Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

Prices never change except in reaction to a choice ANet has made. If ANet make no further changes to the game, the prices of everything would level off and remain constant.

Not true. If players determined that Nomad gear was the next IN thing, prices of Sheets of Ambrite would increase without any intervention by Anet. At that point, you’d probably be calling for more quartz nodes to be put back into the game (temporary of course) to offset the increased demand for refining these.

Then, if the fad died off, and there’s too much quartz in supply due to the extra nodes, you’d be calling for more sinks to bring prices back to a predetermined level.

Take the above, and imagine having to do that for each and every item with value that can be sold on the TP. You expect John to invest the time to track and implement constant changes each day or week? All in the name of some utopian economic model that makes a small percent of players happy.

As the old saying goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Players who are smart with the TP will prosper, and players with no patience are willing to pay.

Capitalism, ho!

John Smith.4610:

You assume that absolute parity is required inside of tiers, I don’t necessarily agree.

Where cosmetic rewards are involved I think a lack of parity is desirable. That Mjolnir is so much more expensive to make and correspondingly rarer in the world than most weapon skins is considered a feature by many.

Where core mechanical function of a character is involved, I think there’s less tolerance for wild disparity. Light armor users are right to feel a little persecuted by the current system. The problem is less that that their days to complete is longer and more that insignia for all weight classes probably should have used a fourth material in the first place. But that ship has sailed and to me if light armor users can be expected to take X many days, changes that increase the number of days for the other two weights towards X are justified – sometimes parity is everyone being screwed together .

There is an example in game that I was hoping you might be able to abstract some data from and maybe give us your assessment of the “successfulness” of the two items:

• Wings of Dwayna are available to all three armor crafters and require cloth mats in every case.
• The gift of blades is available to all three armor crafters but uses that craft’s ‘preferred’ material in each case.

Yeah. I couldn’t imagine trying to micro-manage the economy. Doing it for one item would definitely be an unnecessary hassle but imagine doing it for many many items. You can be certain if someone wants it done for silk then other people would request for it to be done for other items as well.

Wanze.8410:

Can one of you economy buffs tell me what this means?

I attached an image that you may appreciate.

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium. Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

You assume that absolute parity is required inside of tiers, I don’t necessarily agree.

You dont have to micro manage all the time, but somebody has to do it sometimes. Unfortunately the game cannot simulate the opportunity created by a design that isnt quite hitting the mark.(to make a better design for profit) Which one way that real economies get micromanaged.

as far as parity within teirs, it doesnt have to be the case, but the lack of parity should not be manufactured. It would be one thing, if there was simply more cloth users, and they wanted cloth more, its a different thing when the system is designed to require more effort, and the items designed to cost more.

the price of damask is not a natural development of a balanced system, it is the natural development of an unbalanced system.

1)it requires directly more effort to create damask. twice as many items with a similar drop rate
2)damask is designed to have a higher demand.
3)silk production is extremely time ineffecient.

See, it would have been fine if there wasnt parity, and this was a cosmetic thing, but this is Best in slot, its not cosmetic, its actual progression for a charachter, this type of thing has to be a lot more balanced, or people tend to get upset

the other thing when you are talking about parity within teirs.
scale has a big factor on whats acceptable.
lets say a hamburger costs 3 dollars, and turkey burger costs 5 dollars.

people dont care much, because even though it costs 66% more for turkey burger, in terms of effort to get, they both feel the same. for a minimum wage guy, its a difference of 20 minutes of work versus 35 minutes, no big deal. The turkey lover only feels slightly persecuted.

but when you magnify that situation, people will react differently.

lets say the purple car costs 3000 dollars, and the red car costs 5000 dollars. Now you are talking about a large difference in investment. Now, add to that that one guy is not allowed to buy a purple car, and you get a problem.

TLDR small scale differences will generally be acceptable, but when these changes are magnified, it causes discomfort

Wanze.8410:

But the TP already provides that function. Just type in the amount of silk you need, and check its gold price. You now know how much gold you need to buy your daily silk.

But not everyone wants the answer to all their in-game needs to be “go buy it on the TP.” Not everyone wants to play this game like it’s the Home Shopping channel.

Can one of you economy buffs tell me what this means?

723c is only slightly less than 27c^2.

Changing the number of silk scraps needed for bolts upends the demand, as would changing the number of silk bolts required for damask (although that’s easier to tweak). People have already been up in arms about the game’s minor tweak to the amount of light armor that drops for light-armored-profs.

The trick to making any sort of drastic change is to backstop the process so that nobody loses out too badly and everyone is made reasonably happy with the outcome. If for example the price of silk were made to drop drastically, perhaps lock in all silk on the markets (nobody can buy or sell it temporarily), then make the announcement, so that nobody could jump on there and start taking advantage of the difference. Then make it so that for a short period of time, NPCs will take all the silk you want to dump on them at slightly below the previous market value, so that people who stockpiled can dump their stock.

As for people who made ascended armor under the new system, so what? Did they give everyone who made a Legendary before the skin wardrobe a second new Legendary? No, they gave them a little achievement. Will they give everyone who made Legendaries prior to Precursor crafting a free Precursor? Unlikely. They might want to arrange a bonus achievement for people who made ascended gear pre-fix, but they wouldn’t need to go nuts about it. If they absolutely felt that players deserved something special for having made the more expensive ascended gear, they could make an entirely second set of it, with the same stats but a different name, so that players who made the “expensive” version (which would still be an option for completionists) would have a different set unlocked in their wardrobe than those with the “bargain” version.

And as to the “oh noes, they could never disrupt the markets!” they’ve done this CONSTANTLY since the game has launched. The initial release of Ascended Crafting was a massive disruption to the price of things, the community survived it.

Not true. If players determined that Nomad gear was the next IN thing, prices of Sheets of Ambrite would increase without any intervention by Anet.

