore all the entitled babies. Keep doing what you do best. Being awesome.

Nimraphel.7819:

I think 3 months – 6 tops – is what can be required of a legendary, provided one plays 3 hour every single day. No, that is still not casual by the way. What you seem to argue is that that is too easy. I’d argue it precludes any sensible individual with anything even remotely resembling a life.

3 months for 3 hours a day is 550 hours, give or take. 6 is ~1000.
That’s…that’s not really all that much if you think about it, given that a good number of players hit up GW2 on the weekends for upwards of 5-6 or so, though they’re admittedly not spending their time HARDCORE GRINDAN or something.

If you intend to bum it out and burn your time grinding because you refuse to use the TP or anything else, I suppose that’s…well, that’s just your own decision. It doesn’t have to be that hard, and for many people, it really isn’t.

Also, for anyone complaining about fine mats:
1. Make your clovers first, you get free mats.
2. If you’re still somehow lacking in mats, promote some t5s to t6s. It ain’t that hard, folks.

Ectos depend on rares, which are admittedly rare. Then again, a full MF set cost me something like 1g to buy off the TP a few weeks back, and that included 5/6 Superior Pirate, +3%MF gems for all my accessories, and Superior Luck on my weapon.

I’m hardly rolling in drops, but it’s mostly because I’ve been leveling alts, instead of grinding away. Now that it’s profitable to start hunting up drops, though, I may just start.

For the record, it’s still rather impressive that GW2 legendaries doesn’t actually require a person to beg their guild to tag along for months on end to complete.

I mean, really? Look at all the recent counterparts in WoW. Dragonwrath? Fangs of the Father? Try as you might, there’s nothing you can do about any of that solo.

Yeah, sure, you can get items that were legendary for their tier maybe six years ago by yourself. Cool.

Realistically speaking, I much rather prefer GW2’s alternative.

How any Tyrian can continue to make this thread about the cost of Legendary weapons is beyond me. How any Tyrian can continue to argue the conditioned reflex that RMT is evil is beyond me. The title of this thread “Recent Market Shifts” is about Arenanet’s behavior as a Real Money Trader of Tyrian gold, the decision to offer a Tyrian gold derivative disguised as a Tyrian gold currency exchange. Just as Facebook overvalued its IPO, so too did Arenanet. Overvalued Tyrian gold is destroying the Tyrian economy and what it means to be Tyrian. Does being a citizen of Tyria mean giving Arenanet the power to set the cash price of a Legendary? Or anything in Tyria?

Arenanet could put the parts of Legendariest up the arses of 1000 Jormags and Tyrian Heroes would climb up Jormag’s kitten 1000 times! As Tyrians we would have to decide what to do with these half-insane kitten covered Tyrians running around yelling “Say hello to my little friend!” As Tyrians, we also have to decide what to do about Arenanet telling our half-insane, kitten-covered Heroes that Legendariest also costs in cash. The only people who can tell our half-insane kitten-covered hoeroes what Legenderiest costs in cash are other Tyrians.

Look closer at this thread and any thread in this subforum about RMT and gem prices. If you want to continue thinking this is about entitled babies consider this.

Overvalued Tyrian gold is making it too easy to buy gems. The demand for character slot unlocks, bank unlocks etc….Arenanet’s source of reliable income, is very rapidly being filled. The gem store’s innate ability to serve as a Tyrian gold sink has been gutted, they will be left with only keys to drive gem sales.

The Algorithm Arenanet is using to determine the value of Tyrian gold told us what to expect from high gem demand events. Anyone could follow the predictable pattern established.

Arenanet, you have lived up to your promise of making gems available for Tyrian gold, now please stop killing Tyria with kindness. You have made so many statements of ethical intent. You know mmo’s need a new business model. You know what is needed, a true way for Tyrians or any citizen of art to hold the builder/developer/artist accountable. If Tyrians controlled the value of Tyrian gold, the moment the buy and sell order spread starts to widen beyond norm would give Arenanet the most ethical, the earlist alarming, the most Oh kitten I am Tyrian give more Tyria measure of the success of their artful efforts.

And here I thought people found gems too expensive to buy. Huh.

