Guild Wars 2

Hello all,

This post/question is directed towards the developers…

Years ago when I was an avid Eve Online player, I used to be fascinated when they would release details about all the high-end hardware they were using to make their system(s) work (which, at the time, was Fusion IO based SSDs, which they were using about 6-7 years before consumer-level SSDs came out).

As a gear head who hosts dedicated servers for a few games, I would simply find it fascinating to know what kind of hardware/backend stuff it takes to host this kind of game.

Understandable if you guys consider that kind of info proprietary, but I think a “behind the scenes” look at the hardware would be welcomed by quite a few of my fellow nerds.

Belzebu.3912:

Another problem is, you have any idea how hard it to improve AI from minons? It demands A LOT of time.

Actually, for an AI coder, this should be one of the easiest types of AI to fix/write – considering all you need to do is:

Am I attacking a target? >Yes=>Minion Attack my target – continue attacking target until target is dead or no longer targeted.

That’s not complex code, bud.

John,

I’m sure many a player invested some time and effort into building up an inventory of the holiday-specific crafting materials – specifically, many of the different kinds of snowflakes.

For the last couple of years, this had been a wise investment, as those materials would increase in scarcity in the months following the event.

However, due to the changes added this year…it seems that the market for these “holiday special” materials has flatlined and the glut of snowflakes shows no sign of abating (and actually, the TP inventory seems to be climbing).

Are there any plans to address this – perhaps by either increasing the amount of snowflakes needed by all the recipes, or adding some kind of sink to soak up the excess inventory?

It seemed such a shame to me to make these “holiday-special” materials so common now, and I hope Anet will re-think holiday event specific materials in the future and keep them specific to those holidays. For those folks who love to work with the economy, it’s nice to have these kinds of limited/rare things we can work towards at certain times of the year.

Please let us know your thoughts.

Thanks!

Ditto – stick on Plains of ashford loading screen for the last 10 minutes.

Confirmed, still getting a {"error" “invalid data”}

Fiontar.4695:

Apparently, the only economy they care about is the Legendary, Precursor and related markets. Pretty much the entire rest of the economy has deflated completely, with vendor prices providing the only floor.

This is the consequences of a game supported almost entirely by micro-transactions. For every unbreakable pick, sickle, and axe they add (among all the various food stuffs, and the ridiculous 200%+ magic find they ran during the last content update), they are removing gold sink after gold sink, and further diluting an economy where scarcity is almost non-existent, and low-level goods are virtually worthless.

For those of you actually short-sighted enough to say “I’m glad, I want everything to be dirt cheap”, I think you are completely missing the point. For an MMO to truly thrive, it has to address as many player-types as possible, and that includes the people who enjoy the financial aspect of the game as well.

It’s somewhat of a tragedy that both the economy and crafting are being so overlooked by Anet as a source of player enjoyment. Crafting has no real use long-term, since the “easy button” is constantly being sold to the player base on so many items.

Look at the Southsun event – they piled on the overabundance of magic find just to get people interested, and as soon as the event ended, not only were the few viable markets largely decimated, but that zone is a virtual ghost town again.

Look at Eve Online – what is probably the poster child for a virtual economy – and you’ll see that scarcity actually DRIVES the game, as opposed to detracting from it.

The problem, as I see it, is that Anet is simply getting in their own way. In the drive to maintain player counts/gem store spending, they are making more and more concessions to the players that want it all NOW, as opposed to those willing to work towards a goal.

While you may cheer at being able to get everything dirt cheap – keep in mind that you’re actually cheering the “dumbing down” of your own game. I’m not sure that’s something to get excited about.

It’s painfully obvious that the database/hardware are simply not robust enough to handle the traffic.

Anet – you need new gear.

Agreed. I’ve never had any lag issues to speak of prior to this week, but the current lag in FA is off the scale, and the disconnects have been aplenty. It almost seems like the server is experiencing a DOS attack of some kind.

Regardless, whatever the issue, it needs to be addressed asap.

He’s right in the sense that the way Anet implemented the item drop system not only negates most of the value of crafting, but is really a lost opportunity to open up a whole other area of the game to those that like crafting as a “profession”.

Why on earth are low-level mobs dropping fully crafted goods? Why on earth would a stag drop a piece of armor? Where do all these animals keep all these armor and weapons they drop all over. It’s a pretty ridiculous if you think about it. I could understand most of the humanoid-type mobs dropping (most) of these types of things, but spiders? Bears? Deer?

