Guild Wars 2

Psientist.6437:

In my apparently uneducated opinion, a player exchanging gems for gold will preferentially spend that gold on in-game goods that require the most time in-game to acquire. Precursors take a long time to acquire. Again in my humble, ill-informed opinion, the question of whether the currency exchange impacts luxury goods more than non-luxury goods is a question of how much. More than a blip I wager.

Another indicator, the currency exchange doesnt really impact precursor prices, probably less than a blip:

The gold/gem ratio is rising faster than precursor prices, so over time, it has become incredibly cheap in terms of real cash to purchase a precursor. Here are some numbers:

I take the gold/gem ratio from https://www.gw2tp.com/gems as my source.
To get the gem/gold ratio, i multiply it by 0.7225 (0,85*0,85), to determine how much gold i get for 100 gems and note the value in 3 month steps, starting Sep 17th 2013:

Sep 17th 2013: 4.77g x 0.7225= 3.45g
Dec 17th 2013: 7.60g x 0.7225= 5.49g
Mar 17th 2014: 8.23g x 0.7225= 5.95g
Jun 17th 2014: 12.01g x 0,7225= 8.68g
Sep 17th 2014: 13.12g x 0.7225= 9.48g
Dec 17th 2014: 15.85g x 0.7225= 11.45g
Mar 17th 2015: 14.48g x 0.7225= 10.46g
Jun 17th 2015: 17.93g x 0.7225= 12.95g
Sep 17th 2015: 20.60g x 0.7225= 14.88g

Now lets look at precursor prices at the same points of time and see how much gems you needed to buy one from the tp:
The Legend:

Sep 17th 2013: 845g/3.45g x 100= 24493 gems
Dec 17th 2013: 805g/5.49g x 100= 14678 gems
Mar 17th 2014: 717g/5.95g x 100= 12051 gems
Jun 17th 2014: 1130g/8.68g x 100= 13019 gems
Sep 17th 2014: 1370g/9.48g x 100= 14452 gems
Dec 17th 2014: 1370g/11.45g x 100= 11966 gems
Mar 17th 2015: 968g/10.46g x 100= 9255 gems
Jun 17th 2015: 1228g/12.95g x 100=9483 gems
Sep 17th 2015: 1326g/14.88g x 100= 8912 gems

That means the price for the legend in cash went down by 64% in 2 years, how is this possible in your opinion, if, according to you, cash spenders have a considerable impact on precursor prices?

Some figures for other precursors in the same timespan:

Colossus went down from 16400 to 6000 gems
Dusk went down from 24000 to 9400 gems
Dawn went down from 17900 to 6000 gems
Zap went down from 16600 to 7600 gems
The Lover went down from 16300 to 4300 gems

I am a little confused what the difference between DPZzzz, DPZzzzz and DPZzz is.

Can you elaborate more?

Since the last patch about 20 hours ago, I have a hard time adjusting the gold/silver/copper price values when I am buying/selling on the trading post.

Usually I hover over the small input window for the prices and adjust it via mouse wheel scroll. But now, once I hover over the box for the copper value, it becomes unresponsible, as if my mouse pointer wouldnt be there. If I left click into the copper box, it actually adjusts the SILVER price by 1 for each click, either up or down, depending on if i click in the upper or lower half of the copper box.

The same goes for the gold value, if i try to click into the silver box (earlier, I even listed a couple of stacks of snowflakes for 2.02 gold instead of 2 silver).

It seems, as if the “hitboxes” for the gold/silver/copper values are actually quite a bit to the right from their visual display.

Not sure, if others experience the same bug, or its a problem on my end.

LordByron.8369:

i ll answer only to this since i know this part of the forum is the worse to debate about economy impact of the game (this is the section for making money on other players….).
I think not

This is actually the best section of the forum to discuss this and it belongs here.
Maybe its time for you to consider that the reason why you get so much opposition to your claims that rampant speculation and tp flippers are causing inflation and are bad for the economy is that you are simply wrong.

