Guild Wars 2

A lengthy discussion has been going on in this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/19#post4873983

about silk prices in general, the high requirements for silk in bolt of damask and the disadvantage of of light armor users because they need about 50% damask than the other two weight classes, which makes it longer to acquire and substantially more expensive.

With the current recipes, i think it will be hard to balance out costs for Anet by adjusting material faucets, so the best solution would be to adjust the recipes. And I dont mean to adjust the silk recipes because it wouldnt really cure the imbalance between weight classes, just make asc cheaper in general.

As alot of new players came in in the last couple of weeks,that might not be too familiar with ascended crafting, lets have a look at the status quo again and the problem at hand. Good info can be found on the wiki page:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/19#post4873983

If we disregard the account bound materials (empyrial shards, bloodstone dust, dragonite ore, karma, obsi shards, skillpoints, globs of dark matter, laurels) and just focus on the refined t7 mats, Bolt of Damask, Deldrimor Ingot and ELonian Leather, we have the following requirements for a full set:

Light:

• 36 Damask (18 for the insignias and 18 for the armor pieces)
• 6 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Medium:
• 24 Damask (18 for the insignias, 6 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Heavy:
• 25 Damask (18 for the insignias, 7 for the armor pieces)
• 16 Deldrimor for the armor pieces

So overall, to craft 1 set each, we need 85 damask, 24 Elonian and 16 deldrimor and their prices on the tp are:

• damask 14g
• deldrimor 4g
• elonian 2g

So the refined t7 components add up to the following values for each set:

• Light: 516g
• Medium: 372g
• Heavy: 414g

So the 2 problems that arise are the discrepancy of timegated t7 mats and the price spread between light and leather armor and I am trying to find a solution that solves both problems without Anet having to micromanage the values of the mats involved and doesnt require too much changes to crafting mechanics and drop rates.

In general, I think the average price tag of ascended armor is fine as it was intended as a long term goal, so I am aiming to find a solution that brings the price tag of all sets closer together in a price range between 350-450g, depending on market prices.

As Damask makes up the bulk of the costs of each set, I think its easier to find a solution in which silk retains its high value compared to deldrimor and elonian, rather than bring all 3 mats to the same value. While raising Elonian value should be part of the solution, I think Deldrimor is fine at its current price point because its also the only one of the 3 mats that is used extensively in ascended weaponcrafting (lets disregard elonian for bowstrings), so a higher price tag would mean additional costs for weapons for all classes.

Overall, we need to address the extensive use of damask in light armor, to solve the higher timegate and costs and bring leather up in value, preferably up to deldrimor.

As already mentioned, a light set needs 18 bolts each for the armor and the insigias and the other two sets, need 24/25 damask, so we need to shave off 12 bolts and preferably substitute it with elonian.

It doesnt make sense to take them off the armor parts (for immersion), so we just take them off the insignia.

Now we have the following material spread:

Light:

• 24 Damask (6 for the insignias and 18 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian (12 for the insignia, 6 for the armor pieces)
  Medium:
• 24 Damask (18 for the insignias, 6 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Heavy:
• 25 Damask (18 for the insignias, 7 for the armor pieces)
• 16 Deldrimor for the armor pieces

This means that the asc insignias crafted and used by tailors need to be a different one ot the other ones, otherwise accounts with a tailor and an armorsmith would use them to craft heavy armor, which would screw up the balanced costs.
It would also result in a balanced timegate of 24 days, if we adjust the heavy set to 24 bolts and add 2 deldrimor ingots.

I am getting close to the post length limit and its wvw reset soon, so i gonna post later about raising the price of elonian to about 4g.

You’re asking for regulatory help in order to increase the price of leather rather than decrease the price of cloth. Surely you haven’t banked a few stacks of Elonian Leather in anticipation of this change. Surely.

Careful with how you calculate costs. A couple of them, damask in particular, provide a profit to the seller. Including this distorts the cost differences between sets.

Forgive me because I never took economics in college, but doesn’t this completely ignore supply and demand, and therefore the values would pretty quickly reset themselves roughly to how they are now?

Ayrilana.1396:

Careful with how you calculate costs. A couple of them, damask in particular, provide a profit to the seller. Including this distorts the cost differences between sets.

Last time I looked into trying to craft or flip Damask, I found out that the returns barely covered the cost for posting it on the trading post, and sometimes I would even go into the red if I attempted it. Despite its high cost, there is simply not a reliably inexpensive way to farm cloth like there is for ore and wood, meaning you are buying gear to salvage or the materials themselves. That, and you need 300 silk cloth to make one Damask, never mind the other materials too, and silk is bloody expensive.

MiniEquine.6014:

Ayrilana.1396:

Careful with how you calculate costs. A couple of them, damask in particular, provide a profit to the seller. Including this distorts the cost differences between sets.

Last time I looked into trying to craft or flip Damask, I found out that the returns barely covered the cost for posting it on the trading post, and sometimes I would even go into the red if I attempted it. Despite its high cost, there is simply not a reliably inexpensive way to farm cloth like there is for ore and wood, meaning you are buying gear to salvage or the materials themselves. That, and you need 300 silk cloth to make one Damask, never mind the other materials too, and silk is bloody expensive.

Eh I have it the opposite way. I didn’t have a time efficient and profitable way to get t2-t4 wood while metal, leather, and cloth aren’t a problem. As a result, I had over 900 unrefined globs of elder spirit residue. Now I have a profitable way for wood though not very time efficient so starting to make wood again.

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re asking for regulatory help in order to increase the price of leather rather than decrease the price of cloth. Surely you haven’t banked a few stacks of Elonian Leather in anticipation of this change. Surely.

Wanze spends an extraordinary amount of time analyzing the game economy and offering explanations/solutions to a huge number of questions and problems people have with it. Besides that, I’m pretty sure he plays the TP on the regular, and has loads more money than anybody in the game needs. To suggest this nearly-max-length post offering a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the T7 market is nothing but a ploy to make a quick buck off of a change that would require months to effect is hyper-cynical and plain ridiculous.

