Guild Wars 2

Thou shall not make a profit – that is what the Gem store is for.

mrstealth.6701:

You are trying to compare someone buying up an item which has a total supply of about 5 to an item with supply in the thousands, that just had that supply greatly increased.

It’s easy to fully control the supply of Twilight (assume you have the funds) because there is very little supply. I would expect people that can do this to buy them out, and relist them to make a profit.

The comparison only goes as far as people willingly wasting money. Because they can as it no longer holds value to them.

Seeing as how the recipe from this topic didn’t actually drop tens of thousands of ectos into the market from thin air (no matter how much Anet / white knights would say), of course then, I wouldn’t expect the TP barons to be buying like mad.

However, if the market had been impacted by the creation of ectos enmasse through it’s more than possible that thousands of blind orders would have filled by TP barons in a buy race.

Especially if that race has 50 or so people in it, all clicking “buy” with 250 remaining in the box with every press. Even more so when only a matter of a few thousand ectos separate from the 30s price point up to 1g price point. When I mentioned 1.2g initially I was being a bit extreme. In reality, 40s would have been realistic, but my response to the fake story still remains that prices during the event remained lower than 29s the entire time. And also never went lower than 24s.

There was never a huge flood that prompted mass purchased from those who could and would buy them.

So the whole discussion is really moot, since it started over a false story.

ThiBash.5634:

Kuruptz.4782:

there is small chance some ppl got banned not knowing that is a exploit but I’m 99% sure the majority knew this was an exploit

To be honest, I still don’t get why this is considered such an obvious exploit.

If you’d have a 100% chance to get your materials back + ectos, then yes, I’d agree it’s obviously an exploit.

But a 90% chance still means there’s a good chance at a failure…so I honestly don’t get why it should be an offense worthy of perma bans? Why not simply remove the items, give a warning, maybe a temporary block and be done with it?

Why must players suffer the loss of their account simply because Anet made a mistake? Just so everyone can see how tough they are as a gaming company?

The bigger question is why was their response time so SLOW if it was such a serious thing. That’s not a good sign of good management.

evo.8640:

mrstealth.6701:

You are trying to compare someone buying up an item which has a total supply of about 5 to an item with supply in the thousands, that just had that supply greatly increased.

It’s easy to fully control the supply of Twilight (assume you have the funds) because there is very little supply. I would expect people that can do this to buy them out, and relist them to make a profit.

The comparison only goes as far as people willingly wasting money. Because they can as it no longer holds value to them.

Seeing as how the recipe from this topic didn’t actually drop tens of thousands of ectos into the market from thin air (no matter how much Anet / white knights would say), of course then, I wouldn’t expect the TP barons to be buying like mad.

However, if the market had been impacted by the creation of ectos enmasse through it’s more than possible that thousands of blind orders would have filled by TP barons in a buy race.

Especially if that race has 50 or so people in it, all clicking “buy” with 250 remaining in the box with every press. Even more so when only a matter of a few thousand ectos separate from the 30s price point up to 1g price point. When I mentioned 1.2g initially I was being a bit extreme. In reality, 40s would have been realistic, but my response to the fake story still remains that prices during the event remained lower than 29s the entire time. And also never went lower than 24s.

There was never a huge flood that prompted mass purchased from those who could and would buy them.

So the whole discussion is really moot, since it started over a false story.

If their actions are being dictated by the price of ecto, then they still value money as well. If they didn’t care about money, they would simply buy up all the ecto, no matter the price.

Looking at what actually happened…the price ecto of dropped sharply the day the event started. Not a huge change, but a very sharp change in the month’s overall price curve. Sell orders count went down a good bit, likey from people buying the ecto to supply their initial crafting batches or from speculators hoping the new recipes would increase demand. This apparent buying spree (number of listed sell orders dropping) was before the price drop of ecto.

Shortly after, a huge number of buy orders were filled, the number of buy orders quickly dropped by around 30,000. This was also before the ecto price dropped. Since the price had not dropped yet, I will assume that the majority of those buy orders were filled with the new influx of ecto. Some may have been delisted by a buyer aware of the sitation and hoping to relist at a lower buy price later, but I’d bet most were from order actually being filled.

The number of buy and sell orders quickly returned to their previous numbers, as the price of ecto continued to drop. The number of sell orders went up drastically in the week after this, peaking on the 28th at over 66,000, more than 2x its previous highest of just under 28,000. This peak was well after the ecto prices had went back up to a midpoint between the pre-event price and the price-crash low.

This points to the fact that there was a large increase in the supply of ecto, that lead to a rapid price crash, and many people rushing to fill buy orders. Had traders rushed to spam the buy button, there would have been a decrease in the number of sell orders listed after the price drop. The only dips in sell order listings came before the price dropped, and again after it had already gone back up and leveled off..

Soul.5947:

My question is where did i agree that anet can ban me from the game for their mistakes when i purchased the game ? An exploit is usually considered something hard to find and not something obvious to everyone. This is crafting so excuse me if i don’t consider this an exploit. Btw nice job ruining the holly-days for everyone that got banned.

By this logic, it could be said that anybody who’s ever had their house broken into is at fault for accidently leaving a window open. ANet left a window open. It happens. Even the best of bug-squashing teams will miss something. The correct reaction would have been ‘Hey I better report this…’ rather than ‘Hey how can I make stupid amounts of gold from this?’ IMO

Erasculio.2914:

The fact it had such a higher return than the other recipes you admittedly knew about, and that it was different enough that you actually tried crafting a rare jewel instead of your usual options (daggers and warhorns) shows how you understood it was not the same thing. In other words, how it was something in a different order of magnitude from other recipes in the game, which you quickly tried to make a profit from, even if you failed.

In other words, how it was an exploit you tried to abuse.

This is one leap of logic that has a hole in it. If you are looking for scales, and you find that naga drop them more often, so you start fighting naga more often…by your resoning, that’s an exploit?

AcidicVision.5498:

Valmarius.4150:

AcidicVision.5498:

mrstealth.6701:

If the line between legit and exploit gets any muddier people are going to prevent themselves from crossing it by simply not playing this game anymore. Maybe we need an offical post on what amount of gold earned per hour is considered acceptable. :\

I know someone, who has since been banned, that made over 4,000 gold in less than four hours from the snowflake recipe. Now tell me if you consider over a 1,000 gold an hour from a novelty recipe to be acceptable or legit.

Edit: I thought I had a screencap but I couldn’t find it. The number was somewhere along the lines of 4,195.

Those are crazy numbers. I’d take 100 gold an hour to be an obvious exploit, never mind 1,000.

yeah, thats where people are generally kittening up. They seem to think this was just a few gold and that you could get comparable results other ways and that the people banned may not have known that it wasn’t intended.

We aren’t talking about the people that might have turned 100g or only done the recipe 5-10 times before realizing something was up. We are talking about people that crafted and salvaged for hours straight earning in the thousands. Enough to casually buy precursors and legendaries to try to flip.

They were in the process of crashing the market for one of the rarest materials in the game. That is not a small scale issue caused by typical crafting. For that type of change to happen in two days on a supply from 24+ collective servers, there was some serious exploitation occurring. I’d like to see ectos drop over 10s in price in less than 48 hours from people crafting/salvaging pauldrons. It would never happen.

So what people are saying it seems is that its ok to exploit a little but just dont get greedy and do it a bunch because then its bad…this generation is so kittened up in the head. Wrong is wrong 100% of the time theres no grey area and by not punishing, continue to allow those that did this exploit “a little” to go unpunished sends a direct message to potential future bug exploiters to just exploit a little and not get greedy or you might get banned.

Selective enforcement is a slippery slope.

So in the end, some of my best friends in the game now have their accounts terminated because they helped contribute to making the price of ecto go from 35s to 25s and the price of Mithril Ore go from 24c to 50c.

Forgive me if I don’t find that result to be egregiously damaging to the game economy. As a multitude of others have mentioned, the market reached equilibrium prior to the fix, which is what you’d expect in a healthy market economy. I don’t see how any of that is damaging. So what if the exchange rate of mithril:ecto changed temporarily? There is no free lunch in the economic exchange that people are now banned for; hell, I don’t even think the godskull people were exploiting. Eventually the price of large skulls increased to equilibrium there, too.

