Guild Wars 2

Given the amount of just wood needed to both level your craft and make an ascended it would take months just to gather the wood.

When I gather and craft some thing myself. I feel I’ve earned it and I can use the gold I have to go else where.

If I simply buy the mats off the TP. It feels like cheating and cheapens the feeling of accomplishing some thing.

It’s like the part of the brain that holds the concept of “Opportunity Cost” is nothing but an empty vacuum of space, sucking in stray brain cells.

Azure Prower.8701:

When I gather and craft some thing myself. I feel I’ve earned it and I can use the gold I have to go else where.

If I simply buy the mats off the TP. It feels like cheating and cheapens the feeling of accomplishing some thing.

Gathering gold and using it to buy stuff makes me feel like I’ve earned it.

Just like gathering dungeon tokens to buy gear makes you feel like you’ve earned that gear.

I see this argument pop up now and then. It’s really a small issue; it amounts to ‘play the game my way, you feeb!’.

Look, some people would rather not grind the minmaxiest way to get gold. Some people like the meditation of running around gathering. Some people are time-rich and gold-poor.

All I’m saying is it’s a matter of perspective. If you enjoy gathering the mats ARE free, because they save you doing something else you might find unpleasant.

Or, if you’re working on world completion or just doing events for the heck of it, would you consider any mats gathered incidentally NOT to be free?

What they mean I guess is the over all bank balance didn’t go down. But there is a bit too it because when you’re buying the mats you generally have to pay extra. Right now that extra is a low, many many times the actual value in time of the mats themselves.

If it takes 30 minutes to gather close to 150 Ancient wood logs it doesnt make economic sense to pay close to 10g for that same amount of wood because no content you do is going to give you anywhere close to 10g per 30 mins (except gathering the wood and selling it yourself of course ).

Clark Skinner.4902:

I can’t understand how they can think that crafting something was free since they gathered the mats.

Say that you are out walking. You are hungry and need to eat something. You stumble over a Snickers on the side walk. You pick it up. You can now sell it but since you are hungry you eat it. How much did you pay for that candy bar? In my perspective nothing, since you were hungry and was going to buy something to eat anyways.

Vaugh.7193:

Clark Skinner.4902:

I can’t understand how they can think that crafting something was free since they gathered the mats.

Say that you are out walking. You are hungry and need to eat something. You stumble over a Snickers on the side walk. You pick it up. You can now sell it but since you are hungry you eat it. How much did you pay for that candy bar? In my perspective nothing, since you were hungry and was going to buy something to eat anyways.

What a terrible example.

If you COULD sell it, then yes, you lost out on money in order to eat it.

No one is gonna hustle a snickers bar.

I guess as long as people don’t see gold dissapearing from their wallet then it seems free to them. Although if you start selling t6 mats instead of saving them you find out just how much money you’re technically spending when you craft max level gear.

Do people not understand the basic concept of “free” anymore? Just because something has a value attached to it does not make it “cost” you when there is zero cost attached to ownership.

If I collect an item, that has no cost attatched in doing so it is free, REGARDLESS of its value.

If I enter a competition for a brand new car, and I win and I am given the keys and ownership of it, the car is FREE. If I then chose to sell it, that is PROFIT.

All mats gathered in the world are free. There are GIVEN to the player. The “time” involved in collection is not a cost, as your “time” has no given value in the game world. You dont get 10 gold just for logging in each day. You are not “employed” in any way shape or form.

Relentliss.2170:

Given the amount of just wood needed to both level your craft and make an ascended it would take months just to gather the wood.

Made 4 ascended weaps, and 2 ascended inscriptions so far (that I sold). Leveled up 2 disciplines to 500, and the last one artificer is @ 470 now …. The only thing I buy any stacks of regularly is soft wood b/c I have a fundamental disagreement with J. Smith’s changes to it that took us from needing only 2 or 3 logs… to needing 4. FOUR? 4 is just breaking the camels back. Roll back plz.

I wish we could sell Vision Crystals too b/c I have enough leftover mats for 3 of those right now. …and I’m quickly running out of ideas of what weapons to make next

.

