Guild Wars 2

So, I hope I don’t get too much hate for this because I understand that plenty of people enjoy multimap AB runs.

However, it has driven down the value of ecto in the market. A simple solution could be limiting chest opening to people who contributed to that map’s meta or making it so that only the first map of chests dropped guaranteed rares.

I’ve seen people posting about how they get entire stacks of 250 ecto from one AB multimap and I honestly don’t think it is at all balanced compared to other sources of ecto/rares.

I hope the devs see this and do something to address this issue. Also, other opinions are great but please keep it civil.

They said they’re not going to do anything about the economy and pricing, at least not for a while.

John Smith.4610:

Hello everyone, I’m John Smith, the Studio Economist for ArenaNet. We’ve kept pretty silent about the economy recently, but today I’m here to talk about our current strategy.

Guild Wars 2 has an amazing economy, one of the largest and most active in-game economies ever created. ArenaNet takes pride in offering players an ever-changing world that lives and grows with them. As the game develops, the economy must develop as well, and that’s one of the many reasons we’ve made hundreds of changes to economy balance throughout the lifetime of the game.

For the most part the continuous monitoring and balancing has led to an incredibly stable economy with sustainable growth and reasonable inflation levels. However, we’ve noticed a disturbing side-effect of that continuous balancing: For many markets we’ve accidently set the idea of a price, rather than the market setting the idea of a price. Flax is a great example of a market where the prices weren’t really reflective of input or demand, but rather the idea of a value. Eventually players recognized that there was an abundance of flax and the price began to trend in a positive direction. We’ve noticed that a large number of markets are exhibiting this behavior in both directions—resulting in their being underpriced or overpriced—and their prices no longer reflect the average wealth or income of players.

To address this, we’re taking a step back from the standard amount of economy balancing we’re doing; in fact, we’ve actually already started doing that. We hope to see many markets adjust their prices to match the current state of the economy. We do recognize that there are some markets moving to a place where we aren’t looking for them to be; once we see the economy moving we can reassess the markets and make improvements, as we have in the past.

I’ve heard about this but they could still change some things. They didn’t say they will not change anything…

Just a flesh wound.3589:

They said they’re not going to do anything about the economy and pricing, at least not for a while.

Since they already know about the multi loot that post is probably directed towards the changes in prices and supply from that and that’s them saying that they are going to wait and see what happens.

They may eventually do something about the AB multi loot, but that quote above saying they aren’t going to do anything to change the economy is only a week old so it’s unlikely they’ll do something to affect prices after saying that they aren’t going to do anything soon.

alaskasnowgirl.6047:

S
However, it has driven down the value of ecto in the market.

That’s not bad for the ‘economy’ — it’s only bad for people who earn ecto from sources other than AB/ML. As long as people can buy all the ecto they need and sell all that they don’t want, the market is working fine.

In fact, part of the reason that John Smith said that ANet would take a more hands-off approach is the widespread belief idea expressed above that there’s a certain price at which items should be selling. There isn’t — there’s no magic max or min for ecto, magic coins, or leather which makes them too expensive or too cheap.

High prices are good for those who don’t need items and bad for those who do; both groups are part of ‘the economy’.

ANet is well aware of AB multiloot’s existance, and some devs even take part in the multiloot squads. Multiloot has existed for months, and has been widespread since June. They already know about it and have chosen not to do anything about it. Also, it’s impossible to get 250 ectos from a single run, 40-50 is probably the best you can get if you manage to loot 8-10 maps fast enough and are lucky with rng when salvaging rares/exotics.

I don’t see it going away soon… Ecto’s are going to drop, but you aren’t really making any less money “yet”. Before when it was harder to get ecto’s you could sell 3 for 40 silver each and get 1.2 Gold before TP tax, but they were harder to get back then, or at least less numerous.

Now you spend about the same effort as you did before, but you get more Ecto’s, for it, however because they are easier to get, their value drops, and you now sell 5 ecto’s at 25 silver each to get 1.25 Gold before TP tax.

I don’t really think you’re going to earn any less, is my point, as you’re going to spend the same effort to get more Ecto’s, but the prices of Ecto’s is going to drop to balance that out.

Problem is you have to do Multiloot to earn as much as you did before, and that kind of becomes your only option to earn as much as you did before, rather than follow a boss train which visits some varied locales to earn your buck.

I am no expert on economy though, so I am probably way- WAY!- off base, this is just how I perceive things with very limited knowledge of the situation.

there is an impact on people who do not like the idea of multi looting and do not do it.

vesica tempestas.1563:

there is an impact on people who do not like the idea of multi looting and do not do it.

if you choose not to do a activity then you do not deserve the rewards from said activity. your not entitled to free gold. thats not how economys work.

indeed i do not want the reward from what i consider is an abuse of a design flaw. Completing 1 event and try to farm the loot from 5 or so other events with no effort for free – really? And as a said other players are being NEGATIVELY impacted by this abuse, genuine rewards from other activities have lost a lot of value because of this one skewed abuse.

vesica tempestas.1563:

indeed i do not want the reward from what i consider is an abuse of a design flaw. Completing 1 event and try to farm the loot from 5 or so other events with no effort for free – really? And as a said other players are being NEGATIVELY impacted by this abuse, genuine rewards from other activities have lost a lot of value because of this one skewed abuse.

