Guild Wars 2

Kain Francois.4328:

People are irrational to think precursor crafting was ever meant to be cheap precursors.

And people are irrational to craft the precursors right now because it’d be twice the cost of buying it on TP.

People are irrational to believe Anet would make the economy right.

People are irrational to have faith in Anet, that effort will pay off, but in reality, gold still dictates everything.

Well for me at least it makes no sense. Do small things and make small progress to your pre instead of buying it? Cmon. If I farm 10g/day, its a small progress, too. I dont mind that its expensive but its too expensive. 200g for rank 1 of 4? Please.I will just farm gold again.

Obtena.7952:

The point is simple; allows you to track your progress to a pre-defined goal. That’s all it was ever intended to be.

I really don’t think this is a fair point. One could argue that saving your gold to buy a precursor off the TP, also allows you to track your progress to a pre-defined goal.

Which means we must revert back to the original question. What is the point of it. To me, it just seems like the crafting and buying it off the TP are essentially the same thing.

It’s a plenty fair point because the price of a precursor on the TP tends to be variable; therefore, saving gold to buy your precursor is NOT a pre-defined goal.

You CAN say that about precursor crafting: I know EXACTLY how much I need of whatever mats and activities are needed to craft a precursor. So you go ahead and ask again what the point is, I will just repeat my original thoughts; crafting gives you a a definite requirement that no other method does.

These arguments stem from a lack of understanding the monetary value vs. the real value of a thing. I’m no economist but this has specific terms and it’s clear that people are equating these two values when they make their “I’m angry about crafted precursors” threads.

Aomine.5012:

Ayrilana.1396:

Garrisyl.7402:

Ayrilana.1396:

Such as what? The cost was more or less in line with what someone else found which was just over 600G.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rb17p/bolt_i_the_experimental_sword_guide/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rb2x3/bolt_ii_the_perfected_sword_guide/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rb4cl/bolt_iii_zap_partial_guide_as_this_cant_be/

Just because you chose to buy the time-gated materials at their sell order prices doesn’t mean that it’s more expensive to craft.

1) I based my calculations on the crafting cost, not the TP cost.
2) From an economic point of view, crafting vs buying time-gated materials makes next to no difference. If you craft them all yourself you save money. If you buy them off TP it costs more, but you can sell all the time-gated materials you craft (and now don’t have to use for precursor crafting since you already bought those) for the exact same price difference (-15% taxes).
3) The reddit post you link to is 19 days old. Back then it WAS profitable to craft instead of buying, since there still was a pre-HoT surplus of materials on the market. Notice how I mentioned crafting The Legend shortly after expansion launch and saving money?

Since then prices have roughly doubled for most materials, so it is no longer possible to save money by crafting most precursors. The price for crafting Zap i calculated several days ago was 1100g by the way. Feel free to prove me wrong using today’s material prices.

1) Then you did something wrong in your calculations. I looked at the materials that make up the core cost of crafting a precursor and they do not come close to 1,100 gold unless you use the cost of buying the time-gated materials directly off the TP.

2) Actually it does make a large difference and I’m incredibly surprised that you don’t understand that. It almost makes me wonder if you even did the calculations yourself. You do realize that crafting something like deldrimor ingot and then selling it at the buy order price still yields a profit, right? You’re completely ignoring that there’s a profit margin for some of the ascended materials simply because they are time-gated and people are impatient.

3) We go back to my original post.

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29181-Zap

You stated that it was wrong. I asked you to show how but instead you ignored that and started arguing about the links and how they were 19 days old.

Hey, stop all these NS theory crafting and start crafting precursors yourself by buying all the TP materials and prove us wrong already ok?

If you find it profitable, go ahead, show me a screenshot of you buy all the materials off TP and then craft it. Do those that exculsively use ores or woods, which is like 90~100 of each t7 materials. If you refuse to do it, it means you’re just spreading NS that even you yourself wouldn’t consider using, and completely contradict yourself.

Price level changes, so we use the price level of the current materials. I can say that back then precursors are 50g, so should I use the price level of 50g for precursors?

I presented a website that shows the materials used including their cost. Those costs are then totaled. There’s no difference between me manually taking each item and making a table to calculate the total cost versus using the site. The same goes for crafting it. The costs do not change as you craft something.

All that I’m seeing is that you’re trying to dismiss what I have presented because it goes against your argument that you have been trying to paint.

Edit: Oh. And FYI. I just went through and calculated the costs manually. It’s practically what the website I originally linked stated.

Garrisyl.7402:

Ayrilana.1396:

2) Actually it does make a large difference and I’m incredibly surprised that you don’t understand that. It almost makes me wonder if you even did the calculations yourself. You do realize that crafting something like deldrimor ingot and then selling it at the buy order price still yields a profit, right? You’re completely ignoring that there’s a profit margin for some of the ascended materials simply because they are time-gated and people are impatient.

3) We go back to my original post.

https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29181-Zap

You stated that it was wrong. I asked you to show how but instead you ignored that and started arguing about the links and how they were 19 days old.

The theoretical cost of using a material for crafting is always going to be it’s TP price. If Spiritwood planks were 7g to craft and 10g on the TP, you would “lose” 3g (minus taxes) every time you used one for crafting instead of selling it. It’s not as clear as gold directly leaving your wallet, but it’s the loss of an unrealized profit.

It can be cheaper to craft all the time-gated materials you need, but not by much. Let’s look at an example using the above prices: You need 10 Spiritwood Planksfor an item.