Silent Shino.7239:

What bug was it? I can’t tell from the screenshot

If you watch closely you will see that the thief is not perma stealthed.

No.

I think they are a great way to transfer some wealth from those who can afford it to casual players who farm it because its so easily accessible.

You will still be best at running away.

Oh man, here wo go. Its the first day of this content being live, its permanent and people already complain that they didnt get what they want.

Sorry to put the brakes on, this toy is just purchaseable in my imagination.

But im sure some people would buy it for 500 gems, even if it doesnt give a speed buff.
It would just enable you to ride around your favourite city on it, while all your hype related tells in map chat will flash in different colors and look all sparkly.

Maybe add a wagon or two, for your favourite mini and a Cape to fly from the last one.

I would buy it just to run it off a cliff.

Moaners will moan before they actually know what they are moaning about.

If you check under the Promotions Tab in the Gem Store today, you can buy 1 each Experience Booster and Transmutation Charge for free.

There is no time limit on this offer but i would claim yours at your earliest convenience.

Psientist.6437:

Wanze.8410:

Garrisyl.7402:

The problem was the RNG element which forced players to buy precursors on the TP, where prices were artificially inflated due to people buying them with real money through currency exchange.

This is not true, most precursors reflect the value of materials (mithril/elder/t5 fine mats) that someone has to use in order to craft enough rares to forge a precursor on average, or the value of the corresponding rares on the tp.

In fact, the cheaper precursors are offered below forging value atm.

Wanze, your supply side bias is showing. Your description of the price difference among legacy precursors highlights the role of demand, not the role of supply or the cost of production. How players generate their demand potential is important. Where currency enters the marketplace is also very important, and I agree with Garrisyl that RMT impacts luxury goods like precursors first and most persistently.

That being said, the new method will likely distribute the effects of RMT more broadly than it does now.

edit: The new method may even decrease the overall demand for gold.

First of all, neither Garrisyl nor me were talking about RMT´s but the currency exchange.

And people, who buy gems with real cash to buy their precursors cant be responsible for inflated prices because they dont inject any gold into the economy, they actually take some gold out of it. And if prices of some precursors should spike temporarily (because 10-20 people buy the same one) professional forgers will add new supply because forging them with bought rares or crafted ones with t5 mats will yield good profit.

By farming huge amounts of mithril, elder wood and t5 fine mats for rare inscriptions, the player base basically farms alot of precursors every day, professional forgers only re-distribute those ressources to those precursors which yield the highest profit atm, which are usually those that are in demand atm.

If prices for precursors should go back to 500g, mithril, elder wood, t5 fine mats as well as the corresponding rare weapons for expensive precursors will also lose 50% of their value as forging precursors is the biggest sink for those.

Those mats make up a big part of the overall loot value of lvl 80 players, so the average g/hour will go down as well, so it doesnt really matter that pres only cost 500g now, Casual Joe still needs the same time to farm the gold to buy one.

I stand by my point, expensive precursors reflect the value of the materials that are needed to forge one, the cheaper precursors are traded below forging value because supply from rng drops (from mobs or the forge) is higher than demand.

And prices are not inflated.

btw, are there any girls from Sweden in game?

They might be able to help you.

For those who dont bother reading Evons blog, quite a few armor/weapon skins, tools etc. will be taken out of the gem store in 7 days.

Gem Store Spring Cleaning
With the approach of summer and our pending return to Lion’s Arch, it’s time to clean house a bit and put a few things into storage. The Wintersday weapon set will be removed from vendors in one week, and the following items will no longer be regularly available in the Gem Store until next fall.