Agreed.

I had started spending money on the game again as some of my concerns had been addressed. Multiloot has put me back in the position of not spending.

ah well we can agree on this at least

Ectos were going to go down regardless since HoT made them far more common. When they changed map contribution rewards to event rewards, I was seeing rares everywhere, easily doubling the amount I normally obtained.

As a simple fix for map hopping, put a cooldown on joining maps, like 10 minutes, though it should be more like 1 hour to prevent node hopping.

Healix.5819:

Ectos were going to go down regardless since HoT made them far more common. When they changed map contribution rewards to event rewards, I was seeing rares everywhere, easily doubling the amount I normally obtained.

As a simple fix for map hopping, put a cooldown on joining maps, like 10 minutes, though it should be more like 1 hour to prevent node hopping.

That suggestion means that players trying to play with friends and not trying to multiloot now suffer. Or guilds wanting to play together. Or someone just simply taxing from a map that’s not working on the meta to one that is, without the intent to multiloot.

a simpler approach is to stamp the player with an eventID – you get to loot the rewards from the event that matches the eventID.

The easiest thing to do is just put an ICD on the big sphere chests so you could only open them once per meta cycle no matter how many maps you jump to. In one fell swoop that kills the multimap exploit without punishing people doing the meta legit.

I cannot comment on the effects on the economy of the game as I don’t have the data. However, it is one of the biggest reasons why I have started to feel frustrated. I no longer feel there is much point in playing other than completing the new stories.

The people who do this looting have no time to play with the rest of us. No matter what content is suggested the gold they earn from multiloot takes precedence. For example trying. to do guild missions alone is possible, but frustrating.

I am just one person, but perhaps I am not the only one who feels this is hurting the community.

No matter the effect on the economy, the concept of looting event rewards in multiple maps in the same cycle seems both ludicrous and broken. It boggled my mind, until I remembered that ANet is the company that pioneered the most ridiculous MMO gameplay going with daily events in one low-level zone, complete with herds of players spamming AoE where mobs are going to spawn.

Garambola.2461:

I cannot comment on the effects on the economy of the game as I don’t have the data. However, it is one of the biggest reasons why I have started to feel frustrated. I no longer feel there is much point in playing other than completing the new stories.

The people who do this looting have no time to play with the rest of us. No matter what content is suggested the gold they earn from multiloot takes precedence. For example trying. to do guild missions alone is possible, but frustrating.

I am just one person, but perhaps I am not the only one who feels this is hurting the community.

I do a lot of things in the game, and there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of people anywhere I go.

The thing with multilooting is this- if Anet knows what’s happening, and they haven’t taken any action to nerf the way the Auric Basin meta functions (either by jacking up key prices, or reducing currency, or straight up removing the large chests) then why make it some kind of ethical issue? If you don’t want to do it because it’s tedious or whatever, that’s cool. But if the only reason you would avoid it is because you’ve convinced yourself that it’s renegade points all the way down, and you’re somehow preserving a sense of mmo-ideological purity, then that’s your choice. Nobody is preventing you from participating, and it’s frankly not fair to cast blame at players who have figured out a totally legit given the developer implemented mechanics and drops available to them from the game way to play the game.

The point was the abuse of the mechanic is producing an unwanted side-effect that impacts people who choose not to do it. Example – i get a couple rares when i do fractals, the value of my loot has dropped making it less rewarding – all because of the abuse of a single event in the entire GW2 world.

I would suspect Anet have not fixed it because maintaining state across multiple instances is an expensive problem to solve. Clearly Anet had no intention of creating this behaviour.

‘An exploit is the misuse of a software feature or bug in a way that allows a player to generate in-game benefits without the risk or time expected by the game’s designers.’ That’s exactly whats going on here.

vesica tempestas.1563:

The point was the abuse of the mechanic is producing an unwanted side-effect that impacts people who choose not to do it. Example – i get a couple rares when i do fractals, the value of my loot has dropped making it less rewarding – all because of the abuse of a single event in the entire GW2 world.

I would suspect Anet have not fixed it because maintaining state across multiple instances is an expensive problem to solve. Clearly Anet had no intention of creating this behaviour.

‘An exploit is the misuse of a software feature or bug in a way that allows a player to generate in-game benefits without the risk or time expected by the game’s designers.’ That’s exactly whats going on here.

