Guild Wars 2

It’s definitely a hint worth looking into, thanks Gaberen!

Hi,

I’m a 31 year old seasoned gaming veteran with an MMO career that started in EverQuest., and I’m looking for a guild that emphasises sPvP, though I’ll also happily participate in occasional dungeons/WvWvW.
I’m playing on Underworld, and would be happy to join any european-based english speaking or cross-scandinavian guild also on Underworld. Alternatively, I’d be willing to transfer realms to join a strictly danish guild.

My main is a mesmer, and that’s the only profession I have considerable experience playing. However, I’m a genuine team player, and given a good team leader who knows what he’s talking about I’d be fully willing to try out any profession/build that your team is in need of. I’m willing and able to join Mumble/Vent/TeamSpeak as required.

I can typically be available in the 19-24 CET timeslot. Due to various real-life interests I will probably not commit to being online at specific schedules, but if your guild manages to regularly offer me a good time, I’ll be around all the more often.

If interested, please post a few words about the guild you’re representing, or link to your recruitment thread.

Thanks!

Presently, Jerono of Underworld

I’m with OP. Everything sold on the gem store should be thought of as micro transaction items, and people who are unwilling to pay real money for virtual item should just be happy they have the option of getting it with gold AT ALL, rather than complaining that they can’t afford them.

Also, despite having a good amound of disposable income, gem prices are still cheap enough that I easily prefer buying mine with gold rather than real money.

Pedra.4381:

Ryuujin.8236:

If only we could craft and sell tinfoil hats, I’d make a killing on the trading post

If you believe that ArenaNet doesn’t manipulate the game “economy” then there’s nothing I can do to convince you.

But given your views, would you be interested in buying a bridge from me?

I challenge you to provide a single reasonable argument suggesting that they do.
Here’s a counter argument: If ANet DID manipulate the gem exchange, the rates would be reasonably competitive compared to 3rd party gold sellers.

1) There could be arguments for and against. I didn’t pay much attention to the Lost Shores event, but I believe there were some limited period items available for gem purchase, which tends to drive price up.

2) No. Gem calculation is not based on the economy of individual players. It’s based on global supply and demand. If you want to remove players from the calculation, that means preventing them from using the gem exchange. Also, if ANet ever does something specifically to please the people who wants to buy gems with gold, they’ll be kitten all over the people wanting to buy gold with gems.

Zero Angel.9715:

That’s not what I meant at all, and I spent a great deal of the OP explaining exactly what I meant.

I was simply trying to find out why gem prices spiked to 3x since I started playing and why ANet isnt doing anything about it since they control the supply (and the supply is not limited in any REAL sense, like Oil is, supply in GW2 is just numbers in a system)

Let me repeat:

However I do think that they should use whatever means they can to find out why prices are spiking so high and mitigate those means ‘as necessary’ so that a balance between profit and player happiness can be achieved (because ANet needs money to hire content designers, buy software, buy server hardware, and pay their staffers).

You spend a great deal explaining, but you’re still practically incorrect.
Gems are theoretically unlimited in the sense that yes, ANet can “print” however many gems they want. However, that’s not happening. Gems are only printed in the quantities produced by customers buying gems with real-world currency.

Just as oil is a limited resource based on the amount of ancient lifeforms that died and remained under pressure for thousands of years, gems are a limited resource based on the amount of real money being paid by players to purchase gems.

Hypothetically, yes, I guess so.
You’re gonna see hoardes of people buying gold through the gem store, and a complete halt in people buying gems with gold long before that though.
I personally suspect gems will eventually stabilize somewhere around 30 gems per gold.

Barollo.4192:

All that said, if you want a compromise why not impose a listing fee, paid the first time a good is listed? Seller can adjust the price as many times kitten he wants without incurring any further fee (which I think is what The Eternal Grace says above).

From the point of view of someone who thinks the listing fee should stay, that doesn’t even remotely resemble a compromise. On the contrary, it makes it even easier to do the thing we want to prevent (endless 1c undercutting).

I think this feature would be less pressing if the Posted sorting had a better resolution, and if sorting happened exclusively by timestamp rather by the current combination of abbreviated timestamp and product.
I currently have two pages of transactions that completed “seconds ago”, and it’s impossible to determine which of these transactions completed most recently.

Being able to clear old transactions would be a clear 2nd priority for me, especially because I’d be left with several hours of work clearing out my backlog…

Iehova.9518:

Rajani Isa.6294:

Random is Random is the obvious answer, I would think.