That said, everyone start buying up Elonian now! Nothing could go wrong!

I’m confused. Why does making a leather armor set need to cost the same as making a light armor set? It’s not like you get an advantage over other players by having ascended armor. I mean, maybe in WvW, but the difference in tactics, skill, and player numbers will negate the 5% stat difference in pretty much every skirmish.

Andred.1087:

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re asking for regulatory help in order to increase the price of leather rather than decrease the price of cloth. Surely you haven’t banked a few stacks of Elonian Leather in anticipation of this change. Surely.

Wanze spends an extraordinary amount of time analyzing the game economy and offering explanations/solutions to a huge number of questions and problems people have with it. Besides that, I’m pretty sure he plays the TP on the regular, and has loads more money than anybody in the game needs. To suggest this nearly-max-length post offering a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the T7 market is nothing but a ploy to make a quick buck off of a change that would require months to effect is hyper-cynical and plain ridiculous.

That said, everyone start buying up Elonian now! Nothing could go wrong!

It’s a call for ascended leather to cost more
rather than fix for the others which would be the most obvious choice for anyone not looking to make a profit.

What happens with a player controlled market.

Ayrilana.1396:

Careful with how you calculate costs. A couple of them, damask in particular, provide a profit to the seller. Including this distorts the cost differences between sets.

I know what you mean but it doesnt really matter. I know that you could probably craft a bolt of damask for maybe 10g, if you get all mats on buy order, for example. It doesnt change much, though, does it?

Wanze.8410:

Ayrilana.1396:

Careful with how you calculate costs. A couple of them, damask in particular, provide a profit to the seller. Including this distorts the cost differences between sets.

I know what you mean but it doesnt really matter. I know that you could probably craft a bolt of damask for maybe 10g, if you get all mats on buy order, for example. It doesnt change much, though, does it?

It doesn’t have a major impact to your argument as it’s not focused entirely on the cost and you’re reallocating how many damask each profession needs.

MiniEquine.6014:

Ayrilana.1396:

Careful with how you calculate costs. A couple of them, damask in particular, provide a profit to the seller. Including this distorts the cost differences between sets.

Last time I looked into trying to craft or flip Damask, I found out that the returns barely covered the cost for posting it on the trading post, and sometimes I would even go into the red if I attempted it. Despite its high cost, there is simply not a reliably inexpensive way to farm cloth like there is for ore and wood, meaning you are buying gear to salvage or the materials themselves. That, and you need 300 silk cloth to make one Damask, never mind the other materials too, and silk is bloody expensive.

You sure? I often see a 2G profit for it and a little more depending on when you buy the mats and when you sell the damask.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Andred.1087:

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re asking for regulatory help in order to increase the price of leather rather than decrease the price of cloth. Surely you haven’t banked a few stacks of Elonian Leather in anticipation of this change. Surely.

Wanze spends an extraordinary amount of time analyzing the game economy and offering explanations/solutions to a huge number of questions and problems people have with it. Besides that, I’m pretty sure he plays the TP on the regular, and has loads more money than anybody in the game needs. To suggest this nearly-max-length post offering a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the T7 market is nothing but a ploy to make a quick buck off of a change that would require months to effect is hyper-cynical and plain ridiculous.

That said, everyone start buying up Elonian now! Nothing could go wrong!

It’s a call for ascended leather to cost more
rather than fix for the others which would be the most obvious choice for anyone not looking to make a profit.

One requirement for my solution was not to reduce the average, high costs of ascended armor because i think the high price is intended.
If you have a constructive suggestion, how this can be solved without 1 or more mats going up in price, im all ears.

SonOfJacob.7396:

Forgive me because I never took economics in college, but doesn’t this completely ignore supply and demand, and therefore the values would pretty quickly reset themselves roughly to how they are now?

supply/demand is created through, in part, these recipes. Also you can create a recipe that is more in line with how the base items are supplied. Right now leather and silk are the less easily and controllably supplied, and yet silk makes up the majority of the recipe.

Wanze.8410:

A lengthy discussion has been going on in this thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/19#post4873983

about silk prices in general, the high requirements for silk in bolt of damask and the disadvantage of of light armor users because they need about 50% damask than the other two weight classes, which makes it longer to acquire and substantially more expensive.

With the current recipes, i think it will be hard to balance out costs for Anet by adjusting material faucets, so the best solution would be to adjust the recipes. And I dont mean to adjust the silk recipes because it wouldnt really cure the imbalance between weight classes, just make asc cheaper in general.

As alot of new players came in in the last couple of weeks,that might not be too familiar with ascended crafting, lets have a look at the status quo again and the problem at hand. Good info can be found on the wiki page:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/19#post4873983

If we disregard the account bound materials (empyrial shards, bloodstone dust, dragonite ore, karma, obsi shards, skillpoints, globs of dark matter, laurels) and just focus on the refined t7 mats, Bolt of Damask, Deldrimor Ingot and ELonian Leather, we have the following requirements for a full set:

Light:

• 36 Damask (18 for the insignias and 18 for the armor pieces)
• 6 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Medium:
• 24 Damask (18 for the insignias, 6 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Heavy:
• 25 Damask (18 for the insignias, 7 for the armor pieces)
• 16 Deldrimor for the armor pieces

So overall, to craft 1 set each, we need 85 damask, 24 Elonian and 16 deldrimor and their prices on the tp are:

• damask 14g
• deldrimor 4g
• elonian 2g

So the refined t7 components add up to the following values for each set:

• Light: 516g
• Medium: 372g
• Heavy: 414g

So the 2 problems that arise are the discrepancy of timegated t7 mats and the price spread between light and leather armor and I am trying to find a solution that solves both problems without Anet having to micromanage the values of the mats involved and doesnt require too much changes to crafting mechanics and drop rates.

In general, I think the average price tag of ascended armor is fine as it was intended as a long term goal, so I am aiming to find a solution that brings the price tag of all sets closer together in a price range between 350-450g, depending on market prices.