The game’s designers themselves participate in multiloot. I’ve ran into the same Anet employees with their anet guild tag on before in various maps while opening chests, and the only way that kind of map hopping could happen is if they were either in a multiloot squad or using some kind of dev tool we don’t know about, but only specific devs would have access to that kind of thing.

I am not willing to do the multiloot because it just plain is, at this stage, neverending no fun which means that I am pretty much locked out of the economy. My purchasing power is absolute garbage.

I am currently trying to find any way to get enough money out of something other than the multiloot to be able to purchase anything near what I did pre multiloot. Before John Smith’s announcement, I occasionally held hope that they would do something like make only the instance you won in lootable, or something otherwise intelligent.

Then I remembered the trait debacle and remembered which company I’m dealing with. John Smith’s comment confirmed that, something that didn’t really surprise me. Disappoint, yes, surprise, no. Like everything, I have no choice but to accept it and try to find other ways to make money.

Multimapping breaks the risk/reward ratio which is fundamental to any game design. Not only multimappers are being rewarded far beyond what the difficulty justifies, but even being rewarded for failing the event, since the pooling of risk over 7-8 maps renders it meaningless.

Also if devs are running this exploit and profiting personally from it, combined with delaying or refusing to fix it , this basically amounts to dev corruption.

sophiewhite.3149:

if you choose not to do a activity then you do not deserve the rewards from said activity. your not entitled to free gold. thats not how economys work.

Unless you AB multimap. Then you’re entitled to free gold. You don’t have to do anything! Just stand there and then loot the chests on 10 different maps cleared by others! Yay!

Anet will not fix AB multimap bc of one reason, to sell more HoT expansion. The knowledge of getting gold easily will prompt a lot of new players to buy HoT. They know it is an exploit and just refuses to fix it. Why? The amount of HoT expansion bought has increased. Thats just my opinion

Gregori.5807:

I am not willing to do the multiloot because it just plain is, at this stage, neverending no fun which means that I am pretty much locked out of the economy. My purchasing power is absolute garbage.

I’m not sure what you are doing that you can’t earn good gold outside of AB/ML. I don’t participate in it and my purchasing power has gone up, not down. If you want to contact me in game, I’d be willing to offer you suggestions for low-effort changes you might make in your routine to increase your income.

Gregori.5807:

Before John Smith’s announcement, I occasionally held hope that they would do something like make only the instance you won in lootable, or something otherwise intelligent.

There’s nothing in his statement that suggests — to me — that they have no plans for AB or multilooting specifically. He was talking about intervening in specific material markets, not about loot balancing generally.

Not saying you should “hold hope” suddenly, just that his statement shouldn’t sway you one way or another.

alaskasnowgirl.6047:

So, I hope I don’t get too much hate for this because I understand that plenty of people enjoy multimap AB runs.

However, it has driven down the value of ecto in the market. A simple solution could be limiting chest opening to people who contributed to that map’s meta or making it so that only the first map of chests dropped guaranteed rares.

I’ve seen people posting about how they get entire stacks of 250 ecto from one AB multimap and I honestly don’t think it is at all balanced compared to other sources of ecto/rares.

I hope the devs see this and do something to address this issue. Also, other opinions are great but please keep it civil.

WUT? In your oppinion ecto is the god of the economy, and it should be at a fixed price (which you and other players) think it’s worth it? How so? Why should ecto price should be higher, because you got used to that price for a long period of time?

The ecto price it’s still very high as a crafting material, my perceived value it’s low so I think the economy it’s broken because ecto it’s above 20s, there, I said it.

Some people have started charging to use multi-map lobby which should help fix the economy.

General Health.9678:

Some people have started charging to use multi-map lobby which should help fix the economy.

I think you misunderstood, they’re charging to NOT have to use the lobby. You essentially get a free pass from having to move your icon all the time when switching maps, which honestly is super lazy and not worth paying for.

honestly id love to not have to farm silverwastes constantly to make my gold to make legendarys. but we cant all have what we want. starting this thread was stupid as there is already a megathread. its not bad for the economy. plain and simple. its good for the economy as many players before me have explained. if you think ab is easy let me show you sw. the place where you couldnt die if you tried. takes no skill or coordination and just mindless running in circles while loot auto deposits in your inventory. SO MUCH SKILL AND EFFORT WOW!!!!!! you want skill to be rewarded? then offer buffs to fractals and raids. those take effort coordination and practice. esp raids. youll probably complain because you dont do those either.

alaskasnowgirl.6047:

I’ve seen people posting about how they get entire stacks of 250 ecto from one AB multimap and I honestly don’t think it is at all balanced compared to other sources of ecto/rares.

And what do you think should anet do against these absurd exaggerations of those people?

The only reason I disagree, is because before the ABML thing it was an ordious task to get ectos. Now they’re at least slightly affordable. I wish there was an ABML for mystic coins as well. Those could really use a drop in price