Come on. It’s plain stupid.

If, however, these mobs dropped nothing but raw materials needed for crafting, then crafting would suddenly be worthwhile, as opposed to the very limited opportunities for profit it represents now.

The good news is – this would be an easy change to make. Disruptive to the economy in the short term, to be sure….but it sure would make both looting and crafting a heck of alot more interesting (and potentially profitable).

In my opinion, no “finished goods” should drop from kills AT ALL. All weapons, clothes, armor, etc….should be made by craftsman, period.

Cmon, Anet….you obviously spent a ton of development time on creating crafting in the game, only to totally and completely negate 99% of its’ value as a game element due to your drop system.

Time to let go of the easy button.

There are quite a few things that Arenanet could/should (IMHO) be doing to help guilds help build their own customer base. With that in mind, here are a few suggestions our Guild has come up with for things that we would both like to see, and that would help us bring new players into the GW2 fold:

1. The long-promised API

Long before GW2 even launched, Arena net talked extensively about an API that guilds/fan sites would be able to use to pull info from the game to create interactive websites, etc. Where is it? Why has it no longer been mentioned? It would seem this would be one of the easier tools to deliver to folks.

At any rate, as a large gaming community, we like to reward our members for doing things that directly contribute to our success in any game. An API would go a long way towards allowing us to do that very thing.

For example, an API that tracked things like “influence earned for the Guild” by each member would allow us to create internal competitions and rewards for our Guild members that brought in the most Guild influence. (that’s just one example of a number of things we could do with a good API).

An API would also go a long way toward promoting the game by allowing us to incorporate as much player-info as possible into our community forums. Things like current player location, player stats, appearance, etc. The more of our members who DON’T currently play GW2 that we can get to ask “What’s this all about?”, the more potential customers for Anet.

2. Guild Gem Donations/Guild Boosts

These two suggestions go hand-in-hand. First, adding the ability for Guild members to donate Gems to a Guild “Gem Fund” which would could then only be used to purchase things like Guild Boosts (and by boosts I mean things like Guild influence boosts, karma boosts, experience boosts). Of course, one would not work without the other, but it might be a good way to both increase gem sales, AND give smaller Guilds a way to earn influence faster, etc.

3. The iPad/We App(s)

Whatever happened to all the offline “apps” we were promised during the pre-launch marketing push? Out of game chat, etc.? Again, we’ve heard nothing more abut these since launch…why is that? So many of these “promised” features are what got a lot of us to sign on in the first place. Time to deliver.

4. Free Guest passes/weekend for Guilds

Free weekend promotions are great, and I’m glad to see Anet has partnered with so many PC gaming sites to distribute keys/get the word out. However, I honestly think a far more effective way to both give new players a taste of GW2 AND reward existing Guilds would give those keys out to the Guilds themselves. Think about it, a “Free Guild Weekend” promotion could work like this:

- Issue each Guild “Free Weekend” keys on a unlimited basis (give each Guild a uniquely-generated URL to send their members to generate a key)

– For every actual “paying member” a guild generates (i.e. a customer that buys the game after trying it using that guild’s key), give that guild some rewards (X amount of influence, Guild Merits, some kind of communal boosts, etc.)

Think about that….not only would that give Guilds incentive to bring in new folks, but it would also motivate them to make sure those folks have the best possible experience in the game as well.

5. World vs.World recruiting tools

- allowing a Guild’s “flag” to be interacted with after they had claimed a building might be a good recruiting tool for them (i.e. clicking the flag could bring up that Guild’s “recruiting/about us” page, which could contain a “Request an Invite/Apply” button.)

Now, obviously, there would have to be a few things in there to prevent abusive behavior by some guilds (like fighting to claim all the best structures even though they have no buffs to run on them – something I hate to see myself). SO – I would probably want there to be some “minimum requirements” in order for their flag to be “clickable”. Perhaps making it so that it does not allow players to interact with it until a Guild puts a minimum of X amount of buffs on the claimed structure. Something that scales by structure type might be appropriate (i.e. 1 buff is required to claim a supply camp, 3 for towers, 4 for keeps, and all of them for things like SMC).

