Guild Wars 2

John Smith.4610:

tolunart.2095:

Leamas.5803:

The RNG acts very strangely with me and seems anything but random (Which I have reported to ANet couple times). Just can’t do it. I know people who have thrown in over 1000g worth of stuff to get nothing, while I know others who have gotten multiple pre drops with little effort from the forge.

This is the definition of “random.”

You might be referring to the clustering illusion. Wikipedia has a really cool gif:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

But is it really an illusion in this case? Granted, it is way better than it used to be. Way back when, it was very predictable. This was early winter 2012/2013, post Lost Shores and the infamous November loot nerfs. I remember that whenever I got a rare, which was extremely rare in those days, most of the time, probably more than 80% of the time, I would get a second rare shortly there after that would have either the same base stats or same sigil, or the identical item sometimes. It happened this way often enough that it was surprising when it didn’t happen. From the forge, I once had 3 identical exotics staffs drop from ~20 rare combination attempts in the forge. Of the 7 I had drop that day, which, granted is a good rate for exotics, 3 were identical, 3 where the same base item skin with different stats and no upgrade, the 4 that had upgrades all had the same upgrade (Dire Orrian Staff of Rage x 3, Shaman’s Etched Batch of Rage, Rampager’s Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade), Carrion Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade) Valkyrie Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)). I’ve seen this sort of “clustering” behavior every time I’ve used the forge in bulk…granted that was only 3 times I think since I only forge stuff I make or stuff I find.

While I’ll grant you these sorts of things are possible with RNG, the sheer size of the loot table should make this sort of behavior extremely unlikely, much less predictable. Is it an illusion or is it truly random when the behavior is predictable? Like I said, open world has improved vastly since those early days and I haven’t tested the forge for some time. The above were results from using the forge ~9 months ago with 62 crafted rares plus those rares returned. The exotics I sold on the TP.

give a defense of, why it is healthy to have the Amberite weapon’s fossils be non-tradeable? I spent around 20 hours of game-time farming geodes, opening chests, and to no avail. That experience was neither fun, nor rewarding, and I have not been back to Dry Top since.

Yeah, I on the other hand, completed my Ambrite set the other day and have near a dozen fossils left over in my inventory. I’d give them to you if I could, but I can’t, because reasons.

You might be referring to the clustering illusion. Wikipedia has a really cool gif:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

I think the problem here is that there are too many things in this game for which pure RNG is the only option, and with teeny teeny tiny odds such that many people have zero success even after a massive number of attempts. I think the game could greatly benefit from more “consolation” or “streak breaking” mechanisms to it. Marvel Heroes, for example, has a rare currency that is similar in function to Gems, which you can receive as drops. You can increase your odds of acquiring these drops similarly to Magic Find, but they also have a “streak breaker” mechanism that ensures that if you haven’t gotten one in eight minutes of activity due to RNG, you WILL get one soon. You can get more than one per ten minutes or so, but never less.

Some mechanism like this would greatly benefit GW2, either a streak breaker that means if you haven’t looted a certain high value item after [the intended average number of attempts], then you definitely will loot it on the next attempt, RNG be kittened, OR a system of tokenization, where every attempt has a chane of dropping the cool RNG thing AND it gives you a token which, once you’ve collected a bunch of them, allows you to just buy the RNG thing outright. The existing BL ticket scraps work similarly to this, although there is still RNG involved with them.

I think the point is that this isn’t a problem with the game’s mechanics … it’s just a perception people have when they sample a very small subset of space where a cluster occurs.

The point is that it is a problem with the game’s mechanics that causes people to perceive things incorrectly. A game’s design has to take human psychology in mind, and deliberately avoid negative perceptions. You can’t design a game and then claim ignorance of how humans can be predicted to react to those systems.

John Smith.4610:

tolunart.2095:

Leamas.5803:

The RNG acts very strangely with me and seems anything but random (Which I have reported to ANet couple times). Just can’t do it. I know people who have thrown in over 1000g worth of stuff to get nothing, while I know others who have gotten multiple pre drops with little effort from the forge.

This is the definition of “random.”

You might be referring to the clustering illusion. Wikipedia has a really cool gif:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

I’m sorry, but when one guild member gets more precursors than everyone else in my guild combined, and in fact, leaves the game for 2 months, comes back, and loots a pre-cursor off a moa, while I spend those 2 months doing multiple events and get nothing, I don’t think that’s what I call a “clustering illusion”.

