Guild Wars 2

They did a bad thing when they made the prices for Scribing recipes. Take one of the most simple finished products you can make, a Write of Basic Strength. This is a utility buff on par with most basic potions. It’ll eventually have a price likely in the 50s or below range. To make it you need:

3 copper
6 green wood plank
2 jug of water
1 bolt of jute
1 crystalline bottle
5 glittering dust
1 vial of weak blood
All this is fairly ok. It’s a bit of a complex recipe so far, but all these materials can be picked up for a few silver total, no problems there.

10 pouches of brown pigment. These are going for 15-20s a piece. That means you need to spend at least 1.5g to make the one writ.

3 resonating slivers. These can only be earned from Guild Missions (which are currently mostly broken), or bought off the TP for ~50s a piece, so another 1.5g.

This puts the recipe at over 3gs, and writs will NEVER be worth 3gs.

Now, I’m sure the TP fanboys will chime in, “that’s just the will of the market, the latter two ingredients are only that high now because lots of people are trying to level their scribes, those ingredients are new to the game, supplies are low, demand is high, they will balance out to a lower point eventually.”

And to some degree that is true, but ANet is still responsible for the CURRENT state of things. They KNEW supplies would be low for those materials, and KNEW that demand would be high. They could have resolved that. Knowing that scribes would need hundreds of brown pigment to level their craft, and that brown dye would be in short supply, they could have created a temporary faucet for those materials, like giving every new scribe a “gift of pigment,” 500 account bound brown pigments to use for that purpose. Knowing that it would take players a while to accumulate Resonating Silvers, they could have given a “gift of slivers”, 100 or so account bound slivers to help people catch up, given that many players had been running guild missions for years anyway.

ANet knows that certain things they do will cause temporary imbalances in the marketplace. They have tools they can use to fix these imbalances, but they CHOOSE to not employ them. They should choose differently.

Not that i want to defend the way that they implemented scribing, I actually think its utterly broken.
If it was meant to be leveled by pooling ressources from many guild members, they should have implemented a system like for guild hall upgrades, where people could donate mats.

But the reason why brown pigment is so expensive now is the patch they launched on October 29th, which made pigment, beside other things, depositable in the material storage.

The mayority of pigments is created by regular players and casuals, that just harvest away on plants and get random drops. Before the 29th, pigment was just clogging their precious bag space, so they disposed of it by selling it on the tp.

But now, most players just deposit whatever pigment they get into their storage and basically forget about it, so supply on the tp dried up.
Most players dont even know what pigment is for and certainly dont know what value it actually holds, otherwise they would put it on the tp.

And you cant really say that Anet didnt add more dyes to the market. With Hot release, prices for dyes plummeted by 50%.

But the reason why brown pigment is so expensive now is the patch they launched on October 29th, which made pigment, beside other things, depositable in the material storage.

The mayority of pigments is created by regular players and casuals, that just harvest away on plants and get random drops. Before the 29th, pigment was just clogging their precious bag space, so they disposed of it by selling it on the tp.

And that may account for a pricing change between when HoT launched and just now, but it’s still at a very high price due to basic supply and demand differences. If your argument were the primary cause then ALL pigments would be high, not just the one that is required in massive quantities for low level Scribing. It’s basically like if they only just added both Armoring and Copper as a resource a few weeks back, you could expect copper ore to be at tens of silver each, and it’s much easier to farm.

I get why the prices would be high right now, I’m just saying, there are methods ANet has available to create short term solutions to short term problems, but they seem to refuse to do this, only looking at the very long term trends and ignoring any inconvenience to players in the meantime. I’m sure that if prices are more in balance in six months time they will view that as a situation well handled from their perspective.

And you cant really say that Anet didnt add more dyes to the market. With Hot release, prices for dyes plummeted by 50%.

Orly?

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/20406

Ohoni.6057:

But the reason why brown pigment is so expensive now is the patch they launched on October 29th, which made pigment, beside other things, depositable in the material storage.

The mayority of pigments is created by regular players and casuals, that just harvest away on plants and get random drops. Before the 29th, pigment was just clogging their precious bag space, so they disposed of it by selling it on the tp.

And that may account for a pricing change between when HoT launched and just now, but it’s still at a very high price due to basic supply and demand differences. If your argument were the primary cause then ALL pigments would be high, not just the one that is required in massive quantities for low level Scribing. It’s basically like if they only just added both Armoring and Copper as a resource a few weeks back, you could expect copper ore to be at tens of silver each, and it’s much easier to farm.

I get why the prices would be high right now, I’m just saying, there are methods ANet has available to create short term solutions to short term problems, but they seem to refuse to do this, only looking at the very long term trends and ignoring any inconvenience to players in the meantime. I’m sure that if prices are more in balance in six months time they will view that as a situation well handled from their perspective.

And you cant really say that Anet didnt add more dyes to the market. With Hot release, prices for dyes plummeted by 50%.

Orly?

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/20406

The reason why other pigment isnt as high as brown one is that there are nearly no scribes at level 125 yet, which enables them to use other pigment than brown.

The dye you linked proves my point as it went from over 4s buy order before hot to 1.65s buy order shortly after.

The reason why other pigment isnt as high as brown one is that there are nearly no scribes at level 125 yet, which enables them to use other pigment than brown

/sigh, yes, which is the entire point I have been making.

The way that they rolls this out, situational bottlenecks were inevitable. When a system is new, you need a surplus in supply of the low level ingredients, and as the system matures, the higher level ingredients become more important. They designed a system that would be stable a year after implementation, which is better than nothing, but a well designed system ALSO accounts for initial rush and takes steps to offset it.

It’s like if you design a theme park to run smoothly months after launch, but pay no attention to the potential for massive crowds in the early days when everything is fresh.

As I said, I think the system might be fine in the long term (although it actually still seems like it will be pretty expensive for what you get, even once things settle down a bit), but they made NO move to offset the early demand surplus and supply shortfalls. As I said, this could easily have been resolved by providing some sort of short term “brown pigment and resonating slivers faucet,” either some event that guaranteed them as rewards that runs through October and November, or a “welcome to HoT” gift basket that offers plenty of each, or a “enjoy your new guild Hall” basket, or “for this month, Guild Missions will reward 10x the slivers and a bonus pack of brown pigment,” etc. Of course these bonus rewards would be account bound, so that people couldn’t just hoard them and sell them off at a profit. The point is not to make people money, it’s to make people Scribes at a stable cost.