Yes, but players would never DO such a thing, unless ANet made a practical change that made Nomad gear considerably more useful than it currently is, and ANet would know about that change before the players. Players do not behave irrationally, every move they make is a rational response to changes in their environment, and anyone who knows how this game works could predict those changes in advance if you knew what changes ANet intends to make. If ANet announced that they were adding massive endgame content that would absolutely require tanky-healer builds to survive it, and they couldn’t predict that it would lead to a spike in Nomads mats, then they should really hire some sort of “money knowing guy” to work on things like that.

Don’t waste time considering what players could do when it conflicts with what players would do. Players could do any crazy thing for no apparent reason. But they won’t. What they will do is buy the things that are most useful to them in the most efficient way possible, and ANet has absolute control over what that thing is.

And yes, if the demand for Ambrite skyrocketed, and if the price was already at a point that they found worthwhile from a loot standpoint, then they would want to increase supply, either in a long term way (like increasing the amount dropped per harvest), or in a short term way (like adding new events that offer spare Ambrite temporarily).

Take the above, and imagine having to do that for each and every item with value that can be sold on the TP. You expect John to invest the time to track and implement constant changes each day or week? All in the name of some utopian economic model that makes a small percent of players happy.

Pengy, how many items on the TP fluctuate wildly for no apparent reason? The price of silk has fluctuated mostly around 1.75-2s for the past two years. The only significant shifts were towards the end of ‘13, when it shot up from the 10c range, and a bump last fall where it jumped to as high as 3.32. All I’m suggesting is that they should stabilize the price to be in balance with it’s vertical and horizontal neighbors, and then keep it that way, which would only have required their intervention at those two points over the past two years.

This wouldn’t be necessary for every item on the TP, just the core commodities.

As the old saying goes: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Players who are smart with the TP will prosper, and players with no patience are willing to pay.

Capitalism, ho!

And I believe that’s a bad way to run an economy in an adventure game. It should be “adventure, ho!,” and prosperity should come at the tip of a sword, not at the tip of the UI in town.

Watch out! Ohoni is a firm anti-capitalist!

I’m not, the core of capitalism is good, but I think that pure, unregulated capitalism is as bad as “pure” communism, or heroin. You need a balance to have an ideal system. The ideal that pure capitalism is inherently good for this game is no different than saying that if the zerker Warrior was just inherently “better” at everything in the game, just unquestionably more efficient, that ANet should do nothing about that, and players should either just accept it and play as zerker Warriors or accept that they will never be as good as those other players. When anything is inherently “better” than something else, ANet should help to balance that. If one class is better than another, then it should either be nerfed, or the other buffed. When one way of earning money is unquestionably more efficient than another, then it should be nerfed or other methods buffed to be equivalent.

And besides which, the game economy we have is NOT capitalism, because ANet controls the methods by which currency enter the economy, the methods by which materials enter the economy, and the function of each of those materials. If the US government were solely responsible for placing every raw material in the nation AND for determining the physics involved in how much of each material were needed to make an item and how functional that item would be in your daily life, and could tweak any of these aspects at their whim, would you view that government as one supporting “capitalism?”

Celtic Lady.3729:

Wanze.8410:

But the TP already provides that function. Just type in the amount of silk you need, and check its gold price. You now know how much gold you need to buy your daily silk.

But not everyone wants the answer to all their in-game needs to be “go buy it on the TP.” Not everyone wants to play this game like it’s the Home Shopping channel.

Exactly. That’s the problem it’s TP centric and I’d rather play the game and get rewarded then farm gold to go buy something someone who wasn’t affected by DR just happened to get one day!

To add to my earlier statement I’d also like to add that several other functions were added to another game that was AHcentric in it’s design. I won’t mention the name because I don’t want this post deleted but here is what they did:

They added the ability of some drops to be presents for other players that you can send to your friends/guild mates. They added a 100% increase to drop chances ie if it was 2.5 chance to drop it would then become 5% for certain must have items to function. They removed certain items from their AH before closing it and made those items rewards from doing normal everyday and sometimes quick activities in the game (the equivalent of dailies in GW2). They added twice as many cosmetic items. They gave several items the ability to increase gold drops from enemies like rings and jewelry something that’s considered a side item usually when gear is considered. And they added several vendors that uses currency akin to Karma and boosted how much this currency players would get when they played so it would mean something.

But also they had things in another game they developed that made sense in the long run. They added vendors that used currency akin to karma where you could directly buy materials that in GW2 would be considered Tier 5/Tier 6 materials. Orbs, etc all of the hard to get items could then be bought by players at a significant cost to this currency yes but it also allowed players the ability to use their currency (something other than the harder to get gold) to buy the items they needed to build the best gear rather than relying on the auction house for these items or the rare chance of them dropping.

It’s definitely something to think about.

The core of capitalism is most definitely NOT good. It is greed, and it has severely damaged the health of our society. Since around 1980 things have gone downhill, which is why so much kitten is going on in the world right now.

Anyway…there does not have to be equality in the cost of different mats. In their use, however, there should be. Time/money spent should be equal.

The core of capitalism is most definitely NOT good. It is greed, and it has severely damaged the health of our society. Since around 1980 things have gone downhill, which is why so much kitten is going on in the world right now.

Eh, to a point, but again, the opposite of capitalism is no better. The idea of competition breeding best outcomes and success being better rewarded than failure have a positive influence, but left unchecked it results in over-stratification and eventual revolt as the vast majority become upset that an increasingly tiny minority have growing majorities of the resources. For the system to work overall, it needs to have an external balance that works towards the majority’s favor, so that winners have more than losers, but not way more, and that even losers have enough to get by. There needs to be sufficient incentive to do your best, but not so much that it dispirits those who know they are not capable of ever being the best, so why bother trying?

But again, GW2’s economy is nothing like actual capitalism, so it’s a bit of a moot point.

Capitalism doesn’t necessarily lead to wealth disparity.

Capitalism doesn’t necessarily lead to wealth disparity.

