Guild Wars 2

Got a perma-ban for Snowflakes, pretty lame in all honesty as I made about 30g off playing around with it.

Anyways all my assets are now frozen in my account I can’t log into, I made everyone a leader yesterday so maybe someone else will take the helm.

If they overturn the ban I will be back, otherwise I’m looking for a new game.

Once they patch the game I will be force logged out of the forums and won’t be able to reply.

Best way to stop inflation. Ban all the wealthy players, and watch as the casual players start to buy gold again with money because it is worth more!

I’m honestly debating if I care enough to, I’ve played hundreds of hours, and I mostly enjoy playing in the markets. If I am always worried I am not playing how they want me to and am risking getting banned all the time It’s not really worth it.

After thinking about it for an hour I may just ask for proof that they followed their own ToS when deciding to permanently ban my account.

Permanent Account Terminations
‘We exercise careful judgment in every case in which an account is terminated. We will review breaches of the Rules of Conduct and the User Agreement with close attention to the most flagrant and persistent patterns of rules abuse. In such instances, particularly when we perceive a risk of substantial real or potential harm to the Guild Wars 2 community or to the game’s stability, an account can and will be permanently terminated.’

Anyways maybe they will just refund my money instead of go through the headache of proving they followed all the proper steps in each case, as I really doubt they did.

At the end of the day they banned me for breaking rule 17.

You will not exploit any bug in Guild Wars 2 and you will not communicate the existence of any such exploitable bug (bugs that grant the user unnatural or unintended benefits) either directly or through public posting, to any other user of Guild Wars 2.

I would say that a reasonable person would see and agree that I didn’t know I was exploiting a bug since it worked the same as other things, and I didn’t gain any unnatural or unintended benefits because it had the same profit margin. It’s why I’m not sure what I did wrong here.

First off let me start by saying I was one of the people who got permanently banned for this. I myself made 150 mithril snowflake rings, and salvaged them for ectos.
As a trader who used to craft rares, and then salvaging them for ectoplasm (making rare silk epaults) this is a real shock to me that they decided snowflakes were an exploit.

I was curious about the reason the recipe was even taken out in the first place. As an avid market player I had noticed the market had already nearly reached equilibrium by the time they took it out. So naturally I went to the forums to ask some questions and share the real numbers and data. I was quite surprised that John Smith, the Guild Wars 2 economist seemed to agree that the margin I was trading at was not considered an exploit at all, and that it was something else people were doing with Wintersday Recipes.

http://i.imgur.com/xXXrd.png ¹

Today I was banned for exploiting for using the recipe and margins I expressed in the statement he quoted. Doing exactly what he claimed was not an exploit.
I had the bad fortune of crafting these rings when I could have just crafted silk shoulderpads and still got nearly the same return. In fact you can still make the shoulderpads right now and get this kind of return.

It’s true those players who got in early before the snowflakes went to 25-30 silver made a lot of money, but just banning anyone who made them is extremely unfair. I paid 16 silver per salvage, you can still buy a lot of rares for less than 16-17 silver and salvage them. This is clearly not an exploit, and even John Smith agreed with me.
Obviously I am a little upset I put a lot of time into both Guild Wars 1 and Guild Wars 2, and have always been impressed with their leadership. This latest choice is really making me question what has happened over at Anet. I hope they are just confused and don’t fully understand how many people they are finding guilty by default.

Full Thread on the Issue:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/How-to-make-1-glob-of-ectoplasm-into-stacks/first²

I suspect this has something to do with markets and not WvW. As a heavy trader who has made about 400g trading goods on the wintersday market I just got myself a perma-ban. Kind of sad that even though I have never exploited they still decided to kill my account because of my trading volume and profitability.

@ ButterBlume

I will be very transparent with my assets, anyone who is taking advantage of other members or our plans in the guild will also be pretty exposed as the markets are visible to all.

This thread has turned into a fight between players and that was not the aim.

I set the 250g requirement because if you haven’t been able to extract that wealth out of the market already odds are one of the following is true.

-You don’t have the interest in playing and researching markets.

-You don’t have the time required to make that much money on markets.

-You don’t understand the markets well enough to make that much money.

You have to understand that if any of the statements above are true then when we are sharing information, you are probably not going to be able to be an equal partner with everyone else in the guild.

The guild is first and foremost about sharing trading information and data in a smaller and more secure setting than these forums or reddit. I am not requiring you have the money because I am going to demand you buy 250g of X to inflate the price. I am suggesting if you haven’t been able to come up with 250g since the game launched you probably would not be an equal member in the Guild.

@ Ravion Hawk

I understand your frustration with some of the behaviors that go on, precursors is a perfect example of using trading power to only help yourself and destroy other players experiences. (I won’t play in such a dangerous market, since soon all the people holding precursors are going to get smoked when Anet makes them easier to get)

Just be aware that some trading practices even ones that involve market control are not always bad. A lot of the things I do have a positive impact on the market as a whole, and benefit the casual player, while taxing the player who wants exclusive goods.

Also to be clear I don’t partake in any cheats or exploits.