As Damask makes up the bulk of the costs of each set, I think its easier to find a solution in which silk retains its high value compared to deldrimor and elonian, rather than bring all 3 mats to the same value. While raising Elonian value should be part of the solution, I think Deldrimor is fine at its current price point because its also the only one of the 3 mats that is used extensively in ascended weaponcrafting (lets disregard elonian for bowstrings), so a higher price tag would mean additional costs for weapons for all classes.

Overall, we need to address the extensive use of damask in light armor, to solve the higher timegate and costs and bring leather up in value, preferably up to deldrimor.

As already mentioned, a light set needs 18 bolts each for the armor and the insigias and the other two sets, need 24/25 damask, so we need to shave off 12 bolts and preferably substitute it with elonian.

It doesnt make sense to take them off the armor parts (for immersion), so we just take them off the insignia.

Now we have the following material spread:

Light:

• 24 Damask (6 for the insignias and 18 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian (12 for the insignia, 6 for the armor pieces)
  Medium:
• 24 Damask (18 for the insignias, 6 for the armor pieces)
• 18 Elonian for the armor pieces
  Heavy:
• 25 Damask (18 for the insignias, 7 for the armor pieces)
• 16 Deldrimor for the armor pieces

This means that the asc insignias crafted and used by tailors need to be a different one ot the other ones, otherwise accounts with a tailor and an armorsmith would use them to craft heavy armor, which would screw up the balanced costs.
It would also result in a balanced timegate of 24 days, if we adjust the heavy set to 24 bolts and add 2 deldrimor ingots.

---

I am getting close to the post length limit and its wvw reset soon, so i gonna post later about raising the price of elonian to about 4g.

should the replies in this thread be focused on your specific solution? or all solutions, and yours is mostly your contribution to the solution pool?

OK, lets have a look at Elonian Leather.

By adjusting the light insignia recipe, we managed to balance out the t7 mat requirements for each set and now they all need 24 damask and either 18 elonian leather or deldrimor ingots.

This setup has the advantage that the price of damask spreads equally across all three sets, so it doesnt matter if it fluctuates a bit. And if I had the choice of either rebalancing deldrimor or elonian leather, i would choose the latter because it has minimal sinks, apart from asc armor crafting (deldrimor has has a high consumption in weaponcrafting), so it doesnt affect too much other markets. Thick Leather is also traded at vendor value on the tp, which is never a good thing. So i rather make adjustments there, considering that mithril is also used in very high volumes for forging rare weapons for precursors.

The ingredients for a square of elonian leather and their values are:

40 Thin Leather Section@(44 Copper) 18s
20 Coarse Leather Section@(1 Silver 1 Copper) 20s
40 Rugged Leather Section@(2 Silver 11 Copper) 85s
1 Glob of Ectoplasm@(31 Silver 70 Copper)
10 Thermocatalytic Reagent for 15s
150 Thick Leather Section@(10 Copper) 15s

Makes a little less than 2g crafting cost and for our sets to cost the same, its price should go up to the value of deldrimor, which sits around 4g.

The obvious choice for adding value is T5 leather, as it sits at vendor value. Historically, mithril ore was always valued around 40c, with a few ups and downs, so for my suggestion, i would like to aim for a value of 40 copper per thick leather section as well.

That would mean that 50 squares of thick leather add up to 60 silver, which isnt quite enough.

We are left with a couple of solutions to raise the value further.
1) Raise the requirements for refining thick leather from 3 to 4 sections
2) Raise the requirements for elonian leather from 50 to 100 thick leather squares
3) Raise the value of thick leather section beyond 40 copper
4) Raise the value of thin, coarse and rugged leather

IT will propably be a combination of 1,2 and 4.

1) and 2) will raise the amount of t5 leather sections needed to 400, which means at a price of 40 copper, will add up 1.6g.

The price for the ecto and the reagents stays stable at 47s and the t2-4 leather is currently valued at 1.23g.

That gets us to 3.3g overall costs, so we are still missing 70 silver for our goal of 4g crafting cost.

But we have to consider the additional demand for t2-4 leather due to our adjustments to the insignia recipe. Before the change, we needed only 24 elonian leather to craft 1 set each, now we need 36, meaning about 50% more demand for leather in general, if we disregard other sinks for leather, like bowstrings for t7 and consumption to level crafting from 0-400 for t2-4 leather.
Ideally this would add another 50% value to the t2-4 mats, which now would cost 61s more overall.

BOOM! ~4 gold without even touching any droprates of metal, cloth or leather.

Of course its impossible to predict exactly, how the prices of metal and leather will behave indipendantly and especially t5 leather will need some close monitoring until it finds its new equilibrium but i think Anet found some great ways to adjust silk during season 2 and i am confident that they will be able to do the same for thick leather.

Wanze.8410:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Andred.1087:

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re asking for regulatory help in order to increase the price of leather rather than decrease the price of cloth. Surely you haven’t banked a few stacks of Elonian Leather in anticipation of this change. Surely.

Wanze spends an extraordinary amount of time analyzing the game economy and offering explanations/solutions to a huge number of questions and problems people have with it. Besides that, I’m pretty sure he plays the TP on the regular, and has loads more money than anybody in the game needs. To suggest this nearly-max-length post offering a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the T7 market is nothing but a ploy to make a quick buck off of a change that would require months to effect is hyper-cynical and plain ridiculous.

That said, everyone start buying up Elonian now! Nothing could go wrong!

It’s a call for ascended leather to cost more
rather than fix for the others which would be the most obvious choice for anyone not looking to make a profit.

One requirement for my solution was not to reduce the average, high costs of ascended armor because i think the high price is intended.
If you have a constructive suggestion, how this can be solved without 1 or more mats going up in price, im all ears.

Leather and cloth are both more difficult to gather than ore and lumber. Cloth is more valuable due to 3 factors:

1. Cloth is used for all weights
2. Light armor classes outnumber leather classes in fractals.
3. 100 bolts or 300 scraps are required for Damask double that of any other weight.

