Guild Wars 2

Iris Ng.9845:

I don’t remember which level, but in a certain tier where tempest can practically one-shot himself with boss’ retaliation, a well played reaper can actually sustain through that shenanigan and deal meaningful damage. A spoj is worth three of me.

There are several bosses where I have to watch out for retal … or I’ll kill myself. :-) [zerker tempest]

I haven’t seen any necro hate recently in PUGs (I mostly play in PUGs; at least at high levels). I just finished all the levels 51-75, I didn’t see people calling for specific classes after 80 (except that druid is popular for heals, and helpful, but generally that’s been someone volunteering).

I’m not sure if necro is optimal for speed clears, but IMO it’s fine — esp if you understand the encounters/mechanics and pay attention.

Well, now there’s one for sale on the trading post, so there’s clearly a way to make them … or get them via drops, not sure which.

I did this several times with a storage guild, running it with at most 2 people. I did not get personal or guild credit when someone else started it, but did get credit the one time when I started it (in that case both of my accounts and the guild got credit). It seems possible that right now you don’t get credit for this particular race unless your guild is the one that started it, and at least 15 people finish (they need not be from your guild). That’s an annoying bug if so.

Aisina.4963:

Toppcats.5306:

1) We need more resonant slivers – perhaps a lot of them – then a double-click will produce them (as was the case with the mordrem and evergreen slivers to make the respective lodestone)
2) As guild scribes advance – the system will ‘see’ that and award players slivers and/or shards with the guild mission completions
3) There are higher level vendors yet to be unlocked – Level 2 Vendor when I looked at the text I took note of the fact that it will sell some random items ‘related to crafting’. A further search did NOT let me see what those random crafting items might be.
4) The overall Guild level might have to reach some arbitrary level prior to a ‘recipe’ simply appearing for the scribe to use to produce the shards (after all – we are seeing other things tied to Guild level – AND I note that crafting for the scribe is limited to the guild hall .
5) There may be a recipe that needs to be unlocked/found at a vendor somewhere within the game that now carries that new recipe.
6) Does the shard need production by some other means (ie: Mystic Forge)

1) I have over 100, can’t click them.
2) I am the highest Scribe can get to at the moment, not recieving higher level item.
3) I will pop this upgrade when I log on. See if I get anything. (Unless someone already has this vendor upgrade and can save me doing it!)
4) Guild is level 20 currently, anyone else higher that could comment on this?
5) Possible, but why not advertise it? Hmmmm.
6) Tried to forge them, they won’t go in.

Just work already kitten it

My scribe is 130, my guild is level 22. I could go to 140, but I don’t see the point. I’m unable to make fragments (double click, discovery, mystic forge — none show anything). More generally, if someone could make resonating fragments, I think they’d be for sale on the trading post. This seems like a bug, I just wish it’d be acknowledged.

SairaJayn.2065:

Ah yes! Same I made a fancy chair and simple table last night and got nothing.

Did you look in the processing queue? I thought that creating it prepared it for processing, but it needs to be processed for the guild to have access to it.

cybermaohi.4310:

hello,

it’s been the 3rd time I’m searching almost everywhere over the last 2 weeks and I can’t believe I’m the only one in this case : I don’t see the green star in order to begin the new story content, i.e. Prologue: Rally to Maguuma – Heart of Thorns

if someone could tell me if this is normal or how to fix this I’d be really grateful

thank you

Several of the quests don’t result in a clear green star — the first one just has text directing you to the right map (silverwastes) … I assumed this is because access to that map isn’t universal. Once you get to silverwastes, you’ll see a green star near the red fort.

Later on, there are some missions where there’s no green star but there is a green circle, and you use a proximity sensor within the circle.

I know there are people who like a strong leader system, but this does work well, IMO.

Several bugs during the last fight:
(1) The first time I used the retry mote, the portal was off the platform, i.e. impossible to get. ah well; try again.
(2) After a number of tries (I had difficulty reliably avoiding dmg by jumping), I found myself alive but downed just after the last phase — where lots of little mobs spawn; the mordremoth voice played a speech for that, then I died. When I retried, I got blighted rylock — but before he could go back onto my team, mordremoth entered the final phase (stunnable, takes more damage, lots of little guys). So I killed mordremoth like that — just stun him then burn him down. But the sequence was wrong; I’m not sure if this was because of multiple retries, or because my last attempt just barely made it into the last part, or because I used the retry mote before everything had been reset.

Freyah.8912:

Underwater Deep Path, 7 times out of 10 there’s someone who did not say they don’t know what to do and pick all the luminous plants so rest of party dies and then get lost and eaten by piranhas. XD

Oh, and the electric staircase before Old Tom in Uncategorized, I’m sooo bad at that bit. Terrible. If I make it up top it’s by pure luck alone. =)

FYI: you can dodge through the electric waves, and also block them. This makes it fairly trivial with guardian (not that I make it every time, but most of the time).

Also, with any class you can rest part way up on the left and wait for another good time.

Cactus Brawler.7415:

Perhaps Anet didn’t intend for some accounts to be flagged with a higher reward rate, but it does seem suspicious how certain accounts have win streaks that push the boundary of credibility.

If you know of a specific account which — going forward — continues to get good drops at unexpectedly high rates, that is solid evidence that there is a problem.

If you know of a specific account which — looking backwards — had an incredible string of luck, that’s solid evidence that RNG is implemented correctly. Random results included surprisingly long strings of good and bad luck.

I also think it’s possible that there’s some bonus in loot tables for accounts without recent activity — but I have not found any solid evidence for this. I tried to test it out with some of my storage accounts, but did not see (looking forward) unexpected strings of good rolls continuing. This also doesn’t disprove it (perhaps I didn’t wait long enough), but it certainly doesn’t support it.

I have had good rolls after going away for a while and coming back, which is why I wanted to test it; and what I hear from people new accounts makes me suspect the same (e.g. 50 blk → 3 nodes, a perm merchant, and 10 black lion tickets) -- but that’s just what was said in chat, and all the data I have is within what you’d expect from a correctly implemented RNG.

I have talked with someone who claimed to have ~7 drops of The Legend (low AP, and after I explained that my staff was Bifrost, the next time I saw him he had that). The streak of luck he described would exceed what I think is plausible from properly implemented RNG, but I only have his word, and for various reasons I’m not sure if he was saying that just to get attention.

I’ve also talked with someone who forges a lot of precursors, and they seems to think that their account is blessed with good luck … but again, I don’t have sufficient data to actually support any assertions based on this.

Good Tofu.9376:

Yep, proc’ed once out of 12. Guess my luck is really ****.

Update: Rolled 5 more individual times, 0 for 5. So 1 out of 18 tries (counting the time it spit out 20 obs shards).

Update: Rolled 6 more individual times, again 0 for 6. So its 1 out of 24 now. GG Anet.

Total count is 141 obs shards spent on 10 mystic clovers.

There is no way that the rate is 33% for clovers. I’ve literally gotten (66%)^23= 0.007071483% chance of this happening.

If the chance is 0.007%, then given the size of the player base we can be certain that many people have had runs like this. It’s unlikely if you choose a specific time to start counting (i.e. it’s unlikely that you’ll get another run like that if you try right now) — but extremely likely that we’ll see runs of luck like that when enough people try RNG.