Nearly all of the gold I have made has been a result of trading. Most of it involved a lot of independent research and experimentation. A lot of people will be shocked at how much money can still be made off the two week old Wintersday markets. The information will probably only be made widely public after the event is over, and people have made their respective fortunes. It’s funny seeing posts on sub-reddit that are voted to 1-2 and seem to be so informative and helpful about markets, but in reality they are just way for players to control the markets even more, while also providing disinformation.

No I wouldn’t be investing other players gold. I am looking into establishing a kind of Guild Wars 2 market brain trust.

I have a few markets that can yield really high returns that are not that well known, I am sure there are other traders out there with similar information. If like-minded players got together and shared this information within a small group they could all benefit.

If the size of the group gets to large then the value in information is lost.

I am interested in started a trading organization. As most of the traders and wealthy players know a lot of information is not made public until the group of players who found out about it have already taken full advantage of it. I am suggesting a guild of traders who share exclusive information only within the group, and work together to achieve collective goals.

I would ask that you already have the funds to at least make an impact on the market in a meaningful way when combined with the power of the other traders.

If you have at least 250 gold that can be used towards trading investments, and are interested in this idea, contact me in game.

Any tonics received before they made them unaccount bound are gliched. They are not able to be listed. Once that is fixed tons of these tonics will flood and crash the market.

My 2c buy orders are being filled in mass today. Clearly people have lost all faith in it becoming worth anything in the future. Even if I had to hold it for 9-10 months next Halloween will see it around 5-6 since you can turn them into Ptot’s. If I needed the money right now I would say it’s not worth it, but it’s better than just sitting in the bank losing value to inflation.

Honestly all the Candy Corn speculators decided to dump their supply for two reasons. Commendations were taken out of the game at the moment, and snowflakes looked to make cheaper exotics, so candy corn amulets ‘were’ looking useless for a bit. They since changed the Wintersday Jewelry to make it cost way more to craft. So honestly if Commendations come back in any useful manner the Candy Corn used in the Key Trade will probably push the market again like it did before the took Commendations out, and lied about how useful snowflakes were by changing recipes. I am going to hold my stock for now.

Grave.4523:

Except it isn’t, as the price of snowflakes rose and ectos fell the return rate shrank until, as stated in many posts here, the “guaranteed return” did not exist. This is because the pristine snowflakes were a limited supply item, you could not buy them with gold from a vendor.

To those comparing this recipe to other rare using t5 mats, consider this. Those recipes do not require you to put up an ecto at risk. Currently one can buy 12 s worth of t5 and craft rares, salvaging them for a chance at profit. When they took down the snowflake recipes, you had to pay around 60 silver to make the snowflake gem, which is “coincidentally” when it became impossible to make guaranteed money off this recipe. Quickly someone tell me what 20% of 60 silver is! No! It can’t be! You mean to tell me the price of snowflake+ecto to craft the jewel had…..reached an equilibrium based off the 20% chance to lose the jewel! This is madness! No…. this is ECONOMICS!

Grave you are the only person here who seems to fully understand basic markets and how simple profit analysis works. Thank god because if not I would start to wonder if I had gone crazy. Nobody seems to grasp that just because you could recycle it didn’t mean it was more cost effective. I will hold firm to my point that when they made the choice to nix the recipe when you factored in every aspect involved in it including the 50-60 silver you lost when you failed to get it back, the snowflake recipe offered you a return at a very similar rate that you can still get now making lots of other recipes.

Now like I said earlier players could use Black Lion kits and trade them in for risk free ecto salvaging, but John Smith made it pretty clear that the exploit that got it banned was creating wealth from nothing, not the Black Lion kit uses.

I still completely fail to see how this is creating wealth from nothing, at least anymore so than crafting rares and creating more wealth by salvaging than you paid for the materials.

@Essence Snow.3194

I agree 100%, If they said they didn’t like the market changes as a result of the recipe they should have just come out and said that. Instead they are acting like this would have been a limitless gold creating loophole, and that is so far from the truth.

Kanthor.2094:

I don’t think there is any “undisclosed behavior”; making and salvaging the items WAS the “exploit”. I think Aura mentioned the solution to avoiding this problem in the future though. Simply buy whatever items will be used by some new efficient recipe, and sell them when they peak. The potential for profit is huge, and the risk of being punished is absolutely zero, since Anet does not consider “playing the TP” an exploit.

Well if they really shut the trade down because of Mithril Ecto salvaging they did it at a time when market had finally balanced. In effecting letting the market determine a fair price per salvage. That was when they decided it was no longer acceptable. As someone who was paying 16 silver per salvage on snowflake mithril earrings hours before they decided it had to be shut down I find it kind of strange. I mean right now I can buy 15 potent bloods and make a 16.5 silver rare and salvage it. How on earth is this not an exploit if snowflakes are. Making money from salvaging has been part of the game forever. I can make tons of money making rare gear and salvaging it. Is this an exploit? I always thought of it as people undervaluing their materials they were selling me.

I feel like I just keep beating the same drum, but if people really feel like this is an exploit that had to be removed and are calling for player bans I have no idea how they don’t notice the same profit margins are still open on traditional crafts at this moment. Sure the players who bought the flakes for 2 silver made a fortune, but when the market balanced all the prices finally why was that the time to shut it all down?

