Guild Wars 2

Your geographical location: Canada
Whether you cannot log in or cannot stay logged in: Can connect to character selection, map loading screen comes up then disconnected.
Where you are in the game when you are disconnected: loading screen (characters were in Lions Arch, Rata Sum, Verdant Brink, but never loaded up any of those maps).
The error code you receive: (Code=1083:5:7:1595:101)

Edit: Working now.

None of the above. I was hopeful when they said they were working on a problem with delayed transactions, but that was weeks ago. Also, it has been made clear that ANet will absolutely not return gold or items lost as they have not built the functionality into the game. So unless our gold and items are sitting in some buffer in the TP waiting to be released, we are not getting anything back.

morphemass:

I don’t think a more granular time display would help. I’ve done some careful measuring in the past, and roughly 30-40% of all times displayed which are of sufficiently testable granularity (i.e. 12 hours, 17 hours) are

1) just plain wrong
2) change over time inconsistent with the passage of time
3) reorder themselves chronologically

Fluffycalico:

Fortunately/unfortunately the official response on the matter has shifted from “you were hacked” or “gold and items are never lost™” to silence and often the removal of such threads. There was a vague “we have a discovered a problem and it may or may not help you no guarantees when we fix it” sent in response to a few support tickets, but nothing has come of that, and it appears more and more as if the issue being worked on was not related to the problem that people are having (i.e. TP eating items and gold).

Knasher.5607:

Actually on second thought this probably wouldn’t work and its probably the reason why the trading post says estimated profit instead of actual profit. If someone were to buy your stack one item at a time, then that is the profit you would get (i.e. (itemprice * .9) * 250) which is how the estimated price is calculated, but if someone were to buy your entire stack in a single purchase, I’m betting it would be (itemprice * 250) * .9

X * Y * Z = Z * X * Y, no matter where you put the parentheses.

It’s incredibly unlikely that they would remove orders of banned accounts – in fact if they can’t change a character’s inventory I really doubt they could if they wanted to. What is the major issue that you’ve discovered and how is it different from someone who e.g. quits the game?

Literally no one has gotten gold or items returned to them by support – not a single person. The best thing you can do is make a bug report in game since the Customer Service people have no ties to the devs.

Heru:

You simply repeated what Roger Smithee said. Should people that say “don’t kill the hands” also be banned? They are lying as well. Should people that buy out the stock of an item and place uncharacteristically high buy orders also be banned? They are lying as well.

I think it’s a mistake to equate real life products with in-game items, but I’ll humour you. In real life, there are tons of individuals and corporations seeking investments. They’ll promise you the moon and the stars (sometimes even literally) in order to get your money, but this isn’t illegal. You can’t protect against people abandoning their common sense. Tons of investors get drawn into what are basically fantasies due to their own greed and the masterful presentation skills of investment groups.

Jamescowhen’s analysis is pretty spot on here. Remember all those people that got banned for the 21 karma weapon incident? The same ideas apply here. If you found some special recipe in the game that pumped out precursors, it would be classified in hindsight by almost everyone as an exploit. ANet have even confirmed in dev posts that there is no way to get precursors other than random drops or random forge chance.

Roger Smithee:

My point was that “oh look at this cool item I got hint hint” and this well-organized price manipulation are the same thing, the only difference being the effort put in. Dishonesty and other forms of social engineering are inherent in any kind of price manipulation.

If I buy out the stock of an item and start putting up inflated buy orders, that is every bit as dishonest as what was done here. It’s up to the buyers to believe or not believe the information they are given – it’s up to them to use their own judgment on the worth of items. A buyer could just as easily have made money off this manipulation as lost money if they approached it correctly.

My question is: what makes what this particular group did bannable?

Another question that might shed more light on the answer: should people that say “don’t kill the hands” be banned as well?

I’m having difficulty finding the punishable offense. Yes, it’s rather underhanded to convince people that X + Y = Z when Z is a highly desirable item and you have huge stock in X and Y. However, this is no different at all than the very slightly more subtle attempts at price manipulation like “hey reddit look at this major kewl item I got isn’t it amazing hint hint” or recently posts on these very forums by people claiming to have made money buying A and doing B with it.

