Guild Wars 2

This is one of the many reasons I despise markets like this in any MMO I play.

Gulesave.5073:

Is it unfair that some players were able to profit immensely from this, while screwing the rest of us over? Absolutely. Is that a realistic part of a trading system based on real-world stock markets? Yes, and you already knew that.

So don’t create an mmo trading market based on real world systems in mmos that aren’t sandbox mmos. Never mind the fact that with all of anets supply side manipulation and the increasing number of items that are introduced and unable to be sold this is moving farther and farther away from a real world market in any case.

arena net allowed tradable items And simple patch information to make their game content practically unplayable for the majority of players…

please,   read the above statement and make excuses for it without sounding foolish

Behellagh.1468:

chemie banger.9624:

Releasing it to a select few is not the public.

It is if they then turn around and post it.

Not if between getting the information and posting that information their friends get it and friends of those friends get it, etc, etc. Then there are alpha testers that never publicly release the information but can still use it and give it to friends. All we know for sure is that the information was definitely used prior to the patch. I’m not going to do the supersleuthing the find out when the information was made “public” vs when things were getting bought up, but I’d wager there was purchasing being done pre-public information. Even if your still think people aren’t using this knowledge to their advantage, remember that the first legendary was made by an alpha tester abusing the knowledge gained from testing.

First off, ArenaNet is absolutely abysmal at releasing information for pretty much everything. I shouldn’t need to go to different 3rd party sites or channels to get this information and more often than not I see it there first and no mention on the gw2 forums. Whoever is in charge of their PR stuff does not understand that having information from a central channel is important. The central channel here being the official GW2 website and forums, it is not twitter, reddit, dulfy, twitch, or whatever other website. RELEASE THE INFORMATION ON GUILDWARS2.com. Even if these 3rd party websites don’t leak the information to friends, they still limit the number of players that gain the information in a timely manner. For things that will drastically alter the market, the information should be delivered by ArenaNet and no one else. It should be on the front page and have a post on the forums. Send out an email.

Second, the market manipulation due to insider information should be met with a BAN, not a slap on the wrist due to lost profit. If their system is done even halfway decent they should be able to tell who bought up lots of the impacted items well before the patch and ban them. Sure there might be some speculation on some items, but when thousands are bought up it’s not just speculation. I remember back when precursors were being made easily and all they did was ask people to delete them. ArenaNet needs to put some manpower into setting a precedent by not allowing people to continually exploit either by insider information or actual in game exploits. They should have also done something about the market manipulation a long time ago, the market has been controlled by the wealthy for a long long time and it creates a bad environment for new players and even casual players. They either need to drastically increase drops, make certain things account bound, or punish manipulators. Personally I favor crashing the market with increasing drops and making certain things soulbound, I don’t see legit buying/selling as something that needs punished but I certainly recognize that a single player shouldn’t be able to control the entire market for a single item.

Finally, this is just a plain old bad implementation. The achievements should have been implemented in a way that it promotes the player actually achieving them instead of buying them. It’s the same old ArenaNet implementation though, they add something that is good(new achievements) while also doing something(s) bad(destroying the market/achievement is bought).

Unfortunately just like in real life the richest players in the game dictate the policy, so I doubt anything will be done about this. Anet is unlikely to put everyone on equal footing. But people should be aware of the issue.

I looked up the one item which is part of a collection that I have on my current character that was featured in a youtube video last night. It didn’t move in price or supply until 4 hours before the patch, and then slowly with little price movement but significant supply movement until an hour before the patch when supply dropped far enough to start hitting the silly high prices.

Supply has recovered some and prices are down from their peak but it’s still twice as high as it was yesterday at this time. So I didn’t see a long lead time of “insider buying” and it pretty much aligned to after the info appeared online.

The thing is it doesn’t matter. However they release it, put it on the wiki the day before for all to see, some players will still be asleep, in class, at work and wouldn’t be able to act on it until after the spike already hit. Someone will be peeved off, there isn’t a way to be fair.

I’m not talking about true insider trading. Simply relying on people like Dulfy, Wooden Potatoes and Bog Otter would probably reach more players than posting the info in the news section, the forum or the wiki.