It does if you’re doing it right. If you live in an unchecked capitalist system and one person does not eventually end up with all the capital then it just means you have really bad players. Of course in the real world before it gets to that point the majority put the upper classes heads on pikes and flip the board to start over. This is why most practical economies avoid true capitalism and put checks in place to balance out the upper and lower classes a bit. An America run entirely on capitalism would be like the current one only without any social welfare programs (including public education and access to emergency medical care), flat taxes if any, and zero regulation on businesses such as environmental, safety, or hour/pay requirements. The result would be almost everyone working as much as physically possible for pure subsistence, a tiny minority making slightly more than that in exchange for having unique talents or responsibilities, and almost everything else going to whoever “won” and whomever he chooses to support.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Wanze.8410:

But the TP already provides that function. Just type in the amount of silk you need, and check its gold price. You now know how much gold you need to buy your daily silk.

But not everyone wants the answer to all their in-game needs to be “go buy it on the TP.” Not everyone wants to play this game like it’s the Home Shopping channel.

Maybe TP should change it’s name to Black-Wallmart ? XD

Ohoni.6057:

Can one of you economy buffs tell me what this means?

723c is only slightly less than 27c^2.

Gah! Please don’t use Math to make inane statements. 27c^1.38 ~ 96c (the price of mithril) which is also “exponentially more expensive.” You can play this trick with any two items that have different values, and one will always be exponentially greater.

silently slips past zero and one

The word exponential carries a lot of weight, and shouldn’t be tossed around because it sounds good.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Wanze.8410:

But the TP already provides that function. Just type in the amount of silk you need, and check its gold price. You now know how much gold you need to buy your daily silk.

But not everyone wants the answer to all their in-game needs to be “go buy it on the TP.” Not everyone wants to play this game like it’s the Home Shopping channel.

Heresy! GW2 is a game about an economy. Everything else is just ancillary to the TP and keeping the economy stable. That so many TP barons may have a vested interest in this specific discussion is simply a by-product of that.

Not going to bother reading much beyond the first page and some comments by the dev. He mentions availability. My question is why isn’t the cloth line of the basic materials available via nodes from day 1? They are the 4th type after metal/wood/plants. We already have rare mats like claws and such that can’t be noded.

I think cloth nodes should be added to the world…kill sheep for wool…kill silk wurms for silk(or maybe just harvest their nests.) The thing is you have to be guaranteed at least 3 pieces per node just like the other sources. The animals all exist in the game already for this to be implemented.

As it is the only gem store node I purchased was the cloth one because you have no other guaranteed place to get cloth unlike the 3 other classes of mats.

TL;DR : I don’t think it makes a difference what the recipe calls for as long as we have a way of getting it like the other mats of its class (metal/wood/plants). There is no reason for it to fill the void that rare mats already fill (they are not available at nodes).

Ohoni.6057:

The trick to making any sort of drastic change is to backstop the process so that nobody loses out too badly and everyone is made reasonably happy with the outcome. If for example the price of silk were made to drop drastically, perhaps lock in all silk on the markets (nobody can buy or sell it temporarily), then make the announcement, so that nobody could jump on there and start taking advantage of the difference. Then make it so that for a short period of time, NPCs will take all the silk you want to dump on them at slightly below the previous market value, so that people who stockpiled can dump their stock.

So instead of acting as a gold sink (through taxes when sold), all the silk supply in game will act as a massive gold faucet, when sold to an npc.

Sounds legit.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Wanze.8410:

But the TP already provides that function. Just type in the amount of silk you need, and check its gold price. You now know how much gold you need to buy your daily silk.

But not everyone wants the answer to all their in-game needs to be “go buy it on the TP.” Not everyone wants to play this game like it’s the Home Shopping channel.

And they dont need to, if they dont want to. The choice is there.
And even if they do, the interaction with the tp is just a couple of minutes, while the amount of time you need earn your gold take up the mayority of your time. So the emphasis lies still on adventuring, rather than trading.

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium. Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

You assume that absolute parity is required inside of tiers, I don’t necessarily agree.

A micromanagement for abolutely even prices would be ridiculous, I agree.
Yet, we’ve seen crafting-recipes change or new sinks for materials being created, so that some items won’t become trash-items and their worth doesn’t go down to vendor value.
Possible even changes in the looting-tables no one of us players could know of.

Absolute parity is an illusion, the market will always change, based on supply and demand.
However, at least from the crafting recipes we could get a bit of equality.

As I followed this topic, I made a simple calculation on the price of crafting ascended equipment.
I admit, I kept it simple by taking prices for Bolts of damask, Elonian Leather, Deldrimor Steel Ingots, inscriptions and insignias(both Zojja, as zerker is the meta) from the BLTC, instead of calculating their specific material-cost by crafting recipe.
Not included in the calculation are: Recipe-costs(has to be paid only once per item), laurels, karma, skill-points and accountbound items you have to farm(Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore, etc).

With prices I took from the BLTC right now, weapons cost inbetween 63.336-74.736 gold.

For ascended armor, I calculated the price for a whole set each.
First off I calculated a base-cost, depending on the materials all recipes share.
With the prices for zojja-insignias I took from the BLTC right now, each profession has a base-cost of 347.292 gold.

Next I added the differing costs, which includes damask, elonian leather and deldrimor steel ingots for the inner and outer layer of the armors. Also the additional 360 Spools of Gossamer Thread for light and medium outer layers and the 150 Thermocatalytic reagents for the heavy outer layer(btw, that difference is around 8 silver).
The total numbers are:
Light: 608.016 gold
Medium: 465.816 gold
Heavy: 510.926 gold

I’ll take the lowest priced armor as my base for a comparision:
Heavy armor users pay 9.68% more in total than medium armor users. In my perspective that would still be OK.
Light armor users, however, pay 30.53% more than medium armor users.

Total parity? No, I don’t need that.
But I’d find it preferable to ensure that there isn’t such a disparity.