The difference between a duping exploit and a market imbalance caused by an undervalued asset is that in market imbalance, equilibrium is reached as the market corrects. When there is a duping exploit, there cannot be a correction as there is infinite supply and the market collapses.

I’m almost tempted to get my tinfoil hat out again after reading this thread…

I guess I see it pretty simply: Don’t exploit. Period. It ruins the game for everyone.

If you find an exploit that the devs missed, report it.

If you know people who are exploiting, kick them from your guilds and report them.

If you are taking advantage of an exploit, you might want to have a look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself some hard questions about your character.

I don’t care if ArenaNet made a mistake with their coding, or overlooked something. If you exploit, you are making the game suck for me and everyone else, and if I find out about it, I will report you.

I dont agree with you Doc. An increased supply of Ectos affects the econonmy on many levels. For starters there is the direct effect we observed in just a couple of days. Price of Ectos dropped from 35s to 25s. If all you’re interested in is buying ectos this might seem a good thing but it isnt especially for people who dont exploit.

Think about it for a second if the price of ecto falls so will the price of Rare gear because well rare gear is mostly used to generate ectos. That means if you’re PvEing and you get a rare drop and try to sell it you will not find people willing to buy it off you for 20s – 25s when the price of ectos is 25s, why? because by buying the rare there is no guarantee they’re going to get the ecto and if they do they will be saving nearly nothing. on the other hand it makes sense to buy rares for 20s if the price of ectos is 35s because well you save some money.

It also effects crafting. If you’re a crafter and are trying to make a profit (no one does it for charity) a drop in prices isnt really in your best interest. If you’re crafting a weapon that needs say 50 ectos and ectos sell for 25s you have to do a markup over 12g 50s if Ectos cost 35s you have to markup something that costs 17g 50s to make. if you mark up by 10% with ectos at 25s you’ll be making 1g 15s profit while with ectos at 35% you’ll make 1g 75s profit.

And this is based on only a couple of days. If this was allowed to run prices would probably have continued to fall and fall making the situation worst and worst.

Thats the direct effect, there is also an indirect effect. The economy suffers when you have rich people that happen to be a bit greedy. So think about your example someone making 4000g. With that kind of money he can monopolize segments of the market. How about using those 4000g to buy say all abyss dyes from the market and reselling them at double the price?

This was not as benign as you think in my opinion

I haven’t been banned, I haven’t played the game much at all lately since the perceived loot drop has killed any enjoyment I had in the game as a casual player (I’m just a gamer that loves the excitement of getting cool things).
I haven’t even read through this entire thread. However, there is one question that begs to be answered in regards to this:

If the player base had listed the snowflakes at a much higher price, would the bans existed?

A few things that don’t line up. If this “exploit” was so damaging to the game economy because it caused a lot of gold to enter in, why did they allow about 17 days before banning people? Isn’t the damage already done? Isn’t the gold possibly long gone by now?

Also Gold was not “created” through a game mechanic, but generated from other players. Since materials were bought and sold on the TP to “create” gold it could be argued that since a % of each transaction is taken away, this was actually a gold sink overall for the economy while allowing some players to gain gold.

You could also argue the fact price changes on the TP did not damage the economy. Ectoes went down and raw materials went up, I’m sure many people made money on the shifted prices.

Explain to me in simple terms how this broke the economy?

Galen Grey.4709:

post

Here’s the thing (imo): you’re correct that increased supply of ecto has an effect on the market. But I don’t see how the economy is damaged. If ecto price drops, exotics and rares drop too, hurting people who use those items to gain money (crafters included). These people may be hurt, and the hurt may be directly caused by the exploit, but I do not qualify this as a damaged economy. It’s just a changed economy, where said practices are less economically viable, and where in turn other practices become more economically viable. People getting pushed out of their comfort zone =/= objectively hurt.
If Anet increased the drop rate for ecto, the same thing would happen as with this exploit: more supply > chain reaction. It’s ludicrous to say that Anet increasing ecto drop rates would damage the economy, is it not?

I never used this system to make gold, I hate people who exploit the TP and the already kittened up economy (which is a DISASTER and my biggest complaint about this game)… but it’s no reason to ban.
It’s anet fault, that’s how they programmed the game, they have testers and all and they are fine with the kittened up economy (because they want to sell gems for gold) so you can’t blame the players to try to make some kitten money.

Oh, and what about the godskull bug abusers? Were they all banned too?
Because, you know, those guys are most likely the very ones who control the market now.

OK gonna make a repost of part of a reply from earlier , seems i got infracted over “discussion of customer supoort decisions” even thou i was just speculating why Arenanet was waving the ban hammer so hard and nothig specific.

This section doesnt touch on that so hopefully will be in the rules :

Well there seems to be a lot of speculation about how much people made on this , with incredible figures being posted of thousands and thousands of gold.

OK ill give you some fairly accurate figures base ( and yes they will be at the extreme end of the scale) , its kinda up to you if you believe them or not.

As I said in a previous post near the start of this thread , I spotted this money making scheme on saturday afternoon and happily chatted about it in guild chat ( hey I managed to get 20 people banned with doing this :P ).
Did not see anything wrong with that at all, infact my whole conversation was along the lines of

“oh you know that trick salavaging rare shoulders to make some money , well think i have spotted another one with some of the crap to make it being sold ridiculously cheap. see it all depends on the price people are gonna sell these snowflakes for and atm they havent a clue and selling em really cheap. Now if you want to make money on this you better get in asap before they start to climb in price and make this just another marginally profitable recipe " ( and yes this is a paraphrase as i cant remeber exact word i used over mumble).

Ofc quite a lot of players then went on to make some money out of this.

Now one person actually went little crazy on making em, as they wanted to make as much gold from it possible while the prices allowed it.

Since it was a weekend and they had monday off work , they done it constantly from saturday afternnon till monday evening. When i say constantly i pretty much mean that yeh apart from sleeping a bit they did it constantly.

I would say he crafted from what I see for about 57 hours

Saturday 1pm – 4 am Sunday
Sunday 10 am -4 am Monday
Monday 10 am – about midnight

This is what i meant about extreme end of the spectrum as thats a hell of a lot of hours to put into it in that time frame. On the monday I had constant comments from him that the market was adjusting on pricing and it was becoming marginal to make any cash from it.

So from his investment of 57 hours of mind numbing boring behavior of craft and salvage the $64000 dollar question is how much did he make ?

yes it was a lot , infact it was about 750 Gold but thats no where near the thosands and thousands people are claiming people made.

Overall comes out something like 13g/hour , yes high figures but not unrealistic really for being a “early adopter” of a new feature/recipe/release in a mmo.

I just don’t see how this is truly an exploit. Yes you got more ectos from the item then you put in, but isn’t that how a business works? You make something for a cheap price and sell it for more on the open market?

I just don’t understand all this hoopla.

Here’s what I was doing at one time a month or 2 ago.

I would make leather bags. The cost of the materials were 15 silver, the price on the TM was 25. That’s a 40% profit on my end. I kept doing this until the market evened out for the mats vs profits. Is this considered an exploit? I just don’t see how this snowflake issue is any different.

The only people who cant understand it, are those who deliberately fail to understand it. Its even right there in the OP.

15 T5 Mats + 3 Bolts of Silk + 1 Cured leather thick hide + 11 Silk string = 0 to 3 ectos + 1 to 3 silk scraps. ( might not be 100% accurate working from memory atm) (and no T5 items back or 1-2 T5 items back)

1 Ectoplasm + Pristine Snowflake + Orichalcum or Mithril Ore (12)
=0-3 Ectos +1-2 Mith/ Ori Ore + chance to get Snowflake Back

Just like every other jewlcrafting recipe.

Oh just like every other jewelcrafting recipe? Like this?
Beryl Mithril Ring
Ingredients:
1X Mithril Setting[s]
1X Mithril Band[s]
3X Embellished Brilliant Beryl Jewel[s]

3X Embellished Brilliant Beryl Jewel[s]

3X

3

I wouldnt say just like when other jewelcrafting recipies you at most get back 1/3 of jewels back. Again, deliberately ignoring the obvious.