Price manipulation in itself is not a bannable or punishable offense. Traders do it every single day, taking advantage of incorrect common knowledge or 0-day trends etc. All of this is really, in essence, taking advantage of the perceptions of buyers.

Anyone else experiencing low/sporadic loot bag drops?

So, Ive noticed lately that the loot in WvW (some days) will drop very rarely, despite my activity/kills not changing. Here’s a bit of a record of the past few days:

Monday: loot rarely drops (about 4-5 items total after 2-3hrs, less than 5 badges)
Tuesday: normal drop rate (bags are full multiple times a night, plenty of badges)
Wednesday: loot rarely drops
Thursday (today): loot rarely drops

I can’t remember the days before this, but I know it was the same sort of pattern – some days would be normal, some days I wouldn’t get much of anything. I used to have full bags every night I played WvW.

It could potentially be this bug https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/The-Trading-Ghost-Bug/

Unfortunately this seems to happen any time there is some kind of maintenance going on.

Look there again.

“When they say that we have no tools to give players individual items, they really mean it. It’s not just an excuse. We currently have no method of generating items on Live.”

In that case, what is the explanation for this?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10uk5u/a_big_thank_you_to_anet_support_for_awarding_me/

Terrant.2903:

MF Panda.5874:

I’m still amazed that people think the DR system is for botters. That makes no sense, not even as a kind of temporary stop-gap. Gold farmers have no interest in events (the gold income is equal to 1 green weapon), and players botting for themselves (e.g. a player botting events in order to farm karma) will eventually be banned – and in the meantime will gain nothing that isn’t account-/soulbound.

The point is one of the early posts by Anet mentioned it was an attempt to dissuade farming in general, but in particular by bots. Whether or not that’s sensible, it was what was said.

Instead of talking about botters, this discussion should focus more on the topic of whether or not it’s reasonable to diminish the rewards of those who are simply better at the game.

Wow, seriously?

…

You express some surprise at my suggestion to change the tone of discussion. Yes, the DR system is currently incredibly overbearing for many, many players and is clearly not working as intended by ANet. However, my point wasn’t about whether or not the current state of DR is acceptable, it was about whether DR for events or dungeons is acceptable at all.

One could make a good case for diminishing dropped loot rewards but why ever diminish experience or karma or other such rewards? That was what I was getting at.

I’m still amazed that people think the DR system is for botters. That makes no sense, not even as a kind of temporary stop-gap. Gold farmers have no interest in events (the gold income is equal to 1 green weapon), and players botting for themselves (e.g. a player botting events in order to farm karma) will eventually be banned – and in the meantime will gain nothing that isn’t account-/soulbound.

The DR system is clearly intended for players. There are many players who are exceedingly good at generating karma and XP or doing dungeons etc., and the DR system is put in place to cap out their effectiveness.

Instead of talking about botters, this discussion should focus more on the topic of whether or not it’s reasonable to diminish the rewards of those who are simply better at the game.

There might be some hope for those of us who have lost gold and items. According to this http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10uk5u/a_big_thank_you_to_anet_support_for_awarding_me/ support is now able to modify your character’s inventory – in this case they even spawned new items out of thin air.

It’s actually best, if you are forced to do something like that, to simply pay the 5% fee for listing then cancel the listing so that it ends up in your pickup box. This way you can retrieve + vendor the item later for a net 95% of its value.

You’re not missing anything, just vendor them.

DR seems to affect WvW as well – I barely got any loot bags from it after the patch (normally my inventory fills up pretty quickly, but I only got like 4-5 items total after playing for 2.5 hours). A thief from my guild also noticed way less rewards, and he normally gets a TON.

What I’ve learned in this thread is that you think siege golems are too expensive.

You need to give up on this idea that things “should be” or “ought to be” worth some value that they aren’t. In games with more open and more player-driven markets, things are worth what the market says.