My apologies, this is the wrong forum for this discussion. My intent was only to highlight more my frustration with the inflation in the inflation in the TP and to ask if something is to be done to bring down the cost of PREs because other means are not really feasible IMO. I didn’t intend to open a discussion about the “finer” points of the games RNG.

Becka Williams.4978:

John Smith.4610:

tolunart.2095:

Leamas.5803:

The RNG acts very strangely with me and seems anything but random (Which I have reported to ANet couple times). Just can’t do it. I know people who have thrown in over 1000g worth of stuff to get nothing, while I know others who have gotten multiple pre drops with little effort from the forge.

This is the definition of “random.”

You might be referring to the clustering illusion. Wikipedia has a really cool gif:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion

I’m sorry, but when one guild member gets more precursors than everyone else in my guild combined, and in fact, leaves the game for 2 months, comes back, and loots a pre-cursor off a moa, while I spend those 2 months doing multiple events and get nothing, I don’t think that’s what I call a “clustering illusion”.

There is a “issue” well known among the player community where some people have unreasonably lucky accounts, while others are dreadfully unlucky, well beyond that of RNG. ANet never officially acknowledged there was a problem. There were some very large threads about it some time ago. I used to be very unlucky, but now I consider myself to be more or less average as my drops have improved slightly over time. I know a guy with 8 legendaries, I don’t know if he just has no life or too much money, but I can’t even conceive of that. I once knew a guy who looted 5 PREs from mobs alone. I knew another who couldn’t get a decent drop to save his life to the point that he refused to do dungeons or group with anyone because ALWAYS getting the worst drops in the group became too disheartening. I suspect he quite the game shortly after I met him.

Leamas.5803:

My apologies, this is the wrong forum for this discussion. My intent was only to highlight more my frustration with the inflation in the inflation in the TP and to ask if something is to be done to bring down the cost of PREs because other means are not really feasible IMO. I didn’t intend to open a discussion about the “finer” points of the games RNG.

IF your intention wasnt to start an off topic discussion, why do you keep on contributing to that discussion in your next post?

Wanze.8410:

Leamas.5803:

My apologies, this is the wrong forum for this discussion. My intent was only to highlight more my frustration with the inflation in the inflation in the TP and to ask if something is to be done to bring down the cost of PREs because other means are not really feasible IMO. I didn’t intend to open a discussion about the “finer” points of the games RNG.

IF your intention wasnt to start an off topic discussion, why do you keep on contributing to that discussion in your next post?

I thought of that after posting that I should have PM’d him. ;-) Oh well.

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

Isn’t that basically what an outlier is?

He’s got you there, John.

And yeah, I can confirm that those lucky streaks DO happen. It happened to me just last weekend. After getting basically nothing the previous two runs, this Sunday Fractal run ended up giving me 4(!) Exotics, 2 Globs of Mist Essence, a Fractal Spoon and an Ascended Ring at the end. It was downright incredible.

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

Can you confirm whether it is an RNG that uses some sort of value from the user’s account or whether it is purely random/session based? I have a friend who swears that smack-talking an anet dev during a beta weekend pvp match doomed his account to poor rng for life.

Fool! You NEVER smack-talk devs. :O

Essence Snow.3194:

Games shouldn’t be truly random though. That’s the point. They should strive to ensure that all players have the best chance of having equal experiences given equal input. Not “Sorry Johnny your game experience is a bad one, but that’s the nature of rng.” Imo that is the mark of broken reward mechanic.

Again “imo” game reward should be more consistent with flares of random thrown in to give the illusion of random instead of inconsistent with flares of clusters to give the illusion of pattern.

THIS

John,

This post very much echoes what I was saying with the Ambrite weapons. While it is great, and excellent, that the RNG may fit in to exactly how you would predict it as a economist, and statistician, and you correctly can say exactly how much a precursor would drop, at the end of the day, this is not fun for us. Granted, for those that are lucky, they have “fun.” However, for us from whom the RNG has not worked in favor of, it’s simply not.