Rogacz.9865:

Just like every other jewlcrafting recipe.

Oh just like every other jewelcrafting recipe? Like this?
Beryl Mithril Ring
Ingredients:
1X Mithril Setting[s]
1X Mithril Band[s]
3X Embellished Brilliant Beryl Jewel[s]

3X Embellished Brilliant Beryl Jewel[s]

3X

3

I wouldnt say just like when other jewelcrafting recipies you at most get back 1/3 of jewels back. Again, deliberately ignoring the obvious.

You are ignoring the new component — the snowflake. Sure it can be reused, but what if you lost it and they were priced at 1g? This was a new recipe--it’s hard to believe that all recipes would stay the same with new updates and whatnot.

The following is not by any means a repost of my infracted and deleted post earlier in this thread.

Way I see it:
A developer can sometimes make an oversight (it happens) > people generate ecto.
Does generating ecto damage the economy? It does not. No gold entered the market, therefore no inflation and what not. Just an increased supply of ecto. Hell lmao, ecto got cheaper therefore more accessible. The exploiters did the casuals a favor; a win-win. For the record, yeah this was obviously exploiting. The fact that a game’s developer made the exploit possible doesn’t really change that.
So what harm was done? People made hella money by selling ecto. Nota bene: selling ecto is no exploit, the easy generating of ecto was the exploit. Still though, hella money. Which the exploiters didn’t “deserve” (this can be the only reason for sanction, as the economy was not damaged, leaving out speculations such as “they made money then they started powertrading and buying up all the supply then artificially rasing prices etc!!!”). Whether they deserved it or not is subjective, but lets say they didn’t.
Enter sense of righteousness and the capability to do something about it. Sanction time! Now how harshly shall we punish? My view in punishing players in a video game:
- Perma ban: when massive damage is done to the game and/or its players, be it through the economy or some form of mass griefing (which afaik isn’t possible in gw2) or whatever you can come up with.
- Temp ban and/or alternative sanctions: when no damage was done to the game and/or its players, but instead an individual person or group made unfair winnings of any kind (again, be it through the economy or whatever other exploit you can think of).
It’ll come as no surprise that I believe the second sanction fits the “crime” way better. If I were to be in a position of power in such a situation, I would temp ban (say 6 weeks?) and on top of that, most importantly, confiscate the winnings from “criminal activity”. So If a dude made 4000 gold, you take it all away. That you can’t determine exactly how much he profited is not usually an issue. Just take a lot. Its OK to take away more than the exploiter gained, this additional part can be considered the ‘fine’. How much is OK to fine? Frankly, I dont know. I’m OK with a heavy fine though. Noone likes the rich in a video game, so when you have an excuse to get ’em, go hit ’em where it hurts.
No to perma banning though. It would could very well be argued that such a decision could be determined to be a primitive decision.

PS: If one in a position of authority were to ‘allow’ the exploit, and god forbid stimulated this particular exploit, then said authority should definitely not be punishing “offenders”. Seriously devilish stuff right there if this is the case.

You are ignoring the new component — the snowflake. Sure it can be reused, but what if you lost it and they were priced at 1g? This was a new recipe—it’s hard to believe that all recipes would stay the same with new updates and whatnot.

The price is irrelevant. The issue was it should have required 3 jewels, and during salvaging return only 1, like every other nonexotic jewelery. The issue is obvious, and has nothing to do with TP prices like some people would like to assume.

Not to mention the obvious fact that it has surpassed other jewels in price ONLY because the recipe required JUST ONE JEWEL INSTEAD OF 3. Not for any other far fetched reason.

TP only comes into play because the created loop produced ecto’s which serve as gold stabilizing agent, and because other crafting materials were affected (like mithril).

And yes, its actually easy to believe that recipes will follow the exact same general format, and we wont suddenly get cloth armor that will suddenly be salvagable in such a way that you get back insignia or ingnia worth of mats in addition to other highly valuable mats.

Obvious exploit is obvious, and punishment, while strict, was well deserved.

To answer the main question in the first post (if it hasn’t been somewhere on these last 4 pages), I’m going to paraphrase some response I read from a moderator on another thread. This moderator mentioned that it was not statistically unlikely to double some of the mats (ectoplasms I presume) by crafting then salvaging. Apparently, this is one of the central dogmas in their entire crafting system and should be expected to always apply.
So it seems that this, rather than profit margin is why they consider this an exploit.

Now I’ll add a personal opinion about this, if you’re tired of these by now feel free to skip it.

I am personally very against using exploits that harm other players and applaud bans when I feel it was nigh impossible to commit these exploits not knowing they were such. If I was more active on this forum I might already have been mistakenly called an “Anet fan boy” for this stance.
However, if I had found out about this one when it was still possible, I might myself have failed to recognize this as an exploit and for these reasons:

-early discoverers of recipes/crafting gimmicks have often made loads of money from buying cheap materials from the still uninformed public. So making a lot of money from something like this would not automatically trigger my “exploit” alarm.
-In other jewelery pieces, the core gem can also be gotten back by a chance as big as the upgrade recovery stated on the salvage kit being used. This is not an exploit (I sincerely hope).
-As the OP pointed out, this is only profitable as long as the materials stay cheap. The same goes for any crafting recipe, whether to salvage or sell, and whether there is RNG involved or not.
-The difference in ectoplasms needed for other jewels of the same tier could have been attributed to it being a special christmas recipe or a company decision to reduce the cost of ectoplasms. This last one would have seemed a bit of a strange strategy to me but it’s not like I always understand Anet’s decisions.
-The reason they seems to consider this an exploit (as paraphrased earlier) is not an obvious one.

Some more clarification on the last point:
True, I can in retrospect not think of any crafting item that has a (non marginal) chance to yield more of a type of item needed to craft it than actually was used. However, I only realised this when I read the post of said moderator. Nowhere in game (or outside) did I encounter something/someone telling me that an item should always adhere to this rule.
So since it is never mentioned, does that mean I have to be able to logically assume this? I have been scolded for being too logical in the past, but when it comes to game mechanics, that’s where my logic ends. The silk recipes the OP mentioned yield a material on salvage that is not even used to make it. This is also not logical, and again I sincerely hope this is not an exploit.

Concluding, I believe that most of the people banned, most of the people on this forum (even most of those who are trolling the banned people right now) and in general most people playing this game would not have recognized this for an exploit, except perhaps now in retrospect.

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

Galen Grey.4709:

post

Here’s the thing (imo): you’re correct that increased supply of ecto has an effect on the market. But I don’t see how the economy is damaged. If ecto price drops, exotics and rares drop too, hurting people who use those items to gain money (crafters included). These people may be hurt, and the hurt may be directly caused by the exploit, but I do not qualify this as a damaged economy. It’s just a changed economy, where said practices are less economically viable, and where in turn other practices become more economically viable. People getting pushed out of their comfort zone =/= objectively hurt.
If Anet increased the drop rate for ecto, the same thing would happen as with this exploit: more supply > chain reaction. It’s ludicrous to say that Anet increasing ecto drop rates would damage the economy, is it not?

I think it is. The exploit made it so that once you start the cycle a single ecto would cost about 3s to aquire. If the exploit had continued to run indefinitely it is safe to assume that people undercutting each other would have resulted in an ecto price somewhere in the range of 3s 1c to say 5s . That would have killed the market for rares in my opinion. If rare drops netted just 5s doing PvE wouldnt be viable anymore, people would gravitate towards dungeons and a whole market would die. Same goes for crafting, if margines are small the majority of players will stop selling wares again another market is death. Thats not to say the economy as a whole would collapse, it wouldnt no doubt but no one looks at the TP and says the economy is entirely healthy when looking at say masterworks which nearly all sell at a loss.

This is way bigger then going out of your comfort zone in my opinion, left unchecked it would certainly drive away people from certain playstyles because the economy for the products you aquire from those play style would be dead.

