Showing Posts For Kiserai.3957:
That is not what is going on here. Read my posts. I abused nothing; I’m in the clear here as far as ArenaNet is concerned. It sounds like you came to this thread assuming you understood others motivations and didn’t let pesky things like “people saying the exact opposite” get in the way of that.
While I suppose you have that right, there is absolutely more going on in this thread than abusers complaining about their fate.
There is nothing that would even possibly convince you that this was ignorance rather than malice, is there?
I find that hard to believe.
They would have been stupid to do that thinking it wasn’t an exploit, and clueless if they only did it a couple dozen times.
Were it the later, they may still be playing tonight.
They were neither stupid nor clueless. Maybe I’m wrong! Maybe they were stupid? Anythings possible.
I tend to think pro traders are a bit more savvy then that myself. Feel free to argue the negative all you want.
It’s been argued for the last several pages, including where I admitted that I knew about this problem and didn’t know it would be classified as an exploit, as well as the part where it explains why a “pro trader” would have a different perspective.
It’s all right here in this thread, if you’re curious.
It was an exploit. The heavy exploiters were gaining from it knowing this is a little too good to be true. They milked it in the hundreds/thousands range.
That’s based on an assumption that they knew it was too good to be true, when his point was that they didn’t know. You can’t assume your conclusion in your evidence then use that to prove someone wrong.
Are you honestly comparing the two? Really? Now I’m starting to doubt the “willfully” part of my above post…
You should. When people say they don’t understand, it’s usually because they don’t understand.
There are a lot of people not understanding. I’m one of them. Roughly 200 more can’t post here today.
Because only a few were actually banned; the worst offenders.
They didn’t do it ten times.
They didn’t do it a hundred times.
They did it thousands of times.
Which, as discussed for the last few pages, is not in any way evidence of intent. It’s how salvaging for profit works.
If you knew that already and were making that point for another reason, then I apologize for missing your point…
edit: i admit i stop reading at page 3
I’m glad you admit it, but explaining why you’re rehashing an earlier point doesn’t unrehash it…
If you take the 3 italic lines and combine them…you tell me xD
That sounds too tinfoil-hatty to me. I think miscommunication or mistaken assumptions are much more plausible.
I keep seeing the word profit being thrown around, by both Anet and gamers when I feel like it had nothing to do with profit but everything to do with creating supply.
That makes some sense, although I would point out that the ability to generate infinite ectoplasm already existed and continues to exist—but people only do it when it’s profitable. Still, that perspective helps.
However, the ArenaNet response still leaves a burning question, and it revolves around intent. If the problem was as simple as what you said, then the only actions they would have taken would be to close the hole and delete the ectoplasm that people had stockpiled. But that wasn’t the case at all—instead, the players were officially branded as people who intended to destroy the game’s economy and banned to protect everyone else from their machinations.
You see, when someone who views the trading post as its own minigame looks at this situation, he doesn’t see any evidence of that at all. Instead, he sees people behaving out of simple self-interest, following the precedent of previous strategies (salvage for profit) and events (which offered significant wealth in short timeframes for people who cashed in quickly) and having no special knowledge of the developers’ intent. The fact that some of these people did it hundreds of times isn’t evidence of malicious intent—it’s exactly how salvaging for profit works. You do it in bulk or you don’t bother. There’s no malice there, just normal actions with a failure to anticipate that this situation would have different consequences. And that’s why I’m worried now.
I saw nothing wrong, right up until the bans kicked in. I heard exactly how this worked, but said nothing because I didn’t recognize a problem. I may not be banned now, but that provides no comfort. I don’t understand the logic that led to those people being banned, which is why I don’t know how that logic won’t apply to me someday. That should never happen.
There’s really just two possibilities here. The first one is that ArenaNet knows something we don’t, and which they have not communicated to us. The second is that ArenaNet presumed malicious intent of these people, received evidence colored by confirmation bias, and have made a mistake in judgement as a result. There isn’t a third option.