Really I think it just comes down to having a perma-swiftness character (or 2) with multiple gap closers so that you’re effectively always moving @ 50% movement speed to cover more ground. (& disengage instantly from mob/wvw aggro)

Knote.2904:

No one is gonna hustle a snickers bar.

XD
this comment wins the thread IMO.

Those who don’t know/care about opportunity cost will continue to live fully content with their decisions, and perhaps they’re better off that way. If you are unaware you made a sub-optimal decision, you won’t have to worry about regretting it. How many times have we heard how someone profited by turning X (something they acquired “for free”) into Y, which they then sold for Z gold, not knowing that had they simply sold X, they would have made more than Z…

Living sub-optimally? What a strange concept. You live your life to some standard of what optimal actually is? I run through southsun to get some mats, sometimes the queen is up so do that and any pre-events still up. This is not optimal? I hop onto a train in Frostgorge if the node is near it and hop off after a couple of champs. Again this is not anywhere near optimal use of my time. Same goes for Orr I guess.

Serenity.6149:

Those who don’t know/care about opportunity cost will continue to live fully content with their decisions, and perhaps they’re better off that way. If you are unaware you made a sub-optimal decision, you won’t have to worry about regretting it. How many times have we heard how someone profited by turning X (something they acquired “for free”) into Y, which they then sold for Z gold, not knowing that had they simply sold X, they would have made more than Z…

This is an easy trap to stumble into. I have to remind myself they have a value regardless on regular occasions.

Knote.2904:

Vaugh.7193:

Clark Skinner.4902:

I can’t understand how they can think that crafting something was free since they gathered the mats.

Say that you are out walking. You are hungry and need to eat something. You stumble over a Snickers on the side walk. You pick it up. You can now sell it but since you are hungry you eat it. How much did you pay for that candy bar? In my perspective nothing, since you were hungry and was going to buy something to eat anyways.

What a terrible example.

If you COULD sell it, then yes, you lost out on money in order to eat it.

No one is gonna hustle a snickers bar.

You assume we care about making money in the first place. That’s your problem. If I don’t have a use for materials I will sell them, if I do I won’t. It’s pretty straight forward.

Let’s say your working towards your Legendary Twilight, but you’re short of msybe 30 gold.

One fine day, BAM, you get Entropy from a champion bag.

Now you can either equip Entropy since the hammer will look kitten on you. Or you can sell Entropy for the 30 gold and complete your Legendary.

Either way it’s a 30g decision. And so it is with farming mats.

It’s not the gathering part that is free/not free.

Regardless of how you gathered the mats, you have the choice of selling them or crafting them. So the crafted item isn’t free, you are exchanging the value of the mats for the crafted item.

One doesn’t need to minmax and do a lot of calculations to understand that you’re losing something to gain something. Sometimes it’s a huge loss, like some of the food recipes that cost 3s to make and sell for 3c. In that case, the chef didn’t make 3c, he lost 2s97c. But just seeing that 3c was enough to know it was a bad deal, without putting any thought into it.

Barter is still a way of paying for things – except you pay in materials, not cash. The fact that you have gathered the materials yourself doesn’t diminish the cost of the end result in the slightest.
After all, you never say that “well, the gold i have is an accidental result of my gameplay, so the things i buy with it cost me nothing”.

Astralporing.1957:

Barter is still a way of paying for things – except you pay in materials, not cash. The fact that you have gathered the materials yourself doesn’t diminish the cost of the end result in the slightest.
After all, you never say that “well, the gold i have is an accidental result of my gameplay, so the things i buy with it cost me nothing”.

Interesting…I say that all the time. In my entire time playing GW2 I have never once gone out of my way to make gold.

I think people are mixing cost with potential profit.

Yes if you used the materials to create an exotic staff you missed out about 6g profit you could make selling those materials but that doesnt mean it cost you 6g to build that exotic staff. The cost you incurred is the time you spent gathering the materials not the potential profits you lost.

If I buy a $25,000 car the cost of the car is $25,000 not say $35,000 cause instead of keeping the car I could sell it for spare parts and make more money out of it.
Simply speaking the cost is what you paid to get X (be it money / mats or time) and not what profit you could have made had you not kept the thing you got.

