Guild Wars 2

I normally make my own omnom bars since I am usually in Orr so I can gather the berries, however the Crown Pavilion being the place to be at the moment means I really don’t feel like gathering what I need, it’s easier/faster to just buy them.

I am guessing this is possibly the same for other people too perhaps.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

SynfulChaot.3169:

We are limited in profit we can make from all other sources in the game. Why should the TP be immune from the limitations ANet has been quite free with applying to all other money-making methods?

I’ll say it again: farming produces money from nothing, which causes inflation. Capital Gains (flipping) merely exchanges money and loses some in the trading process, which fights against inflation.

And I’ll say it again. Flipping is leeching off of the system and is IMHO unethical. ‘Farmers’, aka players who are playing the kittening game, get punished and restricted while those that play the TP and siphon money away from said players get rewarded and are unrestricted.

Maybe I’m missing something (and I’ve only taken one semester of intro to economics so please don’t hate too much (-: ) but it seems to me that their is a gap between the buyers and the sellers, and the only thing the flippers are doing is narrowing this gap and of course making money in the process.

Is this not actually increasing total satisfaction?

Sellers are getting more money for their goods then they would if they had sold to the previous buyers bid and the “buy now” buyers are getting a lower price than they would have had they bought from the previous “buy now” sellers.

As for the negative effect flippers have on inflation, with money essentially being printed every time someone kills a mob or completes a quest, isn’t this a good thing?

I don’t know maybe I’m looking at it too simplistically.

These threads are amusing, to be sure, but there is no need to attack other players over their opinions. One of the biggest benefits to having a professional economist in charge of the TP is that changes will not be made because of assumptions or blind panic, but on the basis of real data interpreted through knowledge and experience.

The problem is that the micro is mixed in with the macro, and the futures commodity market is not elastic enough to make the credit default swaps mitigate a broad enough risk profile.

Did it occur to you that the inflation rate is high to try to combat the massive rate of farmer unemployment?

This is the post where we spew random economic sounding words with no real clue what we’re talking about right?

TLDR: I’d like to short this guy’s ideas and conspiracy theories.

DevonCarver.5370:

I agree on all counts, but I hope you’ll concede we are no longer early in development. Making those changes nigh impossible to make at this juncture. If you happen to have a time machine handy…

I actually happen to have one, but its for personal use and you can’t have it.

… The me from the future just told me I should reconsider telling anyone about my time machine but who’s he to tell me what to do? Its not like he can see the future!

There can also be people who flip on the market and have written their own code to get notifications when they get outbid on items through constant API calls, however I’m quite sure something like that wouldn’t be instantaneous (or it could potentially DDoS the GW2 API through too many calls in a short span. It would also require a very powerful machine to sort through it that fast.)

I digress. While it is possible (and potentially true) that there are bots on the TP. The fact that you, @Earlywood, claim that nobody can respond that fast means that you’re probably using a bot program with which it’s inhumanly possible to react (and then double check the price). Think about it, how else would you be able to know that someone else is outbidding you at a speed incapable of a normal human? Just a logical fallacy on your end…

cpg.7140:

The difference is that A.net could change the math that determines the ratio without telling anyone, if they so desired. Clearly they have to have the ability to create/destroy gems on the fly for conversions (because it can’t be possible for there to be 0 gems available for purchase at any given time, the way it might be for a normal item on the TP) so they have more power to influence that market compared to other items on the TP. Not saying they do, of course, just saying it’s less transparent.

Creating gems won’t be necessary. People will be more than happy to convert gems to gold at that time because the conversion will be 10000 gold for 100 gems or something like that.

If gems are entirely sold out, I’ll promise you I’ll put some in the system again. I won’t let such an opportunity pass.

And for the record, gems are rising in gold price because they’re indeed not correctly priced. I’m not inclined to convert to gold yet. Maybe once they’re at 5gold per 100 gems or something like that. Seems more appropriate at the current age of the game.

Lead by example. I wanna see a video of you nuking 50,000+ of these from orbit.

Fiontar.4695:

When have you ever seen an MMO where the vendor price provided the actual floor for such a large portion of items in the game? Usually the vendor prices are a small fraction of the market value. This is not the case here. That higher tier mats/goods are often cheaper than lower tier shows exactly how broken the economy is.

Again, you’re applying your rather narrow definition of a “broken” economy (prices of certain goods are at the vendor floor. Thus economy is broken.). Using most commonly accepted economic metrics such as consumer spending (consumption) and rate of inflation, GW2 is a very healthy economy.

Has the fact that blue/greens are vendor trash halted the transactions of billions of items in this game? Is it destabilizing the value of currency? Are they not being consumed?