Yes if Anet increased the drop rate of things dramatically they can damage the economy no doubt about it. The economy depends on scarcity. If I want to craft something and I need 15 sharp claws I will consider outright buying them if I know I might need to spend an hour farming mobs to get those 15 sharp claws but If I knew killing 15 mobs would net me all the 15 claws I need I would just harvest them myself. That would result in sharp claws that are extremely cheap in order to entice people into buying them just to save a few minutes. It will also result in gear that uses sharp claws to also be extremely cheap because else people will just craft it themselves. Imagine if this would be true of everything include lodestones. Do you think anyone would bother with the TP? Not likely in my opinion.

A healthy economy requires a balance between supply and demand. A large supply can be disasterous. Even in the real world, while its a shame you can even find stories of farmers destroying their product just to ensure that an over abandant supply doesnt destory their market.

Rogacz.9865:

You are ignoring the new component — the snowflake. Sure it can be reused, but what if you lost it and they were priced at 1g? This was a new recipe—it’s hard to believe that all recipes would stay the same with new updates and whatnot.

The price is irrelevant. The issue was it should have required 3 jewels, and during salvaging return only 1, like every other nonexotic jewelery. The issue is obvious, and has nothing to do with TP prices like some people would like to assume.

Not to mention the obvious fact that it has surpassed other jewels in price ONLY because the recipe required JUST ONE JEWEL INSTEAD OF 3. Not for any other far fetched reason.

TP only comes into play because the created loop produced ecto’s which serve as gold stabilizing agent, and because other crafting materials were affected (like mithril).

And yes, its actually easy to believe that recipes will follow the exact same general format, and we wont suddenly get cloth armor that will suddenly be salvagable in such a way that you get back insignia or ingnia worth of mats in addition to other highly valuable mats.

Obvious exploit is obvious, and punishment, while strict, was well deserved.

Ok thats your opinion , and I respect it.
Personally i think its the other way around

some people used this to generate money with no thought that it could even possible be a exploit, as ive said many times its uses the same process to make money as outlined in my original post.

Yes its different from other jewellry recipes, it was also a new recipe that used a new unique component that i would imagine a lot of people was unsure about the rarity of and also how long that the item was going to be available due to it being a “wintersday” item.

I still feel there is reasonable grounds to give people the benefit of the doubt about there actions as some may have perceived this as a “exploit” but i bet a lot just thought "ooh something new , wow i can make money of that " and never even gave it a second thought .

Assigning the motivation " you knew you was exploiting , hahahaha serves you right " to everyone caught up in this is not only unfair is a very broad generalisation about people motives .

@Doc @TrapjaW I totally agree. Another thing that’s been bothering me is how much it really affected people? And do people know why exploiting is bad?

It’s bad when it hurts you. The major thing is affected was the ecto selling (NOT buying) business. Do we really have a lot of people selling ectos? And regardless, ectos is used so much, I would like to think having more ectos more accessible was a good thing for most players (maybe not the economy). If you really don’t want people to be rich—-it’s pretty easy—Don’t buy from the TP

But sometimes I get the feeling that most pro-ban people are witch hunters with pitch forks. But it really caused no detrimental harm. It didn’t cost anyone here there lifetime savings nor their hours invested, but you know what, it cost the ban people everything. And looking at how some people react to the situation, it’s just so wrong. I don’t know how other players can look at them that way. They weren’t grieving you or anything. And I can’t imagine how much they impacted your day to day life except it would be 200 people richer than you that you would be possibly jealous about. But that takes an easy (gold reset) and a temp ban so they fall behind. A perm ban is just too much for this incident.

Special recipes that require a limited event item, it isn’t safe to assume the recipe wouldn’t be special?

The bigger question, which nobody has answered. If this had such a hugely damaging effect on the economy that people MUST be perma-banned, why did they wait 17 days? Wouldn’t the gold already mostly be circulated back into the economy and prices returned nearly to the pre-winter’s day pricing? Not to mention there is a significant amount of money REMOVED from the economy due to TP usage?

Being perma-banned seems kind of harsh. A much more reasonable action would have been maybe a two week suspension. There would have been much less of a community outcry while still punishing the offenders.

BroScientist.9875:

Being perma-banned seems kind of harsh. A much more reasonable action would have been maybe a two week suspension. There would have been much less of a community outcry while still punishing the offenders.

I think that’s the main point of this incident. I don’t care whether it could be deemed an exploit or not. But the punishment was way too harsh for it’s degree of impact. Unless ArenaNet could show how many people left the game due to this problem. But in addition to a temp ban, a gold reset too or individual rollback if their tech is powerful enough).

ArcTheFallen.7682:

@Doc @TrapjaW I totally agree. Another thing that’s been bothering me is how much it really affected people? And do people know why exploiting is bad?

It’s bad when it hurts you. The major thing is affected was the ecto selling (NOT buying) business. Do we really have a lot of people selling ectos? And regardless, ectos is used so much, I would like to think having more ectos more accessible was a good thing for most players (maybe not the economy). If you really don’t want people to be rich—-it’s pretty easy—Don’t buy from the TP

But sometimes I get the feeling that most pro-ban people are witch hunters with pitch forks. But it really caused no detrimental harm. It didn’t cost anyone here there lifetime savings nor their hours invested, but you know what, it cost the ban people everything. And looking at how some people react to the situation, it’s just so wrong. I don’t know how other players can look at them that way. They weren’t grieving you or anything. And I can’t imagine how much they impacted your day to day life except it would be 200 people richer than you that you would be possibly jealous about. But that takes an easy (gold reset) and a temp ban so they fall behind. A perm ban is just too much for this incident.

The problem here is that you will never get a agreement between both sides of this discussion. As both feel strongly about and wont shift from there point of view.

In regards to the overall outlike on this , both us who disagree and those who agree with Arenanets reaction to this are a very very tiny vocal minority of their playerbase. As tbh most people it hasnt impacted or personally affected couldnt care less and would not even bother commenting.

Arenanet itself has generated some huge publicity for there actions across multiple sites like this , several mmo reporting sites , reddit etc .

Which from there perspective i guess is a good thing as it shows they are taking a hard line against “exploiters” yes which no one really likes. All at a cost of a miniscule fraction of there players.

Yes I dont 100% disagree with there stance , but it should have been used more carefully and applied to a “exploit” that was much more concrete then this and not as ambiguous on if it truly was a exploit or just a clever way to make some cash.

Someone else stated several pages back that a great deal of the confusion surrounding this issue could have been avoided if ANet had simply spoken up in a timely manner.

This highlights the communication issue that exists between ANet and the playerbase. It’s interesting to me that we didn’t hear from the ANet staff until after the issue had all but sorted itself (economically speaking, e.g., balancing of prices on goods), and only then was it clarified that “this is an exploit, there will be bans”.

This is a terrible way to run a business, in my opinion. The fact is, this could have been stopped dead in its tracks if ANet had spoken up. If someone from the CM or Mod or (gasp) Dev team had popped into one of the (it looks like) several threads regarding this and said, “yeah, gonna check into this… stop until we get back to you”…. done deal. Word would have spread the same way word about the recipe did: guild chat, voice comms, and other means of communication would have lit up: “ANet said stop, they’re investigating!!”

To then after the fact permanently ban players is excessive. If we’re going to dish out blame, there’s plenty to go on ANet’s plate as well. Lax quality testing, poor response time on the issue… I’m not saying players are blameless here; I’m saying there is a shared burden, and for that reason, justice should be meted out tempered in understanding. There should probably be some temporary suspensions, and several rollbacks… and that should be about where it ends.

For the record, I don’t have a jewelcrafter and didn’t get in on this…. at all.

Galen Grey.4709:

Doctor Orderly MD PhD DDS.7625:

Galen Grey.4709:

post

Here’s the thing (imo): you’re correct that increased supply of ecto has an effect on the market. But I don’t see how the economy is damaged. If ecto price drops, exotics and rares drop too, hurting people who use those items to gain money (crafters included). These people may be hurt, and the hurt may be directly caused by the exploit, but I do not qualify this as a damaged economy. It’s just a changed economy, where said practices are less economically viable, and where in turn other practices become more economically viable. People getting pushed out of their comfort zone =/= objectively hurt.
If Anet increased the drop rate for ecto, the same thing would happen as with this exploit: more supply > chain reaction. It’s ludicrous to say that Anet increasing ecto drop rates would damage the economy, is it not?