In fact, that might kill two birds with one stone – disallowing Guilds to keep claiming structures that they have no plans to run buffs on, AND rewarding those guilds that DO put the proper buffs on things they claim by turning those structures into recruiting “tools” for those guilds.

6. Guild Leaderboards

I love the new leaderboards….but they would be much better for us if we could have our own “Guild Leaderboards” to see where people stand within our own guild (and adding all that info to the API would go a long way as well by allowing us to add it to our website).

Anyhoo…..that’s just a few ideas we’ve had ;-)

I full understand that this was implemented to prevent botting of the TP, but at this point (for those of us who like volume trading on the TP) it is severely detracting from the experience of legit traders.

Why should I have to spend 1-2 extra hours selling items everyday due to a flood prevention mechanism put in place for bots? There has to be a better way. Regardless of the reasons – if a bot prevention mechanism is forcing me to wait to “play” the game, it is a failed mechanic.

Why not at least increase the number that we can sell at once? Even better, how about adding a “sell all at this price” button to save us all the unnecessary waiting to sell our goods?

Shadowstalker.9627:

But I think most will not. What we need is people to take personal responsibility for their choices and their server community and over all game community. This is not just Anet’s fault, it’s all of our fault.

Of course, because it should always be the responsibility of the customer to balance the performance of the product they’ve paid for.

Again, Anet put up US servers for US customers to utilize. If they are now saying (they’re not, of course, saying much of anything) that in order to play a "balanced’ game we need to move to servers across the pond, how is that in any way our fault? The fault lies in the design of the game mode/scoring system itself.

But…let’s step back and say you’re right – let’s say that if I want a balanced WVW match then it is 100% my responsibility to move to a crowded server 8000 miles away. No problem – just make sure I don’t lose the 100k+ worth of influence I’ve spent fully upgrading my guild so as to deliver 24/7 buffs to our guild members who support us.

….but as that doesn’t seem to be an option, your suggestion is that, in order to actually be on a competitive server, we have to be willing to:

- Move from a US to a EU server that will offer less network performance for us.

- Move to an over-crowded server, where there may or may not be a language barrier with 50% of the players, and that will give us 60+ minute queue times

- Lose every bit of guild research we’ve done

Well, gee….that sounds like fun.

I’m not entirely sure I understand why so many people are willing to give the game devs a pass on this one, but the fact is – if you are server jumping to servers outside of your time zone in order to “fix” the imbalances inherent in the scoring system of this game mode, it’s YOU who are part of the problem, not those of us that actually stick with our servers.

I’m a paying customer, not a paid play tester, nor a volunteer “game balancer”. They offered me a product, and offered me a server in my locale which (logically) I chose. I DID my part. From then on, the responsibility for providing a balanced game mode on the server I chose falls on THEM, not me.

Yawn. WvW has degenerated into “Time Zone Wars” (perhaps it should be renamed?).

In all seriousness, though, I keep reading phrases from these winning servers (which all have the EXACT SAME “feature” in common – a mixed NA/EU 24/7 presence), like “we want people to up their game”, or “it’s no fun for us either”, and frankly, that’s a LOAD.

If that were true, then all these people intent on nothing but a checkmark in the win column (as opposed to, you know, actually fighting something other than NPC’s for their major point runs) would not have jumped to servers that give them the LEAST network performance possible (due to nothing more than geographic location) simply to be on one of the half dozen servers full of people that think that’s also a good idea.

The very idea that I should need to move myself and my guild (and our 100% completed guild skill training) to a server 8000+ miles away, and suffer the network performance hit simply because of this glaring flaw with the game that allows servers to amass the same amount of points (while fighting ZERO opposition) is laughable at best.

Can anyone else imagine any other online game that would suggest moving to a server with far worse ping/lag to GAIN a competitive edge? Why on earth is ANet advocating (by their silence on the matter) such a thing?

Meh….I’m sure I just wasted 5 minutes typing this.

Tallis.5607:

I find it very, very odd that you can place buy orders without any cost whatsoever. And that you can put up as many buy orders as you want.

Together, these two create imbalances that would easily be fixed by adding a fee for buy orders and/or limit the number of buy orders.

Why on earth would anyone think it’s a good idea to place artificial limits on the DEMAND side of the equation? Limit the number of buy orders? Really?

It’s amazing to me how many “solutions” are being presented for problems that don’t exist.

