Guild Wars 2

So, I have been thinking about this lately. The price of those keep going up, today they are almost at 3 golds each. The problem is, there isn’t a real reliable source of farming orbs, i don’t even want to speak about crests or doubloons. Their price is going up and the supply from the TP is going down lately. Honestly i think 2250 orbs are too much of a deal. This is actually one of the few things i need to craft HOPE, i wouldn’t say I’m suck there, but god, you need something like 750 golds to get them. And if the new legendaries are revealed i expect the price to spike even more.
All in all, I’m just curious how this is going to be solved, because if it stays like it is now the new legendaries will be a lot more expensive than the old ones.

It’s excessive. Jeweler can upgrade the tier below orbs (crystals I think), but even that requires 2 crystals and 5 dust. Still a lot of gold.

I don’t analyze all of my drop rates and stuff ingame. That would just depress me. HOWEVER – I seem to be getting a lot more crystal and orb drops lately. I don’t know if that’s just me or if they’re adjusting things with the two or three patches they’re put out this past week. I hope that’s the case.

They may just add them to the map rewards rotation.

I also used to get a ton of orbs when I did the T6 node farming.

Lysander Freeman.4186:

It’s excessive.

How is it excessive? These items weren’t in demand at all before and most sold at vendor + 18% (the minimum possible price). Now, suddenly everyone wants them and the price spiked. Eventually, people will realize the value of their mid-tier gemstones and sell or upgrade them via jeweler recipes, the demand will tapper off, and Orbs will reach a new equilibrium price.

There’s always a crowd of people complaining that too many items sell (on the TP) for too little. If ANet does anything that changes that, there’s another group that complains the new price is excessive.

“Balanced” prices are in the eyes of the beholder. As long as there’s enough supply that people can buy these on the TP, I don’t see an issue requiring government intervention. Perhaps that’s because I try not to be in a rush when working on legendaries and the mats in this game accumulate eventually.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Lysander Freeman.4186:

It’s excessive.

How is it excessive? These items weren’t in demand at all before and most sold at vendor + 18% (the minimum possible price). Now, suddenly everyone wants them and the price spiked. Eventually, people will realize the value of their mid-tier gemstones and sell or upgrade them via jeweler recipes, the demand will tapper off, and Orbs will reach a new equilibrium price.

There’s always a crowd of people complaining that too many items sell (on the TP) for too little. If ANet does anything that changes that, there’s another group that complains the new price is excessive.

“Balanced” prices are in the eyes of the beholder. As long as there’s enough supply that people can buy these on the TP, I don’t see an issue requiring government intervention. Perhaps that’s because I try not to be in a rush when working on legendaries and the mats in this game accumulate eventually.

I don’t think the price will drop, infact I would say that when/if Anet launch the next round of legendarys for HoT these Gem stones will move closer to 5g each as demand vastly outstrips supply,

Where the Orbs where indeed not used before HoT the fact that you need 9 for 1 gemstone so 2250 for the stack, you only need 1000 players to eat 2.2million of them, 10,000 players and well you get the idea,

For Anet to bring these into line with other gemstones, they could alter that recipe to needing 6 orbs, this would drop roughly 60-90s from them,

Or like it was mentioned add the gemstone to map rewards.

I believe that 3×3 orbs per gemstone are not excessive in and of themselves. However, when you take all of the other requirements for legendaries into account – the 77 Clovers, the 90ish time gated t7s and the Mastery requirements not to mention the rest – I still think the requirement for them is a bit much. These legendaries and the raid are what we have for end game PvE content and it just seems like they want to make thing take a lot longer than necessary to keep people playing.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Lysander Freeman.4186:

It’s excessive.

How is it excessive? These items weren’t in demand at all before and most sold at vendor + 18% (the minimum possible price). Now, suddenly everyone wants them and the price spiked. Eventually, people will realize the value of their mid-tier gemstones and sell or upgrade them via jeweler recipes, the demand will tapper off, and Orbs will reach a new equilibrium price.

There’s always a crowd of people complaining that too many items sell (on the TP) for too little. If ANet does anything that changes that, there’s another group that complains the new price is excessive.

“Balanced” prices are in the eyes of the beholder. As long as there’s enough supply that people can buy these on the TP, I don’t see an issue requiring government intervention. Perhaps that’s because I try not to be in a rush when working on legendaries and the mats in this game accumulate eventually.

I don’t think the price will drop, infact I would say that when/if Anet launch the next round of legendarys for HoT these Gem stones will move closer to 5g each as demand vastly outstrips supply,

Where the Orbs where indeed not used before HoT the fact that you need 9 for 1 gemstone so 2250 for the stack, you only need 1000 players to eat 2.2million of them, 10,000 players and well you get the idea,

For Anet to bring these into line with other gemstones, they could alter that recipe to needing 6 orbs, this would drop roughly 60-90s from them,

Or like it was mentioned add the gemstone to map rewards.

