80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
(edited by TrapjaW.4983)
Showing Posts For TrapjaW.4983:
ATM: Spitting out money
Normal Guy: “Woah is that supposed to be doing that?”
Nearby cop: Silently watching
Normal Guy: “I’m just wondering… you know because if it is I want some”
Nearby Cop: Silently watching
Normal Guy: Watches other people take some money
Nearby Cop: Silently watching
Normal Guy: “So… This is cool right? We can take this money?”
Excited Guy: “I think its their way of stimulating the economy”
Normal Guy: “Really? Awesome. I’m going to get some of this then”
Normal Guy: Takes money
Nearby Cop: “That’s it you are all under arrest!”
using a real life analogy to highlight why something is wrong in game really is kinda silly, especially one as blatant as that.
How about read,understand,think about the circumstances about this particular episode and then make a informed decision (which ever side of the fence you are on regarding this ) and then state your opinion , instead of trying to link it into hypothetical real life moral decisions which lets be honest dont compare really to decisions in a video game.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
I know several people who got banned and just as a point not all of them got refunds.
I know one didnt buy the product direct via Arenanet and they did not get a refund .
Oh and the people screaming oh this was a clearly defined exploit etc again , maybe go back and read the 280 comment thread on it and try and understand the other point of view on this, saying its clearly defined etc is strecthing the point tbh.
And as for the person saying oh someone made 10k gold on this , personally i would say thats a load of rubbish.
I am aware of nearly 20 people who got banned over this ( yes my guild got hit hard by this ), of those 20 people most didnt even make nowhere near that ie: mde 50-100g range .
One person who actually crafted and salvaged nearly constantly for the entire time of this as they was determined to make money made about 750g with about 57 hours of constant crafting, so i would very very much doubt someone could do 10k gold not unless you are using some seriour scripting/bot programs even then id doubt you could do in the time frame it occured in.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
its not really a attemp to question the moderators. its more along the lines that previous instruction from moderators was discuss it there .
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-damage-done/first#post1143155
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Snowflakes-Outrageous-Overreaction
just 2 examples I quickly found giving those instructions.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
May i ask why “The Tale of two jewellry Recipes” was closed ?
yes it states that regina answered the thread ( response on first page)
Since then we have had multiple comments from moderators/community support when other people opened threads revolving around this issue to go to this one thread to discuss it ,one that has been left running for several days.
Seems a sudden change of direction is all , we are told to discuss it there after the post from regina and now its been locked down.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
are you even jewellers?
for rare and exotic recipe you need 3 jewels (meaning 3 ectos) and 5 jewels (meaning 5 ectos) to make one ring, earring, pendant…
when you salvage you get back 1 jewels most of the time, some mithril or orichalcum if you are lucky 0-3 ecto or 0-5 ecto according to the tier of the recipe.
if you craft lower recipe you need just 1 jewel not ecto but you don’t have ecto back if you salvage… you mostly do it for crafting experience.
i never noticed this snowflake recipe since i didn’t need the stats but i could understand at first glance that a recipe requiring only 1 jewel (meaning 1 ecto) could have been an ecto mining source. and if only i would have bothered to see this recipe i would have told for sure this was too weird!
it is very stupid to compare this recipe to any tailoring or any other crafting branch recipe.
the tailor rare recipe don’t need ecto but need 15 t5 mats and when you salvage you never get back the mats for making the same recipe again, you never get back the insignia you need to make that recipe again. if you do you certainly can exploit the recipe!! for the same reason as above.
it is perfectly obvious that all the rare and exotic recipes of every crafting profession are intended to farm ecto (or trying precursor in the mystic forge) but the jewellers (and obviously cooking)…
the jewellers need the same quantity of ecto you could have back by salvaging… so when this is not the case of course you should have wondered is this really intended? you better ask before doing it repeatedly over and over again.though, this recipe is certainly an error made by anet, they could have take back all the ectos and gold farmed this way and done with it… but if you craft even if you do it casual it is impossible not to notice how different this recipe is!!
edit: i admit i stop reading at page 3
Probably should have carried on reading past page 3 but yes it can be to time consuming with long threads.
