Guild Wars 2

face it, some people are so bad at math they think they can statistically beat a roulette table or slot machine. They truly think they are winning long term.

Sure some people hit the jackpot or some find a method to cheat the system. But over all, Anet will need the mystic forge to eat 99% (no this is not an exact number, infact it is probably even closer to 100) of all gathered materials so they retain some sense of value.

Once people are done crafting, to level the last few toons they are interested in, the forge is about the only material sink left.

Xym.9417:

face it, some people are so bad at math they think they can statistically beat a roulette table or slot machine. They truly think they are winning long term.

Sure some people hit the jackpot and some find method to cheat the system. But over all, Anet will need the mystic forge to eat 99% (no this is not an exact number, infact it is probably even closer to 100) of all gathered materials so they retain some sense of value.

Once people are done crafting, to level the last few toons they are interested in, the forge is about the only material sink left.

I totally agree – that is how it is designed to work. Your choice then is to operate at a loss in an attempt at quick gains, or calculate the max you can spend per forge in order to break even and only forge at or below that threshold.

Xym.9417:

face it, some people are so bad at math they think they can statistically beat a roulette table or slot machine. They truly think they are winning long term.

Sure some people hit the jackpot and some find method to cheat the system. But over all, Anet will need the mystic forge to eat 99% (no this is not an exact number, infact it is probably even closer to 100) of all gathered materials so they retain some sense of value.

Once people are done crafting, to level the last few toons they are interested in, the forge is about the only material sink left.

What has happened is that the market has normalized where if a person crafts any item with buying all components from the TP – the price will be equal to the finished product or a lot of times, they’ll end up losing money. There are people here claiming that it isn’t true, but refuse to provide examples because it doesn’t exist anymore.

The market trend is that anything related to legendaries/precursors has held value because that’s the current ‘end game’ for PVE bound players. Everything else gets closer and closer to NPC-value because the demand just isn’t there.

Because crafting normally is normalized, that leaves the Mystic Forge which long story short is gambling. Some people will profit off of gambling, most will lose. Those claiming to make crazy profit are either lying, or figured something out before the community has. A lot of times people will figure something out and not want it to get out in fear that it will ruin it as people hop on the bandwagon; however until next patch, there aren’t many unknown recipes in either crafting or the Mystic Forge.

The comparison to a roulette table is only partially correct. You’re right in that the odds are stacked against the forge users. However, in some cases the market hasn’t fully adapted and there are consistent profits, even with the poor odds, to be made until the market catches up.

To return to your analogy, it’s like betting at the same roulette table as lots of other people, but you got your chips at a discount, so your EV is higher than the people who paid full price for their chips. Of course that still doesn’t always mean there is a net profit to be made, but until the market catches up, there are still a few opportunities out there.

Edenknight.9284:

What has happened is that the market has normalized where if a person crafts any item with buying all components from the TP – the price will be equal to the finished product or a lot of times, they’ll end up losing money. There are people here claiming that it isn’t true, but refuse to provide examples because it doesn’t exist anymore.

These examples do exist. The problem is that as soon as someone says, " I make x profit per <insert sigil/weapon/armor/etc> piece" if even 10 or 20 people read the post and start doing it, the profit margin dries up and they have to find something else to make. Setting up an excel sheet so that you can quickly input the cost of materials, and seeing the break even points of all the items you can make is a great way to start.

Edenknight.9284:

Those claiming to make crazy profit are either lying, or figured something out before the community has.

I didn’t see anyone in this post claiming to have made crazy profit. However any profit allows you to forge endlessly without going broke. At one point I was averaging almost 1 gold per forge of a certain exotic weapon type but more people seem to have caught onto that particular one and its now down to only a ~15 silver.

I have to admit that the influence of Aion on the crafting aspect, as well, the other RNG aspects really do suck. What happen to the whole “if you hate mmos, you’re going to love GW2”? GW2 is just as much a big mmo as any other. I like farming mob but you can’t do that for too long. Can’t farm the same dungeon for too long either… Above all, you must farm! I don’t get what the devs want us to do farm or not. I like the game but stop limiting what we can or can’t do with the little time we have to play. Give us a clear way to achieve things in a game and that makes crafting useful (weaponsmith and armor). Crafting/dungeons is where the good skins/weapons should come from and not from a forge.

Your luck has to be legendary to make these. Hence the item type.
Thank goodness to me it’s just 0,1s with a bunch of pretty pixels.

Xym, i’m very glad you brought up that point.

Believe me when I say I cannot beat a roulette wheel. For anyone who knows how a roulette wheel works, the 0 and 00 essentially give the house long-term odds. In the short run, this may vary wildly for the house, as they are just 2 of 38 possible results, but the long run always evens out.

Interestingly, this is the kind of concept I am trying to impress upon the rest of you.

The final step OF the process (4 precursor eligible items -> 1 item) is indeed an approximation of a slot machine, but there are several key differences that most people overlook, notably that in various circumstances the MF can be guaranteed to improve your output item. You WILL NOT make a great deal of money on this step, unless you get lucky. You can, however, passably break even, or gain/lose a little money.

Where the real profit is, is how you get to that final step.

\\Stop reading here if you don’t really care about what I have to say about markets

The market.

The market is not a roulette wheel. It is full of imperfections, perceptions, prospectors.
Maybe it is my involvement with US Stocks in real life, but I find free markets to be both brutal and beautiful, not to mention something I can track while idling in video game forums. I love the trading post in this game and I think it is almost perfect. The best thing about Guild Wars’ version is how much more chaotic it is relative to the stock exchange in our day to day lives.

In truth, the minds that pull the strings of the NYSE is flooded with talent. The best statistical models are at work trying to pull at any market advantages. In this environment, I am hardly a factor. For most of us, we can only get swept along in the market currents while larger entities steer the boat. We try to pick the right boat.