Pretty much a disappointment since something I sold for like 2g last week is now 300g since it now is part of the achievements. Sad.. This whole update is a big let down for me.

What is this thread about ? Is it like “9/11 was an inside job” ?

Some are upset they couldn’t buy items for collections before the price spike. Some think others are profiteering off of it because they “knew” what to stock up on weeks in advance.

Ok, since Anet don’t consider the current prices as work of an insider trader then how about put some soft cap and make things at least reasonable? Simple exotics being sold for 300g, 400g, 500g is non sense. How come they cost half the price or so of a precursor?

Where is the control over the market to not become abusive?

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/46467
The item price have been fluctuating over the year, the selling price during August was ~70g and 100g-ish. The current price for said product is over 600g. That’s clearly an abuse.

There were items that clearly were fishy. Someone posted the spidy info about them being bought up 3 days b4 any of the videos. It was deleted..idk why.

Likely because what that info implied violated the NDA release date.

Sweetblue Huntress.9856:

The announcement could be made in all venues at the same time. The fact would still stand that somebody would be sleeping/working/school/whatever at that time and miss out on making money. Such is life. There are people who spend their game time watching the market and flipping things. Hey, if that’s fun for them, more power to them…I prefer to be out and about in Tyria.

This happens every single patch, announcement, data mining, rumors, speculation. Something becomes the next big thing and the prices spike. You’ll also see that most things that spike come back down in price. There will always be people preying on the people that must have it now must have it first!

It really just sounds like a temper tantrum to me. Op wants more money…don’t we all…and feels cheated out. /shrugs

And as I said already in a post in this thread, yes, there is no solution that will make it equal for everyone. But… letting a few select people in on it is about guaranteed to be the most unfair way to deliver the information. And disseminating through big name social media players that most of the playerbase doesn’t even know about, much less closely follow, is not a whole lot better.

No one is saying they can do it perfectly. But they can do it much better and I’ve yet to see a good argument for why they can’t.

The best way I see for this kind of problem is not to reveal any info that will affect the market during testing, release the patch with downed TP, release the patch note, then after about 6 hours put the TP to live.

That should be fair game to everyone.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

If Anet is going to let this kind of insider trading continue then they should consider locking all sales on the TP until patches go live.

I shouldn’t need to “know someone” in order to get collections done.

Insider traders: get karma converter for ~300g

Not insider traders: now costs >1000g

For those who don’t know, guides to all collections and what you need were posted last night by people who had “special access” to the patch. All the items used for collections have since been bought out and relisted for 100x the price.

Its all intended
“you mistakenly perceive a fantastic and functioning system as broken”

This game is not about clearing dungeons, going into war or pvp and similar.
This game is about browsing internet, buying and reselling…..

Manasa Devi.7958:

I just find it somewhat grating that the disclosure of information like this by [expletive deleted] youtube jockeys on “shows” I wouldn’t watch if I was paid to do so, is considered “releasing information to the public”.

I like this game, but watching online 3rd party youtube drivel about it isn’t a sacrifice I’m willing to make under any circumstance.

Agreed 100%

While I’m wincing at the new prices as much as any of you, people really need to take a deep breath and calm down.

1. Keeping the news mum until release wouldn’t change very much. Whoever was first on the trigger would STILL buy up as much of the newly desired item as he could, as fast as possible. People who were asleep/at school/at work at the time would STILL miss out, and they’d be complaining. No matter what you do, somebody will always get the jump on the rest of the market.

So yes, I agree with JS here. Once the information has been released to the public, whether it be via an official statement or through exclusive previews, whoever puts in the most effort to keep themselves informed and educated deserves to reap the benefits.

2. Be patient. Prices are only so high now because players are impatient and want the new stuff ASAP. (Why? Just because you want to be the first with the new skin? If so, then you need to decide if the jacked up prices are worth that privilege.) If players everywhere all agreed to hold their ground and refuse to pay, the sellers will start to undercut each other in an effort to get buyers, and prices will return to normal.