..Can anyone translate the rest of that post? Aside from “gems are too cheap, this isn’t about entitled babies”, I…can’t get anything out of that.

John, I love your sentence: " The oversupply the bots created hurt the legitimate producers of items. As the prices go up, more real players will enter the market. " , do you actually believe that bringing back real players to brainwash farming stuff instead of bots is an improvement to their gaming experience? I’d have thought they would enjoy themselves more doing Dungeons, WvW, and that spending the money made in those activities to buy low cost mats a more entertaining way of using ones time. Isn’t GW2 a multi-player game? or is it a solo adventure game of farming material for a legendary?

Anyway, I can imagine the smile of our simple minded farmer posting the proceeding of endless hours for pig slaughtering on the Trading post and collecting his incomes from it after 15% Anet taxe. I can also imagine the sad face of the said farmer when he try to use the hardly earned money to buy some stuff and realize at this point that if raw material price gets higher, so does the rest of the market. And eventually he will learn that being twice richer in a twice more expensive world changes nothing except the time it took him to reach his goal just doubled.

Why farm solo? Farming with friends is pretty awesome. (Unless you have no friends to farm with, in which case )

If you’re looking at things from the viewpoint of “I don’t care who I buy from, I just want it to be cheap”, then yes, banning bots and removing a large amount of supply from the market is going to seem like a bad idea.
On the other hand, if the viewpoint of “I would much rather buy things from real people than bots” suits you, then the idea of things costing twice as much when you buy/sell doesn’t really change much at all.

At the end of the day, the farming grind is just another facet of the game. No less integral to the health of the game, in that sense, than WvW or dungeons; if all you did was dungeons every day, you’d get bored. And more than that, you’d buy out everything you cared to get from the dungeons and never want to do them again.

What removing a bit of the supply on the TP did, in effect, was give real players (as opposed to bots) an incentive to actually go back to farming again. It’s not a “LOL YOU GUYS SHOULD JUST FARM FOR YEARS LOL”, it’s a “Man, if almost nobody is farming because they’d rather just buy things from bots, that’s a pretty bad mindset, lol”.

tl;dr
Yes, it actually is an improvement to the gaming experience overall. Try looking less in the short-term.

Auvic.5679:

And here I thought people found gems too expensive to buy. Huh.

..Can anyone translate the rest of that post? Aside from “gems are too cheap, this isn’t about entitled babies”, I…can’t get anything out of that.

Arenaet, here is another definition of your ethical aesthetic. How many Tyrians do you think understand just what the BLTP currency exchange is?

Auvic, like you I have no problem with prices going up or prices doubling as long as I am doing business with Tyrians. I wonder if the Algorithm includes the number of Tyrians who would consider it their obligation to undercut the Tyrian gold offered by organized crime RMTs?

When Arenanet opened Tyria’s doors, they set the BLTP’s buy and sell orders for Tyrian gold and all change in the value since has been the result of an Algorithm translating Tyrian behavior. The BLTP is the only entity posting buy and sell orders and we well and truly have no idea what is going on with the valuation of Tyrian gold. All we know so far about the Algorithm is that demand for gems is predictable and exploitable.

That Algorithm means Arenanet is directly responsible for the cash value of every single item available in Tyria.

I’d thought that ANet only put in a base amount of gems into the market at the start, and backed out from there? You can claim that they’re fudging with the market all you want, but I don’t really see any evidence for shifts in prices that can’t be more easily explained by someone else playing the market in a smarter way than you, or me.

I don’t think many people understand the BLTP currency exchange.
I also don’t think most people care.

Is ANet responsible for the cash value of every item? Yes, in a sense, because they’re profiting off people buying gems and injecting them into the market. Are they themselves injecting gems/removing gems from the market arbitrarily? I don’t believe so.