Rather than increase the cost of leather I would remove the 100 bolt requirement and roll back loot to down level which would allow leather and cloth to be more easily farmed (similar to ore nodes which are map specific). While light armor would still cost more due to Damask being used in all 3 weights it would lower costs for light.

I recognize that Anet want ascended to be expensive but this needs to be rebalaced as they’ve gone overboard imo.

Wanze.8410:

OK, lets have a look at Elonian Leather.

By adjusting the light insignia recipe, we managed to balance out the t7 mat requirements for each set and now they all need 24 damask and either 18 elonian leather or deldrimor ingots.

This setup has the advantage that the price of damask spreads equally across all three sets, so it doesnt matter if it fluctuates a bit. And if I had the choice of either rebalancing deldrimor or elonian leather, i would choose the latter because it has minimal sinks, apart from asc armor crafting (deldrimor has has a high consumption in weaponcrafting), so it doesnt affect too much other markets. Thick Leather is also traded at vendor value on the tp, which is never a good thing. So i rather make adjustments there, considering that mithril is also used in very high volumes for forging rare weapons for precursors.

The ingredients for a square of elonian leather and their values are:

40 Thin Leather Section@(44 Copper) 18s
20 Coarse Leather Section@(1 Silver 1 Copper) 20s
40 Rugged Leather Section@(2 Silver 11 Copper) 85s
1 Glob of Ectoplasm@(31 Silver 70 Copper)
10 Thermocatalytic Reagent for 15s
150 Thick Leather Section@(10 Copper) 15s

Makes a little less than 2g crafting cost and for our sets to cost the same, its price should go up to the value of deldrimor, which sits around 4g.

The obvious choice for adding value is T5 leather, as it sits at vendor value. Historically, mithril ore was always valued around 40c, with a few ups and downs, so for my suggestion, i would like to aim for a value of 40 copper per thick leather section as well.

That would mean that 50 squares of thick leather add up to 60 silver, which isnt quite enough.

We are left with a couple of solutions to raise the value further.
1) Raise the requirements for refining thick leather from 3 to 4 sections
2) Raise the requirements for elonian leather from 50 to 100 thick leather squares
3) Raise the value of thick leather section beyond 40 copper
4) Raise the value of thin, coarse and rugged leather

IT will propably be a combination of 1,2 and 4.

1) and 2) will raise the amount of t5 leather sections needed to 400, which means at a price of 40 copper, will add up 1.6g.

The price for the ecto and the reagents stays stable at 47s and the t2-4 leather is currently valued at 1.23g.

That gets us to 3.3g overall costs, so we are still missing 70 silver for our goal of 4g crafting cost.

But we have to consider the additional demand for t2-4 leather due to our adjustments to the insignia recipe. Before the change, we needed only 24 elonian leather to craft 1 set each, now we need 36, meaning about 50% more demand for leather in general, if we disregard other sinks for leather, like bowstrings for t7 and consumption to level crafting from 0-400 for t2-4 leather.
Ideally this would add another 50% value to the t2-4 mats, which now would cost 61s more overall.

BOOM! ~4 gold without even touching any droprates of metal, cloth or leather.

Of course its impossible to predict exactly, how the prices of metal and leather will behave indipendantly and especially t5 leather will need some close monitoring until it finds its new equilibrium but i think Anet found some great ways to adjust silk during season 2 and i am confident that they will be able to do the same for thick leather.

Well thought out but fatally flawed in my opinion. You’re asking for Elonian leather to be as lousy as Damask to create. Making leather armor the same as Dams will simply stop players from crafting medium armor.

phys.7689:

should the replies in this thread be focused on your specific solution? or all solutions, and yours is mostly your contribution to the solution pool?

Well, I am looking for feedback on my suggestion and please point out any flaws that I might have overseen.

You are welcome to make additions to it or present a different solution.

If you would like to suggest a different approach, it shouldnt devalue the average crafting costs for all sets too much (should end up between 350-450g per set).
In the end all 3 sets should cost about the same and have the same timegate.

I think it would be a bonus for any suggestion that also achieves any of the following:

• take t5 leather away from vendor value
• puts additional demand on other low demand items, for example t6 cloth or leather, which is moving towards vendor value
• doesnt mess too much with the mithril price in order to bring it to vendor value or add more than 100% of value to it
• has low implementation costs
• doesnt require micro-managing of ressources from Anets side

Aidenwolf.5964:

Wanze.8410:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Andred.1087:

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re asking for regulatory help in order to increase the price of leather rather than decrease the price of cloth. Surely you haven’t banked a few stacks of Elonian Leather in anticipation of this change. Surely.

Wanze spends an extraordinary amount of time analyzing the game economy and offering explanations/solutions to a huge number of questions and problems people have with it. Besides that, I’m pretty sure he plays the TP on the regular, and has loads more money than anybody in the game needs. To suggest this nearly-max-length post offering a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the T7 market is nothing but a ploy to make a quick buck off of a change that would require months to effect is hyper-cynical and plain ridiculous.

That said, everyone start buying up Elonian now! Nothing could go wrong!

It’s a call for ascended leather to cost more
rather than fix for the others which would be the most obvious choice for anyone not looking to make a profit.

One requirement for my solution was not to reduce the average, high costs of ascended armor because i think the high price is intended.
If you have a constructive suggestion, how this can be solved without 1 or more mats going up in price, im all ears.

Leather and cloth are both more difficult to gather than ore and lumber. Cloth is more valuable due to 3 factors:

1. Cloth is used for all weights
2. Light armor classes outnumber leather classes in fractals.
3. 100 bolts or 300 scraps are required for Damask double that of any other weight.

Rather than increase the cost of leather I would remove the 100 bolt requirement and roll back loot to down level which would allow leather and cloth to be more easily farmed (similar to ore nodes which are map specific). While light armor would still cost more due to Damask being used in all 3 weights it would lower costs for light.

I recognize that Anet want ascended to be expensive but this needs to be rebalaced as they’ve gone overboard imo.