You might be right about the price moving closer to 5g, but that still doesn’t address the question: why is that excessive? While 5g is more than 3 g (current price) or 1g (price a few weeks ago), that’s not enough to require government ANet intervention. Although the pricing on orbs is high, it’s still not worth it to forge medallions, so those are still selling at vendor prices.

In other words, as phrased now, the request is “we don’t like the price, please change the recipe so it’s cheaper” rather than, “here’s why the current supply|demand ratio is a problem for the game”.

I don’t expect too many people to change their mind about it, since this is parallel to the discussion about the costs of silk/damask and largely ends up dividing people along party lines: those who support a market-driven economy don’t see an issue vs those arguing it’s excessive because they feel compelled to grind.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t expect too many people to change their mind about it, since this is parallel to the discussion about the costs of silk/damask and largely ends up dividing people along party lines: those who support a market-driven economy don’t see an issue vs those arguing it’s excessive because they feel compelled to grind.

I think you’re taking this a lot more seriously than I am Quite simply, a game is more fun to play when rewards can be achieved within a reasonable amount of time and effort. That’s all subjective, of course. This is a game. This is not a job. My personal view is that the legendary requirements are excessive due to sheer amount of time involved, not due to the difficulty. There just doesn’t seem to be a reason for the orb requirement aside from the need to create a huge time-sink when they’ve already introduced other time-sinks like the masteries and fulgerite, etc (which I have done already), which is why I don’t think it was well planned. I would much prefer skill challenge and playing difficulty being the challenge to meet on the way to a legendary vs. base ‘material’ investment (as much as can be said about a computer game).

Am I still working on the legendary? Yes, I am Do I see a way to make it more fun and less of a time-spent-playing issue? Yes. Overall Playing Experience > Economy

In Age of Conan, if you wanted that awesome cape, you had to kill a Dragon. A really kittening Big One in an organize 40+ man attempt. In Guild Wars, if you want that awesome thing, you farm for 120+ days for a few hours each day.

Lysander Freeman.4186:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t expect too many people to change their mind about it, since this is parallel to the discussion about the costs of silk/damask and largely ends up dividing people along party lines: those who support a market-driven economy don’t see an issue vs those arguing it’s excessive because they feel compelled to grind.

I think you’re taking this a lot more seriously than I am Quite simply, a game is more fun to play when rewards can be achieved within a reasonable amount of time and effort. That’s all subjective, of course. This is a game. This is not a job. My personal view is that the legendary requirements are excessive due to sheer amount of time involved, not due to the difficulty. There just doesn’t seem to be a reason for the orb requirement aside from the need to create a huge time-sink when they’ve already introduced other time-sinks like the masteries and fulgerite, etc (which I have done already), which is why I don’t think it was well planned. I would much prefer skill challenge and playing difficulty being the challenge to meet on the way to a legendary vs. base ‘material’ investment (as much as can be said about a computer game).

Am I still working on the legendary? Yes, I am Do I see a way to make it more fun and less of a time-spent-playing issue? Yes. Overall Playing Experience > Economy

In Age of Conan, if you wanted that awesome cape, you had to kill a Dragon. A really kittening Big One in an organize 40+ man attempt. In Guild Wars, if you want that awesome thing, you farm for 120+ days for a few hours each day.

So based on what you just said, you’re with the second group he listed in that you think it is excessive and compelled to grind?

Ayrilana.1396:

So based on what you just said, you’re with the second group he listed in that you think it is excessive and compelled to grind?

Hah! There is no way to get the masteries and materials without grinding due to there not being enough content to get these without gross repetition. Grind is build into every mmo really. It’s more about the achievement being based on a huge time/gold-sink on multiple levels.

Lysander Freeman.4186:

Ayrilana.1396:

So based on what you just said, you’re with the second group he listed in that you think it is excessive and compelled to grind?

Hah! There is no way to get the masteries and materials without grinding due to there not being enough content to get these without gross repetition. Grind is build into every mmo really. It’s more about the achievement being based on a huge time/gold-sink on multiple levels.

What do you consider grinding? Doing the same event more than once? Twice? Three times?

Ayrilana.1396:

Lysander Freeman.4186:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t expect too many people to change their mind about it, since this is parallel to the discussion about the costs of silk/damask and largely ends up dividing people along party lines: those who support a market-driven economy don’t see an issue vs those arguing it’s excessive because they feel compelled to grind.