Scenario 1) You instantly buy 10 planks of the tp for 100 gold. This means that over the next 10 days you can sell your daily plank, since you no longer need them for crafting. Each plank sells for 10g -15% taxes= 8.5g. Subtracting the 7g crafting cost leaves you with 1.5g profit for each plank, or 15g over a 10 day period. Since you recuperated 15g, the final cost of this scenario is 85 gold.

Scenario 2) You craft all 10 planks over the course of 10 days. Remember that their value is not the crafting cost, but what you could sell them for. Since you could sell them for 10×10g -15% taxes, the total cost of scenario 2 is 85g (Even though you only directly spent 70g on crafting them).

As you can see, it literally makes no difference whether you craft or buy the Spiritwood planks. Real prices are slightly different and you might save some gold, but not much.

I mentioned the age of the reddit post because you brought it up in relation to the 600g crafting cost. The market has changed so much since then that you cannot rely on the cost estimates made in it.

You were right that i calculated wrong though. I had counted the deldrimor cost of the first tier twice for some reason. If we take away that it still costs 850ish gold to craft, which is the current buy order. This is not accounting for the hours spent crafting instead of earning gold, or the tons of account bound materials used (Karma, geodes, bandit crests etc.)

I’m not saying no one should craft their precursors, all I am saying is that you shouldn’t if your main goal is to save money.

Is that how you’re really going to try and rationalize using TP costs for the time-gated items rather than the cost to craft? If you truly want to believe that then I’m not going to try and convince you otherwise. You’re just the type of person that I want to sell things to.

Also, please look at my previous post where the numbers using today’s costs were pretty much still in line with what that post showed 20 days ago. You’re completely ignoring that bit.

The costs that I calculated were in the 600’s. The items that can’t be bought, but need to be farmed, isn’t as time-0consuming as you’re trying to make out. You can get the 400 geodes in a little over an hour and the badges can be acquired over several VW’s.

First I haven’t seen any proof that mathematically it costs more flat gold to craft a precursor and even if it did, I would much rather go on an interesting journey where I have to explore the world and slowly refine this weapon as opposed to just dropping a bunch of gold on the trading post and getting it, the precursor crafting system as far as I’ve seen is cheaper then just buying it, and even if if isn’t that much cheaper, making a precursor is just much more interesting and dare I say “fun”

thewaterguy.4796:

First I haven’t seen any proof that mathematically it costs more flat gold to craft a precursor and even if it did, I would much rather go on an interesting journey where I have to explore the world and slowly refine this weapon as opposed to just dropping a bunch of gold on the trading post and getting it, the precursor crafting system as far as I’ve seen is cheaper then just buying it, and even if if isn’t that much cheaper, making a precursor is just much more interesting and dare I say “fun”

Feel free to start your interesting journey, like RIGHT NOW.

It’s not interesting at all. It’s just a grocery list of buy this and that.
There’s not even a story behind it because most objective is like do this/buy this from a npc and move on.

thewaterguy.4796:

First I haven’t seen any proof that mathematically it costs more flat gold to craft a precursor and even if it did, I would much rather go on an interesting journey where I have to explore the world and slowly refine this weapon as opposed to just dropping a bunch of gold on the trading post and getting it, the precursor crafting system as far as I’ve seen is cheaper then just buying it, and even if if isn’t that much cheaper, making a precursor is just much more interesting and dare I say “fun”

Mathematical proof: https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29180-The-Legend

Current lowest Sell order: 950
Current lowest Buy order: 850
Current cost to Craft: 1656

Completely insane.

Blaine Tog.8304:

thewaterguy.4796:

First I haven’t seen any proof that mathematically it costs more flat gold to craft a precursor and even if it did, I would much rather go on an interesting journey where I have to explore the world and slowly refine this weapon as opposed to just dropping a bunch of gold on the trading post and getting it, the precursor crafting system as far as I’ve seen is cheaper then just buying it, and even if if isn’t that much cheaper, making a precursor is just much more interesting and dare I say “fun”

Mathematical proof: https://www.gw2bltc.com/en/item/29180-The-Legend

Current lowest Sell order: 950
Current lowest Buy order: 850
Current cost to Craft: 1656

Completely insane.

And dev is going to say that 101 answer of:
“The market is fluctuating, so ofc the price would be high. Give it some time and the economy would eventually be stable again.”

Then they release more legendaries every 3 months, that require the same 90~100 Deldrimor/ Spirit-Wood and fluctuate the price again.

So tell me, any dev, if you’re even here, how long is the market going to be stabled then?
2 more years? By the time no-one play this game anymore?

I have to challenge that because Anet never came out and said “We are making craftable precursors so legendaries are more obtainable”. It’s simply an option for people that don’t want to play TP/MF.

Except that it requires roughly as much “playing the TP” as just buying the thing, only with more outside work on top of that.

It’s a plenty fair point because the price of a precursor on the TP tends to be variable; therefore, saving gold to buy your precursor is NOT a pre-defined goal.

But so are the prices of materials, so the costs of the Precursor Crafting also fluctuate over time.

Again, the “this is an alternate method of earning them” argument would fly IF it was all through activities and account bound materials, NOT through processes that involve tons of TPable mats.

