Showing Posts For Magikker.9243:
The difference between a good and bad game is often polish. I think that might extend to real money shops in games as well. The rest of the world is fairly polished but they haven’t quite got the gem shop to where it needs to be. I’d love if they had 100 skins on there, but they need some major upgrades to the interface to handle that.
And furthermore, I think that people are hesitant to buy skins since this game has nowhere to store skins. I wouldn’t buy dye off the TP if it wasn’t store-able, but it is, so I do. I’ve got my main looking like I want, I’d love to have a secondary outfit, but right now having multiple outfits is a huge hassle. So I’ve found a set I like and I’ll stick with it till it’s easy to swap.
Gem shop dyes, now that’s another thing that needs a bit of polish. If they want those to be meaningful they ought to be include far more dyes in a pack, new colors, or have the gem shop versions unlock across all characters. People would buy that stuff.
Except in the real world you can’t buy and instantly sell something for profit. And in the stock market, no one has to wait to buy stocks to level their crafting or to equip them. Everyone there is just buying with plans to resell later at a higher price.
Also, I have seen a bot at the TP botting away, and with patterns I’ve seen with mass buying and selling at patterned prices and near-instant reposting of buy orders when it gets outbid, I am sure there have been bots on the TP since late September.
As far as buying and selling stuff instantly in the real world… you kinda can. But don’t mistake explanation of what is possible with what should be going on in the game. After my experience with Diablo 3 I’m wary of the impact markets on game worlds.
The casual players who aren’t farming 24/7 should be seeing the benefits of a “bot-less Tyria” when they sell any drops they get from “casual playing” and get more cash for those items.
Right, that’s true in the long term. Their drops will now sell for more, but the things they’d like to buy cost more too…. at least things on the tp.
In the short term, people with a lot of mats in the bank gained a bunch of value practically overnight. People with few mats and a lot of gold lost value overnight. Gold is value is in it’s purchasing power, people don’t like to see their purchasing power diminished. Those people would really like the bots back. It makes for fairly humorous conversations in map chat.
This is one of the more interesting things I’ve since in an MMO. Bots, while annoying, are becoming missed…. Chat in LA on my server last night was all about how much they wanted to see the bots come back. The casual players who aren’t just farming 24/7 much preferred the cheaper prices of bots offered.
Why would you want to reduce it? It’s supposed to be a free market is it not?
Why should it be a free market? Digital economies and real economies are very different. What makes you think that what works for should work for the other?
I really hope this isnt someone who wrote a market bot to auto flip items.
Is this even possible?
In real markets it’s common. Most trades are conducted by algorithms. There are also firm out there who make a living “flipping items” expect in the real economy it’s called market making. They put out buy and sell orders on the same stock. This helps the market in that if someone wants to sell stock there’s always someone willing to buy it, and vice versa. They make a little bit of money per trade but trade constantly, so they can make quite a bit.
Actually, market making was the legitimate side of Bernie Madoff’s business.
What utility does a legendary weapon have over an exotic weapon? And it appears you are looking at wealth from the lens of envy rather than scrutinizing what it actually means to be wealthy in GW2.
I believe, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that utility of a legendary comes from it being a long term goal for players. It’s really the embodiment of digital bragging rights. It’s meant to shown off and it’s meant to be envied. Legendaries and every other cosmetic item in the game work on psychological and social levels. So yeah, I guess I am asking what it does to the player base when the purchase of end game content is trivial for some and seemingly out of reach for others. I’d argue that game economies can have a huge impact on player satisfaction. We only have to look at Diablo 3 to find a recent and well covered example of how things can go wrong. I think envy has something to do with it but so do goals and motivation and probably a lot of other things.
If wealthy TP traders want to speculate on the market, they have to buy up supplies. What does this do? It turns money over to farmers. It gives incentives to suppliers. Is that such a bad thing?