Welcome to a world controlled by RNG: if it’s correctly implemented (and fair), it produces results that look unfair because random results include strings of good and bad outcomes like this.

Wanze.8410:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

mtpelion.4562:

Wanze.8410:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Anti-competitive behavior would be doing something that prevents others from entering the market at all or results in a long-term manipulation of prices. Neither of these things can happen as long as unidentified dyes continue to drop and/or people throw dyes at Zommy to see what he gives back.

Dont forget crafting. It hasnt been profitable for the longest time but a couple of weeks back, I made a test run and I didnt lose any gold, while crafting color specific unidentified dyes. The profit wasnt great, considering you also have to pay karma but i think its the reason, why some prices stopped spiking.

I wouldnt try it now, though, as prices for dyes have dropped across the board.

I have a spreadsheet that checks unidentified dye crafting profitability which I use every day when I log in. The color that is profitable changes often, but there is usually almost always one that is profitable.

Shhhh!

The main thing is there isn’t much demand for spectrum-specific unidentified dyes, so the profitability lasts only a few days (or hours). There are a number of other niches that are consistently profitable in the same cyclic way and for the same reasons: the demand is low so folks can’t craft arbitrarily large amounts of the item(s) and still profit, which means the competition remains low.

What I, and I guess mtp, mean is to open crafted unidentified dyes and sell the dyes you get for a profit.
But youre right, sometimes its cheaper to buy an unidentified colored dye than crafting it yourself, thats what i did, anyways.

When the wardrobe changes went live, i made a spreadsheet to determine the real value of unidentified dyes, by calculating the average value of fine, masterwork and rare dyes. At that time, the real value was around 8-12s, while it was traded on the tp for 15-20s, iirc.

Its way easier to calculate for the crafted unidentified dyes, as their loot tables are significantly smaller.

I remember this. At the time, I bought large quantities of identified dyes based on the same analysis (granted, mine was less precise). I wound up with more than 100k identified dyes — mostly blue (stacks 54c, with some more stacks at lower prices down through 14c depending on the dye), but also lots of greens (sets of 100 @1s) and some golds (10s). In hindsight, I made the best profit on the greens, which I dumped over a long period. Some of my sell orders are still open, but I’ve sold most of those identified dyes now. I also had some unid’ed dyes, but only 8 stacks or so.

My sell orders might have looked like manipulation.

I appreciate the value flippers provide in giving liquidity, but it’s fairly easy to avoid them if you’re not trading to make money: split the buy/sell spread in half, or even just go over the current high buy order by 10%. They’ll leave you alone, since it’s cheaper to let a few individuals purchase that way than chase full control over all supply. (I can’t get myself to flip because it’s too labor intensive — it’s exactly the kind of labor where software makes sense, but that’s against the ToS, so I’ll leave it to others to do so. <shrug>)

Gimli.9461:

omg what a ripoff. I got 25 keys, out of that I got 3 scraps.
Seriously Anet? so basically the cost of 1 skin on that weapon merchant is 10k gems or something?
Stop giving me crap when I open chest and give me kitten I want. Or sell me kitten I want on gemstore. This RNG just made sure I’ll never again buy a single durping black lion key on your store.

Black lion chests are pure RNG (well, occasionally there are guaranteed drops, but not right now AFAIK, and generally they’re not valuable because they’re guaranteed) — you might get valuable drops, but mostly you’ll get boosts or other things which may or may not be valuable to you. If they’re not, you’ll do a lot better selling gems and buying the thing you want, rather than gambling for it with RNG.

It’s been like that the whole time the game has been around, and the comments apply to other RNG boxes (like exclusive dyes)… because some people like gambling, the price of buying the RNG box may be slightly higher than the average return. (Sort of like the lottery. :-)

IEximius.9204:

Strill.2591:

IEximius.9204:

Strill.2591:

The 1 day crafting limit means that Bolts of Damask are profitable to produce. If you remove it, you remove any potential benefit from being a max-level crafter.

hardly profitable tbh, barely.

Then you obviously haven’t done much research. I’m making oodles of money from crafting.

http://www.gw2spidy.com/recipe/7309

by “oodles” you mean 21s per day off each damask? maybe a bit more if you had to grind for all the mats yourself? lmao, you have no idea.

Yes, I also make money from Damask. I don’t think it compares well to speculation in terms of time/reward, and I don’t need anything so I’m not doing it so much now, but yes you can make a decent profit. (When I was doing this, it was with multiple accounts.)

First — find a cheaper way to acquire silk (hint: many of the people selling it are making a profit doing so). You can do the same for the other materials, though those are a bit harder — but at least you can buy at offer rather than at ask (which is why gw2spidy uses for calculations, so you can do better than those numbers). Sometimes you should time how you sell materials, sometimes you should consider alternate strategies:

http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/46741

Zahld.4956:

why not just double bag sizes? things are always growing exponentially.

I’m sure being too pedantic, but this is not exponential growth (… as a former mathematician it’s painful to see the word misused).

This looks like linear growth (each release offers a roughly constant number of new items) with a relatively low coefficient.

(Think of it this way: if each new release had 20% more items and you started with 1000 items, then in 100 releases (every 2 weeks, that’d take 4 years) you’d have 82 billion items. Exponential growth is fast.)

I also wish for more space, but the issue for me is clearly wanting to keep too much; at some point, it’s worth deciding that throwing things away (or selling) is better than keeping on the off chance that it’ll be useful at some point — it won’t be useful or valuable enough on average to justify the time.

The Night Fox.6018:

linuxotaku.4731:

Didn’t accepting the item unlock the skin on your account? You won’t get the same stats, but you should at least be able to get the skin via transmutation.

Unfortunately, no. The ‘skin’ is the same as the default so it is automatically unlocked. The item though is the one with the particle effect. If I cant equip the item/move it, then it doesn’t work.

Wardrobe is useless.

You could file a request to support — sometimes they’re willing to send a replacement item (not always, but it’s a lot less effort than going through the reward track again).

Didn’t accepting the item unlock the skin on your account? You won’t get the same stats, but you should at least be able to get the skin via transmutation.

Behellagh.1468:

A small increase doesn’t bother me when buying. A small increase with a large order does bother me when I’m buying only a few of an item. And the reason for that is velocity. There is a relative volume of items sold to high bidders on the TP. Only a few items in front of me is no concern if I know, through experience, that within an hour or two my buy order will be filled. The trick is putting in the order well before you need those items.

As for your “can’t be the only one”, there has been numerous threads discussing minimum changes in over and under cutting but while being coppered is a problem for an individual for the market at large it encourages competition and fairer prices to buyers and sellers.

I am unconvinced that 1c under/overbids are really beneficial to the market, compared with minimum increments that are somehow fractional — and at least once, John Smith indicated a willingness to consider changing this (asking what it would look like).

But I can’t see a simple way to change this which would not have substantial downsides — enough to leave me unconvinced that there’s a good way to change it as things stand. The system works, there are no major problems. I thought I could find better examples of markets failing to reach equilibrium, but — despite the money that can be made by flipping — I’m no longer convinced that bid increments would help, since you can also find similar inefficiency for items in the 1-4s range (where 1c is 0.25-1%), and there are enough participants who are willing to move substantially when they think the current price is not the equilibrium price.

Chalky.8540:

…
If the above is true, TP botting should be fairly simple for them to detect (all the people who were sending old-style TP requests after the update!). Botting is what people should focus on, humans undercutting by 1 copper is not a problem and it’s better that they do that than cause the price to crash by undercutting by 10s every single time.