I don’t mean to be overly negative. However, I do want to be honest when I say that I’m just not driven or motivated to do the following based on the RNG loot philosophy that current pervades the game:

*Buy gems to unlock Black Lion Chests – I cannot, CANNOT justify spending my hard earned money on a gamble for a video game.
*Play content over and over, grinding precious few hours I have to game in my life in something tedious or monotonous.
*Verbally recommend that others play this game.
*Answer well what the “end game” is, since it is a grind to try to get lucky for the cool skins. My answer would be, “Well, you can just keep playing to see if you can get lucky for a precursor. If you don’t want that, well….”

I do appreciate even the smaller response you were able to give to my post earlier. I appreciate the openness on the response about trying to find a good middle ground. I believe my frustration came out a bit more than I’d wanted in my post, but I do hope that you’d understand it’s only because I dearly love Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. I just wish Guild Wars 2 could find its way soon, as I believe it has lost some of its appeal for me with all the RNG end game skin elements.

Cheers.

I wanted to raise a question on Collections, and why it was believed to be a good idea to make some items incredibly hard to get (Claw fragment), and others making it seems like an endless stream (Tequatl spoon).

Also what was the idea behind making the rareness of these items (trinkets in particular) gated behind bugged events, like Foulbear, Commisar, etc. Surely there was an easier way to implement the loot drops that we never seem to get, regardless of faithful participation?

Sorry, but I’m not seeing an even 2-way street with the time (and money) invested in these items and the rewards that are supposed to be get-able. To me the collections introduced last month are a time-and-gold-sink aimed at those who have nothing more to do with their in-game time and money than to throw it at the last amount of AP’s they can. The exotic variants of Commisar’s Manifesto, Sam, Pendant of Arah, etc. are all looking like they were never meant to drop. Please, if there’s a logical reason behind these decisions (and the broken events), I’d love to hear it.

I saw a suggestion in a thread a few weeks ago (probably lost by now, thanks broken Search), where something could be done in-game to increase the rarity of these items from Fine to Exotic; (kind of on the same vain as using a Mystic Binding Agent) where it costs x-amount/time to acquire, to improve the quality of the item. Doing so would make it Soulbound on Acquire, as to not flood the market. This would satisfy the requirements for the collection and we can move on with the game in other areas.

I’m sorry, but when one guild member gets more precursors than everyone else in my guild combined, and in fact, leaves the game for 2 months, comes back, and loots a pre-cursor off a moa, while I spend those 2 months doing multiple events and get nothing, I don’t think that’s what I call a “clustering illusion”.

In two years of playing for hours daily, I’ve yet to see a single Precursor drop. Not one.

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

Sorry, I just don’t believe it’s random. And if it is random, it’s broken. I don’t see how one person can “randomly” get 10 precursors, while I get 1, and I play WAY more than they do. And even if you do believe this is truly random, do you understand why this might be frustrating to the players that don’t get precursor drops?

Sorry, I just don’t believe it’s random. And if it is random, it’s broken. I don’t see how one person can “randomly” get 10 precursors, while I get 1, and I play WAY more than they do. And even if you do believe this is truly random, do you understand why this might be frustrating to the players that don’t get precursor drops?

Yeah, that’s the important bit. We can believe it’s random, or not, and argue about the laws of averages all we want. The problem is it doesn’t FEEL good to be on the receiving end of a bad luck streak. ANet should want their players to feel good, and while it might be nice to have a lucky player feel super good about getting ten precursors, it feels bad to not get any, and it would be in the best interests of keeping everyone happy if they cheated with the intention of having everyone “win” over a reasonable period of time, rather than to let random chance create long-term “losers.” “Hot Streaks” can be cooled down a bit, they’ll never notice, and “cold streaks” could use a little extra heat, which they’ll definitely notice, all to the better.

Even if the distribution of Precursors does fall into statistical averages, they shouldn’t.

Ohoni.6057:

Sorry, I just don’t believe it’s random. And if it is random, it’s broken. I don’t see how one person can “randomly” get 10 precursors, while I get 1, and I play WAY more than they do. And even if you do believe this is truly random, do you understand why this might be frustrating to the players that don’t get precursor drops?