I don’t think it’s necessarily bad, but a corner stone economic principle is, and I’m paraphrasing here, is “reward things you want more of and tax things you want less of”. Would it be a bad thing if the single most effective way to make money in the game was the trading post? Is that the behavior that devs want the most of? I make no money in sPvP, very little in WvW, a decent amount in dungeons, even better farming Orr, but I do best with my time on the trading post. It’s got the highest reward ratio for my time. Is that what the devs expected in their game?
And I just feel the need to say this is one of the best and most reasoned MMO related discussions I’ve ever had. yall are awesome.
There’s been this sort of mismatch at different times and different levels for a while. Last time I looked tier 5 mats were cheaper than tier 4. This is because T5 mats are very common in the most highly farmed areas of the game, but people don’t farm the areas that drop T4 much at all. Those zones are almost empty on my server. It very well could just be supply and demand.
Absent of such a scenario, the super-wealthy players would eventually hit a ceiling where there is simply NOTHING for them to do with their money. They’ve made a Legendary (or maybe even several Legendaries). What else can they do? Apart from the “monopoly” idea I raised earlier, which I’m sure ANet would not tolerate, the only things one could do would be to finance the purchases of other players (effectively “giving it away to charity”), or just quit the game, in which case they have just removed themselves from the economy and are thus no longer an issue.
Given that GW2 is a multiple player game player’s bank rolls of do have an impact on other players. This is were it gets really murky for me because now we’re into social sciences, but let me give an example. If I see a legendary in the wild it might impact my motivation. If I look up the total cost of creating a legendary and see that it’s around 1000g that might impact my motivation. If I see guys with multiple legendaries and I only 30 gold in my own bank, maybe I start to think that I’m playing the game wrong. I know some of my buddies cited that to me as one of the reasons that they’ve moved on to other games. The impacts are of centralizing large sums of money are broader than the in game markets. It starts to get into issues that are a lot more personal and probably can’t be quantified in the same way market liquidity can. I think this is where it gets into the differences between a healthy game economy and the economy’s impact on the game world and the players.
Another example would be how it effects the design of content. If you can have a wealthy class who are so rich that “end game” purchases become fairly trivial does that effect the way you design the game? The devs have expressed surprise at the rate which players achieved the first legendaries. But imagine for a moment an alternate GW2 with no trading post… how many legendary weapons would be in that version of the game? The trading post allows for a greater stratification of wealth and I would have to imagine that had a huge impact on the rate at which some players are achieving “end game” content. Is that a problem? I don’t know. Is there a benefit to this stratification? I’m still looking.
Most of the trading in real life North American markets are done by trading algorithms. There’s actually course on how to write your own going on at Coursera right now. It’s not quite rocket science, though it’s not trivial either. They could hire a grad student with the right background to work it out for them if they are interested.
I think the question for me keeps coming back to whether the consolidation of wealth in the hands of a small number of players is good or bad for a game world. I’d love to see the data on the wealth distribution in and I’d be very curious to see what the dev team would think of that data. I’d guess what looks normal under the lens of Austrian Economics might not look so good under from the point of view of community manager or content developer.
Only thing remotely fishy about this ordeal is that some guy has 3800g to throw around. It’s possible to obtain that much gold but takes a lot of observation, timing, and repeated luck.
Luck only exists on relatively small sample sizes.
Godskull/precursors.
say 800g made from godskulls (lowish estimate)
= 13 precursors @ 60g
= 13*400g at current prices
= 4400g after fees.And yes, people did make that much on forging precursors from godskulls.
That is $1500 on black market or an ungodly amount of gems.
froging precursors from godskulls? did they change something about the formulas in the mystic forge or something? i haven’t really tried this yet, but i believe to get one you’d have to be incredibly lucky.
Yeah, it was a bug. You could fairly commonly get a precursor from two lvl 65 godskull rares and two… other rares… I forget the exact details. But some people used this bug extensively. It was known in some circles for a month or more before the bug was fixed. Knowing it was bug I never tried it, but I know people that used it a lot and nothing ever happened to them.