I disagree that undercutting by larger increments (e.g. 10s on items which are >= 10g) would cause the market to crash — if you believe (as I do) that the equilibrium is largely set by supply and demand, then a larger bid increment would mean faster convergence to equilibrium … and would more often result in sellers batching together (i.e. sellers being willing to wait in line of the price has reached equilibrium — with 1c increments, there’s no incentive to wait in line for moderate ticket items even if you think the price is at equilibrium).

But as I said, I’m unconvinced that it’s possible to make a substantial improvement which doesn’t also suck in terms of UI or complexity.

Eight Samurai.6840:

Yeah our guild organizes daily for tequatl many of us are approximately 100 or so kills for teq and I think only 1 or 2 in the guild have claimed to have gotten his hoard chest. On a side note, we have plenty of spoons!

There is a selection bias at work (would you still be doing it after 100 runs if you’d gotten the drops you want?) — though I feel your pain. I started doing Teq again recently when I found myself randomly on a good map, and discovered that it is reasonably doable without camping on the map for 30m; and (other than people who lay on the ground dead) it’s fun, even on maps which fail.

On one of my first runs (perhaps my first run since I finished the achievements long ago), I got a hoard chest.

I’ve been doing it daily since (occasionally on multiple accounts), but haven’t gotten another chest. OTOH … I might not still be doing it if I hadn’t gotten one hoard drop — or if I wasn’t trying to get a matched set of weapons.

JCROY.5730:

Korsbaek.9803:

VidGhost.3215:

Your wrong!

Anet has stated that you have as much chance of getting a precursor weapon on your first try on the mystic forge ( or open world L80 exotic drop ) as you do on your 10,000th try! .. its the same odds every time it is a lottery in every sense

So someone could play GW2 for 10 years every day and still not get a Precursor. Its unlikely but 100% possible and there in lies the problem.

The only 100% way is buying it on the TP

nope im not wrong each has the same chance yes but if you do enough with that chance then your stacit chance is higher its simple math example if you do it 10% chances looking before you done it you will have more then 10% chance to get someting you need;)
and i said that the said got so close to 0% chance for it to not get a precourcer but i never said it where 0% only stupiedly close

Yes..you are wrong..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy

You can parse that to determine that the original was incorrect? I’m not sure what the poster was claiming.

I would say that if you decide you’re going to keep going until you get the precursor you want (i.e. throwing more rares/exotics at it), the likelihood that you will fail to get the precursor you want approaches zero as your horizon (how much you’re willing to spend — in the future, not in the past) approaches infinity.

In practical terms, if the rate is 0.16%, then if you’re willing to do 100 (== ~300 rares, ignoring exotic outputs) tries, then you have about an 15% chance of at least one success (the converse of 0.9984 ^ 100). If you’re willing to do 1000 tries (== 3000 rares), then you have about an 80% chance of success. If you’re willing to do 10,000 tries (== 30,000 rares), then the chance you will not get a precursor in at least one of them is 1.11e-7 — your chances are on the order of 9,000,000:1. OTOH, given the number of people playing GW2, if everyone were to try this there might well be a person who winds up with that set of unlucky rolls.

If we expand again to 100,000 tries, then the chance of no precursors is 2.8e-70 … so vanishingly small that it is exceedingly unlikely to happen while we watch. Of course, ignoring the exotics (which you could sell back), that would cost on the order of 180k gold … so it’s also prohibitively expensive.

Enko.6123:

The main issue is that a lot of people bought them at prices that were artificially inflated because Anet announced it would only be available for two weeks. If they had instead announced that it was becoming a permanent part of the loot table much like how the other three permanent contracts are, there wouldn’t be an issue. As I believed that it was only available for a limited time, I had even bought gems specifically to exchange for gold to buy it as the expectation was that the price was going to jump again once it was off the loot tables. If I had known previously that it would be available permanently, I would have just made the gold the normal way from playing and from the TP and bought it when I had the available gold. It almost feels like it was a bait and switch of a limited item to get people to buy gems to trade for gold to be able to get one.

As anyone in my guild could tell you, I have spent way too much money on this game as I do buy a lot of gem cards to buy stuff off the gem store. I keep the gem store and in game economies separate except in this one case where I believed that the Permanent Hair Stylist would be gone after two weeks so traded gems for gold to ensure I could get one in that time period.

I think what you’ve described others doing — buying things to horde and resell at a profit — is not something which supports a healthy economy or a positive experience for new players. In economic terms, the price is not being determined by use value, but rather by speculation — in this situation, I think ANet is probably doing the right thing in providing additional supply. You got the item you wanted at a price you were willing to pay — it’s not clear you experienced much harm, other than knowing that you could have got a better deal by waiting.

I’ve occasionally lost out through changes in the market (e.g. with the battle for LA, they reintroduced some drops which I’d been keeping in the hopes of selling at a profit) … but I have to say I think that was a positive experience for more players than the ones hurt.

My view may be tainted by posts like this one, though:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/Permanent-Hairstyle-Contract/first#post4264536

… where it certainly sounds like some people were willing to try to manipulate the market. I think you’re basically SOL if you attempt to manipulate the market, and ANet decides the result isn’t what they want. They can always change the market.

Rialen.1524:

linuxotaku.4731:

I have had 4 precursors drop for me (1 in the past week — 3 from the MF and one from fractals); I sold one since it was a second copy. I’ve also bought one precursor from the TP. The precursor system sucks — “fair” RNG produces results which appear manifestly unfair in terms of results. I think my luck with RNG is approximately what you’d expect.

Congratulations, you are one of the lucky ‘Blessed by Fate’, and there is nothing wrong with that. It happens, which is great, seriously. I am simply presenting a realistic view on the matter.

I didn’t get lucky with the mystic forge — I threw in many thousands of rares and many hundreds of exotics; I was perfectly willing to throw gold at it as long as it took. And my luck there is approximately what you’d expect — it cost about a little more to get my precursors that way than it would have getting them via the trading post (which is within the normal variance for RNG).

Rialen.1524:

People are arguing that they deserve a precursor in this thread because they played the lottery and lost, but they still deserve something for the input. They don’t. People are arguing there isn’t a guaranteed way to get a precursor. There is. I’m posting a response to those people, and at the same time giving a rational perspective on the implemented high end system of this game. I in no way am saying the current system is fun, effective, or pragmatic. In my honest opinion, it’s absolutely terrible. I agree that the entire system needs an overhaul, and that it does need to be enjoyable. That said, we have to take what it is at face value and go from there (that being my last post) for the time being.

It sounds like we agree that the current system is a horrible implementation. (I know at least some of the reasons for it — it’s an item sink for rares & exotics; positive surprises do generate a strong psychological effect and encourage people to be evangelists or — like me — to make the less popular legendary whose precursor dropped; and it rate limits legendary creation by type. But that’s different from saying that I like the system.)

The trading post is a sure way to get a precursor for some players, but it only works if there are people playing at the non-guaranteed ways of getting precursors — the system works only because there are people throwing in rare and exotic greatswords in the hopes of getting a dusk or a dawn.

I included my own experience to point out that I’ve gotten precursors all 3 ways (drop, MF, TP) — and I still dislike the system.