Auvic,

If you want to sound credible, you should first learn to read, then learn to understand what you read, so you don’t waste your time answering out of the point. Also you should spend some time get some education in order to grasp the depth of a post and not limit yourself to the first degree.
My point is not about farming with or without friends. My point is that the issue is deeper than bots and concerns the offer and demand ratios. Now I doubt you can grasp that, I also doubt that you realize there is no difference in earning 4 time more from your farming if anything else around you is also 4 time more expensive. I bet you don’t even value your time since you like farming so much and do not care if achieving something takes twice longer than it should.
Maybe I have grown too old and I can’t grasp the concept of paying for farming while I get paid good money for working irl and aim at doing something else of my spare time which is on short supply.

Auvic.5679:

I’d thought that ANet only put in a base amount of gems into the market at the start, and backed out from there? You can claim that they’re fudging with the market all you want, but I don’t really see any evidence for shifts in prices that can’t be more easily explained by someone else playing the market in a smarter way than you, or me.

I don’t think many people understand the BLTP currency exchange.
I also don’t think most people care.

Is ANet responsible for the cash value of every item? Yes, in a sense, because they’re profiting off people buying gems and injecting them into the market. Are they themselves injecting gems/removing gems from the market arbitrarily? I don’t believe so.

Auvic, I offer no harsh rebuttal, this is indeed difficult to grasp. The product Arenanet is selling through the gem exchange is a similar to a stock or a government bond. I am beginning to feel this may have taken them by surprise. I do not know what this means for Arenanet/NCSoft or the gaming industry in general.

I have faith in ArenaNet employees. They live in a state that voted for Obama, in support of same sex marriage and the legal recreational use of marijuana. It is early Friday morning in Washington, if what I am saying is not true please, it is your responsibility to Tyria to call me out.

Psientist.6437:

Overvalued Tyrian gold is making it too easy to buy gems. The demand for character slot unlocks, bank unlocks etc….Arenanet’s source of reliable income, is very rapidly being filled. The gem store’s innate ability to serve as a Tyrian gold sink has been gutted, they will be left with only keys to drive gem sales.

Gonna take a moment to point something out here: the Gem Store has never been a gold sink. It is a gem sink, since the items in it can only be purchased with gems. The ability to buy gems with gold doesn’t actually create a gold sink, since gold doesn’t actually leave the system by that interaction. It just gets shifted around between players.

Softspoken.2410:

Psientist.6437:

Overvalued Tyrian gold is making it too easy to buy gems. The demand for character slot unlocks, bank unlocks etc….Arenanet’s source of reliable income, is very rapidly being filled. The gem store’s innate ability to serve as a Tyrian gold sink has been gutted, they will be left with only keys to drive gem sales.

Gonna take a moment to point something out here: the Gem Store has never been a gold sink. It is a gem sink, since the items in it can only be purchased with gems. The ability to buy gems with gold doesn’t actually create a gold sink, since gold doesn’t actually leave the system by that interaction. It just gets shifted around between players.

The model Arenanet is using functions as a Tyrian gold sink, but you have correctly pointed out a flaw in my assumptions. If only Tyrians posted buy and sell orders, the usefulness of the BLTP as a gold sink is in question. I have been struggling with how useful a dual NPC trader open market would work. I just keep running into how unethical the current use of a trader feels.

Trading gold for gems is a goldsink. The person who sells gems gets about 30% less than you have to pay for your gems.

Malediktus.9250:

Trading gold for gems is a goldsink. The person who sells gems gets about 30% less than you have to pay for your gems.

Trading gold for gems is a goldsink, but not because of the 30% fee. Trading gold for gems is a goldsink because it is not a currency exchange but a derivative.

Malediktus.9250:

Trading gold for gems is a goldsink. The person who sells gems gets about 30% less than you have to pay for your gems.

I hadn’t considered that.

I still maintain that the core idea of gems for gold isn’t a sink, but I can’t question that the taxation rate applied is. Calling the entire a feature a gold sink to me though feels iffy in the same way calling the Trading Post a gold sink is. There’s fees for posting: those are the gold sink. The actual buying and selling is just shuffling it around.

SoftSpoken,

You are not yet seeing how differently the player controlled (almost) Trading Post and The Currency Exchange (never) operate. If only one person in the game could post buy and sell orders for Green Wood Logs, would you buy green wood logs?