Economics 101: The less regulation and taxation the better. Let the market find it’s own equilibrium. All ANet needs to focus on as far as the market is concerned is eliminating the bots who are causing over-supply issues in some areas.

People need to stop asking for more controls to help them make a buck. The fact is, if you can’t make a profit in a free market, you’ll certainly never be able to make one that has even more controls and/or fees.

TurboGuard.4865:

I’ve asked before and I’ll ask again: Why don’t all of you people who say you are turning a huge profit from the TP share with us your methods instead of acting like smug elitists?

What possible interest would anyone have in doing that – to create competition for themselves? Further, if being successful and disagreeing with those that continue to scream “it can’t be done” make me an “elitist”, I can live with that. You can throw all the names and labels around that you want, but as long as you won’t take responsibility for YOUR OWN success, you’ll be doing it while sitting in the cheap seats.

This is the problem – most people don’t have any interest in actually taking the time and LEARNING FOR THEMSELVES through trial and error (as everyone who is successful at trading did) – they want someone to present them a magic formula on a silver platter and tell them “here, do this, this and this, and you’ll be rolling in profits!”.

You and I both started with the EXACT same opportunities in the game. I feel absolutely no obligation to do the work for you (and hurt my own profit potential in the process).

Want to know how to do it? FIGURE IT OUT. You’ll be better off for it in the long run. Anything short of that – to include asking people to take you by the hand and show you exactly what to do – and all you’re asking for is a shortcut that you haven’t paid your dues to earn.

…and sorry, I’m fresh out.

Fabsm.5897:

This market could be MUCH easier but… it is flooded by bots. And the only thing that can stop the bots, in my opinion is killing quantity orders.

The normal user don’t place thousands of orders. She places an order for something he wants, or buys it directly.

Do you have better solutions?

And what constitutes a “normal” user for you? Simply, because you don’t “play” the TP as some players do, does not mean that the only “normal” use of it is small-quantity orders. The TP is no less a part of the game than PVP, PVE, or WVW.

There are players that actually enjoy the economic aspects of these types of games, and play them solely for that reason. Those types of players would not fit into your definition of “normal” due to their large quantity buying/selling activity (I typically buy/sell in excess of 100k units per day in various items).

Are there bots manipulating the market? Possibly (although no one knows definitely except ANet). Do I think the solution for combating those bots is punishing legitimate players and preventing them from playing ANY aspect of the game the way they wish?

Never.

If whatever “solution” a developer uses to combat botting impacts legitimate players in any way (such as the ridiculous “diminished returns” system), then that “fix” is a failure, plain and simple.

As for a better “solution” to your perceived problem with the TP – since I obviously don’t see the problem(s) that you do, I see no need for a “solution”. Aside from being more proactive banning botting activity from causing massive price crashes due to over supply, the best market is a market free from artificial controls.

Once PVE botting is handled, the market will reach a state of equilibrium in a few months, and that will be that….but frankly, this market has been “dumbed down” enough.

Right now, the market is impossible

The 15 Gold per day I’m making says otherwise.

Yes, you explained “why it could work for you”, but if there are those of us who do our homework and seek out those markets that have profit potential, why should we change the whole system for those that can’t seem to figure it out?

I’ve got news for ya, bud. This is – hands down – the easiest in-game market to turn a profit on I’ve ever seen in an MMO, The only ones complaining are those not patient enough to do the research/planning necessary to turn a profit, plain and simple. I have a guild full of people making tons of gold everyday, and not one of them are asking for changes to further “make things easier” for those that can’t seem to “get it”.

The only thing Anet needs to do is get a handle on the bots. Once that happens, the market will get even better than it already is – and in its current state of functionality, it’s just fine.

If it is so important to you, that you feel the need to complain/suggest about it, perhaps it is time to review just how important the balance is to you and whether you should do something more directly proactive about it.

It is not, and should not be the job of the players to balance this (or any) game mode, period. If victory in ANY game relies not on strategy or tactics, but pure differences in time zone(s) of a server’s population, that game mode is BROKEN, period.

There are a plethora of MMO’s that have dealt with the issue of players being able to run ramshod over other’s territory unopposed due to time zone differences EVE Online in particular makes it difficult (but not impossible) to simply wait until your opponent goes to bed to capture their territory.