Rialen.1524:

I’m just going to write this briefly since this thread got dredged up. There is a set precursor recipe. It’s extremely basic, here goes:
.
.
1000~1400 gold + 1 Trading Post interaction = 1 precursor of your choice
.
.
There it is folks, you have a 100% precursor rate with that recipe. Aside from being a hint snide, it’s entirely true, and entirely possible. All this recipe requires of a player is work.

You must work to obtain what you desire, people need to instill this in their views. There are people who are lucky, which is great, but expecting to be one is a fool’s mistake. You are entitled to nothing. Give up on the idea that you’re going to be the luckiest person in the world of Tyria. Be realistic, a precursor is not going to drop for you, a dusk won’t just fall into your lap from Zomoros. If you are fortunate enough to be Blessed by Fate and RNG gives you a precursor wrapped up with a bow, congratulations, go skip home. More often that will not happen, and in that case you have lost nothing by maintaining a realistic look at things, and will eventually receive your well deserved precursor through work. Welcome to harsh reality folks, you get out what you put in, nothing more is guaranteed. No one has the right to complain about any mystic forging follies, you simply rolled the dice (that are evidently stacked against you) and lost. Would you have put that capital together with some amount of work, you would have had an assured return on your input.

I have had 4 precursors drop for me (1 in the past week — 3 from the MF and one from fractals); I sold one since it was a second copy. I’ve also bought one precursor from the TP. The precursor system sucks — “fair” RNG produces results which appear manifestly unfair in terms of results. I think my luck with RNG is approximately what you’d expect.

I have no problem with work, nor — for that matter — with converting cash to gems to gold (I have a job … it should be easy to do the math about time/reward). But the details matter, and saying that it requires “work” to get a precursor doesn’t necessarily mean that the work required is well designed or fun to do. (And to be clear — this is a game; even long term goals should be designed in such a way that they’re fun … not easy, but fun.)

I prefer the current system — it doesn’t try to force you to grind out skins in a short time because it’ll be too late afterwards. Dry Top seems like a decent example of good design.

You may want exclusive skins, but the flip side of that is that people who want the same skin either can’t get it, or have to pay a speculator to store it. Even though I’m often one of those speculators, I fail to see how this is actually good for the game as a whole — I can see how it was good for you if you had lots of time during the event with skins you want. But that’s different from saying that it’s better for most players.

Skady.5916:

Trice.4598:

About Dry Top, seller actually enjoy the difficulty of solo’ing path rather than spamming 1 on guardian with staff, anyway selling is dying because of people like you.

Hey man, I never grieved anyone selling Arah. Are you sure you wanna put a blame on me? Any proof that i grieved somebody?

If you guys enjoying difficulty and challenge so much – how about u let other people join your group and maybe learn something from you? Instead you just scamming community and getting a feeling of a false accomplishment

This is a odd accusation — check out the stickied posts to find examples of people happy to teach how to run these paths (solo or in a group). Occasionally I’ve purchased dungeon runs (not for DM — I got that with PUGs and guildies — but for tokens when I’m lazy). The folks I’ve seen selling have been quite willing to give pointers and advice if you’re trying to learn the same.

Most people buying aren’t — at the time that they’re buying the run — interested in practicing solo or duo runs. And many of the people selling also occasionally run with PUGs, given them a chance to learn.

Mystic.5934:

The crafting UI upgrade has received near-universal applause (there are a few bugs, but no complaints).
The TP, on the other hand, has received near-universal complaining (with some people being OK with it). We don’t just complain to complain, we complain when something sucks (and we applaud when something is awesome). Eventually we run out of energy and stop complaining (it’s tiring being mad), but that doesn’t make it suck any less, that just means we’ve given up caring.

Some parts seem better; some parts seem worse. I’m waiting a little while to see if I really mind the parts that seem worse; sometimes change aversion blinds you to when a change is actually a good thing. I’m not sure that’s the case for the new TP, but I’d advise withholding judgment for a little while.

On a lark, I tried with a fine salvage kit, and I noticed that in savlaging Worn Rag (vender price 10c), I got much better results from Fine salvage kit than the copper-fed salvage-o-matic (sample size of 50-100). I did again, the second time with more (200) and keeping track:

Editing this in place:

Fine Salvage Kit: 200 → 302 wool, 67 jute
Salvage-o-matic: 200 → 251 wool, 102 jute

Journeyman Salvage Kit: 200 → 264 wool, 98 jute
Fine Salvage Kit (#2): 200 → 268 wool, 101 jute

I’m still waiting on my buy orders, but it does look like my sample size wasn’t large enough; last two sets of 200 (on a second account, but still) look roughly as you’d expect for a slight improvement over basic kits.

Wanze.8410:

With the release of the new Silver Fed Salvage O Matic in the gem store today, can you elaborate a bit on how the chance to salvage rarer materials of the salvage kits works and gets applied to? I assume that it applies to the chance to get a higher tier common mat (ori instead of mithril when salvaging a lvl 80 sword) but after some research i have done, those chances are nowhere near the rates advertised in the tooltips. So i think its either bugged or salvageable items also have an internal chance to salvage rarer mats to which the chance of the salvage kit itself gets applied to.
In my test i salvaged 1000 hard leather straps with each salvage kit except BLSK, here are my results for getting Hard Leather instead of Thick Leather (adverticed chances to salvage rarer mats in braces):

crude = 10.5% (0%)
salvage-o-matic = 12.5% (10%)
basic = 13% (10%)
fine = 12.3% (15%)
journeyman = 15.1% (20%)
master = 15.1% (25%)
mystic = 17.8% (25%)

My detailed research results can be found in this topic over at the crafting forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/Salvage-Rates-results-on-rarity-of-Kit/first

I’d also like clarification; thanks for the detailed data. I think I see one item with better results from Fine vs. Salvage-o-matic (sample size is still smallish though — 200 each), but I’ll post in that thread.

Sauzo.6821:

linuxotaku.4731:

aelfwe.4239:

@protoavis
…
3) you tell the truth: you have 25k gold and you are here complaining for precursor price. This would be the wost and saddest option. You are basically trolling people because you told you made 25k golds flipping tp, that basically means you are one of the main reason precursor price is high BUT regardless this you are here complaining about precursor price. Its like a warlord who sell weapons complaining of war.

Chose your option

There are plenty of ways to make money trading which don’t contribute to high precursor prices. Precursor prices are determined by liquidity and the supply/demand curve, AFAICT.

But I think he/she is referring to is that most of the people who have large amounts of cash made a good chunk flipping the TP or still do. Those people can afford to throw up huge buy out offers over everyone else thus driving up the prices, not necessarily on precursors but smaller stuff that they can throw large buyouts for large amounts and buy out all the lower amounts for sale, thus kind of setting a higher prices. Of course there are those that didn’t play the TP and have large amounts of cash but those people generally aren’t gonna spend it since they didn’t get that much gold from spending it unwisely. A loosely based example is the guy who plays the TP all day making 100g a day and the guy who makes 10g a day doing other stuff. After a week, that guy who makes 100g a day is gonna be able to blow more gold on anything while the 10g a day guy isn’t gonna have the cash to really throw around. Loose example like I said but you get the general idea.

If you mean items like the permanent hairstylist contract — then I agree that people who have a lot of cash determine the price.