Also this is going to make it extremely hard to ban anyone over this. I was playing what I thought was a new emerging fair market. Yes I made and salvaged over 200 earrings, I however made a pretty standard salvaging margin. There was not even a second where I considered this an exploit. I was maybe making 10-15% more than I normally do salvaging.

John Smith.4610:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

The equation for those who are curious about the returns on investment.

Cost
Snowflake + Ecto = 50 Silver (80% Retention Rate) ~ 10 Silver loss
Mithril = 6.4 Silver

16.4 Silver for a lv 75 Rare Ecto Drop Chance.

With T5 Mats trading at 80 copper right now
T5 = 12 Silver
Silk = .5 Silver
Silk Spools = 5 Silver

17.5 Silver per Salvage

These are the rates the markets were at when they shut the loophole. Yes you could use a black lion kit for a 100% retention rate, but each salvage would cost you 25 silver if you bought the black lion kit making it all worthless. Hopefully some of you guys out there understand the math and realize this was not nearly as lucrative as people thought.

The people who made the big margins were those who knew how to get the flakes really cheap, being a smart trader is not an exploit. These were the market margins.

You are honestly calling for a ban on people for making rares one silver cheaper than you can make them at this second. I hope you take a second and realize how quickly you guys overreact.

You are mistaken. There were several recipes that produced significantly more output than the input required and could be easily and reliably cycled without using Black Lion kits.
You are correct playing the market is not exploiting, but finding a loop that reliably produces more and more items in a cycle is an exploit. Check out the name of this thread.

@kaffaljidhma.1496

If this is what you are talking about it sounds like making mithril jewels was fair game, and some undisclosed behavior was actually the cause of shutting the recipe down. No worries man. I don’t think you did anything wrong.

Tallis.5607:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

If you wonder why others have 1000’s of gold and you have nothing it is most likely due to your own inability to see opportunity.

No, it is due to me being honest.

It’s okay. There are always cheaters in the game. You are one. You are now rich by using what Anet called an exploit. Congratulations. I hope you enjoy your 50 gold.

Anet posts about a cheat, you do it, you make 50 gold. That is cheating. It really is THAT simple.

Now, I understand that you have some last shred of decency left and that you won’t feel good about yourself when you call yourself a cheater. So, you call it something else. You call yourself an opportunist, even though you use something that Anet calls a cheat. That’s okay, self-delusion is important, it just means that you still have some sort of conscience left.

There is still hope for you!

You are throwing a tantrum like a little baby. I am making tailored gear with T5 materials. I am selling the ectos out of it. The recipes are valid. The gold I am making is not an exploit. Learn how to make money if you want it so badly and stop crying so much.

I’ve made ~50 gold in the last two hours doing the same thing that this recipe had to be ‘suspended’ for. The markets are out of balance, it has nothing to do with this as a glitch or hack recipe. If it was suspended because you could make money salvaging they would have to suspend half the recipes at the moment. If you want to make money stop crying exploiters and mulling over their justified punishment and start using your noggin.

If you wonder why others have 1000’s of gold and you have nothing it is most likely due to your own inability to see opportunity.

You win the troll of the thread award I give up. Hopefully other people will take a look at both posts, in the meantime I think I’ll go make 100’s of gold on the still broken ecto’s market. Take Care.

Aura.1645:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

Aura.1645:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

Aura.1645:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

Aura.1645:

2 Silver for a snowflake
30 Silver for one ecto

2 ore -> 1 ingot
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Filigree
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Setting
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Hook
6.6s for 12 ore

total mats needed to start:
12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake
38.6 silver

NOW, make one snowflake earing. Grats, you have exo, or rare snowflake earring.

Salvage with Mystic salvage kit or Master (50% upgrade, 25% rare material drop)
Get anywhere from (0-3 ectos per salvage)
50% of the time u retain the snowflake, and you remove 1 filigree, 1 ecto, and 1 snowflake.
58% of the time you get at least 1 ecto [1-(.75*.75*.75)]
with 6.25% of the time getting 3 ectos [.25*.25*.25]

For every salvage attempt to gain 0-3 ectos (with a rare) it cost
.6 silver per attempt with master salvage
8 ore (4.4 silver @55c per ore) per attempt 50% of the time, 12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake (38.6 silver) the other 50% of the time.
(avg value of each attempt when you do it an infinite amount of time: (38.6+4.4)/2

21.5 silver cost each salvage with 58% of the time getting you at least one ecto (30 silver)

You can really tell who knows what they are talking about, and who is just making up numbers. If you go back and read my post I outline the numbers very clearly for you. If you bothered to make any and not just speculate randomly you would notice that snowflakes were trading from 25-30 silver making the ecto the cheaper part of the loss.

However you way underestimated the retention rate, which is 80% if you use the master salvage kit. In reality the avg salvage ran close to 16 silver.

Let me blow your mind real quick you can still make rares for under 20 silver, just buy T5 mats which are dirt cheap at the moment, and craft just about anything in the game.

Then I guess Anet should ban everyone who is crafting rares because according to your math there is a 33% return on any rares you craft and salvage right now, making more money from salvaging things you craft is an exploit after all.

Ill just leave this here for you to educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Your numbers are wrong, as well as your basic logic about crafting. If I somehow missed the point you were making, it was a very poorly made point.