Lexandro.1456:

All mats gathered in the world are free. There are GIVEN to the player. The “time” involved in collection is not a cost, as your “time” has no given value in the game world. You dont get 10 gold just for logging in each day. You are not “employed” in any way shape or form.

Look up the concept of opportunity cost

I think the issue for the OP is that the people who say that stuff are also the ones telling people, “It doesn’t cost that much! Just go farm the mats yourself. It’s free!”

That may be where the real issue lies for the OP and I can’t say as I blame him. I have friends that clear whole maps of materials(all the materials in a map) on a daily basis. What’s one person’s good time is another person’s root canal. People just lack tact in conveying that stuff sometimes is all.

Knote.2904:

It’s like the part of the brain that holds the concept of “Opportunity Cost” is nothing but an empty vacuum of space, sucking in stray brain cells.

Opportunity costs? In a video game? This isn’t business— unless you literally spend every waking moment in GW2 farming for gold, in which case your opportunity costs comment would be somewhat applicable.

But for the majority of players who play casually with no rhyme or reason when it comes to making gold, there is absolutely no way to measure opportunity costs, because it is company/person specific based on their normal business/farming practices.

Only farmers (or businesses obviously) can talk about that kind of thing. And I mean farmer farmers, like they play the game solely to make money.

If you are that person then why the heck are you even playing this game?

I know Champ Farming is profitable.

I know TP power trading can earn you 100g/day easily.

But, why do you think some people wouldn’t do that kitten all day?

Because, I am not playing Atari Economy Simulator 2014.

Some people actually enjoy walking around in open world, killing monsters, helping low levels kill that tough veteran/ champ, witnessing the brilliant art direction in certain parts of the maps, or… oh I don’t know, playing the kittening game?

Some people enjoy gathering mats because it satisfies their desire to see more of the game in the way it was meant to be played. That intrinsic value has sentiment garnered to the individual – you have no right to define what other people enjoy, doing so makes you look so arrogant.

Sure, maybe I am wasting my time chopping for Soft Wood Logs instead of killing the champion rotations in Frostgorge Sound. And maybe you’re right in saying that people aren’t exactly earning those assets for free if they have to spend their time to get it. But there are a plethora of reasons as to why people do what they do, despite those actions being converse to making the most amount of money in a short interval of time. Maybe, some people in this game open their GW2 program to have a good time surrounded by people who care for them.

It is a bit depressing seeing some people try to force the concept of opportunity cost upon us. If you were talking about a real world situation, where we deal in real money, I would understand. But this is a game and the most important thing is that you have fun. Different people have different notions of what constitutes fun for them. If you are all about making as much profit as possible, that’s great. But it doesn’t mean everyone else does that, wants to do that or should do that.

If you want to put a value on everything, go ahead. I find it sad, but it is just my opinion after all, and many will disagree. I think that talking about sub-optimal decisions in a game is ridiculous, same with putting a value on your time spent playing a game. You will inevitably make wrong decisions, thus losing gold/items/whatever. There will always be moments when you could have made a better deal if you had waited more/bought earlier/etc. Just as you will always lose time sooner or later, whether it’s your fault or not (lag, telephone or door bell at the worst moment possible). As to putting value on my time spent gaming, I for one am not being paid for doing this. Nor are most of the people. So how do you put a value on this? Unless you were supposed to be working, but you are gaming instead.

Anyway, my point is that it’s futile to try and put a value on everything. And as a poster above me said, it’s all about perspective. If you like to think that crafting an item cost you 1 gold because the materials were worth 1 gold, it’s fine. But if I want to think that it cost me nothing because I had gathered all the materials myself, then it should be fine too. If I never intended to sell my materials (and I don’t do that), how can you tell me it cost that much when it didn’t. Sure I could have made money selling the materials, but the fact is I didn’t.

In this game, every single item that you can sell is just money in another form. When you loot a vial of powerful blood, you loot 28silvers. When you consume a vial of powerful blood, you consume 28silvers. Sometimes it’s still useful to keep gathered materials for crafting as that can save you the 15% tax ratio.