Edit: I forgot to add the price for crystalline dust into my excel sheet, the numbers are corrected now.

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

The base-price also includes the crystalline dust, the common amount of Spools of Gossamer Thread and the Thermocatalytic Reagents for Vision and Lesser Vision Crystals.

But yes, excluding the base-price, you pay the following:

Light: 260,724
Medium:118,524
Heavy: 163,634

phys.7689:

Unfortunately the game cannot simulate the opportunity created by a design that isnt quite hitting the mark.

You are not the one who determines whether the game design is “hitting the mark” or not.

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

This as well as the price of leather on the TP tells me there is a problem with the leather markets, not the cloth ones.

Gah! Please don’t use Math to make inane statements. 27c^1.38 ~ 96c (the price of mithril) which is also “exponentially more expensive.” You can play this trick with any two items that have different values, and one will always be exponentially greater.

silently slips past zero and one

The word exponential carries a lot of weight, and shouldn’t be tossed around because it sounds good.

Fair enough. I meant it to mean that the price of the higher was very nearly the price of the lower squared. “Exponential,” as a vernacular term, typically means “squared or greater.”

So instead of acting as a gold sink (through taxes when sold), all the silk supply in game will act as a massive gold faucet, when sold to an npc.

Sounds legit.

For a short time only and then that NPC would be gone. They’ve had short term gold faucets before and the game has survived them. If it matters to you though, currently if someone sells Silk Scrap on the TP at the buy price, it sells at 2.08s, from which they pocket 1.76 and the house pockets the other 15%. So what if the ANet NPC just guaranteed that he would buy all the Silk we had at 1.75 (this would assume that the change made would cause the “natural market value” to rapidly fall to say 1.2s otherwise)? This would mean you’d make slightly less per unit than you would selling on the TP, but not that much worse (2.5s per stack), but you’d have some immediate price protection from the change, and reduce the number of people hoarding a bit because this is the best price they’d be likely to see for a while, but the players would not be gaining any more money than they would have had after taxes anyways.

If the gold faucet would be entirely unacceptable, then just provide something else for it instead, something non-gold. Provide a selection of BoP armor skins that you can trade silk in for, nothing unique, but things that are otherwise trickier to get. Maybe some minipets or something. Provide a wide selection of things so that almost any player would go “you know, it’s worth trading in my bulk silk to get this stuff,” but in a way that would not add gold. And just for the man who has everything, the catch-all Obsidian Shards.

Note, this is just an example, I am not saying that 1.2s should be the target point for silk.

And even if they do, the interaction with the tp is just a couple of minutes, while the amount of time you need earn your gold take up the mayority of your time. So the emphasis lies still on adventuring, rather than trading.

But the earning the money on the TP is way easier than through straight adventuring, so it’s still more about the TP. You could argue that players could adventure for their gold so they don’t need to use the TP, but you could also argue that they could take on level 80 content with starter weapons and no armor, so armor is completely unnecessary, it’s just a facetious argument.

This as well as the price of leather on the TP tells me there is a problem with the leather markets, not the cloth ones.

And that’s likely a factor too. I think all the base mats are distorted. All the cloths are too expensive relative to the metals, and the leathers are too cheap. All the T3-4s are overpriced relative to the T5s, and most T6 are a bit under-priced (ori and lumber are pretty solid due to weapons). There need to be adjustments across the board. I’m not sure which item it is that is “perfect” and the others should be balanced roughly around, but whatever it is, that balance does not currently exist.

Whose idea was it to make ascended armor/weapons a gold grind anyway? Much less an economy balancing act? If you want to artificially balance mats, please do it around convenience items or fashion products, not core gear.

eithinan.9841:

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

This as well as the price of leather on the TP tells me there is a problem with the leather markets, not the cloth ones.

Which of the above numbers? Heavy being 46 gold more expensive than medium, of which almost 14 gold originate from heavy armor needing one bolt of damask more?
Or light armor being 97 gold more expensive than heavy armor(heavy contains no leather, might I add) and 143 gold more expensive than medium armor.

To put it into perspective:
Without the base-price the difference between medium and heavy(no leather) armor is less than half the difference between heavy and light armor, therefore less than a third of the difference between medium and light.

Heavy armor requires no leather at all, its primary material is deldrimor steel which is used for all ascended weapons. A full set costs around 510 gold.
A set of light armor(which contains cheap leather) costs 608 gold, which is 19.22% more.

You still see no problem with cloth?

tekfan.3179:

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium. Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

You assume that absolute parity is required inside of tiers, I don’t necessarily agree.

A micromanagement for abolutely even prices would be ridiculous, I agree.
Yet, we’ve seen crafting-recipes change or new sinks for materials being created, so that some items won’t become trash-items and their worth doesn’t go down to vendor value.
Possible even changes in the looting-tables no one of us players could know of.

Absolute parity is an illusion, the market will always change, based on supply and demand.
However, at least from the crafting recipes we could get a bit of equality.

As I followed this topic, I made a simple calculation on the price of crafting ascended equipment.
I admit, I kept it simple by taking prices for Bolts of damask, Elonian Leather, Deldrimor Steel Ingots, inscriptions and insignias(both Zojja, as zerker is the meta) from the BLTC, instead of calculating their specific material-cost by crafting recipe.
Not included in the calculation are: Recipe-costs(has to be paid only once per item), laurels, karma, skill-points and accountbound items you have to farm(Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore, etc).

With prices I took from the BLTC right now, weapons cost inbetween 63.336-74.736 gold.

For ascended armor, I calculated the price for a whole set each.
First off I calculated a base-cost, depending on the materials all recipes share.
With the prices for zojja-insignias I took from the BLTC right now, each profession has a base-cost of 347.292 gold.