The points made about its difference from the normal jewellry recipes are this , there is already the Passiflora one which is different and also this used a new Rare unique time limited component (snowflake) in it which may have thrown people of as how do they know how unique or rare this component is .
Yeh its a short brief answer but think ive covered it in previous post , and its nearly sleep time for me :P
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Oh and posting there replys is pointless aswell as its a “standardised” response everyone gets , MMO companies very rarely go into any sort of lengthy discussions in disciplinary procedures due to several constraints such as it drags out this process and also due to the want only a official version . As they dont want multiple responses being given out which may vary with details and then them all posted all around the webs creating more fuel for the fire of arguements being one of the no doubt many reasons for this.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
I have a friend, pretty much had considering the event we are all aware of. That person got banned during the last genocide. He’s been playing GW for about 6 years. His name is Dork fikitten23, reference number 130103-000977 and this is his story I am sharing with you. Using the conversation he had with Anet staff member.
Dear A-Net,
I’m rather suprised that I recieved a notification today when attempting to log onto Guild Wars 2 stating that “Your Guild Wars 2 account has been terminated for abusing an in-game exploit… This action is permanent.”.I am unsure what I did to warrant this ban. I do not believe I have done anything against the Code of Conduct for the game, or have ever wished to over my 6+ years of following your games.
There was only one situation in which I could have done something exploitative, and that was in regards to the rare mithril snowflake accessories that was generating ectoplasms. However, I did not do this to generate a profit.
In actuality, I was attempting to identify whether or not this was actually an exploit. As a long-term fan of your games, and in the spirit of giving back to you guys for all your hard work, I was trying to gather enough data on this to conclusively provide you guys with information about an exploit.
In fact, in my mail inbox for the forums, I actually sent a private message to John Smith to report this exploit along with my data. (However, I can’t actually access it as I no longer have access to the forums with this ban). In addition, I would not have kept my sample size so small to limit the effect it would have on the economy of GW2; or have only sold back enough ectos to pay for my initial investment to gather data if I was truly attempting to do this to generate profit from this exploit.
I realize that this is only my word, and that my actions ultimately can still be considered a breach to your CoC. I just really hope that a well-intended action on my part isn’t taken as malicious by you all.
Thank you for your time,
Derek ChungCustomer Derek Chung via CSS Web 01/03/2013 02:24 AM
Some additional information that came to my mind to add to this is:
1) I privately messaged John Smith (ANet employee) to avoid any public information about this exploit being released to the players confirming the ability to create profit.
2) During my data gathering, I made three attempts. The first two attempts had sample sizes of 3 and 10 (snowflakes), which are statistically too small to provide a decent confidence interval to draw statistical significance. The third attempt was to be with 30 snowflakes but I never completed it due to the update. This last group of snowflakes are still on my account after the update and in fact, I actually lost money attempting to gather this data compared to the profits I actually made on the ectoplasms to cover these costs.Customer Derek Chung via CSS Web 01/03/2013 06:58 PM
3) I’m not sure if you need this, but in hopes that this may make the process of resolving this ticket faster:
I hereby provide you, Arena Net, full access to any and all of my game and forum account materials (i.e. my inbox, crafting mats, logs [if you keep any]) for the purposes of acquiring any proof to settle this ticket.
Unfortunately sahira , your post has a very short probable lifetime. As it breaks the forum rules about you are not allowed to discuss customer support on this forum.
Especially not post any comments/replys from them.
I have posted things that didnt even mention customer support as blatantly and was more focused about the companys stance on this issue on this and got infracted , so sad to say your post is going to be removed fast. against the rules
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Is it just me or does the topic not match the content … its titles 2 jewellery but talks of 1 bugged jewellery compared to 1 tailor recipe.
Anyways, yes you can get ecto from the tailor recipe but its not as reliable as you would think. For some of us making ecto this way is a loss even with BL salvage kits. I tried it with 30 @ 19.53s per shoulder for materials, after selling ectos I made a loss because not enough ectos were salvaged.
Unlike the bugged jewellery recipe where profit was pretty much guaranteed.
The reference to two jewellry recipes was in regards to the two different recipes that was involved in this whole saga , basically one was made with orichalcum and one with mithril.
