Guild Wars 2

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Autoloot? It’s a Godsend for normal players. No more hitting F every 2 seconds when in combat.

Sure Rangers with a Pet or Necros with minions parked on a critter spawn point with autoloot are allowed as long as they don’t have any skill on auto attack or heal. There was the question if autolooting reset the AFK timer. No idea if that was considered a bug and fixed or not.

And looking at the various charts, it appears in both of your examples are related to the release of Season 3 Episode 2 of the Living World. New content always draw players away from their default activities which changes the flow of gear and mats onto the TP. Interestingly the price of Linen Scrap didn’t spike like Bolts of Linen or Thin Leather Sections and Squares did.

But now some two or three weeks after the new content dropped players are returning to their normal play routines which in turn return the price of those mats back to their previous trading range.

So as long as ANet is OK with AFK pet/minion farming, if that’s the primary source for those raw materials, then I’m happy that my costs for mats have returned to a more favorable, to me, price range.

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Over what time period are you comparing those costs?

Behellagh.1468:

So as long as ANet is OK with AFK pet/minion farming, if that’s the primary source for those raw materials, then I’m happy that my costs for mats have returned to a more favorable, to me, price range.

I think Anet has sufficiently demonstrated that they are not okay with AFK pet/minion farming, as there have been instances of people getting booted and/or infracted by GMs for failure to respond while doing such things.

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Over what time period are you comparing those costs?

In less than 24 hours. Except coarse leather. Thats 48 hours.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19740
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19744
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19733
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734

Paralel with the price drop sell listings volume went up. I guess I’m not that far off with my assessments…

gryph.8734:

Behellagh.1468:

So as long as ANet is OK with AFK pet/minion farming, if that’s the primary source for those raw materials, then I’m happy that my costs for mats have returned to a more favorable, to me, price range.

I think Anet has sufficiently demonstrated that they are not okay with AFK pet/minion farming, as there have been instances of people getting booted and/or infracted by GMs for failure to respond while doing such things.

Yep they took a broom and trying to sweep long beach clean…

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Over what time period are you comparing those costs?

In less than 24 hours. Except coarse leather. Thats 48 hours.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19740
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19744
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19733
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734

Paralel with the price drop sell listings volume went up. I guess I’m not that far off with my assessments…

Compare the base materials and not the refined ones.

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Over what time period are you comparing those costs?

In less than 24 hours. Except coarse leather. Thats 48 hours.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19740
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19744
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19733
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734

Paralel with the price drop sell listings volume went up. I guess I’m not that far off with my assessments…

Compare the base materials and not the refined ones.

Why? Thats the market they are flooding not the base materials market. They dont even buy their stuff there cause if you do the maths, you’ll see that its a negative return if you buy base mats, refine them and sell them.

It’d be easier to have a talk with you if you finally came up with some statement or opinion.

gryph.8734:

Behellagh.1468:

So as long as ANet is OK with AFK pet/minion farming, if that’s the primary source for those raw materials, then I’m happy that my costs for mats have returned to a more favorable, to me, price range.

I think Anet has sufficiently demonstrated that they are not okay with AFK pet/minion farming, as there have been instances of people getting booted and/or infracted by GMs for failure to respond while doing such things.

Yes and no, they were very specific as to what is and isn’t allowed. There is a lot of grey.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-a-clear-statement-re-AFK-farming/page/5#post6161098

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-a-clear-statement-re-AFK-farming/page/6#post6161450

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Please-a-clear-statement-re-AFK-farming/page/6#post6162437

It’s still GM’s call whether you are AFK farming or not and that they provide enough of a leeway in the player’s favor that it can continue. Of course this all requires players reporting suspected AFKers so a GM can check them out. But they don’t want to action a parent dealing with an infant, player swapping the laundry from washer to dryer, making something to eat down in the kitchen or taking a bit longer than expected in the loo. But if you walk away for hours, then there may be sanctions involved but they are more likely to simply move your character to a safer location first.

Amanzaman.1297:

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Price of the linen,mostly farmed in that way,did not go down.Its been fluctuating from 4s to 5s,for almost two years now.I am not talking about bolts.
Also,you can not analyze market fluctuations for a period of 24 hours.Science of statistics says so.
Another thing-you say that those that are allegedly swamping the market and bringing the price down dont have to withstand any consequences.Not true.Any good tradesman will tell you that he will not do anything to hurt the price of his product.