Sorry if I’m putting words into your mouth (or text into your keyboard), but I think the main issue you have is how beneficial is it for the game as a whole if the trading post is the most effective means of generating in-game wealth as opposed to actually playing the game.
Yeah, that is the bigger question.
In purely economic terms, the market trading in this game is healthy for the economy. As you noted gold is removed due to fees, but in addition traders add liquidity to the markets and reduce the margins between buy and sell prices which benefits “regular” players.
Right, clearly you are adding liquidity to the market, but how important is that to the health of the game? Or, further, why should you be the one playing the role of market maker? Anet could do it, which would take gold out of the market, provide liquidity, and prevent some of the centralization of large amounts of money on player accounts. Anet playing the role of “market maker” would further combat inflation as their profits could be taken out of the economy all together. In this scenario you and I could still play the market but not as effectively in the short run.
Your complaint is smart people can make money by investing their money in the buying and selling of goods?
No,
“The thing I can’t figure out is whether the ability to make so much money on the trading post is good or bad for the game as a whole. "
I’d be curious to hear the positive impact of this sort of market trading on the game as a whole beyond just combating inflation. I only have negative evidence on how it’s impacted my group of friends, but that’s anecdotal and not data.
I’d love to see a scatter plot where each point represents a player. The y-axis would be total transactions on the trading post, the x axis would be the total value of the player’s account (use the current market value of all items on the whole account if you could sell everything on the TP or to a vendor taking the highest offer for each item).
Do similar plots but do one for value against play time, DE’s completed, Anet points and skill points. I’d be curious to see which is most strongly correlated with wealth. I’ll place my bet on TP transactions having the strongest correlation.
But the biggest thing I’m seeing here is a difference in what constitutes market manipulation. Some people consider flipping items as manipulation. But to an economist’s ears that probably sounds a lot like “market making.” I’d suggest that in a digital world market making shouldn’t be left to players because centralizing huge amounts of wealth on individual accounts is a source of other in game headaches.
I’ve been thinking about markets in MMOs and I find that extremely interesting. If you look at GW2 as an example the devs are strongly against gaining gold or items while not actively playing the game (botting) but are perfectly OK with gaining gold or items while not actively playing the game (trading post). Neither are risk free methods of earning gold. Bots can get banned and market traders can lose money on bad trades. But despite the risks you can become digitally rich while you are sleeping, working, or doing laundry with either method.
So why is botting banned and trading blessed? I believe it has everything to do with inflation.
All gold is created from drops, DEs, hearts, dungeons, and selling items to vendors. Each of these primary sources of gold adds to inflation. each time a mob is struck down it’s as if the government (Anet) printed a new dollar bill (copper) and handed it to the character. The monetary supply has increased with each action. This is exactly what botters are doing. They are creating money… but doing it while not actively playing the game.
The trading post does not create any gold. What the trading post can do is concentrate or spread out wealth. What markets tend to do is concentrate wealth toward those that know how to work the market. See the 3800 gold buy order placed on a lemon as an example. Most players can’t imagine that kind of in game money and I honestly have no idea how that person got so much. But lets assume they made it on the trading post instead of botting or exploits. If they bought and sold enough stuff to make 3800 gold they’ve probably destroyed at least 570 gold in fees.
If you consider my two groups; botters and traders they are both bringing in wealth to their accounts, but the botters are contributing to inflation by creating gold and the traders are removing gold from the economy.
The thing I can’t figure out is whether the ability to make so much money on the trading post is good or bad for the game as a whole. Traders help the inflation problem, but they also make it seem like the optimal way to make money is with a market simulator instead of traditional game play. It creates a huge stratification of player wealth. Things that are completely out of reach for some players, see legendaries, are achieved much faster than Anet originally intended. Seems like something that could hurt as much as it helps.
