Guild Wars 2

Obtena.7952:

None of these arguments are new … you should all feel ashamed for rehashing them.

yeah, but they keep coming up, with new players starting them, because a problem unsolved will continue to be a problem. After this one falls off the front page, it wont be long till a new one pops up, Until the issue is resolved, or until they no longer have new people reaching the level in the game where they see the imbalance and complain about it

“why do people keep bringing up this imbalance! we talked about it already!”

because the problem still exists, there hasnt been a resolution, and people dont see the old discussions.

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

None of these arguments are new … you should all feel ashamed for rehashing them.

yeah, but they keep coming up, with new players starting them, because a problem unsolved will continue to be a problem. After this one falls off the front page, it wont be long till a new one pops up, Until the issue is resolved, or until they no longer have new people reaching the level in the game where they see the imbalance and complain about it

So we need to start a thread each time? Just continue the same thread. No one is saying anything new about it anyway. It’s the same complaints, the same defenses. Heck, it’s even the same people.

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

None of these arguments are new … you should all feel ashamed for rehashing them.

yeah, but they keep coming up, with new players starting them, because a problem unsolved will continue to be a problem. After this one falls off the front page, it wont be long till a new one pops up, Until the issue is resolved, or until they no longer have new people reaching the level in the game where they see the imbalance and complain about it

So we need to start a thread each time? Just continue the same thread. No one is saying anything new about it anyway. It’s the same complaints, the same defenses. Heck, it’s even the same people.

i dont think the person who started this thread was in the old one. The forum has no search function, they cant realistically expect people to find old threads and update them.
Most of the people chime in on the new and old threads to restate the main points for the people who have not seen the old ones. Also, sometimes, new ideas actually come up, albeit rarely.

fact remains, if you got a leaky boat, and you keep renting it, you will constantly get new complaints until the boat is fixed. Thats just reality.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-is-silk-going-up-in-price/page/19#post4875717

Here is the old thread, about the same thing. Please merge. Thanks!

Supply and demand doesn’t exist in MMO’s and I laugh then I see it used.

Mats are plentiful? Let’s charge as much as we can to make money.
Mats are scarce? Let’s charge as much as we can to make money.

People need to learn how a real MMO economy works.

First rule is never undercut. Ever. When you undercut, you make the mats less valuable and you lose money. A piece of leather is a piece of leather. No matter if you salvage it from loot from a dungeon, fractal, world boss or random mob. If I spend an hour doing dungeons getting leather and a person spends 5 minutes doing a world boss, I want my leather to sell for a lot, so I’m going to list mine for a lot, because I think my time is valuable. So undercutting just shows that a seller is greedy and that stems from stupidity. Charge a little more and when the one under yours is sold, yours will be the next lowest to buy. The price will rise because everyone will overprice, but a price will be reached where players won’t spend that kind of money and they’ll farm it themselves. The prices will come back down and in the end everyone makes money. Never undercut. Ever.

Rule two. – Ignore hype. When people listen to hype and rush to make money, the market gets destroyed. The price of high end mats plummet because everyone thinks that an expansion will have new mats and the old mats won’t be worth anything. Never speculate on a market where price flux’s based on speculation. It’s like the blind leading the blind.

Follow this and watch your wallet get fat.

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

None of these arguments are new … you should all feel ashamed for rehashing them.

yeah, but they keep coming up, with new players starting them, because a problem unsolved will continue to be a problem. After this one falls off the front page, it wont be long till a new one pops up, Until the issue is resolved, or until they no longer have new people reaching the level in the game where they see the imbalance and complain about it

So we need to start a thread each time? Just continue the same thread. No one is saying anything new about it anyway. It’s the same complaints, the same defenses. Heck, it’s even the same people.

i dont think the person who started this thread was in the old one. The forum has no search function, they cant realistically expect people to find old threads and update them.
Most of the people chime in on the new and old threads to restate the main points for the people who have not seen the old ones. Also, sometimes, new ideas actually come up, albeit rarely.

fact remains, if you got a leaky boat, and you keep renting it, you will constantly get new complaints until the boat is fixed. Thats just reality.

The problem is not everyone agrees that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Thus all the same people come in and say the same things. The one who started this thread may not have known of its existance, certainly. But those who were invloved in the first thread, should have linked it.