They should have had a system in place that acknowledges that supply today is considerably lower than it will be in six months, and that demand today is significantly lower than it will be in six months, and therefore anyone trying to level Scribing today will pay exponentially more than they will in six months, and there’s no reason why this would be a good thing for anyone, so they should have deliberately corrected for that outcome.

The dye you linked proves my point as it went from over 4s buy order before hot to 1.65s buy order shortly after.

Um, dude, it went from 4s to 1s in the first few days, before hardly anyone had a Scribe of their own (since you needed an upgraded Guild Hall which took at minimum a few days. All dyes dropped in price, most likely, as some have attributed, due to people coming back to the game, finding that their spare colors resulted in tons of unidentified dyes, and trying to cash in on that. That dip will take care of itself, and is largely irrelevant to the situation being talked about here.

But then if you follow the moving lines, after a few days, as more and more guilds got their workshops and more and more people looked into Scribing, notice how the price starts to climb, passing 4s within the first week, doubling it half a week later, and now sitting at 500% of the pre-HoT value. It’ll likely stay high for another few weeks, maybe a couple months, and then drop to a more stable place, probably still higher than pre-HoT, because there are new long term sinks, but the faucets are all short term. Good money for anyone who caught on to that trend early, but sucks for everyone else. I am highly doubting your qualifications to give financial advice if you don’t recognize that.

Ohoni.6057:

The reason why other pigment isnt as high as brown one is that there are nearly no scribes at level 125 yet, which enables them to use other pigment than brown

/sigh, yes, which is the entire point I have been making.

The way that they rolls this out, situational bottlenecks were inevitable. When a system is new, you need a surplus in supply of the low level ingredients, and as the system matures, the higher level ingredients become more important. They designed a system that would be stable a year after implementation, which is better than nothing, but a well designed system ALSO accounts for initial rush and takes steps to offset it.

It’s like if you design a theme park to run smoothly months after launch, but pay no attention to the potential for massive crowds in the early days when everything is fresh.

As I said, I think the system might be fine in the long term (although it actually still seems like it will be pretty expensive for what you get, even once things settle down a bit), but they made NO move to offset the early demand surplus and supply shortfalls. As I said, this could easily have been resolved by providing some sort of short term “brown pigment and resonating slivers faucet,” either some event that guaranteed them as rewards that runs through October and November, or a “welcome to HoT” gift basket that offers plenty of each, or a “enjoy your new guild Hall” basket, or “for this month, Guild Missions will reward 10x the slivers and a bonus pack of brown pigment,” etc. Of course these bonus rewards would be account bound, so that people couldn’t just hoard them and sell them off at a profit. The point is not to make people money, it’s to make people Scribes at a stable cost.

They should have had a system in place that acknowledges that supply today is considerably lower than it will be in six months, and that demand today is significantly lower than it will be in six months, and therefore anyone trying to level Scribing today will pay exponentially more than they will in six months, and there’s no reason why this would be a good thing for anyone, so they should have deliberately corrected for that outcome.

The dye you linked proves my point as it went from over 4s buy order before hot to 1.65s buy order shortly after.

Um, dude, it went from 4s to 1s in the first few days, before hardly anyone had a Scribe of their own (since you needed an upgraded Guild Hall which took at minimum a few days. All dyes dropped in price, most likely, as some have attributed, due to people coming back to the game, finding that their spare colors resulted in tons of unidentified dyes, and trying to cash in on that. That dip will take care of itself, and is largely irrelevant to the situation being talked about here.

But then if you follow the moving lines, after a few days, as more and more guilds got their workshops and more and more people looked into Scribing, notice how the price starts to climb, passing 4s within the first week, doubling it half a week later, and now sitting at 500% of the pre-HoT value. It’ll likely stay high for another few weeks, maybe a couple months, and then drop to a more stable place, probably still higher than pre-HoT, because there are new long term sinks, but the faucets are all short term. Good money for anyone who caught on to that trend early, but sucks for everyone else. I am highly doubting your qualifications to give financial advice if you don’t recognize that.

I just mentioned a surplus of dyes with hot because you claimed in your first post that Anet should have done that (and they did), nothing more.

I think your suggestion to give everybody a starting supply of brown pigments or resonating slivers is absolutely rediculous.

You just want to save some gold and dont care, if that means that rewards for other content (like guild missions) gets devalued.
If you want brown pigment, unidentified brown dyes are craftable with potatoes and nutmeg, which you get for karma.
Just craft those and salvage the dyes.
Potatoes arent hard to come by.

Ohoni.6057:

Good money for anyone who caught on to that trend early, but sucks for everyone else. I am highly doubting your qualifications to give financial advice if you don’t recognize that.

I mentioned that (especially pigment) the day HoT released.
If you havent taken my advice back then, its not my vault.

Wanze.8410:

And example is pigment, which is used for coloring guild hall upgrades. They drop from harvesting plant nodes and can also be salvaged from identified dyes. Right now, plenty of players harvest plant nodes, get pigment and dont know what to do with it.
But nearly no guild has a guild hall, trained scribes and is already producing guild upgrades, there is simply no demand.

Alot of demand for materials and items didnt kick in yet because people dont have the knowledge to use those mats or items, so they are dirt cheap. That goes especially for new ones but also old ones.

Thats why I expect market prices to rise significantly until the end of the year. So dont sell your loot to the highest bid (I will buy it and make loads of profit), list it. Undercut by 1 copper, if you need the gold because you are a new player, list it for 50-100% more of its current value, if you dont have immediate need for gold.
It will most cetainly sell within a shorter timespan than you think and you will be a richer person in the future.

I just mentioned a surplus of dyes with hot because you claimed in your first post that Anet should have done that (and they did), nothing more.

I said a surplus of brown pigments, not dyes. Dyes do not really solve the problem, at least not the short term problem, because most players do not realize that they can break down dyes to make pigments, and what profits are involved in that. Also, the problem is concentrated on only 50 out of hundreds of dye colors on the market, so dumping ALL dyes in does not really accomplish much other than to drive down the prices on other colors. If they wanted to dump dyes as a solution, they did not dump nearly enough, given that it is an inefficient method in the first place. It’s like dumping thick stew to quench thirst, it might work, in sufficient quantities, but water is more efficient.