Fixed retention rate, I know how all crafting works (and my logic is fine, as I have proven)

You are valuing snowflakes at 2 silver that’s absurd. They are worth two silver because you can’t do anything useful with them anymore. If they were indeed useful for crafting as before their value would be back around 25-30 silver which is where it has been all Wintersday, so that’s the next error you made.

Even beyond that mistake your logic is all wrong. If you are claiming this is an exploit, but me making rare light armor for the exact same price is not an exploit I have no idea how you can have that position.

I can make rare armor for 16.5 silver right now and salvage it for ectos worth 30 silver by using conventional T5 materials. If I am able to do that, how can you possibly say the return rate on snowflake jewelry is way to good when it’s the same?

The truth is nobody ‘missed out’ on free ectos, the T5 materials are not reflecting the ecto price market at all. So go make whatever rares you want right now and make a fortune salvaging ecto’s. I just find it silly that one way has to be removed because it’s to lucrative, while there are 9 other ways to get the exact same ‘exploit’ return.

I think the problem is you do not understand statistics. Please understand the math I have down, and you will understand why it is an exploit.

You are starting to annoy me, your numbers are wrong. If you are to blind to see that snowflakes cost 16 silver/salvage when they shut the recipe down, and that anyone can still make rares for 16 silver and salvage them (same price to salvage ratio) then you are beyond help. You really seem to be struggling with the numbers. I suggest you take a look back at my post where I detail the real costs of salvaging since you know I actually made them instead of just speculated on how it would work ‘if’ I did.

Aura.1645:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

Aura.1645:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

Aura.1645:

2 Silver for a snowflake
30 Silver for one ecto

2 ore -> 1 ingot
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Filigree
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Setting
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Hook
6.6s for 12 ore

total mats needed to start:
12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake
38.6 silver

NOW, make one snowflake earing. Grats, you have exo, or rare snowflake earring.

Salvage with Mystic salvage kit or Master (50% upgrade, 25% rare material drop)
Get anywhere from (0-3 ectos per salvage)
50% of the time u retain the snowflake, and you remove 1 filigree, 1 ecto, and 1 snowflake.
58% of the time you get at least 1 ecto [1-(.75*.75*.75)]
with 6.25% of the time getting 3 ectos [.25*.25*.25]

For every salvage attempt to gain 0-3 ectos (with a rare) it cost
.6 silver per attempt with master salvage
8 ore (4.4 silver @55c per ore) per attempt 50% of the time, 12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake (38.6 silver) the other 50% of the time.
(avg value of each attempt when you do it an infinite amount of time: (38.6+4.4)/2

21.5 silver cost each salvage with 58% of the time getting you at least one ecto (30 silver)

You can really tell who knows what they are talking about, and who is just making up numbers. If you go back and read my post I outline the numbers very clearly for you. If you bothered to make any and not just speculate randomly you would notice that snowflakes were trading from 25-30 silver making the ecto the cheaper part of the loss.

However you way underestimated the retention rate, which is 80% if you use the master salvage kit. In reality the avg salvage ran close to 16 silver.

Let me blow your mind real quick you can still make rares for under 20 silver, just buy T5 mats which are dirt cheap at the moment, and craft just about anything in the game.

Then I guess Anet should ban everyone who is crafting rares because according to your math there is a 33% return on any rares you craft and salvage right now, making more money from salvaging things you craft is an exploit after all.

Ill just leave this here for you to educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Your numbers are wrong, as well as your basic logic about crafting. If I somehow missed the point you were making, it was a very poorly made point.

Fixed retention rate, I know how all crafting works (and my logic is fine, as I have proven)

You are valuing snowflakes at 2 silver that’s absurd. They are worth two silver because you can’t do anything useful with them anymore. If they were indeed useful for crafting as before their value would be back around 25-30 silver which is where it has been all Wintersday, so that’s the next error you made.

Even beyond that mistake your logic is all wrong. If you are claiming this is an exploit, but me making rare light armor for the exact same price is not an exploit I have no idea how you can have that position.

I can make rare armor for 16.5 silver right now and salvage it for ectos worth 30 silver by using conventional T5 materials. If I am able to do that, how can you possibly say the return rate on snowflake jewelry is way to good when it’s the same?

The truth is nobody ‘missed out’ on free ectos, the T5 materials are not reflecting the ecto price market at all. So go make whatever rares you want right now and make a fortune salvaging ecto’s. I just find it silly that one way has to be removed because it’s to lucrative, while there are 9 other ways to get the exact same ‘exploit’ return.

Aura.1645:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

Aura.1645:

2 Silver for a snowflake
30 Silver for one ecto

2 ore -> 1 ingot
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Filigree
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Setting
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Hook
6.6s for 12 ore

total mats needed to start:
12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake
38.6 silver

NOW, make one snowflake earing. Grats, you have exo, or rare snowflake earring.