Your suggestions would definately make ascended armor cheaper in general but unfortunately doesnt address the the imbalanced armor costs or timegates between the sets.
If you think that ascended armor in general is too expensive, that fine but as I stated, thats not what this topic is about. If you would like to discuss that, please open a different thread for that.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well thought out but fatally flawed in my opinion. You’re asking for Elonian leather to be as lousy as Damask to create. Making leather armor the same as Dams will simply stop players from crafting medium armor.

If Damask (or asc armor in general) is lousy to create is a matter of opinion. Medium Armor users will definately have the short end of the stick with my suggestion but they were able to craft the cheapest asc armor for ever since it got released.

My solution wouldnt put them at a disadvantage compared to light or heavy classes, so even if Damask or asc armor in general is in your opinion lousy to create, it would be equally lousy for everybody.

Thats not given with the status quo.

Wanze.8410:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well thought out but fatally flawed in my opinion. You’re asking for Elonian leather to be as lousy as Damask to create. Making leather armor the same as Dams will simply stop players from crafting medium armor.

If Damask (or asc armor in general) is lousy to create is a matter of opinion. Medium Armor users will definately have the short end of the stick with my suggestion but they were able to craft the cheapest asc armor for ever since it got released.

My solution wouldnt put them at a disadvantage compared to light or heavy classes, so even if Damask or asc armor in general is in your opinion lousy to create, it would be equally lousy for everybody.

Thats not given with the status quo.

You’re asking Anet to make leather as expensive as cloth. Ridiculous topic.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Wanze.8410:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well thought out but fatally flawed in my opinion. You’re asking for Elonian leather to be as lousy as Damask to create. Making leather armor the same as Dams will simply stop players from crafting medium armor.

If Damask (or asc armor in general) is lousy to create is a matter of opinion. Medium Armor users will definately have the short end of the stick with my suggestion but they were able to craft the cheapest asc armor for ever since it got released.

My solution wouldnt put them at a disadvantage compared to light or heavy classes, so even if Damask or asc armor in general is in your opinion lousy to create, it would be equally lousy for everybody.

Thats not given with the status quo.

You’re asking Anet to make leather as expensive as cloth. Ridiculous topic.

He’s asking that less time-gated Damask be used in the crafting process. The solution he proposes would increase leather value so that people actually want to trade in it.
I see no losing portion of this proposition.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Wanze.8410:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Well thought out but fatally flawed in my opinion. You’re asking for Elonian leather to be as lousy as Damask to create. Making leather armor the same as Dams will simply stop players from crafting medium armor.

If Damask (or asc armor in general) is lousy to create is a matter of opinion. Medium Armor users will definately have the short end of the stick with my suggestion but they were able to craft the cheapest asc armor for ever since it got released.

My solution wouldnt put them at a disadvantage compared to light or heavy classes, so even if Damask or asc armor in general is in your opinion lousy to create, it would be equally lousy for everybody.

Thats not given with the status quo.

You’re asking Anet to make leather as expensive as cloth. Ridiculous topic.

No, my solution aimed for a leather price similar to metal, not cloth.

The workload parity to gather the materials is as important as the workload parity to buy the materials with gold. After all, when we trade t1 thru t6 and fine crafting materials on the TP we are trading the decision to gather the materials ourselves or pay someone else.

Wanze, thanks for starting a new thread specifically about ascended armor weight workload parity. I think your first post addresses both gathering and gold workload parity; light and medium armor would cost the same in time or gold, heavy would take less time but, possibly, slightly more gold. The second post describing changes to the recipe for leather squares increases gathering workload disparity for sake of hypothetical gold workload parity.

I would keep the Elonian square recipe as is, and depend only on the increased demand for more squares and squares faster to increase the gold price.

Just to be clear, your general plan is to make some of the insignias used for cloth ascended be made using leather?

Then an adjustment to make leather more valuable?

I like the idea to even out the price between the armors and keeping ascended armor a noteworthy achievement. So far we’re on the same trail, Wanze.
However, I can’t fully agree with your suggestion as it stands.

First off your intent to protect the precursor-market.
You posted a link to the thread about the silk-prices. In that thread we got a citation of the manifesto where Colin Johanson himself states that it should be possible to earn gear with best stats(namely ascended) during normal play, while he mentions Legendaries as an optional achievement.
Apart from that, Precursor-crafting is coming in Heart of Thorns and Anet clearly stated they won’t bring in higher stat-gear, so ascended gear is here to stay.
The precursor-market will be impacted by HoT, no matter what. Demand is likely to drop with people rather doing the collections than saving up all their money for precursors from the TP.
With that in mind I think we should prioritize on ideas regarding the price-balance of ascended gear, instead of catering to the price-stability of an item that is already going to change in the economy with the release of the coming expansion.

With the coming changes for precursors I’m not even sure the rng of the mystic forge will be a sufficient sink for mithril anymore. Not that I really agree it ever was. Everyone I know in the game has tons of mithril. Only the people who gamble for a Precursor(as I mentioned, those numbers will likely drop), or those who reached a point where they craft precursors just to sell them, sink it.
I’d say that the second group has no real numerical significance(in regards to sinking mithril and the sheer player-number) in comparision to people who go for ascended gear in order for the slight boost of stats in PvP or people who run high level fractals. After all, Legendaries are a cosmetical item with the convienience-feature of changing the stat-set.

My suggestion would be to change the Insignia-Recipe to require less damask in order to reduce the overall demand for it. This would reduce the price for damask and its lower tier components, which also benefits new players who are currently competing with a large lvl80 player-base(with an higher income) over the lower tier mats required for damask.
Also I’m still puzzled why a simple insignia requires more damask than some of the light armor pieces require for inner and outer layer.
If projections indicate that the price of a full ascended light armor set could drop too low, the damask-requirements for damask in the light inner and outer layer could be raised accordingly.

On the other hand we have the low prices of leather. First I’d say we boost the requirement for elonian leather cord up to 75-100 thick leather per item.
To further increase the value of leather, I think a set of medium armor should at least require as much elonian leather as a set of light armor requires damask.
This would even out the time-gate for light and medium armor, too.