Yeah, that’s the important bit. We can believe it’s random, or not, and argue about the laws of averages all we want. The problem is it doesn’t FEEL good to be on the receiving end of a bad luck streak. ANet should want their players to feel good, and while it might be nice to have a lucky player feel super good about getting ten precursors, it feels bad to not get any, and it would be in the best interests of keeping everyone happy if they cheated with the intention of having everyone “win” over a reasonable period of time, rather than to let random chance create long-term “losers.” “Hot Streaks” can be cooled down a bit, they’ll never notice, and “cold streaks” could use a little extra heat, which they’ll definitely notice, all to the better.

Even if the distribution of Precursors does fall into statistical averages, they shouldn’t.

Well, this leads back to the idea of precursor crafting…

RNG is the bane of most games though and this game is pretty heavily weighted on it. The only items that people tend to want are locked behind “gambling” of either your time or your money. Black lion scraps/tickets (while they should be difficult to get) really shouldn’t be such a gamble. While RNG in drops is actually highly acceptable, locking goods behind a dice roll in attempt to make them rare and therefore worthwhile is pretty lazy (read cost effective) design.

While Mawdrey II is a direction, it’s usefulness beyond consuming a practically useless material is extremely limited behind RNG. It might actually be worth peoples time to craft it (also time gated and RNG based crafting) if it actually spit out t5/6 mats at a guaranteed rate, for example. Also, it’s not very attractive as a back-piece (i.e. i rarely see anyone wear one).

It’s fine to develop goals to keep people interested, it’s not fine to have those goals be a frustrating experience. Too many mistakes are being made. I’ll point you to the recent Black Lion key sale, where it didn’t specify “limit 1”. Combine that with pretty rapidly escalating prices of goods and you start seeing a walk out. These things are really helping to bring the game down for even the most dedicated players.

The gem shop is a bit overpriced (IMO) for virtual goods. The global TP is fairly out of control when it comes to price escalation. New armor skins being only really added to the gem store actually adds insult to injury.

I personally wish i had more motivation to play the game, but the fairly low amount of new content to play combined with the regular frustrating mistakes being made are just keeping me away.

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

i think you are missing something. It doesnt really matter if its caused by bad random generator, or if its actually a great random generator. Essentially the reality of random is, some people will be lucky, some people will be in clusters, etc. Hindsight doesnt really care what the source is, the fact is, it exists.

So the question then becomes, knowing that if it behaves properly, random, will cause these issues, what is your plan to minimize the negative effects. How do you design the game so that the players fate doesnt feel entirely controlled by forces/trends/statistic distributions which are out of their control?

Ohoni.6057:

Sorry, I just don’t believe it’s random. And if it is random, it’s broken. I don’t see how one person can “randomly” get 10 precursors, while I get 1, and I play WAY more than they do. And even if you do believe this is truly random, do you understand why this might be frustrating to the players that don’t get precursor drops?

Yeah, that’s the important bit. We can believe it’s random, or not, and argue about the laws of averages all we want. The problem is it doesn’t FEEL good to be on the receiving end of a bad luck streak. ANet should want their players to feel good, and while it might be nice to have a lucky player feel super good about getting ten precursors, it feels bad to not get any, and it would be in the best interests of keeping everyone happy if they cheated with the intention of having everyone “win” over a reasonable period of time, rather than to let random chance create long-term “losers.” “Hot Streaks” can be cooled down a bit, they’ll never notice, and “cold streaks” could use a little extra heat, which they’ll definitely notice, all to the better.

Even if the distribution of Precursors does fall into statistical averages, they shouldn’t.

I fully agree. But can we get back to the first part of his quote? Did someone actually get 10 precursors? I really hope that’s a figure of speech.

Buttercup.5871:

Ohoni.6057:

Sorry, I just don’t believe it’s random. And if it is random, it’s broken. I don’t see how one person can “randomly” get 10 precursors, while I get 1, and I play WAY more than they do. And even if you do believe this is truly random, do you understand why this might be frustrating to the players that don’t get precursor drops?

Yeah, that’s the important bit. We can believe it’s random, or not, and argue about the laws of averages all we want. The problem is it doesn’t FEEL good to be on the receiving end of a bad luck streak. ANet should want their players to feel good, and while it might be nice to have a lucky player feel super good about getting ten precursors, it feels bad to not get any, and it would be in the best interests of keeping everyone happy if they cheated with the intention of having everyone “win” over a reasonable period of time, rather than to let random chance create long-term “losers.” “Hot Streaks” can be cooled down a bit, they’ll never notice, and “cold streaks” could use a little extra heat, which they’ll definitely notice, all to the better.