Also, INB4 certain people come in and start claiming that Anet lied about not having grind/vertical progression and that the amount of silk ascended is a grind…

Please don’t. This is not the thread for that. Thanks!

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

None of these arguments are new … you should all feel ashamed for rehashing them.

yeah, but they keep coming up, with new players starting them, because a problem unsolved will continue to be a problem. After this one falls off the front page, it wont be long till a new one pops up, Until the issue is resolved, or until they no longer have new people reaching the level in the game where they see the imbalance and complain about it

So we need to start a thread each time? Just continue the same thread. No one is saying anything new about it anyway. It’s the same complaints, the same defenses. Heck, it’s even the same people.

i dont think the person who started this thread was in the old one. The forum has no search function, they cant realistically expect people to find old threads and update them.
Most of the people chime in on the new and old threads to restate the main points for the people who have not seen the old ones. Also, sometimes, new ideas actually come up, albeit rarely.

fact remains, if you got a leaky boat, and you keep renting it, you will constantly get new complaints until the boat is fixed. Thats just reality.

The problem is not everyone agrees that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Thus all the same people come in and say the same things. The one who started this thread may not have known of its existance, certainly. But those who were invloved in the first thread, should have linked it.

im not going to manually search for the old threads, perhaps if they fixed the search function, they could expect people to do so

anyhow, one advantage to these new threads, is they tend to discuss the issues more concisely. took us many pages to get to the same understandings last time.

as a high level character, i found wool is harder to come by than silk…….

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

pdavis.8031:

phys.7689:

Obtena.7952:

None of these arguments are new … you should all feel ashamed for rehashing them.

yeah, but they keep coming up, with new players starting them, because a problem unsolved will continue to be a problem. After this one falls off the front page, it wont be long till a new one pops up, Until the issue is resolved, or until they no longer have new people reaching the level in the game where they see the imbalance and complain about it

So we need to start a thread each time? Just continue the same thread. No one is saying anything new about it anyway. It’s the same complaints, the same defenses. Heck, it’s even the same people.

i dont think the person who started this thread was in the old one. The forum has no search function, they cant realistically expect people to find old threads and update them.
Most of the people chime in on the new and old threads to restate the main points for the people who have not seen the old ones. Also, sometimes, new ideas actually come up, albeit rarely.

fact remains, if you got a leaky boat, and you keep renting it, you will constantly get new complaints until the boat is fixed. Thats just reality.

The problem is not everyone agrees that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. Thus all the same people come in and say the same things. The one who started this thread may not have known of its existance, certainly. But those who were invloved in the first thread, should have linked it.

im not going to manually search for the old threads, perhaps if they fixed the search function, they could expect people to do so

anyhow, one advantage to these new threads, is they tend to discuss the issues more concisely. took us many pages to get to the same understandings last time.

So rather than searchign for the old thread, you gonna repeat everything you said in that thread in this one?

Good Luck.

ANet likes money, so they make one mat be pretty much needed for everything, then make it a random drop (ZOMG les blame the RNGesus), so that you buy gems to convert to gold to by silk. Simple economics, since the gem store doesn’t update with anything interesting, but ever so rarely. As you go and begin to see the bigger picture, it becomes alot more apparent as to why the system exists in it’s current form.

I’m curious to see how they spin T6 mats though, since thats another gem-to-gold conversion magnet, but it might be possible that most gem-to-gold conversionists see the materials so expensive that its just not worth it, thus by introducing a few more sources, it will drive the price down on the market, and make those mats more appealing.

It’s not just players that play with the market. ANet does too, the silk requirement was to fix a problem with the market that has long since gone, now the fix needs to be fixed.

phys.7689:

i dont think the person who started this thread was in the old one.

Considering how tenacious some of the posters here have been, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a $10 alt acct. I’m also pretty sure at lest 2 posters in the other thread were the same person.

The thing is that silk is stuck in the past. Anet wanted to removed the huge quantity of silk scraps in circulation, so they raised the number of scraps needed for one bolt from 2 to 3 scraps. It is the same reason why you need 100 silk bolts for a silk weave when all the other mats need 50. It is the also the reason why you need 4 soft wood logs to make one soft wood plank. It was needed when everyone was low level and million of soft wood logs were floating around.

It IS unbalanced. Silk being used in heavy and medium armor is not an excuse. Remove from those recipes. Make it so you can actually craft a damask daily as easily as you can craft a deldrimor ingot. Balance it please.