I know I’ve got friends that got turned off by having the end game content seem fairly common yet so far out of their personal reach, since they “want to play a game, not a market.” I’m hoping the new content might help bring them back. But none of them, nor I, have gone back to Diablo 3 and the auction house was the major reason we left that game. For Diablo 3 it was depressing that you could go buy a whole set of better gear than you’ve ever personally found. For GW2 they were turned off by the fact that certain skins feel completely out of reach and grinding for gold to buy a skin doesn’t have the same impact as a player as earning or finding the skin. One friend even quit the game rich. He played the market and bought some really nice expensive skins, but he had no attachment to them. He was walking around with some really expensive stuff but didn’t feel attached to it since his character’s journey was mainly flipping crafting mats in on the trading post while standing in Lion’s Arch.
As soon as they give me a nice way to store armor, weapon, and town clothes skins I’ll use the gem store. They’ve got things I want but no where to store them. It would be a good idea for things in the gem shop to have their own storage tab (like minis). It’s easy to buy minis since they don’t take up space. I don’t buy booster packs since I might or might not need them right now and storing extras takes space. I don’t buy keys for the same reason. I might get what I want, but if I don’t I’ll need somewhere to store the extra stuff. As someone pursuing multiple crafting disciplines (cooking!!!) my bank is already slammed with stuff.
I got killed on this (a while back) and the mobs warped to me at the checkpoint. I was actually relieved to finish it this way as I hated water combat at the time and they were kicking my butt.
The part where you have people pick up the scepter pieces and then they have to give them to Hodgins. has been an issue for us in the past. Since you have to pick them up AND turn them in, if someone gets DC’ed after picking up a piece but before turning it in it might not ever complete. We’ve found ourselves restarting the time this happened. Not sure how reproducible it is or if it was just a fluke.
I finished HotWs last night and noticed no additional way-points spawned the whole time on any of the three paths. I couldn’t remember if it was always this way or if it was bugging out. I don’t normally die there so I honestly don’t remember, but man did it feel bad making everyone wait for my slow character run back after falling in the hole while trying to get the chest on path one. That’s got to be a cruel joke right? Let’s put a chest near a hole and make sure there’s not a close way-point… hehehe
Every time I’ve run into a dungeon and gotten stomped it’s been that it was bugged or I was woefully unprepared. A lot of times when I’ve been stomped it was so hard I thought it must be bugged, but it was really just me not understanding what was going on.
This was true for subject alpha.
There’s actually actually a lot of strategy here and people rarely have to die. He’s just horribly misunderstood. The move that kills so many people is that double red ring. What people don’t know about it, because it’s too hectic to figure out on the spot, is that there are two possible attacks from it. One is an ice attack (the center ring is dangerous while the outer ring is safe) and the other is the earth attack (the center ring is safe but the outer ring is dangerous). So if you akittengeted by the rock attack DON’T MOVE and it wont hit you. If you akittengeted by the ice attack, MOVE.
Now for the part that blew my mind. Alpha picks on people. He’ll ice attack one person at a time and keep icing them while rocking everyone else until the person he’s icing dies. Then he’ll pick someone else. It’s not random and the ice attack has a visual tell, so that you know if it’s you.
What does this mean? if you are being attacked with the earth attack you can stack up on him and don’t move when you see double rings since the center is safe If you are being ice attacked you ought to stay away from the rest of the group and keep strafing as not to get killed.
Fairly easy fight after that is well understood by the whole group.
Subject alpha is by no means the worst fight in the dungeon. I’ll take him over the evolved destroyer any day…. but maybe I’m just missing something there and with a little more understanding I’ll like that fight too.
I thought of a couple more.
I really liked the loot from the Mad King chest. I realized that I get very excited about finding Black Lion Keys, harvesting tools, dye and boosters. I didn’t even get a skin and I still loved that chest.