Well see, that’s the thing…they did. You just didn’t hear an uproar about it because nobody got banned before this. Until this point crafting to salvage for ectos is where the ecto price softcap came from. That’s why market enthusiasts are so concerned right now, even those of us who aren’t banned.
There is no other recipe that could create an infinite amount of ectos from only a single ecto and basic crafting materials. All other ways either requires ectos or fine crafting materials that are always lost in the craft. No other recipes give you back the rare crafting materials required to make it + ectos.
Technically that’s correct, since some recipes used no ectos at all to create ectos, but the bigger issue is what I explained earlier about mat quality. The people who are confused here—myself included—are people who view items as commodities with a monetary value rather than as distinct items. Clearly you do not do that, which is why nothing seems unusual to you.
I know someone, who has since been banned, that made over 4,000 gold in less than four hours from the snowflake recipe. Now tell me if you consider over a 1,000 gold an hour from a novelty recipe to be acceptable or legit.
That is literally 10-100x more profit than the (banned) people I heard from made in significantly more time. When others were doing this, it was more like 5-10g an hour…
Well see, that’s the thing…they did. You just didn’t hear an uproar about it because nobody got banned before this. Until this point crafting to salvage for ectos is where the ecto price softcap came from. That’s why market enthusiasts are so concerned right now, even those of us who aren’t banned.
In the end, it is their playground, so I wouldn’t paint the picture quite so dark, Asglarek.
I had heard about making ectos this way before the winter event, and I heard the details of how people were doing it during the event, and I said nothing to them about it because I didn’t see the difference. That’s what concerns me—that when you break it down to what a market-player sees items as (price points and opportunity costs) this looked like completely normal activity. I didn’t do this, but only because I was doing other things at the time. It could have been me.
Although, if that isn’t the way you see the game—if you see items as items instead of as components to a sub-game, I could definitely see this as being either justice (if you agree) or capriciousness (if you disagree). For those of us who genuinely enjoy the economy as its own sub-game and see it through those eyes, though, this is as baffling as it is harrowing.
It wasn’t me…but it could be next time, and I still won’t understand why.
There is a difference between common mats (silk/mithril etc) and fine/rare mats (claws/bloods/ectos etc).
Yes, but to someone sitting in Lion’s Arch buying the materials and selling the output, that difference is wholly the price.
The difference between a cheap mat and a rare mat is the price.
Why are people even comparing this recipe with others claiming they work the exact same way?
Because the only difference, from a high-level perspective, is the profit margin.
Absolutely. When I was trying to gather ectos for my legendary, I would regularly buy the cheapest T6 mats (or guildies sent them to me) and make either rare level 80 daggers, or rare level 80 warhorns, which I could then grind and hope to get ectos from.
Which means you knew how the salvaging system works – how when salvaging those daggers and warhorns you would get mithril back and maybe an ecto, while when salvaging the snowflake jewels you actually got mithril, maybe an ecto, and also the snowflake jewel, which was enough for making a new piece of jewelry.
The fact it had such a higher return than the other recipes you admittedly knew about, and that it was different enough that you actually tried crafting a rare jewel instead of your usual options (daggers and warhorns) shows how you understood it was not the same thing. In other words, how it was something in a different order of magnitude from other recipes in the game, which you quickly tried to make a profit from, even if you failed.
In other words, how it was an exploit you tried to abuse.
He just finished telling you how he tried it, lost his money, and quit. How on earth do you go from that to assuming he knew this had a better profit margin and thus had malicious intent?
Out of curiosity, is there any other recipe in the game you have used 50 times in a row, salvaging and then recycling ingredients like this particular recipe allowed you to?
The first post in this thread? That was kind of the point, wasn’t it?
I was on voice chat with my guild during this. We were all on different main/overflow versions of Lion’s Arch. Some of us got the full event leading up to the ships, something about the inspector talking and catapults and fighting karka. Others got part of it, but it got stuck at the catapults. Others, myself included, got nothing at all—we stood around being confused for a half hour until we got a mail and a boat icon on the map.