Psientist.6437:

SoftSpoken,

You are not yet seeing how differently the player controlled (almost) Trading Post and The Currency Exchange (never) operate. If only one person in the game could post buy and sell orders for Green Wood Logs, would you buy green wood logs?

Frankly, I’m not going to go into it because the differences between the trading post and currency exchange are not why I posted in here. I came in here to say that the gem store is not a gold sink, since gems are acquirable without the involvement of gold in any way, shape, or form. So its “innate ability” to act as a gold sink has only been “gutted” in so far as it has never existed.

Gems can be acquired with gold, yes, and that transaction has a fee that acts as a gold sink. That is something different from the gem store though. Has its own tab and everything.

All Tyrians could post buy and sell orders for Tyrian gold
The BLTP can only post buy orders for Tyrian gold with the express intent of removing Tyrian gold from the economy
Tyrian’s choose how to spend their Tyrian gold

Personally I would take 20-30-40%? hit selling to BLTP before using the open market

edit, if anyone calls it an innate gold sink I will go to 50%
edit, this isn’t right yet

Please pardon my last mental fart. I have been taking this discussion seriously over the last few days because it is important to me, but I have burnt out and need to take a break.

This is my position the last, recent, next “Recent Market Shift” was, is and will be the result of the BLTP’s currency exchange’s Algorithm. The Arenanet’s RMT of Tyrian gold, is not a currency exchange but an investment/stock in Tyria/Arenanet. Most Tyrians have no idea what is going on within the “currency exchange” tab.

Auvic.5679:

For the record, it’s still rather impressive that GW2 legendaries doesn’t actually require a person to beg their guild to tag along for months on end to complete.

Yeah, sure, you can get items that were legendary for their tier maybe six years ago by yourself. Cool.

That is an excellent point, and it also describes the situation in EQ2. The various legendary/mythical class weapons they introduced over the years required a mix of solo, group, and raid content to acquire. By contrast the system in this game allows one to make that a solo effort, which certainly has its advantages.

Also, we’re up to about 4x now on the price of “fine crafting materials”. I assume the reason the price of orichalcum ore is plummeting is because people are no longer crafting as many exotics to huck into the forge, due to this 4x increase in FCM price.

John Smith.4610:

The price spike doesn’t represent a shortage, it represents prices returning to where they should be without bots. This change creates more opportunity for players playing the game to earn money. The oversupply the bots created hurt the legitimate producers of items. As the prices go up, more real players will enter the market.

but i found recently curse shore drop rate was lower and awful,
yea pricing, new player cant catch the rate cause overprice for them
old Poor player like cant cope cause the rich already super rich,
how do you solve it, lower more the drop rate? -.-,
you should stay the drop rate, not catching bot and lower drop rate. X=
+ I already dump so many gold in to the fat air. kinda boring

It’s hit the crafting industry hard the price hike.

With reduced supply the market can no longer support so many crafters, which in turn increases competition for materials and reduces margins for us. Of course, I realised this day would come when the bots and their immense supply of cheap resources would be cast out of Tyria but, as a mesmer (And thus have trouble farming in dynamic events) it’s a pretty big hit to my potential sources of income.

Slic.2406:

John Smith.4610:

The price spike doesn’t represent a shortage, it represents prices returning to where they should be without bots. This change creates more opportunity for players playing the game to earn money. The oversupply the bots created hurt the legitimate producers of items. As the prices go up, more real players will enter the market.

Before these players (that are all trying to craft a legendary BTW) ever enter the market, they will ragequit the game’s ridiculous grind requirement for an aesthetic skin.

You’re not understanding just how ridiculously unskilled and time consuming the legendary crafting process is.

I thank you for banning bots, but please make t6 mats and ectos drop more frequently from level80+ mob. Otherwise, there will be nobody left to pay for your game.

this is what i agree, i dumped so much money into the fat air,
and now i in semi quit stage, its awful boring farming dungeon and cs for repeat more than 400hrs

I looked at a few of the posts then began skipping through the rest….. now admittedly iv’e had a couple but seriously legendary weapons are wait for it…… legendary…… you need to work for it, this whole self entitlement bit is getting a bit over the top, seriously i love the idea of having to play for ages to achieve something unique, it gives you the sense of achievement for something you enjoy doing.

now before you go about saying i have a spectacular amount of time to play during the days and have nothing better to do, you couldn’t be further from the truth… i work 6 -7 days a week depending on how busy i get and have a loving wife to come home to and spend time with, i have next to no time to play but still love the idea that there will be those few unique people getting about with a awesome looking weapon to show off to the general public that says “i played the kitten out of your game and i love it”.

don’t turn this game into what World of Warcraft became, because it was really hard to tell one player from another in the end.