I think you’re taking this a lot more seriously than I am Quite simply, a game is more fun to play when rewards can be achieved within a reasonable amount of time and effort. That’s all subjective, of course. This is a game. This is not a job. My personal view is that the legendary requirements are excessive due to sheer amount of time involved, not due to the difficulty. There just doesn’t seem to be a reason for the orb requirement aside from the need to create a huge time-sink when they’ve already introduced other time-sinks like the masteries and fulgerite, etc (which I have done already), which is why I don’t think it was well planned. I would much prefer skill challenge and playing difficulty being the challenge to meet on the way to a legendary vs. base ‘material’ investment (as much as can be said about a computer game).

Am I still working on the legendary? Yes, I am Do I see a way to make it more fun and less of a time-spent-playing issue? Yes. Overall Playing Experience > Economy

In Age of Conan, if you wanted that awesome cape, you had to kill a Dragon. A really kittening Big One in an organize 40+ man attempt. In Guild Wars, if you want that awesome thing, you farm for 120+ days for a few hours each day.

So based on what you just said, you’re with the second group he listed in that you think it is excessive and compelled to grind?

To be fair, Lysander actually offered a reason beyond “I don’t like the price”, which is that it might be dispiriting to people to gather a stack of something that expensive. I can’t disagree with the sentiment.

However, the total cost of creating legendaries isn’t going to drop no matter what changes ANet makes — one way or another, legendaries are going to sink lots of mats and coin, as well as other currencies. So the question is: how are the expenses divided out? And near as I can tell, it doesn’t matter: a large group is going to claim foul: if a premium skin requires too much of a cheap item (alcohol for Winter’s Presence) or too high a price for a single item (poly-lumi refractors, when first released), people say it’s too much.

To me, that’s a philosophical issue with no easy solution that keeps the economy health and the vast majority of players content. People don’t value skins that are too easily obtained and they complain about prices (or grind) when they aren’t easily obtained.

We needed a new “Yay!” drop, having decent prices helps transfer wealth from the wealthy (those making Legendaries) to the newer players (who will be doing dungeons, jumpng puzzles and harvesting nodes – good Orb/Doubloon sources). Seems fine, but then I’m not in your boat because I looked up what the new Legendaries required and bought what I needed early before the price went up.

Add them to the end of every dungeon path.

You didn’t want dungeons to give liquid gold, fine. Give them a reason to be played, Legendaries.

TexZero.7910:

Add them to the end of every dungeon path.

This might be a good idea to make dungeons interesting again.

Awko.9201:

TexZero.7910:

Add them to the end of every dungeon path.

This might be a good idea to make dungeons interesting again.

They cant add them to dungeons, for 2 reasons

1. people would speed clear a path for a gemstone worth 2-3gold
2. Anet are trying to remove dungeons from the game by removing rewards, they don’t want you running them.

In saying that they could be easily added to the map reward system for a random map, just like the other gemstones are.

Ok I Did It.2854:

1. people would speed clear a path for a gemstone worth 2-3gold
.

The thing is, they wouldn’t be worth 2/3 golds for too long that way.

It’s too late to change these things now that some people get their legendary.

what do you mean there are no reliable farming methods

every other loot cache in HoT drops one

just farm 5k and youll have all you need, and sometimes youll get viper/minstrel/trailblazer ones instead and be able to buy 10 for that 1

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Lysander Freeman.4186:

It’s excessive.

How is it excessive? These items weren’t in demand at all before and most sold at vendor + 18% (the minimum possible price). Now, suddenly everyone wants them and the price spiked. Eventually, people will realize the value of their mid-tier gemstones and sell or upgrade them via jeweler recipes, the demand will tapper off, and Orbs will reach a new equilibrium price.

There’s always a crowd of people complaining that too many items sell (on the TP) for too little. If ANet does anything that changes that, there’s another group that complains the new price is excessive.

“Balanced” prices are in the eyes of the beholder. As long as there’s enough supply that people can buy these on the TP, I don’t see an issue requiring government intervention. Perhaps that’s because I try not to be in a rush when working on legendaries and the mats in this game accumulate eventually.

Its excessive because its based on how many were generated over the course of 3 years.
Which is a common problem with thier jtem design. Its often based on current supply rather than the new demand they create and the actual amount added over time.

Also they never consider the game design elements.

Orbs are primarily obtained through t6 node farming at a rate of like 1 every 3 to 5 nodes.
T6 nodes are less predictable than they once were, and are only in a few maps.

You need 2225 of them.

So yeah they messed up.

Some times they should look at the time required for an item to come into existence, and not just supply.
Often if it is not over supplied, time to create or obtain items will fit into the answer of the value of the item.

And the truth is the game is better off with vendor value orbs, than needing 2225 of them and it taking 20 min of time to create each.

They keep trying to balance with larger numbers, the best answer was not to increase demand, and the best answer to the problems of demand is not to increase demand. These type of solutions lead to all of the unsatisfying economy numbers they keep creating.

In a system designed to have 250 of an item max, way too many items involve numbers in the 1000s. Its design failure

phys.7689:

Its excessive because its based on how many were generated over the course of 3 years.
Which is a common problem with thier jtem design. Its often based on current supply rather than the new demand they create and the actual amount added over time.

