Guild Wars 2

People who have not one iota of an inkling of an idea of how the Trader works, and whose soul purpose in life is to lose money for no other reason than to undercut the next guy, like they get a medal for their losses.

Now I’m not just complaining about fair competition without doing anything about it. Once smart buyers outnumber the clueless sellers, and I merely cover my losses, I’m through with trying to supply crafted goods altogether for the community. I’ve already moved on to other successful trades to offset my poor investments and I will just stick to those once I’m in the clear.

Here’s just an example of the math logic that is lost on too many players in the market these days:

20 Slot Invisible Bag
(10 Bolts of Gossamer) — 70s70c buyout — 63s50c offer (cheaper than 2 scraps atm)
(3 Piles of Crystalline Dust) — 20s34 buyout (-3c in offer)
(1 Superior Rune of Holding) — 10g (12g24s buyout — 9g54s offer, as if)

So unless someone bought one too many Runes and actually met a 9g5xs offer, the total production cost of a 400 Tailor comes out to:

10g 91s 04c — 10g 83s 81c (waiting for offers to be met) or a negligible 7s Xc margin

Now if you’ve read this far, there is currently one of these listed for 12g 25s (and unless you can make it yourself, this is as good as it gets, so if you ever want one now is the time to rob someone blind). Undercutting the previous lowest of 12g 50s. Now let’s see what happens to their expected profits…

11g 2s 50c when it sells, but
-62s 50c when they listed it, for a net profit of:
10g 40s

Now, I’ve double-checked my math up ‘til now, but correct me if I’m wrong that:
10g 40s < 10g 83s < 10g 91s

Because I’m not double-checking what it shouldn’t take a math-wiz to figure out.

Even if this individual acquired said bag by making it when the cost was slightly lower, it could have never been profitable at a 10g 40s net. Even if they replaced all their bags with the 20 slot Karka bags, in my opinion, this is the superior bag (to at least have one of them) as the mechanics of it are unique.

I cannot concoct a scenario wherein this individual knew what they were doing and still listed this item at this price, and they’re not the only one. Even the 12g 50s bag only nets ~ 10g 62s, for a net loss.

12g 84s is the bottom-line break-even price. Any listing above this only nets 85% of the difference. Any listing below this is taking a net loss on the value of materials.

Not to mention the loss of liquid assets waiting for it to sell and the risk of losing your listing fee (which should be minimal at these giveaway prices). I refuse to believe these bags were made for profit recently by crafters who should have their tools taken away from them. I can only imagine that these players have an excess of one bag for each character they will ever play already, and these are duplicates being tossed out to marginalize their losses after getting “free” 20 slot Karka/Frac boxes.

If not, well, I doubt the audience I am trying to educate will come here to be informed, so…

/end rant

The profit of the crafter is the increase of his skill. For this goal (= higher skill level) he actually has to pay, and the payment is the difference between the materials he consume and the price he can achieve.

I can understand your frustration, dealing with a similar situation in another crafting profession, but unfortunately you can’t eliminate human stupidity.

With respect to material costs, I do know a lot of people don’t necessarily value the mats they have gathered themselves at market value, but even then the minimum break even point would be on the cost of the rune. Assuming they were purchased below cost via the TP rather than from a vendor, this would be 9g 54s/0.85 = 11g 22s 35c

Perhaps they got them even cheaper, but sadly I think it’s more likely that people are making a loss (either unwittingly, or perhaps just to get some of their initial investment back – as you noted, it’s not a small sum to have tied up in one item).

@ Talyjta:

That makes absolutely no sense in this case.

However, if that were the case in this particular sale, I’d say it is a double-whammy. They have no clue how the Trader or Crafting works, and again should have their tools taken away from them.

Talyjta.9081:

The profit of the crafter is the increase of his skill. For this goal (= higher skill level) he actually has to pay, and the payment is the difference between the materials he consume and the price he can achieve.

These require skill level 400 to craft, there is no “skill increase benefit” from crafting these.

Edit: I actually had to double-check this to confirm it was true after seeing the previous post.

Astraea.6075:

With respect to material costs, I do know a lot of people don’t necessarily value the mats they have gathered themselves at market value, but even then the minimum break even point would be on the cost of the rune. Assuming they were purchased below cost via the TP rather than from a vendor, this would be 9g 54s/0.85 = 11g 22s 35c

They would have to sell just the Rune itself for 11g 22s 35c to break even, not the finished bag. While I get that some people might use the thinking “I just looted this it cost me nothing”, then making an item they in turn lose money on without any other possible benefit but to sell it… they can simply sell the materials at an actual profit instead since no other objective is being met anyway. They have to be erroneously believing they are making more profit.

I seriously think people go blind buying materials and pay no attention to their money dwindling away. They see huge numbers and think it = bigger profit. Something like:

“10g rune + free mats < 12g 25s!! Bingo I just made at least 2g suckers! Glad I didn’t sell these free materials for only 3s each like those idiots that don’t know about my super secret recipe!”

Who would buy a 20 slot bag? 2 slots for 10g is not worth it, you’re better of buying 50 slot guild banks.

raxx.8914:

Who would buy a 20 slot bag? 2 slots for 10g is not worth it, you’re better of buying 50 slot guild banks.

I’m still running with at least one 8 slot bag on my main (I’m not running into inventory issues very often). If I were to upgrade that to a 20 slot bag, then I gain more than 2 slots and haven’t paid for the intermediate steps. That said, 10g is a lot of money to commit to inventory space, which is why I haven’t done it yet.

@ Asilion:

I’m not saying they’re correct in doing this, I’m just noting that this is how some people think…

raxx.8914:

Who would buy a 20 slot bag? 2 slots for 10g is not worth it, you’re better of buying 50 slot guild banks.

Simple answer: quality of life.

If you are sitting on 100g you don’t really have a use for and you don’t have 1 of these particular bags (there is no direct substitute hence the inherent value) on each character you play frequently, you’re going to run into inconvenience.

Just the sheer number of items this game forces you to haul around for convenience sake, you will at some point want 20 slots for gear swaps + commonly carried consumables, etc. that you don’t want showing up in the trade window nor auto-sorted everytime. I run an 18-slot invisible at the bottom of my bag window myself, and it still gets tight at times.

The price of 18 slots is 2g, the price of 20 slots is 12g, the price of a private 50 slot guild bank is 25g. The 20 slot bags are never worth it.

Actually, the price for a private guild stash is just around 4.5g. (Buy 4.5k influence)

What, did they lower influence costs?

Errr idk. Unless they raised it up, i got my guild stash a long time ago (before halloween), it should cost around 4.5k influence. 500 for archi 1, 1k for archi 2, then 1k for storage. Unless im mistaken

raxx.8914:

The price of 18 slots is 2g, the price of 20 slots is 12g, the price of a private 50 slot guild bank is 25g. The 20 slot bags are never worth it.

To you.