“I gathered the mats so it was free” is nothing but a cognitive bias.

I’m going to agree with those that say it’s all perspective:

Some people gather the mats and neither sell them nor use them, they simple horde them because they can.

Some people intentionally gather everything, and salvage everything, wracking up stacks of materials to stash away in their guild vaults so guildies have the materials available if they run short, thus they don’t need to waste gold buying them.

Some people gather them, and merch them to normal merchants, because they could care less about the TP.

For some, the game isn’t all about ‘potential profit.’ At which point, these things (to them) are ‘free.’ They only ‘cost’ to gathering them is time, which they are spending playing anyway, and the gathering tools costs, which are easily recouped after a few kills.

Actually, there are mats that are not free, and mats that are. Look at it this way:

If you spend time gathering, then you have spent time and effort, therefore not free.

If, on the other hand, you are doing something else (i.e. playing the game) and you happen to get certain mats through playing “normally” then those are given freely, and you did not spend time specifically looking for those particular mats.

Khorrax.2108:

Anyway, my point is that it’s futile to try and put a value on everything. And as a poster above me said, it’s all about perspective. If you like to think that crafting an item cost you 1 gold because the materials were worth 1 gold, it’s fine. But if I want to think that it cost me nothing because I had gathered all the materials myself, then it should be fine too. If I never intended to sell my materials (and I don’t do that), how can you tell me it cost that much when it didn’t. Sure I could have made money selling the materials, but the fact is I didn’t.

It’s not futile to set a value to an item. All items that can be sold in TP have a value. This is a fact. However, one might choose not to care about it when playing the game, but the value is still there.

It’s not the same to gather 250 of Orichalcum Ore or 250 units of Copper Ore. Although the work is quite similar, one have a higher value than other and to me it’s not worth spending time and effort to farm 250 units of Copper Ore even if i need them, when i can farm less Orichalcum Ores, sell them @ TP and then buy 250 units of Copper Ore.

I do agree it’s about prespective, but that don’t invalidate the items having indeed a value per unit and work load per unit!

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

I’m going to agree with those that say it’s all perspective:

Some people gather the mats and neither sell them nor use them, they simple horde them because they can.

Some people intentionally gather everything, and salvage everything, wracking up stacks of materials to stash away in their guild vaults so guildies have the materials available if they run short, thus they don’t need to waste gold buying them.

Some people gather them, and merch them to normal merchants, because they could care less about the TP.

For some, the game isn’t all about ‘potential profit.’ At which point, these things (to them) are ‘free.’ They only ‘cost’ to gathering them is time, which they are spending playing anyway, and the gathering tools costs, which are easily recouped after a few kills.

None of this is relevant. It doesn’t matter if you play the game casually or not, the point is that burning materials is equivalent to burning money. It is not a matter of perspective at all.

If materials are equivalent to money and burning money to achieve something is called buying, then burning materials to achieve something may also be called buying.

My issue is that I was forced into crafting, which I hate. I play to have adventures not craft.

Then I had to grind wealth and mats to make the ascended weapon.

I also had to craft up weapon smithing from scrarch.

I did not have a stockpile of mats or gold.

I also only have One 80 so getting Ori is very slow if impossible given how much you need.

The whole thing, which started kinda fun, has turned into a terrible grind.

If I had started with WSing at 400 and some mats in the bank, it might not be too bad. Which is where I think many people were at.

Capitalism in a nutshell

Relentliss.2170:

My issue is that I was forced into crafting, which I hate. I play to have adventures not craft.

Then I had to grind wealth and mats to make the ascended weapon.

I also had to craft up weapon smithing from scrarch.

I did not have a stockpile of mats or gold.

I also only have One 80 so getting Ori is very slow if impossible given how much you need.

The whole thing, which started kinda fun, has turned into a terrible grind.

If I had started with WSing at 400 and some mats in the bank, it might not be too bad. Which is where I think many people were at.

Don’t go offtopic.

This thread is about the relation between materials and gold, not about their necessity to craft ascended weapons!

In my case I might well say something I crafted with gathered mats was ‘free’ and what I really mean is that the effort/profit ratio was so low as to be negligible.