But for most items, including precursors, I don’t think there’s any good evidence that those with a lot of money materially affect the market price — as others have pointed out more eloquently than I can, when liquidity constrained the price, flipping precursors was profitable; but that’s no longer the case, as they were range bound with a range of less than 15% for most of the past 1.5 years (there was a demand shock with the wardrobe change — but the shape of most markets since that make me think that prices are driven by supply and demand, not the purchasing habits of people who’ve accumulated a lot of gold).

aelfwe.4239:

@protoavis
…
3) you tell the truth: you have 25k gold and you are here complaining for precursor price. This would be the wost and saddest option. You are basically trolling people because you told you made 25k golds flipping tp, that basically means you are one of the main reason precursor price is high BUT regardless this you are here complaining about precursor price. Its like a warlord who sell weapons complaining of war.

Chose your option

There are plenty of ways to make money trading which don’t contribute to high precursor prices. Precursor prices are determined by liquidity and the supply/demand curve, AFAICT.

Svetli.4276:

this is not the stock market
i hope you buy a ton of mats then have to sell them on super low price !

Basically, you’re hoping that people who speculate will get unlucky — that they’ll expect the price is going up (because supply is less than demand), when the opposite happens. I guess I can understand a desire for schadenfreude — but be aware that speculators don’t ever need to sell the items they buy; and if they never sell, this helps maintain a stable price for sellers.

OTOH, when the price goes up … the speculators/flippers who correctly guess where the market is going help provide supply later on — partially by informing others of what items will be valuable.

A trivial example: Silver Doubloons. They’re a pain to get if you’re level 80 — and you need 250 for one of the legendaries. Some people noticed this, and bid up prices … but prices can only go so high before other people find a way to provide supply (parking 21-34 level chars on jumping puzzles, or mystic forge on T2 universal upgrades & gemstones) — which helps buyers who come along later and actually want to buy them. Prices are flat or down over the past 10-11 months because of this effect.

Based on game theory and economic analysis, it seems pretty obvious that TP participants have a net positive effect … I say that as someone who is somewhat left of center IRL — in this case, people with money from playing the market are providing a service, since you can’t make money unless you find an inefficiency or an unsatisfied demand, and you make money by reducing the inefficiency or satisfying that demand.

I think that service might be better provided by bots (many TP strategies are way too time-intensive for my taste — or I just don’t enjoy that part of it) … but given the design of the market, having more participants (including “flippers”) is good, even for you.

Sauzo.6821:

Obtena.7952:

The number of ways to get things easily isn’t a factor on the demand for legendaries once precursor crafting is implemented.

Perhaps this has been brought up but whatever the mechanics of the crafting, the ‘cost’ to craft will likely be inline with the cost of current precursors. Anet is still going to want people to work a similar amount to make legendaries.

OMG someone who understands what I have been trying to say in I don’t know how many posts!!! Anet is not going to make some easy and cheap way to get a precursor after 2 years of letting precursors climb to such a high price tag. Can you imagine the forums if they made precursor cost like 100g to make? The whole freakin economy would explode. You would have 2g ectos and 3g T6 mats. You would have all the precursors on the TP being pulled and overall, just chaos. There is no way Anet would want to deal with the repercussions from something like that. If they implement crafting, it will be at least 500g in my opinion and probably more.

Your numbers don’t make sense to me. Since the precursor is at most 1/2 – 1/3 of the cost (and often less), a spike in other materials shouldn’t (at least in a rational world) be more than 2x if precursors suddenly became 100g. And there’s reason to believe that there would be more ectos (since rares wouldn’t be thrown into the forge in such numbers) and more T5 materials for promotion to T6 (since fewer would be used for rares for precursor forging via MF gambling) …

Of course, precursor forging for 100g might well involve some of those materials; the way the markets are connected is certainly complicated.

Obtena.7952:

I think the main point is that if it was easy to get a precursor, no one would be able to afford the other mats needed to craft a legendary because so many people would be in the market trying to make one. It’s a zero sum game. SOME aspect of the legendary making process has to be ‘hard’. It will simply shift from precursor to mats … and that’s a worse situation than we have now. Actually, the current situation is the best one:

If you use T5/T6 mats as your example — part of why they’re expensive is precisely that they’re burned up in huge quantities in gambling for precursors. The reason legendaries and precursors went up in price is primarily that there value increased because the legendary is now a skin unlock rather than a weapon you can use on a single character — I certainly agree with that.

But saying that T5 material prices would spike ignores the fact that — if precursor crafting took over from the current mechanism, then we’d suddenly have a flood of these materials and prices would probably fall.

It takes on the order of 14k T5 mats to make then 2000 T6 mats via mystic forge promotion … 14k T5 mats would give fewer than 1000 rare inscriptions — I think this is a little less than the average expected cost of making a single precursor via mystic forge gambling. It’s more complicated than this — because not all rares used in the MF are forged, but conversely lots of T6 aren’t from T5 promotion … but my point is that unless legendary creation nearly doubled, the net demand for T5 materials might decrease … which would cause the price to fall. (There are other limiting factors — karma and gifts of exploration at the least.)

The details of how precursor crafting is implemented will determine what the effects are — it’s absolutely possible that it would cause demand shocks in some markets, and it might or might not be a net improvement (depending on the details). But I think the current system is bad enough that it’s worth trying to improve it.

Obtena.7952:

Precursor is hard because it’s not an ingredient for any other crafting recipe except Legendary. Ascended is a substitute for a Legendary. Frankly, I don’t see any way this could change without having a massive negative impact to the game. Therefore, even if precursor crafting, precursor will still be very hard to get.

I still think they should implement precursor crafting, but the process will be the culmination of everything that is ‘bad’ about crafting; time gates, cost, complexity, content farming for non-purchasable items. It’s going to make MF look good in comparison.

Well, I’ve gone the MF route, and it made me really unhappy with the game (despite successes, and luck which wasn’t great but was probably not too far from the expected average). I kind of enjoy complex crafting processes like those for ascended and LS items; I might be in the minority there, but it sounds like there will still be an alternative for people who don’t want to do this (buying the pre via the TP).

Sauzo.6821:

@ Protoavis
And again, there is another way to get a precursor which doesn’t rely on others, use the MF. My question is why do you keep comparing precursors to T5 and T6 mats? They are 2 completely different things.

The relationship between T5 mats and precursors is that you use T5 mats to craft rare weapons which you then throw into the MF to try to get a precursor. I don’t have JS’s data, but I do think that this use of T5 mats is the main sink, and without that as a sink T5 mats would become much cheaper (unless some other sink replaced the current sink).

Sauzo.6821:

Oh and you do realize that the biggest reason precursors went up in price was because of the wardrobe feature and changing them to acct bound vs soulbound right. You can now make a legendary and slap that skin or weapon onto any character. That is the reason behind why precursors doubled. Your reasoning of T5 and T6 and MF and exos might have precursors slightly but not enough that would break the bank.

I thought Protoavis’ point was clearly that the increase in precursor prices caused T5 prices to increase.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Protoavis.9107:

You are aware that the t5 and t6 price hike of recent directly relates to the MF change (increasing the variance of results to include sub lvl 80 exotics, increasing the cost of every MF since the few exotics returned now offset the initial cost far less) which also resulted in the doubling on precursor prices right? (ie the minimal chance of the precursor combined with the now significantly reduced potential returns caused by the MF change…think about that for awhile and what would happen if flushing mats down the toilet for a miniscule chance of a precursor wasn’t pretty much the required method for generating precursors…) There’s a bigger picture you’ve not bothered to look at. At current estimates by folk who do mass MF…each precursor is requiring many thousands of t5 mats rather than the stack or two you seem scared of……

I’m not scared….I’m incensed at your attitude that wrecking the T5 and T6 market FURTHER is justified if you can get another method to obtain a Precursor.

