Guild Wars 2

Sorry for re-posting this topic the other one was archived.

Is using the Mystic Forge Conduit + 4 items from an NPC Karma vendor to create salvageable items a no no?

is it an exploit?

1. Does it seem too good to be true?
2. Would your friends consider this to be an exploit?
3. Does it provide you with an unfair advantage over other players?
4. Could this be the result of a bug introduced with a recent update or new feature?
5. Does this seem like something that could be reasonably considered to be intended by ArenaNet?

My answers to the exploit “test”

1. Not really, no
2. one or two thought it to be a no no, others said it is not and many from LA recommend karma converting (but that’s map chat..). Many results on the web suggest / recommend karma item converting with and without the conduit for coin generation, though my intent is for crafting since I don’t get those drops much.
3. No, anyone can buy parts from TP and build one or farm for the parts.
4. no not likely it been around for some time
5. Yes, in my opinion, here is why I think it might be
   1a. If I recall correctly an anet person made a comment about the usefulness of karma converting, it was for linens, though it was a while back I am still searching for the POI or Guild Chat video again.
   2a. the currency page states “Currencies and other tokens can be indirectly converted to coin by using them to purchase items that can then be crafted, forged, or otherwise used to produce items that can be sold to vendors and/or on the trading post.”
   3a. There are some in game converters already. some examples are: fractals to pristine, airship parts to ley-line crystals, Dungeon tokens to reward items, unbound magic for mats….etc….etc

As I see it there is only one additional step from those mentioned above that is to place the karma purchased items into the forge to create the salvageable item. But that gets done for items you want to forge anyway.

The reason I am posting is

1. I don’t want to lose my account(or accounts)
2. clarify the use of the conduit
3. I know players where banned for that before though it was a bug with the karma item originally. Presumably that was fixed and the bans were for the exploit only not the karma converting?

Thanks

If you are still in doubt, as the CS Team via a Support Ticket.

Good luck.

people were banned for useing it on xmas holiday recpie that gave you more materials then the 4 items took to craft making it a clear exploit if I remember right.

True, I read about that as well but again that was for exploiting a bug. What I am asking about is not a bug. It is available every day, if you’ve farmed the karma. Again I’m only posting this because there are multiple reports of bans, as far as I can tell they are all because advantages over others or software holes were abused. This is not much different than farming airship parts to get your blade armor it just adds a step of salvaging the blade armor at the end instead of keeping it. Something I do with bio-luminescent box armor or blade box armor when I get them because I already have a set. As an example.

Yea and were have you seen people who been banned for it?

Maybe they are just lying since they dont want to admit to having had a bot doing stuff for them?

The ban wasn’t because people forged karma items; it was because they acquired the karma items for cheap, forged them to allow them to be monetized, and made bank off the brief bit of time invested. Worse, many people abusing the math mistake (in the cost of the karma items) found a way to amass karma more quickly than ANet had planned (at least at the time).

Nowadays, there are no karma→gold farms via the mystic forge that can give you uninterrupted gold in excess of a few handfuls of silver per thousand karma.

In short, forge away; you’re fine.

The exploits I’ve heard about took advantage of a bug or it allowed the player to create gold out of thin air.

Two from right after launch.
1) karma weapons: One on a list of level 80 rare weapons was accidentally priced for 64 karma instead of 64k Karma. Price was quickly changed after the exploit was discovered as some people bought hundreds or thousands of cheap karma weapons to make exotics. They also repeatedly reforged to try for precursors. An unknown number of precursors were made at that time from this.
2) chili pepper popper: buy 2 karma cooking ingredients, combine to make another item and vendor that item. Players could buy cheap karma cooking ingredients. mass produce that item then turn around to the NPC standing next to them and vendor it. Gold was created when the item was vendored. The vendor value was quickly removed after the exploit became known.

So how does the karma gear to salvageable gear compare:
1) no gold is created by this conversion
2) no items that are greatly valued (such as precursors or exotics) are created
3) it’s never been removed from the game in spite of being widely known about for years.

The other consideration is amount of effort involved to get a reward as well as the value of the reward.
The karma weapon was: buy hundreds or thousands of karma weapons, put in forge, get exotics, then reforge exotics (if desired) to try for a precursor. Or use the exotic weapons to cheaply gear a character.
The chili popper was: buy, create item, vendor to create gold out of thin air.
The salvageable weapons is: buy, forge, salvage to get a couple of mats (imposes a salvage cost), then you need to sell to other players (trading post fees) or use in crafting to again either sell to other players (trading post fees) or use for yourself.

When you compare the salvageable weapons to the banned exploits above, it is not an exploit because you do not get large numbers of valuable items or create gold out of thin air. It requires the buying of items to get relatively low value mats that then need to be sold to players or used in crafting before the player gets a return on his karma.

I don’t get how the Mystic Forge Conduit plays a role in this vs the regular Forge. They both do the same thing, and clearly the very existence of the item is for convenience. If they didn’t want you to forge items away from the mystic forge, then they would have never made the item in the first place.

Also there’s a number of soulbound items that can be forged into something salvageable, so karma gear isn’t particularly special.

The point of the conduit is that being able to MF right next to the vendor that offers the items offers a “convenience” that utterly changes the scale of how much you can do.

Not enough to become a problem, especially as any market flooding is somewhat self-correcting.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

The point of the conduit is that being able to MF right next to the vendor that offers the items offers a “convenience” that utterly changes the scale of how much you can do.

Not enough to become a problem, especially as any market flooding is somewhat self-correcting.

It doesn’t change the scale. Before I owned a conduit, I used the forge in WvW garrison. Fill up inventory with karma items, warp to WvW, forge, reforge, sell, repeat. Having the conduit makes it a lot less tedious and saves time, but it doesn’t increase your productivity by a factor of 10.

In contrast, the ‘exploit’ of 2012 involved weapons that were mistakenly priced at 1000 times less karma than they were supposed to be. Even without the additional karma farm exploit, that’s a drastically different situation.

By scale I mean how many forges you can realistically do in a given time. This is pretty drastically increased by not having to zone anywhere.

I don’t think the Devs create convenience items, and then expect players will not use them conveniently.

Again, if you have doubts, create a ticket and ask.

Good luck.

Thank you all for your points of view and experiences, I will enjoy forging at the many vendors around Tyria