I think your suggestion to give everybody a starting supply of brown pigments or resonating slivers is absolutely rediculous.

Ok, why? Can we agree that the current prices are not likely the “stable” prices that will be reached months down the line? Knowing that, why is it not a good thing for ANet to aim for consistently stable prices, rather than deliberately introducing volatility where it is not inevitable?

You just want to save some gold and dont care, if that means that rewards for other content (like guild missions) gets devalued.

It wouldn’t devalue guild missions. Most players have no real use for Resonating Slivers anyway, and do the missions for other types of rewards, and the missions themselves are in a janky state at the moment regardless. Even if they provided an initial bonus of slivers, those would run out within a month or two, once the initial crafting rush wears down, at which point the guild missions would again become the only real source to continue. Short term supply drought, short term supply downpour, net result, balance.

In the meantime, any slivers they get from missions will be slivers they will have over players that rely only on the “gift basket,” and guild mission slivers will be resellable, allowing them to make up other players needs if they want, or saved for when the gift basket wears out.

If you want brown pigment, unidentified brown dyes are craftable with potatoes and nutmeg, which you get for karma.

The price of Potatoes have doubled since HoT too. It currently costs 62 silver in potatoes, PLUS karma for nutmeg, to make one brown dye. That’s about double the price of the sell prices on the lower tier browns.

I mentioned that (especially pigment) the day HoT released.
If you havent taken my advice back then, its not my vault.

I didn’t happen to read anything out of you at that time. I imagine millions of players were in the same boat. The fact is, players should not HAVE to stay on top of these things, they should not HAVE to buy and sell at the right times. The market should adapt AROUND the players, not the other way around. Prices should be stable wherever possible, with supply increasing to meet demand. Obviously they can’t do this with every little thing, and that’s not what I’m asking for, but when there are obvious, predictable problems, they can make available obvious and simple solutions to those problems to result in a mostly-stable price.

Like always, you are asking Anet to micromanage the economy, which simply isnt possible and utopic.

There are obviously players who are fine with paying 15s for brown pigment or 50s for resonating slivers.
If you think the prices are too high, put in a lower buy order and wait until it fills or use your playing time to get those ingredients by yourself.

People are asking for changes to reward systems and to the game in general all the time.

And without change, there wont be change. Stable prices make for a dull game.

This is an adventure game and people like to chase good rewards. If all prices and rewards would be stable, there is nothing new to discover.
But an everchanging landscape of material prices makes sure that the most valuable ressources change every week and encourage you to play different content. I dont know why you want to change that .

The fact that you got zero positive replies to your suggestion of handing out free rewards that other players work for should give you some food for thought.

I said everything that needs to be said on this topic.
Fell free to bump it on your own or see it slipping down the pages for lack of common support.

Like always, you are asking Anet to micromanage the economy, which simply isnt possible and utopic.

I specifically said "Obviously they can’t do this with every little thing, and that’s not what I’m asking for, " to sort of imply that that’s not what I’m asking for.

You say it’s impossible for them to do this across the board, and that is true. If you’re trying to then claim that what I actually proposed would be impossible, well that’s simply not true. They very well could provide exactly the sort of relief I proposed, it would not be particularly difficult, relative to things they’ve done in the past, and they should have done it.

There are obviously players who are fine with paying 15s for brown pigment or 50s for resonating slivers.

There are, but why should ALL players be held hostage to those players who are fine with those prices? Why shouldn’t ANet be willing to act to make likely a more reasonable price?

If you think the prices are too high, put in a lower buy order and wait until it fills or use your playing time to get those ingredients by yourself.

Neither is a practical alternative, and you should know that. Now who’s being “utopic?”

And without change, there wont be change. Stable prices make for a dull game.

Of course they don’t. They make for a dull economy, and the economy SHOULD be dull, because it should only exist to allow players to offload things they don’t need and acquire things that they do need at a reasonable price exchange. It should not be an element that people actively “game.” The economy should be super boring, nobody should care what it does, it should just be convenient, always there for you to offload items that don’t appeal to you, so that people who do want them can buy them. If you are buying items you do not need, because you know that you can get someone else to pay more for it than you’re paying, then something has gone wrong.

Wanze.8410:

Stable prices make for a dull game.

lol wtf, most of the playerbase don’t give a kitten whether prices are stable or changing. They play to have some fun with their friends in their spare time. They’ll sell most of their stuff for whatever prices there currently are, and buy most of their stuff for whatever prices there currently are. What would be bad about stable prices?

Wanze.8410:

This is an adventure game and people like to chase good rewards. If all prices and rewards would be stable, there is nothing new to discover.

If a game has nothing new to discover just because prices and rewards are stable, then it’s clearly doing something wrong.

Wanze.8410:

But an everchanging landscape of material prices makes sure that the most valuable ressources change every week and encourage you to play different content. I dont know why you want to change that .

If content is only encouraging when it can be farmed for mats, then there’s something wrong with this content as well.

I don’t give a kitten about stable or changing prices, I’m still having a blast playing gw2.

Nevertheless, I do not agree with the OP. Scribing costs are okay, if it’s too expensive for you right now, just wait a while until mats get cheaper, or just abandon it if you deem it not worth it’s costs. The problems only exist in your own mind.

Wanze.8410:

Not that i want to defend the way that they implemented scribing, I actually think its utterly broken.
If it was meant to be leveled by pooling ressources from many guild members, they should have implemented a system like for guild hall upgrades, where people could donate mats.

But the reason why brown pigment is so expensive now is the patch they launched on October 29th, which made pigment, beside other things, depositable in the material storage.

The mayority of pigments is created by regular players and casuals, that just harvest away on plants and get random drops. Before the 29th, pigment was just clogging their precious bag space, so they disposed of it by selling it on the tp.

But now, most players just deposit whatever pigment they get into their storage and basically forget about it, so supply on the tp dried up.
Most players dont even know what pigment is for and certainly dont know what value it actually holds, otherwise they would put it on the tp.

And you cant really say that Anet didnt add more dyes to the market. With Hot release, prices for dyes plummeted by 50%.

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it LITERALLY utterly broken? Or have they added in the mats to get above 150 now?