Last but not least the amount of deldrmor steel ingots for heavy armor could be slightly raised to further close any disparities in armor prices.
I know that deldrimor is also used for ascended weapons, this has to be kept in mind.
Still: amongst the ascended armor-mats it is also the only material with gathering nodes for the base-mats.

People are already asking (not sure how seriously) for compensation for doing wvw as part of map completion since future players wont need to, and that only took like an hour of running around a zone taking objectives. A change like this would lead to a ton of kittened off players if they find out they could have saved 100g if they crafted their armor a few months later (except for medium armor which now costs more, which instead would anger people who havent made it yet).

That said its a pretty decent idea to standardize the costs, and if ascended is going to be the top armor set in a game thats going to run for 10 years, might as well fix it sooner than later. Though at this point any idea that addresses a 600% difference between prices of materials in the same tier would be a welcome change and would make this games economy seem like less of a farce.

Psientist.6437:

I would keep the Elonian square recipe as is, and depend only on the increased demand for more squares and squares faster to increase the gold price.

TL/DR: The reason why I opted to raise the requirements for t5 leather in elonian leather is because it would also address the oversupply of t5 leather.

Sure, if we leave the recipe as it is, it will also raise the price of elonian due to the 50% added demand for the insignias. But the added value would only come from t2-4 leather because the ratio in which the player base creates t2-5 leather doesnt match the recipe. Right now, for every 2 coarse leather, we use 4 each rugged and thin leather and 15 thick leather. While more or less for every coarse leather, the player base also creates 2 each thin and rugged, we create way more thick leather than the 7.5 we would need.

Therefore, when demand for elonian is raised, we will run out of t2-4 leather way sooner than t5 leather. Its hard to say, how much t5 leather we really produce because by now, the mayority of the excess isnt dumped on the tp but sold to a vendor.

In general I have no problem with raising the value of elonian leather just by adding value to t2-4 leather because i think its a great mechanism to transfer some of the gold rewards from end game players to new, sub lvl80 players, while making sure that you also gain loot that you can use, while leveling an alt.

phys.7689:

Just to be clear, your general plan is to make some of the insignias used for cloth ascended be made using leather?

Then an adjustment to make leather more valuable?

Basically yes. In the perfect scenario, Damask would go down a little in price as the demand for it would go down from 85 to 72. Thats a decrease of 15% and would settle it at 12g.

deldrimor stays at 4g and elonian gets raised to 4g.

With the new recipes for the light armor insignia, each set would need 24 damask and either 18 elonian or deldrimor, total costs: 360g, plus 6 exotic insignias of your choice, account bound mats and some gold for vendor mats and recipes.

Wanze.8410:

Psientist.6437:

I would keep the Elonian square recipe as is, and depend only on the increased demand for more squares and squares faster to increase the gold price.

TL/DR: The reason why I opted to raise the requirements for t5 leather in elonian leather is because it would also address the oversupply of t5 leather.

Sure, if we leave the recipe as it is, it will also raise the price of elonian due to the 50% added demand for the insignias. But the added value would only come from t2-4 leather because the ratio in which the player base creates t2-5 leather doesnt match the recipe. Right now, for every 2 coarse leather, we use 4 each rugged and thin leather and 15 thick leather. While more or less for every coarse leather, the player base also creates 2 each thin and rugged, we create way more thick leather than the 7.5 we would need.

Therefore, when demand for elonian is raised, we will run out of t2-4 leather way sooner than t5 leather. Its hard to say, how much t5 leather we really produce because by now, the mayority of the excess isnt dumped on the tp but sold to a vendor.

In general I have no problem with raising the value of elonian leather just by adding value to t2-4 leather because i think its a great mechanism to transfer some of the gold rewards from end game players to new, sub lvl80 players, while making sure that you also gain loot that you can use, while leveling an alt.

No matter how you slice it leather is way over supplied considering its usefulness. However, not aure we should make one item use so much of it. It doesn’t create systems people want to deal with

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re asking Anet to make leather as expensive as cloth. Ridiculous topic.

Not at all. Its an outgrowth of discussion elsewhere that achieving parity does not always mean make the high cost item cheaper – making the other low cost items more expensive is also a move towards parity.

There’s a lot of call to make damask cheaper and one of the few arguments for doing so that is not based entirely on self-interest is that there is poor parity between the armor weights. This is a solution that addresses parity rather than tries to validate “but I wantses it cheaper!”

Nike.2631:

Aidenwolf.5964:

You’re asking Anet to make leather as expensive as cloth. Ridiculous topic.

Not at all. Its an outgrowth of discussion elsewhere that achieving parity does not always mean make the high cost item cheaper – making the other low cost items more expensive is also a move towards parity.

There’s a lot of call to make damask cheaper and one of the few arguments for doing so that is not based entirely on self-interest is that there is poor parity between the armor weights. This is a solution that addresses parity rather than tries to validate “but I wantses it cheaper!”

He begins this discussion citing the “why is silk going up in price” debate. By doing so he himself began with players unhappy about the cost of silk being too high making my argument that balancing should be achieved by reducing the cost of Damask relevant to this discussion.

Furthermore by citing the silk price debate first then suggesting that leather should be made close to as expensive as cloth he killed his own argument in my opinion. Players are already unhappy with the costs associated with ascended and as constructed in the OP this is very much an issue of price.

Player happiness is not a factor in a parity approach. Fairness IS. You can make a strong argument that the material requirements of armor weights are not fair — an argument to take action John Smith might find more compelling than “I wantses Damask to be cheaper”.

We’ve argued silk prices to death and the powers that be are unmoved. Time to try a new approach to serving fairness… one that doesn’t hinge on the majority of the change coming in the form cheaper Damask. Because clearly that is not happening.

Hope it dont’ backfire and Anet increase the damask cost of heavy and leather armor.

tekfan.3179:

[snipped for formatting]
1) First off your intent to protect the precursor-market.
Precursors/Heart of Thorns

2) My suggestion would be to change the Insignia-Recipe to require less damask in order to reduce the overall demand for it. This would reduce the price for damask and its lower tier components, which also benefits new players who are currently competing with a large lvl80 player-base(with an higher income) over the lower tier mats required for damask.