And then you realize you cannot have truly random numbers in a deterministic system such as a computer.

Technically correct. Practically irrelevant. True random is only believed to exist in quantum mechanics, yet the dependancy on newtonian physics isn’t a dealbreaker for real casinos.

chtiyonki.6284:

So, we are still in a vicious loop:

1 -> rate is aweful
2 -> because of this lots of players are tempted to buy to goldseller
3 -> thoses no legit players will invest in gems making the rate more aweful
4 -> so legit players suffer of this rate because of no-legit players
5 -> this making those legit player tempted to buy to goldseller
6 -> making the rate again more aweful
7 -> go back to 1

Please define “aweful”. While the current rate makes it expensive to buy gold through ANet, it makes it cheap to buy gems with gold, which is ideal for everyone who doesn’t want to spend any money, whether through ANet or 3rd party sites.

Accepting your assumption that players in all shapes and sizes are driven towards 3rd party sites because of their favorable prices, the eventual consequence is a shortage of gems, which will make their prices go up, which will make ANet gold prices more competitive.

I’m not seeing the vicious circle you describe.

Tallis.5607:

Pillow.9473:

But you cant spend money to get an edge over other players in terms of gear and stats

Sure you can… you buy gems with daddy’s creditcard, you sell them for gold, you buy an entire set of exotic armor, top-notch upgrades for all of them that cost more than 1g each, 3 exotic weapons with top-notch upgrades AND expensive jewelry with the best upgrades. All the stuff that other players have to work hard for to buy you can buy with $$$.

Strictly speaking, this is true. However, getting full BiS in GW2 is significantly easier than in any other MMO I’ve ever played (save GW1), so while it may be a “real” issue, it’s also a very low-impact one.

chtiyonki.6284:

- as we saw during the event and also on the game release: more the gems demand is high, more the rate increase (same amount of gold for less gems).

Important thing to point out that I think you’re missing: when the same amount of gold converts into less gems, that also means that the same amount of gems convert into more gold, which means that buying gold legit through ANet just got cheaper and more competitive when compared to 3rd party gold sellers.

That being said, as long as 3rd party gold sellers exists they’ll be cheaper than ANet. The problem isn’t that their prices are favorable. The problem is that they exist at all.

He might be gambling, expecting to get undercut, and planning to buy everything undercutting him before cancelling his sale, and reposting it all at “regular” price for profit. Or he was hoping to sell quick to flippers, while still fetching a significantly better price than buy offers.

BiJay.9830:

MrGorkajuice.8391, I can’t follow your logic. Probably because it doesn’t make any sense.

The exchange rate went up because more people get to higher levels and have better methods for earning gold. So the gold income of the average player increased. On the other hand real life income didn’t.

My point exactly. While there’s not necessarily a well defined barrier that absolutely dictates that the value of one in-game currency unit may never exceed the value of any one specific real-world currency unit, the fact of the matter is that you can attain a certain buying power either through a certain amount of in-game gold or a certain amount of real-world currency.
Not long ago, one gold got you more buying power than one euro. I consider this an obvious product of inflated gold value, produced by peak interest since the game is still new, and efficient max level gold farmers are still in relatively short supply.

Long term, it’s a ridiculous thought that single use items like alpha siege golem plans should be priced around 1€, and legendary precursors in excess of 100€.

It was an absoute no-brainer that the gold-per-gem exchange rate had to increase. The derived exchange rate considering the €/$ to gems to gold scheme placed GW2-gold as the most valuable currency in the world. Last thing I heard, even 3rd party gold sellers valued 1 gold higher than 1€.

Quote button missing again.

“I think putting a time limit will solve some of the price stagnation, and even bot flooding. "
I think the change you’re proposing will harm legit players more than bots.
By increasing the risk involved in placing items for sale (if it don’t sell in 3 days, posting fee is wasted) you’re encouraging people to minimize orders in order to minimize risk.
As a legit player, I want to post bulk buy orders, and post the items for sale as they arrive. I just want to make my decision of what price to buy and sell at, and then have a minimum of manual management-actions untill I decide that my strategy needs a revision.
A bot however won’t mind placing orders for single items at a time and just repost that order whenever it fills, just to minimize loss in case the order hits the 3 day limit.