I think it is. The exploit made it so that once you start the cycle a single ecto would cost about 3s to aquire. If the exploit had continued to run indefinitely it is safe to assume that people undercutting each other would have resulted in an ecto price somewhere in the range of 3s 1c to say 5s . That would have killed the market for rares in my opinion. If rare drops netted just 5s doing PvE wouldnt be viable anymore, people would gravitate towards dungeons and a whole market would die. Same goes for crafting, if margines are small the majority of players will stop selling wares again another market is death. Thats not to say the economy as a whole would collapse, it wouldnt no doubt but no one looks at the TP and says the economy is entirely healthy when looking at say masterworks which nearly all sell at a loss.

This is way bigger then going out of your comfort zone in my opinion, left unchecked it would certainly drive away people from certain playstyles because the economy for the products you aquire from those play style would be dead.

Yes if Anet increased the drop rate of things dramatically they can damage the economy no doubt about it. The economy depends on scarcity. If I want to craft something and I need 15 sharp claws I will consider outright buying them if I know I might need to spend an hour farming mobs to get those 15 sharp claws but If I knew killing 15 mobs would net me all the 15 claws I need I would just harvest them myself. That would result in sharp claws that are extremely cheap in order to entice people into buying them just to save a few minutes. It will also result in gear that uses sharp claws to also be extremely cheap because else people will just craft it themselves. Imagine if this would be true of everything include lodestones. Do you think anyone would bother with the TP? Not likely in my opinion.

A healthy economy requires a balance between supply and demand. A large supply can be disasterous. Even in the real world, while its a shame you can even find stories of farmers destroying their product just to ensure that an over abandant supply doesnt destory their market.

Completely False. The market had already reached equilibrium on day 4 when ecto prices were at 25s, snowflakes were at 30s, and mithril was at ~80c.

The expected value of master kits salvage is .9 ectos * 25s * .85 tax = 19.1 silver profit

cost = 6 (assuming on average you get 2 mithril back) * .80s + .2 (25s + 30s) (20% of the time you lose your snowflake jewel) + .60s savlvage price = 15.8 silver cost.

At that point people were making ~3s per salvage on average which isn’t that much different then other crafting/salvaging methods.

i’m interested to know, how someone i know who made a vast amount of ectos (over 250) still has his account, yet someone else i know actually LOST gold on this recipe got banned.. logic ? if the worst offenders were banned, how are some of them still running around the game while others are not ..

i also think to introduce a recipe, and then declare the ingredients were meant to be something else, how can you blame the players for this.. because we should magically know what you intended the recipe to be? (and for the record, i do not even have JC craft, was not banned and did not make a single item so i’m not posting this because im kitten i got caught or anything) but i still find it crazy people have been perma banned over this,

if YOU make an error in a recipe YOU add to game, players do not deserve to be perma banned for it.. We cannot be expected to KNOW that it’s wrong.. and also to say that you made a public announcement after the karma thing..so people should have known this would happen.. not all people were around at that time to read that post, not all people check every day on the website to make sure you didnt make a mistake again and have posted about it.. try sending out mass emails or in game mails to the player base to make sure they are aware of what is going on, not just leave it on our backs to check you guys havent made more mistakes

take back the items, re-roll the chars, remove the gold whatever, but to mass ban people for a recipe you made a mistake on is absurd, you cannot just make the assumption all players should know what you guys intend to be right or wrong, we are here to play the game not step on eggshells over every new items/recipe/content you add for fear that we make a step wrong and get perma banned over it.. ridiculous

Ellie.5203:

i’m interested to know, how someone i know who made a vast amount of ectos (over 250) still has his account, yet someone else i know actually LOST gold on this recipe got banned.. logic ? if the worst offenders were banned, how are some of them still running around the game while others are not ..

i also think to introduce a recipe, and then declare the ingredients were meant to be something else, how can you blame the players for this.. because we should magically know what you intended the recipe to be? (and for the record, i do not even have JC craft, was not banned and did not make a single item so i’m not posting this because im kitten i got caught or anything) but i still find it crazy people have been perma banned over this,

if YOU make an error in a recipe YOU add to game, players do not deserve to be perma banned for it.. We cannot be expected to KNOW that it’s wrong.. and also to say that you made a public announcement after the karma thing..so people should have known this would happen.. not all people were around at that time to read that post, not all people check every day on the website to make sure you didnt make a mistake again and have posted about it.. try sending out mass emails or in game mails to the player base to make sure they are aware of what is going on, not just leave it on our backs to check you guys havent made more mistakes

take back the items, re-roll the chars, remove the gold whatever, but to mass ban people for a recipe you made a mistake on is absurd, you cannot just make the assumption all players should know what you guys intend to be right or wrong, we are here to play the game not step on eggshells over every new items/recipe/content you add for fear that we make a step wrong and get perma banned over it.. ridiculous

Right, really dislike how they expect us to read stuff they put out through other party means and don’t really stand out. “You guys should have all read that one post in mmorpg about such and such and you would have known we wouldn’t take anymore crap like this”. Wait what? I didn’t even know about the whole karma incident until this snowflake thing poppped up. And I check the forums frequently!

Hawkmoon.5849:

Someone else stated several pages back that a great deal of the confusion surrounding this issue could have been avoided if ANet had simply spoken up in a timely manner.
.

This is the entire problem. It was asked, on their very own forums, multiple times. It was ignored. Now, much later, they decide to ban people who made these items. The communication from Anet is kitten poor. They have terrible QA for their patching and coding, and they still can’t fix game breaking items like culling.

Now they want to come out and ban a group of folks who never got an answer to the question that was asked on the forums. This is nothing more than just another money grab for them assuming these same people will just go buy another account.

The greed with their incredibly poor cash shop and terrible RNG with things like chests/keys will inevitably lead to the demise of this game. They have messed up every single event they have tried to add to the game, but hey, lets start banning now.

I wasn’t even around for the Karma fiasco that I keep reading about. However, if you didn’t ban people for buying Karma items in HUGE numbers to get precursors then it’s time to go back and remove those legendaries or ban them as well.

If this was ANY P2P game on the market that gets $15 a month, NOBODY would have been banned permanently for something so trivial that self corrected itself within days. Furthermore, a ban for using an in game recipe that required no manipulation whatsoever on the players part.

But the notice has been up in the galactic demolitions office for years, and the time to lodge a formal complaint closed months ago. Sorry this highway needs to be built, you had notice.

Loyn.2830:

Special recipes that require a limited event item, it isn’t safe to assume the recipe wouldn’t be special?

The bigger question, which nobody has answered. If this had such a hugely damaging effect on the economy that people MUST be perma-banned, why did they wait 17 days? Wouldn’t the gold already mostly be circulated back into the economy and prices returned nearly to the pre-winter’s day pricing? Not to mention there is a significant amount of money REMOVED from the economy due to TP usage?

What about anet employees refusing to comment about the possibility of it being an exploit prior to bans?

Ellie.5203:

i’m interested to know, how someone i know who made a vast amount of ectos (over 250) still has his account, yet someone else i know actually LOST gold on this recipe got banned.. logic ? if the worst offenders were banned, how are some of them still running around the game while others are not ..

i also think to introduce a recipe, and then declare the ingredients were meant to be something else, how can you blame the players for this.. because we should magically know what you intended the recipe to be? (and for the record, i do not even have JC craft, was not banned and did not make a single item so i’m not posting this because im kitten i got caught or anything) but i still find it crazy people have been perma banned over this,

if YOU make an error in a recipe YOU add to game, players do not deserve to be perma banned for it.. We cannot be expected to KNOW that it’s wrong.. and also to say that you made a public announcement after the karma thing..so people should have known this would happen.. not all people were around at that time to read that post, not all people check every day on the website to make sure you didnt make a mistake again and have posted about it.. try sending out mass emails or in game mails to the player base to make sure they are aware of what is going on, not just leave it on our backs to check you guys havent made more mistakes

take back the items, re-roll the chars, remove the gold whatever, but to mass ban people for a recipe you made a mistake on is absurd, you cannot just make the assumption all players should know what you guys intend to be right or wrong, we are here to play the game not step on eggshells over every new items/recipe/content you add for fear that we make a step wrong and get perma banned over it.. ridiculous

Your friend was lucky, he was below the threshold for what they banned for (~200 uses of the recipe I think) and got more than the expected amount of ectos (which is between 0.9 and 1 per salvage). While your friend of who lost money was unlucky and was above the threshold and likely got less than the expected amount of ectos.