R E F L H E X.8413:

However, paying 400-500 dollars for an in game item is just a little too insane, and cannot be done by the average person for a game, therefore the don’t wanna spend too much time, you can buy gems for gold marketing idea is a complete failure at this point in time, oh and one siege golem which is almost useless people say is 1g. However this wouldn’t be that big of a deal if the economy wasn’t so bad. ¹

The real thing to blame for our time feeling like we are spending too much for reward – The trading postes minimum prices on our weapon/armor drops being the same as what the merchant would buy them from you rather than what a merchant would sell them to you if he had the item in his sell list. ²

¹ No one is paying 600 USD for a sword, they are paying gold for it. Gold is much easier to acquire in this game than 600 USD is for the vast majority of players. “I don’t have enough money to buy the most expensive items” is not a justification for saying “the economy is so bad”.

² Yes, the solution to oversupply of unwanted items is clearly to enforce a minimum price on those items that is ten times larger than it currently is. Everyone will buy that stuff up immediately. Problem solved.

Things being at the lowest possible selling price is not a problem with the trading post or with manipulation of any kind. It is a problem of either unwanted items (blues, whites, 99% of greens) or oversupply. Changing trading rules is not going to fix supply problems.

In addition, more on the topic, this kind of manipulation is a way for people who pay attention to take advantage of those with less knowledge or time. The best possible information you can get when trying to sell an item is first trying to buy it – it lists the full depth of supply of both sellers and buyers so you can determine for yourself what price to list your item. This is an interface problem, but even fixing it (i.e. making the Sell interface the same as the Buy interface) would not prevent this kind of manipulation.

It’s not a complex calculation that needs to be done in multiple steps.

Assuming the item is sold (best case scenario in terms of profit), all fees are effectively paid when you list the item. You pay 5% of the sale price upfront. 5% of that price is removed instantly from your inventory. You pay 10% tax on the item when it actually sells. This 10% doesn’t come from your inventory, it comes from the buyer. But you have to calculate it anyway. And just like the listing fee, it’s based on the sale price.

Added together, when you list an item, you can only count on getting 85% of its listed value (100% – 10% – 5%). Thus when you are figuring out your net profit, you can simplify your calculation by just saying

[gold gained – gold lost] = [(sale price)*(85%) – cost]

Unless I’ve gone completely bonkers, this couldn’t get any simpler.

To reiterate, his first example has a sale price of 255 Silver. 85% of that is 216.75 Silver. This is less than his listed cost of 218 Silver (i.e. he loses money).

With the bones example, he lists a sale price of 192 Silver. 85% of that is 163.20 Silver. This is 11.20 Silver over his listed estimated costs.

There is no voodoo to this stuff.

Mathemagician.1836:

The motivation for my idea is that there is already a precedent protecting the user from selling something at below vendor pricing. Clearly ANet wants to provide some protection for the seller. It just seems to me that they did it in the most obvious way: without considering their own price “taxes.” For a game that’s supposed to be streamlined and skill based, it occurred to me as being counter to the game’s goal. There’s no “skill” in punching a number into a calculator to see if you’ll actually profit on it, and why should I need to waste my time checking every value against the calculator? What they’ve done is built in a trap option into the game, and then obscured it in two ways: ¹

1) by not making the 10% selling fee “abundantly” clear and, ²
2) by providing a false safety net by not allowing you to sell at below vendor value, but it does allow you to sell at below vendor value after taxes. ³

¹ I really don’t think it’s a trap unless you ignore the fact that what you’re listing probably won’t sell in the first place. I’d actually argue that they are protecting people more by not forcing them to pay an arbitrarily higher listing fee in order to NOT sell something.

If the minimum list prices were changed to a higher price, even fewer people would buy the goods. This is not a problem with trading rules or user interfaces, it’s a problem of unwanted items.

² I think most people agree that the 10% sell tax should be made more clear, but I don’t think there’s any kind of consensus or “best” way to do that other than publicizing. Maybe list it as a possible fee on the sale UI, though that could spawn even more confusion.

³ I really believe that this point, while correct, is pretty moot because of the problem described in ¹. You can’t force people to want unwanted items by changing trading rules (especially by making them more expensive!).

Ephiny:

I don’t see how that is any different from what I did. I simply multiply the listed sale price by .85 (i.e. 100%-15%). This takes into account the listing fee in addition to the 10% tax in one simple calculation.