…and let’s face it – the servers that are “dominating” (if you want to call any server that captures ANYTHING without any resistance as “dominant”) are only doing so because they’ve been allowed to play a game mode that SHOULD be a 24/7 struggle back and forth as essentially a PVE game mode in the “off hours” of that server’s time zone.

Your next argument will be to “change servers if you don’t like it”. To which I reply yet again – why the hell should I have to? I’ve joined an officially sanctioned US server in good faith, built a large Guild filled with our community members, and maxxed out our guild research to level 5. If the only response to my request for a level playing field is that I’ll need to jump ship to a server filled with European players to get it, then ANet has FAILED to deliver a game mode that they can provide a level playing field for.

..and no….I’m not “whining”, bud. Frankly, I don’t need to – we are in a bit of a “golden age” for PC gaming now, and it’s only going to get better over the next 18 months or so. Anet can accept responsibility and fix the multiplayer aspect of the game or large (6000 players+) communities like ours will simply move on to the next game that tries to (which is looking more and more like PS2 at the moment).

I have high hopes for GW2, but Anet has alot of work to do, and putting the ball in the player’s court to balance a broken game mode is a bad start. If they want an “anything goes” player-driven environment, that’s exactly what they’ll get – but they ARE NOT Eve online, and they are not equipped to be.

At any rate – it seems this debate has broken down into two camps – the “it’s not broken because we’re winning” group, and those who can see the potential being wasted due to the time zone issue being abused unabated (and, apparently, endorsed by ANet).

I suspect in the end, only one party will get exactly what they want – aNet. By convincing players that if they want a truly competitive experience that it’s their responsibility to move to a server outside their time zone, Anet is compelling server consolidation, which in the end will greatly reduce their hardware costs/overhead. If that’s their goal – then more power to them….but don;t smile and tell me “there’s no problem here” when your true motives to not taking any action are profit-driven.

In reality – from a business standpoint it’s kind of a brilliant move – get the players to consolidate servers by introducing an imbalanced element to a game mode that can only be fixed by them doing so.

Siliconhobbit.4361:

I just wish someone would write up a detailed guide on how to do so, so the rest of us in the game can have a bit of success as well.

There really is no "magic formula’. Think like your potential customer, know which commodities they will need, and find those that have sufficient volume/margin to turn you a profit.

The only bit of specific “advice” Ill give is this:

Ignore every single commodity on the front page of the TP. Every idiot with a lack of imagination and initiative thinks/thought those were the only places to make money, and they are not only dead wrong, but their little scheme of "flipping’ those products by jumping to the head of the line and buying/selling in small amounts (less than 250) has now been squashed (which is why you see so many of them crying the blues on these forums – because they don’t really want to have to research and seek out profitable markets, they just wanted to press their little easy buttons over and over).

There are literally hundreds of items that move with a great deal of volume that have very little competition. make it your goal to find just one of those, build your bankroll a bit, than find a 2nd, and a 3rd, etc. Eventually, you’ll be diversified into dozens of different items. I’, currently trading 46 items, and I always have "test orders’ working on 2-3 more to see how they fare.

Reading this thread makes me wonder if I am playing the same game as everyone else.

Yeah – I wouldn’t pay much attention to these “doom and gloomers”. Aside from the valid concerns about the botting issue(s) (which I’m sure WILL be addressed asap), all I really see here is so called “experts” (you know, the guys that “do this for a living”) who seem to think the only viable commodities to trade in volume are the few that hit the front page.

Hell, I trade in over a dozen different commodities that move 3000-4000 units AN HOUR, with a margin of 3-4c that will probably never hit that front page (at least I hope they won’t), are not affected by botting (and won’t be, due to their nature), and have virtually zero competition.

….but I’m not going to argue with the armchair economists. By all means – keep telling as many people as you can how margins from the market are drying up, and that there’s no possible way to turn a consistent profit. The more people who believe you, the better it is for my wallet ;-)

Meh – we’ve already had a response from Anet – there is no problem, right? After all, the wvw-focused guilds that don’t care about things like latency, etc. are jumping to any server they think will give them a 24/7 presence – effectively doing Anet’s job for them by consolidating server populations.

Why would Anet get in the way of that? After all….consolidated servers means they need less hardware, which means less overhead, etc.

At this point, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop when they start informing Guilds that we’re going to be forcibly consolidated to “X” server, and lose our (almost completed) level 5 guild research and have to start over.