One thing I want to add is looking a this problem on a bigger picture.

We are all new players. This is our first mmo. We all find this new recipe for a special event during winter and it seems to grant us good ecto supply. We all use it for ourselves to make those clovers we want, the capacitors from fotm, the other things that use this high tier mat.

If all of us used it, would it be a perma bannable exploit? Can Anet really ban all of us? What draws the line on when they’ll bite the bullet and accept that they made a mistake? What draws the line on where they’ll care more about how many people are playing than how well the economy is doing?

From this incident, all I can see is that ArenaNet doesn’t really consider the basic laws of morality, 2nd chance.

Since the beginning of every single exploit, it should have always been 1st offense = temp ban. Then 2nd offense = perma ban. I doubt anyone argue about anyone’s legitimacy in that regard, because a lot of people don’t know it the first time, but they’ll always keep it in mind a second time. But putting first time offenders with constant offenders is just horrible.

I don’t want to imagine that everyone I’m playing with is a hardcore “kill all the exploiters”. Freaking, they are players too and I want them to play still, but what Anet can do is do things the right way and put them back on the right track.

Never knew this game was a sanctuary of purists who can’t take the time to teach the people who play mmos for the first time, or finally found a game they like playing, the honorable way to play.

I request a defiant stack for each player for immunity towards the first offense but it removes all buffs when you use the banhammer skill. Then you can use the banhammer skill to full effect on the next attack.

How you guys feel about the Orichalcum recipe? It didn’t gave any proffit maybe with good luck just like the cheapest lvl 80 are and non stop salvaging that. My friend found the recipe himself after wanting to craft it for his engi. He made around 150 to see if it was an way to earn money or not. If he made 200 G he would probaly thought this can’t be right and either did it another 500 times to get 1000 G or report it.

But he had bad luck first 50 he made 2 G(well could be same with 50 rares) and 2nd time 50 he lost 3 G so he stopped cause it was not proffitable at all. It didn’t even look like an exploit to him he just thought this another recipe like those lvl 80 rare things u can only with luck make proffit of.

Why those guys also got banned? Cause they tried 150 to eliminate luck and not 10?

Sorry for bad grammar, I tried my best.

Let’s see the “Exploits” section of the below link first.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/

After hours of thinking, I think I have the answer why they got perma banned. And I think they deserved to be punished.

“Exploits are errors in the game or third party programs that create opportunities for players to move outside the conventional means of gaining value (gold, experience, skills, etc.).”

Since crafting rare silk shoulders and snowflake mithril earring of winter are pretty similar.
And John Smith said “I always keep a quote from Edward Coke around to remind me of the effect of informed individuals. Coke states, “Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.”
People asked if snowflake is an exploit 17 days ago, and didn’t get the response. So if snowflakes is an exploit/error/bug sounds “uncertainty” to many people(also to me),but that is not the reason they got perma banned. I believe Anet wont sentence people whom are not well informed to death.

“For example, a player discovers a recipe that allows them to craft items from vendor goods for only 50 copper and then sell back the crafted item for 100 copper. The player now has an infinite loop of value gain. If this were working as intended the game’s currency would hyper-inflate very, very quickly as all players swarmed to this recipe to generate gold”

This looks like the answer, but let’s look the following examples.

Plague crafts from Orichalcum Band*1 Orichalcum Setting*1 CM tokens*200
sells on TP at 31G(highest order is 14G).

Selling a legendary GS at 9500G.

Buying jug of Friesson’s ale from vendor at 16c and selling on TP at 76c.

They all find a recipe or a way that allows them to have an infinite loop of
value gain. Do they get banned? Nope.

Also buying items from vendors and selling back is different from selling on TP.
The former can be seen as exploiting a flaw in game, while the latter ? Since when people pursuing the wealth through the free market is a “crime”?

“Exploits come in waves of mass participation and in the end, if they aren’t dealt with, the economy becomes hyper-inflated. “

ReginaBuenaobra North American Community Team Lead also said
“The number of accounts terminated as a result of this exploitative activity is actually very small—fewer than 200. However, these people are the very worst offenders, and engaged in this exploit to egregious levels—hundreds and even thousands of times. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew that their activities would damage the economy”

Do you see the answer now? Anet banned them because those people are hurting the economy. That is a serious crime if you are hurting the “gem economy”. Those people just violated crime of incitement to overthrow the state. If earning gold is that easy, who will buy the gems? How does Anet profit ?

PS.I am “100%” support Anet’s decision this time, so I hope this article won’t get deleted. I should not debate Customer Support decisions or actions. I was a fool few hours ago and now I learn my lesson.

I have already stated my opinion on this matter so all I’m going to do is post something simple.
Here’s the thread with a number of posts 17days ago asking for clarification. There was no response until the ‘banhammer’ had already dropped. It was in the BUGS sub forum where most people would go looking for the answer to the question whether it was a bug/exploit or an intended recipe:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Is-this-intended-with-the-snowflakes/first#post1136155

Here’s where the timely response was when the question was asked 17days ago and answered a day later… in the BLTC sub forum under a title that most legitimate players wouldn’t be searching in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/How-to-make-1-glob-of-ectoplasm-into-stacks/first

I said I was on the fence because I didn’t like: the exploit, the way the guilds have no way to re-establish leadership with a banned, deleted, abandoned leader account, or the fact it was a permanent ban and not temporary ban with a fine.

What is so wrong with a net sending out an email to announce the exploit and punishment or even an announcement in News to make sure everyone knew they were risking their account. COMMUNICATION is very lacking and had it not been many of the grievances would never have occurred.
EDIT: I am not saying this isn’t an exploit, I am saying it wasn’t clear to everyone that it was and therefore timely communication could have saved a lot.

Skin Changer.8073:

Sorry for bad grammar, I tried my best.

Let’s see the “Exploits” section of the below link first.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/

After hours of thinking, I think I have the answer why they got perma banned. And I think they deserved to be punished.

“Exploits are errors in the game or third party programs that create opportunities for players to move outside the conventional means of gaining value (gold, experience, skills, etc.).”

Since crafting rare silk shoulders and snowflake mithril earring of winter are pretty similar.
And John Smith said “I always keep a quote from Edward Coke around to remind me of the effect of informed individuals. Coke states, “Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.”
People asked if snowflake is an exploit 17 days ago, and didn’t get the response. So if snowflakes is an exploit/error/bug sounds “uncertainty” to many people(also to me),but that is not the reason they got perma banned. I believe Anet wont sentence people whom are not well informed to death.

“For example, a player discovers a recipe that allows them to craft items from vendor goods for only 50 copper and then sell back the crafted item for 100 copper. The player now has an infinite loop of value gain. If this were working as intended the game’s currency would hyper-inflate very, very quickly as all players swarmed to this recipe to generate gold”

This looks like the answer, but let’s look the following examples.

Plague crafts from Orichalcum Band*1 Orichalcum Setting*1 CM tokens*200
sells on TP at 31G(highest order is 14G).

Selling a legendary GS at 9500G.

Buying jug of Friesson’s ale from vendor at 16c and selling on TP at 76c.

They all find a recipe or a way that allows them to have an infinite loop of
value gain. Do they get banned? Nope.

Also buying items from vendors and selling back is different from selling on TP.
The former can be seen as exploiting a flaw in game, while the latter ? Since when people pursuing the wealth through the free market is a “crime”?

“Exploits come in waves of mass participation and in the end, if they aren’t dealt with, the economy becomes hyper-inflated. “

ReginaBuenaobra North American Community Team Lead also said
“The number of accounts terminated as a result of this exploitative activity is actually very small—fewer than 200. However, these people are the very worst offenders, and engaged in this exploit to egregious levels—hundreds and even thousands of times. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew that their activities would damage the economy”

Do you see the answer now? Anet banned them because those people are hurting the economy. That is a serious crime if you are hurting the “gem economy”. Those people just violated crime of incitement to overthrow the state. If earning gold is that easy, who will buy the gems? How does Anet profit ?