@Ohoni. . . do you realize that Wanze is like THE economics dude for GW2 Forums? Look him up.

In a more general response, I do not want any ‘free’ handouts, personally I don’t think it’s a good trend to set. HOWEVER, Anet did do something similar for flax/linseed by releasing the location of a Flax Farm and introducing a fairly simple Story Achievement that dropped 10 Linseed Oils (equal to 200 Flax). Something like this could provide a potential boost to initial scribes willing to put in some effort, without making it a hand out or breaking the economy.

I don’t see a need to change anything here. In a month brown pigment won’t be used very much and will crash in price. You are paying to be the first to finish it.

The problem is amplified because scribing is broken and people are stuck at the brown pigment level. Once people get past brown all the other colors open up and no one will use brown anymore.

@ohoni

the important thing here is that the market price of something is only what the market will bear

by definition, people are okay with paying the high expense for brown pigment. they were okay with paying the high expense for flax.

it’s one of those market is a democracy things.

Ohoni.6057:

The market should adapt AROUND the players, not the other way around. Prices should be stable wherever possible, with supply increasing to meet demand.

Around which players?
The ones who are farming an item and want the item to stay expensive?

Atm wealthy players who are willing to spend that amount of gold are buying an overpriced item. Not so wealthy players which are willing to wait can sell their items for more gold. So it helps a bit to close the “wealth gap”.

If pigments would be cheaper other items needed would become more expensive. I don’t know which items are needed but if something like linen gets more expensive it could harm players more than expensive pigments.

While they’re giving people free scribe mats, i’d like free flax/linseed oil and some empty kegs. They KNEW the supply would be low, i demand compensation!

@Ohoni. . . do you realize that Wanze is like THE economics dude for GW2 Forums? Look him up.

Well, he certainly claims to be, but then he was talking about how dye prices tanked after HoT launched and how that was them “solving this,” when it’s plainly clear that the prices rebounded and quickly overshot their pre-HoT levels, and then he suggested that you could just make brown unidentified dyes using potatoes, when that would cost more than double what just buying brown dyes would cost, so I would think that an “economic guru” would have some idea what the economy is up to.

Either he has no idea what he’s doing, or he’s publicly defending a broken system because he’s privately exploiting it to his own benefit, like a player that is constantly talking about how a certain class isn’t OP, when privately exploiting every imbalance to win matches with it.

In a more general response, I do not want any ‘free’ handouts, personally I don’t think it’s a good trend to set. HOWEVER, Anet did do something similar for flax/linseed by releasing the location of a Flax Farm and introducing a fairly simple Story Achievement that dropped 10 Linseed Oils (equal to 200 Flax). Something like this could provide a potential boost to initial scribes willing to put in some effort, without making it a hand out or breaking the economy.

I would be fine with that, IF there were as easily farmable source for brown pigments and Resonating Slivers, but so far as I know, no such thing exists, given that the former are completely random from harvesting, and the latter can only be gained in very limited weekly amounts. One could argue you could just farm potatoes, but even that wouldn’t be worth the efforts for the returns. The Flax “solution” only worked because they had a huge farm of them already in place, and because the cost of flax was high enough that farming it was worth doing.

I don’t see a need to change anything here. In a month brown pigment won’t be used very much and will crash in price. You are paying to be the first to finish it.

Sure, but again, there is no benefit to anyone that this situation exists, and they could easily resolve it, so why not do so?

by definition, people are okay with paying the high expense for brown pigment. they were okay with paying the high expense for flax.

it’s one of those market is a democracy things.

Just because some people are willing to accept a given market price, does not mean that is the price that most people want it to be. I mean, I can draw my line in the sand and put in buy orders for Brown Pigment at 5s or whatever, and a million other players could do the same, and it wouldn’t accomplish anything so long as a few players were willing to pay 15s for it. That is not “democracy” by any stretch.

Around which players?
The ones who are farming an item and want the item to stay expensive?

No, around players who want to use the item for the intended purpose. All crafting mats should be balanced around people using them to craft things. People farming materials for resale shouldn’t even factor into the equation. they can do that if they like, but whether it works out for them or not should not factor into the moves ANet makes.

Atm wealthy players who are willing to spend that amount of gold are buying an overpriced item. Not so wealthy players which are willing to wait can sell their items for more gold. So it helps a bit to close the “wealth gap”.

But only at the expense of the wealthy people getting access to the things they want, and the not-wealthy players not getting those things. That is not “closing the wealth gap,” that IS the wealth gap!

If pigments would be cheaper other items needed would become more expensive. I don’t know which items are needed but if something like linen gets more expensive it could harm players more than expensive pigments.

I don’t believe this would be a significant factor. The other items involved in early recipes are things like green wood, copper ore, T1 mats, etc. Yes, if more people had pigments, the price on these would rise, but it shouldn’t by much, since supply is so crazy high on them already. The pigment situation is only a problem because both the craft is entirely new (ie demand is higher because suddenly millions of players gained the potential to advance it overnight), AND supply is unnaturally low (because every player is starting off with zero of it, as opposed to a staple good like copper ore which people have been collecting and putting on the TP for years already).

While they’re giving people free scribe mats, i’d like free flax/linseed oil and some empty kegs. They KNEW the supply would be low, i demand compensation!

Agreed. This is another area where they should have accounted for early supply/demand shortfalls. That isn’t really the topic of this particular discussion though.

I do not agree with the OP about giving a ton load of materials for free. And even if they go this route, that option better be available to every other player joining in the future who might happen to miss it. They’ll just throw rants on the forums in that case.

Also, isn’t this how a market works? I see no problem. Sell all the materials now for all those rich players willing to throw money at the TP to get their Scribing up as fast as possible. If you want to go cheap, just wait a few months. If you want to level your scribe, then go ahead and spend a fortune, otherwise, just wait.

Rich players buying things off the TP, means money is going down to all the other poorer folks who are just selling.

I kind of agree that scribing costs are really painful for scribes. For their sake, I’d vote to make it more economical.

But I have to also say, that I’m making a boatload of gold right now selling everything that has anything to do with scribing.

Won’t last forever, though…

I do not agree with the OP about giving a ton load of materials for free. And even if they go this route, that option better be available to every other player joining in the future who might happen to miss it. They’ll just throw rants on the forums in that case.