Also they never consider the game design elements.

Orbs are primarily obtained through t6 node farming at a rate of like 1 every 3 to 5 nodes.
T6 nodes are less predictable than they once were, and are only in a few maps.

You need 2225 of them.

So yeah they messed up.

Some times they should look at the time required for an item to come into existence, and not just supply.
Often if it is not over supplied, time to create or obtain items will fit into the answer of the value of the item.

And the truth is the game is better off with vendor value orbs, than needing 2225 of them and it taking 20 min of time to create each.

They keep trying to balance with larger numbers, the best answer was not to increase demand, and the best answer to the problems of demand is not to increase demand. These type of solutions lead to all of the unsatisfying economy numbers they keep creating.

In a system designed to have 250 of an item max, way too many items involve numbers in the 1000s. Its design failure

• Before: orbs (except ruby) trade at vendor +18%
• After: T5 still trade at vendor +18-20%

That suggests to me that the price of orbs remains too low relative to the potential supply. The current demand is still not enough to make it worthwhile to use T5 to make T6, whether via forge or recipe promotion.

I might have missed whether anyone specifically called out a different dimension of “excessive” and that is the fact that each and every amalgamated gemstone must be individually forged. That’s a lot of clicking.

However, that specific issue can be addressed by adding forge recipes to allow mass production; it doesn’t have a direct bearing on the price (although it would indirectly affect supply & demand, since more people would choose to forge rather than pay someone else to do it).

Similarly, another minor issue is that the Material Storage tab doesn’t have a slot for these items.

Finally, I probably wasn’t clear:

I’m not against ANet changing the requirement. I just don’t think it’s accurate or sufficient to say that it’s an “excessive” requirement, solely because of the price spike.

I thought that the promotion of gems was tied more to the cost of the dust then to the gems themselves

The problem isn’t the supply of orbs or gems, it is the supply of dust.

There are millions and millions of crystals on the TP sitting there at vendor value. The only thing holding them back from being used is the high price of lower tier dust.

If you want to lower the price of gems then fix dust and it will make all those lower tier crystals accessible and bring up their value off the floor while simultaneously bringing down the gem cost.

Instead of 5 dusts, down it to 3 or even 2? That actually is a good way to balance it. You can get plenty crystals by farming wood i guess

If you change change the number of dust, all that will happen is that the price for the shards will go up to the point that any cost benefit from promoting is negligible.

They ‘balance’ unused stuff by mechanics like this. It’s a horrible idea, especially that they make items completely underused to super-overused. I am lucky and finished my legendary a couple of weeks ago, I could buy the orbs for around 15-17s each. They are now near 30s…

I point out the Elonian leather too. The fact that many people are now HOT maps where there is nearly no way to get to the low tier leather is beyond me. You can easily play 2-3 weeks and still don’t have the mats to produce one single Elonian leather because ‘balancing’ excess by making it super-demanded is just a bad idea.

Ok I Did It.2854:

Awko.9201:

TexZero.7910:

Add them to the end of every dungeon path.

This might be a good idea to make dungeons interesting again.

They cant add them to dungeons, for 2 reasons

1. people would speed clear a path for a gemstone worth 2-3gold
2. Anet are trying to remove dungeons from the game by removing rewards, they don’t want you running them.

In saying that they could be easily added to the map reward system for a random map, just like the other gemstones are.

Your points fall extremely flat when

1) That value wouldn’t sustain itself
2) Dungeons / PvP tracks are still required for Gen 1 legendary creation

As is dungeons sole value is in Legendary Creation, so why not lump these items in with dungeons ?

I know Anet wants to devalue dungeons and they’ve done that and then some creating a void for players when it comes to daily activities to do with 4-5 friends while they slack off and relax. This is a good mid-ground approach that doesn’t leave the solution to John Smith. Cause frankly we’ve seen how heavy hand his approach to market stabilization is, and it’s not fun. At the end of the day, this is a game not a 2nd job to invest in.

Three years of playing, thousands of hours, I hoarded every orb, crest and dubloon , barely enough for me to make one single legendary weapon, Nevermore. Another three for another legendary? Nevermore.
It is excessive.

Manu.6078:

Three years of playing, thousands of hours, I hoarded every orb, crest and dubloon , barely enough for me to make one single legendary weapon, Nevermore. Another three for another legendary? Nevermore.
It is excessive.

Psst you can buy them on the TP.

Coulter.2315:

Manu.6078:

Three years of playing, thousands of hours, I hoarded every orb, crest and dubloon , barely enough for me to make one single legendary weapon, Nevermore. Another three for another legendary? Nevermore.
It is excessive.

Psst you can buy them on the TP.