First I haven’t seen any proof that mathematically it costs more flat gold to craft a precursor and even if it did, I would much rather go on an interesting journey where I have to explore the world and slowly refine this weapon as opposed to just dropping a bunch of gold on the trading post and getting it, the precursor crafting system as far as I’ve seen is cheaper then just buying it, and even if if isn’t that much cheaper, making a precursor is just much more interesting and dare I say “fun”

I would love to do the “fun” parts of crafting the precursor, but unfortnately large chunks of it are gated behind dumping hundreds of gold into the void. Again, people are not complaining about the tasks required, they are complaining about the gold required.

And dev is going to say that 101 answer of:
“The market is fluctuating, so ofc the price would be high. Give it some time and the economy would eventually be stable again.”

Irrelevant response. The pricing issues are still their fault because they attached the price to complete it to market goods in the first place. You should never require market goods to produce a Precursor via crafting, or at least not in significant amounts.

If you want to craft The Legend, it should require AT MOST, the amount of wood and metal that it would take to craft ONE Ascended staff. That’s it. Ideally it would only require enough to produce one Exotic staff, since that’s all you get anyway. All other materials should be account-bound stuff that you earn by doing various activities in the world.

If they absolutely must include a gold cost, and I really reject that on principle, then the gold costs should be entirely player→NPC, hardlocked prices, like Icy Runestones and Elonian Wine. They should not be items you can buy or sell on the TP. From an economic perspective that seems win-win to me, since instead of being only a 15% gold sink in TP fees, it’d be a 100% gold sink for every item purchased.

There is absolutely no reason that a single staff should take enough wooden planks to construct a log fort, or a sword enough metal to build a battleship.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s a plenty fair point because the price of a precursor on the TP tends to be variable; therefore, saving gold to buy your precursor is NOT a pre-defined goal.

But so are the prices of materials, so the costs of the Precursor Crafting also fluctuate over time.

Again, the “this is an alternate method of earning them” argument would fly IF it was all through activities and account bound materials, NOT through processes that involve tons of TPable mats.

First I haven’t seen any proof that mathematically it costs more flat gold to craft a precursor and even if it did, I would much rather go on an interesting journey where I have to explore the world and slowly refine this weapon as opposed to just dropping a bunch of gold on the trading post and getting it, the precursor crafting system as far as I’ve seen is cheaper then just buying it, and even if if isn’t that much cheaper, making a precursor is just much more interesting and dare I say “fun”

I would love to do the “fun” parts of crafting the precursor, but unfortnately large chunks of it are gated behind dumping hundreds of gold into the void. Again, people are not complaining about the tasks required, they are complaining about the gold required.

And dev is going to say that 101 answer of:
“The market is fluctuating, so ofc the price would be high. Give it some time and the economy would eventually be stable again.”

Irrelevant response. The pricing issues are still their fault because they attached the price to complete it to market goods in the first place. You should never require market goods to produce a Precursor via crafting, or at least not in significant amounts.

If you want to craft The Legend, it should require AT MOST, the amount of wood and metal that it would take to craft ONE Ascended staff. That’s it. Ideally it would only require enough to produce one Exotic staff, since that’s all you get anyway. All other materials should be account-bound stuff that you earn by doing various activities in the world.

If they absolutely must include a gold cost, and I really reject that on principle, then the gold costs should be entirely player->NPC, hardlocked prices, like Icy Runestones and Elonian Wine. They should not be items you can buy or sell on the TP. From an economic perspective that seems win-win to me, since instead of being only a 15% gold sink in TP fees, it’d be a 100% gold sink for every item purchased.

There is absolutely no reason that a single staff should take enough wooden planks to construct a log fort, or a sword enough metal to build a battleship.

Calm down dude, you’re losing your mind.

Read my post carefully.
I AM criticizing this system.
I AM criticizing the developers’ decision.

Ohoni.6057:

It was never meant to make legendaries cheaper anyway.

Because that’s what we’ve been asking for since launch and what they should have delivered.

No, that’s not what “we” have been asking for — only some people wanted it. Most people asked for a way to get precursors that didn’t depend on saving a lot of money or getting lucky. Some thought that meant that the process would be cheaper; a lot did not.

Moreover, it’s only hellishly expensive now because the materials used are in high demand and low supply, because everyone and their sister is trying to worth on the same collections.

As in any economy, those in a rush to be first to get new shinies should expect to spend more, often a lot more. Those who are willing to wait will spend much less. (Although whether that’s less than pre-HoT prices remains to be seen.)

OtakuModeEngage.8679:

In this case however we know how to craft and are doing the crafting, but it cost the same as one at the store(tp). That doesn’t make sense, given all the extra work we have to do, given that we are doing it ourselves rather than purchasing it outright, it should by all means cost less than it does in a store. But it doesnt.

I don’t get why you guys don’t get it – the price of wood and metal is “imaginary”. It purely depends on supply and demand – everybody in this game has the same chance of getting them. It’s like everybody having an apple tree in their garden but most are too lazy to pick them, so the others profit of their laziness. In some cases people don’t have the time to get into their garden but those usually realize that they’ll need a bit more time for their apply pie.
When it comes to cloth and leather though it’s a different story as there’s RNG involved but node farming is steady.

Edit: Realized that I got you slightly wrong.
But the point still stands: Anet analyzed the average price of a precurser and set the material needed for the craftable version after that.
People who only need a few T7 mats don’t mind that their finished product costs 10 gold more than the TP price – thus the price for T7 mats will stay high. And I guess most people already/still have some T7 mats, so I don’t think that anyone really buys everything needed off the TP. I hope you get my point.