Again….utter contempt.

Your contempt sounds pretty much unjustified, since there are lots of ways to implement this, some of which would not create any spike in material costs.

And even if there was a spike or an increase in equilibrium price, it would not be obviously bad for the average player (who both receives and uses T5s and T6s — being able to sell your drops for a higher price is a benefit for those who don’t want them).

Xli.7629:

its funny seeing all these people crying about not getting legendaries.

ledgendary weapons are suppose to be the best weapons u can get in this game and yes it should be very rare and hard to get.

the best weapons should always require both hard work and luck to obtain. if u dont have luck oh guess what? work harder for another 1k gold to buy a precursor. big deal.

giving out easy obtainable precursor will make everybody to have a legendary and whats the point having it if its so common that everybody standing next to u carrying the same weapon as u have?

if that happens y do u have those rarity grade in game when the best weapons become so common?

so NO to easy way to get precursors, work harder or use other weapons.

The problem isn’t that precursors are hard to get — it’s that they’re gated by an RNG approach which is guaranteed to produce results which appear manifestly unfair (there will be both people who have amazing strings of good and bad luck — assuming the RNG is properly implemented). Most people would be fine with a difficult method of acquiring precursors … just not one which seems based on grinding and RNG. (Even if you buy everything on the TP, unless you enjoy the feeling of gambling, throwing things into the MF is really boring. Especially if you do it at a large scale.)

I’ve gotten 2 precursors through the MF, 1 from a chest, and 1 which I purchased from TP. I hate the current system for precursors; I can understand why it’s hard to change, but that’s different from saying that it’s a good design.

Sauzo.6821:

@Protoavis
Actually you can compare T6 mats to a precursor. On average you can put a buy order for a precursor for 1000g more or less and get one. 250 of all 8 T6 mats on an average cost of 50s each(some more like bloods and some less like totems) and it would cost you 1000g. The only difference is that for the precursor, you need to put all that money up front at one time. With the T6 mats, you can buy a few here and there.

As for promoting them, it’s not really worth it anymore since pretty much everyone who wanted to flip some cash would buy tons of T5 mats for cheap and promote them so now, you might save a few silver here and there but overall, not much. That’s what I did with lodestones when I made Incinerator, Meteorlogicus and Sunrise. I just bought cores and promoted them. At the start it was a good savings but near the end, I think I figured out I was saving around 5-10 silver each.

If you’re promoting, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0As-wCpIszrT9dFB3YjVUVFhfenlDUUpXTVBIdm5qWmc&usp=sharing#gid=12 is useful (Or search: egg baron skill points to gold).

With some materials, you’ll save money (right now, blood, bone, and dust — more than the spreadsheet indicates, since you don’t pay the 15% listing fee which it includes to sell the resulting T6 mat). The rest are not worth it (probably because the T5 mats are used by some of the current time-gated crafting for the LS backpiece).

If you’re looking to minimize cost and not looking into alternate ways to turn skill points into gold, then promotion is very helpful; it’s still useful for most of the lodestone promotions (right now all except glacial, crystal, and putrid) … though again, there may be other ways of changing skill points to gold which give more gold.

Lady Deedra.3126:

I don’t flip at all. I have forged all mine. However if I wanted to, I could say buy all of item X, then list enough 1 copper increments to cover enough of the buy it now as I sit patiently in front of my computer waiting for items to be picked up as they become purchased. Constantly removing buy orders and outbidding myself and other who do the same. This doesn’t take into account how much is being forged, added, found, yadda yadda. What it could do is buy everything that people are willing to sell to the player base via TP. Is it perfect, no. Would it control the TP. No, its not possible. Reading too much into what I said earlier. As far as controlling the TP, that’s really not possible. Should’ve elaborated on what I posted earlier. manipulating is more like it. Probably a better choice of words. Furthermore, I could gather a group of friends to do the same thing. As we all sit patiently waiting for the items to pour in. Grinning the whole time for my 1 copper profit as we relist them. No thanks. I don’t TP flip for the simple reason that I don’t care about the TP. TP flipping seems more like a job then anything I care to log on to do.

The basic problem with this is that neither supply nor demand are inelastic. You can make sure that you always have the high buy offer, but if you manage to push the trading range up, you’ll decrease demand and increase supply — meaning that you’ll need to accumulate the excess items. If the particular precursor market has a spread of less than 15%, you’re also losing money on each transaction … however much you have, you’ll run out if you use it this way.

The only situation in which this is profitable is when you’re anticipating where the market is going — if supply is less than demand, then the market is going up and by anticipating it (buying up supply and holding it) you can make money. But this only works when supply and demand are actually out of balance. Once they’re in balance, basic economics means you’ll lose money each day you attempt to control the trading range — a few people will make panic buys, but most are going to be willing to wait it out, while you give your money to all the other people who get precursor drops.

Behellagh.1468:

linuxotaku.4731:

Behellagh.1468:

John Smith.4610:

juno.1840:

QUESTIONS

1. What gold threshold would you use to classify a GW2 player as “rich” (yeah I know this is subjective, but let’s use the RL equivalent of multi-millionaires — my guess would be 6000g-ish, enough to buy a couple legendaries off the TP)

2. Roughly what percentage of the GW2 player population would fall into this “rich” category (probably tough since “smart” players would have their wealth in inflation-proof investments instead of cash in the vault — an educated percentage based upon your view of the data would be more than satisfactory)

3. How does this category of players effect the economy? (maybe a good/bad/neutral type of classification with a brief reason or two as to why)

Thanks!

These are value statements, and I don’t feel comfortable making value statements.

Okay. How much gold in bank would one need to have to be in the top 20% of active players? Top 10%?

I’m not sure that gold in the bank is meaningful either. I have 2 legendaries (I gave away the third that I made), lots of expensive skins/items (e.g. infinite light, anomaly, 4 sets of ascended armor, etc), and tradeable goods worth somewhere between 2k and 6k gold (I’m not sure exactly how much it would work out to be if I tried to sell everything, and it would depend on whether I decided to use or keep items like recipe: chaos of lyssa). But I often have only a few hundred gold in the bank at any given time … sometimes less than 100g.

I’ve changed cash into gold via gems often enough (better use of time than farming/grinding), but a lot of this is from playing or speculating (buying when prices seem too low, waiting to see if my guess was correct).

To the player looking to craft a legendary and thinks the precursor prices are outrageous is looking at the gold in his bank, not their net worth in items and mats. They may be saving those mats for a legendary or ascended so liquidating those is out of the question.

If your primary goal is a legendary, I think it’s reasonable that you be willing to liquidate anything not related to that legendary before asserting that you can’t afford the precursor. You might be surprised by how much you can get selling things … this is how GW2’s loot system is designed: it’s sometimes hard to farm for just the thing you want, but if you play normally you’ll get loot that someone wants and which you can sell on the trading post. If you don’t take advantage of the tools provided by game mechanics, then yes — it will be harder.