3) On the other hand we have the low prices of leather. First I’d say we boost the requirement for elonian leather cord up to 75-100 thick leather per item.
To further increase the value of leather, I think a set of medium armor should at least require as much elonian leather as a set of light armor requires damask.
This would even out the time-gate for light and medium armor, too.

4)Last but not least the amount of deldrmor steel ingots for heavy armor could be slightly raised to further close any disparities in armor prices.
I know that deldrimor is also used for ascended weapons, this has to be kept in mind.
Still: amongst the ascended armor-mats it is also the only material with gathering nodes for the base-mats.

1) I also fully expect HoT to have an impact on mithril consumption for forging precursors but until HoT goes live, it would be fruitless for the discussion to take it into consideration because neither I or any other player knows what changes will be implemented, only John Smith does. I want to change the present, not the future.
For now, I rather implement a solution that doesnt have too much of an impact on current mithril and precursor prices.
Just some ballpark figures for people who didnt actively follow the other thread:
For every copper that mithril ore rises in price, it costs ~5g more on average to forge a precursor greatsword or sword. So if mithril rises just 20 copper from 40c to 60c, it would mean that those pres will get 100g more expensive. Raising it to silk value of 2s, would mean pres get 800g more expensive to forge.

2) Generally there is nothing wrong with lowering the demand and price of damask, as long as you add crafting value to ascended armor somewhere else, which you aim to do by raising the price of deldrimor and elonian. However, I disagree that lowering the value of lower tier mats is an advantage for newer players. Even though its right that they sometimes compete with veterans for those ressources they are able to gather them at a faster pace, due to level-related loot and gear drops. So they would benefit more from a high value of these mats than veterans.

3) I guess we agree that additional t5 leather should be used and elonian leather overall should see a higher requirement in recipes and rise in value.

4) Even if we disregard mithril/precursors while rebalancing deldrimor, its right that we have to take ascended weaponcrafting into consideration. I already posted my opinion about in the other thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/15#post4864188
Classes like Ele/Engie dont need alot of weapons/deldrimor for their builds, usually between 10-15 ingots while guard and warrior could end up spending 25-40 ingots for their weapons, so another class-related imbalance in crafting costs and timegates already exists for weapons. Thats why i think a solution that includes raising the value of deldrimor significantly (50-100%) in order to tackle a class imbalance in armor costs isnt a good one because it raises the same problem for different classes for weapons.

phys.7689:

No matter how you slice it leather is way over supplied considering its usefulness. However, not aure we should make one item use so much of it. It doesn’t create systems people want to deal with

I agree.

So we either have to raise its consumption, which was my approach, or we have to turn off the faucet a bit. I am no programmer but from my point of view it seemed easier for Anet to just adjust the requirements for t5 leather in the spool recipe rather than rebalancing the faucets because there are so much different ones.

For players it would be preferable to handle less leather on a daily basis because salvaging, buying, selling and refining leather takes time, so we would basically do the grunt work instead of Anet.

However, I see 1 disadvantage in lowering the velocity of leather because it makes it more vulnerable to price swings.

The last time someone complained about over supplied item “silk” we see what Anet does.

I suggest people don’t complain about leather unless they actually want the price to increase.

I always thought overtime the price of silk should decrease as there are less people needing ascended armor. But apparently it does not.

The new class probably paid some contribution to the silk price right now just like how the price suddenly spike when Anet release ascended armor collection.

If Anet want to decrease the price of silk they probably already do it. So It’s possible Anet will increase the requirement for heavy/leather armor while decrease requirement for light armor.

I do think Anet should balance out the cost between different armor type though.

laokoko.7403:

Hope it dont’ backfire and Anet increase the damask cost of heavy and leather armor.

What kind of non sequitur bullcrap fear-mongering is this? Seriously.

I’m not an expert in crafting or anything , but as a player who loved the game to death before post 400 crafting, I find it difficult to express my disgust with it as dictionaries do not contain words that reflect my feelings towards it. Every single aspect of its implementation is wrong with no redeeming factors.

1. Ascended crafting should fall in line with previous crafting experience that wans’t blatant attempt to drain you of all resources and didn’t torture you with time gating.

2. It should be fully open for TP from basic resources to final products. People should not suffer through it if they have enough gold to straight up buy it off of TP since nothing in ascended crafting spells “personal journey”. It’s more like a personal circle of hell. Being fully available will drop the prices since everyone will compete to sell their product.

3. Why does this abomination exist in a post 400 crafting? Just look at the cost of discovery of an item! Only to later find out that you cannot do anything with it. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ineffable_Intricate_Gossamer_Insignia

Stop trying to jump through hoops of Anet’s incredibly poor design and ask for an overhaul of past 400 crafting in its entirety. It’s not fun. It’s not properly implemented. It shouldn’t exist at all.

Nike.2631:

laokoko.7403:

Hope it dont’ backfire and Anet increase the damask cost of heavy and leather armor.

What kind of non sequitur bullcrap fear-mongering is this? Seriously.

I knew it won’t end well when I said that. I don’t think Anet will kitten their player off since many dont’ seemed too happy with silk price now.

But I dont’ think it’s entirely impossible Anet raise the heavy/leather armor cost while lowering the light armor cost as compromise.

Prices are fine for damask. Silk needed a sink and now it has a good one.

If anything, the real problem lies in leather that, despite ascended armour still costs nothing. I’d like to see it fixed.

Insignia should be craftable with all 3 basic armor materials: Cloth, leather and metal.

That way people will pick whichever is more convenient to them.
If anything makes one too expensive, the weight of that will spread to the other two.
And if the price of one were to lower too much, that’ll be compensated quickly as people switch to that one, raising it again.

We also could use nodes for all 4 basic materials, not just 2. All materials of the same type should have similar variation of sources. Inconsistencies like that are never fun. A player should be able to think “I got this from this and that source, so this thing which is the same kind and is used the same way must have a similar source, right?” and be right.