This is because when I’m gathering materials I don’t sit down at the computer and decide to devote a chunk of time to gathering a specific material, look up the best areas to go to and then run around farming them for however long it takes.

I just gather whatever I can get from whatever nodes I happen to pass whilst doing other things. So the time and effort required for each one is only a few seconds to run a short distance out of my way and/or pause what I was doing (and I might well be standing around waiting for an NPC to catch up, or the next wave of enemies or whatever anyway).

Compared to the time I might spend earning gold to buy those mats that’s so close to nothing as makes no difference.

Master of Timespace.2548:

None of this is relevant. It doesn’t matter if you play the game casually or not, the point is that burning materials is equivalent to burning money. It is not a matter of perspective at all.

If materials are equivalent to money and burning money to achieve something is called buying, then burning materials to achieve something may also be called buying.

Only if your game play equates to potential profit for you. If all you ever think about it ‘well how much can I get for this’ when yeah, everything you do, gather, or get as a drop has a monetary value. Events have a monetary value: in time, in drops, and in completion reward.

It is all perspective. For some people, gathering the mats during their normal play equates to ‘free’ because they only thing they are ‘spending’ to obtain them is the cost for the tools. They don’t even consider the time because they are just playing normally. For some people, farming runs are considered ‘normal’ play for them, because that’s what they like to do.

Many people don’t assign a cost to doing something they enjoy, which is why ‘free’ is a perspective. Is it an actuality? No. Absolutely nothing in life is free, if you approach it with the view you are using. Even the time you use to play the game is not free. Time is money, you are wasting money. Why? Because you are enjoying the time you play the game, as such you don’t bother thinking about the fact that you could instead by using that time for something more productive… such as a potentially money making hobby, a second job, time with the family, cleaning your house, working in your yard, etc.

Danikat.8537:

I just gather whatever I can get from whatever nodes I happen to pass whilst doing other things. So the time and effort required for each one is only a few seconds to run a short distance out of my way and/or pause what I was doing (and I might well be standing around waiting for an NPC to catch up, or the next wave of enemies or whatever anyway).

Compared to the time I might spend earning gold to buy those mats that’s so close to nothing as makes no difference.

It’s not relevant how easily you can gather the materials. What matters is that they can be effortlessly and directly traded into money and the other way around (+- taxes, but they are mariginal enough). As long as this is true, there is no difference between using money and materials.

It’s free as in: they didn’t pay money for it. Free doesn’t mean there’s no effort involved, at least not in this case.

It is all perspective. For some people, gathering the mats during their normal play equates to ‘free’ because they only thing they are ‘spending’ to obtain them is the cost for the tools. They don’t even consider the time because they are just playing normally. For some people, farming runs are considered ‘normal’ play for them, because that’s what they like to do.

The essence of the discussion should be here: Why are the materials somehow differend from the gold they make during playing “normally”?

Many people don’t assign a cost to doing something they enjoy, which is why ‘free’ is a perspective. Is it an actuality? No. Absolutely nothing in life is free, if you approach it with the view you are using. Even the time you use to play the game is not free. Time is money, you are wasting money. Why? Because you are enjoying the time you play the game, as such you don’t bother thinking about the fact that you could instead by using that time for something more productive… such as a potentially money making hobby, a second job, time with the family, cleaning your house, working in your yard, etc.

I am not thinking it in such a compliacted way. My logic is very simple:
observation 1. There are differend types of “points” in the game. (materials, gold)
observation 2. These points can be traded between each other with no effort and with only mariginal loss in total quantity. (taxes)
conclusion. These points are all really just the same thing.

Time is money, you are wasting money.

Not really that relevant to the discussion, but note that time in fact is not money. Time may almost always be exchanged into money, but you can buy only so much time with money.

We are talking about completely 2 different things.

.1 → The cost to get them;
.2 → The value they have;

If we gather materials, they indeed are free because no money was paid for them (if we remove the cost of the gathering tool per unit). However that don’t mean they don’t have a price tag, because they do:
“It cost me nothing to gather a 5 silver per unit material”

Crafting however is a different thing. Crafting an item with gathered materials should be carefully looked. Although the items were free to get, they indeed have a value. Sometimes it’s better to sell the items for gold and then buy the crafted good also from TP, because the individual items are valued more than the crafted good!