The Guild Wars BLTP is nearly the opposite. This is just a video game. Buyers are rash, impulsive, and you can probably see from this thread that not many players really know how to spot anything. Some will even insist that it is impossible, that the market is 100% efficient, that anything you make will be worth less than what you put in.
They’ll say the tax prevents profits. Funnily enough, the 15% tax on profits is actually a fair-ish approximation of the one you will face from the federal government on any reported gains.
\\

TL;DR:

The fact of the matter is that some of you say that you shouldn’t be forced to play the trading post to make a legendary. This isn’t Sim Securities Exchange.

That’s fair.

But while the system is how it is right now, at LEAST pay attention to the first part.

It IS possible to break even on the MF alone. Not make money. Break even. Or lose slightly! But having it cost a few silver per attempt is VASTLY better than the 50-60s (or far, far worse) per attempt I see some people describing.

Try to meet us in the middle, and do a bit of research, before condemning everything I say as “impossible”.

And for the love of god, I’m not trying to make money off of you by talking up what I have and selling. If I wanted to start up a rumor that putrid essences (EXAMPLE. don’t… go and) were going to be worth a ton or whatever, and then unload my stash, please believe I can do a better job than a handful of long winded posts in a single thread in a single forum =/

I did have a decent chuckle when I was accused of it though. I’m in a region affected by Hurricane Sandy and have been without power or internet at home for the better part of a week. Most of my access to the internet is through work and phone, meaning no GW. Sorry I couldn’t unload my stash of level 75 exotics to all you suckers

Some time spent with Wolfram Alpha would put into perspective just how much bad luck you have to have after 10,000+ attempts assuming a .1% chance of obtaining a precursor. With 10k attempts: Expected value – 10, Standard deviation – 3.161, Variance – 9.99

With 1k attempts there is a 63% chance at success

So if you really threw 40,000 items into the forge without a precursor you are over 2 (almost 3) standard deviations away from the expected 10 precursors which, while still within the realm of the probability, is just unfortunate luck.

@RedHead – thanks for doing that math, I didn’t know which tools to run to figure out the StDev for attempts. It would be nice to know the actual odds of success for precursor a given 4-exotic 76+ weapons. I always thought it would be more than .1% (1/1000) I thought it would be more in the realms of 1/100-1/120 (.9~1% chance)

From there, the rare attempts are going to be 1/5th of the exotic attempts because we know that the upgrade chance is around 20% from rare→exotic

I made 110 rare greatswords today, and threw them all into the forge and got only junk back. Then, I decided to try only exotics, so I bought about 75 level-80 exotic greatswords from the TP (using up all of my gold). Threw them all into the forge, and once again got SHlT back…

Now I’m dirt poor again. Thanks Izzy, and your kitten-creation that is the forge…

Guess I was hoping the path to a legendary weapon would involve a quest line. Something epic. I’m ok with it needing expensive mats and all as well, but it almost seems like a gamble to get one.

Much like the OP, I have lousy luck w/ the MF, so I’m resigned to save up enough to buy a legendary someday. And if that never happens, eh, I’m still having fun.

However, that kinda takes the ‘epicness’ (is that a word, lol) out of acquiring a legendary.

Love the game, hate these gambling scenarios (like the most recent Halloween event, but that’s another thread). But that still leaves a lot of fun stuff to do, and one needs to do the stuff that makes you happy and leave the other to avoid frustration.

I really wish Anet would implement an automated system that would just suspend people who make threads with the word precursor in its title. It’s been repost countless time, mostly from b-hurt people who didn’t get their shinies.

There’s a reason the thing is called legendary you know. As flawed as the RNG system is, if the precursor is widely available to everyone, then what’s the point of having legendary items to set yourself apart from the crowd?

I’m also willing to bet that even if you get your precursor, some of you will either end up selling it for money or just come back here and complain “the requirement for insert legendary components here is too much! QQ”

Legendary weapon, Duplicated, not Legendary lucky player weapon, just so you know

Duplicated.4715:

There’s a reason the thing is called legendary you know.

What’s that reason then? I can’t for the life of me see how the meaning of the word “legendary” pertains to the weapons of that name.

Duplicated.4715:

There’s a reason the thing is called legendary you know. As flawed as the RNG system is, if the precursor is widely available to everyone, then what’s the point of having legendary items to set yourself apart from the crowd

As a norn, this ‘Legendary’ item is symbolically meaningless to me. Legends are not made by accident in a magic pot, they are forged from mighty deeds, earned by the bravest heroes to live on forever in our history.

In Guild Wars, we had a thing called GWAMM. It wasn’t a perfect system, but you had to go near and far, serve great and dull challenges alike in order to seize it. Though there were a healthy amount of people that belittled such an accomplishment, no one could argue that there was an achievement one truly earned the right to have under their name.

I honor those that would sacrifice everything to reach their goals, but I will not regard any hero with these weapons as a legend.

leg·end·ar·y/?lej?n?der?/
Adjective:

1. Of, described in, or based on legends.
2.Remarkable enough to be famous; very well known.

Doesn’t say a thing about it being a rare or hard to obtain item. And doesn’t say a kitten thing about it being a casino reward.

OrianZeta.1537:

I honor those that would sacrifice everything to reach their goals, but I will not regard any hero with these weapons as a legend.

I just look them disguted, 99% of the weapons around are from exploits using lv65 rares. Over all, i barely pay more than 30 seconds of attention to them at all when someone walk near me with one haha

Well, After saving and saving and saving. putting in buyouts for over a month I just crafted 240 rare staffs and 80 exotics. I’m now broke and have nothing to show for it lol. pretty much done for now with the game and otherwise.