All Anet has to do is increase the drop rate of all cloths, I can get mithril and leather really easily, but silk not as much, it should have a higher drop rate than it wont be as hard to obtain, WoW does this for a lot of their mats and it devalues the item pretty well if it’s too expensive for player’s
I believe Anet can possibly use the same strategy if they really needed to

Lower amount of silk required by 25%. For each piece of silk saved this way, require a piece of thick leather section instead.

2 problems solved.

All ANet has to do is want to fix the price of Damask, and they will. I guess they don’t want to. It’s a bummer for those of us who can’t afford that ridiculous amount of gold, but it’s not really breaking the game.

This has been discussed…a LOT. If they intend to fix it, just sit back and wait. If they don’t intend to change anything, it’s time to learn how to cope.

It’s not just T5 or T7 cloth. Cloth is expensive across the board.

Just put in cloth nodes like mulberry bushes or jute plants in the wild, so they can be gathered like ores.

Or just make it so harvesting existing plants also procs cloth drops.

Kronos.2560:

Silk drops ridiculously fast if you simply salvage everything and not vendor. If you are complaining about not having enough you either need to:
1. Salvage stuff or
2. Not sell silk on the tp then complain you have none.

Problem solved.

No, my personal experience is as follows: after weeks of doing events etc and salvaging everything you end up with a 1500 – 2000 silk. This nets you a ridiculous 5-6 damask. This is mostly enough to create 1-2 armor items (depending on armor class/armor location).

The problem is trifold:

- You need 3 silk scraps for one bolt and you need 100 silk bolts for one damask (compared to 2×50 for the other t7 mats)
- You need damask much more than any other crafting material of the same type which makes the demand even higher – alone his fact makes the reason to raise it to 300 silk per t7 unnecessary and stupid
- That not enough, you need this kittening damask also for the highly demanded special back items

So in my opinion, the initial problem was, that silk was extremely common and the TP nearly exploded from the sheer amount of it. While the same problem with t5 leather exists, I don’t know why they only did it with silk or – the other way around – why they just let silk be to 50 per damask.

I think the whole Demask thing was an oversight. Silk market used to be so broken you made more money NPCing it than you did putting it on TP. There was so much Silk rotting in the market that they set the Demask to require an insane amount of 100 expecting it to be fine. But the Silk stock rotting so long instantly hit 0 from so many people buying it. Now the 100 cost is too high after all that Silk is gone.

Lots of people put this to “demand supply, things are working perfectly”. Some say that about the current economy, but if you are at all enlightened you know it’s hardly perfect at all.

The problem as I see it is the devs creating several level gated tiers of crafting materials, and then try to force demand on items that are currently in oversupply usually by creating extreme requirements for recipes. There are lots of examples of this in GW2, damask being one of them. What ANet should have done with ascended crafting (I don’t know if they did it or not): Was to look at player demographics, predict demand for different mats based on the demographics and fix recipe requirements to that. I would assume that if that was the case then silk would have been in more supply, and similarly linen, wool, and cotton. Leather would have been in more demand, and so would mithril, and elder wood.

The problem is that ANet doesn’t seem to take into account demographics and purchases/sales by demographics. If you look at the level spread in gw2, you’d most likely find the densest demographic to be level 80s, followed by level 1-20. The lowest demographic is most likely around level 45-65. No wonder, then, that linen is in so low supply, or rugged leather is the highest valued leather. Demographics need to be taken into account when creating recipe requirements, and I hope ANet understands that.

And meanwhile thick leather is still completely worthless, but Anet doesn’t seem to care about that for some reason.

ProtoGunner.4953:

- That not enough, you need this kittening damask also for the highly demanded special back items

Yeah, they really need to fix that so they all work like the Gift of Blades recipe and let you use your choice of metal/leather/cloth.

Andred.1087:

[…]

There’s nothing to “fix” here. It’s supply and demand. Economics 101. Because Damask is needed for every kind of ascended armor, it is in much higher demand, and thereby has a higher price. While it does have to do with the changes made to the recipes involving silk, and the unreliable way of gathering cloth, ANet can’t just tweak these things whenever people are unhappy. The current system is working rather well.

The problem here is supply.

Supply doesn’t cope with demand when it comes to cloth, because not all 4 basic materials are produced and used at the same rates.