PS.I am “100%” support Anet’s decision this time, so I hope this article won’t get deleted. I should not debate Customer Support decisions or actions. I was a fool and now I learn my lesson.

The problem is example after example, people did not do this to influence, the market, the didn’t influence the market, they had no affect other than buy up raw materials. I know first hand many people who got banned for this who a) did NOT make bunches of gold b) didn’t sell any ectos but used them to craft things for themselves.

90% of the people I know that got banned fall into category A, and ALL of them fall into category B.

I ask again, if this killed the market economy why did they wait 17 days to ban people?

Hasn’t most of the “ill-gotten” gold already been dispersed into the game?

Didn’t the overall effect us usage of the TP actually remove gold from the game?

well ive been watching this thread as obviously it interests me ( funny enough thats why i made the original posts).

I must say its making me laugh who much the post count keeps changing on it , its like a never ending cycle.. goes up a few, mod pops up decides this cant be discussed etc , goes down a few, goes up a few repeat…

must say in 13-14 years of gaming in mmos since EQ days its one of the most heavily moderated forums ive ever participated in. mind i admit half the time im to lazy to bother even going on most :P

Loyn.2830:

Skin Changer.8073:

Sorry for bad grammar, I tried my best.

Let’s see the “Exploits” section of the below link first.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/john-smith-on-the-state-of-the-guild-wars-2-economy/

After hours of thinking, I think I have the answer why they got perma banned. And I think they deserved to be punished.

“Exploits are errors in the game or third party programs that create opportunities for players to move outside the conventional means of gaining value (gold, experience, skills, etc.).”

Since crafting rare silk shoulders and snowflake mithril earring of winter are pretty similar.
And John Smith said “I always keep a quote from Edward Coke around to remind me of the effect of informed individuals. Coke states, “Certainty is the mother of quiet and repose, and uncertainty the cause of variance and contentions.”
People asked if snowflake is an exploit 17 days ago, and didn’t get the response. So if snowflakes is an exploit/error/bug sounds “uncertainty” to many people(also to me),but that is not the reason they got perma banned. I believe Anet wont sentence people whom are not well informed to death.

“For example, a player discovers a recipe that allows them to craft items from vendor goods for only 50 copper and then sell back the crafted item for 100 copper. The player now has an infinite loop of value gain. If this were working as intended the game’s currency would hyper-inflate very, very quickly as all players swarmed to this recipe to generate gold”

This looks like the answer, but let’s look the following examples.

Plague crafts from Orichalcum Band*1 Orichalcum Setting*1 CM tokens*200
sells on TP at 31G(highest order is 14G).

Selling a legendary GS at 9500G.

Buying jug of Friesson’s ale from vendor at 16c and selling on TP at 76c.

They all find a recipe or a way that allows them to have an infinite loop of
value gain. Do they get banned? Nope.

Also buying items from vendors and selling back is different from selling on TP.
The former can be seen as exploiting a flaw in game, while the latter ? Since when people pursuing the wealth through the free market is a “crime”?

“Exploits come in waves of mass participation and in the end, if they aren’t dealt with, the economy becomes hyper-inflated. “

ReginaBuenaobra North American Community Team Lead also said
“The number of accounts terminated as a result of this exploitative activity is actually very small—fewer than 200. However, these people are the very worst offenders, and engaged in this exploit to egregious levels—hundreds and even thousands of times. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew that their activities would damage the economy”

Do you see the answer now? Anet banned them because those people are hurting the economy. That is a serious crime if you are hurting the “gem economy”. Those people just violated crime of incitement to overthrow the state. If earning gold is that easy, who will buy the gems? How does Anet profit ?

PS.I am “100%” support Anet’s decision this time, so I hope this article won’t get deleted. I should not debate Customer Support decisions or actions. I was a fool and now I learn my lesson.

The problem is example after example, people did not do this to influence, the market, the didn’t influence the market, they had no affect other than buy up raw materials. I know first hand many people who got banned for this who a) did NOT make bunches of gold b) didn’t sell any ectos but used them to craft things for themselves.

90% of the people I know that got banned fall into category A, and ALL of them fall into category B.

I ask again, if this killed the market economy why did they wait 17 days to ban people?

Hasn’t most of the “ill-gotten” gold already been dispersed into the game?

Didn’t the overall effect us usage of the TP actually remove gold from the game?

Right, totally agree. The friend I lost due to this awful incident only used the ectos for himself for his ascended backpiece. No harm done there? I’m sorry that someone out there didn’t get to profit off of him? But it’s not like you can anymore anyways cause he got BANNED due to poor design. And a bunch of people who do not understand how much it saddens oneself to not be able to play with a friend and witness a friend lose all of their stuff by doing no harm to anyone aka not putting what he made into gold production but own personal use. In that regard, I consider this a non-permanent ban situation—I don’t see how this hurts anyone let alone the economy. And regardless, it’s not just 200 people who lost their ability to play. I feel it hard to log on knowing that I can’t play with as many friends again.

Infernia.9847:

I have already stated my opinion on this matter so all I’m going to do is post something simple.
Here’s the thread with a number of posts 17days ago asking for clarification. There was no response until the ‘banhammer’ had already dropped. It was in the BUGS sub forum where most people would go looking for the answer to the question whether it was a bug/exploit or an intended recipe:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Is-this-intended-with-the-snowflakes/first#post1136155

Here’s where the timely response was when the question was asked 17days ago and answered a day later… in the BLTC sub forum under a title that most legitimate players wouldn’t be searching in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/How-to-make-1-glob-of-ectoplasm-into-stacks/first

I said I was on the fence because I didn’t like: the exploit, the way the guilds have no way to re-establish leadership with a banned, deleted, abandoned leader account, or the fact it was a permanent ban and not temporary ban with a fine.

What is so wrong with a net sending out an email to announce the exploit and punishment or even an announcement in News to make sure everyone knew they were risking their account. COMMUNICATION is very lacking and had it not been many of the grievances would never have occurred.
EDIT: I am not saying this isn’t an exploit, I am saying it wasn’t clear to everyone that it was and therefore timely communication could have saved a lot.

I recall seeing a post stating that Chris Whiteside from ANET wanted to improve ANet’s communication with its playerbase… This seems like a huge failure in that regards. As you said, a simply announcement/email/etc would have done wonders for informing players. Maybe an in-game mail to all players when they log in. But that’s not all, you have ANET employees refusing to answer or even attempting to answer the question when asked in-game (http://i.imgur.com/0SICA.jpg)

TL;DR: I agree that there needs to be more communication between anet and the players.

While many people will say that those who use the forums only represent a minority of the total playerbase, ANet has other means of making announcements. The launcher for example. A quick blurb “The XXX recipe has a bug that can be considered an exploit. >>Click here to find out more<<” Or an in-game mail explaining that there’s a bug with the salvaging of XXX and that exploiting this bug will result in a ban of XXX days (or indefinitely, whatever).

Skyrant Kangaroomouse.7458:

ReginaBuenaobra.6953:

The number of accounts terminated as a result of this exploitative activity is actually very small—fewer than 200. However, these people are the very worst offenders, and engaged in this exploit to egregious levels—hundreds and even thousands of times. They knew exactly what they were doing and they knew that their activities would damage the economy.

As a reminder, when we dealt with the karma exploit incident in September, we said that we would show some leniency for that particular incident. However, we made it clear that future exploits would be dealt with more firmly. As a result, we have terminated the accounts of the worst offenders in this most recent incident.

As always, if you have an exploit to report, please email exploits@arena.net.

Thank you.

This is not an exploit. It is a regular recipe you put into the game without testing or checking the implications. If you do not check then you can not come after the fact and ban people for abusing it. Why do you have an Economist on staff? I guess he is nto much of an economist if he can’t even prevent things like that. AND THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME!

You #% are too #^& to make a stable economy and balanced crafting since DAY ONE. How about you pull your head out of your $%#@ and pay attention to what you are doing.

Your incompetence is unmatched.