Of course such nodes would not be nearly as abundant as wood and metal, since cloth is not used for weapons and leather is barely used for them, but they should exist. A rack of cloth protected by some pirates, a stack of pelts guarded by some nasty grawl… here and there, some small daily bonuses for people who prefer exploring the world instead sticking to some boring farming schedule or train.

Dear Wanze,

I would be more interested in having you figure out how to make individual pieces of ascended armor and weapons cost 30 gold each.

Thanks!

This is a serious issue. I have crafted 3 full ascended armor sets, but none of them are light armor, which is by far the most expensive.

Either the requirements for damask should be altered or the drop rate of the items should be adjusted.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Insignia should be craftable with all 3 basic armor materials: Cloth, leather and metal.

That way people will pick whichever is more convenient to them.
If anything makes one two expensive, the weight of that will spread to the other two.
And if the price of one were to lower too much, that’ll be compensated quickly as people switch to that one, raising it again.

We also could use nodes for all 4 basic materials, not just 2. All materials of the same type should have similar variation of sources. Inconsistencies like that are never fun. A player should be able to think “I got this from this and that source, so this thing which is the same kind and is used the same way must have a similar source, right?” and be right.

Of course such nodes would not be nearly as abundant as wood and metal, since cloth is not used for weapons and leather is barely used for them, but they should exist. A rack of cloth protected by some pirates, a stack of pelts guarded by some nasty grawl… here and there, some small daily bonuses for people who prefer exploring the world instead sticking to some boring farming schedule or train.

Giving players the choice, which material to use to craft the insignia is also something I considered because i really liked that idea for the gift of blades. However, there are several reasons why I prefer my suggestion.

First of all, it doesnt really balance out the time between the classes, it just bounces the shortest and longest timegate around the weight classes, depending which material is the cheapest atm.

My suggestion would just put an additional demand of 50% on elonian leather, if you could make insignias for any class with leather, it will raise demand 24 to 78, more than 200%.

Usually I would argue, if reward structures in general stay the same, players would still be willing to pay 400-550g for an ascended set. So, if players get the choice of which mat to use for their insignias, prices for all mats would definately come closer together and ideally stay more or less on the same value, probably between 7-10g. This again expands the same problematic of imbalanced costs between classes for weapon sets.

I think it would also favour veteran players who already leveled all three crafting professions to 500 and therefore have the choice to craft the insignia with the cheapest material currently available, while a new player, who just got his tailor to 500 because his main is a light armor user, is stuck with having to craft it with damask.

Well, he still could buy the insignia on the tp, crafted by someone with leather, which would propably be cheaper than crafting it himself with damask.

On the topic of adding ressource nodes for leather and cloth, I am not a big fan of it because it gives too much power to the players to farm the value of the cloth and leather to the ground. Something many people dont consider is the fact that silk being only farmable indirectly (onlike mithril, which has nodes) makes it also way more stable compared to mithril.

I attached the price and supply graphs for silk and mithril from Jan,2014 until now.

It stands out that even though mithril has a way bigger supply on the tp compared to mithril (1-3.5 million compared to 250-800k) it also experienced higher and faster price swings in both directions.

Swagger.1459:

Dear Wanze,

I would be more interested in having you figure out how to make individual pieces of ascended armor and weapons cost 30 gold each.

Thanks!

What is that supposed to achieve?

You could just make them timegated vendor items for 30g.
We would need a new sink for common crafting mats and ectos, though.

Zergs.9715:

I’m not an expert in crafting or anything , but as a player who loved the game to death before post 400 crafting, I find it difficult to express my disgust with it as dictionaries do not contain words that reflect my feelings towards it. Every single aspect of its implementation is wrong with no redeeming factors.

1. Ascended crafting should fall in line with previous crafting experience that wans’t blatant attempt to drain you of all resources and didn’t torture you with time gating.

2. It should be fully open for TP from basic resources to final products. People should not suffer through it if they have enough gold to straight up buy it off of TP since nothing in ascended crafting spells “personal journey”. It’s more like a personal circle of hell. Being fully available will drop the prices since everyone will compete to sell their product.

3. Why does this abomination exist in a post 400 crafting? Just look at the cost of discovery of an item! Only to later find out that you cannot do anything with it. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ineffable_Intricate_Gossamer_Insignia

Stop trying to jump through hoops of Anet’s incredibly poor design and ask for an overhaul of past 400 crafting in its entirety. It’s not fun. It’s not properly implemented. It shouldn’t exist at all.

As all your points are fairly off topic, I wont respond to them.
If those issues are pressing to you or you would like an answer to your questions, feel free to open a separate thread for it.

Instead of reducing the silk needed for light armor, what about increasing the need of leather and metal for medium/heavy armor? Before anyone else points out the “because you have a stake in it” argument, that crap can be tossed in the trash. Everyone has a stake in it.

Logically speaking, cloth insignia for light armor makes sense because it’s cloth armor. What doesnt make sense is using cloth insignia for armor that’s essentially primarily leather or metal. By changing the insignias “weight” to be locked to the armor crafted from it, you’d be able to reduce dependence on cloth. Additionally, this has the added impact of bringing medium and heavy armor closer in line with the ‘crafting rate’ of light armor. Yes it means it takes longer for you to make an ascended set.

The inevitable market impacts would bring silk down a bit, which is not entirely a bad thing. Cloth’s use will still be a part of all 3 armor weights, but the massive amount will have been drastically reduced. Additionally, leather will also be brought up in price. This could be tinkered with a bit more if anet increased the t5 refinement from 3 pieces to 4 (150 for T7 to 200 for T7). The major boost will come when the sheer size of the t5 leather’s supply comes in line with silk’s supply. This would mean leather would be near what silk’s price.

As for metal, I think the increase in demand of mithril will have a positive impact on the price. However, due to the ability for mithril to be mined (and be salvaged from basically every single weapon), the increase should be negligible, with the price rising by at most 30% or so (compared to an ideal 3000% increase for leather).

(i had more, but this headache’s promising to turn into a migraine….)