Salvage with Mystic salvage kit or Master (50% upgrade, 25% rare material drop)
Get anywhere from (0-3 ectos per salvage)
50% of the time u retain the snowflake, and you remove 1 filigree, 1 ecto, and 1 snowflake.
58% of the time you get at least 1 ecto [1-(.75*.75*.75)]
with 6.25% of the time getting 3 ectos [.25*.25*.25]

For every salvage attempt to gain 0-3 ectos (with a rare) it cost
.6 silver per attempt with master salvage
8 ore (4.4 silver @55c per ore) per attempt 50% of the time, 12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake (38.6 silver) the other 50% of the time.
(avg value of each attempt when you do it an infinite amount of time: (38.6+4.4)/2

21.5 silver cost each salvage with 58% of the time getting you at least one ecto (30 silver)

You can really tell who knows what they are talking about, and who is just making up numbers. If you go back and read my post I outline the numbers very clearly for you. If you bothered to make any and not just speculate randomly you would notice that snowflakes were trading from 25-30 silver making the ecto the cheaper part of the loss.

However you way underestimated the retention rate, which is 80% if you use the master salvage kit. In reality the avg salvage ran close to 16 silver.

Let me blow your mind real quick you can still make rares for under 20 silver, just buy T5 mats which are dirt cheap at the moment, and craft just about anything in the game.

Then I guess Anet should ban everyone who is crafting rares because according to your math there is a 33% return on any rares you craft and salvage right now, making more money from salvaging things you craft is an exploit after all.

Ill just leave this here for you to educate yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Your numbers are wrong, as well as your basic logic about crafting. If I somehow missed the point you were making, it was a very poorly made point.

Aura.1645:

2 Silver for a snowflake
30 Silver for one ecto

2 ore -> 1 ingot
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Filigree
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Setting
2 ingots (4ore) -> 1 Hook
6.6s for 12 ore

total mats needed to start:
12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake
38.6 silver

NOW, make one snowflake earing. Grats, you have exo, or rare snowflake earring.

Salvage with Mystic salvage kit or Master (50% upgrade, 25% rare material drop)
Get anywhere from (0-3 ectos per salvage)
50% of the time u retain the snowflake, and you remove 1 filigree, 1 ecto, and 1 snowflake.
58% of the time you get at least 1 ecto [1-(.75*.75*.75)]
with 6.25% of the time getting 3 ectos [.25*.25*.25]

For every salvage attempt to gain 0-3 ectos (with a rare) it cost
.6 silver per attempt with master salvage
8 ore (4.4 silver @55c per ore) per attempt 50% of the time, 12 ore, 1 ecto, 1 snowflake (38.6 silver) the other 50% of the time.
(avg value of each attempt when you do it an infinite amount of time: (38.6+4.4)/2

21.5 silver cost each salvage with 58% of the time getting you at least one ecto (30 silver)

You can really tell who knows what they are talking about, and who is just making up numbers. If you go back and read my post I outline the numbers very clearly for you. If you bothered to make any and not just speculate randomly you would notice that snowflakes were trading from 25-30 silver making the ecto the cheaper part of the loss.

However you way underestimated the retention rate, which is 80% if you use the master salvage kit. In reality the avg salvage ran close to 16 silver.

Let me blow your mind real quick you can still make rares for under 20 silver, just buy T5 mats which are dirt cheap at the moment, and craft just about anything in the game.

Then I guess Anet should ban everyone who is crafting rares because according to your math there is a 33% return on any rares you craft and salvage right now, making more money from salvaging things you craft is an exploit after all.

zazu.2836:

Then why don’t you deal with exploiters in WvW…..please

It’s probably a lot more work, and at the end of the day the gem store and economy is a bit more pressing since it is what determines how much money the game can make.

BUTTERBLUME.3217:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

John Smith.4610:

without using Black Lion kits.

I actually had no idea there were exploits besides the BL kit.

Master salvage kit loses you the upgrade on every fifth salvage.
The BL kit costs about 20 silver per salvage, a 100% price per salvage.

To be as effective as the master salvage kit, the upgrade would have had to cost 5 times the price of a salvage with the BL kit. Since it was considerably less, the master kit was to prefer over the BL one to begin with.

I understand that, and made that point myself. I also understand the developer’s issue with it. Let’s say 80% of players don’t know how to properly use a BL kit to make a profit, instead they will just make ecto’s with it. A weak ecto means all rares and exotics fall in price, and the game economy would get cheaper at a very fast rate if everyone decided to turn their black lion kits into more ecto supply. If using BL kits to make more ecto’s was not intended it’s a valid reason to close the loophole, even if it’s a bad way to use the Kit. It sounds like it is something else that nobody has yet figured out on this forum that caused the recipe to be shut down, so at this point all this discussion is meaningless.

John Smith.4610:

without using Black Lion kits.

I actually had no idea there were exploits besides the BL kit. Perhaps the loot tables were to generous on the item or something, guess I didn’t find the real exploit that it was patched for. Anyhow you know a lot more about it than any of us do, I just hope that the recipe comes back in some form that is not totally useless and is at least competitive with other rare crafting for ectos so that the wintersday market picks up again. It is personally my favorite thing about the holidays, and I’m a bit depressed that nobody wants to buy any of the holiday items anymore.

Black Lion on a daily is a 2-3% chance drop if the wiki results people submitted are to be believed. Using a full black lion kit to make ectos this way would save about 2.5 gold in expected loss.

Essence Snow.3194:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

The equation for those who are curious about the returns on investment.