My rough estimate wouldn’t be changed much by excluding T6 mats and item required for legendaries/exotic skins I’m interested in (ghost peppers, various lodestones, silver doubloons, etc) — the sorts of things I was thinking about:

• black lion chest skins I haven’t decided if I want to use or sell
• stacks of identified (and a few stacks of unidentified) dyes; a handful of exclusive dyes
• BotFW back items I might still want
• event-specific recipe and item drops (power knight cores, toxic recipes, etc)
• stacks and stacks of materials I’m holding in case ascended jeweler ever becomes a thing

Behellagh.1468:

It’s always been my contention that the price of precursors track with those who can afford it “out of the pocket” without first liquidating their assets, the top X%. The line that defines that X% is always moving, always increasing and precursors are tracking along with it. And legendary prices track with precursor prices.

This is an assertion without data, and I’ve known people who saved up money (including one who did lots of CoF P1 runs to purchase Dusk) … I think supply and demand is a much better explanation than impulse purchases by people who have that much money saved up.

The only precursor that I purchased off the TP (Howl), I did after liquidating much of my storage — not so much for the precursor as for all the other things involved in crafting the Howler. Of course, this is anecdotal … but I’m not sure where you’d come up with this argument, as it doesn’t make sense — those with lots of money in their bank:

(1) didn’t get there by spending it on impulse, so they’re not buying precursors just because the money is sitting in their bank
(2) represent a smaller and smaller precentage of the market if you think the % cut-off is increasing
(3) will eventually have most of the skins they want
(4) as others have pointed out, increasing the prices for precursors makes it profitable to gamble in the mystic forge for them — providing supply; you don’t make money by buying and relisting (i.e. trying to increase the price) unless demand is inelastic (doesn’t appear to be true) or remains above supply (in that case you’re just anticipating where the market was going anyway)

laokoko.7403:

I don’t want to argue about inflation. But if you don’t think Anet purposely makes the game more tolerable at the start, and gradually make it more grindy so they can boost sales, I think you are a fool.

I would never assert that the game isn’t grindy; and you can avoid most of the grind by paying money. However, the part of their philosophy that I like is that most of the grind (if you ignore the difference between exotic and ascended gear … which matters, but you can play everything in exotic gear still) is that the grind is for cosmetic items. I’m pretty OK with the idea that you’d have to grind a while, or pay money, to get pretty gear.

laokoko.7403:

That is what every gem shop game do. At the beginning they just try to get people hook to the game. When people are hook, they make adjustment so more people are willing to spend real money. Obviously going too far might backfire, since they’ll loss too many players.

I think you’re misunderstanding part of the psychology of why people spend money — consider the threads with people proudly posting that they’ve never spent money on the gem shop. (Some) people with disposable income will spend money on their hobbies if they’re having fun, and the company offers them something which is appealing (can be cosmetic, can be for convenience, can be something else … just has to have some actual appeal) — even if they can get the item without paying. One way to get people to buy things is to make the game difficult to play without spending money (lots of mobile games do this)…

But here we’re talking about acquiring precursors for legendaries, which are obviously not required to play the game. So I think if you’re using the legendary market to argue that ANet is deliberately making the game difficult to play without spending money, your argument holds no water. If you’re arguing that ANet makes it easier to get some pretty skins if you spend money — you’ll get no argument from me … I’m also not sure why you’d think that a bad thing.

Behellagh.1468:

John Smith.4610:

juno.1840:

QUESTIONS

1. What gold threshold would you use to classify a GW2 player as “rich” (yeah I know this is subjective, but let’s use the RL equivalent of multi-millionaires — my guess would be 6000g-ish, enough to buy a couple legendaries off the TP)

2. Roughly what percentage of the GW2 player population would fall into this “rich” category (probably tough since “smart” players would have their wealth in inflation-proof investments instead of cash in the vault — an educated percentage based upon your view of the data would be more than satisfactory)

3. How does this category of players effect the economy? (maybe a good/bad/neutral type of classification with a brief reason or two as to why)

Thanks!

These are value statements, and I don’t feel comfortable making value statements.

Okay. How much gold in bank would one need to have to be in the top 20% of active players? Top 10%?

I’m not sure that gold in the bank is meaningful either. I have 2 legendaries (I gave away the third that I made), lots of expensive skins/items (e.g. infinite light, anomaly, 4 sets of ascended armor, etc), and tradeable goods worth somewhere between 2k and 6k gold (I’m not sure exactly how much it would work out to be if I tried to sell everything, and it would depend on whether I decided to use or keep items like recipe: chaos of lyssa). But I often have only a few hundred gold in the bank at any given time … sometimes less than 100g.

I’ve changed cash into gold via gems often enough (better use of time than farming/grinding), but a lot of this is from playing or speculating (buying when prices seem too low, waiting to see if my guess was correct).

Belorn.2659:

Has not John and many others on this forum argued several time that there is no inflation since release, and precursor increased cost is only based on supply and demand.

Either they are right, and having a flat price would not had been unfair, or they are wrong, and the game is suffering from inflation.

I don’t think John Smith said that there was no inflation — rather he said that the inflation he tracked doesn’t really track the gem <→ gold exchange rate. And they’ve deliberately made changes which altered economics in a way that would have caused the basket of goods which he uses to track inflation to change prices.

There’s some good discussion in a recent thread — an example post from JS which touches on measuring inflation: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/I-have-a-question-about-the-economy/first#post4216795

Using precursors to measure inflation doesn’t make a lot of sense — most of what’s bought and sold aren’t precursors; and if you do so you have to account for things like how the wardrobe change made legendary skins more valuable (a demand shock is not the same thing as inflation, though it may be followed by a temporary or permanent increase in prices).

Tasty Pudding.3764:

mtpelion.4562:

Flippers target slow markets and improve their efficiency by increasing the volume of trades, thus helping a market reach equilibrium more quickly than if it relied exclusively on utilization trades.

And here is what is false in your argument. Flippers at most double the volume of sales that would have otherwise occurred. They are not creating a thriving market out of thin air. Flippers avoid truly slow markets like the plague.

The possibilities include more than black and white (1) healthy market in equilibrium versus (2) dead market where items are never bought or sold.

And most markets are more active than you realize.

As a random example — I sometimes put in buy orders for crafted jewelry — mostly for salvage. But if there’s a big spread between buy and sell orders, I’ll list them somewhere in between (more than 1c under the current low sell, since I think that’s inefficient and I’m too likely to be undercut — these are slow markets). Generally these sell for a good spread, though low total profits compared with time.

When the spread isn’t large enough, I don’t bother with this — I just salvage (that was my intent, and it’s good enough). But if the spread is large enough (1-2s per item), I’ll re-list — which brings in some profit.

(For the record: when I’m doing that, I usually do have buy and sell listings at the same time.)

Most markets which aren’t in equilibrium are like that — when they move far enough from equilibrium, there’s some incentive for flippers, who will spend some time extracting profit from the inefficiency — and in the process move prices towards equilibrium.

If ANet had designed markets with automated market makers, flippers wouldn’t be necessary. But they choose to leave this open for players … which does make trading (and the economy as a whole) more interesting.

Oxidia.8103:

You can range the molten zerk but on higher lvls he has much much much more hp. It would take forever to range him. Keep in mind that while on ranged the other boss spawns aoe everywhere because party is scattered and in some point the party wipes because it’s imposible to dodge.