Calm down dude, you’re losing your mind.

Read my post carefully.
I AM criticizing this system.
I AM criticizing the developers’ decision.

I don’t argue the person, I argue the argument, so if I’m commenting on a post you meant sarcastically, consider it supporting your position.

No, that’s not what “we” have been asking for — only some people wanted it. Most people asked for a way to get precursors that didn’t depend on saving a lot of money or getting lucky.

Yes, most people wanted a system that didn’t depend on saving a lot of money, and the current system still does. Again, if they removed the gold and gold-fungible components from the current Pre-Crafting system, I think most people would be on board with it.

Moreover, it’s only hellishly expensive now because the materials used are in high demand and low supply, because everyone and their sister is trying to worth on the same collections.

Which wouldn’t be a problem if they hadn’t included tradable materials in the crafting process in the first place, and the instant they did decide to do that, anyone with even a marginal understanding of the game could have predicted the inevitable result, and should have made efforts to correct for it so that we would not end up with the current situation.

Again, you do not need an entire forest worth of wood to craft a single staff, you only need a few planks worth, it should be the other, non-tradable components that upgrade it to “Legendary” class, not just throwing hundreds of sticks at the problem.

As in any economy, those in a rush to be first to get new shinies should expect to spend more, often a lot more.

Only if the system is designed that way. It’s easy enough to design the system to have relatively stable prices from start to finish, with only minimal blips as prices correct themselves, measured in hours or at most days, rather than weeks and months.

People who only need a few T7 mats don’t mind that their finished product costs 10 gold more than the TP price – thus the price for T7 mats will stay high. And I guess most people already/still have some T7 mats, so I don’t think that anyone really buys everything needed off the TP. I hope you get my point.

Even if you already own every material needed in your bank, if it’s more cost-effective to sell those materials and use that gold to buy the Precursor outright, and have money left over, than to craft it, then something has broken down in the process.

Ohoni.6057:

Even if you already own every material needed in your bank, if it’s more cost-effective to sell those materials and use that gold to buy the Precursor outright, and have money left over, than to craft it, then something has broken down in the process.

Quoting without quoting.. tisk.
Of course it is, guess why my nose is golden.
Let’s see if you guys will finally get it:
The price of the precurser is made by players – it isn’t set, never was although one could call it stable.
Most mats (except cloth and leather) are availlble to everyone in the same quantity. So what the players have created is an imaginary worth of precursers and T7 mats (wood and metal).
Anet nerfed leather I think. And that was a mistake – other than that it’s the players who are to blame for the current stuation.
There was no other way to make a legendary journey for the old precursers free. It would’ve made them worthless and there’s also the mat sink factor which might also be the reason why the new legendaries require T7 mats as well.

Edit: You can argue that the game forces you to play in a way you don’t like – I understand that actually. It took me half a year to finish my incinerator although I had everything except the dungeon tokens. So there’s always something one is “forced to do” in order to achieve something. And I wish I had been able to just buy that kitten tokens.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ohoni.6057:

It was never meant to make legendaries cheaper anyway.

Because that’s what we’ve been asking for since launch and what they should have delivered.

No, that’s not what “we” have been asking for — only some people wanted it. Most people asked for a way to get precursors that didn’t depend on saving a lot of money or getting lucky. Some thought that meant that the process would be cheaper; a lot did not.

Moreover, it’s only hellishly expensive now because the materials used are in high demand and low supply, because everyone and their sister is trying to worth on the same collections.

As in any economy, those in a rush to be first to get new shinies should expect to spend more, often a lot more. Those who are willing to wait will spend much less. (Although whether that’s less than pre-HoT prices remains to be seen.)

This.

The price of the precurser is made by players – it isn’t set, never was although one could call it stable.

No, the price of the precursors is made by Anet. Players participate in their process, but only as a farce, not as an actual force. There is no such thing as true “market forces” in the game, because ANet controls all the faucets, all the sinks.

In the real world, there is only so much iron to be found, and in various ways that are either efficient or inefficient to acquire it. And if you are building a sword out of iron, then it will take a certain fixed amount to produce the weapon. These are immutable facts of nature. Therefore, the price of swords will fluctuate based on how many people find it worthwhile to mine for iron, but ultimately they can’t change reality to suit their whims.

None of this is true in Tyria. The amount of iron that enters the economy is determined by ANet. They set how many iron nodes spawn, how much ore you can extract from each, and what alternate methods, such as salvaging weapons and “lumps” exist, and how much each of those provide. The practical use of those ore is also controlled by ANet. They determine what it’s possible to craft from iron, and they determine how useful those products are to the player. They also determine how much or how little of it is needed to produce those items.

If ANet determines that the price of Iron is higher than they would like, then they can cause new nodes to be available, or new items drop that can be salvaged for it, or they can reduce the amount of iron needed in certain key recipes that current require it. If they determine that the price of Iron is lower than they’d like to see, then they can remove node, or remove places where people could kill mobs for iron drops, or they can add new recipes that use iron, or up the amount of iron used by old recipes.

All of these methods have been employed at one point or another in the game’s lifespan, so don’t pretend for a second that this is mere speculation.

The players set the price they believe is fair given supply and demand, but ultimately ANet sets those supply and demand conditions. If they make something difficult to get, then supply will drop. If they make it easy to get, supply will rise. If they make something very useful then demand will rise, if they make it useless junk then demand will fall, all of these factors are in their control at any time.