Next I added the differing costs, which includes damask, elonian leather and deldrimor steel ingots for the inner and outer layer of the armors. Also the additional 360 Spools of Gossamer Thread for light and medium outer layers and the 150 Thermocatalytic reagents for the heavy outer layer(btw, that difference is around 8 silver).
The total numbers are:
Light: 608.016 gold
Medium: 465.816 gold
Heavy: 510.926 gold

I’ll take the lowest priced armor as my base for a comparision:
Heavy armor users pay 9.68% more in total than medium armor users. In my perspective that would still be OK.
Light armor users, however, pay 30.53% more than medium armor users.

Total parity? No, I don’t need that.
But I’d find it preferable to ensure that there isn’t such a disparity.

Edit: I forgot to add the price for crystalline dust into my excel sheet, the numbers are corrected now.

Please base your costs off the base components such as silk scraps rather than bolts of damask or even the insignia. All you’re doing is inflating the number by including additional taxes and the profit margins that come from time-gated crafting. Bolt of damask can produce around a 2G profit after taxes depending on when during the day you buy the components and then eventually sell it.

I also tend to go by the prices that it would cost if you had placed buy orders although the difference tends to be only around 30 gold. Light armor costs 431.54 gold. Medium armor costs 337.34 gold. Heavy armor costs 358.74 gold. I have bolts of damask currently costing 10.32 gold to make.

tekfan.3179:

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

The base-price also includes the crystalline dust, the common amount of Spools of Gossamer Thread and the Thermocatalytic Reagents for Vision and Lesser Vision Crystals.

But yes, excluding the base-price, you pay the following:

Light: 260,724
Medium:118,524
Heavy: 163,634

Using your data

Weapon: 63.336-74.736 gold.
Average 69.036, taking into account 1 2-handed, and both offhand and mainhand versions of weapons for the list below (so an Elementalist needs 2 daggers).

Armor:
Light: 608.016 gold
Medium: 465.816 gold
Heavy: 510.926 gold

Scholar
Elementalist: 6*69.036 + 608.016 = 1022.232
Mesmer: 10*69.036 + 608.016 = 1298.376
Necromancer: 9*69.036 + 608.016 = 1229.34

Adventurer
Engineer: 5*69.036 + 465.816 = 810.996
Ranger: 11*69.036 + 465.816 = 1225.212
Thief: 8*69.036 + 465.816 = 1018.104

Soldier
Guardian: 11*69.036 + 510.926 = 1270.322
Warrior: 14*69.036 + 510.926 = 1477.43

With all the above, to get a full Ascended Weapon/Armor set, including dual weapons:
Warrior: 1477.43g
Mesmer: 1298.376g
Guardian: 1270.322g
Necromancer: 1229.34g
Ranger: 1225.212g
Elementalist: 1022.232g
Thief: 1018.104g
Engineer: 810.996

Tough luck for Mesmers! The sheer amount of weapons available to Warriors explode them to first position. No surprise the Engineer is at the bottom of the list.

I took the medium armor chest piece and broke it down to the bare basics of what I would need.

300 silk scraps just for the chest piece vs 160 wool scraps, 160 linen scraps, and 80 cotton scraps. The only thing that it requires more than 300 of are the Piles of Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore, and Empyreal Fragments which it requires 500 of each. However, these are non trade-able and given out like candy.

I’m also pretty sure that the silk is shared between all three armor classes (light, medium, heavy) unlike, for example, the 200 Thin Leather Sections, 100 Coarse Leather Sections, 200 Rugged Leather Sections, and 150 Thick Leather Sections required for the medium piece.

I wonder if light armor requires even more…

This over reliance on silk by all three armor types for the crafting of ascended is what’s driving the price up and changing the requirements would certainly impact the price.

This is not about economy. It is about fun.

Is it fun when your friends who decided to go with a thief and a ranger get their gear in little time, but you have to wait more than the double of time to get equally geared even though you did as much or even more than them in the game?

No. It is not fun. It is frustrating.

It is fun spending several hours doing all sorts of things all over the game, and the next day when you are crafting the daily materials you have more than enough for the other 3 materials with what you got, but for cloth you don’t have enough for 1/4 of one?

No. It is not fun. It is frustrating.

A game has to be fun. When there’s something frustrating people, the cause of it must be analyzed and resolved in a way that will prevent the frustration while not breaking anything else in the game.

But it has to be done. Inaction is not a choice against such things.

Ok, so I’m seeing the same discussions repeating themselves and very few solutions to the silk disparity in crafting light armor compared to their other armor weight counterparts.

Lets start talking solutions, without bringing up the same arguments for or against.

Suggested solutions thus far:
Reduce the amount of silk needed for damask, bringing it more in line with the other armor weights.
Introduce a way to reliably farm silk.
Increase the other armor weights requirements to balance out the costs/materials of light armor.

These have been discussed at length, and the way I see it, a consesus hasn’t been reached.

The basic arguments against the proposed solutions are:
Reducing the amount of silk required would cause the silk, and cloth in general, market to crash, as silk is fairly easy to obtain via salvaging and bags.
Increasing the amounts required for the other armor weights would cause those mats to rise to a point where it would be more expensive to craft heavy/medium ascended gear than light is now.
Bringing in a reliable farm, would also cause the silk/cloth markets to crash to the point where silk is once again vendor value.

The basic arguments for the proposed solutions:
Reducing the amount of silk would bring the time/costs of crafting light armor to the same level as the other weights, thus being more fair.
Increasing the amounts needed for other armor weights would bring balance to ascended crafting and not single out cloth users.
A reliable silk farm would significantly reduce the costs of crafting light armor and reduce the time involved.

John Smith asked if there was a reliable farm that allowed players to directly obtain silk, even at a slow rate without effective the prices would be viable. I personly don’t think that would solve the issue, but that is my opinion.

So what can be done? Are there any more ideas that don’t involve the afore mentioned proposed solutions?