And because you’re not using standard economic metrics to judge the GW2 economy, most economists simply will disagree with your assessment that the economy is “broken.” Hence I find it mystifying to observe you struggle to understand that not everyone uses your own arbitrary definitions of a “broken” economy.

Also, I’m gonna start separating the guide into three sections, with heavy damage on top, mid-damage, and then low damage on the bottom.

I dare you guys to complain about A.net not listening. They just slaughtered 2 economic problems with a very elegant fix.

ShaeMtal.9473:

Obtena.7952:

I don’t see what rising prices has to do with changing the drop rate. If you think about it, rising T6 prices might be exactly what a game developer wants to see. It get’s you out playing the game instead of running CoF p1 for a week straight.

Except for that with the curent drop rates and potential farming spots, its way more time effective to just run cof p1 over and over again for the gold to buy the mats on the tp, than actualy being out there and playing in the open world gaining the mats yourself.

Yes, which is why crying about the price of T6 mats is nonsense. As long as it makes more sense to grind gold to buy them instead of farm them yourself, the price of T6 mats don’t actually reflect the value of the effort to farm them.

Honestly, this all boils down to people crying because they don’t want people getting fair market value for their farming even though the cryers do want fair market value for the gold they farm. That’s such a BS double standard. If it take 1 hour to get a certain amount of gold doing a dungeon and you get 5-10 T6 mats per hour of farming … how much should those T6 mats ACTUALLY cost? We aren’t ANYWHERE near the point of what I would call ‘expensive’ for T6 mats. If you are smart, you will spend every copper you have to buy them now.

Everybody stand up and cheer for Cystalline Dust finally touching the 40 silver mark.

GG Anet!

I’ve been using this and I’m having quite a fun time. For once, I feel I can take on more than one person!

But that’s the thing … are people so daft they don’t get that the market is there to be manipulated in the first place? For example., you mention flippers ‘taking advantage’ of people. That’s REALLY disingenuous … the people being ‘taken advantage’ of are WILLFULLY selling their loot at lower prices. Ignorance is not a reason to limit market activity.

Let’s be frank … what is the purpose of the market if you aren’t allowed to get the highest price for goods you sell or the lowest price for the goods you buy? Sounds what some people here need is a big slap to the face with some reality and honesty. If people think they are being manipulated by people on the market, they have a CHOICE to not use it and farm their own gear or they can learn to be competitive on the market as well. It’s nonsense to shine a light on something that is done by design.

After the ascolonic rectoplasm scandal people are being more cautious and asking where exactly this substance comes from, and just why is it so pink?

Okay, weird question, but I was talking to a friend about MMOs and Chinese hackers/gold sellers/prison-players and she mentioned somebody she knew whose account was hacked and looted. This individual had “thousands of dollars” worth of stuff.

I thought, for a moment, about my own account: something like 80g in the bank (I’m not super-hardcore and I hate farming, lay off!) that’s worth maybe $30-40 at current exchange rates… ($32.44 if I use the gold->gem exchange rate, $44.80 using gem->gold)

That led me to this question: the economy should gradually grow in size as the gold sinks are never going to fully keep up. But the exchange rate is also adjusting over time and it’s gotten significantly more expensive in gold terms to buy gems. So…

If we convert the available currency in all player accounts to USD using the gem exchange rate (and $10 = 800 gems), how much is that? How has it changed over time? Same question for gear and Trading Post sell-orders? If you combine all of these, how much in assets are available in GW2? Is it a nation-sized economy? Where would it rank in the world?

I know that we don’t have access to this information, but curious what that relationship looks like and wondering if anybody has any guesses: is it linear growth, exponential, random but generally up?

I assume John Smith could make these graphs and am very jealous of the data he has.

I work as a chef in real life, and some of the components of these are just beyond reasonable. Now, I realize this is just a game but think about this: There are flavour palettes in this world that can’t barely handle a half of a jalapeno in their meal. Why on earth would you need a double digit of ghost peppers in one item?

Really destroys a suspension of disbelief here. Not that there aren’t a hundred other ways it gets ruined. But this one got my attention specifically.

Evilzara.6378:

I read the title as “Commandos are OP”.

Well I don’t know about anyone else. but I feel pretty OP’ed when I go commando

Leuca.5732:

Stop avoiding the argument and address why 200% is healthy for PvP.

See the legions of Mesmers all running Phantasm-spec with SoIllusions instead of shatter-variants?

No, you don’t. Because the signet is actually pretty weak, despite it’s on paper solid concept. Even if not, compare the base health for a moment. Phantasms (and less so, Clones) are incredibly fragile. Plus easily replaced. Hence few see the need to try boost them, instead you simply summon new ones (and that thinking then leads to the Shattercat variants).