It was also a play on words/pun whatever you want to call it in my mind ,yeh probably not everyone would get why i made that title but it sounded good to me at the time :P
Oh and saying you didnt make any money on the shoulders is prob due to cost of materials and also you used a very small sample size. Over time and with larger base of figures it evens out on your Ectoplasms as i have done batches of 250 of these at a time and it worked very very nicely.
Edited to add a little bit extra
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
(edited by TrapjaW.4983)
probably the most common one to be missed especially if you are not order of whispers is the poi in the Chantry of secrets in bloodtide coast.
The problem is it doesnt count towards map completion of that zone , but does count to overall map completion.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
This is a re-post of several points i made earlier, it did also contain points about my feelings towards arenanet , it was infracted again for " discussing customer support decisions" even thou it was adressed at the overall handling by the company and nothing specific.
Hopefully this is fine:
Overall I would have liked several things to have been addressed:
1) how are people expected to have known this was a exploit? a new recipe using new unique and time limited components gives a better profit.
so using a tried and tested method of craft/salvage to make profit , people run afoul of it and get into trouble
Yes it seems the recipe was introduced with wrong amounts , since they eventually changed it after a patch ( never any seen comment from arenanet that they made a mistake btw ). Unfortunetly people are not psychic they didnt know this in advance. So people who just thought “oh a good way to make some cash” didnt even consider it could possible be a exploit get hit by this
2) Apparently from other comments on this thread , there was posts on the forum at the time asking about this recipe . No reply to them so people didnt know if this is correct or not . Even someone submitted a screenshot of them asking a Arenanet employee in game and they would not comment.
Overall terrible communication with the playerbase , we have ingame mail , launcher msges etc etc for a reason
3) Time for them to act, if this was so bad for the economy why did it take them so long to act. Simple fact it never created wealth it redistibuted wealth via the trading post.
But if these people made so much money ( see previous post in regards to how much I know one person made and over which time scale ) which made it a threat to the economy why id first it take 4 days to patch it out , and even more importantly take over 2 weeks + to take any action when probably by that time the money has already gone back into the economy.
Overall im dissapointed in this whole handling of the episode. I dont think it was a clear cut as the previous exploit that occured ( ie 21 karma item in middle of a ist of 21000 karma items ).
Its much more of grey area on judging if people willfully abused this , or genuinely just thought it was like several other ways of making cash.
Unfortunately doubt anything will change as policy is so hard to reverse after the action .
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
well ive been watching this thread as obviously it interests me ( funny enough thats why i made the original posts).
I must say its making me laugh who much the post count keeps changing on it , its like a never ending cycle.. goes up a few, mod pops up decides this cant be discussed etc , goes down a few, goes up a few repeat…
must say in 13-14 years of gaming in mmos since EQ days its one of the most heavily moderated forums ive ever participated in. mind i admit half the time im to lazy to bother even going on most :P
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
@Doc @TrapjaW I totally agree. Another thing that’s been bothering me is how much it really affected people? And do people know why exploiting is bad?
It’s bad when it hurts you. The major thing is affected was the ecto selling (NOT buying) business. Do we really have a lot of people selling ectos? And regardless, ectos is used so much, I would like to think having more ectos more accessible was a good thing for most players (maybe not the economy). If you really don’t want people to be rich—-it’s pretty easy—Don’t buy from the TP
But sometimes I get the feeling that most pro-ban people are witch hunters with pitch forks. But it really caused no detrimental harm. It didn’t cost anyone here there lifetime savings nor their hours invested, but you know what, it cost the ban people everything. And looking at how some people react to the situation, it’s just so wrong. I don’t know how other players can look at them that way. They weren’t grieving you or anything. And I can’t imagine how much they impacted your day to day life except it would be 200 people richer than you that you would be possibly jealous about. But that takes an easy (gold reset) and a temp ban so they fall behind. A perm ban is just too much for this incident.
The problem here is that you will never get a agreement between both sides of this discussion. As both feel strongly about and wont shift from there point of view.