I’ve made ten of first generations legendary weapons, buying one single precursor and very few materials. That’s my way. I know the value of time.

Manu.6078:

Coulter.2315:

Manu.6078:

Three years of playing, thousands of hours, I hoarded every orb, crest and dubloon , barely enough for me to make one single legendary weapon, Nevermore. Another three for another legendary? Nevermore.
It is excessive.

Psst you can buy them on the TP.

I’ve made ten of first generations legendary weapons, buying one single precursor and very few materials. That’s my way. I know the value of time.

Are you telling me you farmed 20000 t6 materials AND you know the value of time? Or did I miss your point?

Manu.6078:

Coulter.2315:

Manu.6078:

Three years of playing, thousands of hours, I hoarded every orb, crest and dubloon , barely enough for me to make one single legendary weapon, Nevermore. Another three for another legendary? Nevermore.
It is excessive.

Psst you can buy them on the TP.

I’ve made ten of first generations legendary weapons, buying one single precursor and very few materials. That’s my way. I know the value of time.

You must have a lot of time…

It is very excessive. The two arguing that it is fine NEVER oppose anything Anet does.

Welcome to free to play, cash shop gaming.

Wallets out if you want to have fun or grind for eternity.

Azure Prower.8701:

Welcome to free to play, cash shop gaming.

Wallets out if you want to have fun or grind for eternity.

because everything you don’t like is directly linked to free to play, right?

it creates a longterm need for orbs, which weren’t used at all pre-HOT

same goes for ascended weapons/armor
droprate is relative low so the main source for obtaining ascended equipment is crafting to stop T2-T4 materials from being worthless
that was the main reason for the droprate nerf for ascended boxes in fractals
raids as a additional source for ascended gear and deldrimor steel, spirit wood and elonian leather slowly lost their value, even before HOT

legendary collections fulfill the same purpose

Miellyn.6847:

slowly lost their value, even before HOT

But that’s what the market dictated. Not everything needs to have a relative value. Not everything is designed to be utilized at high rates.

Unfortunately, this principal of niche markets, seems to have been lost on our current economist. Now everything must have an “arbitrary value” determined by “reasons”.

It’s dumb, and the person who designed this new concept should know that forcing (read Fixing) markets like this has only ever been detrimental to stabilization from a historical standpoint.

Axialbloom.8109:

It is very excessive. The two arguing that it is fine NEVER oppose anything Anet does.

Even if there were only two arguing that it might not be excessive (and there are far more than two), it wouldn’t change things: claiming that something is excessive doesn’t make it excessive. It’s up to the critic to support the critique.

Besides, nearly everyone agrees that the amount of clicking to make a full stack is annoying.

What people disagree about is whether the current price of orbs|doubloons|crests is excessive (leading to the current prices for AmGems). And the primary rebuttal is: “high” or “higher than before” isn’t, by itself, enough of a reason to label it “excessive”; it’s got nothing to do with ANet.

Some people are frustrated by the price shifts and some dislike the difficulty of farming crests|doubloons|orbs directly, especially those opposed to simply farming gold and buying stuff on the TP. By itself, that mood is something that should concern ANet.

tl;dr stop worrying about whether it’s excessive and instead ask ANet to focus on the frustration that some players feel. That’s worth their time to address, regardless of the of the economics.

It would require 700+ gold to outright buy just this component (as anyone making new legends need 250 of them) (Yes I am aware supply/demand but this is ludicrous). To mine it out or otherwise try for unsure ways of getting the materials would take a extreme amount of hours that isn’t engaging gameplay at all (not fun in the slightest that discourages me to even play this game anymore). The whole journey to get my legendary was reasonable for me, engaged me to play lots of different areas to get the things I needed along the way, THIS isn’t balanced in game since its such a infrequent variable in drops. All this has done is get me super kittened and want to stop playing the game all together, there is no incentive anymore, it feels not worth the time and effort. Any suggestions?

Not worth the time and effort? That’s pretty much what a legendary is!

All it gets you is some special effects, that’s it.

Grab am ascended and let’s go smash down some champs!

As for the mats needed, they are Legendary Weapons and supposed to carry prestige (I dont really see it that way but many do) the price is supposed to be high).

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

slowly lost their value, even before HOT

But that’s what the market dictated. Not everything needs to have a relative value. Not everything is designed to be utilized at high rates.

Unfortunately, this principal of niche markets, seems to have been lost on our current economist. Now everything must have an “arbitrary value” determined by “reasons”.

It’s dumb, and the person who designed this new concept should know that forcing (read Fixing) markets like this has only ever been detrimental to stabilization from a historical standpoint.

ascended materials are the ‘end game’ materials for armor and equipment, why should they be worthless?

and the longterm need for many different materials, even low level materials, ensures that almost all content stays relevant

Miellyn.6847:

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

slowly lost their value, even before HOT

But that’s what the market dictated. Not everything needs to have a relative value. Not everything is designed to be utilized at high rates.