Metal and wood have nodes. So anyone who really needs metal or wood and can’t afford it can just gather it. Also, weapons drop with much more frequency than armor, and weapons produce mostly metal, then wood.

Leather is extremely cheap because beasts like boars, dolyaks and drakes drop very, very often salvageable items that drop leather, and they are everywhere. On top of that, leather is the least used of all 4 basic materials. And for some reason heavy armor uses cloth instead leather for the second basic material, although all through history leather was used as a base for metal armor much more often than cloth.

Insignia and the ascended back items use only cloth instead being able to craft them with any of all 3 armor materials.

And on top of that, when they set prices they did so considering the massive amounts of silk people had hoarded, so they set prices to make sure it’ll get used up. And that happened ages ago. Now those costs are keeping cloth overpriced across all tiers.

You solve this with one or more changes like these:

• Add more specific intentional sources of cloth. Things players have to do specifically to get the cloth instead getting cloth on the way from salvages and random drops. Like nodes and daily bounties. Need some cotton? Ride a bandit camp, take the cloth from a cloth rack around there. Get to a map that has a bounty that will give cloth, do the related content like events, get the cloth.
• Let people craft insignia and ascended back items with any of all 3 armor basic materials: cloth, metal and leather and sigils with either metal or wood. This will also likely help alleviate the problem with leather, which is arguably too low right now compared with the other basic materials. Players who find one too expensive will use the cheaper one, both taking down prices that are too high and moving up prices that are too low.
• Re-adjust costs of recipes requiring cloth considering the current amounts of cloth people obtain and use instead keeping the costs adjusted to a time where there was an overstock of cloth (e.g.: 50 bolts of silk instead 100 for one damask). This won’t be so effective as the other two, but it’ll do something.

Its strange that some ppl dont see imbalance in Silik… On 100% Anet wanted to ride off Silik as t2/3/4 mats, but twice more than other mats was truly overshoot, its just stupid and make no sense at all. As ppl Mention:

Nodes>you cna farm them daily, get frome weapons

Wood>you can get frome daily, and over that, salvage is not even worthy in most cases (rng Ancient wood )

Leather> is everywhere in mass… Value of lether is far beyond bottom, its funny but you get more Leather by seling leather items, tha nactualy salvage them.. if no1 see problem here i have no words.

And Silik: The only way is Salvage Armors and items that provide Silik there is no other option, and over that we need twice more of them than other t5 mats

And no1 will tell me its “fine”. Anet make mistake, they will not fix it, or sey we made mistake.

But Over that i guess new map daily map rewards will fix it and provide more ways to get silik.

Maybe you are looking at this wrong, why not increase the material cost of everything else to bring it up to the cost of Bolts of Damask?

Hint, high gold prices for commonly needed “must have” or BiS items increases people’s need to spend real money on gems which is a far more likely scenario once ANet figures this out.

Shivan.9438:

Supply and demand doesn’t exist in MMO’s and I laugh then I see it used.

Mats are plentiful? Let’s charge as much as we can to make money.
Mats are scarce? Let’s charge as much as we can to make money.

People need to learn how a real MMO economy works.

First rule is never undercut. Ever. When you undercut, you make the mats less valuable and you lose money. A piece of leather is a piece of leather. No matter if you salvage it from loot from a dungeon, fractal, world boss or random mob. If I spend an hour doing dungeons getting leather and a person spends 5 minutes doing a world boss, I want my leather to sell for a lot, so I’m going to list mine for a lot, because I think my time is valuable. So undercutting just shows that a seller is greedy and that stems from stupidity. Charge a little more and when the one under yours is sold, yours will be the next lowest to buy. The price will rise because everyone will overprice, but a price will be reached where players won’t spend that kind of money and they’ll farm it themselves. The prices will come back down and in the end everyone makes money. Never undercut. Ever.

Rule two. – Ignore hype. When people listen to hype and rush to make money, the market gets destroyed. The price of high end mats plummet because everyone thinks that an expansion will have new mats and the old mats won’t be worth anything. Never speculate on a market where price flux’s based on speculation. It’s like the blind leading the blind.

Follow this and watch your wallet get fat.