Your entire perspective only makes sense if this were, say, a signet on a Ranger. But it isn’t, it’s a signet on a Mesmer.

(edit)
I feel like I should take a further step back on this and go big picture:
Given the system of limited hotbar space, unlike in other MMOs GW2’s skills need to be really really powerful for the meta-balance to work. Assuming a fully-passive SoIll (not the 1s-tick stuff you mention, that’s actually worse than the current implementation, more server load, still die in the AE before they get the +HP), it’d be quite good. Solid HP boost, amazing active, but it robs me of the quite good passive. Exactly what signets need to be long term (see the recent dev post).

But, Feedback is also very powerful, and nearly must have. Mimic is an upgraded Feedback in many situations. Decoy, plenty would say you can’t PvP without it. Blink, you want it. Null Field is a game-changed in group fights, Portal is nearly a necessity in WvW, and … so … on.
And this is still massively imbalanced, because the other skills aren’t up to par.

A lateral-power system like GW2 needs to make you want all your abilities, at all times, because they’re all very powerful. Then it needs to limit you, badly so. 3/30, 1/3, and such. For our healing abilities this basically works already, one heals the most, one reflects, one is instant cast. You will always be in plenty situations where you’d want the other ones, but don’t have them.

Ignoring that Signet of Illusions, even once debugged, would still be that amazing (though quite balance in it’s passive vs active), the goal here is to supercharge every ability to the levels of Feedback, Healing Sprint, Supply Crate or Well of Power. Only once you rage at having to pick 3 out of the huge list of awesome stuff you have does the meta-balance of such a setup even begin to work.

But again, this is ignoring the part where I don’t get what your issue with 4800 health on Phantasms is. So they die in 2 hits instead of 1 tick from one AE, the problem being? Someone using this signet committed to Phantasms, those cannot be truly freely be regenerated, why not just kill them, /point, /laugh and walk away? They still die in the blink of an eye, they just no longer die to random single AEs. That’s ignoring how due to the amount of AEs, they’re still instant-dead in proper PvP.

Name change to better highlight thread content

dem thieves…. =(

4 thieves and a ranger? (obviously a thief is hiding in the pic)

Was the ranger a diversity hire? not complaining just wondering.

Higher tier…commander drops a ram; people build.

Lower tier….people beat on a door. Some asks if anyone has a ram. Someone drops it. No one has supply. Ram disappears. People beat on door with sword till it is down.

I really don’t get how people cannot grasp the basic concept that market value is driven by the players themselves.

The very fact that tens of thousands of players are farming the same few things is why the prices of the said “things”; such as ecto – is falling (Supply outstripping demand), and the same tens of thousands of players chasing the same few things in limited demand is why the price in other areas is rising (ie. precursors).

No conspiracies, no malevolent develops, no market manipulators; just thousands of people all desperate to buy and sell the same item

Behellagh.1468:

We are being hit by monthly or twice monthly popular items that ratcheted the Gold->Gem price upwards, which of course either drain the gold coffers of players or forcing them to now spend real cash. That is a “good” thing since that’s what’s keeping the lights on but if you had been hooked on buying gems with gold cheaply is a shock to your system.
.

Yes that means that ArenaNet is becoming smarter in making us part with our money, which is why people who are used to the easy cheap deals of buying gems with gold are now complaining.

You can’t, in good conscience, say that ArenaNet is wrong to start introducing items in their gem store that people would want to buy. That has always been their goal in the first place, and if I am ArenaNet I would say well done and keep up the good work.

Having a high gold price for gems is good for ArenaNet because:

1. It edges out profit margins of gold sellers.

2. It encourages players to spend more real money on the gem store.

Both of these points are good for ArenaNet, so why should they stop and go the opposite way? I have not heard any good justification why they should stop besides the understandable and usual player-selfish reasons of having the best deal for themselves regardless of the needs of the economy or the company. Futhermore, it is not like ArenaNet never have discounts on promotional items.

Sacrai.6280:

[…] or for fractals that he has the level for it (let’s imagine he is the highest fractal level in the party).

Now, if we use your system, this would allow anyone to open the dungeon, disconnect and reroll, which is defeats the whole purpose of having a story mode. Same for opening higher level fractals, though I lack a bit of context here, as I don’t know if the highest level can leave the group if he wasn’t the one who opened.[…]

ATM, anyone in the group can open fractals with the highest level anyone in the group has achieved.

In regards to dungeons: make the story mode account wide and make story mode a requirement for all party members. Problem solved.

Cheers.