Unfortunately, this principal of niche markets, seems to have been lost on our current economist. Now everything must have an “arbitrary value” determined by “reasons”.

It’s dumb, and the person who designed this new concept should know that forcing (read Fixing) markets like this has only ever been detrimental to stabilization from a historical standpoint.

ascended materials are the ‘end game’ materials for armor and equipment, why should they be worthless?

and the longterm need for many different materials, even low level materials, ensures that almost all content stays relevant

They were not worthless. Their worth was being determined appropriately by the supply of the materials at the time and the need for their use.

Keep in mind, that nerfed dungeon rewards has effectively removed part of the reason those materials were in such high supply, while additionally those recipes were altered to require more materials over all.

Additionally, lower level materials still had value. The problem with the assertion that they did not have value is that the market determines the value. The principal being that you can shift the market by meerly adding or removing sources slowly. The problem with this is that when changing the market your “Game Economist” should ideally be thinking of how much of the game is removed when designing it. As is, several markets are crashing, whether by design or not.

Do you think those markets also need intervention ?
How are you going to determine what items are supposed to have what value ?

What we currently have here is effectively over regulation of markets causing stifling and pretty massive deflation. The problem is, this is taking players out of the game. Making them play more economic focused than they probably should be. It’s still a game, however the trading post and the economy at large is being treated more as a commodities exchange market than an traditional marketplace.

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

slowly lost their value, even before HOT

But that’s what the market dictated. Not everything needs to have a relative value. Not everything is designed to be utilized at high rates.

Unfortunately, this principal of niche markets, seems to have been lost on our current economist. Now everything must have an “arbitrary value” determined by “reasons”.

It’s dumb, and the person who designed this new concept should know that forcing (read Fixing) markets like this has only ever been detrimental to stabilization from a historical standpoint.

ascended materials are the ‘end game’ materials for armor and equipment, why should they be worthless?

and the longterm need for many different materials, even low level materials, ensures that almost all content stays relevant

They were not worthless. Their worth was being determined appropriately by the supply of the materials at the time and the need for their use.

Keep in mind, that nerfed dungeon rewards has effectively removed part of the reason those materials were in such high supply, while additionally those recipes were altered to require more materials over all.

Additionally, lower level materials still had value. The problem with the assertion that they did not have value is that the market determines the value. The principal being that you can shift the market by meerly adding or removing sources slowly. The problem with this is that when changing the market your “Game Economist” should ideally be thinking of how much of the game is removed when designing it. As is, several markets are crashing, whether by design or not.

Do you think those markets also need intervention ?
How are you going to determine what items are supposed to have what value ?

What we currently have here is effectively over regulation of markets causing stifling and pretty massive deflation. The problem is, this is taking players out of the game. Making them play more economic focused than they probably should be. It’s still a game, however the trading post and the economy at large is being treated more as a commodities exchange market than an traditional marketplace.

Anet no longer wants players in dungeons. Hence they told their economist to remove the rewards from dungeons to move players out of them. It worked.

Anet determines what items have value. They change that list of items over time in a cyclic manner. Some items they keep constant (ectos) while others they let be cheap for a while then increase their value later.

I see no evidence of deflation. All major market indicators are either steady or increasing in value, indicating a slight inflation if anything.

Anet only makes big changes to the market about twice a year. I wouldn’t call that stifling or over regulating.

Anet took a single item, increased its demand, and thus increased the demand of 30+ items from 0 to having value. If they change the influx of mid tier dust it would increase the value of an additional 30+ items, while also regulating the price of gemstones. With a major festival coming up I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw dust and crystals drop from the loot tables.

Anet has a history of using temporary festivals to inject supply into markets that give them temporary fluctuations.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Axialbloom.8109:

It is very excessive. The two arguing that it is fine NEVER oppose anything Anet does.

Even if there were only two arguing that it might not be excessive (and there are far more than two), it wouldn’t change things: claiming that something is excessive doesn’t make it excessive. It’s up to the critic to support the critique.

Besides, nearly everyone agrees that the amount of clicking to make a full stack is annoying.

What people disagree about is whether the current price of orbs|doubloons|crests is excessive (leading to the current prices for AmGems). And the primary rebuttal is: “high” or “higher than before” isn’t, by itself, enough of a reason to label it “excessive”; it’s got nothing to do with ANet.

Some people are frustrated by the price shifts and some dislike the difficulty of farming crests|doubloons|orbs directly, especially those opposed to simply farming gold and buying stuff on the TP. By itself, that mood is something that should concern ANet.

tl;dr stop worrying about whether it’s excessive and instead ask ANet to focus on the frustration that some players feel. That’s worth their time to address, regardless of the of the economics.