I’ve ranged him on 49 and 50. It goes much faster melee, if you can pull that off — but I’ve seen more PUGs doing ranged than melee. The last time I did it (49), after 3 failed tries (definitely didn’t feel like a full DPS party, though I was wearing my full DPS gear) — we started (mostly) melee and switched to ranged once there were too many red circles — that worked.

Essence Snow.3194:

Rauderi.8706:

It does seem anti-intuitive to think that buy low, sell high “lowers” prices, but I do see the point about equilibrium.

Buying out the low material to sell it for a higher price means that there is room again for new materials to enter the market at higher prices as well, via undercutting. This gives producers (material farmers, etc) actual value for what they enter into the market.
…

This only applies to impatient buyers/sellers. For those utilizing buy orders and sell offers it increases prices on buy orders and decreases prices on sell offers.

While technically true, if you believe that the equilibrium price is a fair price, then the people who put in buy orders below the equilibrium price were trying to find sellers who are willing to sell the item at a price that’s less than a fair price. Similarly for sellers above the equilibrium price.

So by flipping in a market which hasn’t reached equilibrium (15% or less spread), you make the market fairer for those who buy or sell to the current sell or buy offers — and take some of the (implied) profit those who were willing to wait could have received. On balance, I think this improves fairness.

Lostwingman.5034:

Why does everyone want to go back to the days of dead or nearly dead zones? Go play a single player then.

The top servers weren’t dead or nearly dead in most zones (I often guested when I wanted a map with more people) — that was just true of the average servers. So this probably hurt people on servers like TC (which I guess was a role playing server, and is certainly well populated) much more than people in the average server. Trade-offs… :-/

AngelDiscarnate.5489:

Making them craftable would cheapen the sense of achievement for the people whom have already worked to get them.
It’d be like a kick in the eggs to them, to have them accessable on demand.

Maybe for you. I’ve crafted 3; the precursor is the part I found least engaging (I got two drops from the mystic forge, one from fotm, one purchased off the TP — I sold my extra flame of rodgort). I think the current acquisition mechanism sucks (it’s not hard, it’s just random … fair RNG implementations produce wildly unfair outputs when you consider the extreme cases; I was towards the average, but it still felt stupid).

I understand the need for material sinks, and I understand that the psychological effect of people who have good luck is probably pretty strong (they’re likely to talk about said good luck, and be more engaged; and there are lots of contexts where you can get a good drop if you play long enough). But the system is designed to produce unfair results (in the sense that some people get amazing runs in both directions) … and it’s time consuming and frustrating.

Making precursors craftable — esp using a complex or expensive process — would in no way reduce the value of the legendaries I’ve made, IMO. I made them because I liked the skins … I never expected them to be very exclusive, and they’re obviously not so.

Dworkin Barriman.1275:

Anet isn’t going to fix the precursor issue. They are making too much $$$ the way it is. When you have to come up with 1450 gold for the legend, there are people willing to drop 100’s of $$$ for the gems to convert so they don’t have to use the mystic toilet, or farm for gold. If anet makes precursors craftable, the price will drop by half, and that is $$$ out of anet’s pocket. End of story. I know this is an old topic, but as absolutely nothing has changed since the inception of the game on this issue, it’s still a relevant topic.

If you’re willing to drop 100’s of $$ for the precursor, you’re also willing to drop 100’s of $$ for the other components which are required to make a legendary. And the precursor is only about 1/4 – 1/2 of the total price of the legendary (less for a few; source: gw2legendary.com ); making precursors more easily available would make the other components go up in price.

I’ve spent a lot on gems, and have converted some to gold; I would say that most people willing to spend money on games like this are willing to spend it because they’re enjoying the game. Making precursors more easily available wouldn’t change that equation, nor would it change the fact that there are always other things you can acquire.

But most of the requests aren’t to make precursors easy — just to provide a mechanism which isn’t pure RNG. Pure RNG produces results which look unfair (since not everyone will have anything remotely resembling the average luck, and as you add more people you’ll see more outliers in both directions).

Fyrebrand.4859:

The whole idea of “meta” in PvE is utterly irrelevant for 99% of players. Sure, if you are in some quote-unquote “hardcore” speedrun group, trying to repeatedly blaze through dungeons as efficiently as possible, all day long — and everyone in the group is at the top of their game — playing the “meta” might save you a couple of minutes each run. But unless you are in that top echelon of ultra-efficient speedrun players (and don’t kid yourself, you probably aren’t), any noticeable impact the “meta” will have on your performance is mostly in your own imagination.

This is not true. It’s fairly easy to tell the difference between Ascended Celestial gear with Traveler’s runes and Exotic Berserker gear with Scholar’s runes when solo’ing camps in WvW — it works with both, but the latter is much faster. (Both were with basically the meta for my class — which I can also assure you is much more efficient than what I was running previously.)

Fyrebrand.4859:

Even if warriors were the “meta” in PvE, they are not needed to succeed, or even to excel. The “meta” is not even about tackling the hardest content in the game, getting the best gear, or being the most effective player. It’s simply a method to churn out the highest DPS in a controlled and predictable environment. GW2 is not made with that in mind. It makes little difference in world bosses, living story, dynamic events, champ farms. For almost all scenarios, the “meta” serves no purpose. If the choice comes down to “play the class you’re most comfortable with and enjoy the most,” versus “play the meta,” I simply don’t see why anyone should feel compelled to choose the latter. It really doesn’t matter that much, in the grand scheme of things.

This I agree with. I’d go farther; PvE isn’t very difficult once you understand the encounters — there’s no need to go with the class that’s easiest (high armor + high health + decent passive regeneration).

I have all classes at 80, geared in zerker, and I play the ones whose gameplay I enjoy most (Ele, Guard, sometimes Ranger … I wish I could make my Engi seem as useful in PvE, but apparently I’m not good enough, so I mostly use the others).

[Edited: kitten ANet filters … “hard” followed by “once” triggers them.]

Vakrir.4829:

I’m sure you can deal with every class if you really wanted to. I’m just saying that with claims like “There is not much point in bringing more than 1 warrior” and “Anyone who puts restrictions based on AP or armor type are looking to be carried” and “Most pugs don’t understand WHY they even stack” and “Rangers, Necros, Engineers all have this horrible stigma, but they’re all very viable creating a smooth run.”, this person definitely does not know what they’re talking about.

I didn’t make all those claims, but attempting to defend them:

(1) more than 1 warrior indicates you’re looking for people who can make mistakes and not be downed (high armor/health) — rather than max DPS; this is fine for PUGs, but I read this as clearly trying to compensate for skill

(2) “Anyone” is too strong, and perhaps “be carried” is as well — but in general those who put restrictions on who can join their PUG based on class or AP do so because they can’t get through without help and can’t provide much help for others in their party. Those who request DPS builds (and zerker gear) are a bit different, but AP restrictions (and sometimes class restrictions) seem at least partially to compensate for the party’s weaknesses.

(3) I do think most PUGs don’t understand why stacking is useful, and when it’s worth getting out of the stack. I know I sometimes make mistakes with the latter.

(4) A well played Ranger, Necro, or Engineer can definitely contribute to a smooth run. Not the fastest run, but a smooth run. (This is the one I feel most strongly about btw — the others I’ll grant you have a point, I just don’t think that it’s complete crack smoke to make the claims in question.)