Krytan Armor Skins
Profane Armor Skins
Primeval Armor Skins
Zodiac Armor Skins
Quaggan Warrior Backpack
Wintersday Earmuffs
Fuzzy Bear Hat
Fuzzy Leopard Hat
Glowing Crimson Mask Skin
Mask of the Crown Skin
Sailor’s Beanie
Top Hat
Reading Glasses
Frost Wasp Logging Tool
Tireless Logging Minion
Tireless Harvesting Minion
Bone Pick
Fused Molten Logging Axe
Molten Alliance Mining Pick
Fused Molten Sickle

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/daydreamers-wings-honor-guard-finisher-and-mini-beetle-in-the-gemstore/

Silvia.9130:

Think how cool it would be if when you toggle this system on, the character you choose to gain the XP “became” a mini that followed you everywhere like a normal mini, but just with the exact look of your lowbie :O Would love it to death!

A mini alt which is loved to death isnt much use anymore.

On topic:

I dislike the idea of passing exp to alts. We already have tomes of knowledge, lvl 20 scrolls and for those that want to spend gold to level their alts quickly, we got crafting.

It would also lower the population in sub level 80 maps, which isnt desirable for new players that level their first character.

I just hope alot of t5 leather is being used in rebuilding it.

Katsuragi.4026:

ranger with a bow and try attacking while running forward.

9k hours in game and i never seen a ranger run forward while shooting his bow, only backwards.

Superior Sigil of Critter Slaying
+50% Damage against critters

Noah.4756:

This thread is so full of misinformation it’s unbelievable.

First of all, it is not just a 50 gold difference. For example, the difference between Zojja’s Doublet (Light) and Zojja’s Breastplate (Heavy) is already 33 gold. That’s just one piece of armor.

Second of all, for all the people who are saying that the change is intended. Please don’t be sheep and just repeat something just because “an economist” says so. He never said why silk prices are intended as they are and it just doesn’t make sense balance wise to agree with his statement. Light classes are getting shafted because of this imbalance and the forum keeps getting flooded by new threads like these.

The thought that lowering the price of silk might increase the price of the lower level cloths is true. It shows how imbalanced the whole supply mechanic is of cloths. While trees can be cut and ore can be mined there is no reliable source for cloth. As long as this isn’t changed light classes will have to pay a higher margin and these threads will keep making their return.

Heavy classes had the shaft for over a year after release because their rare and exotic armor was more expensive than light and medium, didnt see no complains there.

Concerning your sheep comment: Why arent people allowed to repeat what the game economist had to say but you are allowed to repeat what complainers have to say?
Just saying the economy is imbalanced or the recipes are out of whack isnt very constructive.
You already acknowledged that simply lowering the silk requirements propably wont have the desired effect, so what do you suggest? Personally, i couldnt care less about light armor users as i only play warrior but i will give it a shot.

First of all, some general observations:

- Leather (all tiers) is the cheapest of the mats used in armorcrafting, it is not farmable directly but due to having next to no real sink apart from leveling tailor and ascended light and medium armor crafting, there is an oversupply. T5 leather is the only mat used in asc crafting that usually is available at vendor value.

- Metal (all tiers except t6) is the 2nd cheapest of the mats used in armorcrafting, it is directly farmable from nodes. It also has alot different meaningful sinks apart from ascended armorcrafting (crafting rares for forging precursors, gift of metal, mystic forge weapons, regular weaponcrafting and jeweler). In my opinion, metal is the “healthiest or most balanced” of the 3 mats used in armorcrafting.

- Cloth (all tiers except t6) is the most expensive of all mats used in ascended armorcrafting, it is not directly farmable but even though it has no other sinks, due to the higher requirements of t5 mats (300 silk instead of 150 thick leather or 100 mithril) and its requirements in ALL armorcrafting, it is undersupplied.

I think the general idea is to bring all 3 armor types more in line in terms of pricing. Which means we have to get damask and elonian leather more in line with deldrimor.

Lets have a look what we need to craft one full set of each armor:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_armor#Materials

• 75 Bolts of Damask (36 for light, 24 for medium and 25 for heavy)
• 24 Elonian Leather Square (6/18/0)
• 16 Deldrimor Ingots (0/0/16)

In general, i think we should leave metal requirements untouched, their prices are healthy and there are alot of other sinks. Obviously, the ascended sink for cloth in general is to big and the ascended sink for leather is too small but the ascended sink for both should be higher than for metal.