I also really like running someone through a story mode for the first time. Or figuring out a path the first time with a PUG group.
Over all I’ve had a great time in GW2 and in it’s dungeons. I thought I’d try to offer some constructive feedback.
Things that I’ve like about dungeons:
The feeling of completing a path for the first time. It feels like I accomplished something.
The loot drop rates in HotW and the money from AC bosses. I’m always up for any path of these two even if I don’t need the tokens.
Unique mechanics. I absolutely adored the final “fight” in CoF story mode. That was really great. We all had a good laugh figuring it out. Easily my favorite dungeon moment. I’m also partial to using the spike traps with Deatha and the rocket reflectors in CM.
Naked moments such as the boulders in CoF and lasers in CoE.
Finding two hidden rooms in AC.
Things I haven’t liked about dungeons:
It was hard to find groups for story modes on later half of the dungeons. CoF, CoE, HotW were really hard to find. Still looking for groups will to try certain notorious explore mode paths.
I can only see how strong a mob is by clicking and targeting them. In a messy fight it’s hard to tell how many bronze, silver and golds are up. I don’t like when trash mobs and silver mobs use the same models.
DPS/composition checks at the end of paths. If you are going you are going to make a fight rely on a ton of DPS make it the first boss. Don’t let us get to the end before realizing we didn’t bring enough straight DPS or a class with certain skills. If we need poison to beat the Effigy in CoF path 1 let us know that up front so we can bring it in with us… Or better provide some sort of mechanic that allows us to apply it.
The words, “bonus event” cause an audible sigh on our VoIP. They don’t feel like bonuses. They feel like penalties.
I don’t like when there are parts that absolutely require 5 people. I don’t mind soft limits on how many people you need but dislike when I have to sync the lighting of 5 torches or the turning off of 5 security systems, or standing in 4 braziers while one person breaks the door lock thing. Those are hard barriers to how many people are required. If someone takes a break or leaves we are required to wait or replace them to continue no matter how good the remaining 4 are.
I don’t like kite/dying as a strategy to win events. Magg blowing up the door has caused silly things to happen in my PUG groups and it’s not fun. There are events in AC that are very similar (protect someone or something) but no one does that kite train there.
I don’t like how far back some waypoints can be. It can make falling off an edge make you feel like a burden on the team. Couple this with a maze like dungeon (people get seriously lost in CM all the time) or respawning mobs and using waypoints becomes un-fun.
AOE circles don’t reflect how threatening things are. If I see a red circle I don’t know if I should dodge. It might one shot me it might just be a scratch but I can’t tell by the circle. This is a big issue in story mode because you’re new and don’t know the fights. Also an issue in messy fights since you might have painful and painless circles on the ground at the same time. It’s also an issue in WvW.
Weak NPCs… is Logan really a Purple class NPC? He doesn’t seem like it at all. I also feel like that hound in CM should be sent to stop what ever elder dragon shows up next as it’s way stronger than 5 of Tyria’s best. It just feels a bit game breaking to have a hound be that strong or a member of destiny’s edge that weak. I’m not suggesting you nerf the hound but maybe give him a back story as to why he’s that strong. Potion? radiation? something?
Hidden rooms in AC not having at least a little chest or something in them. Though, I do love the turkeys.
I’ve watched a bunch of completion videos and they all had one thing in common which is that the camera doesn’t freak out on them like it does on me.
I have to say that I’ve got a lot of friends that will not sPvP because it doesn’t level their characters. That will probably change once they reach 80, but right now that a big hold out for some people.
This is the one thing that keeps me from buying (with gold or gems) new skins. I really like some of the Halloween stuff but were woulkittenep it if I don’t want to use it all the time? I haven’t bought a Mad King Thorn costume since I don’t know where I’d keep my normal town clothes if I did. I’ve already maxed my bank with other skins I’d like to keep. It’s also keeping me from sinking gold into cultural armor.