So NO, they very absolutely cannot pass the buck for the price of an item on to the players, and nor can anyone else do it in their stead. The price is exactly what ANet chooses for it to be, and if it ever is not for any length of time, then they have the tools to fix that and choosing not to use them IS a decision on their part.

Ohoni.6057:

No, the price of the precursors is made by Anet. Players participate in their process, but only as a farce, not as an actual force. There is no such thing as true “market forces” in the game, because ANet controls all the faucets, all the sinks.

It isn’t made by anet, otherwise underwater precursers wouldn’t be dirt cheap and I’m pretty sure that the chances that any precurser will drop are equal. I don’t think anet ever changed that rate.

Ohoni.6057:

In the real world, there is only so much iron to be found, and in various ways that are either efficient or inefficient to acquire it.

Yeah, but we’re in a game and even with one character you’re able to gather a multiple of what you need for one Deldrimoor and Spiritwood a day.

Ohoni.6057:

None of this is true in Tyria. The amount of iron that enters the economy is determined by Anet. They set how many iron nodes spawn, how much ore you can extract from each, and what alternate methods, such as salvaging weapons and “lumps” exist, and how much each of those provide.

Yes, but like I said above, You can farm quite a lot of it still, you aren’t restricted to only x per day. Your restriction is 30-45 min for usual nodes to respawn, no respawn time if you’re using several characters to farm. That’s pretty generous actually.

Ohoni.6057:

If ANet determines that the price of Iron is higher than they would like, then they can cause new nodes to be available, or new items drop that can be salvaged for it, or they can reduce the amount of iron needed in certain key recipes that current require it.

Yes, they can and in case of softwood, cloth and leather they should. But they are a bit slow when it comes to that.

Ohoni.6057:

All of these methods have been employed at one point or another in the game’s lifespan, so don’t pretend for a second that this is mere speculation.

They did with Mithril a year ago but that only had a marginal effect, then they somehow increased the droprate of silk which had a momentarily huge effect and decreased the droprate of leather, increased the amount needed for leather crafting and added a new “recipe” which would use a lot of leather – that’s a typical example where they went wayyy over board again. Some day they might fix it. But nonetheless the effects most of these changes have are not as worse as you think.

Ohoni.6057:

The players set the price they believe is fair given supply and demand, but ultimately ANet sets those supply and demand conditions. If they make something difficult to get, then supply will drop. If they make it easy to get, supply will rise. If they make something very useful then demand will rise, if they make it useless junk then demand will fall, all of these factors are in their control at any time.

So you want everything to be useless junk so the mats required are cheap? And to who is it useless to anet or the players? If it’s the latter then who sets the price?

Ohoni.6057:

So NO, they very absolutely cannot pass the buck for the price of an item on to the players, and nor can anyone else do it in their stead. The price is exactly what ANet chooses for it to be, and if it ever is not for any length of time, then they have the tools to fix that and choosing not to use them IS a decision on their part.

I disagree. You want a precurser, so you either have to work or to pay for it. Those who sell it put the same effort into gathering it as the buyers would who decide to pass that effort. This is true for at least metal and wood.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Ohoni.6057:

It was never meant to make legendaries cheaper anyway.

Because that’s what we’ve been asking for since launch and what they should have delivered.

No, that’s not what “we” have been asking for — only some people wanted it. Most people asked for a way to get precursors that didn’t depend on saving a lot of money or getting lucky. Some thought that meant that the process would be cheaper; a lot did not.

Moreover, it’s only hellishly expensive now because the materials used are in high demand and low supply, because everyone and their sister is trying to worth on the same collections.

As in any economy, those in a rush to be first to get new shinies should expect to spend more, often a lot more. Those who are willing to wait will spend much less. (Although whether that’s less than pre-HoT prices remains to be seen.)

Keep on repeating that same statement over and over again and nothing will change.

Anet will be releasing new legendaries every 3 months as they claimed, and they’d still be asking all this “100 Deldrimor this”, “90 Spirit Wood that”, and market will still be chaotic every time the new legendaries released. Even guild hall upgrading is using the same material, and ask for EVEN LARGER quantaty.

So how long do you expect the market to be stable, when they keep on adding this sink again and again and again and not changing the supply, or not changing the formula of this stupid crafting system?

2 years?
By the time no-one play this game?

Quit being delusional. The market will never heal, or takes too long to heal from this if Anet still continue this process and change nothing. Things will only get worse, not better, because there’d be more legendaries to come, and the max level of Guild Hall is 99, which is an infinite amount of material/gold sink. We have been hoping new precursors share a different formula from the old ones so they don’t compete with each other, but clearly this does not happen.

When I started precursor crafting The Legend, it was actually cheaper than buying it on the TP. But now with the inflated mat prices it costed me like 100-200 gold more to craft. To me there is no point in precursor crafting. Friends suggested me to farm the mats myself, but then I am still better off selling the mats and buying the precursor on the TP. Do yourself a favor, don’t start precursor crafting and just buy it on the TP.

It isn’t made by anet, otherwise underwater precursers wouldn’t be dirt cheap and I’m pretty sure that the chances that any precurser will drop are equal. I don’t think anet ever changed that rate.