If we change the requirements for the heavy armor set and substitute Bolts of Damask with Elonian Leather, we would see a way more balanced distribution to craft 3 full sets:

• 50 Bolts of Damask (36 for light, 24 for medium and 0 for heavy)
• 49 Elonian Leather Square (6/18/25)
• 16 Deldrimor Ingots (0/0/16)

Additionally, Thick Leather section requirements should be raised from 150 to 300 (its the only mat at vendor value), to bring the sinks of cloth and leather more in line.
Cloth will still have a bigger sink as leather from 0-400 crafting, though, so the changes to heavy armor crafting (using leather instead of cloth for paddings/linings) should also be introduced from 0-400 to ease demand on cloth in general. That leaves the additional cloth sink (compared to leather) from crafting insignias.
They are obviously crafted with cloth because each armorcrafting profession can use and refine cloth. But as the heavy armorcrafters wont need cloth anymore, i would suggest to make insignias in general be craftable with either cloth or leather. That gives leatherworker and tailor the choice of which mat to use (a good way to balance prices between those two) and heavy armorcrafters will have to use leather only.

Problem solved?

Sarrs.4831:

I would prefer for them to be targeting Silk, Gossamer, Mithril and Orichalcum prices, honestly.

Silk is as cheap as never before ever since ascended crafting got introduced, gossamer is cheap as well. Mithril lost 70% of its value in the last 6 months, orichalcum about 50% of its value.
What are you talking about?

RedCobra.7693:

lol though, i bought around 50 exotics with doly runes and wanted to see if saying this would make them sell, what do you know it did cba again though only made about 10g not worth the negativity :C

give me a break wanze im new to this whole thing, dont sit there and pretend youve NEVER done this before

Yeah, right. All those 10 people that saw this topic before you changed the title and OP, bought your 50 dolly Armors within an hour. Give ME a break.

I have done plenty of hawking on this forum but i do it in a subtler way than you I guess. Another difference might be that i have build up a reputation compared to you because people actually made some gold from my tips and thus are more inclined to believe me.

If you truly believed that dolyak runes will be more popular because of increased regen after the patch, the smart thing to do would be to salvage those armors with a BLSK to get some extra ectos and save inventory space, as the runes itself stack, armor does not, and wait until after the patch to sell.
To increase your chances of other speculators raising the price, you could have posted in an already existing topic on this forum that deals with speculation about the feature patch and related price shifts. It would also help your cause, if you would have provided a link to the interview and would give an example in which game modes people like to use dolly runes.

If your information was accurate and not dolly droppings, you can utilize other peoples buying power to increase the price of the item and even make some of them a little richer, adding to your reputation.

If you would have done so and waited with selling your dolly runes until next week, you might have gone out with 100g profit instead of 10 gold.

Today Anet released the new silver fed salvage o matic in the gem store that salvages at the same rate as master/mystic salvage kits.

The Copper Fed S-O-M is one of my favourite convenience items so i was excited for the new one. Unfortunately the salvage costs at 1 silver are way above regular master salvage kits which only cost about 61 copper per salvage.

I propably gonna get it anyways but the profiteer in me says that it isnt worth the convenience it gives.

Evilbeavers.3964:

So much butter.

7500 silver worth of butter.

I forfeit my profit on the butter and sent it all to Devon Carver´s account along with 3 letters: GvG

phys.7689:

Wanze.8410:

phys.7689:

And on your last point, im different than you, im not here talking to try to protect my method of earning. Im not even advocating any actual nerfs to the TP or flipping. I am for increasing mmo fun. Problem is the reward system and how it is built to feed the tp, is lowering fun. Many games have rich people, who can buy the world, but there also a lot of people who earned items just as fast, if not faster by playing the game. Im not really playing this game to earn money, earning money is just what i have to do to get the things i want in the game. Id basically prefer i had some goals that a good, reasonable way of obtaining it was based on non TP gameplay.