In regards to the overall outlike on this , both us who disagree and those who agree with Arenanets reaction to this are a very very tiny vocal minority of their playerbase. As tbh most people it hasnt impacted or personally affected couldnt care less and would not even bother commenting.
Arenanet itself has generated some huge publicity for there actions across multiple sites like this , several mmo reporting sites , reddit etc .
Which from there perspective i guess is a good thing as it shows they are taking a hard line against “exploiters” yes which no one really likes. All at a cost of a miniscule fraction of there players.
Yes I dont 100% disagree with there stance , but it should have been used more carefully and applied to a “exploit” that was much more concrete then this and not as ambiguous on if it truly was a exploit or just a clever way to make some cash.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
You are ignoring the new component — the snowflake. Sure it can be reused, but what if you lost it and they were priced at 1g? This was a new recipe—it’s hard to believe that all recipes would stay the same with new updates and whatnot.
The price is irrelevant. The issue was it should have required 3 jewels, and during salvaging return only 1, like every other nonexotic jewelery. The issue is obvious, and has nothing to do with TP prices like some people would like to assume.
Not to mention the obvious fact that it has surpassed other jewels in price ONLY because the recipe required JUST ONE JEWEL INSTEAD OF 3. Not for any other far fetched reason.
TP only comes into play because the created loop produced ecto’s which serve as gold stabilizing agent, and because other crafting materials were affected (like mithril).
And yes, its actually easy to believe that recipes will follow the exact same general format, and we wont suddenly get cloth armor that will suddenly be salvagable in such a way that you get back insignia or ingnia worth of mats in addition to other highly valuable mats.
Obvious exploit is obvious, and punishment, while strict, was well deserved.
Ok thats your opinion , and I respect it.
Personally i think its the other way around
some people used this to generate money with no thought that it could even possible be a exploit, as ive said many times its uses the same process to make money as outlined in my original post.
Yes its different from other jewellry recipes, it was also a new recipe that used a new unique component that i would imagine a lot of people was unsure about the rarity of and also how long that the item was going to be available due to it being a “wintersday” item.
I still feel there is reasonable grounds to give people the benefit of the doubt about there actions as some may have perceived this as a “exploit” but i bet a lot just thought "ooh something new , wow i can make money of that " and never even gave it a second thought .
Assigning the motivation " you knew you was exploiting , hahahaha serves you right " to everyone caught up in this is not only unfair is a very broad generalisation about people motives .
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
OK gonna make a repost of part of a reply from earlier , seems i got infracted over “discussion of customer supoort decisions” even thou i was just speculating why Arenanet was waving the ban hammer so hard and nothig specific.
This section doesnt touch on that so hopefully will be in the rules :
Well there seems to be a lot of speculation about how much people made on this , with incredible figures being posted of thousands and thousands of gold.
OK ill give you some fairly accurate figures base ( and yes they will be at the extreme end of the scale) , its kinda up to you if you believe them or not.
As I said in a previous post near the start of this thread , I spotted this money making scheme on saturday afternoon and happily chatted about it in guild chat ( hey I managed to get 20 people banned with doing this :P ).
Did not see anything wrong with that at all, infact my whole conversation was along the lines of
“oh you know that trick salavaging rare shoulders to make some money , well think i have spotted another one with some of the crap to make it being sold ridiculously cheap. see it all depends on the price people are gonna sell these snowflakes for and atm they havent a clue and selling em really cheap. Now if you want to make money on this you better get in asap before they start to climb in price and make this just another marginally profitable recipe " ( and yes this is a paraphrase as i cant remeber exact word i used over mumble).
Ofc quite a lot of players then went on to make some money out of this.
Now one person actually went little crazy on making em, as they wanted to make as much gold from it possible while the prices allowed it.
Since it was a weekend and they had monday off work , they done it constantly from saturday afternnon till monday evening. When i say constantly i pretty much mean that yeh apart from sleeping a bit they did it constantly.
I would say he crafted from what I see for about 57 hours
Saturday 1pm – 4 am Sunday
Sunday 10 am -4 am Monday
Monday 10 am – about midnight
This is what i meant about extreme end of the spectrum as thats a hell of a lot of hours to put into it in that time frame. On the monday I had constant comments from him that the market was adjusting on pricing and it was becoming marginal to make any cash from it.