But they are that way because ANet allows them to be that way. John Smith said himself that he’s fine with objects of a supposedly equivalent tier having wildly different prices, Charged Lodestones being a specific example. If they decided otherwise, they could fix it. If they wanted the underwater precursors to cost as much as, say, Dusk, all they would need to do is dramatically lower their drop rate via the usual channels. That might take a while to have an impact if they did it quietly, but if they announced the change so that people wouldn’t have to do the math themselves, it would kick in fairly quickly. Of course, the true demand for underwater Legendaries is very low, they are purely a vanity item since underwater combat is so undervalued, but again, they could greatly up that by making underwater combat more important.

Likewise, with the terrestrial weapons, when they added new classes that made underused weapons more interesting, it bumped the Precursor prices and the prices for other rare skins.

Some markets they have very direct levers to play with and are very easy for them to manipulate, other markets either have such low supply or low demand that they are more difficult to tweak, but any situation can be nudged in the direction they want it to be if they so choose. There is push and pull, certainly, if they make a certain change the players might react in a way that softens the impact in the short term, but the eventual outcome would be inevitable, the more difficult/time consuming they make it to acquire something, the more it will rise in market value relative to its demand. The easier/faster they make it to acquire something, the more it will fall. The more useful/desirable they make an item to people, the more its price will rise relative to available supplies, the more useless they make it, the more its price will fall, and these factors are always at their fingertips without even having to touch the market controls directly.

Yeah, but we’re in a game and even with one character you’re able to gather a multiple of what you need for one Deldrimoor and Spiritwood a day.

Sure, but it requires time on your part, time that could be spent doing other things, and that time has non-zero value.

That’s why mithril and elder wood had relatively low market value when compared to the surrounding materials, because they were relatively easy to earn compared to other similar materials (since they heavily populated the more populous maps and could be salvaged from most level 80 drops). Now the sinks are a bit stronger so their value is rising again, but ANet still controls both factors. Silk is much higher value than mithril, not because there is some absolute universal Truth to that being the case, but rather because ANet chose to make it so that you cannot harvest silk from the world, causing natural supply to be far lower than most basic mats, and also made it so that you required twice as much of it as mithril in many core recipes, causing predictable demand to be significantly higher to achieve equivalent results.

If they’d instead chosen to allow you to harvest cloth from the world (as ESO did), and had Damask require the same amount of Silk as Deldrimore does Mithril (although one or both toned down slightly to account for metal being used in both armor and weapons), then the price of Silk would be equivalent to the price of Mithril.

They CHOSE for that not to be the case, and the outcome was entirely within their hands.

Yes, but like I said above, You can farm quite a lot of it still, you aren’t restricted to only x per day. Your restriction is 30-45 min for usual nodes to respawn, no respawn time if you’re using several characters to farm. That’s pretty generous actually.

And again, you can do that, or you can spend your time elsewhere. When players have to do things that are not inherently fun, things that they would not be doing if not for the “reward” of it, then the reward needs to be worth the time. In many cases, farming for mats is not what most players would consider worth the time to go out of their way. This is why items that occur in “meta” maps tend to have relatively lower market values to items that can only be found in “non-meta” maps, because less players are in those maps unless they are going there specifically to get those items.

So you want everything to be useless junk so the mats required are cheap? And to who is it useless to anet or the players? If it’s the latter then who sets the price?

That’s not the only tool they have. Everything is a case-by-case situation, but big picture I think the better levers would be in increasing supply of certain materials or reducing the amount needed by core recipes, in most cases. You don’t turn a cool item into junk, you just make it easier to put together, and therefore less effort on the part of the people making it, and therefore a lower expected price for it, because if you don’t offer a fair price then someone else will.

I disagree. You want a precurser, so you either have to work or to pay for it. Those who sell it put the same effort into gathering it as the buyers would who decide to pass that effort. This is true for at least metal and wood.

All true, of the current state of things, but everyone who put effort into getting that precursor put in exactly as much effort as ANet determined it would take. They harvested exactly as many nodes, killed exactly as many mobs, completed exactly as many quests, or spent exactly as much gold as ANet determined it should take, and if ANet decided to change any of those factors, then the amount of effort required would also change.

People asking for lower prices aren’t asking ANet to “declare” a new price for them by which the market must abide, they are asking ANet to change the conditions responsible for the current prices, so that players who sell them will feel that a lower price is fair relative to their new, lower efforts.

It’s actually pretty simple to quote someone
[qu ote = the number of the post; name ]

Ohoni.6057:

John Smith said himself that he’s fine with objects of a supposedly equivalent tier having wildly different prices, Charged Lodestones being a specific example. If they decided otherwise, they could fix it. If they wanted the underwater precursors to cost as much as, say, Dusk, all they would need to do is dramatically lower their drop rate via the usual channels.

Yes they could – welcome to a completely rigged game in which everybody is pampered and put into cotton wool as everything that remotely resembles reality is a no go.

Ohoni.6057:

Some markets they have very direct levers to play with and are very easy for them to manipulate, other markets either have such low supply or low demand that they are more difficult to tweak, but any situation can be nudged in the direction they want it to be if they so choose.

You’re right and they should tweak materials required here and there or increase their output. Speaking of silver dubloons, charged lodestones, quartz – but that has got nothing to do with precurser crafting as the mats for the precursers are availlable to everybody in the same amount and in fact they’re that plenty that increasing the nodes would miss us the forest for the trees.

Ohoni.6057:

Sure, but it requires time on your part, time that could be spent doing other things, and that time has non-zero value.