• its excessive because it arbitrarily creates an inconsistent value for 1 item. (compare to other crystals and upgrades)

• its excessive because it bloats the trading post elements of the legendary design to too high a level. ( you already have large straight gold requirements, and tons of TP sinks from large material sinks)

• its excessive because if you seek to avoid trading post you would have to farm T6 nodes for 189 hours, assuming you get at least 1 every 5 minutes. AND since t6 nodes are a limited resource, you can probably only get 5 or 6 per level 80 charachter a day.
  its excessive

• Its excessive because it bogs the entire design of the legendary aquisition down in a singular purposeless item grind, whereas the entire other facets of the new legendary design seeks to vary your requirements up constantly both to hide grind, and create less tedium.
  this one part of one part of the legendary uses 600 gold. this is totally unbalanced in its design.

• Its excessive because its a part of the maguma gift, and has little to nothing to do with play in maguma

• Its excessive because this type of item design that is best handled by grinding gold, encourages a gold first gameplay, when the game is very bad at giving gold for the most entertaining/healthy playing styles. Essentially gold grind in this game tends to cause people to have less fun playing, and create degenerative play styles.

• its excessive because it forces the value of incandescent dust to 4.50, essentially destroying all of its other uses, most notably as a transference item.
  Dust requirement in item exchange values should not far outstrip the costs of the constituent materials, this is now the case for most other item transfer methods. Its basically supposed to be the tax for exchanging, and now the tax tends to cost more than the items
  This creates a bottleneck on these promotion and cross promotion items, which creates greater supply of over supplied items, lowering their value further.

• Its excessive because now, their most likely solution will be increase supply(probably of dust), which further bloats an already bloated inventory, and drop system, and continues the cycle of item inflation which has been going on since the game started, which they tend to solve with further item inflation.

its bad on many levels.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

slowly lost their value, even before HOT

But that’s what the market dictated. Not everything needs to have a relative value. Not everything is designed to be utilized at high rates.

Unfortunately, this principal of niche markets, seems to have been lost on our current economist. Now everything must have an “arbitrary value” determined by “reasons”.

It’s dumb, and the person who designed this new concept should know that forcing (read Fixing) markets like this has only ever been detrimental to stabilization from a historical standpoint.

ascended materials are the ‘end game’ materials for armor and equipment, why should they be worthless?

and the longterm need for many different materials, even low level materials, ensures that almost all content stays relevant

They were not worthless. Their worth was being determined appropriately by the supply of the materials at the time and the need for their use.

Keep in mind, that nerfed dungeon rewards has effectively removed part of the reason those materials were in such high supply, while additionally those recipes were altered to require more materials over all.

Additionally, lower level materials still had value. The problem with the assertion that they did not have value is that the market determines the value. The principal being that you can shift the market by meerly adding or removing sources slowly. The problem with this is that when changing the market your “Game Economist” should ideally be thinking of how much of the game is removed when designing it. As is, several markets are crashing, whether by design or not.

Do you think those markets also need intervention ?
How are you going to determine what items are supposed to have what value ?

What we currently have here is effectively over regulation of markets causing stifling and pretty massive deflation. The problem is, this is taking players out of the game. Making them play more economic focused than they probably should be. It’s still a game, however the trading post and the economy at large is being treated more as a commodities exchange market than an traditional marketplace.

Anet no longer wants players in dungeons. Hence they told their economist to remove the rewards from dungeons to move players out of them. It worked.

Anet determines what items have value. They change that list of items over time in a cyclic manner. Some items they keep constant (ectos) while others they let be cheap for a while then increase their value later.

I see no evidence of deflation. All major market indicators are either steady or increasing in value, indicating a slight inflation if anything.

Anet only makes big changes to the market about twice a year. I wouldn’t call that stifling or over regulating.

Anet took a single item, increased its demand, and thus increased the demand of 30+ items from 0 to having value. If they change the influx of mid tier dust it would increase the value of an additional 30+ items, while also regulating the price of gemstones. With a major festival coming up I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw dust and crystals drop from the loot tables.

Anet has a history of using temporary festivals to inject supply into markets that give them temporary fluctuations.

and further increase item bloat. If you keep trying to solve equations by multiplying and increasing values, you create unwieldy systems that no one wants to use.

if you want to make a car equally balanced, so you add a bunch of lead weights to the back of the car, you just created a car that is ineffecient and less agile. Thats what anet keeps on doing.
the car is just getting heavier and heavier, and less and less people want to pay the gas to drive that car.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

TexZero.7910:

Miellyn.6847:

slowly lost their value, even before HOT

But that’s what the market dictated. Not everything needs to have a relative value. Not everything is designed to be utilized at high rates.

Unfortunately, this principal of niche markets, seems to have been lost on our current economist. Now everything must have an “arbitrary value” determined by “reasons”.