WvW is a great concept with a horribly broken implementation. If Anet actually wants this game mode to be more about time zones than actual strategy and tactics – then mission accomplished, I suppose….but spending 4-5 hours duking it out to control territory just to have it effortlessly taken by a team that encounters little to no resistance due to timezone differences in the player base has already killed my enthusiasm for the game mode.

Despite all the suggestions put forward, there really is only ONE true fix for the problem:

Do away with the current “ranking” system (which is meaningless anyway, since it has nothing to do with skill, strategy, or tactics), and match servers against each other based on nothing more than their matching population patterns.

Servers that are full 24/7 should be matched against servers that are full 24/7 – which is also something every player that actually wants a challenge should be demanding.

Anything less, and we’re all just wasting our time (Planetside 2’s looking really good, though).

whiran.1473:

I know a few EVE folk who came to GW2 and have been amusing themselves on the trading house. Some have thousands of items up for sale and thousands of buy orders. But, again, they aren’t bots.

We know that bots exist and I hope that ArenaNet finds some way to destroy them all sooner than later. We can all do our part by reporting them (which I do for every bot I see and they typically disappear within a couple of days at most) to help out.

But, one shouldn’t make claims if they can’t back them with facts or, at least, observations.

^^ this.

The condescension exhibited by some folks in this thread is laughable.

YES – bots are a problem. If I had to guess, I would say that Anet is working on automated systems of detection, and need to allow some of these bots to run for a bit as a result (to gather data, etc.).

Have bots destroyed the economy? Nope. I have a Guild filled with people making a killing on the market everyday….despite the large influx of certain types of material(s) from bots. Eve Online’s been dealing with botting for years – there are still thousands upon thousands of bots in that game, yet it has the most thriving economy of any MMO in existence.

There are a few things that even those commenting in this thread who are apparently “too smart” for the rest of us need to know:

1. Just because you can’t figure out how to make a profit and/or earn Gold at a reliable rate, doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

- I’ve made in excess of 500 Gold thus far on the TP, and there are dozens of people in our Guild who have found reliable spots to farm loot that are bot-free (we make a run to one of the better ones almost every night).

2. Anet IS dealing with the bots – despite what some may post/think

- Alot of very smart folks work at ANet. Do you honestly think they are just going to allow the game to be overrun by botters? While I’m surprised that a game that was in development this long didn’t already have systems in place to deal with this issue in a more quick & efficient manner, I doubt they’re going to flush the game down the toilet by ignoring the problem.

I’ve run across several areas where bots/botting is highly concentrated (dozens of bots just sitting there in their skivvies, fighting mobs when they spawn in the same spot).

These bots also use nonsensical/random letters & numbers in their names, so it’s difficult to tell which ones I’ve reported (and they are stacked on top of each other, so even clicking them individually to report them is nearly impossible).

SO – my suggestion would be to add a “Report a Botting Area” to the bug report screen. This would allow us to report an area that contains a large concentration of bots (which would seem a lot more efficient in the long run).

While I fully understand that each botting reported has to be investigated, etc….some of these spots/accounts are so blatant that I think it would speed things up a great deal if GM’s could just “respond” to an area an observe the player behavior there for a bit.

Beyond selling blue crafting materials (and even those are getting crushed by BOTs) there isnt really anything you can sell on the TP that you cant vendor for the same or better due to fees and ‘taxes’.

The 15 Gold I make per day (on average) purely from buying/selling both mats and finished goods via the TP beg to differ.

I’m confident bots will get handled eventually (there are about two dozen almost-naked bots in frostgorge – directly south of the trading post near yakington’s toil waypoint right now) – I wish there were some way to report a location where they are massing, as opposed to having to report individual bots. They are massed so tightly there, I can’t tell which ones I’ve reported, etc.

At any rate – there are only so many markets the bots can truly impact – mostly low-level stuff. It’s a downside, to be sure, but there are thousands of items on the market, and all it takes is a willingness to do a little homework to turn a profit.

I continue to assert that once the rankings have had time to put equivalent servers up against each other, a fair and challenging competition will be had by all. (IE, I support nightcapping, even though I’m not winning because there are people out there who nightcap better than I do.)

This is really the only “true” fix, and it will only come with time. It will (or should) be a simple case of matching servers with other servers that have the most similar 24hr traffic patterns.