Even if the distribution of Precursors does fall into statistical averages, they shouldn’t.

I fully agree. But can we get back to the first part of his quote? Did someone actually get 10 precursors? I really hope that’s a figure of speech. My “age” is 3500+ hours and I’ve never actually seen a precursor drop. Not even once.

I have about the same amount (300 less actually) of time and i’ve seen 2. One from the forge, one from cliffside fractal on 9.

phys.7689:

John Smith.4610:

There isn’t such thing is some accounts getting stuck lucky. Yes there’s an RNG, yes it’s random and there are streaks and outliers and an even aggregate distribution.

i think you are missing something. It doesnt really matter if its caused by bad random generator, or if its actually a great random generator. Essentially the reality of random is, some people will be lucky, some people will be in clusters, etc. Hindsight doesnt really care what the source is, the fact is, it exists.

So the question then becomes, knowing that if it behaves properly, random, will cause these issues, what is your plan to minimize the negative effects. How do you design the game so that the players fate doesnt feel entirely controlled by forces/trends/statistic distributions which are out of their control?

This is definitely part of the frustration that players have had to live with while playing this game. To add salt to the wound, the Scavenger Hunt(Collections) was added to the game sans the ability to acquire a non-RNG precursor. That was the whole reason why people wanted the Scavenger Hunt in the first place. I totally get why you guys don’t just want to throw in a non-RNG way to get precursors, but it shouldn’t have taken this long to come up with a solution. What are you going to do to allow people to work toward a precursor without breaking the economy and when can we see implemented and if it’s never going to come, can you just tell us that? Can we please get this addressed?

The rewards system needs a fix. So does the drop system. It’s an unmitigated mess right now.

Buttercup.5871:

Ohoni.6057:

Sorry, I just don’t believe it’s random. And if it is random, it’s broken. I don’t see how one person can “randomly” get 10 precursors, while I get 1, and I play WAY more than they do. And even if you do believe this is truly random, do you understand why this might be frustrating to the players that don’t get precursor drops?

Yeah, that’s the important bit. We can believe it’s random, or not, and argue about the laws of averages all we want. The problem is it doesn’t FEEL good to be on the receiving end of a bad luck streak. ANet should want their players to feel good, and while it might be nice to have a lucky player feel super good about getting ten precursors, it feels bad to not get any, and it would be in the best interests of keeping everyone happy if they cheated with the intention of having everyone “win” over a reasonable period of time, rather than to let random chance create long-term “losers.” “Hot Streaks” can be cooled down a bit, they’ll never notice, and “cold streaks” could use a little extra heat, which they’ll definitely notice, all to the better.

Even if the distribution of Precursors does fall into statistical averages, they shouldn’t.

I fully agree. But can we get back to the first part of his quote? Did someone actually get 10 precursors? I really hope that’s a figure of speech. My “age” is 3500+ hours and I’ve never actually seen a precursor drop. Not even once.

No, it’s not much of an exaggeration. He gets SO many precursors, the rest of the guild has as wishlist, so that when HE gets it (not them), they get first dibs at buying it. This has happened to a few guild members. He has like 5 legendaries. The bit about the moa was true too.

John Smith.4610:

I think the RNG as a concept might be a topic large enough to warrant a separate thread. I’m going to spin one up where we can discuss different theoretical tactics with dealing with the inherent problems in RNG.

This is great news! It can’t happen soon enough. Thank you.

John Smith.4610:

Be careful saying things don’t make any sense, it’s very rare that’s true. Almost everything (I’m speaking generically) is done for some reason or purpose, that purpose isn’t always very clear at first.

Unfortunately there is a rather large information gap between what you know, and what we can see going on. Without knowing what you know, I think it’s fair for us to describe quite a few things as “not making sense”.

For what it’s worth I am familiar with Bayes. In the 1990’s I worked with a group to produce a learning system that individuals could use to build a spam filter according to their own definition of spam. These systems were known as Naive Bayes Spam Filters and we managed to build a proof of concept system with a really lousy UI.

As an interesting side note it turned out that learning systems for individual users was simply not necessary because spam is so generic that it fulfills the Supreme Court definition of pornography. You know it when you see it.