No, it would not be necessary in the future, because prices would have stabilized. Basically, I haven’t run the exact numbers, but let’s say that it would take 5g in materials to craft from 25 to 100 Scribing, at the current market values. Let’s say that the target “stable” value, once the initial rush of players already reach that level and the supplies reach an equilibrium point, is that it would cost 1g to achieve that. the “materials gift” would be 4g of materials, so that you’d still have to spend some, but no more than the intended equilibrium value.

People who come along later would have no justification in complaining, since they would already have that equilibrium value right off the market. Now people would get salty, because that’s what people do, but they would not be justified in it, any more than people complain about not getting pre-order bonuses well after release, or not getting a sale price months after a sale has ended.

Also, isn’t this how a market works? I see no problem. Sell all the materials now for all those rich players willing to throw money at the TP to get their Scribing up as fast as possible. If you want to go cheap, just wait a few months. If you want to level your scribe, then go ahead and spend a fortune, otherwise, just wait.

Yes, those are the choices currently available, but those are not the best possible choices, and players should not be forced into picking one. There should also be the choice "make your scribe now without having to pay a fortune to do so. That should also be a choice. ANet has it within their power to make that choice a viable option.

Rich players buying things off the TP, means money is going down to all the other poorer folks who are just selling.

So what? They aren’t getting that money for nothing, they are getting that money in exchange for delaying their access to Scribing. That is not a virtuous transaction.

Ohoni.6057:

@Ohoni. . . do you realize that Wanze is like THE economics dude for GW2 Forums? Look him up.

Well, he certainly claims to be, but then he was talking about how dye prices tanked after HoT launched and how that was them “solving this,”

I never said they “solved this” because in my opinion the wasnt a problem to be solved in the first place.

I just pointed out that there was a big influx of dyes registered with HoT Launch because in your OP you suggested that Anet should have done exactly that:

“Knowing that scribes would need hundreds of brown pigment to level their craft, and that brown dye would be in short supply, they could have created a temporary faucet for those materials.”

I also wouldnt be surprised that pigment not going into the material storage for the first couple of days wasnt an oversight but intended, in order to have the player base list it on the tp first before they moved to depositing it into their storage.

I just pointed out that there was a big influx of dyes registered with HoT Launch because in your OP you suggested that Anet should have done exactly that:

And I’ll repeat, because you apparently missed it the first and second time, that I did not say they should increase the supply of dyes as a solution, I said that they should increase the supply of brown pigments. You listed a quote from my first post, but there is a much more specific one right after, “, like giving every new scribe a “gift of pigment,” 500 account bound brown pigments to use for that purpose.”

Increasing the supply of dyes would potentially be a solution, but it is an extremely inefficient solution, with more side effects and less bang for the buck. If they wanted to just dump random dyes into the market as a solution then they would have had to dump ten to a hundred times as many dye bottles as they would brown pigments to result in an equivalent impact, and in the process they would have completely demolished the prices on most dyes.

Did the (unintended but likely not unanticipated) increase in dye availability help to blunt the Scribing issue? Maybe a tiny bit, but not nearly enough to matter, or care about.

Ohoni.6057:

Rich players buying things off the TP, means money is going down to all the other poorer folks who are just selling.

So what? They aren’t getting that money for nothing, they are getting that money in exchange for delaying their access to Scribing. That is not a virtuous transaction.

I was responding to this with that, sorry should have made it more clear:

Atm wealthy players who are willing to spend that amount of gold are buying an overpriced item. Not so wealthy players which are willing to wait can sell their items for more gold. So it helps a bit to close the “wealth gap”.

But only at the expense of the wealthy people getting access to the things they want, and the not-wealthy players not getting those things. That is not “closing the wealth gap,” that IS the wealth gap!

It is closing the wealth gap. It’s not closing any progression gaps. But that’s why people play the game. If someone took the time/gems to get that much money to allow them to get it first before everyone, I see that as a valid way to go about it.

They earned the money, in whichever way they got it, so in that regard, they should be free to spend what they want to spend. This drives up the price for those materials, but that’s just how a free market works. A-net should not just outright hand people stuff, making people earn it is a lot more acceptable.

It is closing the wealth gap.

No, the wealth gap is that wealthy people can get the things that they want while the poor people cannot. You cannot close the wealth gap by allowing wealthy people to buy the things that they want, you close the wealth gap by not allowing them to accumulate money more efficiently than other players.

This drives up the price for those materials, but that’s just how a free market works.

And you say that as if “and because that’s the way a free market works, it is good,” which is not true. Free markets do work that way, that does not make it a good thing that they work that way, and GW2’s economy could be better than a free market. They choose to not make it so.

A-net should not just outright hand people stuff, making people earn it is a lot more acceptable.

Earning things is fine, so long as it’s fair. The problem here is the temporary imbalances caused by unusually high demand and unusually low supply. This creates a system in which the average player does not have “usual” access to the materials he would need to advance, so an “unusual” solution is required. It would be fine if players had to “earn” their gift baskets, so long as the amount of effort was reasonable, but understand that this is just a correction to a situation that is outside the players’ control, it is meant to correct an imbalance, it is not truly a “gift,” it is “compensation” for a problem that ANet created.

since i don’t bother with the scribe at all i absolutely love the way scribe is designed for the single reason that i bought thousands upon thousands of pigments as they were basically worthless. now every few weeks (thanks to the soft gating) one of them will shoot up to insane prices as scribes level their craft further and further. very predicable and huge profit. it somehow feels too easy.
from a scribes point of view this must utterly suck, though. there is nothing to be done. deal with it or give up on the scribe.

Ohoni.6057:

I just pointed out that there was a big influx of dyes registered with HoT Launch because in your OP you suggested that Anet should have done exactly that:

And I’ll repeat, because you apparently missed it the first and second time, that I did not say they should increase the supply of dyes as a solution, I said that they should increase the supply of brown pigments. You listed a quote from my first post, but there is a much more specific one right after, “, like giving every new scribe a “gift of pigment,” 500 account bound brown pigments to use for that purpose.”

Increasing the supply of dyes would potentially be a solution, but it is an extremely inefficient solution, with more side effects and less bang for the buck. If they wanted to just dump random dyes into the market as a solution then they would have had to dump ten to a hundred times as many dye bottles as they would brown pigments to result in an equivalent impact, and in the process they would have completely demolished the prices on most dyes.

