Guild Wars 2

Hello,

I’m not planning to get involved into this issue too much, but it is worth a try…

My observation in the last few weeks is that certain goods occur at the TP in a quite unusual way. Namely, it looks to me that some1 dumps huge quantities of crafting materials at a significantly lower price than the otherwise normal market price. Forming a price plug. Having played many MMOs before – to my best knowledge, this kind of behaviour is typical to hackers/botters or anyone else who can get stuff for free so there is no such price for them as ‘too low’. No/hardly any competition because of the low price, but no loss of effort as getting the materials took none or minimal.

This is only a suspicion ofc. I’ll tell you one example and see it for yourself if you are interested: coarse leather squares —> for at least 10 days someone (probably one person, but the TP interface does not show such information) has been putting them on the TP 25-40 stacks (6000-10000 pieces) a day, always undercutting the lowest seller by much more than it is usual in the case of frequently traded and highly demanded crafting materials where the usual undercut is only a few coppers. Take a look at the history of coarse leather squares at Spidy (http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19734), and you see that except for the occasional spike (probably when the guys sleeps lol) the price is always hammered down around 11s50c.

I can not prove this, but I’ve been trading crafting materials almost since launch, and I’ve never before seen this occuring so consistently. So this may be something Anet wants take a look at… or maybe not.

p.s.: Leather cant even be farmed from nodes, it had to be salvaged from armor pieces. So a guy buying 60-100k armor pieces (quite a lot of gold), salvaging them (probably 20-30 hours of clicking, then crafting squares from sections) is just simply willing to throw out at least half of his earning potetial? Seems a little too much effort to me to be wasted this easily… but maybe thats just me.

It’s because of the AFK farmers who are dumping what they earned. Supply has gone up by something like 75% this past week.

I think course leather is a side effect of the new bandit mini-content. Plus there is a big dump of course leather sections that you can make squares from so that’s where the squares are from.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s because of the AFK farmers who are dumping what they earned. Supply has gone up by something like 75% this past week.

So who are these mysterious AFK farmers? Or rather… what is ‘AFk farming’? Are there bots that run your character with the Orr/Frostgorge champ trains and SW and whatnot? I still dont see how can one get 20-40 stacks of squares and bolts of textile and leather. For example there are no champ trains that give you low lvl loot if you are 80. But even wool and thin leather (lvl 20-30 stuff) is in massive oversupply.

I’m not saying that these guys cheat, it just annoys me that I cant figure out how they do it. Atm the whole textile and leather market is flooded with low price mass-sellers (they undercut a good 15-30% below the market price, instead of the usual 1 copper). Several of them. So you see 5-6 guys selling 2k-10k pieces of leather or textile. They are not robbing themselves for sure, so there must be a way they get this much stuff leagally if ANET does not ban them. What I do is putting up buy orders, then salvaging and selling. But I cant keep up with them niether in price nor in volume. Whats the trick here?

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s because of the AFK farmers who are dumping what they earned. Supply has gone up by something like 75% this past week.

So who are these mysterious AFK farmers? Or rather… what is ‘AFk farming’? Are there bots that run your character with the Orr/Frostgorge champ trains and SW and whatnot? I still dont see how can one get 20-40 stacks of squares and bolts of textile and leather. For example there are no champ trains that give you low lvl loot if you are 80. But even wool and thin leather (lvl 20-30 stuff) is in massive oversupply.

I’m not saying that these guys cheat, it just annoys me that I cant figure out how they do it. Atm the whole textile and leather market is flooded with low price mass-sellers (they undercut a good 15-30% below the market price, instead of the usual 1 copper). Several of them. So you see 5-6 guys selling 2k-10k pieces of leather or textile. They are not robbing themselves for sure, so there must be a way they get this much stuff leagally if ANET does not ban them. What I do is putting up buy orders, then salvaging and selling. But I cant keep up with them niether in price nor in volume. Whats the trick here?

You do realize that you posted in a two month old thread, right?

Ayrilana.1396:

You do realize that you posted in a two month old thread, right?

I do. So?

Do you realize you wrote something totally irrelevant to my question?

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

You do realize that you posted in a two month old thread, right?

I do. So?

Do you realize you wrote something totally irrelevant to my question?

It wasn’t irrelavent at the time.

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

You do realize that you posted in a two month old thread, right?

I do. So?

Do you realize you wrote something totally irrelevant to my question?

It wasn’t irrelavent at the time.

Oh… I see what you did there, but I meant your latest reply not the old one. Anyways, now you are too keen on kicking my topic-bumper kitten so I wont get any decent answer from you I guess… at least you enjoyed teaching me some discipline and it also wasnt a bad try on derailing this topic. You got skillz.

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

Nimrud.5642:

Ayrilana.1396:

You do realize that you posted in a two month old thread, right?

I do. So?

Do you realize you wrote something totally irrelevant to my question?

It wasn’t irrelavent at the time.

Oh… I see what you did there, but I meant your latest reply not the old one. Anyways, now you are too keen on kicking my topic-bumper kitten so I wont get any decent answer from you I guess… at least you enjoyed teaching me some discipline and it also wasnt a bad try on derailing this topic. You got skillz.

Defensive…

Back when you created this thread, there were AFK farmers. It was pretty big and there were threads popping up several times a week about it. Players would get on a necro (or ranger) and let their minions/pet do the kills for them for hours upon hours without having to be at their computer. They were able to do this because the autoloot system kept them in the game.

These bits would just sit in certain locations that had decent enemy concentration and/or fast mob respawn. The nightmare court in NW Maelstrom and the centaur outside the mine in eastern Harathi are two examples. They would get cloth and leather through salvaged drops such as armor and salvage items. They would also get them from the loot bags as well.

Players may also go to karma vendors and buy armor so that they can salvage. This was commonly done for linen at one point and probably is still done. Players may also farm champ bags that are practically flooded upon players and then open them up on a character that is within the level range to get the specific tier a drops. There is also the bandit events that someone mentioned which have brought players to these lower level zones.

Also remember that many players play this game at all hours. There’s a high chance that any change isn’t caused solely by one players but all as a collective.

All righty, ty for the answer!