So from his investment of 57 hours of mind numbing boring behavior of craft and salvage the $64000 dollar question is how much did he make ?
yes it was a lot , infact it was about 750 Gold but thats no where near the thosands and thousands people are claiming people made.
Overall comes out something like 13g/hour , yes high figures but not unrealistic really for being a “early adopter” of a new feature/recipe/release in a mmo.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Why are people even comparing this recipe with others claiming they work the exact same way?
Because the only difference, from a high-level perspective, is the profit margin.
Selective reading eh? How about you quote the part where one recipe creates something from nothing which the other one doesnt? Oh wait, we are trying to make it look like people that exploited are innocent, i forgot.
Gluttony the recipe does not create something from nothing at all, both the examples used in my original post require a constant input of new materials for each and every craft.
The difference is in quantity and cost ( cost being decided by a open market that adjusts to suplly and demand )
Its a fallacy that people seem to be determined to propagate that this allowed creation of these items forever without any input materials.
No they didnt. You did not recieve the major ingredient (the 15 bones) back. Never. Not under any circumstance. There is not even a 1% chance of that happening.
And here we have a recipe that has a 80% chance of returning the major ingredient (the brilliant snowflake). You see the difference? the recipes are nothing alike. You can re-use the brilliant snowflake 4-5 times, heck you could have re-used it 10000x if you have enough black lion salvage kits and the only cost invovled would have been the mitrhril and salvage kit. So, tell me how the recipes are even similar in return salvage value?
I never said that the recipes was similiar in value ever, i have always stated in every post since the original that the snowflake one was much more profitable.
What I have said is that the method for generating profit is the same , the thing that makes a difference is the cost of the input components.
Yes the main cost as ive said before is either the Mithril/Orichalcum ore depending what recipe people were using and yes input of Pristine snowflakes which obviously varied depending on your luck of getting it back with a salavge kit ( and yes i know what type of salavge kit affected this return rate ).
But again the costs of these are in a open market that is set by suplly and demand so the prices started adjusting as demand incresed.
Lets take a hypothetical situation , Anet introduces a area that drops huge amounts of T5 mats reliably ..the T5 mats then take a nosedive on TP. Suddenly your in this exact situation basically again, you are able to craft salavageable rares incredibly cheap and again people who realise will be able to make a lot of money before prices stabilise again if they jump onto the crafting bandwagon again.
( and prob be my last post atm , as going to sleep :P )
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Why are people even comparing this recipe with others claiming they work the exact same way?
Because the only difference, from a high-level perspective, is the profit margin.
Selective reading eh? How about you quote the part where one recipe creates something from nothing which the other one doesnt? Oh wait, we are trying to make it look like people that exploited are innocent, i forgot.
Gluttony the recipe does not create something from nothing at all, both the examples used in my original post require a constant input of new materials for each and every craft.
The difference is in quantity and cost ( cost being decided by a open market that adjusts to suplly and demand )
Its a fallacy that people seem to be determined to propagate that this allowed creation of these items forever without any input materials.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Had it obviously appeared to be an exploit, I would not have done it.
Out of curiosity, is there any other recipe in the game you have used 50 times in a row, salvaging and then recycling ingredients like this particular recipe allowed you to?
The damage to the player base is far greater than the damage to the economy ever was.
No. The gain for the player base, by losing all those exploiters and cheaters, is far greater than the help to fix the economy given by those bans.
Yes there is look at rare shoulders recipe in original post , i have made batches of 250 of those when the price on the components was right to produce ectos , to sell at a profit after covering material costs.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
wait if this one is so Equally as everything else people claim its
Why the hell do you even use it?
It wasn’t equally in the beginning, when prices of snowflakes were 2s, prices of mithril was 40c, and prices of ectos were 37s.
I was equally after they let it go for 4 days without doing anything and ectos dropped to like 25s, mithril rose to 60c+, and snowflakes were like 30s.
The thing is, Anet let it go long that the market eventually reached equilibrium after a bunch of people tried it because of huge threads on these forums and reddit. People like myself, probably tried it <100 times, realized it wasn’t worth the time, and stopped doing it.