If you’re buying materials for 218 Silver and selling the end-product for 255 Silver, you are actually losing 1.25 Silver.

Net profit = [Sell price*(100%-15%)] – Cost
[255 * .85] – 218 = 216.75 – 218 = -1.25

/edit – Doing the same for your bones armor, you get a net profit of 11 Silver. But if you keep announcing these things here on the forums, I’m sure you’ll find the margin to be much lower.

frOst.2198:

Selling gossamer scraps that you find isn’t a profit. It just converts items you already own into the appropriate gold value…You already found that item…so it is NOT profit. ¹

Profit would be investing 10 g in materials you bought from the TP to craft a RARE item that only you have found, then selling it on the TP for 15g. That IS profit. ²

¹ This way of thinking boggles my mind. Yes, the items that you find in game have both a market value and an intrinsic vendor value. Whichever one is higher is the one you should aim to get (taking into account taxes etc.).

You seem to be saying something like “I already own it, thus I already own the value of it – so when I convert the item into gold, nothing was gained”. Ok, yes, in some philosophical sense. But you profited when you got the item in the first place.

Additionally, there are many items whose market value is greater than their vendor value (because of pressure from demand) – and without the TP in place to make transactions, you would not have had the opportunity to make that gold in the first place. The TP’s mere existence allows demand to affect the market value of items in a clear and accessible way.

² First off, you can already put 10g into the TP and get out 15g without any crafting or intermediate process involved. It’s simply a matter of knowledge, research, and sometimes luck.

Secondly, let’s assume this process existed where you can buy 10g worth of items, then click a button on your crafting UI, then sell the resulting item for 15g. The more that people find out about this, the more the resulting price is going to be driven down from 15g to 14g to 13g etc. In addition, the 10g worth of recipe items would be driven up to 11g, 12g, 13g etc. That is simply how this kind of market works. Whenever some profitable transaction exists, people jump on it until it is no longer profitable. When people say efficient markets, this is precisely what they mean – smoothing out the prices of items until there is no profitability left in the pure transaction.

MrMT.4061:

Something has gone wrong with the economy when everything green, blue and white is vendor trash… ¹

Far from improving, the situation seems to be getting worse. Greens were not worthless when we started playing – they have become so. ²

Yellows are starting to lose relative value also. This is a slippery slope. ³

¹ Something would be wrong if these items were in high demand and still worthless. When have you ever, in the process of playing this game, said to yourself “wow I need to get me some of that blue gear”? The simple interaction here is that the items you’re talking about are unwanted. You can occasionally upgrade yourself while leveling by checking out some greens, but it’s generally not worth the search time – you gain more by just continuing the leveling process.

² At the extreme beginning of the game, Greens might not have been “worthless”, but I can tell you that their prices haven’t changed much since ~1 week after the game came out.

³ The real value of yellow gear is now tied up with the value of ectoplasm in most cases. Many yellows are still more “expensive”, but what’s happening is that buying a yellow comes with the opportunity cost of not saving money for an orange – which is what many many people are doing (hence the steady rise in the price of many exotics and the drop of price in yellows to match up more closely with ecto prices).

Kargion.6352:

Main problem is users in GW2 are selling items at other MMO prices. Users need to bring down their prices in line with the games economy. A weapon for 30-80G is ridiculous. 5-10G is hard to come by and sounds more in line with how hard it is to get money. ¹

¹ There are many misconceptions here. Players in GW2 are not selling items at other MMO prices, they are selling items at GW2 prices. The only force determining the prices of goods of these expensive weapons are demand. The price of these goods has steadily risen since the the trading post first came up for more than an hour because players keep buying them up. If you can’t afford these weapons, the price does not need to fall to come in line with your personal economy. They are simply not priced for you, they are priced for those that can afford them.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

I wish yellows sold for 5-15 gold, that would be amazing. ¹

In any case, I agree with the OP, right now the economy is going down the tube because of various factors (one major one is the diminishing returns systems on loot and events). Rares are quickly losing their value and becoming salvage items. ²

¹ If yellows sold for 5-15 gold, exotics would sell for hundreds of gold and precursors for thousands, and we’d be experiencing the same situation as we are now, apart from repair and travel costs seeming extremely cheap.