In Bayesian terms, between the Omerta policy here and the glacial pace of development on this game, we are not receiving the Bayes Tokens needed to update our data set, and the information gap remains.

Thanks for reading.

I feel like this is a dump question and I don’t even know if the answer of my question can be derived from previous answers. But it just pops up in my head so if anyone can answer or point me to the right direction, it’d be great.

Dungeon running is recognized as the current highest g/hr farming method and also one of the most popular one. However it rewards player mostly in straight gold instead of drops. Does this eventually leads to inflation? because that more people run dungeon instead of farming materials?

Afya.5842:

I feel like this is a dump question and I don’t even know if the answer of my question can be derived from previous answers. But it just pops up in my head so if anyone can answer or point me to the right direction, it’d be great.

Dungeon running is recognized as the current highest g/hr farming method and also one of the most popular one. However it rewards player mostly in straight gold instead of drops. Does this eventually leads to inflation? because that more people run dungeon instead of farming materials?

Exactly. Dungeon running might have the highest direct gold rewards but the drops arent that great. There are several other ways to make more gold (if you sell your loot).

John Smith.4610:

It doesn’t necessarily lead to inflation, but it is a major input of liquid currency into the economy.

For the record, this is exactly why I dislike it. It becomes just another facet in “it’s always more worth it to farm gold and buy what you want than to get the item itself”. Imagine if, instead of gold, dungeons rewarded 3 T6 every time you completed a path instead? I think that’d be much cooler (as a player).

Although that’s not a question, so I don’t expect a response. :P

Rising Dusk.2408:

John Smith.4610:

It doesn’t necessarily lead to inflation, but it is a major input of liquid currency into the economy.

For the record, this is exactly why I dislike it. It becomes just another facet in “it’s always more worth it to farm gold and buy what you want than to get the item itself”. Imagine if, instead of gold, dungeons rewarded 3 T6 every time you completed a path instead? I think that’d be much cooler (as a player).

Although that’s not a question, so I don’t expect a response. :P

Many players do not enjoy “playing” the TP, and do not seek to get the most value out of their loot, if they sell through the TP at all. This would likely increase the perception of such items as “vendor trash” among those who aren’t interested in crafting, and lead to more players selling mats to vendors and/or buy orders.

They are also likely to buy from sell orders more often, I did in the beginning when leveling several toons through crafting. So this may have the unintended effect of putting cheaper mats into the hands of flippers through buy orders who sell them to other players through sell orders, increasing the margins between the two and thus making more money for flippers and less for dungeon runners.

Also, as JS said this is an important faucet for introducing gold into the economy. Without enough faucets, gold sinks like the TP could do their job too well and reduce the amount of gold in circulation to the point where the average player cannot earn enough gold to use the TP to buy the things he needs and wants. Giving us things to sell needs to be balanced by giving us the money to buy them with.

tolunart.2095:

Many players do not enjoy “playing” the TP, and do not seek to get the most value out of their loot, if they sell through the TP at all. This would likely increase the perception of such items as “vendor trash” among those who aren’t interested in crafting, and lead to more players selling mats to vendors and/or buy orders.

They are also likely to buy from sell orders more often, I did in the beginning when leveling several toons through crafting. So this may have the unintended effect of putting cheaper mats into the hands of flippers through buy orders who sell them to other players through sell orders, increasing the margins between the two and thus making more money for flippers and less for dungeon runners.

There is nothing wrong with more items in the market if it’s regulated. 3 T6 from a dungeon instead of 1g would regulate the price of T6, keeping them from skyrocketing, and potentially even make some other items more valuable in response. Flippers are not a bad thing, they are good for the economy. Putting more items in their hands, thus, is also a good thing.

tolunart.2095:

Also, as JS said this is an important faucet for introducing gold into the economy. Without enough faucets, gold sinks like the TP could do their job too well and reduce the amount of gold in circulation to the point where the average player cannot earn enough gold to use the TP to buy the things he needs and wants. Giving us things to sell needs to be balanced by giving us the money to buy them with.

The TP is a dynamic gold sink that adjusts to the current state of the economy; it, by design, will never do its job too well. Dungeons are but one faucet among many, and it is largely because of dungeon gold that item prices, such as precursors, are where they are now… and we all know how much people complain about the high prices of items.