The fact that it was a recipe that Anet added, was affected by market rates and didn’t just create gold out of thin air, and wasn’t different then other market altering recipes, really pushes it in terms of permanent bans for an “exploit.”
Now everyone has to be careful, because who knows what recipes Anet is going to add in the future. How are we to know that a new recipe that gets added that turns out to be profitable is an exploit or not? This recipe didn’t create items out of thin air, it created an exchange of 60 mithril and 2 snowflakes, for 7 ectos. It didn’t simply take 1 ecto and suddenly make 10 of them like clueless people like to think.
Thank you strifey at least you seem to get what i was aiming for in the original post , as said you can do this with anoter recipe with a smaller profit margin. Nothing was created from nothing it was just the componet materials worked out much cheaper.
Now people say “exploit” , when there wouldt have been any profit if the snowflakes were priced higher on trading post. So its simply all hanging in a very dubious “grey” area as is it materials to make em where undervalued or start screaming its wrong.
Depends on your point of view i guess.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
there is small chance some ppl got banned not knowing that is a exploit but I’m 99% sure the majority knew this was an exploit
To be honest, I still don’t get why this is considered such an obvious exploit.
If you’d have a 100% chance to get your materials back + ectos, then yes, I’d agree it’s obviously an exploit.
But a 90% chance still means there’s a good chance at a failure…so I honestly don’t get why it should be an offense worthy of perma bans? Why not simply remove the items, give a warning, maybe a temporary block and be done with it?
Why must players suffer the loss of their account simply because Anet made a mistake? Just so everyone can see how tough they are as a gaming company?
Yes I feel Anet are using this as a example to show " how tough they are as a gaming company". Its a deterrent strategy to highlight how hard they will come down on people when they feel something is wrong.
I think its a bad incident to do it on as it isnt not as clear cut as most “exploits” due to the reasons i posted in the original post ( if you can remember the original post after its been derailed onto tangents a million times :P ).
Edited for spelling
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
(edited by TrapjaW.4983)
Please dont De-rail the thread with wanton attacks on other posters about oh "haha " they got banned, oh they " deserved" it etc . Everyone s going to have a different view on the correct course of action.
I made this thread to highlight that the exact same process could already be done with another crafting recipe ( yes ofc it depends on mats prices which ive managed to get cheap enough for the mats to work out, and sat and made 250 pairs of shoulders ). The problem is a question of profit scale it seems as the input mats wre “to cheap” leading to its a exploit.
The problem you “hightlighted” is missing the most important and vital point…that they were BUGGED…after crafting the core jewerl and making the effective jewel…you could recycle it…and…you got the ectos…the mithril…and the already made core part!
That where the bug reside…with the core part back…you just needed to add another hook and ta-da ! another earring ready to recycle…plus ectos ofc…repeat 1000 times -> illecit profit.
And THATS why they banned ppl…not for recycling items for ectos…i did that and still do it, and i’m totally fine.
Glitchers and pro- glitching players are just mad they got banned and want to discharge all the fault to Anet for making mistakes (wich is quite understandable since everyone like the monthly patches , but do not like the bugs it may cause since they have no time to test them)
Ok think we gonna have to disagree on this as the process for it is still the same which ever recipe your using . At no point is there a ever perpetuating cycle , you are always inputting new materials of some sort onto each craft and obtaining Ectoplasms ( dont get me wrong the wintersday stuff mats is way cheaper, well at least at start ).
And saying the recipe is “bugged” well dont think you can say its bugged it produced the same effect as other recipes , so that might not be the right word.
While i will agree that it was advantageous over other recipes and yes poorly designed when released since it used a core mechanic of the game crafting/salvaging it dont think you can scream oh its a “Exploit” as clearly as people would like to say.
Yes it gave people advantage on money making but thats exactly what trading post manipulators use the TP for everyday.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Please dont De-rail the thread with wanton attacks on other posters about oh "haha " they got banned, oh they " deserved" it etc . Everyone s going to have a different view on the correct course of action.