Not to mention that since many of these items come from world events that are done all the time, supply will keep on coming in. You only need one of these items for the collection, and eventually supply WILL outstrip demand.

3. I won’t rule out the possibility that some people MAY be doing inside trading, but we’d need to see clear evidence of it before accepting it as truth. Lots of times, price spikes are due purely to speculators gambling on the possibility that something will be required and buy up a large amount. Other traders see the sudden drop in supply, think something is afoot and hop on the train as fast as they can. This then leads to a self-fuelled price spike based solely on somebody’s guess that something will be in demand soon. The higher prices are unpleasant for real buyers, but there wasn’t any sinister plot going on behind the scenes; just fear and panic.

If people WERE doing inside trading, then I trust JS’s statement that they have systems in place to catch and punish these individuals.

While I love and am very grateful to GW2 content creators such as WP or guide creators such as Dulfy I also feel Anet dropped the ball on this one.

The problem with releasing information to a very specific number of people, information they will re-release and make public later is that the TP can be played before this information is passed along.

I’m not accusing anyone of anything but just the fact that it COULD happen should make Anet realize this method of doing things is wrong.

Why? Because it allows people to have an unfair advantage over others. Some people have posted above that this has already happened and that there was even some spidy data to back it up. Not sure if that’s so or not – but come on – if it has or has not happened is not the point.

The point is that it is very clear that it could happen and that should be enough for the company to take some measures.

Acinonyx Rex.8609:

John Smith.4610:

I’ve actually commented on this more than once, but recently:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/page/12#post4376858

"
Attempting to track people manually isn’t effective. If we suspect it’s getting unwieldy we have a numbers of options to make insider traders (and them only) lose large quantities of money. We’ve done this before to destabilize insider trading as an idea and will likely do it again."

I do not consider it insider trading once the information is released to the public in any form.

edit: Adding the post text so you don’t have to click if you don’t want to

So anything we found on Dulfy or Youtube should be considered as official communicaiton from Anet ?

I took out the last bit of your post, cause I bet someone does it for you… but I think you’re spot on…. of course we shouldn’t, and they know it. Your post did give me a good chuckle though

It is strange how official detailed information by Anet is still kept strictly hidden until the patch is out, but 3rd parties seem to be allowed to release information when ever they want.

Why there even has to be anykind of previews or guides out before the patch even is live? Why can’t they be simply controlled that everything gets published at the same minute as the patch goes live and the clients start to update, just like the official patch notes are. Patch notes are never out before the patch, always when it is live.

No one needs guides before the patch is live.

It used to be like that before and it was a better style.

So Anet wanted youtubers to preview to collections to make people excited about them. They could have easily resticted them to showing only the basic collections that would not affect the market that much and let them mention: oh btw, if you collect all the ambrite weapons you get an ascended armor. That would have been enough.

The market was still going to get messed up when the patch came live, but more people would have had a chance to get some of those exotics on a more normal prices.

I believe that they actually wanted this to happen, thus forcing players to actually go hunt for the items, and not buy them from the TP.

IceVyper.6810:

I believe that they actually wanted this to happen, thus forcing players to actually go hunt for the items, and not buy them from the TP.

I think you meant

“encouraging players to buy gems with $$$ to convert to gold to buy from the TP”

They clearly knew putting the most useful collection rewards on items that have very low drop rates and very limited supply is going to drive more people to the TP and not into the game world. With the drop rates being as low as they are it’s not like people can actually go out and hunt for them because the drop rate is tiny and relies entirely on RNG so just some more “gentle” pushing towards buying gems to convert to gold, nothing new there they’ve been doing that for awhile now, likely from pressure higher up due to the declining profits (and NCSoft’s other games not fairing as well as expected, see Wildstar and it’s rapid declining player base)

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Morsus.5106:

Can you prove that this isn’t just a bunch of speculators?

There is probably legitimate concern due to the previews that have been posted on youtube over the last couple of days. WoodenPotatoes has done 2. Someone else has done 1 that I’ve seen, and there’s a 3 part preview in German. Some of which cover the various collections, their requirements, and their rewards in some detail.