Did the (unintended but likely not unanticipated) increase in dye availability help to blunt the Scribing issue? Maybe a tiny bit, but not nearly enough to matter, or care about.

It doesnt matter if the solution is a good one or not in your opinion because we havent agreed that there is a problem.

At this point, i am just discussing semantics and responded to you claiming that i said something which i didnt.

I still disagree with everything you brought to the table, the problem and the suggested solution.

Your main problem is that you dislike the concept of a live and changing marketplace and Anet stated many times that its an integral part of how they want their living world to be.

Ohoni.6057:

And you say that as if “and because that’s the way a free market works, it is good,” which is not true. Free markets do work that way, that does not make it a good thing that they work that way, and GW2’s economy could be better than a free market. They choose to not make it so.

Free markets are great. This was a deliberate design decision by A-net. Let the community figure out their prices, with A-net dictating the rarity of items. Whenever a new tier of something comes out in other MMOs, the devs don’t just dump free mats to players. That has never happened, and nor do I think anyone expects that from an MMO.

Ohoni.6057:

No, the wealth gap is that wealthy people can get the things that they want while the poor people cannot. You cannot close the wealth gap by allowing wealthy people to buy the things that they want, you close the wealth gap by not allowing them to accumulate money more efficiently than other players.

I think you need to use a different term. Economic inequality is related with the amount of wealth a person has. Wealth (how much money/stuff you have) and income (how much money/stuff you are able to earn).

Richer people, buying stuff off the TP, will send that gold to the a poorer person selling it. That effectively moves gold from someone who has a lot, to someone who has less. That is closing the wealth gap. That is distributing the wealth.

And with that new found wealth, people are indeed more easily able to acquire what they want.

A person with a lot of stuff, would be able to get what they want faster, simply because they have more of it. Now, perhaps they managed to get all that stuff through money. With the high prices currently they are paying at a premium. This means that they are spending more money than what the item will be worth. Where does that money go? To the people selling, who, if given the premise that they are poorer, are earning money at a higher rate as compared if they were sold in a few months time when prices go down.

What does this mean?

Rich people are spending more money for an item. With all that extra money going into poorer people’s wallet. That is indeed closing the economic disparity between the two.

But my gosh, why are we debating about economics. The issue here is that you don’t like the direction Anet is going with new crafting/materials. Which in all honesty, isn’t something people have been complaining about.

The mats are there in the TP, bought for a premium. If you have money. Buy it. Everyone knows the prices will stabilize. Every guild out there will be doing scribing at one point. Anet had never done anything in the past to dump free materials, nor I think they ever will. Has there been any precedence in other MMOs doing that? When something new comes out in some MMO, do they devs hand out the materials on a silver platter for everyone to just get started? Why does this need to change? Who else is being negatively affected by it? We all want free stuff. But that’s totally missing the point of playing the game. Something new and shiny comes out, of course people want to get it. The more incentives to get this new thing, the more people will be willing to pay for it.

This is akin to asking Anet to provide the mats for a new hypothetical craftable legendary.

Besides, at least the stuff is buyable from the trading post. That gives players that option to buy them, rather than being some sort of account bound mat.

since i don’t bother with the scribe at all i absolutely love the way scribe is designed for the single reason that i bought thousands upon thousands of pigments as they were basically worthless. now every few weeks (thanks to the soft gating) one of them will shoot up to insane prices as scribes level their craft further and further. very predicable and huge profit. it somehow feels too easy.
from a scribes point of view this must utterly suck, though. there is nothing to be done. deal with it or give up on the scribe.

Exactly my point. None of this should be a thing. Scribing should exist to allow people to become scribes and make scribe things, not so that people can profit by exploiting those players.

At this point, i am just discussing semantics and responded to you claiming that i said something which i didnt.

What about your suggestion that I use potatoes as an economical alternative?

What about Taunt?

Richer people, buying stuff off the TP, will send that gold to the a poorer person selling it. That effectively moves gold from someone who has a lot, to someone who has less. That is closing the wealth gap. That is distributing the wealth.

No, it is not. It is a net-zero exchange. Yes, they are sending gold to the player, but they are acquiring items in return. They have gone from liquid wealth to material wealth, but the total wealth remains constant on both sides. The wealthier player is still just as wealthy, and the poorer player is just as poor, he just has more gold and less pigments.

Actual wealth exchange would involve the wealthier player losing gold and gaining NOTHING in exchange for it, and/or the poorer player gaining gold or materials while expending nothing in exchange. So long as the gold is exchanged for useful goods or services, wealth has not shifted in the slightest.

The mats are there in the TP, bought for a premium. If you have money. Buy it. Everyone knows the prices will stabilize. Every guild out there will be doing scribing at one point. Anet had never done anything in the past to dump free materials, nor I think they ever will. Has there been any precedence in other MMOs doing that?

A lack of precedent does not mean that they should never do something. They haven’t had raids before, and yet a lot of people seem excited about that. If you want some degree of precedence though, keep in mind that they raised the material costs of a ton of base recipes shortly after introducing various systems, for example making wood refinement much less efficient a few months after launch. This was basically a situation where they started with a pricing that was fine for the launch of a new system, but broken in the long term, and they adjusted it to be more sustainable in the long term.

The problem here is that they launched it in a way that was sustainable long term, but is not well balanced against the initial rush. This is why they should have a corrective measure against that initial rush.

This is akin to asking Anet to provide the mats for a new hypothetical craftable legendary.

If those materials are market goods that would shoot up in value, then they should. The price of Legendary weapons should not be controlled by market prices, all items involved should either be merit-based and entirely off the markets, or they should be materials in such high general supply and demand that the added demand would not significantly impact the market values. Scribing goods failed because they were both new demand AND new supply.

Besides, at least the stuff is buyable from the trading post. That gives players that option to buy them, rather than being some sort of account bound mat.

Account Bound mats would be better, because there would be no discrepancy between rich and poor over access to them. Of course the method of distributing them would have to be something that was fast enough, and reliable enough that players could accumulate all the materials they needed to level their crafting in a reasonable amount of time. For example just making Resonant Slivers account bound, while retaining their current drop rate and recipe costs, would not be a successful plan, but if they dropped in much higher quantities then making them account bound would be far preferable.