Cost
Snowflake + Ecto = 50 Silver (80% Retention Rate) ~ 10 Silver loss
Mithril = 6.4 Silver

16.4 Silver for a lv 75 Rare Ecto Drop Chance.

With T5 Mats trading at 80 copper right now
T5 = 12 Silver
Silk = .5 Silver
Silk Spools = 5 Silver

17.5 Silver per Salvage

These are the rates the markets were at when they shut the loophole. Yes you could use a black lion kit for a 100% retention rate, but each salvage would cost you 25 silver if you bought the black lion kit making it all worthless. Hopefully some of you guys out there understand the math and realize this was not nearly as lucrative as people thought.

The people who made the big margins were those who knew how to get the flakes really cheap, being a smart trader is not an exploit. These were the market margins.

You are honestly calling for a ban on people for making rares one silver cheaper than you can make them at this second. I hope you take a second and realize how quickly you guys overreact.

I myself am really sad they shut the recipe down, mostly because it instantly destroyed any real wintersday trading. Wool is trading close to merchant levels, and presents have all become worthless. At the same time the community is cheering yea close the 1 silver cheaper salvage loophole!

You know better than to use the maximum prices in an example. Use the averages. Also to note that the ecto and snowflake have a chance of returning into the next item so their value decreases with every return, along with minimal mithril.
As for black lion salvage kits…I’m pretty sure ppl that did this did not go and convert gold into gems for the kits. Most likely scenario is that they had some saved from daylies and prior blc. TL;DR the estimation of the cost of making these you gave here is inflated

I clearly stated these were the prices when they shut the loophole down. It may have been a lot better earlier, I am saying at the time they made the choice to close it, there was a one silver difference. I am also using 25 silver for an ecto, and 25 for the snowflake, which is a bit low to be honest.

John Smith.4610:

lDeadeyesl.9156:

The equation for those who are curious about the returns on investment.

Cost
Snowflake + Ecto = 50 Silver (80% Retention Rate) ~ 10 Silver loss
Mithril = 6.4 Silver

16.4 Silver for a lv 75 Rare Ecto Drop Chance.

With T5 Mats trading at 80 copper right now
T5 = 12 Silver
Silk = .5 Silver
Silk Spools = 5 Silver

17.5 Silver per Salvage

These are the rates the markets were at when they shut the loophole. Yes you could use a black lion kit for a 100% retention rate, but each salvage would cost you 25 silver if you bought the black lion kit making it all worthless. Hopefully some of you guys out there understand the math and realize this was not nearly as lucrative as people thought.

The people who made the big margins were those who knew how to get the flakes really cheap, being a smart trader is not an exploit. These were the market margins.

You are honestly calling for a ban on people for making rares one silver cheaper than you can make them at this second. I hope you take a second and realize how quickly you guys overreact.

You are mistaken. There were several recipes that produced significantly more output than the input required and could be easily and reliably cycled without using Black Lion kits.
You are correct playing the market is not exploiting, but finding a loop that reliably produces more and more items in a cycle is an exploit. Check out the name of this thread.

It may just because I use my Black Lion Kits for Salvaging Exotic Runes while trading which nets me well over the 10 silver they are saving you here to make ectos, but squandering your Black Lion Salvage kits on something like doesn’t seem like and exploit at all. Remember they cost 7 gold each right now, or the player would have to pay ~$2.00 for 25 salvages.

While it’s true using a black lion kit would give you the ability to salvage rares for 10 less silver in loss, you have to take into account the 25silver it costs to use up a charge on it.

Using a black lion kit to protect a 10silver loss (which is why the recipe was banned) is one of the worst uses I can think of for this gem store item. It would make your total salvage costs over 30 silver!

The equation for those who are curious about the returns on investment.

Cost
Snowflake + Ecto = 50 Silver (80% Retention Rate) ~ 10 Silver loss
Mithril = 6.4 Silver

16.4 Silver for a lv 75 Rare Ecto Drop Chance.

With T5 Mats trading at 80 copper right now
T5 = 12 Silver
Silk = .5 Silver
Silk Spools = 5 Silver

17.5 Silver per Salvage

These are the rates the markets were at when they shut the loophole. Yes you could use a black lion kit for a 100% retention rate, but each salvage would cost you 25 silver if you bought the black lion kit making it all worthless. Hopefully some of you guys out there understand the math and realize this was not nearly as lucrative as people thought.

The people who made the big margins were those who knew how to get the flakes really cheap, being a smart trader is not an exploit. These were the market margins.

You are honestly calling for a ban on people for making rares one silver cheaper than you can make them at this second. I hope you take a second and realize how quickly you guys overreact.

I myself am really sad they shut the recipe down, mostly because it instantly destroyed any real wintersday trading. Wool is trading close to merchant levels, and presents have all become worthless. At the same time the community is cheering yea close the 1 silver cheaper salvage loophole!

Grave is dead on, the Flakes market started to balance out and while it was still profitable it was not anywhere near what people are making it out to be. The real key came from 3 chances to play on market confusion.

1 Buy a large wintersday box for around 2.5 silver, on average it would drop 3.5 silver worth of snowflakes. The mystic forge upgrade rates are also about 3x what they are normally with snowflakes for some reason. So 50 t4’s could become up to 35 t5’s that step could instantly net you 5-6g in saving on snowflakes.