No one here feels “entitled” to their legendary weapon.
Thanks for sharing your political views though.
You (I know this is a streatch here) /may/ want to actually read what people posted first next time.

What people want is to eliminate/reduce the RNG behind EARNING their legendary weapon.

And guess what? Eliminating/reducing the RNG behind getting a legendary will still result in….legendaries being legendary.

you guys have also change drop rates.

evidence is found in the dye mistake, which was followed up by anothe rmistake in overnerged it, which seems to have overnerfed drop rates of other item types as well.

no reason to lie or decieve or obfuscate this fact. it’s plain as day and obvious as the sky is blue.

it’s not just bots being banned, it’s not just less people farming those spots. bots were being banned en masse before the sudden and rapid rise in prices. the sudden an dmeteroic rise in price doesn’t correlate with those actions.

they do have a 1:1 correlation with the known drop rate changes, which is documented in the dye drop rate “fix” patch notes.

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

monepipi.5160:

Legendaries are OPTIONAL. They are only for the rich and dedicated. No, 3hrs a day is still fairly semi casual. There are people who play for 16 hrs a day. If you can’t afford the dedication they aren’t for you. Period.

Can only afford to spend 3hrs/day? You can still have your legendary, you just need to keep at it for a longer time. Don’t have the patience? well then don’t try. Legendaries are meant as a long-term goal, something to work on when you have the time.

Personally I’m not even aiming for them.

this ^

If people want Precursors to be cheaper, maybe something like this to make it as hard maybe harder but less gold involve:

- Recipe For Precursor’s-

• 250 Obsidian Shards* (525K Karma)
• Gift Of Battle (500 Badges of Honor WvWvW)
• Gift of Dungeon (500 Tokens)
• 250 Ancient Swordblade/Scepter etc….

Oh and 1 more thing, make all the Legendaries looks cooler! Because right now not all Legendaries looks as cool as the greatswords.

Legendary should not be at all so connected to grind fest. 100% map, one/two crating skills maxed, tokens wvw and dungeon, materials and karma (500k) , plus lets say story line and all world bosses killed should b more then enough . Why , well those above say u did everything game offers. And also u put effort to that .
As we have it now , world bosses are mostly useless as well as story . I really don’t see why would we need RNG and years of Orr farm when some great things already exist. Legendary should be about fun and grind with no life is not fun.
Btw u know what owners of legendary do after getting it ATM?
They sit in LA tired of everything , afking.

I want to have option to “remove” items in “I’ve Sold & I’ve Bought” same in “I’m Selling & I’m Buying” It also allows us to remove some unnecessary items. This makes it easier to find item. It will perfect for edit My transactions.
I hope that my request will be considered.Thank you.

So, I feel like the bots are back? I was actually making a profit crafting last week and over the weekend. In the past 24 hours prices have dropped again, back to where they were over a week ago.

I can see some of the responses if the posters are from Iran or China or other countries without market economies. But, the vast majority of this games players should understand the basic law of supply and demand.

John is absolutely correct. When prices go up, suppliers have more incentive, and will produce more. It can’t work any other way.

The other thing that John did not mention, but should have: The bots/RMTs are stealing real-world money from ANet and NCSoft. These guys have made a marvelous game, and sell it on a very restrictive (to them) marketting principle: Pay once, only pay again if you want more stuff.

The bots would eventually render that model ineffective at producing revenue.

YES, ANet makes real money from gem sales. And ONLY they should make real money. They designed the economy very well, but cheaters and thieves have been stealing their income.

It will level off to the right equilibrium. Give it time. But, once there, accept that the prices SHOULD be where they end up.