We are just discussing market manipulation in a different topic and I was wondering what you would consider market manipulation within the guild wars 2 economy.

If we go by the real life wiki definition of Market Manipulation, which examples stated there would be considered MM in game as well (and therefore shouldnt be practiced)?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMarket_manipulation

Personally, i dont see any of the examples given being illegal in GW2 (and i think I know why but an explaination might be great).

The only things i can think of that would be considered illegal are:
Insider Trading
Using exploits like duping or the snowflake bug during wintersday 2012

Wanze.8410:

We are just discussing market manipulation in a different topic and I was wondering what you would consider market manipulation within the guild wars 2 economy.

If we go by the real life wiki definition of Market Manipulation, which examples stated there would be considered MM in game as well (and therefore shouldnt be practiced)?
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FMarket_manipulation

Personally, i dont see any of the examples given being illegal in GW2 (and i think I know why but an explaination might be great).

The only things i can think of that would be considered illegal are:
Insider Trading
Using exploits like duping or the snowflake bug during wintersday 2012

it was a loooooonnng time ago, and may no longer exist but i think JS weighed in on pumping and dumping unfavorably, though i dont think he said it was illegal, and that it would sometimes fail.

Not really a question about the economy per se, but I have a question about the tp functionality.

Since the update, I have come across the situation where there were either no listings for an item or no bids.

In the case where there were no listings, I could not find a way to actually list my item. My only option was Sell Instantly on the button. I could not click in the listings box and change the button’s message to List Item or whatever it says. I seemed to only have the option to sell to the bids.

Likewise, with the case where there were no bids for an item, I could not get it to let me create a bid. I just got the Buy Instantly button.

Am I missing something?

ananda.5946:

Not really a question about the economy per se, but I have a question about the tp functionality.

Since the update, I have come across the situation where there were either no listings for an item or no bids.

In the case where there were no listings, I could not find a way to actually list my item. My only option was Sell Instantly on the button. I could not click in the listings box and change the button’s message to List Item or whatever it says. I seemed to only have the option to sell to the bids.

Likewise, with the case where there were no bids for an item, I could not get it to let me create a bid. I just got the Buy Instantly button.

Am I missing something?

You just have to adjust the gold value you want to sell it for in the 3 fields for gold/silver/copper

Are you allowed to tell us the percentage of gold sunk out of the economy by trading post fees and taxes (relative to overall gold drained by all gold sinks)?

Ballpark figure would suffice.

I take a wild guess and say 60%.

Leamas.5803:

But is it really an illusion in this case? Granted, it is way better than it used to be. Way back when, it was very predictable. This was early winter 2012/2013, post Lost Shores and the infamous November loot nerfs. I remember that whenever I got a rare, which was extremely rare in those days, most of the time, probably more than 80% of the time, I would get a second rare shortly there after that would have either the same base stats or same sigil, or the identical item sometimes. It happened this way often enough that it was surprising when it didn’t happen. From the forge, I once had 3 identical exotics staffs drop from ~20 rare combination attempts in the forge. Of the 7 I had drop that day, which, granted is a good rate for exotics, 3 were identical, 3 where the same base item skin with different stats and no upgrade, the 4 that had upgrades all had the same upgrade (Dire Orrian Staff of Rage x 3, Shaman’s Etched Batch of Rage, Rampager’s Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade), Carrion Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade) Valkyrie Pearl Quarterstaff (No upgrade)). I’ve seen this sort of “clustering” behavior every time I’ve used the forge in bulk…granted that was only 3 times I think since I only forge stuff I make or stuff I find.

While I’ll grant you these sorts of things are possible with RNG, the sheer size of the loot table should make this sort of behavior extremely unlikely, much less predictable.

There are some 90000 ‘available’ items in the game, of all types; that number is probably low by several thousand.

About 39000 weapons and armor pieces are actually in play. Compare that to the combination of variables that make up a weapon and you’ll see there’s really only a tiny fraction of the gear possible actually in the game.

the more i think about the candy corn gobbler, the more ingenious i think its design is. whos responsible for it? can you comment on it at all? i kinda have the feeling that specifics like its 2 tiers of use, its gem price, its intended audience, how much corn you estimate it will gobble in a year, and such are all things you cant really talk about but are really interesting… pls john pls

It is a very clever item, I’ll agree. I didn’t buy it though; I couldn’t justify the cost of 1 – 3 silver (depending on Candy Corn prices) per use, especially when there seems to be a fairly high chance I’d end up with a useless transform, and no guarantee of getting the boost I wanted.