Master of Timespace.2548:

The essence of the discussion should be here: Why are the materials somehow differend from the gold they make during playing “normally”?

They aren’t, just the person’s perspective on their value is.

Since the intent is to use them, to people that gather their own mats during what they consider enjoyable play, materials cost less than what they would need to purchase the same quantity on the TP. Its cheaper to grab the tool and gather as you play (where you’re also earning money through drops and in straight coin, recouping that tool cost) than it is to just buy it off the TP.

Does it change what they could make from the TP is they chose to sell them? No. Does it change how much it would cost if they bought the armor instead of crafting it? No. If what they wanted was even for sale.

But the real question is: do they care? Again no, because their perspective is that it was just simpler, cheaper, easier to grab the mats as they played and make it themself.

It’s ok that you don’t understand, you’re not alone in that. What and how people view the value of items depends a lot on personal perspective.

Items you find/loot/pick up, have no value unless you sell or trade it.

Items you buy with gold, have value.

^ Perspective. Mine and others. People have a different one to you.

Cheap shot: we enjoy ourselves more.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Master of Timespace.2548:

The essence of the discussion should be here: Why are the materials somehow differend from the gold they make during playing “normally”?

They aren’t, just the person’s perspective on their value is.

Since the intent is to use them, to people that gather their own mats during what they consider enjoyable play, materials cost less than what they would need to purchase the same quantity on the TP. Its cheaper to grab the tool and gather as you play (where you’re also earning money through drops and in straight coin, recouping that tool cost) than it is to just buy it off the TP.

Does it change what they could make from the TP is they chose to sell them? No. Does it change how much it would cost if they bought the armor instead of crafting it? No. If what they wanted was even for sale.

But the real question is: do they care? Again no, because their perspective is that it was just simpler, cheaper, easier to grab the mats as they played and make it themself.

It’s ok that you don’t understand, you’re not alone in that. What and how people view the value of items depends a lot on personal perspective.

Well I don’t know what to say. I tried to use rational reasoning to show that materials are really just money, but you suggest that all that matters is the person’s perspective of value, even if that perspective is completly biased in the rational sense? Hm, you may be right, it feels better and more fun to craft the item using the materials you gathered yourself and so on*. Thus, you get more enjoyment out of the game if you gather the materials yourself and so it makes sense to do so. I quess it’s really just a matter of perspective after all.
Though, it still doesn’t really justify the claim “I gathered the mats so it was free” now that I think of it :/.

Nothing is ever free. Gathering all materials and then crafting an item may seem to be free of costs at first glance. However, you could have spent the time gathering on other activities or sold the materials. Therefore, gathering and using the materials are costs.

To illustrate the concept by an example: Cleaning your appartment is not free. You may not have to pay someone as you do it on your own, but you have to spend time doing it. In that time you could have enjoyed yourself or pursued another more productive activity. If cleaning were free, nobody would hire another person to do it for him. The same applies to gathering materials. It’s not a matter of perspective, it’s all about opportunity costs.

Oportunity costs are no actual costs, they are theoretical costs meassuring a difference between two given Options.

When someone got a bunch of mats he can for example either a) sell them on the tp or b) craft an item which he sells on the tp.

Let’s say a) is giving a profit of 1 gold while
b) is giving a profit of 90 silver.

So if he is crafting an item from the mats he is loosing 10 silver compared to selling them directely while he is still making a profit of 90 silver. One could say that the enjoyment of crafting something is worth 10 silver in this case. So this equation only helps someone to decide which option if worth more on a personal basis.

On the other hand if he makes 1 gold from an crafted item compared to selling the rawmats for 90 silver he is still making a profit of 1 gold.

But it is as well very shortsighted not to consider time and -especially in a game- fun.

If an Option is fast and profitable in Terms of Money but I hate doing it then I have pretty high oportunity costs considering my fun compared to do something which I enjoy. So everyone has to decide on his/her own if the gained monetary value is worth the lost fun. (In an ideal world an option is fun and profitbale But that’s not always the case.)