The people who made out like bandits were the ones playing the market and confusion at every level.

Just buying snowflakes at 27-28 silver and salvaging was not that big of a deal. Getting paid 1 silver to open large boxes was nice while it lasted though. I mean there were warning signs that the market was not right if you bothered to take the time and look. I don’t have much sympathy for people who are mad they keep missing the opportunities. If you look around in the market they almost always have glaring signs that something is broken. In this case ecto’s losing about 20% of their value after wintersday started.

Also I am amused by all the people who used Black Lion Kits. Unless you don’t value them at all each salvage is about 25 silver is extra cost to save an item 20% of the time. Since the item is only worth about 60 silver it’s such a waste of money.

The first thing I thought when I saw that wintersday jewlery was 1/3 the price it should be was "this is going to be interesting….’ I wonder how that same thought was not had at Anet when they decided to go with this cheap recipe.

This is essentially Anet messing up and rebalancing markets. The wealth was not created from nowhere, it took lots of mithril and snowflakes to make the ectos. You could see the value of this being passed back to any player who sold a snowflake, or anyone who sold mithril. If they didn’t pull the recipe the markets would settle again, only with ectos being worth about 10-15 silver, mithril being worth 1-2 silver, and snowflakes being worth 30-40 silver.

Anyone who made these and salvaged them noticed this new exchange of good and took advantage of how easy it was to convert cheaper goods to more expensive ones. If this happened enough there would no longer be any profit in it. That is why I find it hard to call this an exploit. In essence the money that was made was from mithril sellers letting the product go to cheap, and ecto buyers paying way to much in the new market prices.

Clearly Anet didn’t want this rebalance happening so they took out the way to exchange goods. This also completely crashed the wintersday goods market (it’s best to just vendor wool items now )

Anyone saying oh these few people got most of the money you are right, they noticed that the markets were not balanced and exchanged mithril and snowflakes for ectos. I do offer that if you sold any ugly wool, large presents, or unique and pristine snowflakes in the last three day you directly profited from this without knowing it making 2-10x the gold you would now that the jewelry is disabled, so don’t feel so screwed. I am personally sad that they took the only steam out of the wintersday market. Now its just stagnant and uninteresting.

I would also add the question of why on earth it took three days to shut this down?!? Anyone with a bit of common sense would question why 1 snowflake is trading at 30x the rate of others. Anyone who looked into it saw the opportunity to make untold thousands of gold, why they let this go on for a full 72 hours is beyond me when they were patching the game daily, and the ecto market was showing signs of being inflated during the first 24 hours after the new recipies were introduced.

The drop rate seems to be pretty low in my experience personally. I have opened 13 chests from runs on lvl 10 and 20, and each one just had more relics.

The good news is at ~2000 relics you can just make your own piece of accended gear and infuse it. It’s what I had to do to not die from a single agony burst on lvl 20.

For me Twilight Arbor (Story) was the easiest dungeon I have done yet. The mobs die quick and deal pretty low damage. (Compared to AC, Arah, and HoW) Also the story takes ~20 minutes so its a pretty quick venture.

Not a problem for just pugs, I run 20’s with the same group every night, we have not had any problems with any fractals and were really doing speed runs.

The key to avoid the mobs when he is downed is to hit the seal really fast then it’s only like 6 adds.

Sadly in the last patch (I think they broke it or the difficulty is insane!) they added spawns during the boss fight. He will randomly bring in 10-12 vet mobs during the boss fight (not while he is downed). So on top of his burst agony moves we are all taking 2-3 vet mobs on everyone at the same time. I really don’t think this is possible at 20+ after yesterdays patch. Would love to see a video of a group clearing it!

Anyhow they went a little overboard with the spawning of mobs and made it impossible, at least for my group it was.

Lucky you didn’t decide to try and play it after the patch yesterday. They fixed the lack of mob spawns on cliffside, but just deciding to spawn in 10 or so vet mobs in the middle of the fight with the boss (not while he is downed). Well I guess there are plenty of mobs now, to bad the fight is impossible at 20+…

Encountered the fixed version of cliffside tonight. The mob spawns are so numerous and random it really is a shame.

I run with a group of 5 players, and we have not had any issues with fractals at level 20 for the past few weeks. All of the sudden tonight we are fighting the boss in his 2nd form (white light blasts), and it spawns in 6-8 vet novices during the middle of the fight. We should not have to hid in the hallway and worry about breaking aggro and clearing the room around him.

Until you guys have a working version of the dungeon boss why not just return it to the working version that was possible?

Lirael.2603:

I’ve been watching the gem prices recently, too. I actually have a very different take.

Look at GW2Spidy again. Select the 1 month view. From November 2nd to November 12th, gem prices are flat — extremely stable.

Take a look at November 13. That’s the beginning of the rise. It’s been rising since then. November 13 is also the date of Linsey’s post on Ascended gear.

Let’s go back to the climb in prices starting on November 13. There could be two explanations for this:

(1) Players started buying gems with in-game gold in anticipation of the Lost Shores release. Supply stays the same. Demand increases. Prices rise.

(2) Players angered by Linsey’s post on ascended gear stopped buying gems with real money. Supply dwindles. Demand remains the same. Prices rise.