This is actually not how an MMO economy works at all and never has. Supply and Demand actually does work because everyone is constantly undercutting everyone else for no good reason. When supply is greater than demand the undercutting drops prices as seen in every MMO economy there has ever been. When demand is higher the undercutting doesn’t interfere with the price because people snatch up the lower price then still pay the higher price.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

And meanwhile thick leather is still completely worthless, but Anet doesn’t seem to care about that for some reason.

ProtoGunner.4953:

- That not enough, you need this kittening damask also for the highly demanded special back items

Yeah, they really need to fix that so they all work like the Gift of Blades recipe and let you use your choice of metal/leather/cloth.

Ascended backpacks are supposed to cost alot. The blade backpacks have a high cost apart from the ascended mats.

Wanze.8410:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

And meanwhile thick leather is still completely worthless, but Anet doesn’t seem to care about that for some reason.

ProtoGunner.4953:

- That not enough, you need this kittening damask also for the highly demanded special back items

Yeah, they really need to fix that so they all work like the Gift of Blades recipe and let you use your choice of metal/leather/cloth.

Ascended backpacks are supposed to cost alot. The blade backpacks have a high cost apart from the ascended mats.

making damask into the premium high class material of the T7 teir is fundamentally flawed though, since they also decided to make cloth use substantially more of it per craft.

Point being, if they wanted it to be expensive, they should have used some other premium item, or they should not have made ascended light armor use much more damask than any other armor weight.

really though, the expensiveness should never have been designed into the basic material involved. The basic material interacts with too many other things.

I’m glad I’m not the only one that have noticed this imbalance, and many of you have described the problem and possible solutions very well as well. I hope the devs acknowledge this issue and fix it in some way.

As someone sitting on a mass of gold this thread is just pitiful. Honestly if you want to craft your ascended armor do it now, its not going to get cheaper or easier.

You people advocating the cost of damask to drop to the price of the other of leather and metal need to look at the thing that is required in EVERY set of armor. Cloth is required for every armor weight.

The underlying problem with damask is that every armor weight needs at least 24 (medium only tales 24 iirc) and the rate at which linen, cotton, and wool drop is pathetic.

Take my advice, farm gold and just buy your materials it will take you far less time. Not like gold is insanely hard to come by either. I mean Ive made 85g this week without doing dungeons and all Ive done is sell t6 mats from laurels, tequatle, and a few world bosses and wvw. Seriously those of you complaining about prices are hoarding everything or just buying a bunch of garbage with your gold you dont need.

It’s a legacy thing. Silk used to be 7 copper each because there was no use for it once you had 400 in all crafting disciplines, and it still dropped without effort – pretty much like the thick leather of now.

Some genius decided to raise the cost of the t7 to 100 instead of 50 for everything else because he thought the supply was the problem – and the result is the current situation with silk. They haven’t changed it after they realised it was a really bad mistake as doing so would kitten off players that had already spent thousands of gold on ascended gear.

Should leather be changed to 100/mat, the price would climb as well, though not as much as it isn’t required for insignia.

All insignia requiring cloth is what really makes all forms of cloth expensive though. Jute is expensive since it can be transmuted into wool. Wool, cotton, linen and silk are expensive as they are all needed for insignia. Looking at the relative prices of linen and silk, one might even say that silk’s situation is acceptable and the real problem is cloth being needed for ascended insignia.

The imbalance here just screws over all light armor classes. It no longer affects me since all of my characters have full ascended everything, but good luck farming @ new elementalists and mesmers.

And please don’t dump ascmats into your necromancer unless you have no other characters left. It’ll only be a lifetime of pain.

Hayashi.3416:

And please don’t dump ascmats into your necromancer unless you have no other characters left. It’ll only be a lifetime of pain.

But i’ve been getting ascended for my necro before my ele. Don’t see why it’s more difficult for a necro than for an ele, or a mesmer. I love my necro. He is awesome!
#necromaner4life

You clearly have never been kicked on sight from parties once they see your skull symbol.

#discrimination4life

I agree with this really, ive given up on making ascended armor for my main, and instead will be making it for my Ranger, since not only does it use so much less, its also way way cheaper and i can also make another ascended backpack!

Hayashi.3416:

You clearly have never been kicked on sight from parties once they see your skull symbol.

#discrimination4life

Honestly I haven’t. In fact, I’ve never had anyone even comment that I was using a necro. Either way this is WAY OT.