“I was referring to “easier markets”, not to “better markets”.”
Fair enough, my bad.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Can-Armor-please-be-separated-into-Light-Medium-and-Heavy-Armor-categories

TL;DR: ANet response is that they’re planning on adding something of the sort.

Fabsm.5897:

Do you have better solutions?

I have the distinct feeling that Savage Deathknell, like me, do not think there’s a problem, and therefore no demand for a solution. I find the TP vastly preferable to any trading mechanism I’ve ever seen in any other MMO. It’s superior to other trading mechanisms both in terms of providing a useful way of getting stuff I need for my character, and in terms of giving me a trading minigame to profit from.

Bots are bad, and old below-vendor orders are useless noise, but the TP itself is excellent.

I find it rather amusing that you actually consider Auctioneer’s ability to earn you a profit – without caring what you were selling – a credit to the WoW AH.

With a full refund, I wouldn’t be terribly objected to a TP reset for the sole purpose of getting rid of all those below-vendor buy orders. They don’t particularly bother me, but there’s something annoying about having a remnant of a fixed bug lingering.

I’m not a fan of suggestion 2 and 3.

Re. point 2, I don’t see the harm in having older orders lying around, and I know from personal experience that just because an order hasn’t been filled for the past 3 days, it doesn’t mean it won’t get filled tomorrow. If orders should auto-decay, I’d request it would take at least a week, to allow any order to be exposed to weekend-trends regardless of when it was posted. And next up would be a valid argument to let them last a month, since some market trends might be related to monthly achievements (salvage). Save technical constraints on ANet’s part, I don’t see the harm in having hordes of older orders in the system. If the orders are no longer priced competitively, they’re rendered irrelevant. It should be up to the individual player to decide that the money he has locked up in never-completing buy orders could see better use, and that the items he has posted for sale ain’t going nowhere.

Regarding point 3, I like that one type of offers can be placed for free. When looking at the precursor problem, there’s still the mostly undecided question of “what exactly is it worth?” Assuming that 100G is more than people are willing to pay, sellers posting the item at 100G are currently taking a 5G loss for nothing. Now, assuming that 100G is less than people are willing to sell for, your suggestion would cause buyers to face the same loss if posting a 100G buy offer. For expensive items which has yet to settle on a fair price, you’re heading for a situation where both buyer and seller are hesitant about posting experimental offers. With the current system, at least the buyers are able to post risk-free buy offers of however much they’re willing and able to pay, and the sellers can make a fairly informed decision.

I don’t know why YOU would use the TP, but I’m using it because it’s a great place to pick up cheap leveling gear, and there’s a ton of money to be made just playing TP.

By all means, just vendor your random drops.. TP is already flooded with those items, which is why they’re so dirt cheap.

Regarding how the exchange rate of gems to gold is handled, I don’t know how ANet does it, but I know what I’d do:
On launch, establish an exchange buffer of a certain amount of coin and a certain amount of gems (eg. 1 million gems and 1 million silver). The relation between the coins and gems in the exchange buffer determines the exchange rate. Gems sold are added to the gem pool, and the coin awarded is subtracted from the coin pool and vice versa.

I’m pretty sure there’s no ANet conspiracy to keep exchange rates fixed at a certain level, because the current rate is not favorable to them. There’s no way I’m buying gems for real money at the current exchange rate. Whatever gems I’m picking up is gonna be bought with gold, and gold has no value to ANet. This is no so much because the gems are expensive to buy with real money, but by comparison they’re dirt cheap to buy with gold.

“Changes like these should have been made with a temporary PvE/PvP ability split/difference until high priority bug fixes, across all classes, have been implemented”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not aware that ability splitting is currently implemented in GW2 in any shape or form.
Are you seriously suggesting that they implement something as significant as this as a temporary solution?

“In a few months time when everyone has finished crafting on mains and alts, and there is less supply, the price of these crafting materials will rise above the cost to make them.”

I might be reading you wrong, but I don’t recall the process if buying ingredients on TP (or similar), crafting an item, and posting that item for sale, ever being profitable in any MMO, save certain crafts that involved cooldowns.

In a game like Guild Wars 2, where crafting is further encouraged due to massive experience rewards and being required to earn legendaries, and with a global economy, there’s just too many crafters out there who would seek to take advantage of any profitable recipes.