But why do you keep posting in topics about profits on the tp instead of making suggestions on how to improve rewards for other parts of the game in the appropriate forums?

you realize any post about this stuff gets moved to this forum because this is the rewards part of the forum right?
You also realize that the OP of the post is saying i wish i didnt have to play the TP to get endgame items?

I am completely on topic an appropriate here.

All the OP did was to express his wish to obtain shinies through regular gameplay at the same pace as by playing the tp. He offered no suggestions towards rewards from regular gameplay but centered his post on the TP, so this topic is in the right forum.

Some other users, including you, start giving suggestions on how to improve rewards for other playstyles here but they get completely lost in topics like these because the title and OP doesnt imply that those suggestions might be included in this topic.
Devs will simply not see your feedback because its posted in an unrelated topic.

I am pretty sure, if you make a suggestion about reward structures in the appropriate sub forums and dont mention the Trading Post in your suggestion, it wont be moved here.

I offer my paw in marriage.

Bids start at 50g and 50 bloodstone bricks.

Can offer help for daily rezzer achievement.

Kitiara.2706:

Everything requires 10 brown dye!

Plenty of brown dyed undergarnments in raids these days, should be enough to go around.

Zenguy.6421:

You will have noticed the sudden massive drop in prices for most Masterwork dyes.

Assuming this drop has been driven by a small group of people, it would appear to be a deliberate attempt to drive competitors like me out of the market by forcing losses on recently bought stocks of these dyes.

In commercial markets this sort of behavour is usually illegal. However I realise that the market of a MMO is a different sort of beast.

Is this the sort of market behaviour a problem for GW2?

Thanks

The recent massive drop in prices for identified dyes has come with the last gem store update and the new bundles, which include Unidentified Dyes (account bound but i guess once identified they are tradeable) and Black Lion Keys, so there are lots of dyes coming in from those BL chests also.

I dentified Dyes, especially fine and masterwork ones, have had big price spreads for a long time now, so they are attractive for flippers, so I wouldnt neccessarily agree with your assumption that your competition is just 1 guy or a coordinated group of people.

And even if it was, its not manipulation but how the market in GW2 works.
The competition makes you post higher bids and lower listings, which in good for the general player base because they can sell their dyes for a higher price directly and can buy it cheaper.

The strategies of “market manipulation” that you described usually never work, unless there is a shift in general supply or demand from the player base, especially for items that are not limited in supply to begin with.

The demand for dyes in general has seen a steady surge this year with all the new accounts being created after the 75% off sales earlier in the year and through HoT prepurchases.

Their supply usually spikes with changes to the gem store, like key sales, bundles that contain keys or dyes, special dye kit (like Shadow dyes), which also have 1-2 dozen regular dyes on their loot table, which usually drop hard. Abyss dye, for example, was part of the lions arch rebuild dye kit and dropped from 70 to 30g when it got reintroduced in July and now dropped from 70 to 40g when the new account bundles went live.

Even a newly introduced item to the BL Chest loot tables can spark a sudden supply spike for dyes in general as a byproduct of people going for the new shiny.

Edit: Not all of your perceived competition are flippers in the first place, they might be forgers as well.
For forgers, the price spread of the dye they are placing orders on doesnt really matter. If they want to forge rare dyes, they look at prices for masterwork dyes as a whole and only place orders on the ones with the lowest buy orders.

One masterwork dye might have a price 40s/70s and another one has a price of 20s/30s highest bid/lowest listing. You, as a flipper, might only place bids on the first dye, as it has a higher price spread and profit margin for each flip, the forger will place bids on the 2nd dye, as it has the lower highest bid. Sometimes, a dye is attractive to the forger and flipper at the same time because it has a low bid price compared to all other dyes and a high price spread.