If you now check GW2 spidy and time at which items prices raised it matches, but it would probably be the same after launch.

Unless it’s made impossible, people with enough cash will keep buying entire stocks and reselling them higher.

There’s only two real solutions for that.

-Either limits in both time and quantity for trades. Buy 100 items, try to sell them back right away, and you see you have a cooldown on that. Until the cooldown ends, you can’t sell those items back. The more you bought the longer the cooldown. Bought too many crafting components and want to sell the rest back? Put them in the bank, wait, and then sell them.
- Or hard caps in prices. An exotic weapon from champion bags would be between 2 and 20 gold. An exotic trinket would not go higher than 10 gold, no lower than 50 silver. A crafted exotic not higher than 100 gold, no less than 1 gold, legendaries not higher than 1000, no less than 200g, and so on.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Unless it’s made impossible, people with enough cash will keep buying entire stocks and reselling them higher.

There’s only two real solutions for that.

-Either limits in both time and quantity for trades. Buy 100 items, try to sell them back right away, and you see you have a cooldown on that. Until the cooldown ends, you can’t sell those items back. The more you bought the longer the cooldown. Bought too many crafting components and want to sell the rest back? Put them in the bank, wait, and then sell them.
- Or hard caps in prices. An exotic weapon from champion bags would be between 2 and 20 gold. An exotic trinket would not go higher than 10 gold, no lower than 50 silver. A crafted exotic not higher than 100 gold, no less than 1 gold, legendaries not higher than 1000, no less than 200g, and so on.

You made good suggestions, unfortunally, Anet hired an “economist resident” for GW2 and he thinks everything works as intended. No matter how hard you think economy is broken, you can’t show him proof because he’s the only one who got data. He was supposed to share his datas with us but he has no time for this anymore, so you can’t proof anything.
All we can say is everything works as intended, and if you want to compete with happy fews who got early informations, you should buy a lot more gems to convert into gold.

I’m very disappointed with ANet’s response to this. If it is not information released on the official site, abusing said info should be insider trading.

I watched one of the videos and thought to myself, I better buy some of those items for my collections before they skyrocket in price after the patch hits. So I bought a couple of the exotics, Eternal Ice & Breath of Kralkatorrik specifically, and they’re now all much cheaper than when I bought them pre-patch. Like… less than half what I payed for them. I lost probably 50 gold total so far, and each time i check the price, they keep going down. If ANET came out and said this was against the terms of service, I’d never do it again because the gains aren’t worth risking your account over… and probably be much happier in the long run anyway because I wouldn’t be regretting my decision.

Insider trading is illegal in the stock market because you know what will happen ahead of time, and you’re using knowledge not available to the public to commit an act that is completely illegal. Watching a video posted on a public website and guessing what will happen to the future value of items is a risk. There’s a big difference.

Wiz.1543:

Or take a quote from Dulfy. So much this.

Or you know, don’t let the videos release pre-patch or cancel the previews all together to make it fair for everyone and all the fansites. Getting tired of playing catch up every patch.

In other words don’t release anything that can influence the tradingpost, or release it via an official channel so everybody is informed at the same time.

Playing catch up takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the otherwise great patch.

I know content creators like Woodenpotatoes, Boggoter Mighty Teapot and Matt Visual which I am all a fan of need content to prepare for great video’s to get us more into gw2. So what you can do is split content in tradingpost effecting and non tradingpost effecting. And only let the latter be previewed. This is easier said than done, and easy from a standby perspective.

But something needs to be done about playing catch up every time.

Maybe one simple but elegant solution is to take off the trading post x time before and x time and after patch?

Then someone will complain that Anet isn’t communicating properly with us. Again lose/lose.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

alcopaul.2156:

this is why communism is good

A fair start for everyone,

You can look up the videos just like everyone else. How is it not fair? Are you blocked by the channel?