There might be “secret” recipes that will be profitable for short periods of time, and there might be recipes where you can maximize profit from ingredients you already possess by crafting something with them, rather than selling the ingredient directly… but turning a profit from picking up wood and bones on TP, run to a crafting station, and coming back to sell whatever? I don’t see that happening.

“It surely doesnt offer the ability to make money or ‘play’ the TP.”

My initial investment has paid back by more than a factor 10 over the ~3 weeks I’ve played the TP. And that’s in actual gold coins available for me to use, not some expected future returns from stockpiled goods.

Hippocampus.8470:

What system would you recommend instead, which could be implemented at anything like the same speed we’ve come to expect from the TP?

Random thought: a checkbox option when posting non-instant deals (whether buying or selling) that decreases the sales tax or buy post amount by 1% in exchange for prioritizing your transaction below full prize transactions. The theory being that only bulk traders will be interested in using this.

Dogahn.8265:

I am faced with a system that discourages me from putting up decent leveling gear somewhere anyone who could actually need it could get it.

Heck I’m not even looking for a profit on the TP anymore, I’d be happy getting vendor value for this trash and knowing it was going to a player who could use it.

The reason the TP doesn’t allow you to help players in need of your armor while making a profit, is that a bunch of (mathematically challenged?) individuals are (unknowingly?) taking a loss to help the players in need of armor.

It’s a shame that crafting is not profitable, but the current state of the TP very much allows players in need of gear to get it at a decent price.

I strongly suspect legendaries are in fact not sellable.
I just did a blank trade post search with the only filter being Rarity = Legendary, and Only Show Available left unchecked. Only entry found is Bottle of Elonian Wine. So it’s impossible for me to post a buy offer, and I suspect it’s equally impossible to post one for sale.

There’s no way this would NOT be exploitable. Take out massive loans on a mule account and use the loaned money to buy stuff from my main account.

Also, considering how irresponsible certain people are with REAL money, it’s quite possible that a bunch of people will loan so much money that the in-game debt eventually discourages them from playing the game / forcing them to get a new account.

In some sort of utopian world it could be considered a decent feature, mostly just because “it’s possible in real life”. In reality, it’s a horrible idea. Impressionable youngsters don’t need to be introduced to concepts of debt any earlier than they otherwise would (unless the specific purpose of this feature is teach people to borrow money responsibly).

Fred Fargone.3127:

What do you guys mean 10% sales tax is not public knowledge?
Just type
/wiki trading post
in game and read the third line. That is pretty much on the level of your eyes when you open the page.
Its not hidden, ya guys just weren’t looking for any info before you started to rush into things.
Reminding of the 10% sales tax every time you sell something would: a) Look dumb on the GUI, b) Be rather annoying

If by “Public Knowledge” you mean “accessible to everyone”, then yes, it’s common knowledge. If you mean “something practically everyone is aware of”, no, it’s not. I for one am flabbergasted to just now learn that /wiki commands exists from in-game.
The 10% tax is not hidden, but it’s something you don’t learn of untill you do actual research (however easy that might be). Considering that the listing fee is right there in your face when you post a sale, it’s not an unreasonable assumption for the uneducated to believe this to be the only tax involved.

Personally, I noticed the 10% tax after doing some trading that I expected to generate a profit, but the profit wasn’t there.

They managed to include the 5% fee in the GUI without either looking dumb or annoying the user. I’m sure they can do something similar for the 10% tax (show the tax from currents transactions next to withdrawable amount under completed transactions?)

Wazabi.1439:

Do you know reducing transaction cost makes speculation easier? How do you intend to address that?

And do you know how price is determined by supply/demand and all these undercutting is just white noise fluctuations? How does that affect the price in e long run?

Why exactly is it bad to make speculation easier?

Prices always stabilize in the long run. When people have learned from experience what they can realistically get for an item, there’ll be a level they’re not willing to go below, and vice versa.

Keep in mind, allowing players to drop prices free of charge still encourages players to find an appropriate starting price, since noone’s suggesting refunding the difference in listing price caused by your new reduced price.

Wazabi.1439:

Answer me this oh economics expert…what’s stopping me from udder cutting you once you’ve adjusted your price for free?

Nothing. That behaviour is encouraged, which is why what KDragon suggests will be achieved:

KDragon.3208:

it will allow other sellers to retaliate by adjusting their orders down. In fact the market will become healthier, as prices on over-valued items will be driven down quickly.

If there’s an actual market for the item in question, pirce on sale offers will eventually be on level with buy orders.