(Sad attempt to bring it back)
Ascended gear is supposed to be an “end-game” goal. Its supposed to take time and/or be expensive. The only reason that people see the amounts of mats required for light armor as a barrier, is they want it as soon as possible. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself. But it leads to complaints that it’s “too hard and unfair”.
I am ok with where silk is at. It now has value. The price isn’t that high. And the stuff is super easy to come by. And they added more ways to get it.
However I do agree about increasing the amounts for leather. The stuff is as common as silk, but because of a lack of uses it doesn’t have any value at all.
Also just because I am ok with raising the amount of leather needed, doesn’t mean I think that silk is unfair. Just want to make that clear.

For those that a crying out to adjust the recipe:

As silk is a constant rng drop, supply is steady, spread over the whole player base.
That means, you will most propably get silk from loot, even if you would try to avoid it.

Now there are two kinds of players, some need silk and some dont need silk.
Those that dont need silk, get it anyways and those that need it dont get enough.

And that is vital to keep the price of silk balanced.
If the average player that needs silk would be able to farm his daily demand directly without too much effort, the daily silk supply from those that dont need it, would have no demand anymore. It would inevitably go back to vendor value.

So for it to keep its value (And by value i mean any value except vendor value), the average player shouldnt be able to farm his daily demand of silk.

Silk, as a material, is very unique from an economic point of view because it basically only has 1 big sink (asc armorcrafting) but alot of individual sources. With all the different kinds of different light armor gear, containers and salvage items, etc. its easily more than 1000 faucets.

I would guess that ascended armor crafting sinks more than 95% of all the silk in game, so changing the recipe in any way would mean that out of a sudden, either 50 or 33% from that demand will simply not exist anymore., so you also have to drastically reduce the faucets as weel, or silk will be at vendor value in a couple of days. And adjusting over 1000 faucets by such a huge amount will take quite alot of work.

Now many still believe that the price of silk and the huge amount you need to craft damask is unintended by Anet but i am sure its pretty much where they want it to be.

I agree that having to deal with huge amounts of silk on a daily basis is a hassle, so why not cut supply and demand in half? Because the more is being produced and used on a daily basis, the easier it is to adjust. And Anet actually did a fine job doing so during season 2. Last summer, silk nearly had double the value it has now, so they introduced temporary faucets (halloween and wintersday) as well as some permanent faucets (drytop and silverwastes).

So instead of cutting demand for 35% or 50%, kitten many of you suggested, they added maybe 10-20% temporary and permanent supply. That way they were able to decrease its value by ~10% each month for 5 months instead of silk losing 99% of its value in a matter of days.

TL/DR: Silk is working as intended.

For those asking for the prices of cloth come down, how are you going to feel if that happens after you’re done crafting your ascended? If the prices stay where they are, I think you may actually like the prices of cloth once you’re done.

Erus Keb.8379:

For those asking for the prices of cloth come down, how are you going to feel if that happens after you’re done crafting your ascended? If the prices stay where they are, I think you may actually like the prices of cloth once you’re done.

To be fair, its the same when buying a precursor really. I spent almost 300 gold on the precursor for “The Minstrel” and it dropped down to 180 gold shortly after they announced precursor crafting. I was annoyed yea, but it just made it way easier to get another one(Which i do plan on doing), and im not even asking for the price of silk to be lowered. Id like an easier way to get the other cloth materials though.

Wanze.8410:

For those that a crying out to adjust the recipe:

As silk is a constant rng drop, supply is steady, spread over the whole player base.
That means, you will most propably get silk from loot, even if you would try to avoid it.

Now there are two kinds of players, some need silk and some dont need silk.
Those that dont need silk, get it anyways and those that need it dont get enough.

And that is vital to keep the price of silk balanced.
If the average player that needs silk would be able to farm his daily demand directly without too much effort, the daily silk supply from those that dont need it, would have no demand anymore. It would inevitably go back to vendor value.

So for it to keep its value (And by value i mean any value except vendor value), the average player shouldnt be able to farm his daily demand of silk.

Silk, as a material, is very unique from an economic point of view because it basically only has 1 big sink (asc armorcrafting) but alot of individual sources. With all the different kinds of different light armor gear, containers and salvage items, etc. its easily more than 1000 faucets.