What about adding silk to the salvage tables of medium armor? This would allow ~2/3 of armor drops (not counting for RNG or loot weighting per armor class) to be able to produce silk. What effect would it have on the silk market? Would it cause a massive influx of silk into the market and crash the prices? Or would it allow silk to become a bit more affordable, and still make “farming” silk a more viable option?

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

maddoctor.2738:

tekfan.3179:

maddoctor.2738:

So everyone has to pay 336.276g for their insignia, which means the non-insignia parts of the armors are:

Light: 261
Medium: 118
Heavy: 164

Which means Light armors cost more than double of the Medium armor if you exclude the insignia which are common for all weights.

The base-price also includes the crystalline dust, the common amount of Spools of Gossamer Thread and the Thermocatalytic Reagents for Vision and Lesser Vision Crystals.

But yes, excluding the base-price, you pay the following:

Light: 260,724
Medium:118,524
Heavy: 163,634

Using your data

Weapon: 63.336-74.736 gold.
Average 69.036, taking into account 1 2-handed, and both offhand and mainhand versions of weapons for the list below (so an Elementalist needs 2 daggers).

Armor:
Light: 608.016 gold
Medium: 465.816 gold
Heavy: 510.926 gold

Scholar
Elementalist: 6*69.036 + 608.016 = 1022.232
Mesmer: 10*69.036 + 608.016 = 1298.376
Necromancer: 9*69.036 + 608.016 = 1229.34

Adventurer
Engineer: 5*69.036 + 465.816 = 810.996
Ranger: 11*69.036 + 465.816 = 1225.212
Thief: 8*69.036 + 465.816 = 1018.104

Soldier
Guardian: 11*69.036 + 510.926 = 1270.322
Warrior: 14*69.036 + 510.926 = 1477.43

With all the above, to get a full Ascended Weapon/Armor set, including dual weapons:
Warrior: 1477.43g
Mesmer: 1298.376g
Guardian: 1270.322g
Necromancer: 1229.34g
Ranger: 1225.212g
Elementalist: 1022.232g
Thief: 1018.104g
Engineer: 810.996

Tough luck for Mesmers! The sheer amount of weapons available to Warriors explode them to first position. No surprise the Engineer is at the bottom of the list.

comparing every possible combination of weapons is interesting, but not useful, because having more weapons is not a quantifiable balance.

armor and full weapon slots. A warrior with 14 ascended weapons has no more power than a warrior with 2 ascended. He has more options out of combat, but that becomes impossible to properly compare in value.

however, we can directly compare the difference in power between a mesmer with exotic armor, and a mesmer with ascended armor. we can say a mesmer without ascended armor may be at 9500/10000 power, and a warrior with full ascended is at 10000/10000 power.
and getting that difference costs more on some classses than others

a difference in power definately exists and it cost to progress is very different per armor weight

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

phys.7689:

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

I was referring to the ascended only recipes for metal and leather T7 refinement to require 300 materials. This will negate the argument that it’s unfair that non-light armor players need less materials. The only argument that would remain is the differences in acquisition which would mainly be the differences in obtaining cloth/leather vs ore.

Tough luck for Mesmers! The sheer amount of weapons available to Warriors explode them to first position. No surprise the Engineer is at the bottom of the list.

Of course that’s only if you insist on getting ascended weapons for all possible weapon slots. If you only gear for what you use, it would be cheaper to gear, say, a GS or Ham/Bow Warrior verses a GS/Sword and Focus Mesmer.

It is fun spending several hours doing all sorts of things all over the game, and the next day when you are crafting the daily materials you have more than enough for the other 3 materials with what you got, but for cloth you don’t have enough for 1/4 of one?

Just throwing this out there, but what if they added recipes to craft armor Insignias using metal or leather as well as the existing cloth ones? Like you could make an Ascended Insignia using 3 Bolts of Damask if you liked, but you could just as easily make it using 3 Deldrimor Steel or 3 Elonian Leather instead if you preferred. How much would that help things?

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

Using Tekfan’s pricing, the average base cost of making a set of ascended armor (not counting the cost of leveling that craft, and the various fixed costs that all armors share) is 180g, which is slightly more than Heavy currently is, and about 2/3 the cost of Light. So what if, for the time being, we agree that this is a reasonable goal price. This would require the three Light classes to pay less, but cause the other (soon) six classes to pay more. What if instead we tried to balance to the lowest common denominator, and make it cost only ~160 for a full set of any? Then everyone sees at least a little savings. And of course there would be minor variations, some would be more or less expensive on any given day by maybe 5% or so, but they should be within a reasonable range of each other, and so long as you’re willing to track the prices and get in on a good day you should be able to get roughly equivalent prices.

I believe we need some new item sinks that give t5 and t6 armor materials more consistent, and long term value, but are not required for maximum vertical power. Using the concept of legendary weapons, which have equalized the values of mithril and elder wood (to be at least above vendor) but provide a non essential horizontal progression.

new item sink.
legendary armor upgrade item.

• upgrades ascended armor to legendary status (stat switchable)
• provides a modest particle effect when you have a full set.
• obtained by
  • via mystic forge with rare armors and exotic armors
    • weighed perhaps more heavily to exotics than precursors, t6 mats going up increases the value of t5 mats indirectly, while keeping the heirarchy pure
    • like precursors, but with higher rates (since you need like 6 of them)
  • OR (two methods, ones a gamble, one is guaranteed, but requires more investment on average, maybe 3x as much)
  • via npc that appears in stone mist castle, and in PVE at end of dynamic event chain, and in aetherpath after clear and some bonus objective is done.
  • The npc asks for
    • 6 damask and 500 bolts of gossamer
    • or
    • 6 elonian and 500 hardened leather
    • or
    • 6 mithrillium and 500 orichalcum.

The numbers are just thrown in there, but i would caution against going too crazy, keep in mind you need 6 of these, and you would have already had to invest in acsended.

• I would, as this is released lower the requirements for damask, because silk will get sunk from being destroyed in the mystic forge, or being promoted en mass to create gossamer for the direct recipe. This allows one to roughly unify the effort for ascended, without fearing price drops.