It’s dumb, and the person who designed this new concept should know that forcing (read Fixing) markets like this has only ever been detrimental to stabilization from a historical standpoint.

ascended materials are the ‘end game’ materials for armor and equipment, why should they be worthless?

and the longterm need for many different materials, even low level materials, ensures that almost all content stays relevant

They were not worthless. Their worth was being determined appropriately by the supply of the materials at the time and the need for their use.

Keep in mind, that nerfed dungeon rewards has effectively removed part of the reason those materials were in such high supply, while additionally those recipes were altered to require more materials over all.

Additionally, lower level materials still had value. The problem with the assertion that they did not have value is that the market determines the value. The principal being that you can shift the market by meerly adding or removing sources slowly. The problem with this is that when changing the market your “Game Economist” should ideally be thinking of how much of the game is removed when designing it. As is, several markets are crashing, whether by design or not.

Do you think those markets also need intervention ?
How are you going to determine what items are supposed to have what value ?

What we currently have here is effectively over regulation of markets causing stifling and pretty massive deflation. The problem is, this is taking players out of the game. Making them play more economic focused than they probably should be. It’s still a game, however the trading post and the economy at large is being treated more as a commodities exchange market than an traditional marketplace.

Anet no longer wants players in dungeons. Hence they told their economist to remove the rewards from dungeons to move players out of them. It worked.

Anet determines what items have value. They change that list of items over time in a cyclic manner. Some items they keep constant (ectos) while others they let be cheap for a while then increase their value later.

I see no evidence of deflation. All major market indicators are either steady or increasing in value, indicating a slight inflation if anything.

Anet only makes big changes to the market about twice a year. I wouldn’t call that stifling or over regulating.

Anet took a single item, increased its demand, and thus increased the demand of 30+ items from 0 to having value. If they change the influx of mid tier dust it would increase the value of an additional 30+ items, while also regulating the price of gemstones. With a major festival coming up I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw dust and crystals drop from the loot tables.

Anet has a history of using temporary festivals to inject supply into markets that give them temporary fluctuations.

So having some markets trend at 300% inflation on goods while other more common materials have seen their prices decline by over 500% is perfectly fine and not a sign of deflation to you.

How is any of that acceptable by any standard ?

You can say Anet dictates the market, and you’d be technically correct.

However, shouldn’t the market be a direct representation of the players and not an economic policy put in place to cater the most extreme demographics ?
After all it’s a marketplace not a stock exchange. It should be treated as such. If items don’t have what someone sees as an appropriate value (whatever the heck that’s supposed to mean) there are better ways to address it.

Case in point back near launch of the game, instead of changing the “supply” or removing gold Anet added new recipes for under utilized markets. This lead to the original mystic forge conduit. There’s something to be said about then and now.
I cannot believe the same person made the same design choices. Adding content and recipes is the right way to adjust markets. Adding something that incentives players to chase it. What we have now is neither. We have markets collapsing, near imploding and skyrocketing for the sake of some failed economic policy.

Yes it met it’s target goals, but in doing so it failed the average player base drastically and turns people away from actively playing the game. I’m saying this as a player who is a part of several large guilds and the same sentiments can be heard from a vast majority of anyone who is not new to the game.

For once, I agree.

This is really no different than needing to park alts at a jp chest to farm silver doubloons for Juggernaut. In fact, your best solution is the exact same thing – park any lesser-used 80s at a chest and hope for crests and orbs. The main difference is that you have a wider variety of things that fill the bill and you need three times as much. If you really want to be active, harvest cacti in Dry Top.

Instead of just one legendary requiring this horrible farm, all the new legendaries use it too.

Has anyone compared the cost to craft any of the new legendary weapons using buy order prices from beginning to end and then compared it to core Tyria weapons with similar demand (e.g. Bifrost, Juggernaut, Twilight, etc)? How about just the precursors of both sets versus the legendary gifts?

I will be probably angry if ever they changed anything about it since I worked really hard to get them.
I was complaining about it too but this is about legendary weapons when you have to deal with the fact that they are not intended to be cheap and easy to get.
If you remove the cost of these gemstones, the price will drop from ~2500 to ~1700. It would be too cheap for a legendary IMO.

Cost aside I wish there was an batch option for these things. There is too much unnecessary clicking involved. -_-

Miyani could sell something for 10 Piles of Crystalline Dust and it replaces the dust in the recipe and it would take 3x 30 of the other stuff.

This reminds me of spending hours farming Sparks for Charged Lodestones hoping for one drop and worrying about diminishing returns. Much later they started dropping in a number of places. Everything else is reasonable about the new Legendary crafting process but 2250 orbs is just ridiculous considering how RNG they are to acquire. The crafting process is ridiculous but considering I can’t even get enough orbs to make 5 a night that isn’t bothering me so much.