Time you spend otherwise in game still awards you with gold, so you can still buy what you need if you decide to not put the effort in.

Ohoni.6057:

And again, you can do that, or you can spend your time elsewhere.

That’s your choice actually and I heard that nothing pays as well as the Silver Wastes, so even if the price of the items farmed there is lower you probably get that many that it “evens out”

Ohoni.6057:

That’s not the only tool they have. Everything is a case-by-case situation, but big picture I think the better levers would be in increasing supply of certain materials or reducing the amount needed by core recipes, in most cases.

Since precurser prices dropped already since HoT I think the prices for everything (but cloth and leather) are fine right now.

Ohoni.6057:

..and if ANet decided to change any of those factors, then the amount of effort required would also change.

Yes and that would make precursers worth less – something anet tried/tries to avoid.

Ohoni.6057:

People asking for lower prices aren’t asking ANet to “declare” a new price for them by which the market must abide, they are asking ANet to change the conditions responsible for the current prices, so that players who sell them will feel that a lower price is fair relative to their new, lower efforts.

I think you people should be glad with what you’ve got when it comes to precursers. The only real point I see is with cloth and leather and some recipe requirements which could be lowered.

Edit: Something with the editing was wrong

Yes they could – welcome to a completely rigged game in which everybody is pampered and put into cotton wool as everything that remotely resembles reality is a no go.

Yes, I think of that ever time I’m PKed by some ganker in Queensdale. . . oh, wait. . .

This is a game that takes a very hard line against open world PvP, but is very embracing of economic PvP. Personally I’m not a fan of either.

Speaking of silver dubloons, charged lodestones, quartz – but that has got nothing to do with precurser crafting as the mats for the precursers are availlable to everybody in the same amount

Doubloons, lodestones and quartz are also available to everyone in the same amount. There’s no difference there. The only difference is that the quantity of those items that trickle into the world are relatively low, and the need for them, while not insubstantial, is relatively low to core materials, since only fringe items need any of them. The other items drop in much higher numbers, yes, but are also much more needed by all sorts of recipes, and often in very high quantities, so on balance they are not much better.

The prices on Precursor mats aren’t as bad as they possibly could be, but they aren’t as good as they could, and I believe should be either.

Time you spend otherwise in game still awards you with gold, so you can still buy what you need if you decide to not put the effort in.

But many activities do not provide nearly enough gold for that either. That’s the problem, not that it’s impossible to acquire these items through various means, but that these means are not nearly balanced enough against one another.

Since precurser prices dropped already since HoT I think the prices for everything (but cloth and leather) are fine right now.

That’s your opinion, the opinion of others differ. Many items could stand to come down considerably more.

Yes and that would make precursers worth less – something anet tried/tries to avoid.

And should not. Keep in mind, any item has it’s direct worth and it’s relative worth. The direct worth is how much you would want it even if everyone has one, and the indirect worth is how much you want it only because it’s uncommon. The direct worth of precursors would remain high no matter how common they are, but the current 500-1000g price range is more reflective of the difficulty and cost in acquiring them, not in what anyone actually wants to spend on one. The price really should come down, especially given that the Precursor alone is worthless to you, you have to then invest another huge chunk of resources in order to convert it into the actual prize.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, I think of that ever time I’m PKed by some ganker in Queensdale. . . oh, wait. . .

This is a game that takes a very hard line against open world PvP, but is very embracing of economic PvP. Personally I’m not a fan of either.

Doubloons, lodestones and quartz are also available to everyone in the same amount. There’s no difference there. The only difference is that the quantity of those items that trickle into the world are relatively low, and the need for them, while not insubstantial, is relatively low to core materials, since only fringe items need any of them.

There is a difference between node farming and mob farming. It’s called RNG. In most cases you can’t do something and expect the Item you want to drop – when node farming you know exactly what you get for your time. In case of Quarz node farming: You can only mine the nodes once a day with your account.
I do wonder why you contradict yourself here.

Ohoni.6057:

But many activities do not provide nearly enough gold for that either. That’s the problem, not that it’s impossible to acquire these items through various means, but that these means are not nearly balanced enough against one another.

That’s your self made problem.

Ohoni.6057:

The direct worth of precursors would remain high no matter how common they are,

Not really as the “direct worth” is now entirely in the hands of the players.

Ohoni.6057:

but the current 500-1000g price range is more reflective of the difficulty and cost in acquiring them, not in what anyone actually wants to spend on one.

No, only in your head.

Ohoni.6057:

The price really should come down, especially given that the Precursor alone is worthless to you, you have to then invest another huge chunk of resources in order to convert it into the actual prize.

No and no – I’m actually using spark as a skin.

TL; DR:
All those complaining about the prices of Deldrimoor Steeland Spiritwood Planks made their own problems – the prices for those and the precursers are made by the players. If you don’t like it, don’t do it.

Everytime there’s an RNG factor in requiring mats though it’s debateable whether or not the drop rate should be increased.

And that is my answer to those complaining that “the precurser is cheaper than all Deldrimoor add together on the TP” – with that I’ve said everything I had to say (multiple times actually) – have fun whatever you do.

Oh and Ohoni, please learn how to quote properly.

Ohoni.6057:

I have to challenge that because Anet never came out and said “We are making craftable precursors so legendaries are more obtainable”. It’s simply an option for people that don’t want to play TP/MF.

Except that it requires roughly as much “playing the TP” as just buying the thing, only with more outside work on top of that.