• people can use any of the basic materials to get a universal upgrade, this will bring the values closer together, but not exactly even.

this would increase the desirability of ascended armor, and make ascended armor a step on the way to fully unlocking your class

increase the value of t6 mats, and also t5 mats value from possible promotion.

this would be a horizontal progression, rather than a vertical progression.

possible issues

• may explode the t6 basic mats price
• may decrease the desire for specific stat fine materials (but this should take awhile, so would you be kitten while you work on ascended, and the legendary upgrade for months?

to solve the possible t5 explositon
create direct renewable means of getting t5 materials at a bit better than your average farm, (300 in 2.5 hours) but thats the only(or main) thing you benefit as you are doing the activity. (it should definately require active participation) perhaps a dynamic event based minigame in cities.

Summary / TL;DR
Create cloth gathering nodes
This could balance cloth price.
Make insignias craftable with all 3 armor crafting materials.
This could balance the material prices in relationship with eachother.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

I was referring to the ascended only recipes for metal and leather T7 refinement to require 300 materials. This will negate the argument that it’s unfair that non-light armor players need less materials. The only argument that would remain is the differences in acquisition which would mainly be the differences in obtaining cloth/leather vs ore.

this would balance it, but i dont think the 300 material thing is actually a good daily requirement. requires about 2-3 hours of effort just for that 1 material, keep in mind these all require more materials/resources elsewhere, putting your total time investment in ascended armor per day, at like 4 hours or more. over 36 days. thats 144 hours
assuming the average player gets in 12 hours a week, thats 12 weeks. 2-3 months for a modest increase is discouraging for players.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

I was referring to the ascended only recipes for metal and leather T7 refinement to require 300 materials. This will negate the argument that it’s unfair that non-light armor players need less materials. The only argument that would remain is the differences in acquisition which would mainly be the differences in obtaining cloth/leather vs ore.

this would balance it, but i dont think the 300 material thing is actually a good daily requirement. requires about 2-3 hours of effort just for that 1 material, keep in mind these all require more materials/resources elsewhere, putting your total time investment in ascended armor per day, at like 4 hours or more. over 36 days. thats 144 hours
assuming the average player gets in 12 hours a week, thats 12 weeks. 2-3 months for a modest increase is discouraging for players.

Why does it have to be daily though? It can easily be made a long term goal which you can do over the course of several months. If all else fails, you can buy them off the TP. Even then, getting 300 mithril ore is not difficult and in no way requires more than an hour.

Mikuchan.7261:

Summary / TL;DR
Create cloth gathering nodes
This could balance cloth price.
Make insignias craftable with all 3 armor crafting materials.
This could balance the material prices in relationship with eachother.

Click here to see long arguments for why and how

hide spoiler

The problems I see:
1. Cloth (silk is not the only problem) are unproportionally more expensive than leather and metal.
2. Light armor is also unproportionally more expensive than heavy and medium armor.

The reasons I see why the problems exist:
1. Cloth is unproportionally expensive. Silk is not the only problem. It’s easy to brush this off by saying “supply and demand”. It is true that the price is caused by supply and demand, however, the supply and demand idea is not the base problem. Cloth is used in all 3 ascended armor crafting disciplines and also in a very large scale in all of those. It cannot be gathered, which metal can. Leather cannot be gathered, but also isn’t required nearly as much. Metal can be gathered infinitely on nodes at set random locations. As such there is a huge imbalance between the supply of metal, leather and cloth and the demand of metal, leather and cloth and this imbalance is the problem. It causes demand and it hinders supply.
This imbalance is even greater when you consider middle tier cloth, which is much harder to get for lvl 80 characters since much of the armor loot you will get will be lvl 80 and not the lvl you are farming and thus you get silk from it.

2. Ascended light armor is unproportionally expensive. This is, in my opinion, not caused by high demand of light armor compared to other armors, which would be a fair case if it was. The reason why light ascended armor is the single most expensive armor is because of the unproportionally high supply/demand ratio of damask compared to the other materials, which is not only caused by demand of light armor, but also caused by demand of heavy and medium armor. Demand of light armor does not affect the demand of Elonian Leather (in any significant way since it does not require enough of it to make a difference) or Deldrimor Steel (at all).
The reson for this is that insignias are only craftable with Damask.
As such, an imbalance can again be seen.

How I think the problems can be fixed
1 Introducing cloth gatherable “nodes” (and potentially even leather). Introduce a new “harvesting” tool, “carders”. Hand carders and drum carders of varying metal tier – Copper hand carders, iron hand carders, mithril drum carder, etc. The gatherable nodes then, provided you have carders, give you cloth scraps. This way you introduce a “realistic” way to harvest cloth and provide a sure-fire way to supply it that of course could have varying droprates. The reason why I wrote “nodes” in quotation marks is because they don’t need to be actual gathering nodes like trees or metal veins. They can also be living or corpses of animals for example. Wool would be a bit hard to grow due to it’s nature, so a wool gathering node could be a (wild) sheep. To gather it, you walk up to it and interact with it or it’s corpse, holding the appropriate tool. Once interacted with, that sheep, respawned or not, has it’s wool cut for an appropriate time compared to other gathering nodes. Or alternatively there is a chance to get wool from it for each time it respawns. Or yet alternatively, the sheep is an invulnurable NPC.
Cotton would naturally have a “normal” gathering node much like other plants.
Leather could be implemented in a similar way as I suggested that wool is implemented, by utilizing “gathering node animals”.