I made this thread to highlight that the exact same process could already be done with another crafting recipe ( yes ofc it depends on mats prices which ive managed to get cheap enough for the mats to work out, and sat and made 250 pairs of shoulders ). The problem is a question of profit scale it seems as the input mats wre “to cheap” leading to its a exploit.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Wouldnt mind a comment why one is considered Legitimate and one is considered wrong , from the two examples I posted.
As shown they both use the same method to generate profit.
One of the reasons it bothers me so much is i noticed this on the first day of Wintersday and quite happily chatted away in my guild about it , saying oh its the same as the silk shoulders but people are selling the snowflakes really cheap etc etc . Result 20 guild members banned as yeh ofc they thought oh a decent way to make money on trading post when they could .
Many where old players but some also new people , so they wouldnt have been around for this warning in regards to the “karma” event ( i wasnt either ).
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P
Well This latest fiasco with multiple players getting banned has left me somewhat confused. As from what I have read on this forum is they have been banned for something that has always been possible to a certain degree anyway.
It has always been possible to generate Ectoplasms using cheap mats to craft rares and then salvage. Yes it seems that profit margin was greater on this due to “underpriced” components but the process is the same in both case’s.
———————————-
Crafting Rare Silk Shoulders:
15 T5 Mats + 3 Bolts of Silk + 1 Cured leather thick hide + 11 Silk string = 0 to 3 ectos + 1 to 3 silk scraps. ( might not be 100% accurate working from memory atm)
Now this recipe generates Ectoplasms, from a input of some other components.
If you can buy the components cheap enough and in bulk you can quite happily make a huge batch of these , salvage em all down for a nice stack of Ectoplasms.
You then sell some Ectoplasms to cover your materials cost and have Ectoplasms left over which are profit.
This can then be repeated Ad Infinitum to keep generating profit. Or at least till your component supply adjusts in supply on the trading post to make the profit dissapear.
Snowflake Mithril Earring of Winter
1 Ectoplasm + Pristine Snowflake + Orichalcum or Mithril Ore (12)
=0-3 Ectos +1-2 Mith/ Ori Ore + chance to get Snowflake Back
Again you are generating Ectoplasms from other components, so you make a huge batch of em , salvage them and sell back some Ectoplasms to cover costs. Which then leaves you Ectoplasms as profit.
Again you can repeat Ad Infinitum until your supply of materials on trading post start to adjust.
Now yes I am aware that due to the way this works with the Pristine Snowflake and the cost of the materials for the recipe , the wintersday recipe was much more profitable.
The problem is that in essence its exactly the same process but one is a " Legitimate " way of manipulating the trading post to make money and the other is a “Permanent Ban”.
Yes other arguements can be brought to the table such as the recipe for the wintersday jewellry was incorrectly designed in that it only used one ectoplasms, which yes is partially valid but surely the developers have to take some degree of responsibility for that. And the fact is you can generate ectoplasms of recipes that dont require any Ectoplasms to make so ( as shown with the shoulders ones above).
There has been comments made by people and I believe a Dev/Official of some sort that it was wrong as it was a infinite loop, which is just basically wrong as at each craft you had to input orichalcum/mithril and eventualy more Pristine Snowflakes.
Dont think anyone can deny it was much cheaper due to the price of materials but those materials were already adjusting on Trading post to reduce this profit ( eg mithril 1 silver a ore and Pristine Snowflake 30s even hitting 40s-1g.).
Anyway so where do we draw the line? What crosses over from making a load of money from using the shoulder recipe and this new one . Is it a question of scale as thats what its coming across to me as really. The wintersday recipe made a lot of gold with that easy supply of materials and its “undervalued” components but was using a existing process that you can still do in game now.
Personally i think its a very “grey” area , yes it seems Anet dropped the ball on this one and introduced a recipe that was to good due to it requiring one Ectoplasms and people have used this to generate money.
The question is how are people supposed to know this is a exploit of some kind when you can do the same process elsewhere to generate similiar results.
Well thats my 2 cents on it , and yes personally I feel the permanet bans are a step to far on Anets behalf on something that is this cloudy about if its wrong or not.
80 Engineer / 80 Mesmer /80 whatever the hell i get to 80 next :P