.I didnt see that you said anything about the gem price rocketed sky high.Why?Cause its Arena doing and its ok?Or cause you,in some part of your petty brain,understand that its the way an open market works?

We had bots in GW1.Tons and tons of them,real bots.Did they ruin the game?No.Arena just stopped being interested in further developement of the game,and the game died out.
Anyway,I personally,do not have a problem with so called farmers.
Im doing things Im enjoying-playing the game,they are doing things they enjoy-farming.And they cant,in any way,harm me.They just dont interest me,cause they are too small group of ppl to have impact on the game in any way.
Cheers.

Not an other chair-warrior… -.- You couldnt resist bringing personal issues into a perfectly clean conversation. ‘Cheers.’

I don’t know. Is the OP saying AFK farmers all started farming and selling in the last 24 hours? Or they all decided to sell, at least, at the same time, this past 24 hours?

Seems a bit odd. There must be some kind of secret coalition. Nothing to do with the very recent economy post, I suppose. /shrug

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Over what time period are you comparing those costs?

In less than 24 hours. Except coarse leather. Thats 48 hours.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19740
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19744
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19733
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734

Paralel with the price drop sell listings volume went up. I guess I’m not that far off with my assessments…

Compare the base materials and not the refined ones.

Why? Thats the market they are flooding not the base materials market. They dont even buy their stuff there cause if you do the maths, you’ll see that its a negative return if you buy base mats, refine them and sell them.

It’d be easier to have a talk with you if you finally came up with some statement or opinion.

People don’t buy the base mats, refine them, and then sell them. One exception I have seen was with low tiered ingots but that’s because they were also upgrading them to the next tier. Normally the refined materials sell for the cost of the base materials used to refine them although there tends to be a lag.

I remember a time when buying green wood, converting it to planks and then promote the green wood planks to soft wood planks was outrageously profitable. And I can sort of think of another more recent case, both which I wouldn’t have noticed without sites like gw2shinies or gw2profits. I normally promote some mat daily, to use up my daily reward of 3 spirit shards, so I stumbled upon them as part of my daily routine.

How does the OP know that the source of these mats is from afk pet/minion farmers? Why can’t it just be normal players selling their mats?

Is the change in leather not something to do with the new leather nodes in the Guild Hall?

Behellagh.1468:

gryph.8734:

Behellagh.1468:

So as long as ANet is OK with AFK pet/minion farming, if that’s the primary source for those raw materials, then I’m happy that my costs for mats have returned to a more favorable, to me, price range.

I think Anet has sufficiently demonstrated that they are not okay with AFK pet/minion farming, as there have been instances of people getting booted and/or infracted by GMs for failure to respond while doing such things.

Yes and no, they were very specific as to what is and isn’t allowed. There is a lot of grey.

{snip}

It’s still GM’s call whether you are AFK farming or not and that they provide enough of a leeway in the player’s favor that it can continue. Of course this all requires players reporting suspected AFKers so a GM can check them out. But they don’t want to action a parent dealing with an infant, player swapping the laundry from washer to dryer, making something to eat down in the kitchen or taking a bit longer than expected in the loo. But if you walk away for hours, then there may be sanctions involved but they are more likely to simply move your character to a safer location first.

That doesn’t sound like a lot of “grey” to me. That sounds like the GM’s actively discouraging performing in-game actions while a player is AFK. A couple minutes, you could probably get away with. Hours-on-end? No.

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Over what time period are you comparing those costs?

In less than 24 hours. Except coarse leather. Thats 48 hours.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19740
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19744
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19733
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734

Paralel with the price drop sell listings volume went up. I guess I’m not that far off with my assessments…

Compare the base materials and not the refined ones.

Why? Thats the market they are flooding not the base materials market. They dont even buy their stuff there cause if you do the maths, you’ll see that its a negative return if you buy base mats, refine them and sell them.

It’d be easier to have a talk with you if you finally came up with some statement or opinion.