Still, I imagine there will be players who will be thrilled to have it.

John Smith.4610:

insanemaniac.2456:

the more i think about the candy corn gobbler, the more ingenious i think its design is. whos responsible for it? can you comment on it at all? i kinda have the feeling that specifics like its 2 tiers of use, its gem price, its intended audience, how much corn you estimate it will gobble in a year, and such are all things you cant really talk about but are really interesting… pls john pls

Gobbler was a group idea, with many brilliant people all contributing.
I haven’t checked any data on how much gobbling has occurred, it’s a bit too soon to tell anyway. There is a LOT of gobbling material available though so my gut reaction is a lot, how ever much you’re thinking multiply it times 10.

Was it designed before or during Halloween?

So, John, you mentioned before in the past that during Halloween 2013, you guys “made the sinks too difficult to interact with”. Now that Halloween 2014 is drawing to a close, are you more satisfied with how the sinks have worked for this year?

My personal feeling as a player is “Yes”. Supply has been massively increased, while the sink costs have been lowered, leading to the impression that “grind” has been reduced to a much more manageable level. At the same time, due to the wide variety of stuff that can be bought from the vendors, there’s a much higher chance for any individual player to have something that interests them, resulting in greater participation and thus more overall use of the Halloween mats and the Trading Post (of people buying and selling said mats and goodies).

I’m just curious to know if your internal metrics are bearing my impression out.

John Smith.4610:

Zaxares.5419:

So, John, you mentioned before in the past that during Halloween 2013, you guys “made the sinks too difficult to interact with”. Now that Halloween 2014 is drawing to a close, are you more satisfied with how the sinks have worked for this year?

My personal feeling as a player is “Yes”. Supply has been massively increased, while the sink costs have been lowered, leading to the impression that “grind” has been reduced to a much more manageable level. At the same time, due to the wide variety of stuff that can be bought from the vendors, there’s a much higher chance for any individual player to have something that interests them, resulting in greater participation and thus more overall use of the Halloween mats and the Trading Post (of people buying and selling said mats and goodies).

I’m just curious to know if your internal metrics are bearing my impression out.

I’m very pleased with this year’s Halloween, and I get the general impression that the players agree as well.

Sinks for unrefined and refined nougat/spiders/skulls seem a little slim.

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

Zaxares.5419:

So, John, you mentioned before in the past that during Halloween 2013, you guys “made the sinks too difficult to interact with”. Now that Halloween 2014 is drawing to a close, are you more satisfied with how the sinks have worked for this year?

My personal feeling as a player is “Yes”. Supply has been massively increased, while the sink costs have been lowered, leading to the impression that “grind” has been reduced to a much more manageable level. At the same time, due to the wide variety of stuff that can be bought from the vendors, there’s a much higher chance for any individual player to have something that interests them, resulting in greater participation and thus more overall use of the Halloween mats and the Trading Post (of people buying and selling said mats and goodies).

I’m just curious to know if your internal metrics are bearing my impression out.

I’m very pleased with this year’s Halloween, and I get the general impression that the players agree as well.

Sinks for unrefined and refined nougat/spiders/skulls seem a little slim.

seconding
the rare mats are about as badly flooded as t5 leather with the new tot bag drop rates

Yeah, I did notice that the sinks for the Nougat/Spiders/Skulls and their refined versions seem a bit inadequate. (I actually ended up buying Mini Carlotta, Prince Thorn and the Maize Balm recipe just for something to do with my excess of mats.)

I’d have added the various Pumpkin Oil/Crystal Nougat/Sharpening Skull recipes to the options for those mats. (Undecided on the quantity required. Maybe 1 or 2 refined material for each?) Just a suggestion for next year’s Halloween.

Maybe you could even introduce Mini Gwynfyrdd in exchange for 10 refined Nougats+Skulls+Fangs, although I don’t know if that would please or upset the mini collectors more. (Happier that they now have a way to earn it directly, or upset that it’s a “huge grind” to get?)

Fixing the forum page bug.