So what? No really … if you’re the kind of player that simply wants to craft it, you don’t care what other methods allow you to do to get a legendary; mutually exclusive.

There is a difference between node farming and mob farming. It’s called RNG. In most cases you can’t do something and expect the Item you want to drop – when node farming you know exactly what you get for your time. In case of Quarz node farming: You can only mine the nodes once a day with your account.

Yes, you can only mine each one once per day, but anyone can do it and there are plenty of them out there to accumulate a decent haul. It’s not like it’s impossible to farm all the quartz you’d ever need using your own picks.

Not really as the “direct worth” is now entirely in the hands of the players.

Not in any realistic sense. I mean, you can make the argument that players could just arbitrarily decide to list their The Legends at 300g if they wanted to, so it’s technically “in the players’ hands,” but that would go against thousands of years of human nature. It’s a nonsense argument to make.

Players will inevitably aim to get the best price they can for things, pricing them as high as they think the market will bear. The price is not caused by individual players deciding what to price things, it’s caused by the systems in place that create conditions in which certain items are more desired by players than they are supplied to them, leading to higher prices for those items. The solution will never be players just arbitrarily deciding to lower their prices without any compelling supply/demand rationale behind it, the solution has to come in the form of changes to the distribution method of the items, or to the function of the items, that would result in a realistic drop in prices.

No and no – I’m actually using spark as a skin.

I forgot that they updated the Pre skins, you used to be able to get identical skins for single digit gold, so I suppose now they at least have some value as skins, but still the main point for most players is to upgrade them to full Legendaries.

All those complaining about the prices of Deldrimoor Steeland Spiritwood Planks made their own problems – the prices for those and the precursers are made by the players. If you don’t like it, don’t do it.

NO.

The prices for those items are not made by players, they are the inevitable reaction to decisions made by the developers about how many materials go into their constuction, how those materials can be acquired, and what use the final product has. Players are completely powerless, in any realistic scenario, to change the market price of those materials from the level determined by ANet’s choices, and trying to present the situation as anything different is just being disingenuous at best.

So what? No really … if you’re the kind of player that simply wants to craft it, it shouldn’t matter to you what other methods allow; mutually exclusive.

Of course other methods matter. It’s a genuine fairness issue. People are hardwired to appreciate fairness, and even if you can get the thing you want one way, if someone else can get it a much easier way then most people regard that as being unjust, and have a natural negative emotional reaction to that injustice. Trying to explain that they shouldn’t feel that way is pointless.

It’s not a genuine fairness issue; I’m going to challenge the idea that Anet implemented any of the available methods to get a precursor with fairness as a factor. It’s a CHOICE issue. You’re trying to make this complicated because complicated suits your arguments. Really, it’s simple. The point of crafting precursors is about choice for players. You pick the choice that is best suited to your playstyle. Now that we have crafted precursors, I think that the core playstyles are captured.

It’s not a genuine fairness issue; I’m going to challenge the idea that Anet implemented any of the available methods to get a precursor with fairness as a factor. It’s a CHOICE issue. You’re trying to make this complicated because complicated suits your arguments. Really, it’s simple. The point of crafting precursors is about choice for players.

And choice is not choice unless the two options are reasonably in balance.

That’s ridiculous. It’s a choice whether or not the options are in balance; there are tons of choices that aren’t balanced; you make the choices that best suit you. For example, if balance is the main factor you use in how you make a decision on your choice, you choose based on what you consider the MOST balanced. Anet has simply expanded the choices available to take into account more of the things that players value. Some players might decide their main factor has nothing to do with balance, so may not arrive at the same choice you did. Your perspective is very narrow.

I think my only complaint (or I just don’t know) is that the new Legendaries are only available through crafted precursors. THIS I don’t like. Whenever my choices as a player are limited, that’s a problem. Crafted precursors and however Anet decided to implement them are not.

What I originally thought precursor crafting would be like:

1 – get a base weapon, maybe a unique crafted item, comparable in cost to any standard crafted exotic, or more expensive, cost here doesn’t matter

2 – Apply various things to weap, to temper it, to strengthen it, to improve it
a – Maybe you need the waters from some specific place combined with ore’s that have been imbued with magic. (Maybe you have to have said ore and you have to put it into lava, several times, gated by time, because you do it too often too fast and the blade will shatter)

3 – Carry this weapon with you, doin various events or dungeons or fractals, or killing world bosses, further imbuing it with magical power. (anyone read the manga Berserk? where Guts’ sword has become imbued with power from all that he has killed?)
Maybe get struck by lighting several times for zap lol.

Imagine having to kill Zhaitan with a lvl 10 greatsword, that’d kind of be hilarious and awesome to me.

4 – and so on…..

Something like what we did to make Mawdrey, or the Black Moa Chick in GW1, but on a more grand, legendary scale.
Sure, there should be costs, there should be time invested, and maybe it still would cost a lot even with this method, maybe to smother the weapon with melted ectoplasm or something.
But to cost as much as buying outright + the time invested… because time “should” equal money… that doesn’t make much sense.

To make a real life example: Cleaning your house – costs a little money for supplies and the rest is time spent, OR hire people, you go n do your thing elsewhere, come back home and your house is clean for $100.
With Precursor crafting, you’re cleaning your house yourself and buying all the cleaning tools and what not for $100, to clean it once. Because you only buy things in travel size when you clean, who buys bulk anymore???