I’d CC that email address to this post. Cause it’s 100% correct. As much as I’d like to hear a dev/mod post, I don’t want them to post anything repetitive into the discussion. We know what they have to say but are they really listening to what we have to say?

Kirito.3591:

Infernia.9847:

I have already stated my opinion on this matter so all I’m going to do is post something simple.
Here’s the thread with a number of posts 17days ago asking for clarification. There was no response until the ‘banhammer’ had already dropped. It was in the BUGS sub forum where most people would go looking for the answer to the question whether it was a bug/exploit or an intended recipe:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Is-this-intended-with-the-snowflakes/first#post1136155

Here’s where the timely response was when the question was asked 17days ago and answered a day later… in the BLTC sub forum under a title that most legitimate players wouldn’t be searching in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/How-to-make-1-glob-of-ectoplasm-into-stacks/first

I said I was on the fence because I didn’t like: the exploit, the way the guilds have no way to re-establish leadership with a banned, deleted, abandoned leader account, or the fact it was a permanent ban and not temporary ban with a fine.

What is so wrong with a net sending out an email to announce the exploit and punishment or even an announcement in News to make sure everyone knew they were risking their account. COMMUNICATION is very lacking and had it not been many of the grievances would never have occurred.
EDIT: I am not saying this isn’t an exploit, I am saying it wasn’t clear to everyone that it was and therefore timely communication could have saved a lot.

I recall seeing a post stating that Chris Whiteside from ANET wanted to improve ANet’s communication with its playerbase… This seems like a huge failure in that regards. As you said, a simply announcement/email/etc would have done wonders for informing players. Maybe an in-game mail to all players when they log in. But that’s not all, you have ANET employees refusing to answer or even attempting to answer the question when asked in-game (http://i.imgur.com/0SICA.jpg)

TL;DR: I agree that there needs to be more communication between anet and the players.

While many people will say that those who use the forums only represent a minority of the total playerbase, ANet has other means of making announcements. The launcher for example. A quick blurb “The XXX recipe has a bug that can be considered an exploit. >>Click here to find out more<<” Or an in-game mail explaining that there’s a bug with the salvaging of XXX and that exploiting this bug will result in a ban of XXX days (or indefinitely, whatever).

/agree.

This treatment of players is disgusting.

Kirito.3591:

Infernia.9847:

I have already stated my opinion on this matter so all I’m going to do is post something simple.
Here’s the thread with a number of posts 17days ago asking for clarification. There was no response until the ‘banhammer’ had already dropped. It was in the BUGS sub forum where most people would go looking for the answer to the question whether it was a bug/exploit or an intended recipe:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Is-this-intended-with-the-snowflakes/first#post1136155

Here’s where the timely response was when the question was asked 17days ago and answered a day later… in the BLTC sub forum under a title that most legitimate players wouldn’t be searching in:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/How-to-make-1-glob-of-ectoplasm-into-stacks/first

I said I was on the fence because I didn’t like: the exploit, the way the guilds have no way to re-establish leadership with a banned, deleted, abandoned leader account, or the fact it was a permanent ban and not temporary ban with a fine.

What is so wrong with a net sending out an email to announce the exploit and punishment or even an announcement in News to make sure everyone knew they were risking their account. COMMUNICATION is very lacking and had it not been many of the grievances would never have occurred.
EDIT: I am not saying this isn’t an exploit, I am saying it wasn’t clear to everyone that it was and therefore timely communication could have saved a lot.

I recall seeing a post stating that Chris Whiteside from ANET wanted to improve ANet’s communication with its playerbase… This seems like a huge failure in that regards. As you said, a simply announcement/email/etc would have done wonders for informing players. Maybe an in-game mail to all players when they log in. But that’s not all, you have ANET employees refusing to answer or even attempting to answer the question when asked in-game (http://i.imgur.com/0SICA.jpg)

TL;DR: I agree that there needs to be more communication between anet and the players.

While many people will say that those who use the forums only represent a minority of the total playerbase, ANet has other means of making announcements. The launcher for example. A quick blurb “The XXX recipe has a bug that can be considered an exploit. >>Click here to find out more<<” Or an in-game mail explaining that there’s a bug with the salvaging of XXX and that exploiting this bug will result in a ban of XXX days (or indefinitely, whatever).

That would be great if they could use the features they already have to inform us.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Loyn.2830:

Skin Changer.8073:

PS.I am “100%” support Anet’s decision this time, so I hope this article won’t get deleted. I should not debate Customer Support decisions or actions. I was a fool and now I learn my lesson.

The problem is example after example, people did not do this to influence, the market, the didn’t influence the market, they had no affect other than buy up raw materials. I know first hand many people who got banned for this who a) did NOT make bunches of gold b) didn’t sell any ectos but used them to craft things for themselves.

90% of the people I know that got banned fall into category A, and ALL of them fall into category B.

I ask again, if this killed the market economy why did they wait 17 days to ban people?

Hasn’t most of the “ill-gotten” gold already been dispersed into the game?

Didn’t the overall effect us usage of the TP actually remove gold from the game?

Right, totally agree. The friend I lost due to this awful incident only used the ectos for himself for his ascended backpiece. No harm done there? I’m sorry that someone out there didn’t get to profit off of him? But it’s not like you can anymore anyways cause he got BANNED due to poor design. And a bunch of people who do not understand how much it saddens oneself to not be able to play with a friend and witness a friend lose all of their stuff by doing no harm to anyone aka not putting what he made into gold production but own personal use. In that regard, I consider this a non-permanent ban situation—I don’t see how this hurts anyone let alone the economy. And regardless, it’s not just 200 people who lost their ability to play. I feel it hard to log on knowing that I can’t play with as many friends again.

i “was” totally agree with you. i quetioned their decisions then my former article was deleted by moderator.

if you are interesting in what i posted. you can see the below link. CHAP. II

http://www.gradesaver.com/the-analects-of-confucius/e-text/section19/

My point is in the section 3

After reading that , you will understand my position.

Skin Changer.8073:

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Loyn.2830:

Skin Changer.8073:

PS.I am “100%” support Anet’s decision this time, so I hope this article won’t get deleted. I should not debate Customer Support decisions or actions. I was a fool and now I learn my lesson.

The problem is example after example, people did not do this to influence, the market, the didn’t influence the market, they had no affect other than buy up raw materials. I know first hand many people who got banned for this who a) did NOT make bunches of gold b) didn’t sell any ectos but used them to craft things for themselves.

90% of the people I know that got banned fall into category A, and ALL of them fall into category B.

I ask again, if this killed the market economy why did they wait 17 days to ban people?

Hasn’t most of the “ill-gotten” gold already been dispersed into the game?

Didn’t the overall effect us usage of the TP actually remove gold from the game?

Right, totally agree. The friend I lost due to this awful incident only used the ectos for himself for his ascended backpiece. No harm done there? I’m sorry that someone out there didn’t get to profit off of him? But it’s not like you can anymore anyways cause he got BANNED due to poor design. And a bunch of people who do not understand how much it saddens oneself to not be able to play with a friend and witness a friend lose all of their stuff by doing no harm to anyone aka not putting what he made into gold production but own personal use. In that regard, I consider this a non-permanent ban situation—I don’t see how this hurts anyone let alone the economy. And regardless, it’s not just 200 people who lost their ability to play. I feel it hard to log on knowing that I can’t play with as many friends again.

i “was” totally agree with you. i quetioned their decisions then my former article was deleted by moderator.

if you are interesting in what i posted. you can see the below link. CHAP. II

http://www.gradesaver.com/the-analects-of-confucius/e-text/section19/

My point is in the section 3

After reading that , you will understand my position.

Don’t think I understand youy position still.

“Tsze-chang then asked, ‘What are meant by the four bad things?’ The Master said, ‘To put the people to death without having instructed them;— this is called cruelty. To require from them, suddenly, the full tale of work, without having given them warning;— this is called oppression. To issue orders as if without urgency, at first, and, when the time comes, to insist on them with severity;— this is called injury. And, generally, in the giving pay or rewards to men, to do it in a stingy way;— this is called acting the part of a mere official.’ "

In the reference above, people have been oppressed and injured. I don’t see the connection in Chapter 3 though, a little lost on that one.