² Items which players want are rising in price, and unwanted items are dropping in price. Items do not have any kind of inherent value apart from their vendor price. It can’t be expected that simply because some item’s name is written in yellow that someone will want it. The drops in this game are designed much like the drops in the original Guild Wars. “Worthless” item drops like whites and blues should be treated as gold drops. Just as you sometimes get 50c as a drop, so do you often get 1s or more as “drop” in that you can vendor it for that amount of gold.

daphoenix.4283:

Mfpanda:

I’m aware of the hidden backlog of items. I have about 400 items still in backlog and no place to put them as my storage is full / I was not able to list any items all week, nor buy bags as I had no money / way of buying b/c items bought go to the back of the log.

Still in risk of losing a ton of items after the game update though since it may affect my items stored on the auction house.

Sorry if I wasn’t clear, but what I am saying is that gold itself is counted as an item when you’re talking about having a backlog. If you sell something, even direct to a buy order, and you have a backlog of items, the gold will NOT show up until you clear the backlog.

Try getting someone in the game to mail you some bags and use the Return To Sender trick to get an extra 50 item storage temporarily. I’m confident that if you clear the backlog of items, your gold will start showing up.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/9-19-TP-outage-and-how-it-has-affected-my-gameplay-today/page/3

“We’re aware of some of the recent issues with Trading Post purchases. This was caused by the sheer volume of activities with our system. We are taking steps to prevent that issue in the future but in the meantime we are actively looking into these unfulfilled purchases and will resolve them within a few days. But please note that we are unable to guarantee that your items will arrive, or that your gold will be refunded due to these issues, as the data may be lost. We’ll continue to investigate this for everyone affected and try to have an outcome as quickly as possible.

Regards,
GM Onyx
Guild Wars 2 Support Team"

(thanks, zaerk.2305)

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Gold-missing-from-Inventory-merged/page/6

“There were some cases where purchases were successfully made, but the delivery of the gems was delayed. This was due to stress on our system due to the volume of traffic. We are taking steps to prevent the issue in the future so you hopefully you won’t run into this again. In the meantime, we are actively looking into these hanging purchases and resolving them within a few days. It appears that this is taking a bit longer than we had originally thought, so your particular transaction may still be pending the refund. That said you should be receiving your gems or your gold refunded to you soon. If you have not received your gems back within 7 days, please let us know so that we may investigate your issue further.

Again we are very sorry that you encountered this issue at all, but I hope this message has helped. If you have any other questions or concerns please feel free to let us know about them as well. Thanks so much for your time and understanding while we work on resolving this issue for you.

Cheers!

Tina
Guild Wars Support Team"

(thanks, Juris Doctor.9842)

Looks like this is officially on the map and there may even be a chance to recover the gold/items.

daphoenix:

Make sure you clear out your pickup tab of items. There is a hidden backlog of items and gold once the pickup box has a certain number of items in it.

The TGB is not a continously ongoing issue, it is a time-isolated occurrence that seems to pop up near maintenance times.

BLTC Maintenance 26 SEP 8:00 AM – 8:30 AM PDT

Just a heads up to everyone to avoid market activity near maintenance times, lest this bug strike again. I am anticipating another wave of TGB complaints, unfortunately, but we’ll see what happens.

Greyfeld.7104:

This is literally the first time I’ve heard of this problem. I’ve bought and sold plenty of items on the TP, and have bought gems for gold on four different occasions.

I lament that this has happened to some players, and I hope it gets fixed soon, but this thread waxes a little melodramatic, imo.

Since you trade things often, it’s probably best to familiarize yourself with the bug and the indications that it is happening. Details can be found here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/The-Trading-Ghost-Bug/

How Can I Protect Myself from this Bug? (message to Players)

1. If you get an error message of any kind on the Trading Post, just stop what you’re doing immediately. Wait a while before you try it again.

2. When cancelling unfulfilled Buy Orders, always cancel the lowest value one first and confirm that the gold shows up in your pickup box. If you cancel a Buy Order and the gold does not show up within a few minutes, just walk away until later.