I would guess that ascended armor crafting sinks more than 95% of all the silk in game, so changing the recipe in any way would mean that out of a sudden, either 50 or 33% from that demand will simply not exist anymore., so you also have to drastically reduce the faucets as weel, or silk will be at vendor value in a couple of days. And adjusting over 1000 faucets by such a huge amount will take quite alot of work.

Now many still believe that the price of silk and the huge amount you need to craft damask is unintended by Anet but i am sure its pretty much where they want it to be.

I agree that having to deal with huge amounts of silk on a daily basis is a hassle, so why not cut supply and demand in half? Because the more is being produced and used on a daily basis, the easier it is to adjust. And Anet actually did a fine job doing so during season 2. Last summer, silk nearly had double the value it has now, so they introduced temporary faucets (halloween and wintersday) as well as some permanent faucets (drytop and silverwastes).

So instead of cutting demand for 35% or 50%, kitten many of you suggested, they added maybe 10-20% temporary and permanent supply. That way they were able to decrease its value by ~10% each month for 5 months instead of silk losing 99% of its value in a matter of days.

TL/DR: Silk is working as intended.

you are simplifying things too much, and making it a binary system, where there is only two outcomes:
silk is vendor
damask is relatively hugely expensive

there are many things inbetween those two outcomes.

you are also too focused on the understanding of how the current system works, and not thinking of how other systems could work better.

lets say you were trying to design a better mouse trap, the explanation of how the old mousetrap works is useful, but it doesnt really tell you much about alternate solutions.

Dante.1763:

To be fair, its the same when buying a precursor really. I spent almost 300 gold on the precursor for “The Minstrel” and it dropped down to 180 gold shortly after they announced precursor crafting. I was annoyed yea, but it just made it way easier to get another one(Which i do plan on doing), and im not even asking for the price of silk to be lowered. Id like an easier way to get the other cloth materials though.

A precursor probably wasn’t a good item to use for comparison here. The main difference is that I get cloth every day from drops. I certainly can’t say that about precursors. Hence, precursors don’t provide any of the income that I mentioned.

I do get your point though. You’d be annoyed.

Edit: I’ll go further and say that I believe some would be annoyed to the point of making a post along the lines of: I was robbed.

Why is everyone so fixated on silk? There are other pricey cloths that have major supply problems that are ALSO causing this imbalance.

The supply isn’t so much the issue. If elonian leather could be used to make the ascended insignia, I guarantee you the price of all the cloths will drop overnight.

Hayashi.3416:

The supply isn’t so much the issue. If elonian leather could be used to make the ascended insignia, I guarantee you the price of all the cloths will drop overnight.

Not really. At most it would increase the price of leather and cloth would stay at a premium. There is nothing in this world that drops prices more solidly than supply. Steadily flooding the market guarantees a price drop.

No. I gurarantee you that if both leather and cloth could be used for insignias, the prices will stabilise where elonian squares and damask bolts have an identical price in between the current prices of the two.

The supply of leather and cloth are nearly identical. It’s trivial to see the effect if you empty out your bank of both, play normally for three days without crafting anything, and look at the numbers in your collections at the end of the test. You don’t have to take my word for it because a simple, short test will unambiguously prove it to be the case.

Identical as in both are 13g? Okay.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Identical as in both are 13g? Okay.

He didn’t say that.
He said that the price would stabilize at a point between the two current prices (closer to the cloth side in my estimation) but would ultimately be identical.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Identical as in both are 13g? Okay.

Hayashi.3416:

an identical price in between the current prices of the two

Somewhere, an English teacher is crying.

If Demand > Supply, Prices rise.

If Supply > Demand, Prices drop.

The only time this doesn’t apply is when markets are purposefully manipulated which happens regularly.

He is trying to increase demand. So the only thing that is going to happen is that the price of leather rises. Doesn’t solve the problem OP pointed out but go ahead and do it anyway.

yolo swaggins.2570:

If Demand > Supply, Prices rise.

If Supply > Demand, Prices drop.

The only time this doesn’t apply is when markets are purposefully manipulated which happens regularly.

He is trying to increase demand. So the only thing that is going to happen is that the price of leather rises. Doesn’t solve the problem OP pointed out but go ahead and do it anyway.

If I read his post correctly, you’re missing something. If leather could be used for insignias then indeed he’s increasing demand for leather which will cause a price increase in those materials. What you’re forgetting is what impact this will have on cloth materials.