Ohoni.6057:

No, it is not. It is a net-zero exchange. Yes, they are sending gold to the player, but they are acquiring items in return. They have gone from liquid wealth to material wealth, but the total wealth remains constant on both sides. The wealthier player is still just as wealthy, and the poorer player is just as poor, he just has more gold and less pigments.

Actual wealth exchange would involve the wealthier player losing gold and gaining NOTHING in exchange for it, and/or the poorer player gaining gold or materials while expending nothing in exchange. So long as the gold is exchanged for useful goods or services, wealth has not shifted in the slightest.

I disagree. I mentioned that people are buying the item at a premium. They are spending, lets say, 50% more on that item’s actual cost down the line. While the sellers, in reverse, are earning 50% more. People who are buying it are losing wealth. They get absolutely nothing in exchange for that 50% of lost money, other than the fact that they get their crafting up earlier than everyone else.

This is a total valid way of using that extra 50% lost.

There will always be people willing to pay double, triple, or more, of an item’s price, if they can achieve something before anyone else can.

Ohoni.6057:

At this point, i am just discussing semantics and responded to you claiming that i said something which i didnt.

What about your suggestion that I use potatoes as an economical alternative?

What about it?

Are you talking about the tuber or the currency officially called copper?

Valiant.5078:

Ohoni.6057:

No, it is not. It is a net-zero exchange. Yes, they are sending gold to the player, but they are acquiring items in return. They have gone from liquid wealth to material wealth, but the total wealth remains constant on both sides. The wealthier player is still just as wealthy, and the poorer player is just as poor, he just has more gold and less pigments.

Actual wealth exchange would involve the wealthier player losing gold and gaining NOTHING in exchange for it, and/or the poorer player gaining gold or materials while expending nothing in exchange. So long as the gold is exchanged for useful goods or services, wealth has not shifted in the slightest.

I disagree. I mentioned that people are buying the item at a premium. They are spending, lets say, 50% more on that item’s actual cost down the line. While the sellers, in reverse, are earning 50% more. People who are buying it are losing wealth. They get absolutely nothing in exchange for that 50% of lost money, other than the fact that they get their crafting up earlier than everyone else.

This is a total valid way of using that extra 50% lost.

There will always be people willing to pay double, triple, or more, of an item’s price, if they can achieve something before anyone else can.

They also destroy the item shortly after they acquire it, so their material wealth is gone while the seller still has the gold.

I disagree. I mentioned that people are buying the item at a premium. They are spending, lets say, 50% more on that item’s actual cost down the line. While the sellers, in reverse, are earning 50% more. People who are buying it are losing wealth. They get absolutely nothing in exchange for that 50% of lost money, other than the fact that they get their crafting up earlier than everyone else.

That really depends on what they do with it. There are often high end items that can be sold at a profit before other players catch up. I understand your point about the “premium” being burnt in the process, but ti would still be ideal if that “premium” did not exist, and a player trying to level his Scribe today would be no worse off than one trying to level one in six months. The wealthy player is still gaining the advantage of not having to wait.

What about it?

Are you talking about the tuber or the currency officially called copper?

You really need to read back through your own comments, you seem to be forgetful. You claimed that a viable solution to high pigment prices was to make my own using potatoes and nutmeg. I pointed out that while this is theoretically possible, at current market prices it would cost twice as much to do this as to just buy unidentified dye at sell prices, not even counting the karma costs. For it to be a viable alternative, it would need to be cheaper, not more expensive.

They also destroy the item shortly after they acquire it, so their material wealth is gone while the seller still has the gold.

If you mean that they consume the item in the crafting process, that is not “destroying wealth,” that is converting their gold into an item, and their item into a skill. The skill has a gold cost value to it, the wealth is maintained. Skill is a very illiquid type of wealth, but it is still wealth.

Ohoni.6057:

You really need to read back through your own comments, you seem to be forgetful. You claimed that a viable solution to high pigment prices was to make my own using potatoes and nutmeg. I pointed out that while this is theoretically possible, at current market prices it would cost twice as much to do this as to just buy unidentified dye at sell prices, not even counting the karma costs. For it to be a viable alternative, it would need to be cheaper, not more expensive.

Its still the same opportunity cost to farm ingredients for unidentified brown dyes now as before HoT release as the karma costs are static and the drop rates for potatoes are the same. If its cheaper to straight up buy brown dyes, they are undervalued at the tp atm and you have no ground to complain.

Either brown dyes and pigment costs too much on the tp, then you should produce it yourself or its cheaper on the tp compared to opportunity costs for crafting it.
In that case, your cry out for Anet to subsidize brown dyes or pigment wont go down very well with the potato farmers union of tyria.

It just seems that potatoes are currently traded for a higher value than the unidentified brown dyes, so just go and farm potatoes, make our own dyes or sell the potatoes to people who want to use it for something else than dyes and buy dyes or pigment from your profits.

Sobin.5947:

While they’re giving people free scribe mats, i’d like free flax/linseed oil and some empty kegs. They KNEW the supply would be low, i demand compensation!

Hey Sobin,

First, you can get some free linseed from completing an achievement in the Torn from the Sky story mission. There are also 2 flax farms (one in Tangled Depths, The Great Tree, and the other in Verdant Brink north of the Jaka Itzel WP)

Second, did you play ArcheAge recently on Kyrios?

So, in all honesty, I have read all the posts and I can no longer tell if OP is trolling or stupid.

Scribing is broken; literally mats are missing from the game. You’re arguing over 100-150 levels in scribing that can be used for:
Placeable Thesis that is broken (all recipes give same stat bonus)
Consumable Writ (also broken, all give power bonus)
Putting arms on your chair.
Elongating your table.
Best part: I can make a giant keg

TL:DR: who cares what the costs are right now because you can’t do anything with it anyway.

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

Sobin.5947:

While they’re giving people free scribe mats, i’d like free flax/linseed oil and some empty kegs. They KNEW the supply would be low, i demand compensation!

Hey Sobin,

First, you can get some free linseed from completing an achievement in the Torn from the Sky story mission. There are also 2 flax farms (one in Tangled Depths, The Great Tree, and the other in Verdant Brink north of the Jaka Itzel WP)

Second, did you play ArcheAge recently on Kyrios?