Daddicus.6128:

I can see some of the responses if the posters are from Iran or China or other countries without market economies. But, the vast majority of this games players should understand the basic law of supply and demand.

China’s economy is, in fact, a market economy (or rather a mixed economy, i.e. one with both market forces and government planning; the term “mixed economy” applies to the economies of the vast majority of countries including the United States). Although ~50% of the enterprises are state-owned they are still subject to market forces. China calls its system a “socialist market economy”, though critics often refer to it as “state capitalism”.

Iran’s economy is considered a transition economy, with something like 50% of it being centrally planned, but this is enough that it’s quite clear that anyone posting from Iran would have experience with market economics.

A better example of an almost fully planned economy would be something like that of Cuba or North Korea.

Nimraphel.7819:

John Smith.4610:

The price spike doesn’t represent a shortage, it represents prices returning to where they should be without bots. This change creates more opportunity for players playing the game to earn money. The oversupply the bots created hurt the legitimate producers of items. As the prices go up, more real players will enter the market.

This still doesn’t adress the ridiculous situation of legendaries highlighted above. While it’s becoming more profitable from a seller’s perspective, it is now more than ever nigh-impossible to craft a legendary. In sum, it’s a hellish market from a buyer’s perspective because even with the most optimal approach, gold/hour is still averaging at 1½-2½ at most from farming due to DR. And I am being generous here.

I think there is a serious need to re-examine what you want from this game. I can appreciate the TP and the market from a purely economic perspective, but that’s an occupational hazard; from a purely gaming perspective, we are a long, long, long shot away from anything even resembling fun.

As it is right now you might as well make a disclaimer whenever a new person hits level 80: “Do not bother with legendaries unless you are unemployed and got 10 hours/day for half a year. Oh and by the way, you should play the TP if you want money unless you belong to aforementioned demographic. Don’t like it? Tough luck.”

The post should end with this. Exactly what i have been saying for over a month.

prices are ridiculus. it used to be 20s for 100 gems, now its 90 gems for 1gold. Ridiculus.

Shpongle.6025:

prices are ridiculus. it used to be 20s for 100 gems, now its 90 gems for 1gold. Ridiculus.

I have been following the gold for gem rate. Some say it’s influenced by demand of the “market”, but I think it’s nothing more than a pure gold sink.

1st week of September 2012: 1g = ~300 gems
1st week of October 2012: 1g = ~200 gems
3rd week of October 2012 (Halloween events): 1g = ~120 gems
3rd week of November 2012: 1g = 90 gems

Where does this end? 1g = 1 gem by January 2013??

Also the graphs shown at the trade gold for gems and gems for gold tab have no meaning as prices only go up, with an obsolete fluctuation within the given time frame displayed in those graphs. When you expand the timeframe from 5 days to 2 months (or even 2 or 3 weeks) it would show one climbing line…no influence from the “market” at all, just a pure gold sink :/

It’s probably worth considering that as the player base matures and more and more characters filter into the end-game regions, players will become less and less willing to buy gems for real-world money considering they can farm gold relatively quickly and buy gems with those instead. All gems in the economy were bought with real money at one point, so if more and more players are buying gems with gold, the supply of gems is eventually going to decrease. This will encourage more players to buy gems to trade to gold, and eventually swing prices back the other way.

I just want to let you know my opinion about the topic end-game items and my fun
and motivation of playing gw2 — In comparison to other hardcore gamers I am rather
a casual gamer spending about 10 hours a week playing the game. It does not hurt me
that I am not able to get a legendary item just in few weeks after reaching level 80.
The game has so much fun inside and I enjoy many aspects of the game. Certainly, one
day in the future I will have also a legendary weapon in my hands but I am not sure
if I will have much much more fun by doing so. And if it takes me a year to get a cool
end-game item so what, I will have a lot of fun along my way.

Regarding bots: I have played a game years ago where using bots were totally legal,
there were bots for gathering and grinding which you could buy for in-game gold and
the outcome of using bots was not too high as you had first to make an investment to
buy the bots. I found this approach to fight against illegal botting interesting. However
for getting end-game items you still had to work hard.