Unfortunately, that’s going to take some time to do a reliable analysis of that traffic, since so many WvW players are server hopping at the moment.

The whole “it ain’t broke” stance is really a joke, however. If you are fighting a “battle” with virtually no opponents, regardless of the time of day/night, of course it’s broke. Despite the “non-interference” public face ANet have put on the issue, I doubt they ever intended there to be battles with virtually zero resistance (how is that even fun, btw?)

Having said that – it will be interesting to see how these servers who are building themselves a 24hr fighting force (good for you, btw) will fare once they are truly evenly matched against servers with identical traffic/population patterns. Will their players stick around, or are the majority of them there simply because it’s “easy pickins”?

Time will tell.

Ghoest.3945:

everything is rapidly moving to "no profit’(as it should)

I love these sweeping declarations.

As with ANY in-game market that has both a large contributing player base, AND a sufficiently diversified product inventory, there will ALWAYS be profit to be made – at least for those willing to do their homework. Even a market that reaches equilibrium will have enough price fluctuations and variance in supply to make a profit relatively easy to turn.

I have to shake my head at all the “the [my product of choice] market is broken, please change X to fix it” posts which run the gamut of “make listings expire so mine can be on top”, or " get rid of the fees because I can’t find a profitable way to make trades with them in place", or my favorite – “get rid of custom bids”, yada yada.

As I see it, there are only 3 things “wrong” with the current state of the market:

1. The overly large influx of goods due to botting/gold sellers (which I’m sure will be addressed asap).

2. The “Last-in, First Out”/stacking system (or whatever we’re calling it now) which is so easily exploited (a “day trader” could easily turn 2-5 gold an hour or more if they wanted to by exploiting this).

3. The overall design of the UI which needs some TLC, along with some added features for convenience (total outstanding after-tax value of sell orders, etc.)

Once the bots are handled, and the market reaches equilibrium (which will probably take another 6-8 weeks), there will STILL be more opportunities than time on the TP – but again, only those willing to do a bit of homework will reap the benefits.

GW2 is a very good game. It seems the devs built-in different aspects of the game to appeal to as wide an audience as possible – PVP for the super competitive, PVE for the folks who enjoy a storyline, WvW for those that like team-based fights, etc.

Crafting is another area it seems like they went to great lengths to build depth for the players who like to craft. However, IMHO they have hampered that part of the game by allowing so many drops of “finished goods” (i.e. armor, weapons, etc.) . The only crafting profession that does not have this limitation is cooking – and that seems to be doing very well.

With that in mind, wouldn’ kitten make much more sense to change the drops received from non-humanoid mobs to raw materials only? It seems to me this would kill two birds with one stone – make all crafting professions a viable means to earn gold, AND relieve the glut of finished goods on the market, thereby raising their value as well.

Couple that with the accompanying rise in value of most finished goods, as well as the increased demand for raw materials, and I believe that small change would (IMHO) make quite a few people happy, and perhaps make the game a bit more challenging in the long-term for both producers (crafters) and suppliers/traders.

Keep in mind that I’m not referring to drops received from chests or dungeons, merely from free roaming “creatures” populating the world that are being farmed so heavily now. I mean – is it really legit that a lizard would drop a sword, or a piece of armor?

Wouldn’ kitten be better all around (both in terms of the market/crafting imbalances, AND for a more “realistic” world setting) if non-sentient creatures dropped body parts/fluids/raw materials when you killed them, as opposed to fully crafted goods?

Thoughts?

Seriously, 2000 items being listed by ONE seller is a pretty big clue.

What a load of crap.

I’m also a veteran of Eve Online – an MMO I played for 5+ years primarily for the economic aspect of the game. I started trading the GW2 trading post with a small seed of starter funds (6G) I bought via the online interface the first few days of the game, and began trading on the TP as soon as it opened.

Over time, I slowly built up the number of markets/commodities I’m trading in, as well as the volume of the trades (both number of trades, and overall volume of units). I now routinely order in excess of 10k units in several different markets, as (I’m sure) do many traders that actually know what they’re doing.

…as for people that think that they "can’t turn a profit’ with the TP…honestly, you’re simply doing it wrong. This is – hands down – the easiest in-game marketplace to turn a profit from I’ve ever had the pleasure to play with.