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

Items you find/loot/pick up, have no value unless you sell or trade it.

Items you buy with gold, have value.

^ Perspective. Mine and others. People have a different one to you.

Cheap shot: we enjoy ourselves more.

Facts sorta get in the way of “perspectives”. This is one of those times you’re just flat out wrong. :P

I used to think the same way, so I get it. Then my boyfriend educated me on opportunity costs. Now I realise the way I was thinking was wrong. Not a big deal really.

Clark Skinner.4902:

I hear this often from people in and out of game. I can’t understand how they can think that crafting something was free since they gathered the mats.

Once you have the mats, you have 2 options:
1. Craft them into something.
2. Sell them.

In both cases, you are without the mats in the end, but gain:
1. The value of the item you crafted.
2. The gold gained from selling mats.

So when crafting, the cost was either #2 (gold you would have gotten selling the mats), or the cost of buying the mats, both of which are pretty similar.

And the time it takes to gather should also be taken into account. Time saved can be used to make gold somewhere else.

I too am guilty of this thinking to an extent, but I always consider the 15% tax involved when selling mats so I think I save some gold (but it amounts to alot in the grand scheme of things if you’re crating thousands of gold worth of items like legendaries etc.) .

There are more efficient ways of getting gold but it’s always boring/repetitive and we’re all here to play a game and have some fun, opportunity cost doesn’t always come into mind when doing less gold making activities for most people.

I mostly do my dungeon runs and WvW with the rest of my free time, never bothered with the current best gold farm which is champ farming because I find it boring and I’m not bothered with the opportunity cost of not running it with all my game time instead of the things I enjoy.

I think FirstBlood made the point I was going to make. Generally things either cost you time or money. When it costs you time, it comes down to how much you value your time. The good thing is you can enjoy spending the time; it’s called playing a game.

Khorrax.2108:

It is a bit depressing seeing some people try to force the concept of opportunity cost upon us. If youwere talking about a real world situation, where we deal in real money, I would understand. But this is a game and the most important thing is that you have fun. Different people have different notions of what constitutes fun for them. If you are all about making as much profit as possible, that’s great. But it doesn’t mean everyone else does that, wants to do that or should do that.

If you want to put a value on everything, go ahead. I find it sad, but it is just my opinion after all, and many will disagree. I think that talking about sub-optimal decisions in a game is ridiculous, same with putting a value on your time spent playing a game. You will inevitably make wrong decisions, thus losing gold/items/whatever. There will always be moments when you could have made a better deal if you had waited more/bought earlier/etc. Just as you will always lose time sooner or later, whether it’s your fault or not (lag, telephone or door bell at the worst moment possible). As to putting value on my time spent gaming, I for one am not being paid for doing this. Nor are most of the people. So how do you put a value on this? Unless you were supposed to be working, but you are gaming instead.

Anyway, my point is that it’s futile to try and put a value on everything. And as a poster above me said, it’s all about perspective. If you like to think that crafting an item cost you 1 gold because the materials were worth 1 gold, it’s fine. But if I want to think that it cost me nothing because I had gathered all the materials myself, then it should be fine too. If I never intended to sell my materials (and I don’t do that), how can you tell me it cost that much when it didn’t. Sure I could have made money selling the materials, but the fact is I didn’t.

We’re not imposing some subjective jedi mind trick on you. Just because Newton didnt discover gravity until the apple fell on his head, it doesn’t mean gravity didn’t exist before that.

Gathered mats have ingame monetary value. If you stumbled on a chest with 50g inside and used the gold to buy a weapon, that weapon wasn’t free. It took you 50g to get it. Gold which could have funded some other project you had in mind.

In this case the chest you stumbled on took the form of trees and rocks.

I don’t understand all of the fuss in this thread. The OP is just pointing out the fact that there is an opportunity cost involved in crafting with mats you gathered yourself. So people who say stuff like “OMG it only cost me 20g to level weaponsmithing to 500 ’cause I had most of the mats in the bank already” are wrong. The correct statement is that it cost them 20g plus what they could have made selling all their mats instead of crafting with them.