I take the second view for two reasons:

(a) Players already knew when Lost Shores would be released. Having a sudden rise on the 13th and NOT having it be a result of Linsey’s post would make the timing coincidence. And you know what they say about coincidences.

(b) There is simply not that many things to buy on the BLTC that is anything of value, really. Character slots, bank slots. What else? Those idiotic chests? This event is indisputably worse in terms of items you can buy. Even minipets are stuck as a RNG reward in a chest that is widely touted by players as an obvious, moneygrabbing scheme.

Yet gem prices continue to skyrocket. Again, I ask. What are they spending that many gems on?

I go with the theory that supply is far, far down, and demand hovers around normal.

Yeah looking closer at the data I think you are probably correct. When they realized that the top gear in the game is a random drop from fractals there is really no point to buy gems to trade for gold anymore, and I’m sure there was a large group who decided not to support the game out of anger.

Anyhow I’m pretty sure you guys are right, and the influx of rare drops are not the culprit at this point.

Can always buy them from the gem store, haha

rolls eyes at the drama

I am saying giving lots of gold to players that didn’t have that much before will spike gem sales as they buy stuff the want from the gem store with the new wealth they now have. It’s not a giant conspiracy, and they are not taking advantage of anything. They are being logical and buying things they want. I am suggesting this move made it harder for people to convert gold to gems. So yes people are directly hurt from the Lost Shore loot. The numbers I used were made up, but I think its fair to say a lot of players got a lot of wealth randomly over the weekend. It’s common sense some of that is going into the gem store.

I am suggesting that gem prices are going up because of it. I think the graph posted above speaks for itself, and clearly shows the market data.

I find about 1 every two hours in dungeons with ~ 150MF.

In Orr it was about every hour with the same MF.

The reason I am suggeting 50% is that if you look at Halloween after the event items and hype died off, the gem prices fell back to pre-event levels. In this case it is rising to 25% over the event levels. Right now it is trading at 50% over the pre-event levels (which is should have returned to)

It’s true the overall money in the system is the same. What changed is the wealth distribution.

I think this is a good example of what happened. Say there are the ultra-wealthy (the botters, mass traders, and early forge glitches) They each have 1,000 gold. They have little demand for anything because they already own everything they want. They make up .1% of the community.

Now Lost Shore comes along and gives items worth 100 gold to 3% users. Those 3% sell their items and receive 100 gold mostly from those who have massive wealth already, enough to buy precursors.

Now instead of the .1% that had gained wealth but wasn’t having much impact on the market, you now have 3% all with significant trading power. That is much worse for the 97% who got nothing. Now they are in competition with many more wealthy traders. Sure there may still be the same wealth out there, but you are in a much worse position in terms of trading.

Its not wealth envy, it’s devaluation of what I have. The price of gems went up 50% over the last few days. This is probably due in large part to a few players who have 100’s of gold deciding to put some in gems. It doesn’t matter the % who got the drop. What matters is that the market is already showing trends of a minority changing market values. I use BL salvage kits to turn exotics on the market. I could care less a guy got a precursor. However when a BL kit costs me an extra 1.5 gold it makes things harder for me. It’s not about envy, it’s about how massive wealth redistribution to a minority has negative impacts on real things I do in game.

I think the Guild Wars team needs to consider the impact of the in game rewards they gave out during the Lost Shore event. I took part in the Lost Shores event and received about 4 gold worth of items. There were at least 5-6 people on the overflow I was on who received precursors. Assuming they sell it for around 120 gold as they are now priced that chest contained well over $100 of in game currency for about 1-3% of the community.

Let me be clear I am not complaining that I got left out, I am suggesting that by being so reckless with the Guild Wars 2 in game economy you are turning a certain portion of players off. You have spiked the gem market by 50% over the weekend as the players who have made hundreds of gold convert it into gems. This excludes the rest of the players from being able to purchase gem store items with in game money at anywhere near the same level as we could just a few days ago.

Driving up gem prices means less access to gem store content for the majority of players, and in turn will make more players decide they will have to purchase gems to get the items they want in game.

This kind of poor market control, or if it’s true intentional hyperinflation of the games gem market has made me decide not to support Guild Wars 2 with gem purchases until they show they have some understanding of how the in game markets work, and show they are not trying to exclude non-cash players from being able to access content.

The reason I am being so critical is that anyone who takes a few seconds to think about it realizes that dumping such a large amount of wealth into a minority of the economy in one burst will raise gem prices by a very large amount. If they were trying to lower precursors there were so many ways to do it without destroying the market integrity. This was the best possible way to justify a large gem price raise, and lower precursor prices. It was also one of the least fair ways to completely redistribute the wealth of the game.

I think it’s one of the responsibilities of a game designer to consider fairness, and rewards when making game choices. I feel like the Lost Shore shows a failure on the part of both reward vs. effort, and fairness. Most of the anger seems to stem from the fact that the event only rewarded people in the right timezones, and of those players rewarded a small minority with lot of gold, while the majority got modest amounts. I hope they don’t just brush all of this anger off as entitled players whining, but rather take a moment and question their own game design choices that caused the anger and frustration.

I hope this was somewhat constructive. I still love the game, and I think Fractals are up there among the best content I have ever experienced in a game, so Lost Shore really was a mixed bag for me.