Unfortunately these are not preventative except in that they limit the harm that you can experience from this bug. There is currently no way that I am aware of to test the working state of the TP. If you object to these measures being too “paranoid”, I empathize. But after experiencing this bug, I approach all of my transactions cautiously in order to limit the amount I would lose if this bug struck again.

If anyone else knows any tips to avoid loss or knows any indicators of the TGB, please post in this thread.

/edit – Mods seemed a little trigger-happy and removed any posts with ticket numbers in them. Unfortunately it seems like we won’t be able to keep a catalogue of ticket numbers here for the devs to examine, but hopefully the information about the mechanisms is enough.

Vawn, your issue seems a bit different than the rest of us. The TGB is not reproducible on command, it is a timing-dependent phenomenon that seems to happen near maintenance times.

I’m not downplaying your issue, though. Also, just to be sure, have you cleared out the items in your pickup box? There is an effect (not sure if it’s a bug) where if you have many items in your pickup box, any gold you get from sales is stuck in queue behind the items (it won’t show up until you’ve cleared out the queue of items).

If items in your pickup box are cleared out, then there is definitely something horribly wrong – an even worse bug than the TGB in many respects.

Additionally, thanks to everyone for adding your information here. If there’s any help to be had for this bug, it’s through giving clear information like has been so far.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/The-Trading-Ghost-Bug/

Post your support ticket number, which specific aspects of the bug affected you, and any additional information that could be helpful to the devs.

A Detailed Explanation of the Bug

To put it simply, the Trading Post can, during a specific period of time, eat items and gold. When this happens, there is no clear indication it is happening (except in hindsight after significant analysis). In fact, all the nice UI messages that have been added to the Trading Post (“No more available at this price, please try again” etc.) merely serve to convince the user that nothing is out of the ordinary. This applies not only to trading items on the trading post but also to buying gems.

This thread is an effort to help players and developers understand the nature of this bug. Having all of one “category” of complaints merged into a single thread has so far been disruptive and resulted in frustration, mixed information, and confusion to both players and developers alike. Hopefully, this bug can be clearly analyzed, categorized, and fixed with the help of this thread. Until then, I’ll also post some tips that players can use to protect themselves from losing their items and gold.

General Information

Who does this bug apply to?

If you do any of the following, you could fall victim to this bug:

-Sell Items on the TP to Buy Orders (direct sell).
-Sell Items on the TP via Sell Orders.
-Buy Items on the TP via Sell Orders (direct buy).
-Cancel Buy Orders to retrieve funds.
-Purchase Gems with gold.

How much can be lost due to this bug? The gold loss is not immediate – it is delayed. There are numerous reports of a delayed spending mechanic that allows you to “spend” more gold than you own and “pay” it back as you gain gold from drops/vendoring. This means you could theoretically lose hundreds of gold, even if you’ve never had more than 5 gold.

Wazabi.1439:

TP is not broken. People do not fear the TP. ¹

They fear the stiff competition in TP that they are not used to seeing in other simpler trading system. Also, these people tend to be speculators that are used to be able to make a profit in a small market but do not understand how a big market works and lose money. In any trading system there will be price fluctuation. No one can say for sure how much is an item worth at any point of time. TP just makes it more visible than traditional P2P trade. Failure to make profit trading is due to a player making a wrong speculation, not the fault of the market. Blaming it on TP is like blaming other players for undercutting. ²

I’ve never encountered lost gold in using TP (haven’t tried Gem market). Seems like it’s due to a technical bug rather than failure of the market. ³

¹ The TP is “broken” in that it currently experiences a bug that eats gold and items. I can guarantee you that anyone bitten by this bug approaches the TP with significant caution now. Outright denying the experiences of others is rude, to say the least.

² This is an interesting tirade but entirely off-topic. The OP is not talking about some kind of design flaw in the market system but a technical issue which causes a chilling effect slant in those who experience the issue.

³ Exactly.

Also having an issue getting my HoM rewards (got the stone manually, Historian says I have nothing, etc) . Double checked that I’m linked and that I do have 22 points. Appreciate any help given!