The same goes for sell listings. Someone who dumps a a bunch of masterwork dyes might not have gotten them via buy orders but forged them with cheap fine dyes and paid a lower price than you did, so he doesnt care, if he undercuts you by a couple of silver.

Nice try of a troll post penguin.
If you put a gold sink directly under a gold faucet, the gold (or items) will never enter the economy.
They basically already done this to champ bags by nerfing the gold output.
Loot items that are sold on the tp will drain 15% of their gold value form the economy, so thats implemented as well.

But lots of scrubs in this game.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Dragonites are too common. I get a stack or 2 per day. What they need to do is buff Empyreals, because I’m lacking in those.

Dear Anet, please nerf stones, paper is fine as it is.

Sincerely, Scissors.

Here is a quite from JS the game economist about price inequality of mats of the same tiers:

John Smith.4610:

You don’t micromanage markets to maintain equilibrium. Not only is it an incredible amount of work you can never be wrong in, it’s not physically possible inside a live game environment.

You assume that absolute parity is required inside of tiers, I don’t necessarily agree.

What exactly seems to be the problem here?

Silk price has been quite stable since ascended armor got introduced, so i dont know why they should cut its demand by 33%, 50% or 66%. It would bring it back to vendor value in no time and even add additional demand on all the other tier cloth, which would go up in price.

If Anet things that silk is getting too expensive, and I dont think they do, they will do the same as last year around this time. Adjust the faucets a bit, with new LS reward mechanics and Seasonal Festivals, instead of cutting demand by a ridiculously high amount.

Shadowbane.7109:

Wanze.8410:

snoeckie.9230:

Yes what?
That wasnt a yes or no answer.

No.

Yes.

My source:

John Smith.4610:

No.

As you only got 9 boosts out of 10 chests, i would submit a support ticket.

Unless you managed to mess up accurately displaying the loot table of 30 items but went to the forums to complain nonetheless.
In that case, you deserve those drops.

Its an RNG Box, dont buy it, if you wnat value for your money.

No.

This might be helpful:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/first#post3383470

clearly a ltp issue here

Hand Sanitizer.

Alamuir.6593:

Edge of the Mist used to be fun. There was a karma train. We all took turns and we all got gold, loot, achievements, etc. For the past three weeks it’s been anything but fun. Over powered players that one shot you, or a small group of the same, while apparently none of the siege equipment or ranger’s arrows nor any thing else affects these OP toons. At all. Not even a scratch. Then having large guilds come in and destroy the ability to do any of the fun things created a depressing scenario which I became frustrated with and simply left. Not really wanting to go back if this is how it’s going to be. For two years I’ve enjoyed running in EoTM but lately, not so much. Maybe I’m getting old and jaded.

Seems like you got into EotM 1 year before everybody else.

Vegito.3048:

Vol.7601:

Your fault buddy

I know. Just sad because my friends got me all excited.

Oh well, looking forward to april now.

They are not your friends…

Astral Projections.7320:

As soon as I posted the suggestion that Wanze = John Smith, my iPad froze and had to be rebooted. Was that you? Did I take off my tin foil hat too soon?

(>.>) (<.<) (>.>)

One of us leveled up, might have been the knockback blast.

The trading post is not an auction house.

someone in map chat just asked how he activates his mentor tag.

What a mentor that is….

Next time you want to buy a video game, check the ESRB Content Rating to see if there is anything in game that might upset you.

all those vets that dont want gliding in wvw, cheer up!

Because you can still play wvw without gliding.

IN EOTM!!!!!!

Ankushp.7245:

Why can’t we have Mounts ?!!

Clipping issues with the capes, they said.

Flying Mounts.

My source? The internet.

If one group of players can be held responsible for in game inflation, its dungeon runners because they handle the biggest gold faucet in the game.

Flippers actually take gold out of the economy and bring the price spread of an item closer together.

If you think flippers are the source of all evil, there are two simple things you can do to stop them:

Only buy your stuff through buy orders and never sell your stuff to the highest bidder.

Problem solved.