2. While lowering the price of cloth would certainly help to balance the prices themselves, it still doesn’t get rid of the imbalance that I suggest is in place where all armors need damask, but light armor and medium doesn’t need deldrimor steel, etc. To counter that imbalance I suggest rebalancing of the material requirements for the different armors.
The main reason why all armors require such a huge amount of Damask is without doubt the insignias. The different parts of the armor (padding, lining, plating etc) seems fairly ok in terms of material requirements. But the only way to get insignias is with cloth.
Make armorsmithing require deldrimor metal for insignias, leathercrafting require elonian leather for insignias and tailoring require damask for insignias.
The problem is then sovled and the prices will balance out with time.

cloth crafters would likely still be screwed, and leather would likely still be cheap. Youd also increase the minimum time to craft. (though not as much as now definately)
let insignias be craftable by any armor proffession using any material, and you solve the issue similarly, cloth will likely still be more expensive, but not as drastically. leather will likely rise in value. Time to craft will be similar for each, and overall more adjustable.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

RollingBob.8502:

Ayrilana.1396:

I think silk is just fine. What we need to do is fix the others so they’re the same as silk.

+1

for this plan to work you would need to a lot of other materials

thick leather needs to come up, hardened leather needs to come up, mithril needs to come up, oricalcum would then need to rise gossamer needs to rise, all fine mats should be more expensive than basic mats in that teir, so they need to rise.

And would this really be better for the economy?

everything would cost more gold, so it would not be as if you would actually be getting much value out of the increase.

And going by the way it was done in the past, not only would everything be more expensive, but it would require increasing your personal consumption to get satisfaction, by factors of like 4. (not only would everything cost more, but you would need a lot more of it to reach desirable outcomes)

you are not really gaining with changes like silk, you are just increasing the amount you have to grind.

short version, silk needs to come down, some other things need to go up, but its worthless, if making them go up, requires everyone to need more of them to achieve the same state they used to be at.

I was referring to the ascended only recipes for metal and leather T7 refinement to require 300 materials. This will negate the argument that it’s unfair that non-light armor players need less materials. The only argument that would remain is the differences in acquisition which would mainly be the differences in obtaining cloth/leather vs ore.

this would balance it, but i dont think the 300 material thing is actually a good daily requirement. requires about 2-3 hours of effort just for that 1 material, keep in mind these all require more materials/resources elsewhere, putting your total time investment in ascended armor per day, at like 4 hours or more. over 36 days. thats 144 hours
assuming the average player gets in 12 hours a week, thats 12 weeks. 2-3 months for a modest increase is discouraging for players.

Why does it have to be daily though? It can easily be made a long term goal which you can do over the course of several months. If all else fails, you can buy them off the TP. Even then, getting 300 mithril ore is not difficult and in no way requires more than an hour.

even if people dont do it daily, the time requirement is still there, you can decide to only put in 2 hours of work a day, but your still going to need to spend 144 hours actively pursuing it.
Which i think is too much for a lot of players. It would be ok for balance, but i dont think its the right number in terms of player investment.

I would love anet forever if they added an option to make ascended gear stats switchable whenever you want.

Aidan Savage.2078:

*Your post is fairly offtopic so…. probably does break the rules. And since your post is pretty much off topic, I dont have much to reply to you with.[/quote]

Yet, here you are typing a paragraph that is simply diminishing my feedback and is definitely not adding anything constructive to the conversation.

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

On a related note:
Do you feed information on major market changes back to the game designers?
If so, have you informed them about what is happening to the silk price?

Rauderi.8706:

“Working as intended” and “there is not a problem” have some merit as a part of the conversation. Ain’t (overly) broke, so why fix it?
Is it fun? Well, no. Is it fair? No. And that’s a problem.

Very well stated.

Zenguy.6421:

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

Who knows, I’ve personally asked him twice and he completely ignored both times. Guess he thinks it’s good design that damask takes literally double the amount of “refined”(bolts) mat than every other ascended mat, and equally as good design that damask is x4 the price of every other ascended mat.

If I could farm my own silk and the price stayed the same I wouldn’t care at all, I doubt most people would. I’d still run dungeons and silverwastes, then buy the silk. The thing I care about is the fact that silk was changed from 2- > 3 scraps per bolt AND 100 bolts per damask instead of the normal 50, then never reverted back down to 50 after silk stopped being useless/worthless

There’s absolutely no reason that it should still take 100 bolts of silk to make a single damask now that silk isn’t worth 3c. It was a change to get rid of all the silk and to make silk worth something, so why should it stay now that silk is 4x the price of t5 logs/ore? Why isn’t leather 100 per elonian? Why isn’t anything being done to fix leather? Why did you only fix one t5 mat, then not reduce the amount required later since the price is insane now?

THE PRICE OF SILK/DAMASK COMPARED TO EVERY OTHER T5 MAT/ASCENDED ITEM IS THE PROBLEM. A problem created by the devs themselves to fix another problem. Going from one extreme to another =/= good design.

Zenguy.6421:

John Smith.4610:

Sounds to me like two independent issues being discussed.
1. Aggregate price for silk and market velocity
2. Farming for individual mats is hard

John,
You’ve twice asserted that there are two issues being discussed here.

Is there a reason why your list doesn’t include the issue that *it takes twice as much silk as the other Tier 5 mats to make ascended materials, even though this issue is a) clearly being discussed here and b) at the heart of the changes in the silk price?

On a related note:
Do you feed information on major market changes back to the game designers?
If so, have you informed them about what is happening to the silk price?

valid question.
the 2 times the amount of effort is really the heart of this discussion
perhaps his intention to make it all use the same higher amounts,

then it would be more about aquisition, and whether the cost(time/money) is the in the correct place.

I would say that the 300 t5, 2-3 hours, 6-7 gold is not the right place, but before we can get there, we first would need to create more parity.

John, you mentioned parity not being necessary before, i spoke in this before, but a new simpler angle is this.
parity IS important for vertical progression
parity is LESS important for horizontal progression
parity is not very important for cosmetics

thats what i believe is true after mulling it over in my mind.

the problem is ascended is vertical progression.

Behellagh.1468:

Capitalism doesn’t necessarily lead to wealth disparity.

That is actally exactly what capitalism leads to. Wealth means more when most do not have it.