Whatever mechanisms the game provides to control the market (or let the players
control the market) and to prevent unintended use of game-play elements, I think it is
okay to be a bit patient and work hard for getting items which many other players may not have.

I have a concern about Major shifts to the market not involving bots.

I have been trying to make money by crafting destroyer weapons and then selling them. It takes a lot of capital to make one. After a couple of successful sales ( with about 8% profits after taxes) The price of the mats dropped right out the bottom, causing the value to drop by almost half. Now if I want to relist my item I will have to pay another 5% fee costing me a total of 20% of the value just to make the transaction making my total loss approximately 70% of my net worth despite some very careful research beforehand.

It looks to me like these economy fluctuations are an attempt to stop players from becoming wealthy through trade with each other, possibly to sell more gems as the only way of gaining money without grinding on mobs all day long.

The economy is usually one of my favorite parts of end game MMO’s but I feel like this one is rigged to suck money out of the system and that makes it not any fun. Please keep drop rates steady and lower your taxes.

thank you very much for starting to work on this problem! I can’t wait to see the progress. GL with everything you guys are working on and good job!

I think we can safely say the bots need fixing again.

In the last 5 days supply of all materials has shot up, way beyond demand, and prices or T5 mats are rapidly falling towards an equilibrium of ~around 1 silver per unit.

We’re looking at another flood of supply creating a barrier of cheap materials that’ll take weeks to clear if not dealt with quickly. That’s good if you’re a newbie crafter of course, but this isn’t the “real” market environment the bots have reached critical mass and dominated the markets again. We’re back to where we were before the mass bannings almost

Is it just me thinking basic exotic gear(rings,..)/weapons are to expensive for a casual player? Prices of crafted exotic has doubled from what I payed after reaching 80 on my first char in september… That is beyond good and evil for me… I just though I could create a twink or two – just for WvW – but if I look in what it costs to equip I will not do that right now or later..!
And I really feel sorry for all the slow playing players… I think there sould not only be exotic stat gear, also there should be exotic stat weapons/equip. Everyone should get the same chance and pay the same…

Personally i think gold farmers are making prices on tp soar too. Since gold is easily bought it made some of the mats a bit too high.

Nimraphel.7819:

I said that having a carrot dangling in front of players for 1+ year (and no, people, 3 hours a day every single day is not casual. 15+ hours a day are anomalies) is simply not sustainable. It is medieval.

Legendary weapons should take a legendary effort to obtain. No more, no less.

I imagine ANet has a plan to release a few more expansions for GW2 that see the game run as long if not longer than the original. We do have the other Elder Dragons to get rid of! so 1+ year? nothing to a gamer who enjoys a game. Look how long some players have been playing wow AND legendary weapons are not required to enjoy the game at the top level.

3 hours a day 7 days a week is an inbetweener. Thats only 21 hours a week by employment standards that a part-timer / casual in my book.

i’m a casual player lives in egypt, the past few weeks was not fun .. i was busy with politics i didn’t play much ..

i came back now for the event and the price’s are to the roof !!! everyone is telling me to buy 100gold for 20$ from some gold bot site ..

there is some guy has put a legendary twilight for 9500 gold .. this guy payed 425 gold to put this weapon on trade .. its crazy !!

i want to buy abyss dye .. thats was my target and 19 gold for a dye is crazy .. so no dye for me now or in the next month ..

if u can’t stop the gold bots .. at least make dungeons worth doing .. give us extra gold for doing dungeons and no one will buy from the gold sites then .. or u find a way to fix this … cuz if its kept on going this way .. 6 months from now and new players will never be able to buy any thing ..

Dear John Smith

It cannot be hidden that you are involved with the economy in gw2 :P.

As the markets have shifted i was wondering if you would have any insight on where the economy for rare materials is moving in the game, especially in the market of Lodestones. Let us know of any updates

I would be curious to see a quarterly update similar to this
https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/commerce-infographic-EN.png
One can hope, right?

Rouven.7409:

I would be curious to see a quarterly update similar to this
https://d2vn94glaxzkz3.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/commerce-infographic-EN.png
One can hope, right?

Just my thoughts Rouven