If you have to complete achievements or farm mats, its not free stuff but a reward.

Wanze.8410:

Red Mistress Denna.9804:

Sobin.5947:

While they’re giving people free scribe mats, i’d like free flax/linseed oil and some empty kegs. They KNEW the supply would be low, i demand compensation!

Hey Sobin,

First, you can get some free linseed from completing an achievement in the Torn from the Sky story mission. There are also 2 flax farms (one in Tangled Depths, The Great Tree, and the other in Verdant Brink north of the Jaka Itzel WP)

Second, did you play ArcheAge recently on Kyrios?

If you have to complete achievements or farm mats, its not free stuff but a reward.

Crap my bad. I’ll demand compensation with Sobin then.

DEMAND, I say!

Its still the same opportunity cost to farm ingredients for unidentified brown dyes now as before HoT release as the karma costs are static and the drop rates for potatoes are the same. If its cheaper to straight up buy brown dyes, they are undervalued at the tp atm and you have no ground to complain.

Whenever you are dealing in fungible currencies, the market value is all that matters. You can’t say “well yeah buying potatoes and making unidentified dye would be more expensive than just buying the dye, but you can farm your own potatoes,” because it would always be more economical to farm the potatoes and then sell them. In that situation, all you’re saying is “get more money,” in the most inefficient way possible. There are two types of economies in this game, the gold economy, things that can be bought with gold or made using things bought with gold, and the gameplay economy, things that cannot be bought or sold using gold and must be earned directly.

Anything that is part of the gold economy MUST be measured by the gold economy, by how much effort it would take to earn via alternative means, compared to how much effort it would take to earn that amount of gold via the most direct means available. “alternative methods” are not viable alternatives unless they provide a way of earning that thing in LESS time than it would take to earn an equivalent amount of gold to just purchasing it.

Either brown dyes and pigment costs too much on the tp, then you should produce it yourself or its cheaper on the tp compared to opportunity costs for crafting it.
In that case, your cry out for Anet to subsidize brown dyes or pigment wont go down very well with the potato farmers union of tyria.

I do not care about the potato farmers’ union of Tyria, the price of brown pigments is still too high.

It just seems that potatoes are currently traded for a higher value than the unidentified brown dyes, so just go and farm potatoes, make our own dyes or sell the potatoes to people who want to use it for something else than dyes and buy dyes or pigment from your profits.

No efforts I make could provide any significant shift in the market value of the potatoes. I could take all my characters to Metrica and Ashford and farm up every potato available and sell them all at buy prices and the price would not shift in any noticeable way. You suggest nonsense to defend a nonsense system.

I think the biggest issue now is there’s currently just too few things to craft as scribe to diversify the cost.

If you gonna put everyone in one segment and leave players with no choice of alternative, ofc the market price will break.

On a Basic material level, I’ve found scribe to be just fine. I watched the stream prelaunch and farmed a lot of multiple tier materials, I think I still ran out of wood though and had to bug my guildies.

My worry is that to create a lot of the second tier materials, you need the first tier materials to ‘upgrade’ if you will. So there will be less of a relax on things like the infamous brown pigment, as it’s still needed alongside the red.

Same goes for the resonating items I imagine, an upgrade process, so if anything you’re going to need more as time goes on, not less. However we can’t see that recipe yet so, speculation.

My main worry is my crystalline ore consumption. A DS takes a significant chunk of time, and I still haven’t figured out all the Noxious Pod locations. I’m happy to run the personal story for 40 a time, but even if I run it 20 times, that’s 800 ore. Between the new Legendaries and the mastery collections, I feel it was a poor choice of currency for basic decorations. Maybe I’m missing something.

Interesting thread though!

Maybe a future festival could dump some extra supply of pig,nets and flax oil into the market to satisfy short term demand while keeping the long term sink stable.

Maybe a future festival could dump some extra supply of pig,nets and flax oil into the market to satisfy short term demand while keeping the long term sink stable.

If they wait too long it won’t be needed, prices will stabilize within a few months. The point is that they needed to offset the disruptions when the disruption occurred. I hope that they can do better next time.

If something takes a guild’s combined resources to level up, then it should be a guild feature, not a crafting profession that can be lost if the player leaves the guild, deletes the character, or stops playing.

The way it has been implemented is just plain terrible. It shouldn’t be any harder to level up than regular crafting professions, the resource/time gate for schematics should be purely on the guild hall side, and furniture shouldn’t be time gated at all.

I think these prices are great. If Anet wants to weed out smaller guilds and make them join larger guilds, and make solo/small guilds grind more, it only stands to reason that they make larger guilds grind to get their shinys too.

Did people go into HoT expecting it to be cheap to do Scribe? I’m genuinely confused. They let us know that there would be jungle-exclusive items needed so the gold cost to get ahead was always going to be high.

I’m curious what you guys expected your experience of unlocking Scribe to be?

(Personally I at least expected to be able to level it! Haha!)

I’m on the same boat as most others on this. Our guild is going to pull ludicrous amounts of resources to level a scribe, and then he will leave, for what? Now we’ve all lost time and money. The scribe craft needs to be tied to the guild itself. Right now its a kittenaotic, with competing scribes vieing their guild member’s resources in a competition to level themselves first, mean while the guild members don’t want to donate anything because its a high risk investment with a low yield return.

Did people go into HoT expecting it to be cheap to do Scribe? I’m genuinely confused. They let us know that there would be jungle-exclusive items needed so the gold cost to get ahead was always going to be high.

I was expecting it to have costs on par with other crafting disciplines, probably less, considering that it doesn’t offer a whole lot to the individual player using it. Instead it costs considerably more.

Yes, if it uses brand new resources then by default it would involve higher than average prices, but as I pointed out several times, there are ways that ANet could have offset those prices to keep them level with the intended eventual balance point, and they failed to do this.

If they did intend for the Scribe to be a “guild focus,” as in dozens of players would put their personal resources into leveling a single Scribe, then they went about it entirely the wrong way, it should not have been handled as a traditional crafting set, but rather as a complex “workshop,,” similar to the existing upgrade systems only much more involved, where the guild unlocks new toolbenches used in the craft, which anyone can use with minimal personal investment.