{snip}

Normally the refined materials sell for the cost of the base materials used to refine them although there tends to be a lag.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the real-life concept of arbitrage, but it is a thing and it is possible to do in the GW2 TP.

I agree that AFK farming should not be a thing. I am not sufficiently informed on the topic to know if Anet has done anything about it but if not they should. I can’t think of another MMO that allows pets to take any actions at all without a command. That is the way it should be in GW2 – otherwise give every profession the means to auto attack upon being attacked.

gryph.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

All salty here…

So. For a while they have been gone, but now they’re back – the pet/minion farmers. Up until a few weeks ago the gap between buy orders and sell offers shrunk under 10% of the usual. Then a patch came and these sellers disappeared. But for a few days now I’ve been seeing multiple sellers putting up 25-60 stacks of one crafting mat, undercutting competition massively (1-3 silvers when the usual is only few coppers) pushing down the sell price almost to the buy order lvl. So either being able to auto-loot from pet kills was not removed from the game and the farmers only took a break or they have found out a new way to acquire infinite amounts of loot.

I know that this is a mastery, intended to work like this implemented by the allmighty Anet. But is it fair? Shouldnt it be otherwise? All games discourage this kind of mechanics where some1 with a hack, bug, error, etc. gains massive advantages without having to put in effort proportionate to the gain. I still do know that its not a hack, but has the same effect. Basically you can make thousands of gold while being afk all the time. Then flood the market with massively underpriced mats as it does not hurt you in any way, because you didnt have to invest money or effort at all. If you sell everything for 1 copper its still a gain, because you had to invest none.

There may be some tricky reasoning behind this but I really dont like it. Anet was concerned about too many agony infusions flooding the market if they allow free deconstruction of all high agony infusions, yet when crafting mats in much larger numbers and worth much more money flood the market it somehow slips through their fingers.

/discuss

p.s.: Thin leather squares went from 7s10c to 5s95c, bolts of linen from 11s90c to 9s85c, bolts of wools from 7s10c to 5s90c, etc.

Over what time period are you comparing those costs?

In less than 24 hours. Except coarse leather. Thats 48 hours.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19740
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19744
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19733
http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734

Paralel with the price drop sell listings volume went up. I guess I’m not that far off with my assessments…

Compare the base materials and not the refined ones.

Why? Thats the market they are flooding not the base materials market. They dont even buy their stuff there cause if you do the maths, you’ll see that its a negative return if you buy base mats, refine them and sell them.

It’d be easier to have a talk with you if you finally came up with some statement or opinion.

{snip}

Normally the refined materials sell for the cost of the base materials used to refine them although there tends to be a lag.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the real-life concept of arbitrage, but it is a thing and it is possible to do in the GW2 TP.

The total cost to refine the base materials into the refined material and the refined material itself are usually near equal. However, the base material market is more fluid with a higher velocity so the prices change more rapidly and frequently. This creates a lag with the prices of the refined materials matching the total cost to create them. It usually fails to be arbitrage solely because of the TP tax as you cannot buy the base materials, refine them, and then sell that product for a profit.

Now, the OP is blaming the change in the refined material market on AFK farmers. Based on the graphs, that is likely not the case. You’d expect to see fluctuations in the base material prices and supply as well since not all of them would take the time to refine the base materials and sell them on a slower market. There weren’t any changes beyond the normal trends you’d expect for the time/day of the week.

The point of my statements to the OP wasn’t to explain what was going on but rather to let them know that it was unlikely to be because of AFK farmers.

You are correct that arbitrage could maybe be a contributing factor to what went on assuming that some people were buying up the base materials but I didn’t see it in the graphs. Before the drop in the refine material price, someone could make a profit of nearly 40 copper from buying thin leather, refining it, and then selling it. Right now it’s sitting at about 37 copper so every 1K you manage to sell will net you about 3.7G just from the refinement process. It looks like people took existing supply that they possessed, refined them, and then dumped them on the market.

gryph.8734:

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the real-life concept of arbitrage, but it is a thing and it is possible to do in the GW2 TP.

Well arbitrage is more about buying and selling the same item between different markets than buying/refining and selling the result for profit. Plus the 15% cost of selling on the TP requires a major markup simply to be profitable. It occasionally happens but it’s rather short lived.