Tagus Eleuthera.7305:

I watched one of the videos and thought to myself, I better buy some of those items for my collections before they skyrocket in price after the patch hits. So I bought a couple of the exotics, Eternal Ice & Breath of Kralkatorrik specifically, and they’re now all much cheaper than when I bought them pre-patch. Like… less than half what I payed for them. I lost probably 50 gold total so far, and each time i check the price, they keep going down. If ANET came out and said this was against the terms of service, I’d never do it again because the gains aren’t worth risking your account over… and probably be much happier in the long run anyway because I wouldn’t be regretting my decision.

Insider trading is illegal in the stock market because you know what will happen ahead of time. Watching a video and guessing what will happen is a risk. There’s a big difference.

They literally told you what items you need… there is no risk in that.

Eternal Ice was 1g before the patch, it is currently 5g… the only way you lost money was if you bought after everyone already bought them up…
Your inability to distinguish when prices have peaked is not really an argument.

Not saying that at all… what I’m saying is that using information gained publicly to attempt to gain an advantage is different from insider trading. And you’re right about the price having peaked before I jumped on the bandwagon… I just thought it would continue to rise. Hindsight, 20/20, all that.

Night before the patch went live I saw the Wooden Potatoes video and thought “I should buy those.” Of course it was very late and I was very tired so instead I went to bed. So today the total cost is 2000 gold or whatever instead of less than 200. I thought then “no one should know what the correct items” are and I still think that.

This feels like another one of those screw-ups that shouldn’t have happened, but now that it has happened, Anet will steadfastly refuse to acknowledge any wrong done or change their policy. They are sadly predictable that way . . .

I think if nothing else this just kind of highlights, again, the need for a clearer and more formalised (and organised) communications policy from Anet. Any significant information about the game really should be disseminated directly from Anet, within the game/launcher/patch notes where appropriate, and via their various social media arms, as near to simultaneously as possible. We shouldn’t need to rely on third party sites (or to obsessively follow GW2 on every possibly social networking/sharing site in the world) to get basic game information on mechanics or events or what have you.

It wouldn’t magically make the market equitable; some people will always get the news first and react to it first and thereby have an advantage. But at least it would be more of a free-for-all rather than tinged with suspicion or possible conflict of interest like this has been.

Regardless of any ‘insider trading’ issues, relying on players and third parties to do important communications work is just poor practice, in my opinion. Third party sites will always have a place for some of the more specialist information, but they should exist in addition to official comms, rather than in place of them.

I agree 100%. The fact that these Youtbers were given exclusive access to a new patch that DRASTICALLY changes the market is bullkitten. They can make a video saying “These items are now SUPER VALUABLE, guys!” and boom – 2g items become 200g items on the TP as everyone tries to flip before others catch on.

People should not be given early access to patches – plain and simple.

Arrow.4619:

Night before the patch went live I saw the Wooden Potatoes video and thought “I should buy those.” Of course it was very late and I was very tired so instead I went to bed. So today the total cost is 2000 gold or whatever instead of less than 200. I thought then “no one should know what the correct items” are and I still think that.

This feels like another one of those screw-ups that shouldn’t have happened, but now that it has happened, Anet will steadfastly refuse to acknowledge any wrong done or change their policy. They are sadly predictable that way . . .

Summed it up perfectly. It’s utter crap.

Acinonyx Rex.8609:

[…]

Real life economy is messed up. Specially because those who made the regulations made them to make sure those with the money get even more money at the expense of those with less money.

The mere fact that people can do things like buying the entire stock of an exotic to sell them back for over 300 gold is proof the system is flawed and must be changed.

They do so knowing the drop rate is horribly low or items are bugged.
Those with interests on keeping things like that will do things like deleting bug reports and drop info in the wiki.

This situation must simply be changed. There’s no excuse.

Azrael.4960:

It’s always interesting to see people go to all this trouble for virtual currency but not apply the same level of determination and discipline on say a stock market. A small investment taken far enough can make a healthy return

a real life stock market has real life risks – a video game does not, its just for fun

So John smith, per your post, I should conclude, in the future, i have to stalk these third party youtubers (woodenpotatoes, and the other), like madness, to know the second a video of them goes online, then burst buy everything (if it’s not even to late since insiders can have spike purchased by then). That is what you are saying? Really? Ouch. That’s all I can say.